Easter

Every Easter we head down to my parent's house and spend the weekend with them. On the day before Easter the guys typically golf and my mom and I go shopping. But this year she treated me to a pedicure, which was absolutely amazing. Then on Saturday night we usually dye the eggs for the next day!

She was so excited! Can you tell?

My mom and brother are going to hate me for posting this picture, but I thought it was hilarious. Those faces say it all. There were lots of surprises when you dye eggs with a 3 and 1 year old.

Each egg was probably dyed 7 times. Lots of dropping eggs into the colored water! :)

Easter morning. My kids LOVE my brother, they honestly adore him and it makes my heart soar when they scream his name and run up to him. He is a terrific uncle!

My sweet girl. I curled her hair and she was SOOOOO excited to show everyone her hair. This picture is after church so we have lost a lot of the curls! :)

A fun surprise that was in their Easter baskets! Hilarious!

My aunt Kittie sent the kids conductor hats for Easter and Cooper of course loved it because it had a train on it! A little high on the head though, don't you think?

Every year my parents do a huge Easter egg hunt and it is usually cut throat between Jayson, Chris and I. But this year my cousin Aaron and his wife Shelley and their four girls came and had Easter lunch with us and did the hunt with us. We tried to warn them how crazy we get and they were such good sports. It was so FUN to have them there. Kinsley LOVED having the girls there and I just like the feeling of a full house.

My parents usually hide close to 150 eggs in their front yard and back yard and they usually have candy in them and some of them have gift cards. There is one prize egg and that is usually what we will kill each other to find. It usually has $20 bucks in it and a Starbucks card. Chris found it this year, I was so excited because I benefit from it as well. :) One year my brother tackled me to the ground to get the prize egg from me, and even though I was almost 8 months pregnant I would not give it up. I told you we are cut throat with our egg hunt! :)

The clan except for my cousin Aaron who was taking the picture! I LOVED having them here.

All the ladies!

Hope you all had a beautiful Easter celebrating our Savior's gift of salvation.

Prayer for Andrea

This is my girlfriend Andrea Popkes. Andrea and I have been friends since Junior High. We don't get to see each other all that often because she lives in Capistrano Beach and for the last year she has been living in Australia. But I am begging for you all to be praying for her.

Three weeks ago Andrea found out she has stage 3 breast cancer.

It is unfortunately already into her lymph nodes.

She is starting chemo this coming week and will be doing it for 4 1/2 months.

She will be having a mastectomy in a month or two that will be followed up with radiation.

She is only 31 years old.

And she is a believer in our Gracious Lord.

Since I found out three weeks ago my heart has literally been breaking for her. She has what they call Infiltrating (invasive) Ductal Cancer. The cancer cells are poorly differentiated, meaning they're aggressive and growing too quickly.

I didn't post this earlier because she had a PET-CT scan this week to see if the cancer had spread to any other parts of her body. And Praise be to the Lord it HASN'T. Which is truly a miracle because there was a one in four chance that it had. So I didn't want to post until I knew exactly how far the cancer had spread. So now you know exactly how to pray for her. The coming weeks are going to be extremely rough as she is going to be feeling really sick due to the chemo and she is going to be losing her hair.

Thankfully Andrea is a strong believer and she is completely putting her trust in the Lord. However when I saw her she said "I don't feel like reality has completely set in." Just pray that she stays close to the Lord and leans on Him in the hard weeks that are coming.

When I saw her, her attitude was amazing and she was so joyful even in these scary circumstances.

And I know that joy can only come from our Great God.

Praise the Lord for salvation.

Thank you Lord for saving Andrea.

Catch up!

This is just a sneak of what we have been up to for the last month. You know me, my posts are few and far between so I going to combine some of our "events" to show you the latest!

Not the most attractive picture of Kinsley but I had to show you a picture of the dress that she got from "Santa". A Cinderella dress is the only thing she asked for Christmas and she was beyond ecstatic when she opened it. Lately Kinsley has been like a life size dress up doll. She changes into her dress up dresses from the moment she wakes up until I pry them off of her when we have to go somewhere. Even then, when we get home off with the clothes and into her dress up clothes. I have to admit, I love it. She is so much more girly than I ever was. She likes to have her necklaces, bracelets and her hair done. Right now her favorite princess is Cinderella (hence the dress) but she loves all of them. I don't know about you, but my favorite princess is Ariel. So that is Kinsley in a nutshell.

Trains, trains and more trains. Cooper is OFFICIALLY obsessed. This is the gift that he was so excited about. He is hilarious because he calls them "choo choo rides". He loves to look at them, to play with them, to hear them, to ride them. Anything involving a train and Cooper will spot it out! I love that he has something that he is so into.

Us spoiled Southern Californians got a downpour of rain for about a week and half in January. I honestly don't know how you Washington girls do it. It is such an effort to get the kids in and out of the car when it is raining so hard. If I didn't have kids I would have LOVED the rain, because I love looking at the rain and lighting candles and having soup. But when you have the kids they get a little cabin feverish! :) One day Kinsley and I got all dressed up and played in the puddles. It was so much fun!

Chris had his alumni baseball game and it is sad because there a fewer and fewer guys from our "era" that are coming. Granted we just had a week and half of rain so I think some of them that had to travel thought the game would be cancelled. But the day of the game the sun showed itself for the first time in a while so they still had the game. Even though there weren't as many wives to talk to, we had a blast. The kids LOVE watching their daddy play baseball. They would yell to him right as he was at bat. It was awesome. Chris loved having his kiddos cheering him on.

Chris loves teaching Cooper to play baseball. He is gently "encouraging" Cooper to bat left handed. Babe, are you thinking scholarship?? :) But no, Chris is seriously adorable when he is playing with the kids. He loves playing with them and teaching them new things. He gets so proud and just smiles those million dollar smiles when the kids do something that he has taught them.

Such a fun day!!

This was our Valentines dinner. King crab legs, mashed potatoes and spinach.(I know the table setup is a little sad, but crab is messy!:) It was SOOOOO yummy. Chris and I both love crab but never buy it because it is so darn expensive but it is fun to splurge every once in a while. We put the kids down early and ate dinner and just talked. It is so nice to have a time to just sit with your husband, knowing that you are not going to be interrupted. I love that I have fallen more in love with Chris as every year has gone by. I feel soooo blessed to call him my husband. I love my Valentine! :)

I hate these plates! They are the plates I registered for when we got married and my tastes have changed immensely since then. My mom actually got me new plates that I picked out, but I want to save them for when we move into a bigger place. So for now, this is what we got! :)

These are the flowers Chris got for me for Valentines. They looked a lot better but I took this picture after they were 5 days old.

When Chris walked in with my flowers he also bought some for Kinsley. It was PRECIOUS!!! These are them, but again they look really sad, but they were really pretty. Kinsley loved saying "Mommy those are your flowers and these are MY flowers." I fell more in love with that man at that moment! He was so thoughtful!

And Sara, these are for you. I know I told you I would do these a long time ago but I am just now getting them on the computer for you!! I think yours are SOOOOO much better, but these are my attempts!! Yours are what I am going to strive for! :)

Love to all of you!!

A little town called Weatherford

Ever since I was a little girl we have gone to my grandmother's house (yes, it has to be grandmother, she won't have it any other way :)) and celebrate what we call our Cooper Christmas. We celebrate it a week before Christmas day. When we lived in Texas we went every year, but since we moved to California we go as often as we can. We were fortunate enough to go there this year. It is and will always be one of my favorite places on earth. My grandmother lives on a farm so when we were young we would play in the barn, walk to the tank (pond) and play in the creek. My grandmother and Big Dad raised cattle, sheep and chickens. I have seen my Big Dad deliver calves and have seen them branded. It was just one of those places that will forever be engraved in my childhood.

This is my grandmother and the kids LOVED her. She handled the chaos of children really well, since she lives on her own usually.

Looking at her house from the barn.

Inside the barn! There was a ton of hay and there was a rope from the ceiling that I would swing on from hay bale to hay bale when I was a kid. The kids were too young to swing but they had fun jumping in the hay anyway.

Going to see the cows!

My mom and the kids! Cooper kept saying "Ride them" and try to walk up to the cows. There was one bull that was eyeing us, so we kept our distance! :)

My Aunt Kittie! She is like my second mom. I seriously ADORE this woman.

My dad with the kids!

Throwing rocks into the creek. Cooper couldn't get enough of it! I wish we had a place like that for him to go to all the time!

OOOPPPPSSSS! Duplicate! :)

He's hilarious! Cooper got his name because it is my mom's maiden name.

Picking up pecans in the orchard. My grandmother and Big Dad grew the pecan orchard and would sell their pecans for a little bit of profit. I was raised on pecans! :)

Our profits!

Cracking and shelling the pecans!

This is actually where I got engaged. Chris asked me right in front of this silo while we were sitting on this old tool box (which isn't there anymore). We sat and talked forever and then at the end he popped the question. He said he wanted to ask me at my grandmothers house because he knew that this was one of my favorite places. I love that I can say this is where I got engaged. And right after he asked me I ran in the house and told my family and my grandmother. She was so PROUD that he did it at her house!

The pecan orchard. Obviously not in season!

I loved this wheel barrel.

The back of the barn.

Just a few of my 2nd cousins. There were 58 of us that came to my grandmothers house. It is all my mom's siblings and their kids and grandkids. It was so fun to see all our family that we don't see very often.

After lunch we always go on a hay ride! Pulled by a JOHN DEERE tractor of course! :)

The barn.

My brother with the kids. I love him so much and wish I saw him more often!

I just loved this picture of inside the barn.

A Texas sunset!

My grandmother is one of the strongest women I know. She has had more trials in her life than any one I have ever known and she still has an unwavering faith in our Lord. I love her so much and consider it pure joy to call her "Grandmother".