Daron, Melanie, Stephen, Kassie, and Kenny

Monday, March 21, 2016

Stephen turns 16!


Daron and Stephen ~ like 2 peas in a pod. Having a "slapping war." Who does that?

priceless video at: https://youtu.be/28eLvhIh08o





And Stephen officially turns 16! Fun waking him up, opening family gifts, treating the kids to a fancy dinner, and visiting Chalks in League City... Bill even marked the ants to warn the grandkids! Visit from Aunt Feffer and her traditional rice krispy treat











  
Stephen is honored at his wrestling banquet ~


Even as a teenager, Kas still loves playdates... making smoothies and playing bball!



Date night, Mom and Dad take off on their month long road trip, and Stephen meets with the missionaries for his first "conversion experience" discussion - new stake initiative for all youth!


 Hilarious family text chain... everyone sending pics of their feet at the start of spring break... as if Kassie was going from a hike in her boots to dancing on pointe... hilarious!


     



And the before and after for working in the yard for a dear friend...





Thursday, March 10, 2016

Parties, zoo dates, and hosting Bonnie O!


Feb-March has been the busiest, yet in many ways the most rewarding time of our family's lives! We've enjoyed playing together at the spa, the temple, the zoo, the scout carnival, and lots of other fun activities.  Big calendar items are trek prep (I chain sawed logs for the first time!) and got to meet sweet Bonnie Oscarson, General YW President, who's native to Klein and served w/ Uncle Henrik in the Sweden temple!





 







Trek pathway clearing, and Dad... showing up to clean the church building at 8am -- LOVE him!!




Hanging with Bonnie Oscarson... Fun highlight: treating her to a Chill shake!







 



And then there's this cute boy Stephen who I feel like was just born -- how did we get all the way to celebrating his 16th?? Cred to Jen for this awesome party invite!!

 
 
 










Love this 'flop on the bed' pic -- we haven't had enough of this kind of down time recently! Stephen texted me one day and sweetly said, "how's it going at home, mom?" So darling. Here's my reply to him:  "You are precious Stephen, I have been going non-stop since I dropped you off at seminary! Filled water bottles, baked bread, baked cookies, went to Kathy Pagano's for a drop off/pick up, made salads for Aunt Feffer and Aunt Kassie, met Kassie at Stake Center to give her the 200 nerf swords from our Book of Mormon conference so they can use them for theirs, took Kenny to Steffs so he could help babysit her kids because she's sick, visiting teaching drop offs, laundry, dishes, now I'm tallying the trek registration forms we received to date so we can chase down the rest of them... About to go to Kathryn's to go over the list and discuss my new counselor. I'm so glad you asked, that was kind of fun to go back over the last few hours... I bet you thought I was on my couch watching a movie eating cookies :-)

I got another chuckle last week ~  I am so happy that our sweet children just float along enjoying life... that's how childhood should be. But I realize sometimes they definitely don't have any idea of what adulthood brings. This morning when I got home from seminary and was about to dive into the house transformation that night's teen party, Kassie said, don't worry mom, you have like 10 hours to get it all done today, it's going to be easy right? I just smiled and started to sing to her my Young Ambassadors song, "All I am is just a housewife"... After an endless ongoing list of things that she had no clue about that was still on my docket for the day, she just looked at me and said, "Mom, how do you know how to be a mom? I'm a little nervous because I don't know how to learn all that." It was cute.