The entrance and a cleared fence row

This is the entrance to the front of our place. We finished it right before school ended this year, but I haven't taken any pictures until now. We still don't have it landscaped, but I was so excited to finally finish it. I may be alot of things, but a welder's helper is NOT one of them. I tried, but bless his heart, I'm sure my husband was close to strangling me several times. :) He is so amazing! He can do ANYTHING!

This is just a close up of the left side of the entrance. He's had the drill bits for 10+ years and always wanted to build an entrance and use them....He was just waiting for the right place!

This is our "back yard" fence row to the right of our house meeting Pasture 4. When we moved on the place, this is how pretty much every fence row looked. It's a daunting task to know that we have so few cleared and so many more to go, honestly....BUT the after pictures make it SO worth it!!!

A pic of the destruction that my husband is leaving behind him! Honestly, he does all of the work himself....the kids and I just pull brush and anything else that we can do to help out....He is such a hard worker! I am so lucky to have him and that he loves this place like I do.

The finished product....check out the brush piles behind it...and there's another huge brush pile in Pasture 4 from the front of the fence row that we pushed over there to burn so that it wouldn't be close to the house. I LOVE being able to look out and see the cows over in Pasture 4 now!!! It's great! Now my job starts...I'm responsible for keeping all of these new, pretty fence rows sprayed so that the weeds, trees, etc. don't overtake us again! ;)

Kyle had a first today....

This is my oldest, Kyle. He will be 13 in a few weeks (which I am STILL trying to wrap my brain around!!!). He had some blood work done the other day, and his bilirubin levels came back high, so today we had to go have an ultrasound of his liver done. His main concern when he heard "ultrasound" was that those were only for pregnant women. :) After the tech explained that you can have them for a variety of reasons, he felt better about it. They didn't find anything abnormal that she could tell, but we have to wait for the official word from the dr. in a few days. The good thing about today is that he was really intrigued by the ultrasound and asked all sorts of questions and really seemed to be at ease with everything that was going on when we left.

He's my hypochondriac child....If he sneezes, he's got the flu and dying. :) We give him a hard time about it...It amazes me how all of my children are SO different.

Grapeland Safari

Today my Mom, my sister-in-law, and I took all of the kiddos to the Grapeland drive-thru safari. We were a little skeptical about how it was going to turn out, but we had the BEST time!!! The people that own it are super nice, and the kids LOVED it! My little niece is 3, and she wasn't quite sure about letting the animals stick their head in the window to eat...her approach was to dump the feed on the ground as soon as the animals got close to the window!!! :)



This little goat enjoyed the kids almost as much as they fell in love with him. They wanted to bring him home...I told them he couldn't ride in the Suburban. :) He would get on all of their backs, but Katie's hair was his favorite!!!

Gotta admit that it's a little intimidating seeing this big guy running at you for feed. I don't blame Caroline for dumping hers!

This pic is for my Mom and my sis-in-law (who keep teasing me that this is my new best friend)...This guy snuck up on me while I was taking pictures and nearly made me crawl into my sister-in-law's lap...They had more fun laughing at me than they had with the rest of the trip. I'll never live this down....Me...who will do ANYTHING on a farm or ranch...was scared of a camel. :)

Cost of admission to the safari: $35

Cost of a bucket of feed: $10

Seeing my Mom in a "train": PRICELESS

:) Love you, Mom! This day was GREAT! Thank you so much!

Vacation!!!!

This last week we went to Lake Whitney for our family vacation, and we had a BLAST!!!! My husband grew up there, so I've been wanting to go to see his old "stomping grounds". :) The lake is absolutely beautiful. Limestone cliffs, clear water...It is gorgeous. We rented a loft right on the lake, and when we weren't jumping off cliffs or in the boat tubing, we were in the pool. I think I swam more the last week than all of the other times put together in my whole life! I think that we're going to make this a yearly get-away. The kids liked it so much that Terry was teasing and said, "So, do y'all want to sell all of the cows and move up here?"....and EVERY ONE of them agreed! I couldn't believe it!!!! :) Too bad mean old Mom vetoed it! ;)

Korey at the Whitney dam

Kyle jumping off of our "favorite" cliff right outside our loft

My wonderful husband and me....I love this man SO much!!!! I am absolutely the luckiest girl in the world!

Terry and the kids downstream from the Whitney dam. The first day that we got there, the river was way down because they hadn't been opening up the dam, but the second day that we were there, they did, and all of this was underwater.

The Katy Bridge

The catwalk under the Katy Bridge....the little piece of metal going down the middle of the bridge is the catwalk.....You have to walk that thing with no handrails, etc. to get to the part of the bridge that you jump from. They've put up all types of metal screens and things to keep people out, but they just keep cutting it and going through to jump, so now they have taken about 5 guardrails and welded them all of the way across the walkway so that people can't get out to it anymore.

Katie after climbing a cliff :)

Birthday boy :)

Today is my baby boy's birthday, and I cannot believe that his is 8!!!!! I think I'm having an even harder time with it because he's at his Daddy's today, so I am missing him like crazy. I love all of my kiddos with all of my heart, but each one is SO completely different. They all have their individual personalities and talents, but today is all about Korey. He is my little man. He has such a huge heart. He is such a rough and tumble kid....loves football and baseball, but has such a sympathetic heart that it is amazing. He's the one that will be right beside you if you're feeling bad. He's not afraid to show affection at all. He would do absolutely anything in the world for anybody. He is so strong and such a hard worker. The child will stay outside and help you until you just absolutely MAKE him go in. He's just such an all around sweetheart! I am so proud of him!!!!! This year, he completed first grade, played football for the first time (and was AWESOME), he made All-Stars (and it was his first time to play "real" ball), and brought countless happy memories to his proud Mom!!!!

One of my favorite memories of Korey is when he was smaller in our house in Giddings, he would take a shower and sing this through the whole thing:

"I love my Mommy. I love my Mommy. I love my Mommy....'cause she's so fweet!"

Every time that I think of that, it brings the biggest smile to my face. He's such a sweet and loving little man.....I couldn't be more proud, and I can't WAIT until he gets home tomorrow!!!!!

A true blond moment...

My sweetheart of a daughter pulled a good one today....My sister-in-law and niece took us to Huntsville because Kyle had a doctor's appointment and my truck was in the shop. After Kyle's appointment, we decided to go eat, and Katie picked Golden Corral (which I didn't mind because you can have a little bit of everything....and honestly, I LOVE their rolls!!!) Anyway, my very intelligent, VERY blond daughter got her plate and comes back to the table. We are all sitting around eating and she says, "Mama, their macaroni & cheese is good, but they make it with green beans in it!!!" I thought that Dawn and I were going to DIE laughing....Just because the macaroni happened to be next to the green beans and one of the green beans had fallen in her macaroni, she was convinced that the crazy people at Golden Corral put green beans in their macaroni & cheese....Crazy girl & a TRUE blond!!!

A huge understatement....

It's been a while since I've written.... :) Actually, a "while" is nearly a year, and that is so pitiful. I have decided that I need to make this a priority. With so many things going on in our life, I want to share them and document them.

Let's see...Where to start?! Since last year, I've gotten a new truck (awesome Christmas present, honey!!!), I've officially coached for the first time EVER (and we won the season!), the kids have grown SO much, and I'm still waking up every morning as the luckiest girl in the world (also thanks to my gorgeous husband)!!!!! There have actually been alot of firsts in the past year. I also got my first gun. We built our first pipe entrance. We've moved onto the place and out of the rent house. I just realized that if I keep trying to update the blog, we'll be here FOREVER....So, let's move on to a first that happened today:

I saw a hawk catch a rabbit for the first time ever....It was amazing!!! I do feel responsible because I was shredding, and I ran the rabbit out of it's hole, and before I realized what was happening a hawk swooped down and picked up the rabbit...Then he took it under this huge oak tree that was not that far from where I was shredding. He acted like he wasn't even worried about me...only his next meal. I did get a few pics of him with my phone, but they didn't turn out that great. We have several hawks around here, and they really are gorgeous birds.

I'll try to post some pics of the outside changes that have taken place in the past year....Hopefully I'll have them on here some time this week.