Family Vacay 2011

We just spent a week with Casey's family, and had a little family vacay. We left for Shreveport last Friday, July 1, and returned here yesterday, July 8. We had a lot of fun, but we are glad to be home!

Last Friday and Saturday we just spent time hanging out around Casey's parents house. On Sunday, we left for a small town in northeast Louisiana (Delhi) where there is a quiet state park called Poverty Point Reservoir State Park. It has a very interesting name, but there is not much going on there! We spent from 4:00 Sunday, until 10:00 Tuesday at this cabin. We had a relaxing time, just hanging out, basically! Here are some pics:











We returned to Shreveport, and that evening Casey took us to one of his old fishing spots. We didn't catch very many fish, but it was very peaceful and fun to just spend time together.






On Thursday, it was Casey's 30th birthday! It's hard to believe! I surprised him with a quick trip to Dallas to spend some time with friends, and also just the 2 of us. On Wednesday night we went to the Rangers game with our good friends Marcus, Whitney, and Chris. Casey and I stayed at the Embassy Suites in Frisco (Priceline deal!) and then I reserved him a tee time at Westridge Golf Course (he had always wanted to play this course!) on Thursday. He played through hole 13, and then we both decided it was too insanely hot to continue playing, but we had a lot of fun!









After we left the course, I let Casey pick where he wanted to eat lunch. He chose Fadi's which is this insanely good mediterranean place in Frisco! It was YUMMO! Unfortunately, when we arrived at Fadi's Casey realized he had misplaced his wallet at the golf course. He called, they searched, and they couldn't find it. He and I went back there and thankfully he found it in the golf cart! It was not a fun hour and a half while that was missing!

After this, we drove back to Shreveport and had a birthday dinner at Ralph and Kacoo's, and then birthday cake at Casey's parents' house.






On the way back home yesterday, we decided to have a picnic at ETBU. We hadn't ever taken the girls there, and we hadn't been back in awhile either! It was fun. We got some sloppy Joe's at Bodacious BBQ, which is the bomb.com! We let the girls run around for a bit and then were on our way again!




It was a very full week, but it was nice to get to spend time together before the rest of the summer madness! (VBS, Six Flags trip, Un-civil War, Rock the Desert, ESL Certification test, SBMS workshop...etc.!)

June Recap

Well, as you can see, June has been busy! I didn't blog for the entire month! Here is what we have been up to!

June 1st: Last day of School!

June 2nd: Last day at BMS for me! :( This day was very hard for me because I had to pack up my whole classroom, and move into a storage building until my new classroom is ready at the new school (SBMS). It was very hard for me to leave my school and my friends behind.

June 6th: First teacher workshop of the summer. This one was actually pretty cool because I got a lesson on how to operate my new macbook pro, and I also recieved my new iPad 2! (Perks of moving to SBMS!)

June 12-18: Centrifuge Youth Camp in Glorieta, New Mexico. Casey and I both went this year, and had a ton of fun. The weather was GORGEOUS, and it was nice to get away for the week. We did some hiking up some mountains, drove into Santa Fe for missions at a skate park and did some shopping, and the students made several important spiritual decisions. On the way home we shredded a tire on our trailer, in the middle of nowhere, and ended up getting home a couple hours late, but thankfully nobody was hurt! (Including the youth guys who ended up having to lift the trailer, because the jack didn't work!) For the first half of the week Casey's mom kept Kailey and Makenna (at our house) and for the second half of the week my mom kept them (still at our house!) They were glad to have us home!






June 22-23: Curriculum writing for me. I had to go and listen to info about the new STAAR (replacing TAKS) exam. Then I had to work with another 6th grade ELA teacher to organize our TEKS/units to be in a logical format and add little notes of importance to each one. It was long.boring.tedious.awful. I left immediately from there (on the 23rd) to come home, load up the girls (and our stuff) and head to Kingwood.

June 23-27: Kingwood trip. My baby sister, Laura, is getting married on September 3rd, and we had her wedding shower on June 25th. I was in charge of making cupcakes for around 30-40 people, and it was a lot of fun! It was a really relaxing trip home!

June 28-29: ESL Certification training. I have to get ESL certified on July 30th, and so I spent 2 days in a workshop, learning what to study for the exam! The girls had their first babysitter on the 29th, and it went really well, so hopefully we can start using her more often!

In between all of these workshops and trips, the girls and I have been spending a lot of time at our local splash pad/water park. I got season passes for Kailey and I (Makenna is free) and we have been having fun going there for a bit each day before it gets too hot! Kailey also went roller skating for the first time, and we got a huge pool for the backyard from Casey's parents that we are spending time in.

We are leaving tomorrow for a weeklong trip to Shreveport and southeast Louisiana for a little family vacay with Casey's family! It has been a busy one so far, and it isn't slowing down any time soon! I do not have any teacher workshops in July (except for taking that test on July 30th) and I am very thankful for that. (Of course, they wanted me to go to one, but I said no. :) ) Here are some pictures from June!

One Year Old!

Makenna turned one on Wednesday! I can't believe she is already one. I know everybody always talks about how fast their kids grow up, but SERIOUSLY, they grow SO fast! Here are some pictures, and Makenna's latest fun facts!

-Makenna is 19 lbs 9oz (still SO tiny!)

-She is 28 inches long

-We are transitioning her from formula to whole milk, which so far is going really well! And I am Super thankful, because that will save us $23.00 per WEEK!

-She LOVES eating finger foods. She is especially fond of ham cubes and cheese cubes.

-She has started to get a little temper. :( We think she sees Kailey act that way, and it is rubbing off on her. The other day she threw a tantrum because Casey took her toy away!

-She is still smiley smilersons most of the time though. Such a sweet sweet baby!

-She is walking all over the place. She seems so tiny to be walking, but it is so cute!

-She loves all things soft and cozy, and loves to snuggle with her blanket.

-She loves music and dances any time she hears her toys play music, or music on the radio.

-She still only has 2 teeth! Crazy!

-She loves to play outside, and especially loves her new sand and water table that Grammy and PawPaw got her for her birthday!

Makenna Grace has brought so much joy to our loves. I love seeing her learn and grow, and I love the relationship she is already building with Kailey. It is one of the sweetest things I have ever witnessed, seeing my girls grow up! I love them both tremendously! Happy Birthday Makenna Grace!

Whooooos birthday is this week??

This coming Wednesday (the 25th) is Makenna's first birthday! I can't believe my baby girl is turning one! This past year has gone by SO fast! It makes me sad that I'm about to have to stop giving her bottles, because I love that part of my night so much. She is such a sweet little angel baby! But, that is another topic for another day. Possibly Wednesday. This blog is about her birthday party, which we had yesterday!

I had a TON of fun planning Makenna's party. I mean, seriously a HUGE amount of fun. I am going to put tons of links and pictures in case you are interested in doing something similar, or if you just need some great designers to make your party ideas come to life!

The theme for the party was "owls", and the colors were light blue, light pink, and white. I started browsing blogs trying to get ideas, and I found several cute owl parties that inspired me:

Birthday Girl Blog (and seriously, check out all her other party ideas! AWESOME)
Kelly's Korner (I linked to her "show us your kids' birthday parties. There are a couple hundred ideas!)
Random girl I found on Kelly's Korner that did an owl party

After seeing all of these really cute parties, I started browsing etsy, and they have TONS of owl party products. So I narrowed it down to the products by SweetBeeDesignShop. She made my party invitation, my banner, and my favor tags. I purchased the digital files, and then printed them out on cardstock and put them together myself. (Well, actually Casey printed it, and cut it out, and helped me put it together!)She did a GREAT job. It was also nice that it was a digital file, because then I could print extra owls to decorate around the party in other ways. Like, I made a sign for the front door, decorated Makenna's high chair, and glued some of the owls to sticks and put them in the yard, and decorated the table. I also found directions to make pompoms, and made kajillions of them and hung them everywhere. I also scrapbooked Makenna's first 11 months of life, using all those pics I have been posting each month! You can't see them very well in the pic, but it also turned out really cute.








For the food, my sister-in-law helped me come up with a few cute ideas. I made owl cake pops, dipped marshmellows, and made pretzel m&m treats. Since our party was from 10-12 we had lunch. We had chicken salad sandwiches, turkey and swiss sandwiches, hot spinach dip, cheeseballs, fruit kabobs, and ham and cheese kabobs for the kiddos. My father-in-law made the chicken salad, and everything was YUMMO! For the punch, I just did cherry limeades from Sonic. Super easy!

I ordered the cake from Simply Sweet Bakery. She also did a great job! I sent her a design I found, plus Makenna's invitation, and the cake turned out perfect!







For activities, I chose for the kids to make an owl puppet craft, which I found the patterns for here. Instead of having the kids color the peices, I cut them out of scrapbook paper. Each owl had its own pattern, and they were super cute! We also played "Pin the beak on the owl" which did not work out too well. But, it was a nice effort! Then the kids just played at the park behind our house for a bit before we opened gifts.











I ordered her outfit from several different shops on etsy, as well. I blogged about her photo shoot in my last post, if you want to see it up close! Here are the shops, and some pics!

Tutu (it was only $10)
Shirt (she is the bomb.com. beautiful work! I have ordered a few shirts from her!)
Bloomers
Bow






My sister-in-law recommended a girl in Shreveport who made sugar cookies for the party favors. I found a design I liked on etsy, and the girl was able to make them almost exactly like them! They were super cute, and yummy!


We had a great time at the party, and it was really fun to plan, but I am definitely glad it's over, because it was exhausting making everything! A special thanks goes to my in-laws for all their help with the food, my sister Emily for taking pictures, and my husband for letting me do this!

As always, there are TONS more pictures on facebook!

Early "One-Year" Photo Shoot

This past weekend we took Makenna to get her "One-Year" Pictures made at Portrait Innovations. They turned out really cute! Her birthday party theme this year is going to be "owls". The colors are light pink, light blue, white, and brown. Here are some of my favorites:










There are tons more on my facebook, as well as some attempted photos with the Kailey-bug. She was not being very cooperative that day, so we didn't get too many of her! But, that was ok, because I mainly wanted to get Makenna's anyway!