Cali's 6th Birthday and a new addition to the family

 No, I'm not pregnant :) Its a new pet...but I'll get to that later in the post.

Cali is 6! Such a big girl now...and approaching the end of Kindergarten...crazy! She is growing into such a beautiful young lady. And spunky too:) Never a dull moment with Cali girl. We had lots of fun celebrating her special day this year. Cali has been talking about her birthday, well, since immediately after her birthday party last year:) That's how she rolls. Her birthday is a big deal to her! She is already talking to me about her plans for her 7th. She cracks me up. Anyways, her actual birthday fell on a weeknight so that evening I baked her a Rapunzel cake(Can you believe I actually did something creative? And no, it wasn't all my idea..I did get a couple of ideas from a website...but I made it my own! :) I think it turned out cute! And when Cali came out to see the surprise cake she definitely loved it. All three girls(and boys:) thought it was magical, so mission accomplished! We watched her blow out the candles(which she also immediately tried to grab and lick frosting off of and then kinda burned herself..oops..guess she won't do that again! Hahaha. We had told her, no, not yet! But she didn't listen...she was fine:) She then opened lots of presents from us, her grandparents and aunts/uncles. Lots of great stuff! After all the presents were opened, she opened one last one from us which was a glass bowl. We told her we thought it'd be nice to put flowers in. She looked at us like, Okaaaay :) We then surprised her with her very own Beta Fish. To give you a little history: she has been begging for a fish to call her own for over a year now. She loves animals. I didn't think she was ready last year and I wasn't sure about this year(and honestly I'm typing this weeks later and she has already gotten him taken away once for 1. taking her out of the bowl 2. adding water to the bowl almost overflowing it and brace yourself for #3. drinking the water out of the bowl...so yeah maybe it wasn't a good call! She did all three of those within ten minutes when she had a friend over. Aye. Cali does make for interesting stories! Gotta love her:), but we decided what the heck. Lets give it a try. As you can see in the pics, she was SO excited and happy. And as you can see Ammon wasn't very happy that he couldn't just pick it up and hold it...but then he calmed down and enjoyed watching "Crystal"(Cali named her!) swim. Crystal is a pink female Beta, very different than the typical ones you see. She has a little bit of blue too-very pretty little fish. It looked totally Cali to me when I saw her at the pet store:) Shes all about pink! (the fish looks green in the pics because of the flash I think)

Welcome Crystal to our family! Here's to hoping you survive awhile under Cali's care! :) Hopefully she won't eat you.

We love you Cali and are so glad you had a great day. It was fun surprising you with a fishy! Next post will be a recap of her choice of a fun birthday activity: Amazing Jakes. And this time, I got to go!!!!

You aren't wearing any green!

Thats what I told Joey on St. Patrick's Day this year. So about twenty minutes later, he walks out of our room sportin this getup...head to toe green...oh, I love my dorky husband :) This made us all laugh, especially Ammon when Joey laid down and Zac started licking his face like crazy. Something about him dressing like this really made me laugh hard that day. Hes a keeper yall...what a stud. And I just know hes gonna looooove that I posted this ;)

Wesley is 7 months old

In the middle of the craziness of Joey's birthday, I didn't forget to snap a few pics of our little cutie!! 7 months old!! He has become a little scooter! So cute to see him bound and determined to get to something..and when he finally gets it, he look so proud :)  He has also has decided to love two of his fingers..not a constant thing...but when hes tired or cuddly especially, you might find him sucking on them(as pictured below:) He is so cute and so fun and so giggly. We love you sweet boy! Its so fun to watch you grow! But you can slow it down anytime you want...its going way too fast!

My sweet Grandma Adams

I have such a special Grandmother..okay, I know everyone feels that way about theirs, but for real. She is better than yours. :) She is such a gentle sweet soul..her love and service to her family is her quality that stands out most to me. In most recent years, health issues have made things tougher for her to do the things she is used to doing, but she still does all she can possibly do for our family. She comes to everything she can come to, even when its hard for her to walk. Even when she isn't feeling well. She was diagnosed with cancer last year and thankfully this year her tests are coming back cancer free-yea! She had a rough Sunday at church a few months ago where the ambulance had to come and pick her up when she started feeling bad and had a very confused feeling, didn't know where she was...turns out she had experienced a stroke and two heart attacks! And can you believe it...she is fine. Miraculous really. She still has a memory better than people half her age! She was alsos hospitalized early in the year with pneumonia. She has had it rough and we pray for her daily. But she is a survivor! And she just keeps going and keeps doing. No matter what, she perseveres and remains faithful. 

I just wanted to dedicate a post to her today as I was thinking about how much she means to me and my family. I'm so glad she is still here with us and that my kids are able to spend time with her every so often when we visit CC or when she comes up to the Dallas area. Recently she came up to visit and during that visit I was finally able to see some cemeteries that she had been wanting to show us, a cemetery with a family member..and then one where we know there should be family members there but we just can't find them. It was a really neat experience for me. We had a fun drive out there with my grandma, mom and the kids(and okay, we were kinda lost for a little bit, but I found my way!) :) One of the cemeteries doesn't have an address...so we had to go off her memory and some makeshift directions I found online.  It was way the heck out in the middle of nowhere! We drove on a road that I found out later is the oldest road in Collin County. Anyways, the cemetery out there was really cool! And really old! The kids were very interested in finding names on tombstones and enjoyed it as well(which surprised me!) I don't think they'll ever forget that afternoon. My grandma looked happy watching us walk around. She had to sit in the car because she is just having such a hard time walking, but she looked happy to finally get to go there again. She had mentioned in a couple of times in the past. I just wish we had been able to find what she is searching for :(  We won't give up though. We had four generations of women there that day searching out our relatives. It was a neat feeling.  I had never really been to a cemetery for family history purposes and I have to say I loved it. My grandmother is amazing with family history work and I hope to be half as amazing at it as she is someday. She has done SO much work. I am just now realizing how much as I search through it all. And yall, I have the bug..I feel it :) I just need to learn..but I have a very strong desire to seek out my ancestors. And I think I got that bug from my Grandma :)

Joey's Birthday Partay!

My man is now 36. He is now on the downhill to 40-yikes!! So old :) JK! I think with age hes just gotten that much more hot! Ow! Hot stuff baby.

So, the week of his birthday also happened to be Spring Break, which also happened to be a week where lots of my family was in town. One of my aunts(along with her family) who currently lives in Utah is moving to the DFW area(so I'll have two aunts nearby-sweeeet!) and she was checking out the area. So lots of other family also came up to see her and hang out. We invited them all over for the afternoon/evening of Joey's birthday for a bbq and cake/icecream. It was a really fun day! I told Joey that he has to take off work on his birthday and that he can spend the morning doing whatever he wants, so he always golfs bright and early :) So he did that...and then we had some lunch and took the kids to a nearby park since the weather was perfection. Then all of the fam arrived-lots of  cousins (well, they are officially second cousins I think, my cousins kids:) Ella and Jenna decorated for the party. Joey set up the zipline for all of them in the front. There was a football game going on in the backyard. Kids were shooting hoops in the big driveway. Kids played the Wii upstairs. Everything I envisioned our house becoming happened that day. Every bit of this acre was used! :) Kids were playing everywhere. We loved it. Felt like a holiday! Okay, it was:) When it came to party time in the evening we surprised Joey with an Avengers themed party complete with masks. The kids all hid under the table and when Joey walked out, they all jumped out with crazy masks on that I had bought a few days before. I had no idea when I bought these masks how hilarious they would be on the kids. Well, hilarious AND super freaky. You be the judge:) We laughed and laughed. Something about the hulk mask was a riot. And also gave me nightmares that night....you might even get nightmares after looking at one of these pictures...I'm serious dude. Ammon didn't know what to think! hahaha. Anyways, we had a great day spending time with family and celebrating the best guy in the world. Joey, I love ya. More than anything in the world. I have said before and I'll say it again: I got to marry the BEST person I know. He truly is amazing. If you know him, you know hes da bomb. I'm a lucky lady to be his!! Happy 36th!!! XOXOxoxo