The fort...

Some days are just long. It seems like Brad's work day will never end, and the creative juices just aren't flowing in me. The other day was one of those days where I was just out of ideas on how to entertain my little ones. Then I remembered the couch forts we used to always build when I was young. It was a hit for sure. Eden, Bentley and I played in there for quite a while, but then I had to start on dinner so Eden began gathering new friends to fill her fort. Once she got all the friends arranged in there, she then decided they each needed some water to drink. It was pretty cute to overhear her playing in there.

This fort was definitely a success and an idea I'll have to pull out again on another one of those long mommy days. :)

Aquarium and Botanical Gardens

A few weeks ago we were able to spend the day at the aquarium and botanical gardens with Kally and the boys, my mom, and the May family. We spent the morning hanging out in the gardens, we had a picnic lunch, and then went in to the aquarium just as it was getting really hot and toasty outside.

In the gardens, the kids loved going down the slide, even little Bentley!

Eden loved the butterfly garden. She was lucky because they kept landing on her. It made her really nervous at first, but then she really loved it.

We are grateful for the opportunities we have to go out and explore! Thanks friends and family for going with us!

Popejoy Gala

Brad is a member of the board for Popejoy Hall so we were invited to attend their fundraising Gala. Brad had to be the emcee for part of the show so he had to get super fancy in a tux. I didn't have anything quite that fancy, but it was still fun to get dressed up and go to that kind of event. Brad looked so handsome in his tux. Just now as I was going through pictures to post, Eden saw this picture and said, "oooohhh daddy, so handsome". :)

Here are some pictures of Brad doing his little speech, and then hosting the Broadway Game Show. So cute up there doing his thing...

Arts and crafts...

Eden has always loved doing crafts and lately she has been especially into coloring and drawing. I love having a space in our office where we have her little table and lots of supplies always accessible to her because she quite often works on projects throughout the day while I'm doing other things. I love finding all her cute pictures throughout the house. I'm often quite amazed at how well she does and how creative she is.

This is a drawing she did of the teddy bear Jade gave her after she got out of the hospital.

These are her drawings of Belle and the Beast. I love the teeth she gave them. Originally she had pipe cleaners glued along the sides of their bodies (brown on the beast, and yellow on Belle) but they all fell off before I took the pictures.

She said this was a frog on a log in the water.

The first is a giraffe, and the second is a flower garden.

We have started taping up some of her favorites and she loves having them displayed.

Family PIctures

When we were out in San Antonio Jesse was kind enough to take some family pictures for us. Bentley was extremely cranky that day so I'm so grateful for the few smiles we did get from him. I love how these turned out and am so grateful that Jesse was willing to do this for us!

What a cute little family. :)

Our trip to San Antonio!

A few weeks ago we were able to fly out to San Antonio to stay with Michael and Jesse. We are so grateful we were able to go out and be with them in their territory. We had an absolute blast! Because we had 5 children under the age of 4, we didn't make it out to many destinations that make San Antonio popular, but we really enjoyed just laying low and hanging out together.

The kids did pretty good on the plane out there. When Jesse picked us up from the airport, Bentley was super curious about baby Jack in the seat next to him, and Eden was out cold in about 3.5 seconds.

Eden made fast friends with Kadence and Sophie and she loved spending time with them. I love the second picture of the girls with their legs all draped over each other. Poor Bentley had to swing by himself, but before too long he'll have little Jack to hang out with.

On day two we did venture out to the outlets, but unfortunately we didn't get too much actual shopping done (again, the small child problem). We did find a little playground in the middle of the shops though that seemed to be a hit with the small, demanding group we had.

They have an amazing pool and lazy river in their community that was so gorgeous and fun. We definitely loved spending time over there. It's just around the corner from their house so the girls thought it was pretty cool that they didn't have to wear seat belts. Notice Eden and Kadence holding hands? So cute.

The kids also loved playing in the water out on the patio. Quite often they would make magic potions using mud, grass, and lots of dead rollie-pollies that were along the edge of the house. (Gross!) Sophie also managed to discover a dead scorpion in one of their buckets at one point. Yikes!

Eden with a big hand full of rollie-pollies just waiting to be stewed!

And after all the dirty play, we would throw the whole lot of them into the tub.

I think I've mentioned before that Eden is kind of a crazy sleeper so every night before we would go to bed I'd go check on her and would always have to put her back up on her mattress. A couple times I happened to have my phone so I took a few shots of how I would find her.

On Friday, the guys were nice enough to keep all the kiddos while Jesse and I spent a few hours at the salon. Jesse documented the chopping of my hair very nicely. :) It was a blast and I loved spending some one-on-one time with Jesse.

Then on Saturday, Jesse and I kept the kids while Michael and Brad went to the huge water park Schlitterbahn. I know these guys had been looking forward to this for months and I think they had even more fun then they were anticipating. They were so giggly and goofy when they came home recounting all the fun they had. They were also starving so they chowed down on tons of food, and then both completely passed out. I guess about 10 hours in the sun will do that to you. I was so glad they were able to go.

And during the rest of the time, we just thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with each other.

Our flight home didn't land until 9:45pm which was 10:45pm San Antonio time. Neither of the kids slept on the plane, but they were both so tired they got a little silly. Fortunately it didn't get too crazy though. We were all very happy to be home in our beds.

We are so grateful we were able to take this trip out to Texas. We had so much fun spending more time with Michael and Jesse. We miss them and definitely don't get to see them enough! We are looking forward to many more trips like this in the years to come! Thanks for all the fun Texas Malarsies! We love you all!