Happy Birthday Gabe

We now have a 9 year old at our house! We started celebrating Gabes birthday on Saturday with a trip to the beach. The big 3 kids and Carl loved being out in the waves. Ezra prefers to eat sand.

Unfortunately the Texas coast has been over run with Sargussum(a type of seaweed from the Sargussum Sea)this summer. Apparently it's the worst its ever been. There were piles of it all along the beach and you had to basically climb over it to get to the water. It was not pretty and smelled really bad but fortunately tne kids still had a blast.

On Sunday we went to the space center to check out the new 7-47 and to see the Mars Exhibit. The 7-47 display isnt done yet but it was still pretty impressive to see.

The Mars exhibits were fun for the kids. Gabe worked up enough courage to try the Mars free fall on his 4th attempt. Here is Gabe getting strapped into the harness

And at the top of the platform, working up courage to walk off.

Once he was down he loved it. The kids each also tried the spinning chair where they have them do a task, spin them around and have them try again to see if they could do the task as quickly. They all were a little slower after spinning.

On Monday we surprised Gabe by wrapping his door in birthday paper he had to go through to come out of bis room.

It also served as a goid background for pictures.

He enjoyed his breakfast request of cinnamon roll waffles

And opened a few gifts. That evening we had Gabe's requested calzones for supper and did cupcakes.

We missed our traditional Hickory Park trip and seeing friends and family at a birthday party but we still had fun celebrating Gabe's birthday. Still cant believe he's 9!

 

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Busy April/May

We had a very busy April/May, therefore no updates, well that and my ipad has been having some issueswith pictures but thats another story. Carl started traveling to Denver for work since he is now in charge of a new building going up there. So he's already had 5 or 6 trips there for meetings, fortunately he is only gone a night or two at the most. We are so proud of him and his hard work and for getting to be project manager so soon after starting! We had some friends from Iowa come visit in April. We had lots of fun visiting and the kids so much fun playing! We even got to go to the beach together! I have pictures but for some reason I cant get them to show up on my ipad. A few weeks after they left we celebrated Easter(which I also have pictures of but cant access) with my Mom who flew down one way so she could drive back to Iowa with us the Monday after Easter. Carl doesnt have much vacation time this year with starting a new job but we wanted to be able to visit a little more then what he could be away so thats why we drove up early. When we arrived the kids were ab,e to see lots of friends and the boys were even able to visit their old classes at school for the day. We were also able to go up to Algona for the day to visit the great grandmas, Bone, Grandpa Matt and Grandma Nancy and of course Rona(again I have pictures but....).

The reason we went back to Iowa though was for Danielle and Grants wedding. The boys were the ring bearers and Callie the flower girl.

The wedding was beautiful(despite Danielles broken leg and weather that just didnt quite cooperate) the kids did a great job(well Ezra actually went home with Grandma and Grandpa because he was EXHAUSTED) and we all had lots of fun. Weddings really do tire a guy out.

We were so honored to be a part of Grant and Danielle's special day.

 

It was a long drive back to Texas and hard to leave friends and family again but at least this time we werent going to an entirely new place, theres something more comforting about the familiar I guess. When we got back the kids have been staying busy finishing up school, catching these cute little guys

We have found 2 of them, we were able to keep the 2nd one and soon he turned into this.

Nd just Monday we found him like this!

It was fun to watch the transformation! We also were able to go to a Sugar Land Skeeters baseball league(a pro baseball league but not affiliated with mlb) tickets are very inexpensive and we had so much fun! Well Ezra had fun till the fireworks afterwards, he was NOT a fan)

We've also been spending lots of time at the pool, we have a neighborhood pool that you can get a membership to and then you have 24 hour access to it, it has been nice being able to go whenever we want to the only drawback is no lifeguards so lifejackets are a requirement for anyone under 8. Kids have loved being able to swim and jump off the diving board.

We even got some snorkels for them to try out, they've decided its much harder then it seems :)

Well we have had some time to relax

But June kicks of our string of kiddos birthdays so we are looking forward to that! Hopefully it wont be so long between posts next time!

 

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