Woodlands Childrens Festival

The kids and I went to the Woodlands Childrens Festival a few weeks ago.  It was a beautiful day and the littles had a blast.   We were there for about 5 hours and there were so many things for the kids to do.  We didn't come close to doing everything.

they played little games to win prizes.  Fishing was Jack's favorite

we rode a barrel train.  

they made crafts

played instruments

fed and pet the animals in the petting zoo

this goat really liked Halle

saw the Ninja Turtles

ran down a hill with a parachute attached

made and flew kites

played in the sandbox

got a painted face

This was their favorite part.  They wanted so badly to do this that we waited in line for an hour and a half.  I was very surprised that BOTH were dead set on doing this and waiting for so long.  They got into these inflatable balls, and then the worker blew it up with air with a leaf blower.  They then went into this inflatable pool and played and jumped and flipped around in these balls.  They had a blast.  They had about five minutes of playtime, which is a decent amount of time, considering how many kids were waiting.

They had so much fun that day that this is them conked out on the way home.  Any event that is able to wear my kids out like this (they are very hard to wear out) is one that I consider a major success.

We got puppies!

Brian and I decided that it was time for a new puppy.  Well, more like Brian decided, but I jumped on board.  Then he decided that we needed two, so they could each have a playmate.  I agreed with him, because I know doggies really get lonely when no one is around.  With Halle being at school now, she wouldn't be able to hang out with the pet like she did with Rudi when she was homeschooled.

So Brian searched for two labs from the same litter.  He found a yellow and a black lab online that were 8 weeks old.  They had been found in Edna, TX.  Brian fell in love with their little faces.  They were sick at the time, and were not available for adoption just yet.  We waited until they were all clear and Brian drove to Edna to get them.  

This is Anna

And this is Bella

They are much bigger now since it's been a month since I took these pictures.  They are really playful and fit right in with our family.  Even Parker, our cat, has adjusted to them being around.  That doesn't really surprise me though, because he and Rudi were friends.  

These girls fight like sisters, but they also can't be without each other.  I'm really glad that we decided to get two, because they really do keep each other occupied.  I think it has helped to keep them from chewing up everything around the house.  Don't get me wrong, they get into everything, but they spend a lot of their play time wrestling and keeping each other distracted.  

They are smart little things.  We don't let them roam the house yet, but in the parts of the house they are allowed in, they seem to be house broken.  They also have learned some basic commands such as sit, down, stay, and eat.  They also know to go to their bed when you tell them to go to their kennel.  

But oh my, are they mischievous!  We have a wrought iron gate in our backyard that they can fit through.  We know it won't be a problem for long, because they are growing fast and soon will no longer be able to squeeze through the openings.  Brian has tried blocking the gate with chairs, wood scraps, the table, etc (it looks ghetto fabulous for now).  Then we'll watch them through the window and you can see them plotting on how to get out!  They help each get through!  As soon as they get out they run to the front door like "Look what I did!"  They are a mess, for sure.  

Little Man

Poor Jack suffers from third child syndrome.  He dressed himself.  He insisted he didn't need to put a shirt on underneath his sweater vest because, duh, he had a shirt on.  And he was too lazy to find matches to either of his shoes, and I just really didn't care that much.  He walked around like this for a couple of days.  Oh, also, with third child syndrome, you tend to wear the same thing for a few days because mom doesn't want to add to her laundry pile.

This is at Paw Paw's house.  He is adamant about putting the foot rest out even though his feet don't reach it. 

Bed head

He only has one sleeveless shirt (oh wait, unless you count his sweater vest) and he calls it his gym shirt.  Here he is lifting a ten pound weight and showing off his muscles.

third child syndrome showing again.  He was allowed to dress himself for Halle's swim meet.  Brian brought him later that morning, and this is how he showed up: rooster hair, mustaches shirt, camo shorts, no socks.  The sadder part is that I had to point out to Brian how bad Jack looked.  Brian hadn't even noticed.

Jack just being Jack.  Here he is just hanging out watching TV, but he has dressed himself in a train conductor hat, toy tool belt, and Daddy's dirty work socks on his hands as gloves.  This is how we roll at Casa del Hargrave.

Halloween 2015

Halloween time was busy.

Halle's swim club hosted a party in October.  They had a pool party, along with inflatables, sumo wrestling, bungee trampoline jumping, a bull-riding thingamajig, and a gyroscope (a spinning ball cage make you want to vomit thingy).  All the kids had a blast.  Halle and I especially had fun on the gyroscope. 

I totally kicked her butt in sumo wrestling.  Ok, well, no, not really.  I couldn't lift my leg high enough to kicked anything without falling over, but I still beat her.

Arden with her friend, Hailey, after they got their faces painted, and got giraffe balloons.

her eyes look so blue!

We also had a fun day one Saturday before Halloween.  It was the perfect fall day.  It was one of the first days that was cool enough to open the windows.  We bought pumpkins,sat outside on the back patio, and let the kids carve them.

we let Jack hammer metal cookie cutter into the pumpkin in order to make cut-outs.  This was a good alternative to pumpkin carving, because he's not old enough to carve.

I think it came out cute.  I carved his name.  Easy peasy.

We had two trunk-or-treats to participate in: one was through our church and every year it is a huge outreach event for the community.  There were thousands of people there at the church, and it's geared toward 5th grade children and under.  Usually it's outdoors, obviously, but that weekend had bad weather, so the church decided to host it indoors.  The kids had a great time playing games, jumping on moonwalks, and passing out candy.  Halle hung out with her girls' group and passed out candy with them.  The rest of us hung out with Brian's and my life group.  The kids dressed in their Halloween costumes: Arden was Owlette, Jack was a ninja turtle, and Halle was the Cheshire Cat.  

The other trunk-or-treat was hosted by a club that Halle is in at her school called Mustangs for Christ.  

Halle is also a part of the student council at her school and helped to decide what to wear for Red Ribbon Week.  Red Ribbon Week is the week before Halloween, so it gives the students a chance to dress up, even though technically they aren't allowed to dress up for Halloween.  Here she is on Wacky Tacky Day

even when she's trying to look tacky, she still looks cute.

Then there was more dressing up for Halle.  She dressed as the Queen of Hearts for her swim team party.  She had a swimsuit underneath her costume since it was a pool party.  When we picked her up she was dressed back in her big dress with soaking her, and with very tall high heels (she needed really tall heels with her dress because it's really long).  Aunt Sarah and Uncle Adam were in town, so we made an impromptu dinner outing to Chili's restaurant.  Poor Halle had to go into the restaurant dressed like that.  Child abuse.

this was her BEFORE the party.

Then came the night of Halloween.  The kids went trick-or-treating. We got separated from the large group of kids, so it was just Aunt Sarah, Jack, Arden, and me.  Jack was scared after only a few houses, so we took him back to Brian and Uncle Adam, who were passing out candy.  Arden didn't last much longer.  She really wanted to be with her friends.  We all went back to the house.  Our cul-de-sac is really popular and busy on Halloween, so our kids ran around and played with the other kids.  Brian blared Halloween hits from his speaker that could be heard down the street.  You could see parents dancing in the street to some of the songs like Thriller.  It was fun!

and Halle had another costume!  She and her friends got together and did the Big Bad Wolf, Red Riding Hood, and the Granny.

Speech Assessment

I took Jack today for an assessment at the Klein Instructional Center.  He did awesome except for the articulation part (which is why I wanted to have him evaluated.). There were 22 sounds he was tested on.  For his age he should be able to say 13 correctly, but he got 12.  So I would say he is borderline with his articulation ability.  Either way, he is hard to understand (unless you're Arden.  She understands everything he says! ). Or maybe he just have the gift of tongues!  :) He goes back after the New Year to have another test done.  Hopefully he qualifies for the speech services so we can turn his Jackanese into English!

Chick-fil-a

The week before Halloween we went to Chick-fil-a to see one of Jack's favorite friends, Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  Jack loved watching his show.   So naturally I thought it would be fun to take Jack to see him.  Wrong!  Jack was so freaked out that he wouldn't get anywhere near Jake.  Being the good mom I am, I told Jack he was going to take a picture with him because darn it, I didn't waste my time for nothing.  Here you see Jack clawing at me like a wet cat trying to get away from him.  I don't blame Jack, though, because this costume was pretty creepy.  Since then, Jack doesn't like Jake and the Neverland Pirates anymore.  But he has decided that he likes Captain Jake, which is basically

 a modified version of the character.  Go figure.  Three year olds.

Arden was all about taking pictures, though, and here she is giving Jake a big bear hug.  

It was bonus that Rapunzel was there, too!

And of course the Chick-fil-a cow was there.  He made me dance with him in the restaurant!  The kids thought this was hilarious.  The cow even dipped me at the end.  Cow-tipping?

Girls are cool

Arden, "When I grow up I'm going to listen to my girls.  If they ask me if they can go to the park I'll say yes because playing at the park is good for you."

Me, "What if you have boys?"

She looks at me like I have two heads and like that never crossed her mind. "I'm not having booooyyyyys!," she says with disgust."

Me, "How do you know that?  You could have nothing but boys."

"No way, children boys are craaaazy. They are nuts.  Girls are cool."

Me, "well you're a girl and you're crazy."

Arden, "Well that's because I'm special."

No confidence issues here, folks.

This is what October looks like in Houston

She is ready for school.  Decked out in a furry jacket and shorts.  I would say she's dressed appropriately. 

First Days

I haven't blogged much lately, mainly because my computer is broken.  I am attempting to start blogging from the app.  The app used to stink but they've made some updates that I hope make it easier.  Anyway....  These pictures of my girls on their first day of school are long overdue.  

This is why the 3 1/2 year old stays in trouble most days

"Jack, it's time for your nap."

"But I don't want to.  Watching TV is my FAVORITE!"

"Too bad, you still need to take a nap."

"Taking naps is too hard.  And taking naps make me sick."

"You don't seem sick to me."

He then proceeds to cough.  "See!"

"Are you lying? You know you'll be in trouble for lying."

"No ma'am.  Arden is.  Arden is lying" (he blames everything on Arden)

"Arden's not even here, she's at school."

I then give him my stern mean mom look, now he knows he's really in trouble.

He nervously laughs and tries to soften me with, "Mommy, you're funny.  You're hilarious."

Halle's 13th Birthday Party

Her birthday party was in July, y'all.  I know, I'm so behind.  Oopsie!  Halle had a blast at her 13th birthday party.  She planned it herself, so all I had to do was buy what she needed, and make the cake.

She had a pool party sleepover party with five of her friends.  These girls are fun and goofy and they all had a great time.

Why is Jenna wearing a swim cap you might ask. 

They played some pool games.  Two games in particular had us rolling.  One game was a frozen t-shirt game.  Beforehand, Halle froze two large t-shirts, each one in a gallon size ziplock bag full of water.  The girls divided into two teams.  Each team had to get the t-shirt out of the bag of rock solid ice and have a team member put it on.  It. Was. Hilarious!  Originally I thought it was going to be a fast game and not that hard to get the t-shirt out.  I thought they would just melt the ice in the pool and the t-shirt would be free.  WRONG.  It took about 20 minutes to free the shirts!  The girls were cracking us up trying to get the shirts out.  They were slamming the solid ice onto the concrete around the pool.  Olivia is a softball player and was slamming it really hard.  I was certain she was going to break the concrete!

Finally it was free after like a thousand tries of breaking the ice and soaking it in the pool water!  Once the shirts were free, they were holy as all get out.  (They were brand new t-shirts before this.)  The girls destroyed them!

this shirt is so destroyed that Jenna has her head through a hole

the other teams shirt.  That's Olivia, by the way, the softball player with major slamming power.  Their team won.

As you can tell, the girls look like zombies with all of their smeared mascara.  That was another game.  They put on as much black mascara as they could and then jumped in the water to make them look as zombie-ish as possible.  Ha!  I remember at that age asking my friends, "is my mascara running?" and freaking out if it was.  Twenty years later they are owning the whole runny mascara thing.  :)

The other game that was really fun to watch was the watermelon game.  We lubed, and I mean really lubed, up a large watermelon with Vaseline.  Then I threw it into the pool.  Each girl was on their own. They each tried to secure the watermelon and get it over the side of the pool.  Bwhahahahahhahahaa!  It was like a cat fight.  The watermelon floats, so it bobs up and down when someone tries to get it.  Also, it was super greasy so they couldn't get a good hold on it.  Once one girl got a hold of it, the other girls would tackle her and knock it away. They were in the deep end which made it that much harder.  One time, the watermelon came loose, and someone ended up grabbing Jenna's head instead (her hair was in a swim cap so it kind of looked like the watermelon in the dark.)  I was dying watching these girls play this game!  I tried to get pics, but they were so dark and blurry from all the commotion they didn't come out.

These are pictures of Jack from a completely different game.  The girls were diving for poker chips that JAck and I threw in the pool for them.  Here he is trying to help the girls out by pointing out the chip.

those dark things in the water are the girls diving for the chips. 

Halle requested that I make the most chocolaty cake I could make.  She also requested strawberry cupcakes.

this was the cake and I think I nailed the chocolaty part.  It was really good!

she got some sweet gifts from her friends.  Jenna, one of oldest friends, brought a picture of them when they were in second grade.

Olivia and Kaitlyn made a collage with many of the goofy pictures they have taken.

We gave her money, but I gave it to her in fun ways.  Brian felt really awkward going to bank and requesting so much money in one dollar bills!  lol
 

I made her a crown, bracelet and ring.

and bills shaped into her name

and a looong strip of bills taped together that she had to pull out of a bag.

it was 60 bills long, I believe, so it kept going and going.