SNEAK PEEK!!!!

  

Here is the exciting sneak peek of the dresses I've sewn for my daughters and I for our family pictures this summer.  I have all put mine done now.  

This is Butterick 9911, and it was supposed to be Elena's dress.  However, I totally goofed the fitting of Isabel's dress, but it was a happy mistake because luckily, it fit Elena perfectly.  This led to a bit of drama, as Isabel sobbed for 30 minutes while clutching the other dress to her and wailing, "I wish Elena was never in our family!!!"  It took her a while to warm up to this dress.  Anyway, I am pretty happy with how it turned out especially since it was a size 7 pattern (for Elena, remember?) and I GRADED the pattern down to a size 4.  It was not a simple bodice to grade either.  Seriously, look at those pleats. I had never graded anything before, but it worked!   We will be off on vacation and so you may not here from me in a while.  Hopefully, we get some great family pictures while we're gone.  And that is all, ta ta.

Ana Swimming

My friends came through for me again and snapped this picture of Ana at her last swim meet.  I'm so lucky to have friends with smart phones.  :)  And Ana did quite well and qualified to go to the championship meet, however, we'll be in Utah then!!!  Yeah! 

Little Pretties

I have been a bear all week.  Seriously.  Not happy with life at all.  So in remembrance that my life is not all that bad.  Quite good actually, here are some very happy, pretty things.  My roses bloomed again.  They smell heavenly.

 I have an amazingly cute family. 

 Elena after Ana did her hair like Pebbles.

 Who wouldn't be happy looking at that face?

Sunday Afternoon Nap and Elena

 Is it just me, or does Elena suddenly look so BIG??

Second Day of Camping-- at the Narrows

So the second day of camping we packed up our stuff and headed to the Narrows Recreation Area.  I saw this place on Pinterest and we were all excited to go, but it was a Pinterest FAIL.  Apparently, there's another place, called the Narrows (see this link) as well, somewhere in Texas that's on private land and that's what we were looking at.  We still had fun though playing in the water, so I guess it wasn't a complete loss.  Just not as cool as we were expecting.

So we spent the entire day playing in the Colorado River.  Good times were had by all, although Leo was extremely tired because he was up half the night with Nicolas (I was up the other half--but I think Leo got the worst of it).  Yeah, so Nicolas had strep throat too and is getting a tooth in.  We are bad parents, I tell you.

Didn't notice the funky setting I had my camera on till later.

So, I've been told Texas is in a drought, but really, living in Houston, I find that hard to believe, as it rains more than any place I've ever lived! And the 80% humidity does not make it feel drought-ish.  However, going here, I believed it.  We walked down the boat ramp and then about a hundred feet further out to get to the river.  We saw several boat houses sitting high and dry far, far, from the river.  Kind of crazy to think about actually, such a huge change.

Poor Nicolas, still not very happy. Although, truth be told, he WAS happy while he was on my back, and when I was holding him.  Just not in the picture.  He just wanted to be held CONSTANTLY.

Ugh, awful pictures of me, but I was there.  Here's the proof.

Ana's self-portrait.

My hottie.  So cute!

And this was actually on our drive home Sunday night.  So pretty.  If I were to live in Texas for a long time, I would want to live here, in Coupland.  Or actually in Fredericksburg more, but here's pretty too. San Antonio would be okay as well, I guess.  Too bad we're stuck in Houston.  Blah.

The end.

Camping at Inks Lake State Park

 Last Thursday we had planned to leave to go camping at Inks Lake.  Only I wasn't very prepared and was slow getting things ready and then Isabel and Nicolas had fevers that day.  So after finishing packing the van, we ended up staying the night at our house.  But the next morning, their fevers were gone and we decided to go camping!   We went up to Inks Lake State Park.  It was really pretty.

 Our lovely means of transportation for those who haven't seen it yet.  We arrived around noon, set up camp, ate lunch and then went swimming.  It was so hot.  And that's why we picked the camping spot we did.

 We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in Inks Lake.

 Ah, I just want to squish him and squeeze him and kiss him!!!

 Hee. Hee.

 Unbeknownst to us at the time, Isabel had a fever the day before because she had strep throat--honest, she didn't complain much about her throat hurting! And in this picture, she had just started breaking out in a rash due to Scarlet Fever.  It really didn't slow her down this much, despite what this picture might suggest.  I could have posted several others of her running around like crazy.

 It would have been fun to rent a kayak or canoe, but this time we didn't.

Some local wildlife.

Elena found this one.  There was also a good sized lizard by our tent too.

I love his chubbiness!

A deer walked right by our tents.  The kids kind of scared them, but they stayed just 15 feet from us for quite a while.