Happy St Patrick's Day!

As I am not very crafty I was pretty proud of our St Paddy's day celebration. We started with Lydia popping out of her room at 8 dressed as below! Then green milk, telling of the historical Saint Patrick, then off to our outing.

The library, Phil's & Amy's new south location where we rode more cows, ate hamburgers, sweet potato fries and ice cream. Then to Sprouts and Academy, before heading home to watch the Little Mermaid II (not St Paddy's but we got it from the library)

We decorated the house and fort with green shamrocks-suggested by Lydia

Salado-Park

The day after the gardens, we stayed in Salado and visited Pace Park.

Lydia said her first three word sentence about a picture like this about 3 years ago: Nini ridy turtle. They enjoyed saying that!
Love it, mom caught her face as she came down the slide quickly.
Gloria while climbing this said, this is dangerous. Not sure where she learned that word
The most fun thing for Lydia the whole week was throwing rocks into the creek, which looks incredibly different since the flood.

Dallas Botanical Garden-Fairy Tale Castles

On CNN one day I saw that one of the best 10 places to see spring flowers in US was the Dallas Blooms, so I clicked on their site and saw that they had a Fairy Tale Castle Exhibit. Talked to Jessamy and Mom and worked it out to go while the guys were fishing over spring break. Then told Lydia who was SUPER excited. We drove up to Dallas and spent the night at J&J's. Then the day finally came, and it was a lot colder than we expected and Lydia wasn't feeling good (she often isn't happy/doesn't feel good in the morning and then is fine by the afternoon). Good thing we had three strollers. The flowers were beautiful and the castles fun. We saw them all and were planning on eating there but everything was outside and Lydia kept saying she was cold so we headed out even though Gloria and I could have spent a lot more time there.

On the Little Mermaid's throne and walking into her castle.

Jessamy, Jonathan and beautiful flowers.
Outside Beauty & the Beast's castle
Rapunzel, the tower even had hair.
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, an African Cinderella, this one was inside bamboo.

My mom was there too but she took all the good photos. We also saw a lake, statues of animals, fountains and goldfish (Gloria could have stayed there a while too)

Salado-Spring

Caleb, my dad and Bill went fishing the first part of spring break (and caught a ton). So I took the girls to Salado. March is rivaling October's pumpkin patches for tons of outdoor fun and photo shoots!

We spent lots of time outside in the backyard: looking at flowers, playing hide & seek, finger painting and swinging.

(Gloria with Rosie, she was quite sad when Rosie won't stay still and be petted)

Zilker again!

A week and half after going to Zilker we went again with some church friends. More playground, statue climbing, picnic and Caleb rode the train this time. Then our friends left and we walked down the path to the duck area of the creek. Well since there were a billion people there feeding the ducks, the ducks were not hungry but we threw the bread anyway. We counted 13 dogs on our walk back to the car-Gloria, who got lots of awwwws with her tutu, wanted to pat all of them!

Another fun sunny spring day!

Arboretum

We drove home from Salado via our Taiwanese friend Remy's home and the Arboretum for a playdate. First was a packed story time at Barnes & Nobles, then picnic by the cows, an Austin tradition. When I told Gloria that Scott (first on cow) was going to be there she said-he likes to hug me, remember a time at another party!

Zilker

After a late start, a friend and I took our Moroccan friends to Zilker park, we had a picnic, played on the playground and statues. I almost lost Lydia on the playground (and was about to go around with Gloria asking if anyone had seen a four year old dressed like this) but she finally came up running to me. We also rode the train (sleeping baby Adam & Pam stayed behind)!

Mardi Gras

2nd annual Fat Tuesday celebrate at our neighbor's. The masks made it another year. There were at least six kinds of rice, bean &/or sausage dishes-yummy, a king cake, Princess & the Frog on tv and lots of friends!

Dancing the Night away

Lydia dancing during Kyle's wedding.

Kyle's Wedding!

We traveled to Arlington to stay at Carrie's for cousin Kyle's wedding to Michelle. It was the first wedding for the girls to go too and they did great during the 15 minute ceremony. They loved dressing up, the food, music (including mariachi band), dancing, family and cake. We even last until 10:30 pm. Then stayed with Carrie and went to church with them the next morning. Fun weekend!