A Decade For Jake

Jake celebrated his 10^th birthday over Spring Break. I'm amazed that it has been 10 years since they laid that first baby boy in my arms. He has changed and grown so much and we enjoy having him in our home. He is very responsible and does well in school. He love skateboarding and spends most of his free time doing that. He also is great with his two brothers and the three of them have a great time together. We spent the day of his birthday at his cousin's house. He had a blast. Two days later he invited two friends to join us at the skate park, lunch at Burger King and then spent the rest of the afternoon skateboarding here.

Here's some pictures of Jake showing off his skateboarding moves:

We're excited to see what the next decade will bring…he'll be grown by then! We love you Jake!

Cousins & Bunk Beds

Over Spring Break we shifted around bedrooms. Jake has his own room now and Dylan and Ryan are sharing a room with bunk beds. My sister, generously, gave us a set of bunk beds that my boys are really enjoying. Ryan is 4 1/2 and has been sleeping in a toddler bed up until now, so he is definitely enjoying the additional space. Dylan opted for the full sized bed on bottom and Ryan has the twin sized bed on top.

The day we got the bunk beds, we rented a U-Haul and went to my sister's house for the day. This was the day after the dryer broke, so we were able to use the rented U-Haul to pick up our new (used) dryer too. The kids had a blast at their cousins house riding skateboards, flying kites, jumping on the trampoline, blowing bubbles, relaxing in the jacuzzi, riding the go-cart and having nerf gun battles. The perfect day was topped off by BBQ'd steaks and brownies!

We got home about 11:30pm and after emptying the U-Haul John announced he was heading to bed since he had to work the next day. Jake volunteered to help me build & assemble the bunk beds. I knew he needed to go to bed, but figured it would be easier to build them while the younger boys were sleeping. So we did it, we stayed up till nearly 1:30am, but we completed the task. Jake was a huge help and we had a good time!

Chaos & Tranquility

Over Spring Break we got to experience both chaos & tranquility. It was chaotic when late one night I had a large load of clothes in the dryer and another large load of clothes finishing up in the washer…when I discovered the clothes in the dryer (after one hour) were still very wet & cold. Yes, the heating element of my 14 year old dryer had gone out. Since it was nearly midnight, it was too late to call a friend to borrow a dryer, and too late to go outside and rig up an outdoor clothes line. Which left me with the lovely option of trying to find places around the house for 2 loads of laundry (did I mention they were large loads??) to air dry. Here's some pictures of the fun.

Since we are preparing to have our roof redone, and didn't have the funds to buy a new washer/dryer, we opted to find a used dryer on Craigslist. Thankfully we found one for a minimal investment and have found that it works better than the old one – yay!

We found tranquility when we spent a day on a walking trail that parallels a local creek bed. This is one of my favorite spots in Flower Mound.

The Adventures of Ryan

Ryan has had a fun month. We started out by going to the local Thomas the Tank Engine event. In the past, we have taken both Jake & Dylan when they were 4 years old to this event and bought tickets to ride the train. However, I didn't hear about this until the day before so we didn't have time to buy the tickets. We did however go and see Thomas and do some of the fun activities such as a large miniature train display, bounce house, train tent, and a blacksmith where they were creating authentic railroad spikes. It was a beautiful warm day and the boys all had a good time.

We also finally put training wheels on Ryan's bike and got him riding fast & keeping up with his friends and brothers. He loves his newfound speed. Here's a cute picture of Ryan lounging in a giant camouflage robe, he is so stinkin' cute!

Texas Blizzard

We have had the snowiest winter since I moved to Texas in 1996. We were two inches short of having the snowiest winter on record, but we did post a new 24 hours snowfall record of 12.5 inches!

This record snowfall hit Texas on February 11, 2010 and took us all by surprise. They were predicting a couple of inches with the snow predicted to start on Thursday afternoon. However, we woke up Thursday morning to find 3-4 inches already on the ground. It snowed the entire day and didn't end until after midnight. The foot of snow shut down the schools for 2 days. It was a very wet & heavy snow.

We also had the pleasure of having our power knocked out by the storm. It went out at 11:30pm on Thursday night, and thankfully was restored just before noon on Friday.

The boys had an absolute blast playing in the snow. They built a giant snow fort in the front yard, had snowball fights and Jake even went sledding on a boogie board.

They played outside nonstop for two days only pausing a couple of times to throw their gloves & hats in the dryer and warm up with hot chocolate.

Songs of Love

In February, we enjoyed a night at Lewisville Christian School seeing Ryan perform songs of love. Our favorite goes like this:

I'm going to wrap myself in paper,
I'm going to dab myself with glue,
I'm going to put a stamp on top of my head,
I'm going to mail myself to you!

Walking For A Cause

At the end of January we joined our friends in a walk for Muscular Dystrophy. The event was held at the brand new Dallas Cowboys Stadium. We enjoyed seeing the new stadium and supporting our friends, The Combs Family, who continuously inspire us.