Spring Campout

****Note: I found this post in my folder that I had 'drafted' and forgotten about. This was from back in early March, but thought I'd give it it's moment in the limelight!****

This year for our annual Sunday School campout we went to Lake Whitney. It was a new experience for us, since this was our first time w/o our camper. We sold our old one just after the new year, and haven't found one since...so we were tent campers for the first time. We put the boys in a small tent and Day and I used a tent we borrowed from our friends the Smiths. The weather was beautiful and the fellowship was great! We had a lot of fun, but it sure is different now that so many of us have kiddos. It just makes for a lot more work and a lot more mess to clean up, more mouths to feed, more clothes to wash when you get home, more people to keep track of, and more toys to fight over share.

I think we might need a bigger table!

Pinata Time!

Conner takin' a wack at it!

Cooper rarin' back for a good swing!

Splashin' in the lake!



Trying to fly kites!

I just loved this pose from Conner. Such a ham!




The boys hangin' out by the fire.




Fishin'

Rock Throwin'

Rock Skippin'

The kids really did well overall and Cooper made a huge milestone while we were there. He's been talking for awhile about wanting to learn to ride his bike w/o training wheels, but since our first attempt, we just haven't taken the time to work on it any more. Well, Cooper made up his mind that he was going to take them off while we were camping. So the first chance he got, we took them off and he never looked back. In true Cooper form...he hopped on his bike and started riding like a pro. He did have some issues with starting and stopping, but mostly because his poor little legs are too short to reach the ground.

We are so thankful that we have a group of people that we can make memories with, that encourage us in our walk with the Lord and have seen us at our worst and love us anyway! I love the memories we are making with our family.

(By the way, in case you were wondering why Carter didn't make it into any of the pictures, its because my mother graciously offered to keep him with her for the weekend. We love ya Carter, but you're just not camping material quite yet!)

WE MISS MABRIE!

As many of you know, Conner and Mabrie are best buddies (in love and will be married upon their 30th birthdays, according to the contract that we've made with her parents!)

Unfortunately for us, Mabrie and her family have been in California for over three weeks while Mark has been working there. Conner had been making her pictures every so often since she'd been gone, so we decided to mail them to her. Carter made pictures for Allie and Cooper made a card for Mabrie too! We mailed it and waited for the news that they'd received them. Here are some pictures of their correspondence. Jenn was even nice enough to take a video of them opening their goodies and telling the boys thank you and that they missed them!

On our way to the mailbox.

Conner putting his letter in the mailbox.

Carter's turn.

And three short days later....

...there were smiles on two little girls faces.

This one is my favorite! I think she liked 'em!

Mission Accomplished!

Don’t hate me because I’m behind!

Okay, so yes...I'm behind on blogging AGAIN! My excusses are long and uninteresting, so I'll skip that part and go straight for the good stuff.

I'll start with Field Day! Cooper's field day was not what I expected, mostly because I was expecting it to be like our field days when I was a kid. Not so much anymore. Mostly, it was just random 'sports'ish games that required little skill nor brought any real compitition. There were no ribbons or awards to win, but the kids seemed to have fun none the less. The few things that were familiar were good ole' Tug of War and the Three Legged Race.

Cooper and his buddies...Jackson and Lathan.

Jumping Rope

Cooper & Jackson winning the Three Legged Race!

Carter taking a turn w/ the football.

"Hockey"

"Betcha Can't Guess"

Conner and Carter had a very scaled down version of field day at preschool. I came to get a few pictures of them in action. It was very cute watching them race each other and be so excited to finish. They did them by class so I didn't get any of them together.

Carter anxiously waiting for his turn.



...and he's off!

The ole' egg on the spoon race!

Looks like he found a faster way!

Two year olds and Tug of War, not a good combo!

Conner's ready with his egg.


He did really well!

Then the bean bag toss...his went next to the furthest.

Running his little heart out!

Three year olds and Tug Of War worked much better!

This post is long enough...stay tuned for more updates!

Happy Easter!

Our Easter weekend did not turn out quite like we'd planned, but that's life at the Diaz Circus! We are having some remodeling done on our house and the wood floor turned into a bigger project than expected when, we pulled up the existing laminate wood floor and found that our dishwasher had been leaking slowly for probably a year and we had water under our floor which means mold and yuck everywhere. This added some work to our project and so our floor was only a third of the way done by the weekend. Day tried to fix the two hoses that were leaking, but somehow this caused another piece to stop working and created another larger leak. So he spent all afternoon Sat. making multiple trips to Lowe's, cleaning up towel loads of water off the floor and still not having a working dishwasher. Looks like a new dishwasher is in our future.

Somehow in the midst of all that, we still made time for some Easter fun. Friday we had our playgroup Easter hunt and this worked out great since Cooper was out of school, he got to come too! Then on Sunday we went to visit G.G. (Great Grandma) and did another hunt in the courtyard at her place.

And there off!

Carter found him an egg!

Cooper found one too!

Happy with their loot!

Cooper was so glad that G.G. is back home!

We are too!

My little poser!

G.G. and her boys!

I even managed to get a family picture of us all dressed after church. Somehow we even stayed moderately clean after going out for lunch! You can even get a peak at our new fireplace.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend in celebration of the death and resurrection of our Savior!

Opening Day!

It's baseball time again, and that means it's time for our annual trip to the Ranger's Opening Day game. For the past two years, we've gone to a tailgate party with some Grand Prairie Police friends of Mark's, but this year we decided to do our own little tailgate party. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't what I'd call favorable for such festivities and I tried to talk my hard core sports fan of a husband out of this idea, but he'd have nothing to do with that!

So, we packed up our grill, burgers, and dogs...along with Cooper (who got to cut school for the day) and Conner and headed to the ballpark around 9:30 am. Mind you, the game didn't actually start until 1:30, but we had to beat traffic and have plenty of time to cook-out and just 'chill'. (No pun intended!) And boy did we chill! It was only around 45 degrees when we got there, and I'm pretty sure it felt like 30ish when the wind blew.

But...we braved the cold and the boys played a quick game of baseball in the parking lot. While they were playing some guys from the Fort Worth Star Telegram came by and took some pictures of the boys. They got our names and where we were from, but did promise anything. Well, we opened the paper the next morning and low and behold, our little Conner...with a bigger picture than George!

George who? Who's that cute kid hitting the baseball?

We took the article to school on Tuesday and he said..."Mrs. Gala...I'm famous!"

The game was great, the Ranger's won and the boys got to hit some balls in the kid's park! It was another great day at the ballpark. Maybe next year will be a bit warmer. Here are some pictures from our day!

Super fun tailgate party!

Yummy beef!

The boys watching a DVD in the car...since they were FREEZING!

Thankfully our seats were in the sun, so we were warm for a good 45 minutes before the shade came and turned us into icicles again!

Captain was having himself a Cooper for a snack!

Conner getting ready to knock one out of the park.

Cooper hitting a grand slam!