This Week

This week Chris and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on June 25.  Lucky number 7!!  

I had some beautiful flowers delivered to my office.  7 roses for 7 years.  They came from Northwest Arkansas Florist (awesome florist!!), which is the florist that did our wedding flowers.  Plus, I've never gotten flowers delivered to me before.  Very sweet.

We had a wonderful anniversary date that included diner and a movie.  A big thanks to Meme and Poppa for keeping Sara Kate.  Love you so much babe and I look forward to many many many more years together!

 

This week we went to school on our normal summer schedule.

This week we stayed home with daddy and did fun things like read books, do puzzles, color, and build block towers.

This week we had some fun times in the bath playing with a belated birthday present from Sara Kate's friends Carley and Evan from church.  Yep, that was fun to clean.

This week we ate some more delicious blackberries, this time in the form of a blackberry short cake.  YUM!!!

And this week we had lots of fun times with cousins, including fun at Meme & Poppa's, sprinkler fun, slip n slide fun, and Boingo Bounce fun!

 

 

 This kid is so serious!

 

 Finally a smile!!!

So that's what we've been up to this week!  What have you been up to?  Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

First Pool Party

Tonight Sara Kate had her very first 'pool party!'  Her friends Landry and Emma came over to eat dinner, play, and play in the baby pool!  Sara Kate did very well sharing her toys, although she did not want her friends using her pink cups!  Last time Emma came over to play, Sara Kate and daddy had to have a talk about sharing, ha!!  But the girls did good together.  Brandy and I have been friends for several years now and it's fun now that Landry is getting to an age that she and Sara Kate can play together (they are almost exactly a year apart).  I've known Jill for several years also, and it's fun that she has a baby girl close in age, too!  I invited our friend Elizabeth but she couldn't make this one.  Hopefully soon she and her babies can come play!

This picture melts my heart.  Landry and Sara Kate were looking out the back door before going outside and Sara Kate was telling Landry something and Landry was listening so intently.  So sweet.

 Checking things out.

 

This sweet girl loves the water!  She is always so serious whenever we see her (at church) but it was so fun seeing her little personality tonight!

 

Miss Emma didn't want to play in the water (although she is definitely a water baby from pictures I've seen her mama post on Facebook) but she had a wonderful time on the swing!

 

And when she was ready to play, instead of the pool she found a hole dug by the dogs that was filled with water from water spilling out of the pool.  That was big fun!

 

 We turned on the bubble machine and got the biggest smile out of Emma!

More pool time!

 

Emma is a March 2011 baby, Landry is a April 2011 baby, and Sara Kate is an April 2010 baby.  It was really difficult getting these 3 still for a picture, and this is a crappy picture but it's the best I got.  And all 3 have quasi-smiles so I'll call it a success! :-)

We're so glad our friends came over to play tonight!  See you all soon!

Baby's First Haircut

I know my baby isn't a 'baby' anymore, but yesterday we did one of the last 'baby 1st's' that we'll get to do with her.  Sara Kate got her first haircut, at 26 and 1/2 months old!  We talked about doing her first haircut before her 2nd birthday but we chickened out and decided we weren't ready.  But she has been looking awful shaggy, rocking the baby mullet and wings over her ears, plus we are getting ready to go on vacation so I decided it was time.  My mom said to have some M&M's or something like that to keep her occupied so we made a stop by the gas station on the way.  We went to a place called Pigtails and Crewcuts, which is a kid place.  

Before (we didn't think to do a back shot until afterwards...oh well).

She got to pick which chair she wanted to go in...they had an airplane, a police car, and a firetruck.  She picked the airplane.

She did so good sitting in chair, and we didn't even need the M&M's!  I don't know if she was just really unsure about what was going on or what but she just sat so good and still.  We talked to the girl about what we to do and she had an idea to give her a little bob, kind of like mine.  She worked on evening out the layers in the back and she didn't really mess with the top any.

 

 

 

All done!  The last thing she was going to do was get the hair dryer out to dry it to make sure it was even, but Sara Kate hates the hair dryer so she wasn't going for that!  That's why we left with it still damp.  But isn't it cute?!

 

  

Silly girl!

'Cheesin' with Alexa, who was her 'stylist!'

They have a 'baby's first haircut' package that comes with a picture and a lock of hair on a scrapbook page, but since Chris came with his camera (of course!!) we just got a regular haircut and they saved some of her hair for me in a bag.

  The back of our hair...very similar!

And here's our big girl this morning before church.

I think she's proud.  She was swinging her hair around during lunch and pointed to her head and said 'haircut.'  We're so proud of our big girl and we think she looks precious!

Welcome Summer!

Hello summer!!

 

Summer is officially upon us and we're feeling it here in NWA!  It's been pretty warm (and we're about to hit the upper 90's this weekend and next week), humid, and we've had no rain.  I've been doing quite a bit of field work (big YUCK this time of year) but I've also done something I've never done before...picked blackberries!  I've had a couple farmers take me to their 'honey holes' and I've loaded up.  The first batch I picked were smaller berries so they were tart, but the ones I got yesterday were bigger and very sweet!  

The guys at my office have also been picking berries and my co-worker Josh shared his wife's recipe for Blackberry Cobbler.  I made it this past weekend and it was delicious!  I made another to take to work today and it was gobbled up.  It's a super easy recipe too so I thought I'd share it.

Blackberry Cobbler

Crust:

1 and 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup shortening

Cut shortening into flour/salt mixture.  Add 7-8 Tablespoons cold water.  Mix until you can make a ball, then roll out dough and cut into strips.

Filling:

1 quart berries (4 cups)

~ 1 cup sugar

2 Tablespoons flour

pinch of salt

Bring to a simmer on the stove.

Grease square baking dish.  To put pie together, layer crust strips, berries, crust strips, berries, dots of butter, crust strips, and sprinkle with sugar.

 

 

 Bake at 350 degrees for 30-60 minutes, depending on thickness of crust, until crust starts to brown (mine have been taking 45 mins to an hour depending on the oven).  

Serve warm with some ice cream and you will be in fruity cobbler heaven!!

In other summer news, we've spent lots of time outside and we've spent the last week watching baseball (which is not something we do) because our Razorbacks are in the College World Series (although they aren't doing very well right at this moment, boo!)!  Wooo Pig Sooie!!

 

I hope your summer has started out good where ever you are!!