Yay for Family Visits!

We were delighted to find out that we would have family visiting this month.  Not only were Chris' dad and stepmom coming from Arizona, but his sister was also able to come for a week from Florida with our three year old niece.  We love having family visit and having grown up the first eight years of my life with many many cousins in Michigan, it hurts my heart that my children are able to see their cousin just once a year usually.  But we had such a good time with them here.  And I'm hopeful that we'll get to see them more often once we move, even though we will be living on opposite ends of a very long state.

We started off our time together down at the Riverwalk of course.  Rita's on the River is my favorite restaurant down there and we always sit outside when we go.  There were many birds that evening scrounging for food and our girls were ever the sweet animal lovers and fed them many tortilla chips together.  We would have made them stop since it was obvious there was passive disapproval from the waitress for the next table, but the girls contagious giggles made it just too hard to make them stop.  Bad mama.

And the pigeons and ducks weren't the only one enjoying the chips.  Anna practically ate the salsa as a soup with her chips.  She was a mess, but she was happy, and sometimes that trumps keeping a baby clean!

We spent one day window shopping in Fredericksburg (while Chris, Grandpa, the boys, and Anna went to a war musuem) followed by an evening at the Tejas Rodeo.  This girl fit right in.

Leah had an unfortunate incident with her diaper and dress while in her car seat on the way from Fredericksburg to the Rodeo and ended up having to wear this to the rodeo.

 

From cowgirl princess to this sloppy look in a diaper and football t-shirt.  This is why you should not judge when you don't know the whole story!

But she didn't care and we had a lot of fun (although I do have a hard time watching those poor little calves getting roped.  I guess I'm not a true Texan.)

We started with a BBQ dinner there at the rodeo.  Anna came up with a new way to eat a hot dog.

After that we were ready to watch the rodeo events.

Halfway through the rodeo, they let the kids come out to try to grab a ribbon tied onto some calves.  The boys took Caroline and Leah and they had fun even though I don't think they had any idea what was going on.

The kids ended up playing in the dirt (big surprise), but Anna didn't take into account that playing in the dirt and sucking your thumb don't mix. 

 

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One of my favorite things about having an imperfect life is having memories that I can picture in my head and still laugh about.  One such memory...

Father's Day fell right in the middle of having our family visit, which was perfect since Chris' dad was here.  I bought this nice frame for him and wanted to take a picture of the cousins to put in the frame to give Chris' dad. 

We tried once and it just wasn't working.  Attitudes were not happy and there was no way we could get a decent picture.

We gave up and decided to try later.  'Later' became last minute and we had to get it done, on Father's Day, before church.  The kids were great.  Smiles and happiness and all that.

The neighbor's dog was outside, as was ours, and the thought to put our dog inside just didn't pop into any of our minds as the two dogs ran up and down the fence line together.  The fence that we were using as our background.

I am totally laughing out loud right now, remembering this happening.  The kids were looking at where ever the dog was and I was trying to click my camera while Chris was trying to keep Anna from walking away and Olivia was trying to get the kids to look at the camera and not the dog.

But we got one that was 'good enough' when it comes to taking a photo of six kids ages 1-10. 

Why my girls lift their dresses up like this, I have no clue.  It is certainly not something learned from their mom! 

When I picked the photos up from Walgreens later that day, the lab developer said, "Oh yah, the picture with the girls lifting their dresses?"  Yes.  But it was seriously the best one.

And I didn't forget to get some of Chris with the kids as well. 

Happy Father's Day to the best daddy my children could have!

 

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We took the kids swimming one afternoon to cool off.

And hung out a lot at home, just enjoying catching up and watching the girls be best friends for a week.

On our last day with Chris' sister and neice, we went up to Landa Park in New Braunfels.  There is much to explore there and the kids especially liked following the train tracks and feeding the ducks.

Followed by playing on the playground.

We had a great time with our family and are excited for when we'll get to see them again!