April 30 - Bake Off

Who makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the house, Luke or Mom? We did a bake off over the weekend to find out. Mom came out on top! Although Luke's cookies were still delicious too. What a fun time!

April has been a relatively quiet month (thus the lack of blog posts). Julia is busy doing homework every night, Luke has been swimming with Aquastar 3-4 days a week and social butterfly Jillian is usually at someone's house playing or has a friend over. Our neighbor's have a new puppy and she is over there almost daily playing with little Maya. She is a cutie!

In other news, Julia is officially lifeguard certified (yay!) while Jillian and I volunteered at the elementary school this past weekend to help make a kindness garden. We (and a few others) cleared rocks, leveled soil, added a heart path, decorated rocks and set up the garden. It was a long day but fun!

Kindness Garden

Playdate fun

Maya the puppy

Orca time! The girls are back as coaches

April 16 - Fur Babies

Just a quick picture post of the fur babies. Enjoy! 

April 15 - Where's Waldo?

The weather has been absolutely BEAUTIFUL in Houston recently. We are soaking in every glorious moment before the heat overtakes us. JD and Jillian have been working on the garden together and everything is blooming now, I love this time of year! JD set up a hammock in the backyard and the kids have been having fun out there too. Even Luke!

This past weekend was a whirlwind. I chaperoned a field trip on Friday to Bayou Wildlife Zoo with Jillian's class. In years past, this field trip was not my favorite as the zoo was a mud pit, the animals appeared dehydrated and malnourished and black flies swarmed the picnic area where we ate lunch. The zoo has since sold and I am so impressed with the changes. The animals looked great, everything was clean and they relocated the picnic tables so no black flies. It was an awesome day!

After the field trip, Jillian went swimming at a friend's house after school for a few hours and then she came home and packed for a sleepover at another friend's house. I picked her up the next morning and we headed to a birthday party. This girl is non-stop! Yesterday, we went to Disney On Ice with one of her friend's from Girl Scouts as well as her teacher and her teacher's family. It was a Girl Scout performance and her teachers girls (2nd and kinder) are also GS's. What a great weekend!

Julia was busy this weekend with her SAT prep on Saturday and homework the rest of the day. Yesterday, she had a swim banquet for HEAT (club team) where she won the "Where's Waldo?" award because she rarely goes to practice. They even announced that they mapped her house to the pool and it was only 3 miles LOL. 

Luke hung out a friend's house on Friday evening and spent the rest of the weekend programming, composing music and chilling in the hammock.

Happy Monday everyone! 

Disney on Ice

HEAT girls (Julia, Myah, Ava, Taylor)

Luke carrying Jillian to her room after she passed out driving home from Disney

April 11 - Hoppy Easter

Jillian was up bright and early Easter morning ready to hunt for eggs. 

"Wake up sleepyheads!" - Jillian

"It's early, go back to your room. Don't go downstairs yet." - me

"Well, I accidentally found an egg with a $5 bill in it!" - Jillian 

Little stinker! After the big kids got up, they checked out their baskets from the EB and then hunted for eggs. As usual, Luke sprinted around the house, focused on getting the most eggs (even though I was very clear it was 31 eggs per kid). After he divvied up his extra eggs to Jillian, they opened them. There were 3 eggs with $5 and wouldn't you know...Julia received $5 and one of the eggs Luke gave to Jillian also had $5, and Jillian had the other $5. So Jillian scored $10! Luke was NOT happy haha. 

Later that day, the girls and I headed over to Ava's house for another egg hunt, dinner and fun Easter games. Jillian was THRILLED to win $20 in Roblox gift cards while Julia came home with a basketball, board game and Sephora gift card. What a day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend!

Happy Easter