River Rats!

...a trip to Arkansas for Memorial Day. We have not been to Arkansas in years so the kids have never been there. What a shame! My mom's family is there. Most of my childhood memories somehow involve Arkansas so you can imagine how excited I was to introduce my kids to Arkansas and our family. One of the most exciting things to do with the kids was take them to the Buffalo River. We have taken Sophie and Stanley, but not Kate and Jude. Let me just say, it was so cool. Our first night there my Uncle Bud suggested we go down to the river before we headed back to the cabin. On a side note, Uncle Bud could be Kate's new favorite person EVER!!!! We didn't have swimsuits so we just let the kids go natural, after all, Arkansas is the Natural State. We ended up going to the river every day of our trip. You can see we all love it!

Ballet in the Buffalo

One!

...Jude's first birthday! I can't believe my baby boy is one, but alas, he is. It seems like yesterday he looked like this:

Where did the year go? Our little family has had a lot of changes in the last year, the biggest being life with our bouncing baby boy. I should really call him our speedy little boy. He is the fastest crawler I've ever seen. When he knows he's being cantankerous he really, really crawls fast, and with a big grin on his face. I just can't imagine not having our little Jude! He is so wonderful, just like his sister. Yesterday was his party and we had it at our house. Yes, our house! Since we live in Oklahoma we decided to have the party at our house. My parents came (Ginny and Pop), Michael's dad and Donna came (Papa Ron and Grandma Donna), GG Debbie (Michael's step-grandma), Bella, Bennie, Jamie, Ian (Jude's best friend), Brad (we call him Uncle Brad), and our sweet neighbors (Mr. Wade, Miss Heather, and Tanner). We are so thankful for all of you and glad you came to Jude's party. It was a great puppy party! Good morning birthday boy!

Puppy food!

My best boys!

Are all these for me?

Checking out the goodies!

That's a yummy dog bone.

Sugar coma

Hey Sissy, you have got to try this!

Best buddies Jude and Ian getting ready to roll

He loaded up his balloons and had a birthday parade to the playground

Rollin'

Big sister has played her heart out. I adore this amazing little girl.

About 20 minutes after everyone left this was the scene.

Good night sweet Jude! Mommy and Daddy and Kate love you.

Day Trippers

...a day trip to Stillwater. Since we now live within easy driving distance (approximately 1-2 hours) of other civilization we decided to take a family day trip to somewhere the kids had not been before. We took them to the big town of Stillwater. Okay, so some might argue it is questionable to consider Stillwater civilization. Despite its small population and strong connection to both Okie Noodlin' documentaries it has some things worth checking out. For this quick trip we had two things on the agenda: Eskimo Joes and OSU campus photo-ops.

Eskimo Joes never disappoints. If you have to wait you can go shopping, there is fun stuff to look at, the Cheese Fries are amazing with a capital "Ahhhh," and the milkshakes were also really good.

We decided to just split two for the table--each parent would share with one kiddo. Here is Kate and I sharing.

Jude on the other hand was not that interested in actually sharing with Michael.

After lunch, and pulling Kate away from her "stage" out front of Joes, we headed to campus to walk around and look for places to take some good pictures of the kids. The most likely place to head to was the campus duck pond. We were able to get some really good action shots of Kate, because other than the one with her brother and the one with the tree she wouldn't stop moving long enough to take her picture.

Jude was much more interested in the camera than his sister today. Isn't he a handsome little guy? You can also see the mischievous grin--that really doesn't go away.

We had a great time introducing our little Texas citizens to a little slice of Oklahoma.