Hill Country Vacation - Part 1

We had a wonderful vacation last week in the beautiful Texas hill country. First, a 3 day weekend at a great lake house in Austin with my parents and brothers. Lots of fun family time!! We enjoyed every minute of the great house and pool, and a day on the boat.

They started a noodle war.

Carter (and everyone else) had so much fun jumping and sliding into the pool! It was about 10 feet at it's deepest point, and he was not at all scared of the fact that he was no where near being able to touch. He even attempted to dive down and touch the very bottom. Got close, but not quite. So proud of my little swimming fishy!

We spent Friday out on the lake in a pontoon boat. Lots of fun!!

This is the only picture take on the 4 of us the whole trip. :/ 

Guess it'll do.

 

This little girl loved the wind blowing through her hair, obviously!

Carter took driving the boat very seriously.

:)

Going after dive sticks.

Ready, set.....

GO!

He really must've jumped from here at least 1,000 times!

Okay, time for a little family jump sesh. These cracked me up!! You wouldn't know, but Carter did jump in between us in this first picture, he just made it down a little quicker. ;)

Trying again, got all 3 of us. Funny faces!

On Sunday we headed to San Antonio, just the 4 of us, to enjoy a few days at Sea World and the wonderful, family friendly hotel we stayed at. More pics of that portion of our trip coming soon! :)

Girls' Trip to Florida

Just wanted to post a few pictures from our girls' trip to Florida this past weekend! Please excuse the quality, they're all cell phone pics :)

We had a lot of fun laying out on the beach, shopping, and eating lots of yummy food! Thanks to the husbands and grandparents that helped make this weekend possible for us! We had tons of fun!!

Just landed and headed straight to the beach :)

 Heading out to dinner the first night.... we had some seriously yummy Thai food!

 Shopping on Los Olas Blvd.

 

Quick stop at the beach before our catamaran trip.

Just heading out of the marina

And doing a little bit of laying out. :)

 

 Floating in the water off the catamaran

 

 Getting caught in the rain on the beach on Saturday.

 Dinner out at a great pizza place on Saturday night. 

Take 2 :)

 And then afterwards, enjoying some music at a local piano bar.

 Cute shot of the 3 of us, but looks like we got photobombed :/

Me & Laura

Fun trip with only one casualty - my cell phone :(
[it rode away in a taxi cab never to return....]

 And I know we were all very happy to get home to our babies!! :)

4th of July Festivities

On the morning of the 4th, we had breakfast, got dressed and out the door for our neighborhood parade first thing that morning. We quickly had about 3 minutes to snap some family pictures before we left.

Carter rarely poses for pictures these days, so we gladly got a few of him while he was willing!

 Something was funny!

 4th of July cuties.

 with Momma

 

And, below are the ONLY two pictures taken of the 4 of us all day long. Just look at how great they both are! All smiling and looking at the camera..... amazing! Thank goodness we had 3 minutes for pictures or we'd have missed out on these!

So, this is our "float"

I'm seriously creatively challenged, and when I saw that we were supposed to decorate a float, I was clueless on where to start. This is what I came up with. I thought it looked goofy, but whatever, we had a decorated float, and we were off to our first neighborhood parade.

 The firetruck came and everyone lined up to get a close look....

 And then take a quick inside tour....

 Carter went through too, but alas, I was not there with my camera in hand. 

And here, he refused to smile. Cute pic anyway.

 A little playtime before the parade starts.

So, wanna know the funniest thing about my decorated wagon? While I thought it was a very pitiful attempt at a patriotic float, to my surprise, it actually WON our neighborhood float contest! Ha! That still makes me laugh! But, Carter got to wear a "winner" ribbon and the kids got a fun water gun out of it, so it actually ended up to be a pretty sweet deal.

Lights and siren going, the firetruck led the way for the parade.

 Eric very proudly pulling around our award-winning (HA! Hahahahaha!) parade float on the parade route.

 Sweet girl finished the parade on Daddy's shoulders.

 All done and heading home.

 

 So after the parade, we headed to IHOP for brunch with the kids. Then took them to the movies to see Despicable Me 2. This was Ella's first movie, and she did surprisingly wonderful!! She got a little restless while we waited for the movie to start and sitting through the previews, but once the movie started, she couldn't get enough of the minions. I fully expected to have to leave with her halfway through, but as long as she was able to go back and forth between mine and Eric's lap every 10-15 minutes and we kept her cup full of popcorn to snack on, she was a happy camper. We all loved the movie! It was so funny, looking forward to seeing it again! 

 Later that evening we headed to Lewisville for dinner and fireworks with The Byrums, my brother and his girlfriend, and my parents. 

Ella "chilling out".... so ladylike.

 Carter and Ava playing while we waited for the show to start.

 The guys played catch.

 Sweet girls.

 Fun with glowsticks!

 

The fireworks made this little girl a tiny bit nervous.

 

 Soooo handsome

 Carter watching the show from his spot. Can you tell he's tired?!

We headed home and up the tollway just in time to see Frisco's fireworks show, too! We watched it all the way from 121 in The Colony until we pulled into our neighborhood. And I think we ended up seeing at least portions of 5 or 6 different shows over the 3rd and 4th. Fun stuff!! 

We had such a fun 4th of July this year, and hope you did too!