Apple core

Last Friday we had our friends, the Peterson's, over for dinner and games. The girls happily ran around in the back yard eating their apples (gratefully it wasn't windy that day for once). Hattie loves apples recently. But she only like whole apples, not slices...but she does pretty good with them. I've had to ignore her dropping them on the grass and picking them back up to take another bite...and turn my head as she starts biting into the core. Yum yum! They sat there for a long time just leisurely munching on their apples.

P.S. You can tell in the picture how little hair Hattie has. Callie is only 5 months older. Hattie could never have that much hair in another 5 months!

Dancing with the stuffed animals

Hattie loves to dance, especially with Elmo. Whenever I ask her to dance, she picks up her nearest stuffed animal by both hands and prances around with him. And she dances best when I dance with her, hence my appearance in the clip. Enjoy!

Springtime fun

My friend Nicole heard of something fun to do here in Lubbock...and we are always looking for things to do since it isn't the most eventful town. So we gathered our girls in the car and went to the local tractor supply store to see the baby chicks, ducks, and rabbits. The girls loved it. Hattie would reach toward the chick, I would pick one up, and then she would be too afraid to touch it. But she loved looking at them! She would love to be at my dad's house now with his new bunch of baby chicks.

Danielle was brave enough to hold the bunny

I think this will become a springtime tradition!

Paul is going to be seriously outnumbered

This morning we found out that once again, we will be having a baby girl! Paul is thrilled. He wanted a girl partially because we have a lot of girl names we like whereas we can't decide on a boy name for the life of us. And now we have a lot fewer preparations for this little one since she can wear all of Hattie's clothes, especially since they will both be September babies. We are glad to share the news!

It's Conference Time

This is the only way that we can watch Conference in peace.

P.S. The volume on the movie is off but yet she remains completely enthralled.

Oh wind a-blowing all day long

I have really come to love Lubbock. I can't believe that Paul is almost done with his first year already. It really is a great place to live.

Except for the wind. It never stops. Even when the radio says it'll be a nice calm windless day, it's not true. It's always blowing. And with the amount of dirt surrounding this isolated city, it's usually very dusty wind. Doing your hair is pointless. Sweeping the front walk is futile. Picking up the tumbleweeds that are blown into your yard can always wait another week because they'll double in number by then. Cars are always dirty.

I have been driving my father-in-law's pickup recently. A few weeks ago I was strapping Hattie into her car seat. While I was perched up in the truck, a gust of wind slammed my open truck door into the vehicle next to us. Looking at the dent in the car, I estimated it would cost around $700 to fix...just what we needed. I dutifully left a note and left it on the windshield, cursing the wind for blowing the door open (which I had carefully checked would not hit the neighboring car.) Grrr. But I suppose that there is good and bad wind...because they never called me about the dent. The only thing I can figure is that the wind blew my note away.

But that's certainly the only time the wind has helped me. Other than that, it's constantly forcing me to hold my skirt down when I walk, or chase after trash at the park. It never lets up. Is it like this everywhere in the Midwest?? Does it drive anyone else insane??