A trip to Dallas

Yesterday afternoon David and I decided to take the kids into downtown Dallas. David is down there just about everyday, but the kids and I hadn't been there. We didn't really have a plan to do anything down there, just drive around and look at everything. We found a place called Pioneer Plaza, so we stopped. Then across the street was a fountain. Nothing too exciting really, but it was just perfect! We had fun with the kids and we were only gone for a couple of hours!

The stampede of statues :)



The fountain.....

Of course we had to stop at Mickey D's for a treat afterwards! :)

Erika trying to be sneaky with my pop!

A look at the outside...

of our apartment! :) In the first picture, Caleb is standing by our door. The first window to the left is our kitchen window, and then the second window (covered by a tree) is Caleb's bedroom window. The second picture is the view from where Caleb is standing in the first pic! I'll get some pictures of the other side of the apartment sometime this week!


*Pictures have been removed*

Dad's day off....

Daddy was home on Thursday! We already had plans to head to Chuck E Cheese with the playgroup that I'm a part of, so Daddy joined us! :) We had a great time!

Cooling off with a fudgsicle!!

What better way to cool off on a hot Texas day than with a good ol messy fudgsicle!! :)

Thanks to Edouard......

We get a little relief from the original forecast!!! Right now it's only 84 out!! Time to go play I think!! :)

YUCK!!!!!

Check out our seven day forecast.....I'm ready to go home now!

The new place....

Here are a couple of pictures of our new apartment! There are none of our bedroom or the kitchen because neither of them were clean yesterday! :) I'll add those later!

The entry way (nothing too exciting, lol)

The dining roomThe kids bathroom
The next three are Erka's room. All of the bedrooms are huge with huge closets!!!


This is Caleb's room

And here are the kids with their teddy bears....just because they are cute! :)

New living room furniture!!!

Thanks to a generous gift we received when we moved to Texas, David and I were able to purchase new couches for our living room! We LOVE them!!!!

Caleb & Erika love them too!

David's new-do!!!

David's been wanting to shave his head again for a long time and I finally caved and let him do it!!! Here's a pic:

My ring is fixed!!!

We went to the mall on Sunday and while we there we went to Helzberg to have our wedding rings cleaned. We asked the man there if he could fix it and about two minutes later it was a perfect circle and on my finger!!!! And the best part....he didn't charge us!!!! We had gone to a different place in the mall and they would have charged us $35 to do it! I didn't want to pay that much so I decided to just wait! Good thing I did! :)

Our Fourth of July

I know this update is pretty late, but it's comical enough to make it worth it! I had mentioned that we were going to take the kids to a carnival. Well the place that everyone told us to go to didn't exist....or we just got bad directions. After driving around we finally found a place that had fireworks. We sat in traffic FOREVER and ended up just getting re-routed back onto the highway because they had no more parking! It was insane! So as we are getting back onto the highway Caleb is in the backseat bawling his eyes out because he wants to see fireworks so bad! We drive just a little ways and see all kinds of people pulled over and setting up chairs on the side of the highway, in the ditch (which was more like a field)....so we followed suit! We got our chairs out and we were all sitting and ready for the fireworks. Well right at the time they were supposed to start the cops came and told everyone they had to leave. There were at least 50 people there and one cop....the outcome wasn't what the cop wanted. We weren't sure if he was going to sit and wait till everyone left or not so we got the kids back in the car....more tears from Caleb. We didn't leave though, we just waited.....finally the cop just left. Right after he left the fireworks started, so we got the kids out of the car and just sat them on the trunk to watch the fireworks. CRUMMY CRUMMY CRUMMY fireworks!!!! Both David and I said we'd rather have been in Coon Rapids!!! Their fireworks last year were great!!! The one nice thing was after they were done we loaded the kids in the car and got on the highway and didn't have to deal with all the traffic! Here's pics: (there's another story under the pics.....)




So we get home, get the kids in bed and head to bed ourselves. Just like every July 4th, there are people outside letting off fireworks, we expected it. David fell right asleep and was snoring as I layed in bed and couldn't fall asleep. Everytime I started to drift off another firework would go off. Right around midnight I'm hearing a noise and can't figure out what it is and then I realize it's someone pounding on our door. Yep at midnight. So I wake David up, it's our neighbor downstairs....."you might want to move your car, the dumpster is on fire" is what I heard. Like completely engulfed in flames. Someone thought it would be funny to put a firecracker in there. Our car was the closest one to the dumpster, but it was like five parking spaces away. It probably would have been fine, but David moved it just in case. The cops arrived as he was moving the car and put out the fire. I think the cops hung around for a while too because it was pretty quiet after that! So there you have it! Our exciting first holiday in Texas! :)

My ring....

Last week we went to the mall one day so the kids could play at the play area there. As I was getting the stroller out of the trunk my finger (right ring finger) somehow got stuck between two of the metal bars! Look what happened to my ring!! It was pretty scary! The part of the ring on the right bottom side that is sticking out just a bit was actually indented. I used a pliers to bend it out just enough to get my finger out! My poor finger was pretty sore the rest of the day.

Good-bye Minnesota!!

Here are a few pics from our going away party! I managed to make it through the night with no tears! I can't say that about the afternoon though. Saying good-bye to our neighbors and walking through the house a final time with the kids was really hard!

The purple people eaters....

Thanks to everyone who came! We left Minnesota feeling loved! Thanks to Jodi & Dawn for organizing it all!

A visit to the lake

A few days before we left for Texas I went up to the lake to visit my grandparents. My sister and cousin were there with their kids too. We had a good time! Erika was obsessed with Courtney's shoes, (see the second picture!) it was pretty cute!

Erika's 2nd Birthday!!!

Well I found the camera cord!!! Now you are going to get sick of seeing pics! Here are a few from Erika's 2nd Birthday! :)

She got excited about EVERY present! It was cute!

The princess dress is actually from Papa Ole and Grandma Deb! They gave her money for her birthday and I knew she would love this so I bought it and wrapped it up for her! She doesn't care about going shopping and picking out a present yet, but I knew she'd love to open it up! Little did I know she would want to strip and get it on two seconds after opening and then wear it all night long!!!

Still no cord....

I'm going crazy searching everywhere for my camera cord! I think I'll cave and just go buy a new one! I'm sure once I buy a new one and take it out of the package, I will find the old one! That's just how life works! It's been a while since I copied pictures to a CD and my memory card is almost full! (and it holds over 1000 pictures!!!) Nothing else is really new down here in our hot part of the country! We still haven't really connected with anyone and made friends. We know a few people from the church that we have been going to, but really haven't had the chance to connect with them again. I know it takes time, but man, it gets a little lonely! Today Caleb asked if we could go find some new friends in Texas. :( Makes me sad! Even he is noticing that we don't have anyone to hang out with! We've had some much needed familly time though! When David is home from work I am like chopped liver! They cling to Daddy like you would not believe! NEVER again will we be away from Daddy for four months!!! That was WAY too long!
Hope you are all staying cool! (David will be staying cool in his no a/c truck soon....I found a fan for him!!!)

A quick update....

It's late and I'm headed to bed soon, but i just realized that I haven't updated for over a week now!
We are doing pretty good down here in this blasted heat! It's HOT right now! The kids and I are surviving by staying inside as much as we can. We have ventured out to the mall play area and the McDonalds playland a few times so they can run off some of their energy. :) David is outside much more than we are and he somehow is surviving without a/c in his truck! We need to find him a fan that he can plug into his truck.
Tomorrow is Erika's 2nd birthday!!!! I can't believe my baby is two already! We celebrated tonight since David will be at work tomorrow. She loved opening presents, it was so cute. She got excited about every little thing. I have a bunch of cute pictures to show you from tonight, but first I have to find the cord to plug my camera into the computer......it's in a box somewhere!

We made it!!!

Here we are in Texas, starting to get settled into our new life! The boxes are starting to disappear and our apartment is starting to look like home, although it doesn't feel like home yet. The drive down went good. We decided to drive straight through so the last couple of hours were hard. We pulled in around 3:30 AM on Saturday morning. After the moving truck was unloaded (which I wasn't much help with because I needed to keep the kids out of the way) this is what our apartment looked like:

After a couple of hours and with lots of help from Jodi this is what it looked like:

We still have a lot of work to do, but we are making progress!!

This is our first holiday without friends and family close by! David is working right now, but tonight we are planning to take the kids to a carnival and stay for fireworks. We saw some random fireworks last night as we were driving home from church, so Caleb is very excited for tonight! Last year he was scared, so hopefully this year he won't be! :)

I'll update again soon!