Teddy Bear Tea 2013

I really cannot believe it but this was our 4th year at the teddy bear tea at the St. Regis in Houston.  

I love that Kate still wants to go and we will go as long as she is willing:)

This year we went again with Eden and her Mom.
However, as a delightful addition,

 Libbie and Shelly came as well.

I cannot even begin to tell you how cute and happy these girls were.

 They laughed and played.  They had a great time!



Eden, Kate, Libbie

None of our girls wanted to wear their crowns:)





Look how happy my girl is:)

Muffy, the Ice Princess, has been there forever.  She was there 12-13 years ago when I took Will.



Amy and Eden





Shelly and Miss Libbie




So Libbie is completely out of focus but I love this photo.  Kate was so careful to be sure that Libbie and Eden were equally included ( I gave her a little lesson on that beforehand since Libbie and Eden did not know one another).

Here is Kate is pointing out the gorgeous crystal chandelier to her friends.  She loves sparkly...



For the past few years, Kate has been terrified of the Teddy Bear at this tea.  She actually does not like any characters in costume.  I told her that she needed to not make a big fuss about it this year.  So, I was very excited to see her actually reaching out to the Teddy Bear with a huge smile.






Libbie and Kate LOVED the rocking horses...







It kind of makes me sad because Kate really wants a horsey for Christmas but she is really too old for the ones I have seen.  I wish I had gotten her one years ago as she loves them.

They also decorated t-shirts and cookies...




















I know I take and post way too many snapshots of these things but they are the moments that fill me with JOY and we love looking back over them from year to year.





Harry has been really, really sick with the flu.  He had 105 fever last night and I was frantically texting with our pediatrician through the night.  He is still pretty sick but his fever is lower.  I am hoping that he bounces back for Christmas and that Kate and I stay healthy (Dave and Will have both already had it last week!)  Harry also got hurt last week at a lacrosse tournament and separated something in his collarbone/shoulder so he has had a tough time of it.

the 4th of July 2013

I need to get more creative with my blog titles.  Anyway, Our 4th of July was fun but a bit disjointed this year. Harry was graciously invited to a resort (just outside of town) with a family for a few days so he was gone most of the day. Ironically, some of our good friends Hoot and family were also at the resort and they brought Harry home and stayed for dinner!  We love "the Hoot family" so much.  And our kiddos have very special friendships as well.  They are "salt of the earth" good people.

So, our day started kind of early. Dave and Will went off to the DPS to practice parallel parking as a driving license test is coming up for him.  Apparently, you can practice at the DPS when they are closed and loads of people here practice the parallel parking because honestly in Texas that is not something we do a lot of.  But I digress...

Each year our neighborhood hosts a sweet bike parade and carnival.  It is very nice but very HOT.  I was soaked by the time we went the block and half to the school for the carnival.  With Harry gone and Will too old, we though maybe we'd skip it this year.  But NO WAY!  Kate is all about the 4th of July and she was so excited to go.  Seriously, you would have thought it was Christmas morning by Kate's excitement.

I had a very cute red, white and blue dress and bow all set for Kate but she vetoed it.  She said the dress might get in the way in the hula hoop contest (which she won last year and the year before) and she could not wear the bow with her bike helmet.  So we grabbed the whatever we could find.  Also, because we are slackers, we did not decorate her bike.

Kate did some crafts and got some painting on her arm.  Will was going to the Astros game with a bunch of his friends so Kate desperately wanted Dave to take her.  She got an Astro's baseball on her arm to seal the deal:)

So, onto the hula hoop contest...  Kate told me before we left for the parade.  "Mom it is going to be a lot tougher this year to win."  I said, "Why?"  She then told me that now that she was 7 she was in the 7-9 age group and those 9 year olds are really good.  Kate is not super competitive at all but she does like hula hooping and she is really good at it.

There was a window right behind her and it was so crowded that I could not move to the other side to take pictures.  Kate did VERY well in the hula hoop contest.  I thought she would win.  It was down to 3 girls.  And then they did the flamingo.  Kate can do it but she did not know she had to keep her foot up for the whole second song. So she put her foot up and then set it down and the DJ wanted them to keep it up.  So the the other girls tied for 1st and she came in 2nd.  She was happy with that!  I was happy that there were no junky stuffed animal prizes for 2nd place as I just cleaned out our play room!

I posted a video of her in the hula hoop contest on Instagram.  You can see it here. It really is better than these pictures and it is 15 seconds:) And her dancing here  (SO cute!).

After the carnival, I went shopping and started preparing dinner for our guests.  And Dave and Kate took off to the Astros game.   Dave sent me this from his phone:)

Later in the day, Shelly and family arrived and were kind enough to bring Harry home with them.  We had a casual dinner.  Poor Hoot was feeling sick so he laid on the couch most of the time.  And Libbie was exhausted but she rallied to have a giggly good time with Kate.  I absolutely LOVE seeing these girls play.  They just have the best time.  And they are pretty rough and tumble too.  They wrestle and belly bump!

There is a story behind this castle.  We are doing a MAJOR purge of our house (more on that soon) and we started with the playroom.  We literally got rid of half the stuff in there.  Kate fell in love with this castle when we went to Disney a few years ago.  Santa bought it for Christmas that year but she never plays with it.  Libbie loves it and plays with it every time she comes here.  So Kate decided to give it to Libbie.  It was very sweet.

After dinner we did a few fireworks.  Stephen and Shelly always bring my boys fireworks (which they LOVE).  Thank you for bringing them!!!

I love how Kate is dancing with JOY at Libbie's neon sparkler.  That is so Kate.  She LOVES Libbie so much!

Poor Hoot tried his best to have fun.  I sure hope he is feeling better today.

  LOVE this one of Will and Libbie!

Unfortunately, it started to drizzle and Owen and Harry were not feeling well so the night came to a early and sudden end.

  On the 3rd, it was just me, Kate and Dave and we took Kate swimming.  I just wanted to share her cute patriotic suit with y'all because it is probably my favorite suit this year...

{Instagram}

Of course, once all the peanuts were fnally together, I had to get a few pictures:)

I hope y'all had a safe and happy 4th of July!  

Dinner with the Hoots {Sunday Snapshot}

We love getting together with Hoot's Mama and family.  In fact, Kate literally counts down the days until Libbie comes over. Yesterday, when she woke up, the first words out of her mouth (even before she opened her eyes) were "Libbie comes today!" Our whole family really enjoys the company of their whole family.  So, they came over for dinner last night and we had a great time as always.

We had a really yummy dinner (menu and details below) but the hi-light of the night was watching these girls play together.  The boys had a lot of fun too but Libbie and Kate had a BLAST!  Libbie is just a funny little HAM!  We did a little photo shoot and I have a 100 photos to go through but wanted to pop a few up today.....

{taken with a D700, 24-70mm 2.8 lens, 800 IS0, f/3.2, 1/320}

{taken with a D700, 24-70mm 2.8 lens, 800 IS0, f/3.2, 1/320}

I also ran the Florabella Envy action from Luxe II (link on sidebar) on both images and lowered the opacity.  Finally, I smoothed out Kate's skin with a Florabella natural skin action (from the retouch collection) a little too.  It is GREAT! I highly recommend these actions.  Kate is having a major skin problem right now that I will blog about another time but let me tell you it is a NIGHTMARE and now I have it too.

Okay, now onto last night's menu.  Dave and I really enjoy cooking and entertaining and I like to kind of keep track of some recipes on here.

Appetizers:

Avacado, Salsa, Cheese Puffs

Fig and Brie Bites

NOTES: I was making both of these for the first time and they were delicious BUT I would add some spice to the avocado puffs next time (maybe a jalapeno or some chipotle powder OR pepper jack cheese instead of cream cheese...yes that is it!).  I did have one or two of these for breakfast this morning too and the avocado puffs were even better warmed up the next day!  So good!

Main Course:


Dave's famous slow smoked beef brisket (so yummy!)
Baked Idaho and sweet potatoes with all the fixins
Broccoli slaw (I love this!)  Cook Illustrated recipe.

And finally for dessert...Harry helped me make Blackberry Cobbler
(served with BlueBell Homemade Vanilla ice cream)




Pioneer Woman 

Kate was SO excited for them to come!!!! She set the table. She made placecards (all her own idea...she started them while I was in the shower).

{sometimes we call Shelly "Shirley" for fun}

As I said, after dinner, Shelly and I took the girls to a nearby park and took about 200 quick photos (both of us us snapping away at once) of the girls.  I have not had time to go through them all but I did spy some really cute ones of the girls together. I am sure my next post will be a "part two" as we had quite a lot of after dinner activities and photos (fireworks, sparklers, dancing, violin).  I am just too lazy to upload them now.

You can see more Sunday Snaphsots here