Texas Peeps

Last year, I wrote about my Heart Friends. These women are "my girls"! I cannot believe that we live so far away from one another- we have been incredibly blessed with an enduring friendship. It doesn't matter how long we've been apart, we can pick up without missing a beat.
In the picture below, we are holding a picture of the four of us that was taken our freshman year in College... I believe in the Fall of 1998. We all squealed when we realized we were spontaneoulsy standing in exactly the same positions. And then we all groaned when we remembered that the old photo shows each one of us carrying our "freshman fifteen". Ugh. So I would like to formally replace that photo with one of these two in our FORCE memory book. (Except that we don't really have one).

The evening of Daphne's birthday, Carole generously invited us all over for dinner and fun. We gathered with husbands and kids and acted like silly girls again for a little while. It's incredible to think that these girlfriends I skipped class with are now wives and mothers. I guess we're old, we just don't feel like it yet!

Some of our sweet offspring playing together out back:

My friend Marcy went completely out of her way and came up from Austin for the night. She had been traveling tons and I am certain that they had lots to do, but they made time to come see us and I am so gratful! I can't come to Tejas and not see my Marcy Girl! Marcy and I both had daughters about 5 months apart back in 2004.. here they are now!

Daphne and Aubrey hit it off fabulously... they ran around taking care of little babies and putting on pet fashion shows with ALL of Baby Charlotte's stuffed animals and hair bows. Sorry for the mess, Carole! Prepare yourself for the disaster that is girly imaginative play! Daphne NEVER gets out just one thing. Everything has to be comprehensively integrated to include every single type of doll, dress up, accessory and stuffed animal. My house frequently looks like a Fancy Nancy Book Exploded inside.

Speaking of my Imaginative Girl... we decided to bring some BlueBell to share with everyone that night... she picked Milk Chocolate. Yum! (For those of you keeping a mental tally of Blue Bell consumption during our Texas trip, this is gallon number 3 in 5 days.)

We scooped Blue Bell into cones and sent the kids outside in an effort to protect Carole's house from further destruction.

That plan to keep the ice cream outside worked pretty well except for all the ice cream that ended up on the kids... Tori got a good amount on her sweater and you can see what happened to Amy's little Noah!

These two were born on the same day! And of course, as per usual, the Hunter giant genes persisted with Victoria. She towers over kids her age. Volleyball, here we come!

I had so much fun with you ladies! I wish we lived close enough for us to do that more than once a year. Thank you so much for the company, the food, and the years of friendship. I am a better woman today because I know y'all. (But I've still got a lot of work to do!)

Family Pictures!

As mentioned in my last post, my friend Emily generously took our pictures while we were in Texas. Please stop by her website... Emily Mulkey Photography. Emily is married to my dear friend Matt from High school. Actually... I dated Matt for about 5 minutes our Junior year. Matt and I were good friends and on our first date, we went to his house to watch a movie. Terms of Endearment, if I remember correctly. So, during the movie, I excused myself to the bathroom and when I went to fasten my pants, the zipper on my jeans completely broke.
Like.. my jeans wouldn't fasten.
At all.
Just what you want to have happen on a date.
So... after fumbling around in the bathroom so long that I'm sure he thought I had food poisoning, I finally just came back into the room with my pants undone.
Yep, I did that.
Matt was a complete gentlemen and took me home (laughing hysterically the entire way, of course.) Why am I telling this story? Who knows? Just fastforward about 13 years and Matt and I are still friends and his beautiful wife Emily is taking pictures of me and MY Matt.


Anyway, Emily is incredibly talented.

Ummmmm... Gorgeous. I think I might be wall papering with these.

Victoria, 3 years old. Daphne, 7 years old that day!

I like how I decided to do the pictures at the END of our week in Texas. Matt, Isaac and Daphne look like blonde-headed Mexicans and I'm the white woman in the middle who looks like their step-mom. Whatever... they're mine. Forever.

Isaac, 9 1/2 years.

GiGi!

Feliz Cumpleanos, Daphne!

On Daphne's actual birthday, we woke up bright and early! First thing on our agenda: Family Pictures! One of my dear Texas friends, Emily Mulkey, is an incredible photgrapher. I somehow convinced her to take pictures of us, so we headed over to the Dallas Arboretum:

Emily's pictures are works of art. I can't wait for y'all to see them! Go to her website to find out more about her! Emily Mulkey Photography

I LOVE the Arboretum! I so wanted to go exploring the whole think like my friend Marcy and I used to do back in the day!

You'll notice that most of the pictures are of Isaac and Daph because Tori was sort of done with the photo shoots at this point....

They have so many new exhibits since the last time I was there... like the Beatrix Potter village. Here they are walking into Peter Rabbit's house... we actually saw a little brown bunny hopping around outside! Victoria was ecstatic!

Unfortunately, the kids were way too hot after just a little bit of exploring... we probably only explored 1/3 of the park! Although we had been in Texas all week, the only time we spent outside was in the pool. My kiddos were covered in sweat and we were ready for a break. Since it was Daphne's birthday, we wanted her to choose where we had lunch. The only restaurant she wanted to go to was Cafe Rio... but they don't have those in Texas. So... I suggested we go to my favorite Mexican restaurant in Dallas... Mariano's.

I LOVE Mariano's! I dream about their salsa sometimes.

Ummm... excuse me, I ordered the LARGE bowl of soup....

And tiny tacos....

Sisters snuggling!

After all the yummy fajitas and salsa, it was time for the birthday song, this time in Spanish!

After lunch, we took Tori and the boys back for naptime, while I took Daphne for a birthday treat: Mani-pedi at the nail shop! Daphne's favorite color is blue:

Daphne LOVED getting her nails done... she often asks to go, so this was a fun birthday treat for her! Lots more birthday pics to come!

Herzlichen Gluckwunsch zum Geburtstag, Daphne!

While we were in Texas, we celebrated Daphne's 7th Birthday... a lot!

The night before she turned 7, we went to dinner with my Mom, sister & family, and met our dear friends, Phil and Heidi Graham. Heidi was like a second mother to me through much of my life, so it's always imperative that we visit with her! I was bummed that we didn't get to see either of her sons, OR their grandbaby, but maybe next time!

We met them at a German restaurant near my sister's house called The Bavarian Grill.

If you like German food, or have ever been to Germany or even wanted to go to Germany, this place is really fun! They have created the perfect German ambiance and I definitely had some flashbacks to our Summer in Germany! On the weekends, they have live accordian music and the girls just had to get their groove on:

Matt ordered an entire side of pig:

Okay, it was just a pork shank, but it was HUGE!!

The owners have a little mechanical train that rides around the top of the restaurant (a la Mr. Rogers' trolley), which was very fun for the kids to watch!

Tori did get a little restless waiting for everyone to eat, so we walked around the restaurant. They had pictures plastered everywhere and it was so fun to see all the places we had actually been able to visit! It still seems a little like a dream.

The waiter came over and played handbells to sing Happy Birthday to Daffodil in German... she LOVED it, can you tell?

Here's a video of the girls dancing! (Remember you'll have to actually visit the blog to see the video- just in case you are getting this via email! http://mattlaurahunter.blogspot.com/)

Snuggles, Sillies and Stunts!

After we got a good night's sleep at my Mom's house, the kids were anxious to get over to Shelli's and meet Baby Michael and start swimming!

Tori couldn't quite wait for Michael, she jumped right in with Jillian and started Day One of an entire week of Dress Up! They fell in nicely together- it was adorable!

I was a little more anxious to get to Snuggle Baby Michael, who is my sister's third child. He is so precious and already a strapping young man- He weighed in at 9 lbs. 3 oz at birth and at only 4 weeks, managed to roll over!! We're calling him Samson now.

Daphne, Me, Jillian and Samantha with Michael:

Wild horses weren't going to pull me away from that baby, so Matt took the kids out to get started swimming:

Tori used this little swim ring and was a little speed demon around the pool!

After my kids got comfy in the pool, they were ready to start some more adventurous jumps! Isaac, Daphne and Jillian decided to call themselves the "Love Family" and gave themselves names like "Cuddle", "Hugs" and "Heart"
Then they decided to make up jumps where they hug and jump or kiss and jump together:

Can I just say that when we visited my sister last Summer, neither of my children would even put their faces in the water? And one of my children tried to use one of Shelli's children as a human flotation device, nearly drowning both children. (Names withheld to prevent sibling teasing) And now, after a little bit of Swimming Lessons, they became little Stunt Devils on the diving board:

And more silliness:

Did I mention the stunts? Here is Isaac in the middle of a back flip:

Matt would hold each of the kids and then shoot them into the air, where some of them would do more back flips:

Jillian:

I like how you can see Daphne fighting over the swim noodle in the lower portion of the pic!

Daphne:

By the end of the week, they were all experts- I was so proud of them!! My sister was so generous to let us spend so much time in her pool over the week- I'm sure we left much more of a mess than we even realize, and she was quite the hostess, especially considering that she just had a baby!!! We love you, Shell! We had a blast!