Pizza Party for the Birthday Girl

Kenzie turned 9 years old today!!! She's growing up on me way too fast!! We are so lucky to have such an awesome daughter!

Here she is striking a pose for me before we left for her party. We had her party this afternoon at Gatti's Pizza. We rented a private room and they provide a hostess for the party that helps with decorating and serving the food. Best of all, they clean up the mess; can't beat that! lol! :)
All we had to do was bring the cake and they did everything else.

Getting the party room decorated and waiting the the guests to arrive.




She had a great turnout for the party. I think about 12 kids came, including some friends from school/daycare and her cousins.

The party included lots of game tokens for each child so they got to enjoy the arcade room for a while too. Here's Aydan with a friend of his from daycare, who is the little brother of one of Kenzie's friends that came to the party. They had a good time playing with each other and its a good thing that there was another young boy there for him to play with.

Time for cake and ice cream...make a wish!!! We had to have a giant cookie cake too because those are the best! :)

We had a great time and are glad lots of her friends and family were able to come!

Tonight she's having a friend sleep over and they are having a good time playing. I think Aydan may be annoying them at the moment but I guess thats what little brothers are for ;) They told me they are going to stay up until 1:30am but that they may doze off before that. Thats good because I know I will, lol!

this and that...

So Easter is this Sunday and I still need to get all the kids' goodies bought. I don't know why I always wait until the last minute for Easter stuff; I seem to do it every year! Well I can say that I do have some clothes for each of them, just need to get them baskets, some snacks/candy, and some smaller toys to put in the baskets. Easter is always like the first sign of Spring, but its been feeling more like summer lately. This week, we are having highs in the 90's and its only getting down to 70's at night. Plus, add humidity on top of that and it makes for hot, sticky weather...and its only April. I just want to be at the beach all the time!! We haven't been there since my sister was here but I'm ready to go back!

Kenzie's birthday is coming up and we've been trying to figure out what we can do for her party. I think she finally decided on Gatti's Pizza. They have party rooms you can rent out and a huge arcade area for the kids to play in. So now we just have to get her invitations sent out. We told her she can probably have 1 or 2 friends stay the night too if they can.

For a few weeks now, I've been doing a workout dvd at home. Its "Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, " which has 3 levels that gradually get harder and each one is only 20 minutes. Its not that I necessarily want to loose the pounds, I'm just trying to get in better shape and tone up a little, which I guess is good since really I've only lost 1 to 2 pounds depending on when I weight myself during the day, lol! Mostly, I just feel better after I exercise. Even though I can't really see much of a difference, it does make me feel better anyway. I started to alternate between the dvd one night and then just running on the treadmill the next night. Well, all weekend I didn't do either. Monday I did the dvd and last night I just sat on my butt watching tv. So basically I feel pretty lazy for not doing much lately and need to get back on track before I stop doing it all together. It can be hard to stay motivated, thats for sure!

whats happening....

So, now that I've finally updated you all on my sister's visit and our Moody Gardens trip, I can fill you in on more random things.

The weather is really heating up fast here. It feels more like summer most of the time than spring. We've been trying to get outside and enjoy the outdoors before true summer actually hits and its too hot to wanna do much out there. There's a nature trail right down the road from us that we've finally checked out the other day. Its a nice place to go for a walk with dog too. Kenzie caught some sort of beetle that she held captive for a day or too. His name was George. She got him all set up with leaves, grass, and twigs. She watched his every move. We finally talked her into freeing George so that he wouldn't die. She agreed. Once she took him outside to let him free, she brough back in a rolly-polly bug (I don't know the true name for those little things.) She's had him since yesterday. He's either playing dead or his spirit is no longer with us.

April is a busy month as far as birthdays and things. Kenzie has been invited to a birthday party every weekend this month, except for April 30th, which will be her birthday party. Plus, Easter is coming up too! Yesterday, she went to a birthday party at a roller skating rink. She loved it! She can't really skate, but her and another friend held on to the side wall. They still had a good time. Speaking of skating, I finally got some rollerblades. At first, I about fell on my behind. It took me a minute to get my balance and remember how to do it. I can't even remember the last time I actually rollerbladed (is that even a word??). Definately been a while! The only other problem is I ordered them online and I think they are a little to small. I should have gotten a size bigger than my shoe size I think. Oh well, we'll see how it goes. I've only used them once so far.

Danny and I have been trying to decide on what to do for Kenzie's birthday this year. She'll be 9 can you believe it!!! She's mentioned going bowling with a few friends so maybe we'll look into that.

I can't believe how fast time is going! April will be over soon and then the school year will be about over already!! Before we know it, it will be Christmas!

Well, I think thats all I got for now! Take care and have a good week!!

Moody Gardens!!!!!!!!!

Last weekend, our family went to Moody Gardens in Galveston, TX. We had the best time there!! There's Moody Garden's Hotel and Convention Center that we stayed in for the night and different things to do like the Aquarium Pyramid, Rainforest Pyramid, 3D and 4D theatres, Penguin exhibits, gift shops, and much more.

Heres a picture of the pool/swim up bar. Thankfully, it was actually warm enough for us to do a little swimming. The pool is heated though so that definately helps! This is the view from our window. One of the pyramids is the Aquarium, one is the Rainforest, and the other is the Discovery pyramid. We were on the 5th floor and had an awesome view! I could have just sat and looked out the window all day.... View of the pool area from our room.

Danny and I having a drink during 'happy hour' at one of the hotel restaurants. Mine was a Pomegrate Bay Breeze...it was sooo good!!

I love this view at the water. There were several boats in the water and the weather was perfect.

Here's Danny enjoying the view also.

This is inside the Aquarium pyramid. Its a shark cage that divers would use when going in the water with sharks. Yikes!!

There's one of the sharks in the aquarium. We also saw a bunch of hammerhead sharks too!

Going through the tunnel. I couldn't help but think of one of the Jaw's movies when the great white shark swims into the aquarium tunnels under the ocean and breaks it. Luckily they didn't have any great whites in here, lol! ;) As much as I think sharks are scary, I just love them! Jaws is like one of my favorite movies! Yeah, I'm kinda weird like that.

We saw a 3D movie too. And, go figure, it was called Sharks 3D. That was the first time I had seen a 3D show. It was so cool!! I really does look like the action pops off the screen. Me and Kenzie kept reaching out in front of us to grab everything. Very cool!

It had been a long time since we've actually stayed in a hotel (and I don't count the scary places we've stayed in driving back and forth from IL to TX lol!) We had a great time and enjoyed the room service delivery. I could really get used to that! It was a nice and relaxing time! We definately need to get away and do things like that more often.

Sister's visit

OK, so I'm a little late posting these pictures from my sister and niece's visit. They were here March 10-17th. Our internet at home is just WiFi and usually its pretty slow. It takes FOREVER and a day to upload pics to my blog so I just haven't made the time to do it until now.

So anyways, we had a great time during their visit. The girls were so happy to be able to play with each other all day, everyday. They stayed with us at our apartment so they had plenty of time to spend together. We went to Galveston a couple times, Kemah Boardwalk, NASA, the mall, and just enjoyed hanging out together. I picked a few of the hundreds of pictures we took to post.

The day they arrived, I picked Kenzie up from school. This picture is from when they first saw each other in the car after I picked Kenzie up. It was so cute to see them so excited. :) We went to Kemah Boardwalk on the Saturday night they were here. It was a blast! Danny's HR lady at his job invited us to come that night because her boyfriend's band was playing. They are an 80's cover band. The kids rode a few rides but it was sooooo busy that night because of it being the first weekend of Spring Break.

Silly girls :)

Showing Hunter some love.

Trying to get a picture of all of them in the atrium lobby at our apartment.

Hanging out by the pool. They wanted to swim but it wasn't quite warm enough yet.

Chillin in the back of Danny's truck.

Here's a couple pics from NASA. We had a good time there too. We were able to watch a high dive show that they put on outside. It was really cool. One diver actually dove from 86 feet in the air. Yikes!!

The Saturn V shuttle. Thats just part of it in the picture. Its enormous!

Another picture at NASA in a space shuttle.

This picture was at my uncle Jerry's. My grandma was visiting also that weekend so we were lucky enough to be able to spend time with her when she came. She split her time up between staying with her son Jerry, and her daughter, Vicki. In this picture, left to right: Aunt Vicki, me, Erin, Grandma, Uncle Jerry, Dani (my cousin). It was so great spending time with everyone!!

All the kids left to right: Aaron (Jerry's son), Kenzie, Melanie, Shawn (Jerry's son), Aydan, Trey (Dani's son), Gabriel (Dani's son), and Christian (Dani's son). The poor girls are way out numbered :)

Well, thats all the pictures for now. I may upload some more later because there's a few more I would like to share.

We had a great time and I'm really glad Erin and Melanie were able to come! Danny's family comes in June so we are really looking forward to that as well!!