I love living in Texas!

Texas is known for many things...football, longhorns (cows that is), oil, big trucks, size, the Alamo...to name a few.  But this time of year, Texas is known for something else.

Bluebonnets!

Highways, fields and pastures are covered in them this time of year.  Aren't they gorgeous.  

We ventured out this weekend in search of a field of our own.  We had never taken pictures in the bluebonnets and thought we would give it a try.  Little did I know how much fun Matthew would have.

 Here he is giddely frolicking through the field.  

Such and handsome boy!

And then there was Samuel.  We tried hard to get him to smile but he was just content to sit in his bumbo and look around.  I guess the fragrance of the bluebonnets must have been really calming.  I actually didn't even know that bluebonnets smelled so good.  I wish we could bottle it.

What a pretty baby!

Uh oh! Don't eat the flowers Samuel!

We even managed to get Matthew to sit still for a pose with me and Patrick.

 Notice his shorts are all wet.  Some of the flowers were waist deep.

It is so much fun enjoying God's creation!

valentine delights

Matthew goes to Mother's Day Out (school) on Tuesday and Friday each week.  This year for Valentine's Day we decided to make treat bags for his class.  I had no idea how much fun this would be for him.

Here is wearing a festive Valentine hat he made at school.   Notice he would not take off his camo hat so I put the paper hat right on top.  I will have to post about the camo hat sometime.  We wear it everywhere.

All of the stuff we included in the bags.

1. Valentine's cards
2. lolli pops
3. goldfish crackers
4. conversation hearts
5. stickers
6. starburst

You can see the apple sticker underneath the whales.  That was Matthew's favorite sticker and they all got put into bags first.

He asked to work on these everyday until they were finished.  

"Let's do my bags."

Even Woody and Bullseye stopped by to help.  

grocery store fun

I really enjoy going to the grocery store with the boys. I know this sounds crazy...busy store, crowds of people, two kids...but we almost always have a good time. Matthew helps me bag all of the produce and also prints all of the produce labels.  He is always thrilled when it is his turn to press the green print button. Samuel normally just hangs out while I push the basket. Occasionally he gets upset and I put him in the sling.

I recently had the idea to take Matthew's shopping cart with us to the grocery store.  I had no idea how much he would like it.  I made sure it was a time when it was just the two of us because I did not think I could handle pushing Samuel in the basket and making sure Matthew wasn't getting into anything he shouldn't.

 Matthew has all of the ingredients for yummy beef stroganoff.  

 No trip to H-E-B is complete without a fruit pouch.

 Notice the cool bandaids.  We swapped the gauze tape for our friends Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. 

We had such fun.  He followed me around.  I pushed a little basket and he pushed his.  We filled both of them up with ease.  At one point he told me his wheels were breaking.  After investigating, I concluded that all of the groceries he was carrying were to heavy for his little cart.  They were causing the wheels to buckle.

Notice we are in jammies.  I took Matthew after bath time and we got back home way past bed time.  But all of the fun was worth not going to bed on time!

Yucky Staph!

It was just a couple of weeks ago that Matthew woke up with a red bump on his right eyebrow.  We noticed it on a Tuesday.  On Wednesday it was slightly swollen and by Thursday his eye was partly swollen shut.  We saw Jackson on Thursday.  He told us to apply a warm compress as often as Matthew would let us.  Well you can guess that, that did not happen.  He would hardly be still long enough for us to look at it for fear that we would touch it.  On Friday when his eye was completely swollen shut we took him to see Jackson again.  We unfortunately had to hold Matthew down on a table while Jackson cut open the abscess.  It was very difficult to see our child in pain especially since we were forcing it upon him.  After a week of some very strong antibiotics,  we are completely healed.   

This was taken and sent to Jackson to see if he wanted to see us.  Looks pretty bad!

After all was said and done Matthew could not be consoled.  We offered all kinds of treats but he just wanted to go home.  He fell asleep minutes after we got in the car to go home and slept for the rest of the afternoon.  

It wasn't long before he was back to himself.  It sure was nice to see those big blue eyes again!