Lake Life

Since moving to the lake we have purchased a pontoon boat. We love spending our free weekends, though they are rare, on the lake. Mainly we swim and hang out with our neighbors and friends, but we enjoy tubing too! I'm using Blogger on my phone so we will see how this works with posting pictures.

Last week Aunt Ashley bought a jet ski!! We are so excited about enjoying the lake while the weather is warm.

Family Fun Night

We have adopted a policy this summer of taking Saturday evenings off. Last year we let groups move in early on Saturday's, basically anytime they wanted. This season we are allowing groups to move in from 8:30 - 11:00 on Saturday's and then we are taking the rest of the day for family time! This Saturday was our first one and we had fun!
We headed out to the Opryland area to Grand Ole Golf. I have been going there since I was a kid and they had bumper boats. They have ditched the bumper boats in favor of go carts!! Tristan had a great time riding with Dad on the go carts, they won the race!!

Tristan was very serious at first, he wouldn't even wave at me, but the he started to relax and have fun!

Emeline rode with me. I'm not quite as much fun as Dad, but we still had fun. Emeline cried the whole first lap and then she looked at me and said "Mom, this is fun!" She relaxed and had a great time! Evelyn was tall enough to ride, but wasn't sure and she decided against it after watching Tristan.
After go carts we hit the mini-golf course: 18 holes of crazy! Our kids have never been golfing so there was a bit of a learning curve.

Tristan picked it up pretty quickly and managed to do pretty well through all 18 holes. He was really into it and wanted to play the other 18 hole course.

Emeline, however, did not catch on so quickly. She kept trying to scoop the ball in instead of hit it. It didn't work out so well.

She finally let Dad help her out a little bit, but then she was back to her old ways. Maybe next time she will get the hang of it.

Evelyn got a little help from Dad too, but in the end she was putting just like her big sister.

It's really an interesting way to golf. Just scoop the ball into the hole. Evelyn got two hole-in-ones with a little help from Dad!

Dad and I were a little more competitive, but we ended up with a tie.

Dad and the kids after our game!

My turn!

After golf we headed to Opry Mills to eat at Chuy's. There was almost an hour wait, but we had a late lunch so it worked out. But, we didn't sit down until after 7:00. We love Chuy's! Not only do they have good food, but they are so accommodating with Evelyn's food allergies. The first time we went there we gave the server Evelyn's allergy card and the kitchen manager came to our table to let us know what was safe for Evelyn to eat!

After dinner we headed home to bed!!

Family night was a GREAT success and we all had fun. We are thinking of going to see Brave later in June and then maybe doing a boy outing and a girls outing. I'm wanting to take the girls to get pedicures one day. I think they would love it, especially Emeline.

Emeline's First Recital

Last Saturday Emeline had her first dance recital. She was SUPER excited since she got to dance on the big stage at TPAC. Her rehearsal on Friday went really well and she was totally pumped about dancing on the big stage again.

Emeline was front and center on stage (this picture was from rehearsal). She did SO well! She knew every move and only had to look at the teacher once or twice. She smiled the entire time and you could tell she was loving it. I think she will stay with dance. I was bragging on her after the dress rehearsal, I was telling her how well she did and she said, "Mom, it's because I practice really hard in dance class every time."

Aunt Ashley gave Emeline some beautiful roses. Ash was able to get some great pictures of Emeline before the recital.

Nannie and Emeline

Emeline and Mom. Isn't she beautiful?? Boy, are we in trouble.

Nana and Emeline. We are so proud of Emeline and all of her hard work!

Evelyn's 3rd Birthday Party in Pictures

This is the short, picture version of Evelyn's birthday. If you follow me on Pinterest you know what my Evelyn's 3rd Birthday board looks like. That was my inspiration and this is what everything actually looked like. Enjoy! Hopefully a more detailed post is in the future! We were supposed to have the party outside, but shortly after everthing was set up it started to rain, so we had to move indoors at the last second.

 Tristan posing next to the table. Since her party was at 2:30pm we just did some snack type things.

 I haven't found a good close-up of the food. We had Butterfly sandwiches (chicken salad and PB&J cut in butterfly shapes), fruit cups, sausage and cheese balls, popcorn cups with m&m's and peanuts.

The cake was from Sweet n' Sassy and was chocolate. I made the cupcakes from scratch. They were strawberry with homemade strawberry icing (made by Mimi). They were supposed to have chocolate butterflys on them, but I ran out of time.

Flowers. We had lots of flowers set up around the house. I got a great deal on an arrangement and was able to divide them up into several smaller arrangements.

Our annual photo with the birthday girl.

The goody bags for all of the kiddos. We didn't get a picture of all of them before they were devoured.

More flowers.

We spent a LOT of time on these butterflies for the lanters, and we didn't even get to hang them to look like we wanted. I had to get some pics of them just because they took SO much time!

Did I mention there were flowers? 

Hope you enjoyed this snap shot. More pics to

Halloween

On Halloween we went to Lauren and Nate's house since they have such a great neighborhood for trick or treating. We had a great chili supper and even better deserts! There was a full house with my parents, Ashley, Nanny and Pawpaw, Nate's parents and grandfather and Adam, Tonya and Rachel. After we ate we got the kids dressed to go on their first ever trick or treating adventure!! Emeline "Don't worry Evelyn you can go next year."

Evelyn and Rachel got to play for the first time outside of Sunday school class. Evelyn is almost 3 weeks older than Rachel.

Nanny wanted to get a picture with the good witch and the pirate before they left to go trick or treating. When we started out Tristan would say "trick or treat" continuously until candy was put in his bucket, and after a while Emeline stopped saying trick or treat all together and just said "thank you" when people answered the door. We trick or treated Lauren's entire street which was about 10 houses and that took about an hour, our last stop was Lauren and Nate's house.

By the time they trick or treated at Lauren's they were old pros.

Emeline is enjoying the fruits of her labor, trick or treating is hard work.

The biggest thrill of the night was handing out candy to the trick or treator who came to Nate and Lauren's house, every time the doorbell would ring Tristan would go running to assist Aunt Ashley in handing out candy.

Evelyn didn't go trick or treating, it was too cold to get her out, but she had fun being the center of attention while we were gone. Here she is sitting with her Pawpaw.

A big thanks to Uncle Nate and Aunt Lalo for hosting such a fun party, we look forward to doing it all again next year!!

Spring Program and Ice Cream Cones

Last Tuesday night Tristan's preschool put on a spring program called "All You Need is Love." Tristan's class was part of the opening and had their own part too. It was so cute! Tristan did not sing, even though he sings the same songs at home all the time, but he didn't cry either, so all in all it was a successful show. Here are some pictures!



Can you find Tristan?

Tristan's class singing their song.

Not sure what he is doing here, maybe trying to rearrange his nose?

On Saturday night Lauren and Nate came over for dinner and they brought the essentials for making ice cream cones. Tristan and Emeline had never had ice cream in a cone before and Tristan had a bit of trouble with the idea as he insisted that he needed a spoon to eat his ice cream. He even fed Lauren the cone so he could get more ice cream. Emeline caught on and quickly devoured her cone and then went on to finish off Tristan's. It was so funny watching them discover that the cones were edible.

Tristan showing off his ice cream covered face and pants.

"What is that dripping on my foot?"

Emeline loved the ice cream cones!

Tristan is trying to get his cone back, he should know better than to leave food lying around with Emeline around.

Exciting Weekend

Wow!! This past weekend was filled with big moments and celebrations!! On Friday Aunt Lauren got married and we welcomed Uncle Nate to the family. The wedding went off without a hitch and was beautiful. We all had a blast dancing at the reception. We dance until about 11:00 when those of us left dancing threw in the towel and headed home. It was an awesome day and we are so happy for Aunt Lauren and Uncle Nate.


In the limo on the way to the reception.

Aunt Ashley and Emeline

Mom and Pa dancing at the reception.

Mom and Pa cutting a rug!

Aunt Lauren, Rachel and Dad.

Dad and Aunt Lauren




On Saturday Aunt Ashley graduated from Lipscomb University, cum laude, with a degree in business administration. After her graduation we all went to Aunt Ashley's house to celebrate with her. We had a great time hanging out with family we don't get to see much. Tristan had a great time playing with some of his third cousins. He and the boys had a great time exploring the yard and just being boys. After the party Dad treated Mimi and myself to an early Mother's Day dinner at Carabbas, it was awesome and a great way to end a fun filled day.

Pa, Aunt Ashley and Nana at graduation.

Mimi and Evelyn. Evelyn's dress was once worn by Mimi.

Pa and Emeline

On Sunday everyone came to our house after church for a casual and laid back Mother's Day lunch. The weather was perfect and we all had a great time even though Dad had to work and Mimi and Poppy left early that morning. There were almost 18 people for lunch.

Emeline, Mom and Tristan

The weekend was great and we all had tons of fun, but it was also tiring and we were all glad to see Monday. We are so blessed to have such a great family to celebrate these great moments with. Congratulations to Aunt Lauren and Uncle Nate, we pray that God will bless your marriage. Congratulations to Aunt Ashley, we know that God will do great things with you. Happy Mother's Day to Mimi and Nana, we love you both so much and are so thankful to have such loving and strong women in our lives. Thank you for all you do and the wonderful example you set not only for me, but for your grandchildren. We are truly blessed!