Now and Then..

Here is a Pic of my 16th B-day with my friend Kori. I'm the brown head.

So, I'll take the hair I have at 31 but the legs I had at 16!

31st Birthday Spread.

I love love love Birthdays. Especially mine! Here's my layout so far. Aren't these the most awesome coasters and handtowels, ( check out anthropologie.com for similar cool stuff)
The Reefs are from my Kirbster, I didn't even pick them out, didn't he do good.
I actually began celebrating last Tues when my girlfriend in hometeam surprised me with a cake . Today we'll go to the beach, and then tonight Kirb and I are going to the opening night of Okalahoma at our local theatre. My friend Jen offered to watch all 3 kiddos along with her own baby, so pray for her!
more pics of fun stuff to come.

My baby girl is 3!

Claire's b-day was tons of fun, mainly because she is tons of fun. She is so easy going and funny, it's an absolute blast to do special stuff just for her. We did the beach, camping in the back yard, cupcakes, and I planned for special visitors just for her. The visitors were my sister Meg and her boyfriend Jake. Claire adores both of them and was so psyched when they got here, she didn't even care about opening presents. After cupcakes with icing so bright it looked plastic, we played outside with all Claire's new toys.
Claire baby, I know you can't read but I want you to know how crazy I am about you. You bring peace and laughter to me, like no one else does. When I hold your little body close, everything is right in the world.

Swimming lessons rule at Port "A". After much convincing and proding and praying we finally did swimming lessons. Gwen prayed for a nice teacher that wouldn't make her stick her head under and I prayed she would be brave and stick her head under. We got both. Our teacher is layed back and they have a lot of fun. Gwen has attempted things she wouldn't otherwise simply because "the teacher said we had to follow directions." Gotta love that Mama's girl! We won't have to worry about peer pressure later on. Claire is a little fish and spends the majority of her lessons underwater, swimming to her own beat........not the teachers!
We've been going to the lessons with our neighbors and great friends Jen, Kaden and baby Jolie. Jolie and Race kick it in the shade while the big kids get their swim on.

Happy Daddy's Day......................

Sending love to Kirby for making our family ROCK.
And props to my Dad for praying for a) me to always know Jesus is my best friend and b) for the husband I would have one day.

When I think of Fathers I think of Protection. What would life be like without knowing your Daddy has your back? I'm glad I don't have to know.

So I stumbled upon this article about playing with your kids in this magazine. The author said she made a toy parade with all her kids' toys and that her kids totally got into it and it made for a great memory. Well, it worked for me to. The girls went from bored and getting into my desk drawers to completely immersed in PARADE. We made the parade, hand made tickets to the parade, sold food at the parade and had music. Gwen was in charge of the entire parade, Claire was the care taker of th animals/ ticket maker and food passer outer. She spent alot of time putting her lions in time out for scratching each other too much. We called her "Security." Gwen thought that was hilarious. I was the custodian at the parade and was able to help with food. Race was a " parade watcher " but he was not allowed too close as he kept knocking the characters out of line.
Good stuff....

Slime and the Pool.

Gwen requested two things last Saturday and I said "yes" to both. She wanted to go to the Pool in Port "A" and to make SLIME that afternoon. I love it when I can say "yes" because I feel as though ( and am told ) that I am always having to say "We'll see", or " That sounds like a great idea.......but not today." Gwen even told me she had a dream that a monster was chasing her around the house and while she screamed " Mom come here now!" I said, " Hold on just a minute" over and over and over. HOw many times a day do we say these phrases that we think are buying us time. Sometimes we have to say them, but I'm realizing most of the time looking at a picture , finding a baby, or listening to a question is really more entertaining than whatever "chore" I'm doing.
I'm in a major relaxation mode right now. Which has a total different look than it did say in college. But what it has bought me is a whole lot of more fun with my kids. Tonight I sat in Gwen's club house (AKA some chairs covered in blankets)
looking at books with her until my bones ached from laying flat on a hard floor. Usually I would have told her we would do that in the morning because it was past her bed time or I would have said , "Hold on , let me finish the dinner dishes and find my water bottle and then I'll be there." I just jumped right in and her smile was pricless.

I had a request for Race's "strawberry head" in the Hair blog. So here is a good one. And for those asking, my camara is a Lumix Panasonic. It has 10x zoom which I love and a bunch of scene and color options. I really love it. We had our other one for like 6 years and it finally busted when Kirb dropped it in excitment over killing a gopher he had been hunting for over a year. (This animal had destroyed tons of beautiful garden work)
Back to Race, COME ON HE'S SO CUTE!! He is always up for a smile or a laugh. He sleeps easily, eats good and is completely lovable.

Hair............

playing with my new camara

Boating with the Wagners....................

Yesterday we got invited spur of the moment to do some boating with our good friends Daniel and Alisa. I was soo excited we managed to get a sitter fast and it was soo fun to be out free of munchkins for a while. I jumped in that water as soon as the boat stopped and felt such a freedom in treading water for as long as I wanted. My friend Alisa is a total ball. She got me out of my scardey pants and made me do the tubing which was really fun. I told Daniel to drive the boat as if Claire was the one on the tube, not me. I actually got bored and made him speed up, which is the hand motion you can see in the pic. Alisa however is like a warrior princess out there. Daniel sped like lighting with her on the back, determined to never fall off. She took all the air and tosses like a champ and then ask for more! I love the pic with her hair flying everywhere and the determined look on her face.
My Kirbster also hung on tight and I delighted in watching him hang on despite Daniel's attempts to get throw him with his quick turns.
We decided "day dates" are really fun and we need to do more of them.
Thanks Wagners for letting us get in on your fun and CONGRATS on 8 eight years of marriage. You guys deffinintly model what it means to keep the love alive!

Stompin around the creek

We had a mini-vacation to Austin last weekend and throughly enjoyed ourselves. Spent time stoppin around and playing in Barton Creek. This creek is special to me because Kirby and I spent a lot of time as a dating couple hiking, tubing , and swimming in it. The girls were a little nervous at first as the flowing creek with all its critters is a little different than the ocean. We took Pop with us the second time and left Race with Grandma so Mama could really play. Upon getting there one of the first things I did was slip on a mini mud-slide and threw myself and Claire right in!
Kirb and I really enjoyed the thrill of being surrounded by shady trees, the smell of outdoors, the sound of the creek and pure luxury of having no agenda whatsoever.
We finished the creek off with a trip to Zilker park and cooled off with yummy snowcones.

Gettin some Crissy time...

Stopped in San Antonio on the way home from Austin last night to have dinner with Crissy and her family. Had awesome food ( stuffed mushrooms being my favorite) and lots of laughs. The pics of us in b-day hats are specifically for Mariah. Mariah we were celebrating your birthday next week and my birthday next month. Sorry you couldn't enjoy the cake, but it was really good.

The kids played great together. Claire was contect to watch Lion King while Keegan continually looked for something else to eat. Rylin and Gwen ate lots of cake and played with all Rylin's new b-day toys.

Enjoying the Comfy life

well, since we're here.. we'll enjoy it! I haven't done laundry or dishes in 2 days. But we have done this. Kirby hung up our Hammock, which he had bought years ago in Honduras. The hammocks in Cancun were awesome, so now we are enjoying our own. This particular evening , the kids seemed so happy to each being doing their own thing in the yard, I had to document it. We spend ALOT of time in this yard and even though it is small we love it. Kirby has made it soo pretty with all the flowers . Our favorite tree has just begun to bloom, and it smells sooo good. It's called a Plumeria. I always say if a sunset had a smell, it would smell like this flower. Sometimes when it's not too windy you can hear the ocean back here too. Even though we live a mile or so away.
If you look closely at the bigger pic of Gwen swinging you can get a glimpse of Skip, our tortouise, making his way across the yard.

Roller Coaster Ride

is what it seems our family has been on for about 6 weeks. Emotionally, at least. To make a 6 week story in a few sentences will be hard, but here goes. We were asked to move to Cancun, Mexico and plant a church similar to ours. We were psyched, to say the least. We spent last week there in fact, in Cancun scouting it out for a church plant and enjoying the gorgeous beaches with our family. (we took my parents along so they could watch kids while we did church work). After returning with both excited and overwhelming feelings of the task at hand we were told the church isn't in a good place to send us right now. No hard feelings of course, we are all new to this. Just ready to get off the roller coaster of different emotions I have felt regarding leaving my house, my friends, beginning a new and exciting chapter, coming to grips with the opportunity to really do our dream much earlier than we had ever imagined, elated feelings of being in another country and seeing my children interact with another culture so well, coming home and being sad to leave Corpus, getting my myself psyched up again by thinking of doing ministry with Kirby, and then coming to grips with the fact that this won't really happen right now. Not in the way we were planning for anyway. I think we all feel like " Now what........................?"

I know God is in control and still very much wants us to do His work. I am so grateful for Him in confusing times. Our family has grown much stronger through all this. Kirby and I have become a much stronger cord and we feel as though we passed a test of " Would you be willing to leave your comfy life for other things" with flying colors. Our " Yes" is still on the table God. What can we do for you?

I really am gonna catch up...........but not tonight. Here is our Good Bye Mariah Party pics.
We hung out at On the Border, laughed loud and alot, said nice stuff to M and made friends with our waitress names Reallie, really or name was Reallie!