Saturday, April 27, 2013

Strawberry Pickin'

Audrey went on her first field trip a couple of weeks ago! Her class went to Froberg's Farm to pick strawberries. They were just as excited to ride the bus as they were to pick strawberries!

They have a little play area that the kids enjoyed with a tractor, animals, and cutouts too!

We've been to Froberg's every spring for the last several years. It's so much fun, and the strawberries are delicious! This year was no exception. Jackson isn't a fan of strawberries, but he tried them again just to be sure. The rest of us ate our fill, and I made some strawberry cream cheese muffins with the rest for my friends at work since we had way more than we could eat!

There are more pictures of the fun in the album!

Friday, April 26, 2013

Eco-Marathon 2013

Shell's Eco-Marathon was in Houston a few weeks ago, and we attended to show our support for Louisiana Tech again this year! The event took place over four days, and I got to be there for parts of all four! Ross and I attended a reception Thursday night with the Louisiana Tech Engineering and Science Foundation (ESF) and the LA Tech team. On Friday, ESF had our board meeting and participated in the opening ceremonies for the event. Then the fun really began on Saturday when the competition started! Jackson and Audrey were beyond excited to see our friends, The Tims, over the weekend, and they had a blast cheering for the LA Tech cars! We all wore our Tech blue to show our support...

We couldn't have asked for better weather! It was gorgeous and not too hot!

The event takes place around Houston's Discovery Green, so we made our way across the track to let the kids play in the park for a while. Jackson and Audrey quickly took to the stage to give us a performance. I was pretty impressed with their moves! Carter had some good moves too, but he was being a little camera shy.

The playground was lots of fun, and Jackson showed us how strong and brave he is by tackling some of the tougher equipment. There were also lots of exhibits along the paths. The two favorites were a spinning wheel where the kids all won some coupons for gas savings, which the adults happily took, and the hands-on robotic demo. Jackson helped Audrey get a good look at it before taking a turn at driving it around.

All of that was lots of fun, but we were really there to cheer on the LA Tech team! Here are some pics of the beautiful cars they made and raced in an effort to get the most miles per gallon! Of course, the top pic with the kids in it is not one of the LA Tech cars...it's a Nascar race car!

We enjoyed some time in "the pit" and playing around inside the convention center too. The size of the competition grew quite a bit this year, and they also included more kid-friendly activities. Audrey liked the dance floor where your moves would help charge cell phones, etc. Jackson liked the paper airplanes and build-your-own saltwater-powered eco-car. I loved getting to spend some time with our LA Tech friends!

The LA Tech team did a great job again this year, and we were glad to get to be a part of it! There are more pictures from the weekend in the album

Easter

I've gotten a little behind on posting, but I'm hoping to catch up this weekend. Here are some pictures from our Easter celebrations. My dad joined us for the weekend and helped Jackson and Audrey decorate and dye eggs. We had fun flying kites and hunting lots of eggs that weekend!

All of the younger kids did a really cute craft at church with graham crackers, an oreo, icing and chocolate to make Jesus' empty tomb. It turned out great and smelled really good too!

We spent Easter afternoon at the Newman's house with friends. Their house backs up to an old golf course, so the kids had more fun playing and hunting eggs there!

I love the two pictures above because it shows the interactions between Jackson and Audrey rather well these days...monkey see, monkey do! (Notice the baskets on the heads.)

The daycare also had egg hunts. Ross made it to Jackson's egg hunt in the morning. After they found all of their eggs, they had fun with some confetti eggs! I was able to join Audrey's class for their egg hunt in the afternoon, and all the kids were bubbling over with excitement to get outside and find some eggs! Knowing treats were inside probably helped!

I ended up taking pics of all of the kids at the daycare with the Easter Bunny, which of course means neither of my kids wanted to go anywhere near the bunny! Jackson was willing to if I was in the picture too, but Audrey wanted nothing to do with it!

There are more pictures of our Easter celebrations in the album