Beau

A couple of weekends ago, we headed to meet Jannie's horse, Beau.  Avery has always loved horses, and Jannie felt like Avery was finally old enough to go for a ride! Avery was super excited to wear her boots, and Jannie brought along a perfect purple helmet to complete her ensemble....

Anna didn't make it too far - this miniature horse stopped her in her tracks! She loved to look and point at the horses, but she had no interest in getting much closer than this...

We finally got her outside, and she thought Beau's neighbor was pretty cool too:

At last they meet... it was love at first sight:

Watching Jannie warm up Beau:

Anna loved hanging with Pops!! She thought it was really funny to make horse noises, and thankfully Pops thought it was cute too (since it happened over & over & over again)...

There they go!

Little sis' new obsession...

Avery rode for a little over an hour, and she loved every minute of it! Beau was pretty sweaty after the ride, so Avery thought he needed a bath:

Anna wanted to "help" too... more with the bucket and rags than with Beau.  And this one has no problem getting dirty (unlike her sister!!):

We had such a fun morning and are so thankful that Jannie, Pops & Beau live so close!  I think we have a cowgirl in training!

Memorial Day weekend… a couple weekends late…

Avery had her 2^nd dance recital this year and performed again at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavillion. This year she danced to Jimmy Buffet’s “Take Me to the Island”… naturally, since it’s a classic ballet song. ;)  We’ll skip the part about how we thought we left her dance bag at home and how we managed to forget her flowers (Jannie &; Pops to the rescue!) and instead talk about how awesome she did. Dress rehearsal was a little rough for her class, but they figured it out for the show, and Avery did great!  I know how hard it is for her to get up in front of an audience (and this one was a REALLY big one!), but she didn’t miss a beat!  Here’s my little islander (although after the lei was wrapped around her head twice, we’re not really sure what island they were going for…):

And here she is in action:

After the show, we headed to dinner to celebrate Avery’s recital, Jannie’s birthday and thank all of the grandparents for coming to watch her dance!

Here we go with all the token shots…

With Daddy:

Mommy:

Deda:

YaYa:

Jannie & Pops:

Sunday, the Pratis came over to swim (and guess who is SWIMMING!!???)!  The weather was perfect, and the kids had such a great time in the pool!  

The crew, minus the dads:

Jack, Avery & Kyle:

We headed to our neighborhood Memorial Day party for dinner, where we ate too much, drank too much and laughed too much!  I’m pretty sure that Anna ate approximately half of the watermelon all by herself. Really wish I would have had my camera – she was double fisting the watermelon all night.  Avery loved playing with the older girls – at one point, she came up to me to say, “Mommy, I’m having lots of fun with the big girls… they really like playing with me.”

Yea for holidays!