Two Peas in a Pod...

Erin's BFF Avery is moving this week.  I've talked to Erin about it but I'm not sure she understands.  I, on the other hand, have threatened to lay down in front of the moving truck in protest.  We love Avery and her parents.  She is Erin's Partner-in-Crime.

We had them over for one last play date before they move.  It was supposed to be sunny and warm but turned out cloudy and humid.  Avery had a giant inflatable water slide and we were going to blow it up and let them play.  Turned out we only blew it up to let them slide on it dry.  They would have gotten too chilled with the way the wind was blowing and the sun behind the clouds if we had turned the water on.  (Not that that would have stopped either one of them...)

They have been together since the Baby Class at Gateway.  I knew that her mom Rebekah worked as well.  I approached her when the girls were about 2 and invited them over.  We've been mom friends ever since.  We've traded off hosting play dates.

Rebekah likes to say that the girls are either BFFs or Mortal Enemies depending on the day and the mood.  Everything that goes wrong when Erin is on red is blamed on Avery and apparently it's the same in the Killian household!  But, for play dates they get along great.  Erin put Avery in a huge bear hug when they got here and they hit the ground running.  Erin doesn't have a toy they didn't play with.

We're going to be super sad when they leave, but we've enjoyed our time with them.  Rebekah promises they'll be back for birthdays and play dates.  I think we really will keep in touch and I'm glad.  (She already has Erin's birthday on her calendar!)

Here are some pics of the girls in action...neither would cooperate for the camera at the same time!

School Daze...2014

Here are Erin's Pre-K Jr. School pictures for 2014. I couldn't decide on which one to buy so I bought them all!!!

They aren't the great pictures that Hard-to-Hold Photography does for us, but I thought they were pretty cute for school pictures!

An Easter Tradition in Minerva, TX...

It was the annual W.A.M Easter in Minerva.  (Wistner, Ammerman, Mize)  We went to Aunt Lois's place up there (Matt's mom).  We've gone up there for Easter the last 3 or 4 years and plan to keep going back until she revokes our invitation!

We went up Friday night.  Tommy and I had to work so we got home, packed and got on the road about 6:00.  We had a little traffic on FM2920 (as usual) but made good time.  We decided to stop in Brenham and have dinner.  We found a nice little Mexican place with a full parking lot and assumed from all the cars that it was the place to eat.  It was good.  I can see us stopping there again when we're up there way.

We got to the ranch about 10:00.  To our surprise Erin was still up and at it!!  Since the daycare was closed she spend the night Thursday with Gram and Pawpaw and was with them all day on Friday.  I thought for sure she would be in bed no later then 9:00 and that was pushing it.  Nope, it was about 10:30 when she settled down and went to sleep.  This is a big deal to us because no matter how late Erin stays up, she always wakes up between 5:30 and 6:00!!  NEVER sleeps in.  This happened Saturday morning!

Saturday brought a lot of fun.  They had predicted rain, but some fluke of nature came thru on Friday and cleared the way for Saturday.  It was a Chamber of Commerce day.  High clouds and a lot of clear blue sky.

The kids played in the dirt around the house (the dogs territory).  They moved to the drive way and played in the rocks.  They visited the basketball goal and played with the little wagon.  We ate lunch and they went down for a nap.  Erin of course was too excited about hunting eggs to actually sleep.  When Billy the Kid got up the Hunt Was On!

There were over 100 eggs hidden by the Easter Fairies and we think we found them all.  There were candy and prizes like money and lottery tickets in some of them, but mostly candy.  The kids gave up the hunt quickly when they figured out that the eggs had candy in them.  They both quit and dug in.  After that, we had a fishing tourney.  I caught the first fish and William caught his very first fish ever.  Amy caught the prettiest fish and Erin caught the biggest.  Thanks Uncle David for making that adventure possible!

We had a nice dinner and got to visit in the cabin.  (I keep forgetting to take a picture of the cabin when I'm up there!!!)

Yesterday was church.  Erin and William started out in church waiting for Children's church and were not the best behaved members of the congregation.  Both of them were "exploring" when they were supposed to be seated and Erin has no volume control so she was blasting in her fog horn voice.  Tommy had to carry her out during the prayer and I think I heard a collective sigh of relief from the congregation.  Shortly there after, William was carted out and they were taken downstairs to the kid's area.

All in all another successful trip!

Gone in 40 Seconds...

Mae and Scooby are the fastest eaters I have ever seen.  Scooby wasn't when we got him.  He was a normal eating dog.  Mae on the other hand has always been a little piglet.

I've attached a video for you to see just how fast they eat.  This time Scooby actually beat Mae.  I let her out last and she almost always beats him.  I have to put them up quickly because if I don't they fight.

Also, I fed them in their kennels the other day and left the bowls in there.  Mae's had - notice the word had - a rubber gripper on the bottom.  She ate that too.

Mae also throws a degree of difficulty in the video by turning a circle in the middle of eating.  Not really sure what that was about.

Easter in the Country 2014...

I completely forgot to do this post.  In my defense, I don't have a lot of spare time!!!

Last weekend was our annual Easter trip to the Country to see Granny and Peepaw.  Erin loves to go up there and we made the mistake of telling her we were going earlier in the week.  So, every day we heard "are we going to the Country today".  We had to tell her how many "naps" she would have before we went.  (She calls going to bed a nap.)

We got there first and it wasn't 5 minutes before Erin had Peepaw taking her for a ride on the tractor.  From there they got on the golf cart, then the 4 wheeler.  She also insisted the swing her on the swing.  Peepaw on one side and Daddy on the other.  She kept telling them to push her high in the sky.  Poor Peepaw must have slept really, really good Saturday night.

The kids were hopped up on sugar in no time.  They all know that there is a goodies stash beside Peepaw's chair and they hit it.  Luke wanted candy corn and couldn't understand why Granny didn't have it for him.  Wrong holiday Bud. Jake is sneakier.  He slips in and takes candy from a bowl on the counter and heads out before he unwraps it.  He hardly ever gets busted that way.  Luke and Erin on the other hand get caught red handed every time. They go for the stash in the living room right by Peepaw's chair in plain sight.  I guess they'll learn eventually.

The guys had to work on one of the deer stands and something on the house so they were gone about 2 hours.  We didn't want to hunt eggs before they got home so we tried dying eggs.  I brought all the stuff except for the vinegar.  Oops.  We let the eggs soak but they never did color.  It kept the kids busy for about 30 minutes and that was really the point of the exercise!

At last it was time to hunt eggs.  Granny had them all filled with candy and had 6 filled with money.  I had to explain that everyone got 2.  It still didn't work.  They were more interested in finding the eggs than listening about not getting more than two shiny eggs.  Of course Jake found the most eggs.  Luke did really good too but tended to follow Jake around and that didn't produce a lot of eggs.  Erin just ran around the yard.  She got the hang of it after a little while and did find some eggs on her own, but mostly Tommy had to help her.

Granny spread a quilt out in the shade and the feast began.  As expected, they were less excited about the money filled eggs.  They were after the candy.  The kids were introduced to Pop Rocks.  It was hilarious.  6 of the eggs Granny bought were pre-stuffed with Pop Rocks.  Luke was the brave soul to go first and I showed him how to eat them.  Erin went next.  Both of them made silly faces and loved the popping.  They were even more excited when they figured out they can bite them and make really loud pops.  Too funny.

As usual for up there, Erin had no nap.  She was going strong all day.  She had gotten up at 5:30 and never looked back.  We were not even to the Mize's community mailbox (about 2 miles from the house) on the way home before she was sound asleep.  We even stopped off on the way home for a coke and she never woke up.  She plays so hard when we go up there that she crashes just as hard on the way home.

And it wouldn't be a trip to the Country without calling the cows up and feeding them by hand.  Erin kept calling for them - "here cows, here cows..."  It was hilarious.  Tommy went out to the pasture to call them up and he had "helpers".  It made Granny nervous to have them out there with the bull.  He's young and a little on the squirrely side.  You can see in the pictures that the cows were more scared of the kids than the kids were of the cows.  They just run up to them wanting to pet them.  The cows are definitely not used to little noisy people!

Here are some pics from this weekend.