Breakdance!

Some of our good friends, the dad and son have the same birthday and this year was 40 & 6 so they rented the church gym, invited their 100 closest friends and had a BBQ catered, breakdance, rap & hip hop, jumpy house bash!

Lydia chose her 'party dress' a smocked one, I love the juxapostion of a girl in a smocked dress breakdancing.  Gloria is spinning.

Princess Girl's Cake

 Gloria helped make her cake and icing for her party...

 and both she and Lydia helped decorate!

The theme was Princess Girl Under the Sea.  I thought it was sweet she wanted Super Girl (aka Lydia) on the cake as well!  Gloria got to be part of the decisions which was fun and then frustrating (she kept changing her mind-Princess Girl doesn't wear a cape, she looks like Rapunzel but with shorter hair, she needs to be in a swimsuit, no crown, etc).  But when it was done it was special and cute and fun!

museum day

 Austin had many museums free on Sunday, we went to the Natural Science Museum on the UT campus, so after church we stayed in 'town' all day, having lunch with some friends from Sunday school then to campus. The building is impressive and filled with bones, fossils...

 stones and gems...

 and special crafts for kids.  There was also a story time.  The fossils from the model below was found near where we live.

Then before, heading back to church for choir and Awana, we played outside on bone chairs and the kids in the sand.

Sweet Sissies

 Sometimes the girls have a wonderful time together and call each other sweet sissies (other times they yell and scream at each other and call each other mean....but for the good blogable times :)
I love this picture.  Gloria especially looks like she is growing up.  They are wearing their next year's swimsuits.

 When it rains in Texas we go outside to play (unless its cold).  Lydia got to wear her new raincoat and matching boots.  It was raining on the way to school so we all walked in our raincoats.  It was warm enough and light enough to make it an adventure.

Super Girl and Princess Girl
My mom got these great costumes and they fit their super hero names (side kick is Super Jack Boy, not pictured).  Gloria's birthday party tomorrow is Princess Girl Under the Sea (at the pool-photos to come!)

Gloria's First day

 It's official summer is over.  Both girls are in school, too bad it was over 100 degrees today.  Gloria is back at the same preschool where they have been going for two years.  She has one of Lydia's 4 year old teachers as well.  Our nature girl posing with a leaf she found outside her classroom door.

 and showing off her backpack (its the mermaid one Lydia used for preschool)

 Besides preschool friends from last year, Jackson will also be joining her to Tuesdays, as well as our friend from Morocco in the 3 year old class!

Cousin fun

 The girls love spending time with their Harris cousins.  I love Linda's book selection and now Lydia and Sophia are big enough to read too.  They each had parts in the Pigeon finds a Hot Dog book.

 a calm bedtime :)

 Grammy got a new dog named Marco the girls loved playing with.

Dressing up in pretty princess dresses at Matt & Heidi's

Sea Rim beach

 Big Texas sky and big muddy beach!

 While visiting Caleb's family in Beaumont for Labor day we took a quick day trip to the beach.  Since Caleb works for Texas Parks & Wildlife we can get in state parks for free, so we took advantage of that.

 It was a very nature-ful time-Caleb caught mullet, which we put in our moat along with hermit crabs and a ghost shrimp

 Gloria wrote her name all by herself for the first and without looking at it written either!

 They wanted to be mermaids and Gloria needed seashells too

watching King Triton.  We had a picnic and rinsed off and took a short walk on a boardwalk, Lydia & Caleb went further than G&I and they got to see an alligator.  Back to Granny's house for the rest of our fun weekend.