Hangin' in Huntsville

Last weekend we went down to Huntsville to visit Obi & CC and see their new lakehouse. It's awesome - 5 bedrooms, a game room, a music room, a sewing closet for Tag to sleep in, bathrooms everywhere you look - basically perfect for our ever-growing family!!! And even better than all the indoor space, it's an outdoor paradise for the kids. There's a dock, a lake, tons of grass, tall trees, dirt, and lots of space for little girls to explore and little boys to dream of exploring. On Thursday night, we got to hang out with our cousins Kim, Michael, Blake and Cory before they had to head to Dallas for a choir contest. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures. Kinsey got to sleep in the game room upstairs and she and Tag both slept great, which was the start to a terrific weekend!
The weather was bizarre to say the least. Friday it was rainy and warm and Saturday it was amazingly beautiful sunny...and freezing cold!!! The dumb weather channel guessers were off by about 20 degrees so we were not very clothing-prepared. Douglas immediately got busy fishing and Kinsey put on her rainboots to hang in the backyard for a while. When the rain kept us inside, CC was prepared with puzzles. She and Kinsey had a great time with an animal puzzle and a cool one with shapes. Kinsey learned what a parallelogram is and we were educated by Robert on the difference between a rhombus and a trapezoid (my math genius friend Susan is totally going to write me off after last week's post about forgetting the circumference of a circle and now this!).

When Hailey and her family came over Friday afternoon, we put the girls in their boots and stripped them down to let them play in the mud. They played for a couple of hours out there and had a blast. Apparently sticks, mud, and puddles are endlessly entertaining.

Here are some shots of them exploring the side of the yard where the water comes in

Daddy and Uncle Brian were busy fishing to catch some more dinner for us. Kinsey was pretty excited to see a fish up close.
Kinsey agreed to kiss the next one...And Hailey looked at her uncle like he was insane for even asking her to kiss that thing!Brian caught a huge catfish - apparently they've been trying to catch this one for a while and he's been stealing hooks. The neighbor even came over to check it out. Douglas caught another big catfish, both of which we ate for dinner. Very tasty. And he caught a big bass, too, but had to throw that one back in. I was running to get the camera to take a pic of this fish when I glanced over and saw Tag pulling up to his first stand!! He was so proud of himself! And after that, he was constantly pulling up on everything he could find. Especially the stairs which I was constantly having to pull him off of. We got to spend some time with our sweet new little boy Walker. He is 2 months now and getting so big! Tag was really enamored with Obi & CC's dog Jack. He and Uncle Robert played with him quite a bit. We're pretty sure Tag's first official word was spoken on this trip "Aaack" It was really cute and he was pretty clearly saying Jack. Saturday was crazy different weather. Like I said, it was a crazy beautiful, bluebird day, as Pops would say, but it was like 40 degrees when we woke up! Luckily I had a jacket for Kinsey, but we kept Tag inside most of the day. He didn't mind because we had some visitors - Candy's brother Larry and his wife Beverly were there with their grandson Clay. Clay's Mom and Dad and brothers were coming back through on their way home from Dallas that evening, so he came to visit. They also brought Clay's family dog Bella, who was a huge hit with all of the kids. She was super sweet and very patient with my shrieking daughter. And she loved Tag and his big ol' kisses. Clay was awesome - we hadn't seen him in a couple of years and didn't realize how terrific he was with kids. We were hoping we could hire him as a nanny but unfortunately he seems pretty busy with his current career path. Here he is swinging Kinsey. This is the famous Obi swing that you've seen many times on this blog. It goes crazy high and spins all around. The kids love it. And now it has the added benefit of appearing to swing out over the water, which makes the girls scream even more!Aunt Crystal had an awesome idea to make homemade playdough. The girls were way excited and it was perfect because they were getting pretty cold out there, even if they wouldn't admit it. Their favorite part was smushing the food coloring into the playdough. The colors turned out pretty cool, except for the purple which came out kind of grey. Great idea Aunt Crystal! We had such a great time and we hated to leave. Kinsey is getting to an age where she starts to get upset when we have to go home, so we always try to have something cool to look foward to, like the next visit. She and her brother will be hanging with the Huntsville crew again at the end of April. See you guys soon!