Camille had told me about all the fun stuff to do in her "backyard," so last weekend we invited ourselves over to play. And it was a lot of FUN!! The hiking was much-needed & the sandpits were huge. The stream was perfect for cooling off on a hot day-and it was hot. 
I was very impressed with the hiking skills of all my girls (icluding my Zetta-girl), although Lizzy got a bit distracted when I let her "loose.":):)
Can you "spy" all 3 of the Payne babies? 
Brian asked if we could take a "quick" family picture that he could send to an old friend. So he set up a tripod (3 chairs stacked up:), and we gathered. It took 3 sessesions, over a period of 2 1/2 hours, and we had well over 50 attempts with the self-timer. Not even one of them turned out normal!! But they are funny...
This is one of the last photos. Lizzy thoroughly informed us that she no longer wanted her photograph taken. The bribery candy was still working a little bit for Faye & Daisy:).
Faye loves to pick out clothes for her sisters, as well as herself. She will often times ask me if they can "be matchies." It is fun having girls to dress up & do their hair (most of the time:). Brian & I will joke that I do their hair more than I do my own hair. 
What's even better than getting my girls dolled up, is that they will actually pose for the camera once they reach a certain age. Lizzie is not that certain age, yet.
Faye & Daisy were more than willing to cooperate.
"Miss Independant," as nicknamed by Great Grandma Payne, would not cooperate. She even pulled one of her little buns out, and was happy about it, too. She's still cute with half wild hair.
Galveston gives us many opportunites to get wet (good & bad:). I pulled out the froggy pool 2 days ago, and it has already provided my girls hours of fun. They just love being wet!
At one point, Daisy was just sitting there in Lizzie's floatie. I didn't know a child could hold still so long without being asleep.
Lizzie is terrified of floaties, or any swimming toy that we own (that's why she doesn't mind Daisy borrowing her float-ring:). Faye, being the loving older sister, wanted Lizzie to have water, so she filled up this pitcher with her frog-water & gave it to Lizzie to play in.
Lizzie making funny faces at me through the glass door.:) Notice the nice, clean, streak-free glass?Lizzy had so much fun hitting Daddy with the pillow. She got so excited, she couldn't even stay on her feet, and Brian ended up havening to hold her up so she could hit him. After building her skills on Daddy, Liz decided to go for the camera...
On Easter morning, I watched the sunrise for a few minutes before beginning the mad rush to get ready for church at 9:00. My sweet girls all joined me and we enjoyed the beauty of our own Easter morning. It set a very peaceful & appropriate mood for the special day. I am so grateful for my Savior & for his strict obedience to our Father in Heaven to be able to Atone for my sins. Elder Holland's talk was so powerful during General Conference--I love how he is able to describe & express the life of our Savior and how important & central the Atonement is for each and every one of us. He shared a very powerful testimony of our Savior. I love having the privilage to learn from inspired leaders, and I love the Gospel in my life!
On Saturday, we had a ward Easter breakfast & egg hunt. Brian was on-call this weekend (he even missed church:(, so he wasn't able to go, but us girls sure had fun with our friends from church. I was just planning on having the ward party do the egg hunt for me this year, but the girls didn't get very many eggs, so I broke down & boiled eggs & we colored them on Saturday after the ward activity. Then Sunday morning the Easter bunny came to hide our eggs for us...
Lizzy got her first egg & broke it open (it was plastic:). To her delight, out spilled a bunch of jelly beans. She was a very focused hunter, when it came to hunting jelly beans. I'm not sure she even went for a second egg.
Daisy sure had fun finding those eggs. Unfortunately, our "yard" was a tad too small for the Easter bunny to hide all our eggs on it, so he also used our living room to hide eggs.
After bath-time, we do scripture power. As I went to get the scriptures and finished cleaning up, Brian wanted to help me out by getting the girls' pajamas on. Daisy escaped when she was half dressed, and Brian just began dressing the next girl. A few seconds later we both paused from our tasks to observe that Daisy had learned a tip from Baloo, the bear...
