neighborhood fun

I realized recently that we do not have enough pictures of our ordinary wonderful moments with our neighbors. We are already feeling sick over leaving this neighborhood in a few months. We love it here!  

The weather was perfect yesterday afternoon. We invited a few kids over to ride bikes and shoot alka seltzer rockets.  It was such a beautiful day!  Sundays do not get much better than this one!

Beautiful Mandy with angelic Soren and Lexey.

Adding Remy and JoJo to the picture.

We were having fun with the kids doing alka seltzer rockets in old film canisters when out of nowhere we started getting pelted with darts. Lo and behold Mike is up on his roof staging an attack.  Myles went after him with the hose but Mike had the high ground and was basically untouchable.

 I attempted to get some pictures of the girls but they were not in the mood to stand still!

 Darling Jo

I bumped a setting on the camera so the rest of the pictures are blue tinted. Sorry!

The boys daring Mike to jump off the roof.

Dave's turn!  Dave jumped right into a pile of fresh dog poop! Such a bummer!

Next the dads and kids played an intense game of hide and seek. Basically it went like this: "kids you go hide. When we find you we are going to torture you"...then they had fun planning the torture...water, silly string, tickles.

The first victims were Warren and Lexey. Calvin was a great sidekick to the dads in hunting down the kids.

Clare and Ellie went way down the street and around the corner to hide. So it  took the boys (by boys, I mean the men, but they were acting like boys so from henceforth we will just call them the boys) a long time to find them. The rode off on their bikes and they were gone maybe 20 minute.  The girls were hiding in some strangers yard way down the street.

The last one to be captured was Brinley. She had a hideout in Mike and Mandy's yard. Calvin helped spray her and then decided to go big and dump the entire spray bottle on her. She was pretty upset so she took her revenge by punching her dad in the bullseye. I'd say with that single move she won the game!

Mike wanted to demonstrate the muscle up one more time but it didn't go quite as planned.

Warren is cute as ever!

Warren eventually found his piece of heaven watching Lexey play wii U.

beautiful girls

Clare's favorite book of all time is Because of Winn Dixie. She has been trying to convince Lexey to read it for a while and finally Lex agreed to let Clare read it to her.  They put on robes and blankets and found a cozy spot out front. There was more giggling than reading and it was a darling moment in time!

 

Some after church photos of the girls.  Everyone was in blue that day!

Lexey wants another baby!

Lexey has been very baby hungry lately. For months!  She talks about wanting another baby a lot. She polled the family to see who else agreed with her!

A couple of weeks ago, Dave and I were hugging and she came over and said, "ok Mom and Dad, why don't you get another baby now. Just go in your room and get us another baby." We said, "lexey, do you think we have lots of spare babies hanging out in our room?"  Then she said, "just go in your room and make us a baby!"  I don't know exactly what she thinks goes into making a baby, but she definitely feels strongly about the idea.

A few days ago on our walk Lex was talking about how she reallllly wants another baby in our family. I told her "Lexey, it is so hard to have a baby. First, I get really sick and throw up all the time, then I get really big and it's hard to do anything. Then the baby comes out and I'm sore and tired."   She said, "Mom, I will take care of you. I will clean up your throw up just like you did for me when I was sick. I can take care of  you. Me and Clare will take care of you.  You can show us how to make cheese tacos and we will make our own dinner so you don't have to cook for us." I just love her. She is so sweet.

(side note...we had a stomach bug go through our house a few times. Not fun. I think it might partially be from being so new in the area that we get all the sicknesses that come around. Lexey was bragging to a neighbor "my mom is really good at cleaning up throw up. If you get sick, call her and she can help you clean it up."  LOL sweet Lexey!)

We have a couple of babies in our close circle of friends. Actually, pretty much everyone in our close circle of friends has a new baby. Next door we have baby Soren. Three doors down we have baby Bekah. Christy has cute Carter. Nolan Scott was born in December and started all this baby talk from lexey. All these babies are under a year old so they were either born right before we came or right after. Lexey loves all these babies and is very good with them. She will give up fun activities to play with the babies. She has patience and creativity in dealing with them.

I need to take a bunch of pictures of Lexey with the babies!

Clare is also really good with the babies. Though I think she'd want another dog instead of a baby!

cute kids

Jo got this adorable olaf hat in the after Christmas sales. It gets really cold (for Houston, in the 40's) sometimes and we like to go outside to ride bikes and play so this really help.

 

She looked so angelic eating waffles one morning.

 

We really love having a three year old in the house.

Our next door neighbor got a huge pile of dirt dropped off for a project in their back yard. We had told the kids to stay out of the dirt so it wouldn't get tracked all over but one day the dad of the house, Mike, decided to let the kids play in it! It was 10 minutes of heaven for them!

Cute Madelyn, JoJo's best friend and our next door neighbor

Calvin's 12th birthday!

Calvin turned 12 recently. We had a fun family celebration or two.


About a week before Calvin's birthday the girls gave them his gift. My Little Pony Monopoly. He thought it was the best gift ever! Calvin is a Brony (a boy who likes my little pony).  We opened the present a week early because Calvin couldn't wait a week. CAlvin has a hard time waiting.

Sunday evening we had cake with the Mealey family, per Calvin's request. We had strawberry jello cake. The Mealey's had never had that and loved it! We planned this for Sun night (feb 8th) since Dave was home.

Tues. for Calvin's birthday the weather was nice so we picked  him up from school a little bit early and went swimming at the YMCA. Jaden Mealey was able to join us, which was fun. On the way home we stopped to get Dominoes pizza (Calvin's favorite) and then came home and watched the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie while eating pizza. It was a fun evening. The Scott's stopped by for a few minutes and we took a break and the kids went out riding bikes with them. They didn't know it was Calvin's birthday when they came by, but were happy to wish him a happy birthday. Myles stopped by the next day with a new hat for Calvin as a bday gift.  Super sweet.

Now that Calvin's 12 he can get his own YMCA pass. He came with me to the gym to get the teen safety training about how to use the equipment. He really loved watching TV while walking on the treadmill and found  a way to make that work well. At first he tried it on the lowest possible speed but that was still an inconvenience so he had a new idea.

 

Calvin was waiting anxiously for mail for about a week leading up to his birthday, expecting mail from family from afar. When mail arrived he was excited to open it right when he got it.  Any money he received was spent within minutes! He is a funny guy.

Calvin is doing well these days. More stable than before and really loving all of our friends and neighbors here. Many of the kids are quite young and he is very sweet to the babies and toddlers. Calvin recently moved from the elementary school side of his school to the middle school side and has transitioned well. We are proud of him. I also think he can do more than he is currently doing. I hope we can help him become all he can be!