Discovery green

Ah, early mornings at discovery green, being completely alone on the water field. It's the small things that make me content. Surprisingly there were a ton of photographers out to see the water catch in the sun rise sans 50 kids running around like every parent might have given them a large coffee before they showed up. After Discovery green we stopped off at the Farmers market. Ate an awesome dish of fried eggs on top of mushroom hash. Picked up some amazing goat cheese, fresh fresh fresh local honey from magnolia, french bread, vegetarian pot pie, and fantastic dark chocolate with cherries and pistachio in it. The rest of the weekend munched on our finds, toasted french bread with goat cheese dipped in honey, yum!

 

Yuliya pulling Cash's swim trunks up for him

 

lost the swim trunks

Your arms fall asleep when.....

You spend 2 hours hanging things from the ceiling. This weekend we finally hung the planets made from yarn balls from Cash's birthday(June) from the kids ceiling, and part of the 1000 origami cranes I made for Yuliya's birthday(March) from the ceiling in other parts of the house. Here are a few pictures, they are so much more beautiful in person. The cranes can detect the smallest movements in what you thought was still air and use it to dance and cast pretty shadows on the walls.

Planets from the kids ceiling in order, the sun is in front of the closet, neptune is dark blue.

These are the cranes in a corner in my room, I'm completely impressed with how great they look underlit :)

Good Luck!!

 

Jessi is trying out for American Idol Saturday! A great voice, more than just our family should get to appreciate it :) Good luck Jess! View some samples of her singing attached :) 

Nice belt

This weekend my sister Tara moved into a new house. It's pretty neat how they were able to find a house so similar to the one they live in and yet different enough, I love it. The yard is massive! Both the front and back yards are big enough for a good game of football. She lives about 10 min closer to us now, which should make for easier visits with cousins. I only wish I had taken pictures of at least the yard....but next time I go I will, promise :) She would probably prefer I post pictures of an unpacked house anyway.  While Tara and Andre were busy moving on Saturday, my sister Amy babysat their oldest daughter Madison, who is almost a preteen.... Okay its true she's only 9, but you can already hear a little preteen coming out. She's dead set on not sharing a room with her 3 year old sister anymore because it interupts her reading before bed, as well as many other complaints that toddlers and 4th graders do not mix.  Good luck Madi! Sharing a room with your brother might come with a few cons too. Before taking Madison back to the new house we went to lunch.....and Alyssa told me a secret......

She's a Super Hero Sidekick! Who knew? They really do grow up so fast.

As promised

Here are videos from swim class number 4 a couple of weeks ago. Yuliya is on the far left in her class, orange goggles. I was standing in a seperate room with all of the waiting babies, please excuse the background noise

Remember when...

I cut Cash's hair last month?  Well I already need to cut it again! But I ran across this video I took of him that day in his sister's mismatched high heels, and a diaper, trying to ride his bike handle bars backwards. Such a goofy kid.

It's tricky...

Yuliya's choice in outfit made me laugh this morning. Way to go little Miss.

and now

"It's Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time
It's Tricky...it's Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)

It's Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time

It's Tricky...Tr-tr-tr-tricky (Tricky) Trrrrrrrrrrricky "

is stuck in my head.

It's tricky replaced the song I woke up with playing in my head which was?

See below :)



Over the weekend we went to the zoo as soon as it opened, it was a great experience. If you get there first thing in the morning you get to see the animals as they are very active.  We were able to see a lot of them eat, play and even watch the elephants get a bath! The new elephant exhibit is really neat, you get to stand in pretty close proximity to the elephants (Bars between). We went to see the piranhas fed, but ended up at the wrong aquarium in the wrong building at the right time, next time!   You can feed the giraffes now also, see here from our last visit.  We did get to see some sort of large lizard eat a rat. See the attached videos below of the jelly fish and active monkey.

 Put 'em to work

 I thought these jelly fish were pretty neat, no one else seemed that impressed

My favorite monkey. Jack had to know, was it my favorite monkey before we got to the zoo, or did I decide after I saw it. I definitely decided after we got there  :)

Happy Tuesday

What a nice relaxing Tuesday, instead of our normal rush out the door at 6 in the morning I was able to stay in bed until the kids came and woke ME up. After a nice slow pace of getting dressed we went out to breakfast for chocolate chip pancakes, hold the syrup. We went and dawdled in Bear Creek park for a while, looking and talking to all of the animals in the mini zoo. Emu's make some pretty bizarre noises! The parrot told us hello and laughed at us, the sheep were baaa'ing and the goats were scratching their backs on the fence. My favorite was the owl habitat with about 6 of them in there looking knowingly at us. It was fun, but miserably sticky out despite the 80 degree weather. So naturally we showed up at the kids' dentist appts a little rugged...

 

This is the way Cash was sitting in the rocker at the dentist's office(legs on the handle bars), watching kids play on a wii, not the screen, just the kids. Ha! Lack of tv and video game systems makes my kids much more interested in what in the world these kids are doing waving their arms in front of a television.

Beauty and the Beast was playing while we were in the waiting room, 20 years later, I still know most of the words. Thanks for reminding me how much I loved that story Dr. Lindhorst, time to start reading that to Yuliya and Cash. :)

Now off to work! Hooray for half days!

P.S. No dental issues A+ for both kids.

Beach with friends

We went to Galveston with friends, we had a blast racing the waves, picking seashells, building sand castles and chasing birds. Jack spent most of the day making sand castles and directing sam to bring him water for the pond in front of the castle(which later turned into a pretty neat waterway, compliments of his index finger being traced through the sand) Sam and Yuliya spent a lot of the day racing the waves. And Cash, as usual, was content to do his own thing, sometimes he would join in racing waves, or pick seashells, sometimes just chill out with his momma. After all of the kids noticed Jack's intense castle building they all became equally as serious about it. Sam bringing his brother bucket after bucket of water from the gulf. Yuliya working on her own sandcastle and also bringing bucket after bucket of water for her own pond. And Cash, well Cash noticed full buckets being dumped on the sand, so.....thats what he did....he made many trips to the water, getting full buckets of water, would lug it alllll the way to our chairs, and then dump it out on some random patch of sand.

This is our friend Sam, he runs fast

This is him when he isnt running

Cash enjoying the beach

Jack almost looks like he's surfing here

Racing waves

Cash watched that jogger jog all the way across the strand.....boys.

This may or may not be how I carry groceries in the house

First sand castle and pond

Dome community!

Here's a video of them in action, when they are on the shore, Cash is the baby that runs to the water on the left and Jack and Yuliya are on the right. Notice Cash dumping water on the ground with no purpose :)

Clear skies.....again

They are issuing a mandatory water conservation it makes me feel like a little kid, "we NEVER have ice cream!" arms crossed.... I took these pictures at nelsons water garden the last time we had a good rain.....on July 15th, before that? About a month b/t each good DAY of rain. Three or four real rainy days all summer?  These pictures make me thirsty, I won't show them to my grass, the plants are so green! I can't wait for it to cool off, get out of this 110 daily heat index, and have a few great thunderstorms.

It's funny when your kids get so used to dry weather that when it does rain they ask, "why is it raining?"

Congrats

To my brother-in-law, Andre on his first publication see here at corp!

Now I know that was a pretty serious publication, don't let him fool you though....

he has a pretty goofy side too :) ( I love Jackson's face here)

I just think this is a cute picture of all the Lehr's and it's pretty hard to get three kids to look in the same direction all at once. Take a moment and appreciate that.

soldier

We love you for all that you are:)  Friend, protector, vacuum, horse, pillow, tag partner, door bell.  Give us more freckles!!

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to "Mawmaw" (Chris' mom)

A great grandmother with all of her grandchildren (cash is so chunky here!)

She made these three people, and then they made those five people!

Happy Birthday Judy, who is always there for us, kids, friends, and grandkids. Some how she is always there when we need her and cooks breakfast while she's at it!

Judy has the best smile, which fortunately all of her children got from her as well.
Judy is a great cook!
She loves to read, if there is a book around she's going to pick it up and start reading.
She's a great listener of 30yr old rants and 4 year old tattles.
We are grateful for mawmaw, grandma, mom, mother, mother-in-law and friend.
I hope you had a great birthday!

First visit to the beach

 wait for me!!

 

you build'em I smash 'em, Cash's demolition business

 

I love yuliyas face here

Today we took the kids to the beach for the first time. Both had a blast. I am not a fan of big bodies of water and made the mistake of saying, "this is scary" So both of the kids tensed up in the deep water after that. We had a blast finding seashells, building and destroying castles,  and running along the shore. Chris is the only one that walked away with a burn, good news for the kids, bad news for Chris. I think we will be knocking sand out of our shoes for a week to come. :)