Memorial Day Weekend

We were fortunate enough to travel to East Texas where I went all the time to visit my grandparents and now my children are going there to visit my Dad and grandmother. We call it the "camp" or PawDee's lake house and the kids always have a blast. 

My 90 yr old grandmother, MawDee (short for Mama Drouet) was there. Dakota got held a lot by this amazing woman. She still cooked dinner for us each night we were there. Love her!

 Dilan and PawDee. PawDee had been working hard on redoing a room downstairs and let his beard grow out. He reminded me of Santa Claus a bit. :)

 Sitting on the bench in the new room

 Dilan driving the pontoon boat

 Drake's turn as captain of the boat

 Drew driving the boat

 Getting in the lake and having fun

 Doing puzzles with Nannie. Nannie also taught Drew how to play multiple card games over the weekend which he said was his favorite part

 Riding the golf cart

 Playing card games every night

 PawDee had the kids roast hot dogs over the fire

 More time with MawDee

 Lake Tejas is the local water park. It has a big slide, small slides, inflatables and diving boards. So much fun. We went here growing up and it has gotten even better. We literally spent hours on the slide here. 

 Here was Dilan and Drake's main attraction

 Drew is big enough to do all the inflatables and big water slide too. He is so growing up!

 Finally we ended our weekend with visiting Pop's grave on Memorial Day. Here are the 6 oldest grandchildren.

Flight Simulator

David has some connections at Southwest and he landed us some time in a real flight simulator the pilots use to train on. So, we took the whole family on Tuesday night to enjoy the experience. 

Drake sitting in one of the seats.

 Dilan and Drake excited to take off

 Drew was up first. He chose to fly into Houston of all the cities in the world. David was a great co-pilot too.

 Then it was the girls' turn. Dilan pretended to fly while I did all the work and it was hard work too! We took off, did barrel rolls in the sky, and landed as well. 

 David flew in the captain's seat next and Drake sat as co-pilot. He couldn't stop touching the buttons!

 Our family had a fun experience flying an airplane in the simulator. We have great respect for pilots and their jobs!

May happenings

It's already the end of May! We have done some fun things this month including...

taking pictures of this sweet 5 month old

 attending Drew's school carnival

 Book Character parade

Drew dressed up like Greg from Diary of a Wimpy kid - if you look closely we used hair product to stick up three pieces of hair on the back of his head

 Celebrated Drew's summer birthday at school with donuts!

 and took more pictures of this little girl with her biggest brother.

Photos, Field Day, Mother's Day and a Garden for May!

Some more pictures from the last bit of April include:

Picking up your baby sister and hugging on her even when she looks pretty uncomfortable. 

Dilan is such a great nurturer and caretaker of Dakota. She is the most interested in her and a big helper when it comes to her baby sister. It is endearing to watch and very sweet to see. This girl is going to make a great mother someday.

 Dakota has started playing in her exersaucer and giving me big dimple smiles which melt my heart.

 A practice photo with Drew for his baptism pictures coming up. Such a handsome good kid - love this boy!

 My crazy toddler, Drake, and his antics as he is climbing off my bed. This kid wants to wrestle and play hard all the time and still cling to his pacifier at night. He makes me smile and laugh constantly. When he does something wrong, like hit his sister, he immediately says, "I sorry ma-ey." I don't get the second "m" in mommy yet but he is so precious. Sometimes I just stare into those gorgeous blue eyes and say, "I love you" over and over because I love hearing him say it back to me too. There is something about the stage where they are learning new words all the time and putting together sentences out of nowhere. This kid and me are such a team.

 and my beautiful five-month old Dakota - those blue eyes are piercing.

 Field Day 2013

Drew got a bit wet in this competition where you take the sponge from the bucket and pass it over your head until the end of the line. A great way to start Field Day.

 Cheering on his classmate

 Being careful with the cup full of water

 Tire roll - Drew did awesome!

 Sack race - Drew hopped very well and could not stop smiling and laughing the whole way

 Dilan's preschool invited the moms for breakfast which we really enjoyed. You gotta love that Dilan wanted to wear her pink cow-girl boots with her outfit that day. Dilan has so much personality but in front of big groups, she gets shy. She was assigned to read the scripture in primary last week and buried her head into David's shoulder so he just said it for her. Naturally, when it came time for the kids to sing to all of us moms at the breakfast, Dilan shook her head no that she didn't want to do it and got all teary-eyed. I told her it was okay and she didn't have to go up there but she definitely was interested in watching her friends sing. Also, you'll notice with her "mommy" art below that apparently I drive around while she is at school. Not too far from the truth...

 Our first garden! David has wanted a garden for years and now we have planted one. The kids absolutely loved digging and planting with him and they go check on it every day. We also planted two peach trees and we tell Dilan they remind of us living in Georgia when we had her there.

 There was a lot of dirt flying from these three kiddos

 and tilling the dirt took some effort!

Hopefully I'll post pictures of our loot when it all grows in!

Clean it and Green it 2013

Drew's school was celebrating Earth Day with a Clean it or Green it event where we went to the school and helped pick up trash. Our whole family got t-shirts and donuts too! I think you were supposed to eat the donut after you did your work but in true Pistorius family style, we started our work with donut in hand. 

Trying to get a family photo after we put on our t-shirts (Dakota was asleep in her stroller)

 Donuts in hand so we are ready to work!

 Picking up small pieces of trash around the school

 Big brother working, little brother eating

 fun times with mom

 Siblings working together

 my beautiful baby opens her eyes after her nap to be a part of the party

Loved this event. I really thought it would be packed with families from the school however, when we got there, it looked like a ghost town. Few people thought this was a worthwhile event I guess so I was proud that we were there teaching our kids to keep the environment clean. Not sure how much of a difference we made but it was the principle that mattered. We were only there 45 minutes as Drew had a soccer game afterwards but we did our part and that felt good.