The Fair!!

I packed up the kids and went to my hometown fair last weekend!  Well...I guess the East county fair would be considered hometown, but the Conroe show was always a big one for us too.  And it has always had a fantastic carnival, so there's that.  I remembered to take my camera this year!  And I'm so glad I did too, I got some adorable photos of the kids!

Like this one!  My personal fav!  More of these later though...

First thing's first, we come to watch my nieces show their chickens!  But for some reason the turkey show always comes before the chickens.  I never showed turkeys, but when I watch the turkey show, I kind of wish I had.  

When you first walk in the show barn, the turkeys are all in cages right beside the fence.  I'm sure one of these days at least one of my kids is going to get pecked by a turkey, but so far they haven't, and they absolutely love to talk to them before their show starts.

They flip them over to show them, and and they all flap their wings at first, and it's just this big production!  My kids go nuts for that first turkey flip!  Haha!  I was telling some people at work about the fair and how the poultry is judged upsidedown, and they were all staring at me like I was crazy.  lol

The poultry show is about 2 hours long or so, and after the excitement of the turkeys, the chicken show is downright boring...unless you know people in the arena!  This is my niece (in the middle) and her lot of birds.  She made the sale, which is no easy feat at the Conroe show!

When the show was over we all goofed off and waited for the results of the homemaking.

Anna likes giving piggy back rides.  :)

My sister is a little smitten with her new granddaughter.  

And then we were off to the carnival!  I'm usually pretty cheap at these things, but this year I splurged on some unlimited ride wrist bands, so worth it!

Anna loves the big ship!

She's apparently getting too old for the kiddie rides, she was a fairly bored sourpuss on them...  

Oddly enough, she's the only one who started to get sick toward the end of the day. haha.

There was a cool fun house with a maze of clear walls that Wallace managed to give himself a bloody nose on.  I didn't get a picture of that, but take my word for it, it was funny.  

I signed them up for these tractor races.

It was adorable!  They pull these weighted trailers.  

Meredith was a bit annoyed when she wasn't able to pull hers very far. That guy there is trying to give her a high five and get her off the tractor, and she's all ignoring him.  

Anna was the only one of mine to make it through the first round!  She was so proud of herself!

My kids pretty much paid for their unlimited wrist bands on this giant slide alone.  They kept skipping the line!  

Because, let's face it, waiting in line blows...

This was about when Anna started feeling crappy.  :(

But she rallied for one last ride on the giant ship....

...and immediately regretted it....

The littles found the carousel.

And this was about the end of it.  We'd been at it for hours.  :)

We finished off the awesome day in the petting zoo.  

Who puts a turtle in a petting zoo????

Meredith was watching me edit these photos and says "can we go to the fair tomorrow?"  Well...no, but definitely next year though!  :)

Easter

Easter in Gilmer this year was a bit of a whirlwind.  We didn't leave town until Saturday, and right as we were about to leave, Meredith managed to run into the granite counter top with her teeth.  "/  We called the emergency dentist line, and they were nice enough to talk us through what to do to get her tooth back into about the right place.  She'd hit the counter so hard that it pushed one of her front middle teeth back a couple of millimeters.  It was super loose and bloody, but Josh got it just about right back where it was supposed to be.  He was pretty convinced it was just going to fall right out of her mouth because it was so loose, but here we are a week later, and it's still in place!

So, needless to say, we got a late start on our drive to Gilmer.  A short 6 hours later, we were there, and jumping on the trampoline at Leah's house.  As if I was going to be able to keep Meredith off of it.  I would flinch every time she took a hard fall...expecting her to look up at me with a gap-toothed smile for the next 4 years or so.  And, I frankly hovered over her for a while, but there's just not much that will hold Meredith back when she's got her mind set on something.  Like jumping her heart out on a trampoline.  :)

Of course, she wasn't the only one.  Gosh...I really think I need to get a new trampoline...My kids go crazy for them!

Easter morning we hung out with Josh's Mom for a little while.  She had some worms in her fridge for Cy to fish with, and Wallace and Meredith had so much fun playing with them.  They get very attached to any little creature they find and want them to be a life-long pet.  

I'm pretty sure this little guy made the 6-hour drive back and is in my fridge at this very moment.  

Then we had Easter lunch and the Easter egg hunt over at Sarah Faye's new place.  It's beautiful.  And there's even a pond!  I'm so jealous!  

Josh hates when I take photos of him, but this was just so adorable!  And he didn't even flip me off, which is how he usually gets me to stop taking his photo.  Lol.

And then they hunted eggs!  There are so many kids, there ends up being eggs just everywhere for them.  You can sort of see them dotted around the yard in the background here.  This was even after the yard had been picked over quite a bit.  :)

Enjoying their loot.  :)

And then the annual coscarone fight!  

So, like I said, it was a whirlwind.  It was totally worth it though.  Easter in Gilmer is always a great time full of family and food and good times.   :)

Our First Track Meet!

Of all days to have a track meet, it had to be the one scorcher in March.  Haha.  This year I signed Meredith and Wallace up for track.  It's a nice short season, just a one month commitment.  And, although Meredith appeared to hate it, Wallace LOVED it!  So, we'll be signing up again for sure.  

Eeeek!  So cute!

I was very excited that Meredith actually ran all of her races.  At every single practice she'd just run off and pick dandelions or play in dirt rather than run. 

This was seriously right before the shotgun start of her second race.  See how everyone else is already in their "set" position...  I was so sure she would just stand there when he fired the gun, but she surprised me and took off!  

Track meets are VERY long.  And we had a few hours between the short sprints and their relay.  So paletas! 

There was a lot of sitting around.

And trying to stay hydrated.

Did I mention how HOT it was today?  

Searching for shade wherever we could find it.

I was most shocked that Meredith actually participated in the relay race.  She and Wallace were both in the same relay.  She never once would practice it with her team this past month.  But today she got up there and did a great job!  And Wallace, who'd been struggling all day with getting a good start with the gun, had a fantastic start as the first leg of the relay!  They did great!  In fact, they got 2nd place, so now guess what?  We get to go to another track meet....  sweet....  lol.  Maybe it won't take 7 hours since it will just be for one event.  

Catching up!

Well goodness.  It's been a while.  I'll think I'll just get all caught up in one quick post.  :)  

First, there was Halloween! 

Wallace only had underwear on...and in my moment of brilliance I thought I'd just have him hold the pumpkin so no one would be able to tell. Now it just looks like he was naked.  "/

This was the year of homemade costumes.  I didn't really manage to get a great photo of Meredith in her costume, but here's one from her school parade.

It's a little tough to tell, but she was a jellyfish!

Anna was a spider.  She needed this costume for a school play, and ended up really liking it!

And hommie was a backhoe!  He actually needed this for school as well, and oh my gosh, was he excited to use the lights for trick or treating!!

Then I saw this scary dude right outside the dogs' kennel one afternoon when Josh was out of town (of course!). The first rattlesnake I've seen at our place since we moved out here.  I just sort of panicked and ran in and out of the house a few times trying to come up with a plan to save the dogs if it decided to actually go into the kennel.  Then about the fourth time I ran out of the house, it was gone and the dogs were calm again.  "/  I was such a grown-up about it.  

I got to take the cheer team photos this year and was super excited to rent a 14mm lens for it!  

LOVE this one of her!  :)

Meredith didn't want to be left out of the cheer photo fun.

Their coach found this super cute idea for a team photo!  :)

We went to soooooo many soccer games!

Anna got more and more awesome as the season went on!

And Meredith....found other ways to have fun while we were there.  Pretty sure I won't sign her up again until she's at least 5.

At least James was playing too, so we got to have lots of fun with our friends this season.  I miss our Wednesday evening McDonalds dinners after practice.  

The football team that Anna cheered for made the Superbowl and won!  It was the WINDIEST game ever!  

And then it was time for the annual trip to Canton for shopping fun at the trade days.  This year Wallace got to come along!  He got a bit caught up in the whirlwind of shopping and toys and hats and turkey legs, etc...and didn't really understand what had happened when the money ran out...  That was just the biggest bummer for him.  I think he'll have a better understanding of it all next year, and I'm sure he'll want to go back.  I didn't get any shopping pics of him with my fancy camera, but we got some fun ones at the camp site.  He really enjoyed camping out!

And of course Anna is all about smores and camping and shopping too!  

I let Sarah's girls play with my camera, and they got some pretty cool photos.  Lots of pictures of the campfire, and some pretty cool ones of everyone sitting around it too!

I'm not even kidding.  There were like a hundred photos of the campfire on the camera when I got home.

I really like the photos kids take!

I took Wallace on the longest hike ever when Anna and everyone else went shopping for the second day.  I'm pretty sure we got a little lost, but my fitbit registered over 10K steps before 10AM!

And then we had the freak MASSIVE snowfall here in south Texas!  The same day that Meredith had her tonsils out.  "/  We ended up letting her go play in it with Anna and Wallace when it was falling that night.  And I almost held back and didn't let them go out in it the next morning because of the tonsil thing.  What a mistake that would have been.  I got some cute pictures of them!  And they may never see snow here again.  Oh, and then their principal let them all go out and play in the snow even more at school!  It was just THAT awesome!

There's almost always a marker smudge on this kid's face.

My kids really like to eat snow...

Good thing I got snow pictures when we had it...because there was seriously no snow in Colorado when we went on the ski trip!

Wallace was in a little school play.  He got to wear his new hat he picked up in Canton!  And this is the day I realized that my son is a bit on the small side....  lol

Christmas morning came!  

Wallace had a pretty nice shiner for Christmas photos...  This kid and his facial injuries...

Christmas morning bedhead is the best!

Not long after we finished opening presents we left for the ski trip.  Unfortunately, Josh managed to get the flu...on the way there.  Well, I guess he already had it, but about halfway through the second day of the drive he started going downhill super fast.  After just about 2 more hours he couldn't even drive anymore.  We'd taken two vehicles!  I was so glad I brought along a buddy to help with the kids!  I had no idea how much I would need her!  She helped me schlep kids and equipment up and down the mountain for four days.  I'd have been doomed without her!  I owe you one Kailey!

This about sums up the ski trip.  Not very snowy....  Somehow there was just barely enough up on the mountain for skiing and snowboarding, but there was also a lot of ice and tree tops and rocks sticking up through the snow on the runs.  We literally didn't see snow falling from the sky until we got quite a ways back into Texas!  It was so weird.

"Stop taking photos and let us get in the hot tub!!!!"

And just like that we're all caught up!  

Soccer Mood Swings...

So, Meredith did better in her soccer game today!  She actually went out on to the field!  But....there were still a lot of tears.  She's starting to look a bit imbalanced out there.  Ha!  I'm going to post the photos from today's game in the order they were shot.  

A little irritated, but not too bad.  This was when Josh was having a talk with her about her options.  Since the alternative didn't sound too fun, she opted to play soccer today!

Good to go...kicking the ball off...

gasp!  Someone took the ball away!  

We've pulled ourselves together...

Damn it!  It happened again.  The best part is her little teammate who's all confused by her crying.

"Oh...it's my turn to kick it off?"

"Okay, yeah...Let's do this!"

@&$%#^@&($!!!!!!

"This sport is exhilarating!  I just LOVE it!!!"

"I'm going to play all the time!"

"I HATE SOCCER!!!!"

"Just kidding!  I LOVE SOCCER!"

"Nope.  Still hate it."

At this point I left to go watch Wallace's game and left Josh with her.  But she appeared to be on another high note.  :)

It's emotionally exhausting to watch her play!

Hommie did so awesome in his game!  He kind of loses focus about mid way through each game, but he pulled it back together again toward the end.  

And although you can't see the ball in this one, he's dribbling it, and he looks so happy!  :)

Anna's out of town, so she missed her game.  But, she's on the trip of a lifetime to New York City with Big Momma and Joe-Joe!  From the sounds of it, they've been having non-stop fun for 4 days.  I can't wait to hear all about it!