National Donut Day

On National Donut Day (June 5) we took some Shipley's donuts to a park we'd never been to before. The donuts were delicious and the park had a merry-go-round! Thank goodness we find out about these holidays on social media and then celebrate them like we've been waiting all year. :) But hey, I'd do a lot for free donuts!

Little things

I finally tried a pancake recipe I've seen several times on Pinterest - one banana and two eggs. That's it! It worked, and with a few chocolate chips on top, this picky eater was happy.

He still tackles me whenever I lie down. I love it.

Millie set up a little bed for her and her doggy and read books to him. This is who plays her prince when she's a princess and she's also married him several times, according to her.

It takes Max a little bit to warm up to people still, so it just made me so happy to see him walk up to Monka and ask her to read to him.

Aunt Sarah brought princess coloring pages! Score!

Finally finished the quilts for the graduating YW in our ward. They call this kind of quilt self-binding, which is a total lie. It was a lot of work. (Kidding! I know what that means)

Another day, another splash pad

Actually, we mostly just go to our own neighborhood splash pad. But we certainly have been there a lot lately - the weather has been better but the pool wasn't open until last week! We had to stay cool somehow!

Millie's favorite spot at our splash pad 

Ward playgroup was at a different splash pad and the kids had so much fun. This was also the day we learned that beach toys make it even more fun!

Mom and Sarah came our way to play. We went to the dollar store first and got some fun toys.

I love the way Max just stands there and let's the water spray in his face! 

Summer is just the best!!

More vacation

Our adventure on Monday night/Tuesday morning kind of wiped us out on Tuesday! We caught up on sleep and I had YWs. Wednesday we ventured out to the library. It was so nice to have an extra set of hands there!

Wednesday afternoon we went to the splashpad for the first time this year! 

Thursday Tyler had to go in to work for the afternoon, and the kids and I played outside.

Also, Max can suddenly climb onto our couches and chairs by himself! Kind of scary since he can't get down by himself. 

On Friday Tyler and I got to go to the temple. Thanks Gigi for watching the kids! 

It sure was nice to have a week together. Back to reality, I suppose!

Mealtime memories

I don't know why I am always inclined to take pictures of Max when he is in his high chair. I guess he is just cute!!

Sometimes he gives up on the spoon and just grabs yogurt with his hand. Not quite as effective, buddy!

Overall hazards.

Sarah's graduation and the flood

We went downtown for Sarah's high school graduation on Monday night! It was fun to go downtown to such a nice performance hall. Since Sarah went to a performing arts school, there were lots of cool musical numbers. 

Partway through we started hearing everyone's phones going off, warning of flash flooding. Instead of staying for the whole ceremony, we left after Sarah got her diploma. We walked out to find pouring rain, more than I'd ever seen! We were navigating to my parents' house and the streets were starting to flood. We decided to change course and get to the highway, thinking it would be better than the old roads downtown. It was still raining SO hard and the water was rising - some dips in the road were really scary to drive through. We got to some train tracks (higher ground) and decided to wait for a bit. There were lots of cars around us and we saw a few try to drive through. We waited there for about 2 hours and finally the rain slowed a tad and the drains started to catch up so the water receded a little. We were almost to the highway (it was 11:30 at that point and both kids were already screaming) when we pulled into a gas station, to get gas and maybe wait for the rain to calm down a bit. We also made contact with my parents. They were sitting on the highway, not moving because there was too much water ahead and they couldn't drive through! I was so grateful Tyler had stopped. We decided just to wait there until we heard from my parents that things were moving again. Tyler went in the gas station and got a bag of snacks and treats and drinks and we tried to make the best of it. Luckily we had a few blankets in the back - I did a little re-arranging and made a little bed that Max played on and slept on, eventually.

Both kids went through episodes of screaming but on the whole they were such troopers. It was such a long and uncomfortable night! Max finally fell asleep around 1am, Millie enjoyed playing a lot longer and fell asleep around 3:30 or 4 I think. 

The rain stopped early in the morning (maybe around 5?) and we were listening to the radio to know when we it was safe to drive again. Finally at about 9:30 (12 hours after we had left downtown) we made it back to my parents house!

We are just really thankful that we were safe through the whole night, even if it was uncomfortable and annoying. We saw so many cars stranded in the roads as we were driving home, some you could even see water inside! And then to see all the pictures on the news - we definitely could have had it so much worse. 

Now Millie keeps bringing it up - "Mom, remember that one time it was raining so much and we slept in our car? That was so funny!!" Well, it's not funny to me yet, but I'm glad she gets a kick out of it!

Memorial Day fun

We started off the morning right - Tyler and Millie grabbed some donuts and then we headed off to the park to go fishing! We met the Circles from our ward there and had so much fun. We didn't catch anything, but we had fun eating donuts and chatting anyway. The kids got bored after a while so we let them play on the playground. It was a great morning!

Bubble Run

On Saturday (5/23) I ran the Bubble Run! Aaaand so did the rest of Houston. Just kidding, but there were 20,000 runners! It was slightly insane! They had "waves" of people starting every 10 minutes or so. Sharon and I had to wait over an hour just to start. There were different colored bubble bogs every kilometer, so it was wet and messy fun. They made up a course around the NRG stadium parking lot so there were lots of loops, which meant lots of opportunities for people to cut off distance and skip to the bubble bogs. It was not a race full of actual runners, which was a little frustrating at times. In fact, when I got to the end, I had a hard time reaching the finish line because there was a wall of people stopped just before the finish taking selfies. Really, people?? I was a just a little bothered. They should re-name it a social media walk instead of a run. I felt badly that Tyler and the kids came to watch - it was a hot morning and they had to wait for a long time! It made for a crazy day but they were so sweet to come.

Can you spot us?

This was at the end of the bubble bog at the starting line - they were foamy bubbles that were pretty fun to play with!