Look what is in my tummy!!!

Happy Fathers Day!!

When I asked Savannah what she loves about the father and grandfathers in her life this is what she said:

Grumpy:  He is silly and pretends to eat my cereal.
Papa choo-choo:  He has a polar bear and he pretends to be a bear and chases me.
Daddy:  He snuggles me and is good at doing flips.  (don't think her dad has ever actually done a flip, but whatever)

We are grateful for the Dads in our life!  Happy Fathers Day!!

Dallas!!

The lead tech and his wife in Dallas had a baby this week, so Matt went to help out with the office.  We decided to tag-a-long again.  It was kind of a last minute trip, but we are glad we went. One of the days, we got to take their cute girl, Lilly, to the zoo with us.  She was the sweetest little girl.  My kids really liked having her along. 

 One thing our zoo in Houston is missing is a gorilla, so we were excited to see one here.

I think this day at the zoo may have been the hottest day of my life!  It is a really nice zoo, but we had a hard time enjoying it because we were all so HOT!  Almost as hot as the Leatherwood's porch.  (remember that Stefani???)

I usually don't post many zoo pics of animals because they are all the same, but these elephants were amazing.  It was so fun to watch them swim and play in the water.  We were all wishing we could join them.

Anyway, it was nice to get a way for a little bit.  We feel like we are seeing every big city in Texas while we are here-- especially since we ended up having to swing through Austin on our way back for more work stuff.  Now on to our next trip back to Utah for a little bit....can't wait to see everyone!

Around the Apt.

This is what is going on around our apartment this morning:

Savannah, doing flips.

Maxwell is doing his own tricks....notice the jumping stance.

Tiger was cold, so he got to be snuggled up in a wet wipe.

It's still HOT outside!  This is the view from our balcony.  Sometimes we go down to play, but we don't last long.

 This is the picture that we still have not hung on the wall.  We have been here 2 months!

We went to yard sales one Saturday and let Savannah pick something out.  She chose this little number.  We will be finding a new home for it after the summer.  Any takers?  Someone just might get it as a Birthday gift.

The siblings getting a little lovin' while we watch the World Cup in the background.

Pool Time

We go to the pool a couple times a week. The kids love it! Maxwell wasn't so sure about it the first couple times, but as you can see, he has warmed up to it.

This is Max's classic "I'm ready to jump" pose. I love it! He does it every time, and not just in the pool. You have to watch close because it can happen at any time. It is not infrequent that I look over to see him standing like this, and it is too late; He pounces on me before I can do anything to catch him. The kid loves to jump! Even if it means jumping flat on his stomach onto the floor. I don't get why he keeps doing it.
Savannah is getting better and better in the pool. We have finally convinced her to jump in from the edge by herself. She thinks she is pretty cool, because she can swim in the deep by herself with a life jacket or floaties. Savannah makes new friends all of the time at the pool. Once she gets their attention, she will talk their ear off!
This is what we have named the "flying squirrel" trick! Matt always makes her do tricks she doesn't want to do. It's good for her though. She ends up liking it. Maxwell, on the other hand, doesn't take much convincing:

He is fearless, which is kind of unfortunate. I have to watch him like a hawk, and he hates any kind of floaties!
Oh how we love the pool!!!

San Antonio!

Matt had to do some work in San Antonio on Monday, so we decided to join him. We left Sunday night and stayed the night. I planned on just hanging out with the kids downtown while Matt took care of work. Savannah decided at breakfast that she wanted to go back home, but I kept telling her it was going to be a really fun day. Matt dropped us off by the Alamo. We just walked around outside because I didn't figure the kids would be big fans of it. I ended up getting a flat tire on the stroller and spent a lot of time trying to fix it. We finally walked to the mall where we could cool off. Savannah had to walk because the stroller was broken. It was so funny, because after walking all over the Alamo, then walking to the mall, then walking around the mall, she says to me "Hey, mom. This has been a super fun day, but I'm just kind of tired of walking." I thought it was so funny, because we hadn't done anything fun for her yet. It's like she didn't want to hurt my feelings since I had told her we were going to have lots of fun.
We did end up doing fun things though. San Antonio is a really cool city! Matt ended up meeting us for lunch. We ate at the oldest restaurant along the river.

The kids loved being able to eat right by the water where they could watch all of the ducks and birds. I had to hang on to Maxwell the entire time, since I know he would have jumped right in that water if he got the chance.
The kids and I had seen all of the river boat tours going by earlier, and I had told them we could ride on one when dad got back. Well, as they passed us while we ate, I commented that everyone on the boat looked miserable. We went ahead and did it anyway. We quickly understood why everyone was miserable though. We were crammed together with lots of people and the sun was beating down on us. I tell you what, Texas is HOT! It was beautiful though. By the time we were done with the tour we were all soaking wet and exhausted, so we decided to call it a day.
I thought it was a really cool city. Hopefully we will be able to go back sometime when we are a little more prepared!

More fun in Texas

Last week we went to the Houston Aquarium with a group of the girls here. I had read a lot of comments about it online and it sounded like it was going to be pretty lame, so I had pretty low expectations, but the kids actually loved it. I thought it was a pretty fun place too.

Maxwell loves fish, so he was pretty excited about all of the big fish tanks! Not Savannah, all she cared about was seeing some sharks!

They have a fun area where you can reach in and touch some fish and manna rays. I couldn't convince Savannah to climb under the tank for a picture in the bubble, so Mariah and Lincoln did it. It actually was really funny because there were tons of people there and she had to climb through all of their legs! What a trooper!
What aquarium is complete without a white tiger? It was pretty random to have a room with a few tigers among the fish, but they were really cool to watch. Outside there were a lot of rides, including a train that goes through a tunnel with sharks swimming all around. It was pretty cool.
Savannah thought she was in heaven with unlimited carousel rides. Just look at her face! She LOVES the carousel!
Max took some convincing, but after our 3rd ride, I finally got him to ride a dolphin by himself!

After church on Sunday, we decided to drive down to Galveston to check out the coast. The water isn't exactly tropical, but it was a nice beach. It was way more crowded than we expected.


Savannah was disappointed we didn't bring any buckets to build a sand castle. She found a little mound someone had made and decided to beautify it with seashells. She was all business when it came to seashells. I got in trouble several times for getting distracted and not collecting them for her.
We just walked around and had a little picnic. It was pretty fun until the ride home. What should have taken us about an hour to get home ended up being about 5 hours. We thought we would drive along the coastline, but got stuck in traffic. We finally made the decision to turn around and go the other way only to get stuck in more traffic. It was frustrating to say the least! I guess next time we will make sure we do not go on a holiday weekend!
(p.s. my first paragraph ended up being a link to the first picture I posted and I don't know how to fix it. Oh well!)