Lets Rodeo San Antonio!

Bobby and I were so excited last night to be able to attend the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo! February is always one of my favorite months of the year. You have first and foremost my BIRTHDAY (the 10th for all of you who plan on sending gifts. haha!), my wedding anniversary (also on my birthday... how funny is that), Valentine's Day, and THE RODEO!

Being that my birthday is just a few short days away we had an early date night to celebrate. Yesterday morning I just couldn't help myself and I had to make some of this...

Of course with my crock pot kick this week I just had to make some homemade Chili!

We munched on this throughout the day and I froze the rest to use later. I can use it for frito pie, enchiladas, or just by itself! Later that afternoon we were lucky enough to reserve our favorite babysitter who our kids adore and we headed out to meet my husband's brother Cody and his wife Melanie and my sister-in-law Stacy and her boyfriend Jason. We ate some super yummy Outback where I totally forgot to take a picture!

We arrived at the rodeo just a tensy bit late but still got to see an amazing show! What these guys and girls can do with their bodies is just amazing to me!





Bobby and I at our seats!





This is the view from our seats. We sat overlooking the chutes! This was so exciting to watch them get ready! This event here is the calf roping.



These 2 pictures were from the Muttin' Bustin'. This is for the little kids where they get a chance to ride sheep. The winner gets a huge belt buckle and applause from one of the biggest audiences that  you'll ever see! I have to say proudly that my nephew Colton won this event a couple of years ago and we were all soo proud!!

Saddle bronc riding

Barrel racing for the ladies

and Bull rinding for the crazy guys!

After watching the rodeo the real treat began. We were able to get to see...



They were soo good! I have heard maybe only 3 of their songs on the radio but after last night I will definitely be uploading some more of them to my ipod. I tried so hard to get good pictures of them last night, but in the dark and with them on a stage that rotated my pictures didn't come out all that great.

We were so blessed to enjoy such a fun evening together!



SNOW!

I know that I've been sounding like a broken record lately but I'm just so dang excited about SNOW here in South Texas. This almost never happens. Graham, our oldest, who is almost 9 has only seen snow maybe 3 times in his whole life. You will never be able to imagine his joy to wake up this morning to a snow day from school AND no spelling test! Grady, our youngest, and almost 3, has never seen snow in his whole life. He was so excited! I'm not sure what he was thinking. He kept trying to play with it as if it were sand. He quickly realized that he had better leave his gloves on if he wanted to stay out there for long.



Grady's first time to touch snow! He called it "hot" a few times. So funny!





It was soo hard to even find a place to write the boys names. They had tromped around so much everywhere that I was literally having to guard spots on the ground to get their names written :).





The lovely sandbox. This was too irresistible for the boys to not play in. The snow that we got here was not light and fluffy, rather more hard and pebble-like.  It made for playing in the sand soo much more fun!




View of the back of our house.




This was the absolute stillest picture I got of silly Grady.





Graham loved jumping on the trampoline. The snow would jump with him!




The front of our house.




A view of our street.




The awesome fire my hubby built for us to keep warm once we came inside from a wonderful winter morning!

 Not to be cheesy and all but I loved this day! The boys were home with no school, my hubby was home from work until almost lunchtime and we really had this great, unexpected quality time together as a family. We seem so busy lately that it was almost a relief to have this simple fun day thrust upon us. We could not have rushed around even if we wanted to! I feel as though God puts certain days in front of us for a reason. Ours was to slow down and make time for simple quiet times for us to enjoy each other!

Show Us Your Life ~ What Do You Feed Your Kids?????

This week I'm joining up with Kelly from Kelly's Korner to do Show us your life - What do you feed your kids????

This is such a hard topic for me. I feel like I try so hard to make them plates with as many different food groups as I can but usually only half gets eaten. I try to do a protein, a dairy, a grain, and a fruit. Sadly I have given up on any vegetables. Graham will sometimes eat a couple bites of green beans but that's it. Grady won't eat any. Since I decided long ago to pick and choose my battles this is one that I give up on because the fights at the dinner table are upsetting to everyone when its night after night. I usually supplement with those sneaky fruit and vegetable kid drinks.
I will say that I have gotten Grady to eat hummus and guacamole on several occasions and lately he has even eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (gasp!). I don't feel that my kids are all that picky, they just eat like kids. If it looks funny or smells funny then its a no go.

Usually I try and sneak extras in where they don't notice. Lasagna is an easy one. A little extra sauce and a little extra stewed tomatoes and I count that as a food success around this house!

Most typically my boys are eating chicken nuggets, steak fingers, popcorn shrimp, mac-n-cheese, chips, granola bars, and raisins (I totally could keep going on with this list but you get the general idea of things!). This Christmas I wanted to ask for the Jessica Seinfeld cook book (but forgot) :


or this other one that I've heard is pretty identical :



I like the idea of being able to fulfill my kids nutritional needs without having to depend on juice boxes or chewy vitamins. Guess who is off to the book store this weekend!




Gotta keep my babies healthy and happy!



Chilly Weather Cooking!

It has FINALLY started to get cold in Texas (well South Texas that is)! We are kinda starting to match the rest of the nation. Everyone up north must think that we are all crazy down here but we just get soo excited when it starts to get cold and much more importantly SNOWS!

The colder it gets here the more I am drawn to cooking in my beloved crock pot! I like it because I can start to make dinner for us in the morning and then I'm pretty much stress-free and ready to serve by the time Bobby gets home from work. I also adore the smell that fills my house while the food cooks! Yesterday my heart swelled with pride when Graham got off the school bus and entered the house and the first thing that he said to me was "Something smells good Mom". I feel so grateful that while its soo cold and blustery outside, we are inside, warm, and with good food to fill our bellies!

I had a whole chicken in my deep freeze just begging to be cooked. So guess what we ate last night?? :)

Oh my gosh, not to "toot my own horn" but it was soo good! So good in fact that I'm pretty sure I want to cook out of my crock pot for the next week! Don't be surprised if that's the only post that you see from me for a while. Because to me COLD = FOOD!

Hope everyone is staying warm and safe!

Breakfast for Dinner

So what is a girl supposed to do with a car full of hungry kids (and a starving Momma) on such a cold and yucky day? Thankfully my 2 year old Grady quickly answered that question for me. While driving home this afternoon from a quick run to Burlington Coat Factory (which incidentally had NO COATS for boys for sale - come on people the dang name of the store has the word COAT in it and you don't have any???) Grady saw a sign for an IHOP and a large picture of pancakes. Very soon the word PANCAKES was being demanded from all the short people in the back seat.

One hour and box of pancake mix later....



Ta Da!

The boys were soo excited. Especially my little pancake thief... Grady! He must have come and snatched at least 3 pancakes from the plate before I had even made their little plates up!



The pancake thief caught in the act!

 By the time I had the boys all ready to go I was famished. You should have seen the size of my plate! Oh wait! Here it is! hahaha


I figured while we were eating pancakes for dinner I might as well include scrambled eggs (I have to eat mine with cheese and Chalula Hot Sauce), bacon, and hash browns. Take a wild guess who will NOT be stepping on the scale in the morning!



We just had to have these Valentine's Day cookies for desert. But hey, we're good! It's February already!


I just love it when we get to have a change of pace and mix things up at dinner!



What I'm Loving Wednesday!

This Wednesday I'm joining up with Jaime again to do What I'm Loving Wednesday! This week I'm doing what I wished I was loving (also know as if I ever won the lotto).

The first thing that I am love love loving is this beauty made by Dooney and Burke!


Sorry the picture came out a little blurry, not sure what is up with that! But oh well, Its the Portofino Pocket Sac in Aqua. Wouldn't this be soo much fun in Spring and Summer?! In words of my favorite anorexic Rachel Zoe... I.die.

The next thing I would wish for (you know, still if I won the lottery) is this Dell Laptop!



This is the Dell XPS 17, retailing for you don't even want to know how much. According to Dell and not me(cause I don't know anything about computers other than the fact that I want a laptop)...

"This beautifully-engineered laptop provides the ultimate in smart performance with Core i7, enhanced graphics and blu-ray

Movies, games, music and Web chat come to life with leading-edge graphics, 3D capabilities, high-definition (HD) video chat and sound that can fill a room."

The next awesome thing completely out of reach is the Canon of my dreams!


EOS 7D 18.0-Megapixel Digital SLR Camera . Funnily enough there were cameras listed for like 9 times the amount that this one cost, but even with lotto winnings, that would not buy the intelligence {side note, when I spell checked this post, I spelled intelligence wrong ;)} needed to use anything better than this.

And so now a super cute necklace and ring set that I saw while cruising the Stella and Dot website. These are things though that I can actually afford and may  ask my hubby for Valentines Day! (so babe, if you are reading today's post check out the below items please!).




This is the Birds of Paradise Necklace. LOVE IT!



...and the matching ring that goes with it! I am so into the coral colors now!

Hope everyone is having a Happy Hump Day!

A Sunday with Family!

This post is just slightly belated... I hate that. I wish I could blog every single day with what happened on that exact day... Some days I struggle with what to blog about and end up just posting cute pictures to show something for the day, and other days or weekends, there is just soo much fun stuff going on that I can't seem to fit it all in!

This past Sunday my hubby and I loaded our kids in the car and drove to Bobby's aunt and uncle's house. It is just so beautiful out there! The weather could not have been more perfect. There was tons of animals for the kids to either look at or pet and lots of room to just RUN! I swear my kids don't even need a swing-set or anything to play on, just give them wide open places to chase and stretch their little legs! Oh and all the food was really good too! *** WARNING - PICTURE OVERLOAD!***



Can you guess how much food actually got eaten at the kids table? If you guess "not much" they you are correct!




My sweet sister-in-laws Stacy and Melanie.



Grady had the best time playing in the room where they keep toys for the little kids.



Champ the Collie. Isn't he just the most beautiful dog ever?




The littlest of all the boy cousins, Carter!





Bobby's Aunt and Uncle were so sweet and they had Pinatas for the kids to break open.





Graham and I just love to take pictures of ourselves.



So do Colton and Graham...So silly!



Grady and Carter being pulled in the little red wagon. I bet you they would have let someone pull them around all day long given the chance!





We were trying to persuade the boys to feel the cattle. They were more than hesitant.




This picture just cracked me up so I had to post it!

Thanks again Uncle Weldon and Aunt Sally for letting have such a wonderful day at ya'lls house!