H-town Trip

I know its really dumb to call Houston H-town but I can't resist.  My dad was planning for months to have all the kids to fly down for my mom's birthday this year.  With Shawn's schedule between interviews and other nonsense he really didn't have a lot of time to go visit so he came up with the brilliant plan of having me go by myself.  I was sad the kids wouldn't see their cousins and then 30 seconds later I realized how genius this plan was.  My husband is awesome.  It was so fun!  My mom had NO CLUE we were in town and it was so fun to surprise her.  I left Thursday morning to catch a flight at 6 am, yes it was early but I was so excited I really didn't care that much!  Shady picked me up and we hung out in Katy for a while and I whipped up a birthday cake for my mom.  It turned out pretty well considering I didn't have all my decorating things, and more importantly it tasted really good.  Bethy did a great job pretending it was her project so my mom wouldn't suspect anything.  We finished the night eating Lupe fajitas and I ate more than my fair share of the beef and shrimp.  Sorry to those that didn't get any.  We don't eat much beef up here so I had to get as much as I could!  Friday we spent shopping and then going out to dinner for some more beef.  It was so much fun and would have been perfect if Shady had not gotten in a car accident.  I won't lie we still had a great time and I loved getting to share two desserts with Poodle.  Such a tiny person never eats that much so I definitely had my fill of desserts too.  It was awesome.  Friday we made it out to Brazos Bend to check out the alligators.  I have never seen it so busy, but we managed to have fun anyway.  We saw plenty of gators and I didn't even make it around the entire lake.  The rest of the day was spent laughing with Poodle and Fernash and making sure I got some beef bbq in my system before making it back home.  I really think I ate about half a cow while I was there.  It was glorious.  Sunday was really great, sweet baby Adam was blessed and it was so fun to see everyone before I headed to the airport.  I was so good to pack the night before and be all prepared and then proceeded to leave my suitcase at my parents house.  It was not my finest moment but my siblings got a kick out of it so oh well.  Since I was the only one not getting to participate in the Easter eegg hunt Mabel was my proxy and I'm sure she did WAY better than I would have.  She found the big prize for me, I was very excited when I opened my eggs.  Thanks Mabel! It was an awesome weekend and I loved getting to see my family.  Thanks to Shawn for taking such good care of the kids while I was gone.  I have the best family ever!

I even got to make it to Asher's birthday!  My brother's kids are so friendly!  They've meet me once and came up right away and give me a hug. They're awesome.

My mom and her cake, can I please look like that when I'm 60!?  

I was totally jealous of my sister's vanity plates, awesome.  

And the gators were fun to see too.

Violet needed her picture taken too.  And even though I didn't have any of my own kids there it kind of felt like I did because my mom likes to see how close she can get to a gator before being eaten.  We still love her though.  

Oh beef bbq how I miss thee.  I would have eaten more but was so full from the previous nights of gorging on food.  

I love this girl, I can't say how excited I am for her and Caroline to be reunited! I can't believe how old they are, so weird.  

Pinkwood Derby

I'm a little behind on blogging to I'm going back a few weeks to Caroline's pinkwood derby.  I guess the church leaders here felt like girls should have the chance to build their own pinewood derby cars so they just made up their own title.  Caroline was so excited about it and loved getting to work on her car.  Actually Shawn may have enjoyed the process more.  He looked up online how to make a winning car with only three wheels that touch the track and everything. It may not have looked like much but it did pretty well.

Caroline's is the pink one on the far right.  We need to think of an awesome name for hers next year.  With a last name like Funk I feel like we could come up with something good.  It won first in the initial heat and pretty well after that.  She didn't make the finals but oh well, there's always next year.

Caroline with her buddies Annabeth, and Ayva.

The boys really loved watching the cars race, Devin may have been a little jealous that he didn't get to make a car.  I told him his time would come and not to worry.  

Caroline and her loot. The stake did a huge activity in addition to the derby and Caroline had so much fun.  I thought it went pretty well despite the fact they told me the wrong time her car would be racing and I missed it.  I was a bit peeved.  

Since parents were specifically asked NOT to come to the derby (so dumb I know) the boys and I headed over to an Easter Egg hunt put on by Vanderbilt.  Honestly they wouldn't have made it the entire time of the derby anyways so it wasn't a big deal.  Plus this place had donut holes and candy, a no-brainer if you ask me!  We even showed up a few minutes early so the boys got to help hid the eggs.  Not a bad deal!

The boys were VERY happy and ate as many donut holes as they could, or as many as I let them, which was at least 10 each.  I swear they could have taken down a tray by themselves.  I did make them eat plenty of fruit too.  And to be honest if I could eat 10 donut holes and get away with it I totally would!  Oh to be young and have the Funk metabolism.  

My Graham cake with his loot.

Devin did pretty well himself too.  

This kid is always making faces.

And my sweet giant.  

While Shawn was super excited about Caroline's car he did make sure she helped do things when it was safe.  I thought this picture was too cute.  It was a great day and hopefully next year Caroline's car will make it to the finals!

Really late birthday post

I know its been almost a month since my birthday but I wanted to post about it anyway.  This is my last year in my 20's which is a little weird for me but I don't think I care so much.  In fact I was really happy that finally this year no one will make fun of me for being young.  I was wrong.  My brother made fun of me for not being 30 yet and one of my good friends here had no idea she was 12 years older than me.  So when someone asked me if I'm at an age that I don't want to disclose my age I told her I would never get to that point because I've always been teased about how young I am.  I guess having a kid at 20 does have one perk!  I loved getting calls and texts all day and the kids made sure to wish me happy birthday the second they woke up.  We had some fajitas for dinner but it really just made me want to go have some true Tex Mex from Houston.  Oh well.  It was a great day and I'm kind of excited to turn 30 next year!

I had made a lot of cake recently and really needed a change.  This coconut cheesecake was so good the perfect balance of sweetness and richness.  I want more right now!

Here is what Devin made for me.  I'm really not sure what they are but felt the need to document it.  It was really sweet of him.

Here is the card Caroline made for me.

Here is the note inside.  She is a very thoughtful kid.  Love her!  Thanks to everyone who made my birthday great!

The big reveal!!!

This has been a very exciting week.  Monday we found out we were having a boy and today we found out that we will be moving to DALLAS in a little over a year!  I'm so excited!  The kids were so happy when I told them.  Well Graham was excited but I don't think he knew why he should be.  Caroline and Devin both jumped up and down when I told them and said, "Yes we get to live closer to cousins!"  I"m so excited to be closer to family and get to see baby boy Funk and baby Adam play together.  But really I'm very excited for Shawn too.  Its going to be a great experience for him.  I am so proud of him, he works REALLY, REALLY hard and deserves to go to such a great program.  I can't wait to get to eat beef bbq, tex mex and for the kids to get to know their cousins better!  Its going to be great!  We're celebrating this weekend with some Texas sheet cake and Blue Bell, it doesn't get much better!  Let the count down begin!

Drum Roll Please...

Most of you may know this but we are adding another BOY into the family!  I kind of thought it was a girl and then remembered that I"m always wrong so I wasn't too surprised by the fact its a boy.  Before I told the kids what we were having I asked them what they thought it was.  Graham said a girl and when I asked him why he said, "Because I like Caroline."   We told the kids and Devin was the only one that was excited.  She was noticeably more irritable towards her brothers for the rest of the night.  Then my brother reminded me that being outnumbered 3 to 1 isn't too bad.  She felt much better after I told her Uncle Ryan is out numbered 5 to 1.  We're excited for the little guy to come this summer and even more excited that he'll have tons of boy cousins to play with.  He'll have two boy cousins on the Reed side of the family and two, possibly three on the Funk side.  Its the year of the boy and we're happy to add to the numbers!

Back to normal

Well after two LONG weeks of spring break the kids went back to school last week and I have to say now that we are back in a schedule things are so much better.  The boys still fight but its much less now that they are not with each other all day and I've realized its just part of being brothers.  Last week started out on a nice note.  As I was leaving volleyball I got a phone call saying I had a delivery waiting to be delivered when I got home.  I was so excited and raced home to see what it was.  I was very excited to see Sheri had sent me an edible arraignment because she awesome and thought it would cheer me up.  It did, a lot.  The fruit was gone in about 5 minutes and the card made me laugh out loud.  It was just what I needed to start off the week.
The kids also had their art show at school so we made sure to head over after school to check out their creations.  The kids really love going to art and their teacher told me how much he enjoys having them in his class, that's always nice to hear.  We even got pizza for dinner that night and I didn't even cry about it.  See what I mean about last week being great?  I also got to bake with some friends and help another friend make a strawberry cake from scratch for her little boys birthday.  Not a bad week if you ask me.  And now this week we find out the gender of the baby and where we will be moving next year.   I"m so excited!

It was so pretty and tasty, but it didn't last long once I gave the kids the ok to rip into it. 

This is 5 minutes later.  I managed to save a few chocolate covered strawberries for Shawn but that was it!

Here is Devin with the picture he made for the art show.  I think its supposed to be some kind of bug.  

And here he is voting for one of his favorites.  He was really sweet and made sure to vote for Caroline's picture, she however did not return the favor.  

And Caroline with her picture.  And I'm realizing these are really fuzzy pictures, sorry!