Birthday Boy

I'm such a mean mom and made B wear the birthday hat on his bday, I take just about every opportunity to dress him up because I think it's funny.  ;)  There is a dog bakery down the street from our house and for special occasions I get him treats.  It's called the Barker Street Bakery and they have some really good looking stuff in there!  It looks like people food but it's all "dog safe".  He got a doughnut this year for his bday.

He may not look happy here but as soon as that hat was off he tore into that doughnut in about 30 seconds.  Happy 4th birthday little guy! 

P.S. - Austin was there for this also, I'm not the only one who thinks it's funny!  :)

Lunching With the Girls

I'm on vacation (WOO HOO!!) and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my day today than meeting Tracy & Leah for lunch.  :)

Leah was super exciting to be lunching with the big girls!

Leah, who are you sticking your tongue out at?

I love kissing those cheeks!

Yeah!!  I'm at the big girl table!

We made a little stop to do some shopping after lunch and Leah was pooped!  But her stroller sure makes for a great clothes rack!

While we were shopping we ran into our cousin Emily.  Leah was happy to see her again before she moves to Chicago next month!  We're going to miss you Em! 

Thanks Tracy for bringing Leah out in the cold to hang with her Aunt Kelly!  Lunching with us is way better than hanging out at daycare.  ;) 

Christmas Week - Part Four, Waco

Christmas week is officially over!  We made our final trip of the week to Cindy's side of the family in Waco.  Everyone was there, all 21 of us!

Here is picture of Garrett & Noah riding around on Noah's new 4-wheeler.  Those boys have the best time together, it's so cute.

The Hortons plate, I think it's so pretty. 

Austin's Grandmother has a love for clowns.  A SERIOUS love for clowns!  Austin said that once years ago they tried to count all of them around the house and the number was in the 1000s!  Here is the little clown tree in the kitchen.  Austin & Cindy are in the background cooking away for our big lunch.

They have a huge tree that is full of beautiful ornaments.  And lots of presents around the tree!

Aunt Jan, Cindy's sister owns a shop called Jan's Perfect Presents in Waco so there are tons of cute Christmas decorations all over the house.  Here is the "Santa Ladder" in the living room

All the stocking hanging!

The entire house is decorated for Christmas

The table is always decorated for the season

There is a kid under that umbrella.  There was a few breaths being held in fear of the tree coming down or eyes being poked out while trying to close the umbrella!

The Townsends & Rohwedders

The May Family, Emory, Zach & Adriane.  Emory was pretty much DONE at this point, she's so cute.  She's very excited about her 2nd birthday next week.  :)

The Stutzman Family, Chris, Alison & Noah

The Ellis Family, Melissa (w/baby Ellis on the way next month), Jason & Garrett

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Christmas Week - Part Three, Home!

Christmas morning we made the flight back home.  We had a blast in the Valley but it's always good to get home.  Austin and I did our gift exchange once we got home but you're not going to see those pics because I look like I just woke up.  Ha!

So, here are the Brody pics, he's cuter anyways!  ;)  We put down his stocking and he was ALL about it!

Funny picture of him once he got his toy out of the stocking.  He was super excited.

Watching intently as I opened my gifts, with his baby next to him of course.

Later in the morning I came in from the other room and this is what I saw.  Austin was napping on the couch and he had put down a blanket for B to lay on and nap by the fire.  So cute. 

Christmas week is almost over, only one more family event left.  I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Week - Part Two, Townsend Style

This year the Mark Townsend part of the Townsend clan stayed at the beautiful La Quinta in McAllen while we were in the Valley. 

We opened all our gifts in one of our hotel rooms before we headed to Grandma & Grandpa's house for Christmas Eve festivities.  It was crammed but fun!

Presents everywhere!

Sweet shorts Travis!  Those are some of Mark's old swimming shorts that Cindy put in Travis's box to add weight!  It was funny :)

Austin with his "saw horse" or "jaw horse", not sure what the thing is or what it's called, all I know is that it's heavy and it's some kind of tool.  But when you're flying home you can't exactly take it on the plane so Cindy got Austin a saw and a plastic horse to explain it to him until he gets the real one this weekend!

Rach with the Pioneer Woman cookbook we got her!  I love that cookbook!  I got one from my parents for Christmas too.  :)

Mark with the Mayan rubbing picture that Austin got him in Palenque, MX this summer.  He likes it as you can see from the face he's making! 

Christmas Eve we spent at Grandma & Grandpa's house.  There were 42 of us there!!!  All of the Townsend's were there except Patrick who is in Iraq serving our country.  He was missed and hopefully next year everyone will be able to be together!  

Lots of presents under the beautiful tree!

Elizabeth, Drew, Caroline, me, & Rachel hanging out

The Mark Townsend crew!  He's one of NINE brothers & sisters!! 

This year Greg rented an entire room for the week for the garage to make more room for everyone!  We called it The Lounge.  It was awesome.  Here is Rach "lounging" in it.  Ha!

Seriously, a huge makeover, it looked like an ordinary garage just a few days earlier.

Elizabeth, Rach & me getting our "best angle"!  ;)

Cindy & Mark

Little fairy Gracie. She was so funny with that wand. Elizabeth told her she had to be nice and tap people with it not hit them. So, Gracie went to her Daddy and hit him with the wand while saying "tap tap tap!" Hey, she listened! ;) It was hilarious.

Every year we have a gift exchange where each couple brings one regular gift and one white elephant gift.  David got this little Mexican window hanging that looked better suctioned to his head!  Nice look David!  Ha!

Paul got the penguin.  It actually got stolen from him!  So funny.

Drew got an awesome snake wine holder.  I mean, who WOULDN'T want that?!?!  ;)

Austin got a "NYE Party in a Box" that Elizabeth brought.  This was funny because a few years ago Austin showed up at Elizabeth's place with a trunk full of party supplies and said he brought a "party in a box"!

Every year we take a big group picture of the entire family.  This year for some reason we didn't get it.  :(  I always love taking that picture each year because it's just so crazy to me that so many of us get together every year in one house and it doesn't even seem too crowded!  So, just to give you an idea of what it looks like, here is a pic from last year, just with less people than this year.  Everyone looks so different now!

 

Thank you Townsend family for making it such a great trip!  We love coming to visit each year!

Christmas Week - Part Two, The Ranch

Austin and I made the short flight to the Valley on Tuesday to spend time with the Townsend side of the family.  We had a great time and started the visit off with 14 of us taking a trip to the ranch that is only about an hour away from town in McCook.  Here is a pic of the house, it's really nice there and always fun to go visit. 

These "wind chimes" crack me up.

I love this wooden post.  It has one of the boys teeny tiny little cowboy boots on it.  I don't know whose they are but they are so little!  It's cute. 

Just a little tree decorated up.  Christmas trees aren't the only trees that get ornaments!  ;)

I thought this was a cool cactus!

So, not everything is beautiful at the ranch...  This is a RAT that didn't make it.  Check that thing out!!  It's HUGE!!!  Disclaimer: No rats were harmed in the making of this blog post, it was like that when we got there!  Ha!

Check it out!  I caught the 1st fish of the day!  It's a 'bute isn't it?!  ;)  He's a bass fish and it took some convincing on Austin's part to get me to put my fingers in his mouth for this picture.  Lucky guy, he got to go right back to his buddies in the pond. 

Austin & I decided to take a Jeep ride around the ranch.  Aiden, Anthony & Elise came along with us.  They had a blast.

We found Cindy fishing while on our Jeep ride.  She's a fishing pro.  I've never seen someone have so much patience fishing, she can stay out there all day just waiting for fish to bite!

Funny picture, you can't really see it that well but George is up the road in the car checking on us to make sure we hadn't broken down in the Jeep.  He was driving backwards as we drove towards him.  We had a little issue getting it going before we took the drive.

Here are some of the calfs on the ranch.  They are so little compared to the big guys!  They just stare at you, so rude!  ;)

Luke & George catching a fish!

Mark is so funny.  He spent a good part of the afternoon like this, running around with a net in his hand catching grasshoppers for bait.  He got a few!

Ok, moving on to the SNAKE portion of this post!  OH.  MY.  GOSH.  This is just ridiculous, it probably deserves it's own post.  Ok, those of you who know me well know I'm not a fan of snakes.  My Dad has witnessed this 1st hand hearing me screaming at the top of my lungs for him from the back yard one summer when I came across a big one.  Beth has witnessed my panicked self calling her at 1am after leaving her house and I found a 3 footer at my back door when I was all alone one night (I slept with the lights on that night, I thought it would figure out a way into the house.  No lie).  But this guy can't even be put in the same category as those.  THANK GOD I didn't see it while I was at the ranch!!!  I love the ranch, let's just make that clear.  But when I go there I bring magazines and my nail polish to touch up my nails during down time.  Seriously, it's just who I am.   And I think everyone knows that because as we were pulling up to the ranch Grandma Townsend brings up this snake that Grandpa had seen THE DAY BEFORE.  Mind you, we had been in the car for an hour and the snake was just mentioned for the 1st time.  It was described to me as a "good snake".  My response is that there are NO good snakes!!  So here you go ladies and gentlemen, here is the "good snake" at the ranch. 

Grandpa Townsend and Zack found this guy right outside the house and took these pictures.

He's about 7 FEET LONG!!!!

Grandpa Townsend told me he could pass me up in a Kelly vs. Snake race for sure.  Yes, I actually asked him if I could out run it.  So, needless to say I was on FULL alert the entire time I was at the ranch! 

Next up, Christmas time in the Valley!