Wildflowers

 We have been blessed by all the wildflowers this spring!  We've had fun picking and arranging.

 Sunshine is quite the little florist.  I guess I didn't realize how much she was paying attention when I was working for Bobbi and arranging flowers on a regular basis.

Flowers make dish duty so much more pleasant!

One Last Time

A few weekends ago T washed and waxed his 1996 Ford pickup for the last time.  Yep, it's time for it to go.  We have lots of great memories in this truck including: driving around the Kansas Flinthills, going to Sonic for lunch while we were in grad school, moving our possessions around {multiple times}, hooking up the trailer and moving to Texas, & bringing home Sunshine from the hospital.

"That's how it is Mom"

Monday's consist of cleaning and laundry around here.  I was working away on laundry and cleaning the bathroom this morning and didn't make it out the door until late morning to get my work-out done.  Well things have heated up here in Texas- though I'm not complaining.  I'll take being hot over being cold any day.  After rescuing a turtle from our dog Honey, we were off.  I decided to stick to walking over running today and still managed to work up a good sweat.  When we got close to home I told Sunshine "I don't want to push the stroller up this hill, it's too hot."  I was hoping for a "You can do it!" or something encouraging.  Rather, without missing a beat, she replied "That's how it is Mom."  Hmm...maybe I say this?  Maybe I am the one that needs to work on encouraging her:).

She has been working on her "to-do" list today.  So far she has checked off play in the garden and play in the mud (I watered the garden last night).   She found several ripe cherry tomatoes while she was in the garden....time to start planning what I am going to do with all of them!

To-do

Tonight Sunshine had T write out her "to-do" for the week.  Here it is...

     - have fun
     - play in garden
     - pick flowers
     - play in mud
     - look at trees
     - play with dogs


I love it.  She appreciates the little things...I am going to try to do more of that this week!

Waco Zoo

Today we joined some friends for a trip to the Waco Zoo.  It was so fun!  The weather was great and the girls had a blast together (us moms did too!).  We spent the morning walking through the first half of the zoo with a LOT of other kiddos...end of the year field trips.  After a picnic lunch we had the zoo pretty much to ourselves for the afternoon.  It's such a young kid-friendly zoo.  Here are some pics from our day!

Rockin' the shades!

Hello Mr. Giraffe!

Sweet friends watching the fish together...

Hi, my parents run a refuge for dogs...

Today is Sunshine's 4th Birthday.  Happy Birthday sweet girl!

When she turned one we started a birthday picture tradition.  For the past 3 years we have taken her picture by the tree we call "Uncle Gerald's Tree".   This tree has some history- it was indeed planted by T's uncle who is named Gerald.  He lived here before we bought the house from him.  So, when we settled in back in 2006 I decided to prune (insert hack) this little sapling.  I cut off so much of the tree that we started calling it the palm tree, b/c it only had foliage at the very top of the tree and was quite top-heavy.  Well the little tree is growing up and is looking quite nice now.  Our little girl is growing up too!  Anyways, I thought I would try to take the annual picture this morning while balancing a colander with berries we had just picked, a camera bag, and Sunshine's Easter basket.  Above is what I came away with...no we do not shelter dogs for a living (but we do love them) and the black dog doesn't even belong to us.  I think I'll try again tomorrow.

How does she know?

The past two days I enjoyed some time away with friends.  We attended the Grace Girls Getaway which was in The Woodlands.  Great worship, an entertaining & challenging/encouraging speaker, delicious food, & shopping were some of the highlights of our time together.
Tonight when I carried my shopping bags in Sunshine immediately asked if she could look through them.  She tried on my new bracelet and necklace and then wanted me to try on the new shirts.  She told me I looked beautiful, talked about the color of each shirt, and oohed and ahhed over my purchases for some time.
How does she know that this is what girls do?  I love it and I think T will love it too- he won't have to sit and look at what I bought now:)!