Chrysalis

Our beautiful pet caterpillars started not doing so well in the house, so I took them outside (yes, back to my parsley), but when I was letting them go, two were missing. I went back in the house, and Daisy and I found one underneath the stool their cage was sitting on. We looked and looked for the other one, but couldn't find it. Two days later, Daisy said she found the caterpillar's chrysalis on our wall. Sure enough, we pulled out our stand, and there it was...

Faye lost her second tooth--on the top this time. She has quite the lisp. Whenever someone comes to our house she asks, "Do you want to thee our chryth-a-lith?" Ha, ha. B is always trying to get her to say words with lots of "sssss" sounds in them. He had been calling her "Toothless Wonder" but because of the change of recent events, she is now "Checkerboard" (her spaces are top, right and bottom left). Poor girl-she's had 6 years of her Daddy's "sense of humor," but has many more years to go (and many more teeth, too)...

June Undertakings

"Ya'll wanna know what we've been up to??? Well, let us tell you..."

Hair trims!! I have never trimmed my girls hair, except once for Daisy, after Faye cut the ends of both her braids off 2 years ago. I did the trims voluntarily this time (they needed it)...

Fayelette (I always LOVE looking into those eyes!!)...

Daisy Dog (fun and funny girl)...

Lizzy-Lu girl (I love that baby!!)...

Church starts at 8:30am for us. That is mighty early, so Faye decided to prepare everything on Saturday night. I'm not sure why she wanted the bird book--maybe for the drive to church?? That is one organized girl. If you look close you can see her neclace and CTR ring at the very top of her dress)...

Liz wanted to help me make bread so bad, she even stopped getting dressed so she could snitch...I mean, "knead" the dough for me...

We discovered 3 caterpillars (after they ate all my parsley). They are black swallowtails, or will be if they survive the Payne girls. We recently learned about butterflies, and of course..

At the first of the month, when it was the end of our Weatherford vacation, we made a trip to the Church cannery, where we picked up the food orders for the Lubbock Stake. Brian and I got up, drove to the Uhaul closest to the cannery, picked up a truck, went to the cannery, and loaded all 6,000+ lbs of food (with the help of a fork lift, thank goodness). Brian did the manual labor while I supervised. :) After it was loaded, Brian started the drive back to Lubbock. I went back to pick up the kids and get our luggage. It took me about an hour and a half. Brian beat me back to Lubbock by about 15 minutes is all. It was a heavy load, and quite the experience. Here's Brian and the girls right before we went to return the truck...

We finally decided (and were able) to visit the Lubbock Windmill Museum...

Liz and Dais standing on the inside of a turbine...

Faye at one end of the turbine (Brian is at the other end with Daisy & Liz)...

And all my girls on the turbine. I didn't get a picture of the whole windmill (in the background), but there are 3 of these turbines per windmill. They are pretty amazing, especially after driving through the windmill farms a few times and seeing hundreds of them together...

One Awesome Week

(said with a southern accent) Livin' out in the middle of west Texas makes it kinda rough to see my folks 'n kin, and makes me feel lack I'm in a whole diff'ernt world sometimes. :)

However, my brother Brady flew into the DFW airport last week, for a work conference, so I took the opportunity to go see him with the girls (B had to work). On the other side of Texas, my sister Camille had the same idea with her family. So, we both drove to the Payne's (thanks Mom & Dad for hosting us all), and commuted to the hotel where Brady's conference was--he was staying there. I took a ton of pictures, so here's just 20 of them to make ya'll jealous. :) It was so fun to see my siblings...

Here's my curly-girlies with Uncle Brady, pointing to his room at the Gaylord Texan Hotel (it's HUGE!!)...

The Cox clan arrived, and we got to refresh relationships and meet our new little cousin--Aisha. Sean & Camille adopted Aisha, who was born April 3rd. She was 4 weeks old when we met her, and such a tiny, adorable little bundle of heaven...

My camera was foggy from the cold rain we had, but Liz adores babies to no end...

Here's the cousins (minus Aisha) at the Hotel, in front of a train display: (from left to right) Jacob, Daisy, Tyler, Chloe (in front), Zetta, Faye, & Lizzy...

The Gaylord Texan had a huge conference center (to match the hotel). One night, we found a nice, quiet area where we could play, chat, and enjoy each other...at least it was quiet, until we got there. The carpet was fun to look at and very Texan...

There were so many fountains everywhere inside the hotel. Daisy just couldn't contain herself. Here she is flapping her wet jacket sleeves and watching the water fly off...

...and Daisy is a bit of a clutz when there's too many distractions (don't tell her I said that), and she won't watch where she's walking. After smacking into a rock-post on the way into the hotel, running into a hallway wall leading to Brady's room, and getting her arm stuck in the rotating doors, she figured "why stop there" and almost took down this big sign. It was very comical, but I was nervous she was going to brake something (including on herself)...

I love this shot of little Chloe. She is such an observer and thinker, and here she is observing a big guyser-fountain...

I never did get a good shot of all the kids on the rocks...

There was a riverwalk inside the hotel--this was the very high ceiling...

There were hand-sanatizing stations placed all over, and I think we hit just about every one...multiple times...

The Cox's had to leave a little early, so us girlies went and had a slumber party one of the nights. Early the next morning, Brady ran in a 5K run they had at the hotel (the Conference hosted the run). We got to watch him start from the hotel room, but I didn't get the camera out quick enough, so I just took a picture before we went down...

Look at that time!! ...and that's AFTER eating Pappasitos, Blue Bell ice cream, and the hotel's giant cookies all week, plus he's not use to all the humidity!!! That's my bro (nice run, Brady)! We especially liked watching the steam come off the top of your head when you were done :)...

I was grateful for the opportunity to see some of my family, especially because it's not an opportunity that happens very often. Thanks for coming to Texas, Brady, and thanks for taking the trip up, Cox Family. It was a wonderful week!!

Easter 2011

For Easter, we like to put the focus on Christ, so on Sunday, we have a good, somewhat peaceful Easter day, with the FHE lesson on the resurrection of our Savior. Then, on Monday, the Easter bunny comes (it's also cheaper for the Easter bunny, that way :)...

We had to wake the girls up Monday morning, cuz B had to go to work. Here is the "before" hunt (they all snuck a few along the way outside)...

The hunt...

And here's the "after" hunt, with happy girls who have sugar in their grasp...

Other Hap'nins

April has been a crazy, busy, stressful, fast, furious, but also fun month. I managed to get a few pictures...

The ABC Rodeo, at Texas Tech. Here's the girls with the Sandhills Rodeo Princess...

And the Lubbock Prepardeness Fair. I am SOOOO glad that is over!! Brian was the chairman, and I was asked to be the co-chair. It was most (if not all) of the reason April was stressful. :) Brian was interviewed by 3 different TV news reporters at the fair, and he had a lot of people congradulate him--from work & even our neighbors. It was neat to be able share the Gospel with so much of the Lubbock community (I'm just glad it wasn't me they interviewed) :)...

For the fair, I was in charge of and helped out with a few different booths. One of them was dehydrated foods. Luckily I visit teach a wonderful sister who is very good at this, and delegated that one to her. :) I did help dehydrate a whole bunch of samples, and I had a little helper myself. Faye loves to decorate and arrange things. It's a little blurry, but she arranged bananas, pears, and mangos...

After the very-stressful weekend of the fair was over, we took a short vacation to the Payne's in Weatherford, where my wonderful hubby completely surprised me with a camping trip (kid-free!!). A few weeks before my birthday, B asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Knowing he would be post-call on my birthday, and then on-call again the day after, I jokingly told him I wanted to go camping. We both gave a curtesy laugh, knowing it was impossible, but wishing it were possible, and then I thought nothing of it... until we actually went camping. He told me it was a belated birthday present. It was a surprise, because I thought we were just going out to Walmart (our usual date-night) and then maybe to buy a frozen-yogurt to share. I had no idea he had all our camping gear, fishing gear, and grub in the trunk. Then, we went to a bait shop, and the surprise began...

(Thanks, Dad, for letting us use your fishing gear and helping arrange the location. And thanks, Mom, for watching the kiddo's)!!


Here are the girls at our favorite place to go here in Lubbock (the Ranching Heritage). They had a special event and brought in a giant map of South America, that people could walk on and look at. It was impressive. I especially liked finding all the inlets/outlets to the Amazon River--that is one amazing river system!! Lizzy liked jumping in the oceans. Daisy liked looking for mountains and grasslands. Faye liked looking at the different countries...

Faye lost her first tooth last night. Yesturday morning she woke up wiggling it, and then last night she asked me if I would pull it out. I pulled for a while and couldn't get it. She wanted it out really bad and let me pull some more, which surprised me (she won't even let me pull out a sticker that she's got stuck in the bottom of her foot). After pulling again, I got it, and that thing bled quite a bit, but she has been so excited about loosing it...

She has asked me to take so many pictures of that thing. She looks so cute without her tooth...

And here's Daisy-dog with her apprentice. Such fun puppies (except when Lizzy came up and licked my foot today). Daisy has always been good at sharing her talents with others...