Open house 2017

Open house went great at Vaughn elementary for both Dilan and Drake! Drew even wanted to come along and see their work. Dilan had just received the happy note from her teacher that day saying how hard of a worker she was and how much she helps her classmates. She was very proud to show off her work and take a picture with her permanent sub, Mrs. DeFrance, who has taken over for Mrs. Wolverton who had her baby. 

Drake was so excited to do the kindergarten scavenger hunt he found in his classroom by showing us his work including his self-portrait and acostic poem, making a video on the ipad for his teacher talking about his favorite thing about open house, reading aloud all of the words on the word wall, and showing us the books he reads. My favorite part of the evening was Mrs. Chamberlain showing me a note Drake wrote her after a particularly bad day with one student in class. Drake told her that she is a great teacher and that he loved her. It made me so proud he was noticing his teacher may have had a bad day and she could use some encouragement. We ended our evening by getting ice cream at Braum's which has become our tradition after school events, yum!!!

Day off

 Our day off from school included making snickerdoodle cookies (the Curtis' recipe), grabbing Chick-fil-A and bringing it to Frontier park for a picnic and hours of fun at the park with our friends.

Then, all four kids went to the dentist and had NO cavities. I celebrated a friend's birthday this week with red velvet cake from Bonnie Ruth's and had a flat tire that needed to be fixed. David was sick all week so Brad came over to help change it with David. :)

Basketball MVP, Carnival, FC Dallas game

Drake is playing basketball for the first time this spring, and he is loving it. Today, he scored 5 baskets and was the MVP of his team. All his practicing outside on our new hoop has really paid off!

 We went to Brian Ellis' fundraiser where he was raising money to train his diabetes dog. Drew bid on a truck and won it and I bid on family photos for this year and won that too! We both got something we wanted and it sure was fun to look around at all the items up for auction. The kids jumped in the bounce house, ate cotton candy, popcorn and a snow cone, and played the fun carnival games outside.

 After Dilan's soccer game, we headed to the FC Dallas soccer game. Our neighbors gave us their tickets and we had an absolute blast cheering them on. Dilan got some cotton candy because she wasn't at the carnival with us and we sat with the Bramlett's because they were there too. We had a lot of fun with taking picutres and posting them to Twitter and then seeing them up on the big screen! Drake would literally watch the big screen waiting to see pictures of himself. And every picture we took and posted made it onto the screen. People were texting me from the game because they were there too and they saw our pictures. Dakota fell asleep in my arms at the game around 8 p.m. because she had such a long day of fun. GO FC Dallas! We won the game 1-0 and we had a great family night!

Lunch and new appliances

 Dakota has been quite my helper (being the only one at home now) this year. She goes shopping with me and she's my little sweetheart during the days. She accompanied me to Home Depot so I could price match a new washer and dryer. I went with the LG brand, while expensive, they are the best and will hopefully last us the next decade. My washer is fine but for the last several months, my dryer only works when it wants to. After having to make a run to the laundry mat to dry some sheets, I finally chose something new!

 Lunch with these cuties on a Friday, they had been begging me to come. We ate with Drake first, then waited for Dilan's lunch and ate dessert with her. :)

Easter 2017

Easter morning was filled with smiles and excitement. The kids were looking through the windows and couldn't wait to see what the Easter bunny brought them. Drew got the Fantastic beasts movie, a new Survivor series book 1, the gorilla beenie boo, Hugo (a new train), and tons of train track he was wanting to enlarge his building capabilities at home. Drake got the movie, Sing, a Thomas on the moon book, the Tiger beenie boo, Phillip (a new train), and more train track too! Dilan found a new series 7 shopkins in each and every one of her eggs, along with the Moana movie, the whatever after book number 8, and the lemur beenie boo. Dakota got the Trolls movie along with 4 new trolls, the bunny beenie boo, and the Peppa pig dance book, 

The egg hunt went great but fast! The kids moved so quickly I barely can capture it in pictures. The little kids go first and then we let the big kids get the rest. MawMille made a prime rib for Easter lunch and we continued to swim and play in the pool. 

Easter eggs 2017

The kids have been swimming all morning, Dilan, Lacey, Aunt Amy and I went to get our nails done. Dilan chose to do purple and turquoise changing colors every other finger. She even got an Easter egg on her big toes. Talk about a fun way to start the Easter weekend! In addition, MawMille gave the kids big stuffed animals. Drew got the polar bear and named him Icebreak, Drake got the Frog and named him Frogus, Dilan got the pink pig and named her Pinky, and Dakota was left with a monkey which later she bonded with and once we got home, she named him Jungle. 

Dakota loved every minute of coloring Easter eggs. She took her time, re-colored some of her eggs, and put Frozen stickers all over them.  

 Drew is methodical about coloring his eggs. He knows exactly the plan and what he will be doing with each egg. He mostly likes to color his eggs a solid bright color and waits patiently for each egg to look the way he wants it.

 Drake found the best shades of blue and turquoise this year. He also sucessfully dyed a RED egg and a few brown eggs to his liking. His colors were bright and fantastic to admire. He's a hard worker and has joy in everything he does, including dying Easter eggs.

This girl colored her eggs with style. She used a neon coloring package, doubled up on the color pellets, used glitter and wrote funny sayings, and decorated each egg differently and in her own way, much like she does life. :)

GiGi's 90th

David's grandmother turned 90! Easter weekend we made the drive down to Houston and on Friday, we had a family lunch at Goode Company BBQ. Amy and Alan flew down from Utah, Lisa and her kids were there, Wendy drove into town with Livi and Eli, and we were there too! It was a great reunion. The kids enjoyed every minute being all together. After lunch, we went to Gigi's senior apartment complex where she had a friend party with balloons, crepe paper, and a huge cake to celebrate. She didn't want all 90 candles on the cake but we got a lot of them on there. ;) 

Easter party

Dakota was so excited about her Easter party at pre-school today. She brought 12 eggs filled with laffy taffy (no chocolate allowed because it melts) and was thrilled to bring home 12 different eggs. She made a bunny bag with her name on it that she kept in her room afterwards too. She received candy, and cheddar bunnies, and her favorite egg was the yellow playdo egg. It was a fun and memorable day! 

Spring Fever

Friday we had our special visitors from California come see us! Mandy and her kids stopped in for a night and it was such a treat. The boys played nerf wars nonstop and the kids watched a bit of Cinderella Friday night too and ate pizza together. Mandy and I stayed up late talking (of course) and we had pancakes and eggs Saturday morning. The kids do so well together! Drake had a play date Saturday morning and when he came back, he asked if "his cousins" were still at our house. He was pretty disappointed that they had left but even more that they weren't his actual cousins!! 

As Drew and I mulched last that afternoon, Drew was feeling worse and worse. He had started to feel bad Thursday night but felt better Friday. I could tell he had a fever. After our last scheduled house and Drew felt bad he couldn't get out of the car to help, I took him over to the urgent care and found out he had strep with a 102.3 fever! He received a steroid treatment, a cough suppressant and an antibiotic. Later he told me the breathing treatment scared him because the nurse told him that it would make him jittery. 

While we were at the urgent care and mulching, David and the rest of the kids went to Academy and bought a basketball hoop. We spent a few hours putting it together and the kids are loving it! While we worked, the younger kids made a fun house out of the box the hoop came in. They rode bikes and enjoyed being outside while we worked on it. We broke in our first games of HORSE already!!

Sharkarosa

Dakota went to Sharkarosa with her preschool for their field trip. They touched a snake, rode a train, fed the horses, zebras and camels, and watched the kangaroos sleep and the wildebeasts jump around. We even saw a sleeping bear. Dakota didn't care to touch the iguana, but she did touch the snake's tail. We loved the trail ride where they had buckets attached to the sides of the vehicle and the animals came up to us and fed. We were having fun until Dakota bumped her chin on the side rail. Luckily, someone had an ice pack in their lunch for us to use. After the trail ride, we ate a picnic lunch with friends and saw the monkeys and lemurs.

Frisco Safety Town 2017

Drake's kindergarten field trip was to Frisco Fire Safety Town. I had Dakota go to a play date so I could chaperone. First, the kids learned a lot about Fire Safety and then they rode the jeeps which of course was the highlight of the trip. Drake's class walked first while the other class drove. Drake led his friends around the town using the signals and cross walks and he was a pro! Then, when it was time to drive, he drove so well! Legoland must have really prepared him :) Other kids were driving on the wrong side of the road and they would drive up on the curbs and into the bushes, but Drake did awesome. No wonder he wants to be a garbage truck driver!!! 

Preschool class picture (age4)

Dakota loves Ms. Elizabeth's class. She's with her friends, Braelyn and Jade, and she goes Tuesday's and Thursday's. She likes a piece of bread, applesauce, goldfish, and a fruit roll up for lunch. 

Data Recovery

Ace Data Recovery is my hero! Right before David  left for China Drew asked me to see some of his childhood videos. I decided that this was a good project to work on while David was gone. So the Wednesday before he left on Thursday I opened up our new hard drive to find that David had not transferred the videos over to it.  Everything else was there including all of our photos. I am mediately got the old hard drive and hooked it up to my laptop and begin copying the videos over to the new hard drive. I closed the top of the laptop and walked out. When I walked back in the hard drive was no longer connected to my laptop. When I asked David what happened he said that I had to keep the screen open in order to continue copying the files. But when he closed the screen, the hard drive fell to the ground and would not turn back on. I was panicked. And we searched our other drives for the videos and they weren't on them. I could barely sleep from the anxious feelings and complete devastation I felt. I couldn't eat, I cried a lot and David was across the world in China. By Monday, I found a place by reading google reviews that I had hope in. Ace Data Recovery was it. I shakinglybput the hard drive in my car and traveled half an hour there. Talked to the man behind the desk and he told me there were Russian engineers that worked there and if they didn't have the code to get the data they could write it. Two agonizing days went by before I got the phone call that they could recover my data. $1300 later and another week gone by and finally had the videos in my hands. I can't even say how upset I was over these videos. I had burned up to 2011amd had the 2016 videos but I was missing 4 years and I just couldn't imagine losing it. Now, onto actually getting those videos into movies so we can have them and enjoy them!!!