Rodeos, Concerts, and Grandparents

 This time of year, everyone here gets excited for the big Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.  We were no exception!   We decided to splurge and get tickets to go to it this year.  (Last year we just went to the carnival part.) As an added bonus, there is a concert every night after the rodeo, with a different singer each night, (most of them country singers). Yay!  

Well after we got tickets, Grandpa and Grandma Pocock called us up and said they want to make a quick little weekend trip and go to the rodeo and livestock show too!  Wahoo!  So they got tickets to come with us and we went two days in a row!  It was super fun and I was so excited to watch a real rodeo for the first time.  Friday night we got a babysitter and went out with just John and Melissa.  While we love taking the munchkins with us places, it was so relaxing and enjoyable to not have them with us for once.

After the rodeo, we got all nestled in our seats because the singer that night was....

Timmy boy McGraw! 

 I love him.  

I have been dying to see a Tim and Faith concert, but I will gladly take seeing just him in concert any day.  It was awesome!  And I don't have any good pics.  Boo!  :(

Saturday we took the kids with us and went there all day long!  It was fun and the kids loved seeing everything!  I think Grandpa loved teaching them about all the different kinds of cows and animals, and they sure ate up all the attention they were getting.  

They got to do a little farming.

We all loved the mutton busting.  We thought we were gonna finally convince Jete to do it this year, but nope.  He's still a little too scared.

(Look closely and that's a kid flipping off the back of the sheep.)

"Piiink!"

Jerzi and her pink obsession.

After walkin around and seeing everything, we headed to our seats for the rodeo.  The kids thoroughly enjoyed it. Plus, the grandparents bought each of them a big ol thing of ice cream.  What's not to love, right?  But seriously, they LOVED the rodeo.  Jete was keeping us all informed of which cowboy was in the lead and who was 2nd, 3rd, etc. in every event.  That boy loves any kind of competition I tell ya!   Makes us so proud! :) 

 Jerzi also loved it and was obsessed with all the horses.  She is already telling us that she wants one for her birthday.  Yikes!  Had better start makin some money if those are the kinds of presents she's after.

Jete and Jerz definitely took advantage of having Grandma and Grandpa there.  They were sure to get in all the lap time they could.  There was so much fun and excitement that Jerzi didn't have time to think about being tired, but as soon as the lights went down for the concert, she crashed too. 

The concert Saturday night was The Band Perry.  Two concerts in two days.  

Yep, pretty spoiled! 

The kids did so good; walked all over the place, at John's speed no less, didn't take naps, didn't ride any of the rides, and sat through a whole rodeo and concert, and were happy all throughout.  It made me so happy, along with this picture.  It's not very often that our kids get to see any family, so I love seeing my little munchkins bonding with their grandparents.

Such a good weekend!

April Fool's Day

April Fool's is a fun little holiday, that I think most people never really celebrate.  We didn't really ever do anything for it all growing up.  But I have learned its kinda fun to play tricks on people.  I didn't really have the energy to plan out a bunch of pranks on my fam this year, even though I pinned a bunch on pinterest that I totally plan on doing another year.  Me and one of my friends did decide to get together and plan out a little April Fool's Dinner though, inspired by yet another pinterest find.  We invited our families to come to "Fool's Cafe".  Their booth was one of the most sought after spots in the whole cafe...right next to the front door.  We gave them a menu that included all the items they could order.  Then they got to order 3 different courses.  The items on the menu were:

Bad Breath

Niblets

Skinny Worms

Split in the Road

Calf Testicles

Puppy Chow

Fruity Cow

Pastel Pasties

Houston's Necessity

Pee

Sugar Carrier

Blueberry Juice

Dog Biscuits

Green Eggs and Ham

Doctor's Tool

Their job was to try and decipher what the real food was by the name given, order the right things, and try and get a full meal.  Me and Karie thought we were pretty creative with the names of the foods and utensils, and were excited to have our family come to our little cafe.  Turns out her fam had a little more fun with it than mine.  Jeter and Jerzi were not too happy when they ordered blueberry juice cuz it was the only thing that sounded good, and then they got a glass of milk ...which they do NOT like.  Had may or may not have been worse than the kids when he didn't get anything for a real meal. I think he ordered Niblets-corn, split in the road-fork, fruity cow-spaghetti sauce, and puppy chow-dip for crackers.  

One thing I learned about the restaurant business, if you want make a creative, fun, tricky meal, make sure:  

A. Your customers aren't starving

B. It's on the early side of a meal time instead of late

C. They understand that everything isn't what it seems before they order

If you do that, your cafe might stay in business a little longer than ours.

St. Patrick's Day

I think St. Patrick's Day is one of my kid's favorite holidays.  Or at least they've talked about it a lot since last year, and couldn't wait for it this year.  Last year we did all sorts of stuff for it. You can read about it here. The kids loved it.  I loved it.  I loved planning and scheming, and their excitement about all of it.  Well, I guess the leprechaun wasn't thinking about the years to come, cuz this year the kids were fully expecting him to come again. 

 St. Patricks Day was on Sunday this year and I had to give a talk in sacrament meeting, teach a lesson in church that day, and make treats for the fireside that night.  The leprechaun must've known how busy and freaked stressed out I was, because he was pretty chill this year. We didn't even make a trap for him, which the kids were sad about.  But they're the ones that chose to watch Supercross over making a trap.  They said, "How bout you just make one while we watch." Ha, nice try!   

I still had to make our "St. Patrick's Day Food". 

I know these kind of look like witches hats, but they were called Andes mint thumbprint cookies, a pinterest find. I thought they looked festive, and would be super yummy.  They were alright.  Not anything to die over.

The leprechaun still came, but he didn't turn our house upside down this year.  Thank goodness!  It looked like he came in just for a potty break and a bowl of our Lucky Charms cereal.  The kids knew it was their duty to scrub the footprints off without me even telling them to this year.  Now I'm off the hook doing St. Patrick's day things until next year, and hopefully I can say the same about speaking in sacrament meeting.  (Ooh I hate speaking in front of people so bad!)

He Has A Plan

I've been holding off writing about this for awhile, but right after Christmas, we found out I was pregnant!  We were so happy and excited, cuz we had been trying for quite awhile.  We didn't tell anybody because we feel like we need to wait until after the 1st trimester or "scary part" is over.  (I've already had 2 miscarriages before, so that's why it's the scary part.)

Well, a couple weeks went by and I hadn't felt sick or nauseated at all, which is not normal for me.   I wasn't tired at all either, which also isn't normal.  So I had a hunch that something wasn't quite right.  So I took another pregnancy test and it still said that I was pregnant, but I just couldn't let myself get fully excited about it.  Hadley convinced me that I was just lucky this time and this was going to be the best pregnancy ever.  So for about a week I believed that, and carried on with everyday life.  We started thinking about baby names, and how we were gonna arrange the bedrooms for the kids, etc.  Then I started spotting. (If the word spotting grosses you out, then you should probs stop reading.)

Spotting isn't that abnormal for me during pregnancy.  I spotted all throughout my entire pregnancy with Jeter.  But I decided to finally go into the doctor and just make sure everything was ok.  I went. The doc said things looked normal so I went back home feeling a little relieved.  Two more weeks go by and I started bleeding a little bit.  I went back to the doctor, and they confirmed my fear.  I indeed had another miscarriage, at 9 weeks.  So now I've had more miscarriages than I have kids.  Ugh.

I have debated whether I wanted to write about this, or even tell anybody about it, or just tuck it away in my own little mind so I don't have to talk to anyone about it.  I finally decided to, because I don't keep a journal, but I do try and post things that are going on in our life so that I can look back on our experiences. I also never wrote anything about my previous miscarriages, and wished that I would have. I don't want to forget my feelings and thoughts on this particular matter and what we went through at this time in our lives.

 So aside from dealing with all the aftermath of having a miscarriage (bleeding, lots and lots of bleeding), talk of a D & C, infections, cysts, and wearing what I call "diapers" for way too long,  I felt sadness, fear, and disappointment.... at first.   I still kinda wonder if something is wrong with my body to make this keep happening.  But as I prayed and heard Hadley's prayers go up in my behalf, I felt so much better.  Hadley's been so supportive and good to me during all this. It's kinda frustrating to not be able to plan out our lives how we want, but I am so grateful to know that Heavenly Father has a plan for us! I know that I would way rather have Heavenly Father's plan than my own, and when or if he wants us to have another child, it will happen.  (Which will probably be when He knows that I can handle Jerzi's freakish fits and a new baby.)  These miscarriages are a constant reminder to me that He is in charge of our lives.  I am so grateful  for the 2 kids that we do have.  My family means everything to me in the world, and I feel so lucky to have them now, more than ever.

Blog Makeover

My blog is basically just for me, because I'm horrible at keeping a journal. I am not the creative/crafty type, so I've always just kinda ignored the look of my blog. But a little bit ago, my amazingly crafty, creative and beautiful sister in law gave my blog a little face lift and I love how it turned out. She can do yours too! Just drop her a message over at MissAudreySue. She posts about lots of other fun things on that blog too, like: hair/beauty, nails, fitness, sewing, and crafts. Go check it out!

Valentines 2013

Jeter and Jerzi got invited to do a valentines exchange with a big group of their friends.  So we made little mailboxes to hold their valentines, and headed off to the party.  It was really cute to watch all the little kids get so excited about giving each other these fun little valentines, and to see Jete and Jerz's eyes light up when they saw how full their mailboxes were.

(I wasn't quite as excited to see Jeter's knees ruined in his pants from playing outside with all the kids.  Oh well, it's just clothes right?)

For the rest of they day, we kinda just chilled and ate a lot of candy while Had was at work.  

For me, each holiday is all about the food!

I love having a reason to do fun things with our food, and it always makes all of us a lot more excited to eat it for some reason.  

Our little valentine dinner.

After dinner, we played and then put the kids to bed early so me and Had got to spend a little time to ourselves.  Had spoiled me with gifts this year.  As I realized how much money he was spending, I felt a little sick inside, but that didn't stop me from loving all of it.  :)  I'm so excited for it all!  It was a great day and I love my family so much.

Car Show

 I guess one of the perks of living in a big city....cool things happen here sometimes.The Houston Auto Show was here and because we're such "valued" customers of GMC, they sent us free tickets to it in the mail.    Neither me or Had are really that into cars, but it was something different that we don't get to normally do, and kinda cool to go see all these crazy cars.  

It wasn't quite as fun for us as it could have been, cuz without even thinking, we brought our kids along.  Just imagine about 50 billion people in a building....and you can actually get in almost all the cars.  Then picture your husband wandering to whatever car he wants to check out, and kids splitting in different directions to get in their "favorite" car.  Yeah, I was a little nervous the whole time and worried they were gonna get lost, taken, or scratch a car that we could never pay for.  They had fun though, and none of those things happened, (except for me worrying), so I guess it was a pretty good little outing.

If anyone couldn't guess, this was Jerzi's favorite thing there.  She loved that it was pink, and begged us to buy it for her. 

Jete loved this jeep.  He said he wants one when he gets bigger, so he can ride without a top or doors, and go wherever he wants.  

Here's some of the crazy cars we saw.