Missions Baseball

Matt got free tickets for a Missions baseball game from work, so we went on a Thursday night, May 23rd, despite it being a school night. 

After getting in the gate the kids came across a Navy Federal Credit Union booth that was giving away free stuff to lure people to sign up.  The kids made sure they got everything offered.

So they were outfitted with visors, sunglasses, and a helicopter toy.  

Easter / Matt's Birthday

Easter picture

Easter landed on Matt's birthday this year.  The Easter bunny didn't really want to visit our house and took a long time to get there.  I guess with the million of cats that live in our yard the Easter bunny figured it would be better to do a hunt in the house.  

He hid picture clues of objects in the house and they had to follow the clues to the next location.  The last location was in the garage with Oreo.  The buckets were right in front of them, but they didn't notice them because they were loving on Oreo.

To celebrate Matt's birthday we made Matt an Easter themed birthday cake with edible Easter grass on top.  It turns out that when you light the birthday candles the Easter grass is also flammable. 

We didn't get our Easter Egg coloring done until the next week on April 15th.  It turned out to not be a very good kit because the eggs didn't really hold the color.  

Enchanted Rock Spring 2012

On St. Patrick's day we went to Enchanted Rock.  It is an enormous pink granite pluton rock formation, the largest in the United States. It takes about an hour and a half to get there.  It is a popular park to visit so you have to arrive early because they close the gates when they reach capacity,  then you have to wait in line until people leave so you can get in.  

The view from the top is beautiful and the hike up is relatively easy.  Blake made it without any trouble.  

There was a neat "cave" to explore.  

After exploring the rock we sat down for a picnic lunch.  

Enchanted Rock is close to Fredricksburg, so on our way home we went out to the wild seed flower farm to look at the flowers.  It had been a rainy spring so we expected to see lots of flowers, but we were a few weeks to early.  What we did see was pretty. 

Spring Break with the Herreras

First on the agenda was playing nonstop Super Mario Brothers until they passed the 8th level.  With that accomplished we were able to move on and do some sight seeing.  

March 14 - San Antonio has 5 missions, with the Alamo being the most popular tourist site.  We have recently discovered that we enjoy visiting the other missions because there is more to explore and you don't have to fight the crowds of people.  We decided to take the Herreras to see Mission San Jose.

Of course we still had to take them to see the Riverwalk and the Alamo.  In the 2 years that Carlos has been here to our 9+ he has explored and gotten to know San Antonio better than we have.  He was our tour guide when we went downtown.  He knew a free place to park that made for a nice walk along the River to the tourist areas.  

The Alamo

March 15 - We spent a fun day with the Herreras at Sea World.

Celebrating Presidents Day

Presidents Day Art by Julia

With Matt and the kids off for President's Day we decided to get outside. Matt had ridden bikes along the trails connecting all the missions with the Cub Scouts several years ago, so we decided to take the kids bike riding on those trails.  We started at the Mission Espada.  

There wasn't much ridding by Blake and Julia.  Matt was trying to help Julia learn how to ride without training wheels and so Matt was basically holding the bike most the way.  Blake had training wheels, but couldn't keep the pedals moving.  I had to keep pushing him along.  

It was more like Kylee and Brayden rode while Matt and I helped Blake and Julia ride.

We almost made it to the next mission, but with construction going on we turned around and ended up doing almost a 2 mile trip.

Ringing in the new year

We had been working on reading the Book of Mormon as a family for three years.  We started out with just a few verses a day when the kids were little.  At the beginning of this year we figured out that if we read one page a day we could finish by October.  We fell behind and reevaluated several times.  In December we realized that we would have to read two pages each day to finish by the end of the year.  Near the end of the month we left town for the holidays and didn't read for the whole week.  We came home on the 30th of December and Matt was determined to accomplish our goal, so new years eve was spent reading the Book of Mormon for a couple of hours straight.  The kids were good sports and helped draw pictures about what was being read to help keep their attention.  The next time through we are trying to make it in a year.

Brayden's drawings

Kylee's drawings

Julia's drawings

Almost White Christmas in El Paso

It felt like the Christmas season when we woke up Saturday to snow in El Paso.  We went to Katrina and Joey's house that morning for breakfast.  They hosted a big crew including the Gaspar de Albas, Whettens, and Matt's mom and brother Ryan.  While finishing the preparations for breakfast the kids had a snowball fight in the backyard.

After a yummy breakfast of crepes and huevos rancheros, the kids kept entertained making graham cracker gingerbread houses.  They enjoyed sampling all the candies as they worked.

 

Christmas eve the kids opened pajama's and books at GrandMindy's house.  Christmas day landed on Sunday.  GraMindy had church a little bit later, so the kids opened presents first.

We took some pictures after church.  Then it was off to go eat lunch and exchange gifts at my parent's house and up to Las Cruces to visit with Grandpa Caldwell and Janet in the afternoon.

On December 27h these three cousins all lost a tooth on the same day.  It was Natalia's first tooth lost.

They discovered that they could get a better deal selling their teeth to Grandpa than from the Tooth Fairy.  Kylee and Natalia both collected $5 from Grandpa.

We decided to entertain the kids by taking them ice skating with Cynthia and Katrina's families on December 28.

Ben and Erin were able to stop in for a short visit.

We ended our week by visiting Kristina at work at Menchie's yogurt shop.