We've been in Texas for a little over 4 months now. Here's what we've been up to!
Back when we first moved in, one day I was unpacking and found Sara and Ava happily playing together in a laundry basket with a hula-hoop and a few other toys. It was a cute moment, and nice that they would play quietly together so I could get some boxes unpacked!
Ava LOVED climbing on top of the boxes. We had a lot of boxes in the front room by a window, and I would often find her playing in-between or on top of the boxes in there. I think she thought they were a big fort or castle for her to play in!
We inherited a piano from Rob's grandma several years ago when she downsized from a house to an apartment, and we haven't had a chance to actually use it until now! It was being stored in Rob's parent's basement for a few years, but when we moved to Texas we loaded it up on the moving truck and brought it with us!
Rob has a lot of books. We had at least 40 of these cube book boxes full of his books. It took a long time to unpack them all! And we don't even have room for all of them on our current bookshelves!
There are LOTS of options for barbecue here in TX. We tried out this place is in our neighborhood and enjoyed some tasty ribs, brisket, and a few sides. Plus, free dessert buffet of peach cobbler, banana cream pie, or soft serve ice cream. Yes please!
This picture is a good representation of the natural landscape here in McKinney. There are lots of parks and walking trails like this one sprinkled throughout the city. This is a green-space park just South of where we live. It's a nice place to go walking with views of nothing but the fields, trees, and sky.
McKinney also has a year-round weekly farmer's market in the quaint downtown area. Love me some fresh produce!
It gets pretty windy in Texas! I learned the hard way that sometimes it just isn't worth trying to style your hair, because the wind will re-style it for you as soon as you step outside!
Along with the wind comes lots of heavy rainstorms in the Spring. The girls loved splashing outside on days when the rain was light enough (and with no thunder or lightning, which we also get a lot of).
And if there's no rain to splash in, the sprinklers, splash park, or swimming pool will do just fine.
(Sara after Summer swimming lessons with her friends Brielle and Hallie)
In the Spring, Sara loved picking dandelions from our yard and arranging them in vases for a table centerpiece.
The girls also enjoy playing at the nearby parks...
...spending time at our great city libraries...
...and cooling off with a tasty treat from a fancy pirate-ship snow cone shop!
Our house backs onto a patch of trees, so we see lots of these little critters running along our back fence and jumping through the branches all day long.
We've also been seeing a lot of this lately:
Ava falling asleep while looking at books...
or while watching a movie...
or while out shopping!
Ava isn't asleep in this next picture; she is throwing a tantrum on the cement of course! I actually hadn't seen this picture until looking through photos on the computer today. Rob must have taken it. I wonder what she was so upset about?! (Terrific twos!!)
Sara loves to draw, and spent several hours over several days and weeks filling every page in a small notebook she got from the store.
She created her own little coloring book by drawing on each page with a pen, and then went back later to add color with markers.
(most of the book was drawings of mermaids because the book's cover has a picture of Ariel on it)
(our family as mermaids!)
After she filled up her mermaid book, she moved on to a new blank notebook and did her same coloring book technique of drawing with one color first, then going back to add color later. I thought this picture of a monster ransacking a town was hilarious, random, and very well drawn!
(notice the girl between the monster's legs.... she died, and that's her up in the clouds all the way to the left. Next to her is Jesus welcoming her to heaven, and to the right of him are the girl's grandparents! Pretty cute, even if it is a bit morbid. :)
A few other fun happenings this Spring and Summer:
McKinney has a homemade ice-cream contest every year. This year there were over 30 entries, and you could pay a small fee to be an ice-cream taste tester and vote on your favorite flavor! Below is a picture of us enjoying our yummy samples with our friends who we've known since college and their three girls. (They also live in McKinney and are the reason we moved to Texas, because Rob's friend offered him a job at the company he works for. Yay for already having good friends to do fun stuff with when you move to a new place!)
Ava especially loved all the yummy ice cream samples!
They also had fun carnival games and pony rides at the ice cream contest. It was a fun day!
On another day, Sara was super excited to get a treat from the ice cream truck that passed by our house at least once a week during the summer. She chose a Tweety Bird "frozen confection" with gum ball eyes!!
Sara also started using a bedtime board to help her stay on track with the bedtime routine. She drew all the pictures representing each item and moves them from the left to the right as she completes each one.
Here are our little patriotic babes at a barbecue at our friend's house on the 4th of July.
And here they are playing with the Cabbage Patch Kids that were mine as a child! My mom held on to them for all these years, and now my girls get to play with them too!
We visited a fun science museum in Dallas last month, but the only pictures I took were of the girls playing in the "dig for dinosaur bones" exhibit in the children's play area. They love playing in the sand!
That's it for now. See y'all on the next post!
