Summer Lovin ... Had Us a Blast!

Now that the summer is over I finally have some time to post on my blog. I know I need to keep up better with this, but it seems of late that I am too busy reading other people's blogs :). We have had the BEST summer ever. We played outside like mad dogs, did tons of stuff with friends, went to the circus, went to the BEST wedding ever in the Hill Country for our friends Steph and Justin, cooked outside almost every night, put up a play house for the girls, visited my grandparents and my aunt and uncles in Illinois, I went to DC three times, and Toronto once, Rylie girl came for a visit, I turned 30, Andy turned 29, our tiny baby that was JUST in my belly turned 2, Queenie had a birthday, we finished our kitchen, we went to the PAUL MCCARTNEY concert, I made tons of cupcake pops (my new passion), Lucie learned to talk, Lennon learned to chill out (mostly). It has just been GREAT! These pics are not in chronological order, sorry.

PS- I need to add some more b-day pics from my 30th and our trip to Illinois. These will be posted soon!


Lulu at Queenie's B-day breakfast. She NEVER cries so I had to post this!

Seriously, could this be any more classic? Me, always posing, and my beautiful prissy (not) daughter with her finger up her nose.

My two favorite homeboys.

Meggie and Queenie! Happy Birthday Queenie! Glad you are still around at 21!

Lucie wearing the sunglasses Aunt Elaine bought her! SHE LOVES THEM!!!!!

Opening presents at Lucie's 2nd Birthday. Blayne's like ... uh huh ... I want what is in the bag :)

Uncle Jack with his favorite chicas!

Lucie waiting for her birthday to start. I made her have an Elmo party. Lucie is so silly, she doesn't have a "favorite" anything. She just likes to hang out with Lennon and me and Andy. No tv character, no favorite color, nothing she's childishly crazy over. Just her family. I LOVE IT! I know it is wrong, so wrong. But I really love that she just wants to be with us! WE are her favorite :)

Mimi bought this for Lu's birthday. A bow holder! Our friend in Ennis made it. Amanda Zabonik http://www.myspace.com/redbarncandlecompany . She also makes seriously THE BEST candles EVER! They burn twice as long at Tyler candles and they smell better and they are cheaper. GO TO HER SITE!

I made some Elmo cake pops for Lucie's birthday party. They are SO good and I have pretty much become obsessed with making these things now. They are just TOO cute!

Andy and I were SO blessed and were able to go to the Paul McCartney Concert. It was pretty much my idea of heaven. I just needed three other guys up on stage with him. The concert was at the new Cowboy's stadium and was just amazing! At the very end he finally put some images up on Jerry's screen, this was, " Here Comes the Sun". Heaven. For Me.

At the show! Big dork Andy!

Paul on the screen. He was so amazing! Light hearted, young, played for three hours straight, played about 15 different guitars, moved me, made me so thankful for my parents, made me feel good about my kid's names, just really really made me happy!

Serving drinks for our friends in our suite for the Paul McCartney concert.

At Lu's birthday party at Teressa's. All the mommies with their babes :)

CHEESE - Happy 2nd Birthday!!!!

My kids on the street in Oak Cliff. Should I say anymore?

River 09! We went a couple of times this summer. Brother Jack actually made it out this trip so I was super happy! We rented an awesome house that sat right on the river. Loved it loved it loved it!

Me and Val-A-wa!!!

Happy 29th Andrew Bradley Dyke Lopez! You are my best friend and the BEST dad ever! Seriously dude!!! Same team Farvre!

Lennon and I at the Circus. She was trying to be brave :)

We went down on the floor before hand and they got to try on some costumes.

Watching the show ... love this shot!

Breakfast on the new island in the kitchen. They love sitting in the big red chairs!

Lucie AKA the dirtiest baby EVER. I think she had markers, dirt, crayons, worms, Ebola, cooties, I mean everything on her this day. She's super!

Let me out of the house...I'm so dirty, I must live outside with the worms and the other people of the Earth who truly understand me! Lennon, you don't get it. You still freak out when a spec of dirt hovers near you.

All the cousins with Papa Pez!

My Favorite pic of Andy and Lu. I know these girls are going to look at these pictures one day and say, "Mom, what was the deal with those big bows"? Um...really? Can anything be cuter than this?

Looks like trouble ... the FAM on the way to watch fireworks.

Cheesers all around! It blows my mind how much Rylie looks like Mimi Rox.

This is just a little too much JonBenet, but the girls had SO much fun. They had a real tea party with pink cupcakes and got to dress up in whatever they wanted to try on. Blue eyeshadow was the rage and all was pure and perfect in the world for that hour.

What Lennon really did our whole family vacation at the Texan. Poor kid really struggled. She was so excited to spend time with Rylie, but I think, had some hard moments in dealing with the fact she had to share - sometimes.

Me and the girlies with Micky the monkey. He was super cute. He had some moments though ... made me a little nervous.

Our three silly girls with their hats/braclets. They fought over these for three days. They never lost air. Go balloon man!

Our sweet baby Lu playing outside. Too fun! Too cute. Too Lu

Me and my Grandma Millie Candy celebrating my 30th birthday. I love her more than I can express. I want to be all of the things that I love about her. Her bookshelves, her garden, her unfailing love of what she cherishes, her class, her strength, her books, her bleu cheese dressing, her love of the earth, her love of her family, her love of her mother, her love of MY mother, her love of me, her love of her husband, her love of fairies, her love of magic, her love of possibilities, her love of children, her love of animals, her love of love. Love you Grandma!!

My new second cousin. I want to steal him. Look at his face. I also want to steal his mama and have her come hang out with me and my girlies for a weekend. Swap mama stories, life stories, love stories. Love me some Hudson AND Cooper and some Ben and Stacy!

Ummmmm...can you say Candy family resemblence. Laura Varee Vs. Lucie Varee. Auntie - you rock! I'm so glad my girlies have you like I have you!!!!!

Growing up we always took pictures out by the front yard tree. Prom night, homecoming, easter, everything got documented by that tree. It killed me when my parents had to cut the tree down. Such is life I guess. But man it was hard. Don't know how long we will be in this house but, I want as many tree pictures as possible.

Shamless plug...but I'm SUPER proud. My team voted me teammate of the year for 2008. This is me crying like a fool. I had snot coming out of my nose - seriously. NICE. I was insanely humbled and honored and just really floating out of my body.

Some more cake pops. These were for my friend Kate's shower. She didn't know if she was having a girl or boy so I did a mash up. I loved the way they turned out. Seriously these things have become my outlet! She ended up with a boy. Baby Beau. Sweetest baby ever. I got to rock him recently for a good 20 minutes. He tickeled my chest with his tiny little hand and looked right in my eyes the whole time. I *heart* him! Dang it....I'm a little baby crazy right now and craving a little boy, is it that obvious?

Did I mention, I am making diaper cakes also. I just think these make the cutest table center pieces!

I will end on this HOT note. Me and Elizabeth and Val on my 30th. We had SO much fun and I felt so blessed to spend this night celebrating with two of my childhood friends. I know how rare that is and I am so unbelieveably grateful.

FINALLY Catching up

I know I know its been waay too long. No excuses. I will just do a quick re-cap of the last one hundred months and then I promise to keep up with this thing!


Lennon turned 3 in February. We had her party at Boomerangs bounce house place. A week later some kid almost got killed in one of the houses. Whoopsie.


I love this shot of the girls. Look at thier legs. We've noticed that anytime they are together like this they are either holding hands or all tangled up together. I hope that lasts a little longer. They are already fighting over baby dolls and clothes and make-up and boys ... okay not boys but they do fight over daddy a lot!


Here's Miss Lennon on her first day of Montessori school. She's holding her arm all gimpy because she got burned on our treadmill. Seriously. She milked that one for a good three months. School is going MUCH beter for her. About a month in we had a parent teacher conference and they told us that she was having a hard time transisitioning to new activities during the day. That was just weird to me because the girl loves a schedule. I guess she got over it because now she can't wait to get to school.

My sweet little puppy face. Queenie bought us tickets to Baby Loves Disco for Lennon's birthday. We had a blast and the girls were dancing machines.




Lucie was so cute that day. She scared the crap out of us though when she would just go up to any family and act like she belonged to them. We are noticing that she is finally starting to be a little weary of strangers. I never thought I would want her to be that way, but after the 100th time of pealing her off the leg of the random pizza guy or store clerk or homeless person I'm glad she's sticking a little closer to me.



Sorry this is so blury. The Easter babies LOVED getting dressed up. We keep thinking Lucie is going to be our little tom boy but she gets so excited when we put dresses on her now. She's also really into purses and wants to carry one all the time. So who knows? Lennon is absolutely driving me INSANE with her clothes. She wants to wear a dress everyday and it's usually the same little brown and white polka dot dress. I went to Gymboree a few weeks ago and bought her four new dresses which she refuses to wear. We are learing to pick our battles though and she ends up wearing that damn dress about three times a week.


I have been searching for some paintings for my room and couldn't find anything that I really liked. I saw this tree design on a blanket tag my mom bought me for Christmas so I decided to just paint it myself. I've never painted on canvas before so I was pretty pleased with how they turned out.

Silly girls! This is the other outfit that Lennon has to wear at least twice a week.

I will end on this note. Lucie peed in the potty!!!!!!!!!!! She's only done it a couple times since this time, but we are in no rush especially since Aunt Megan tought Lennon how to change Lucie's diapers. This makes up for her teaching Lennon to say "I'm going to pee on you". Which she only says in public places. At the top of her lungs. As she lifts her leg up like a dog. Totally makes up for that.

More to come ... I need to up load some more pics. So that probably means another 6 months ;)

The Buff-a-lents are coming!!!

We took the freakazoids to see some honest to goodness real buffalo this past weekend. It was quite the experience let me tell ya. We drove to the area where the Lewisville Lake dam opens to the Trinity River. Andy's been fly fishing there for the past few weekends and it's actually a really pretty area. They do canoe and kayak riding lessons here also, that will be an adventure we want to tackle this spring.

Anyway, back to the buffalo. We paid our money and then drove down to the meeting point. No one told us this was the meeting point mind you as the lady who took our money just grunted and said drive slow. There were about 30 other people all standing around trying to figure out what to do next. Well, miss personality at the park entrance showed up and opened the gates right under the dam. We all jumped back in our cars and started to follow her. We drove on a dirt road for a few miles then the caravan made an abrupt left turn into a pasture. Now HAD we of known that we would be going on a off road adventure we would all be packed into Andy's Ford F150. But since our guide only spoke caveman we were in my very low to the ground Stratus. There were a couple close calls, but we made it through. We drove another mile or so through the pasture and then came to our destination. Then low and behold another guide showed up and he informed us that we would finally reach the buffalos ... after walking about another 200 meters down the fence line. So off we went in search of the mighty illusive beasts.

He stopped us after a very long walk (maybe it wasn't that long ... we just each had 2o extra pounds we were lugging in the form of small booger faced children so it seemed long). Finally after his numerous attempts at shaking a feed bag and shouting, "Hey Buffalo", I'm not kidding, we saw them! These huge suckers could RUN! A herd of 30 or so buffalo came right up to the fence. The guide told us to not pick up our children and hold them over to pet the animals as they have been known to in his words ... eviscerate children. Nice.

It truly was quite magical staring at these HUGE animals. I just couldn't get over how fast they were and how rough they were with each other fighting over the treats he had for them.

The girls seemed to like it. Lucie kept pointing at them and said that they were "bubba's" which is what she calls dogs. Lennon thought that the baby buff-a-lents were the cutest. I think this is Lennon talk for a buffalo crossed with elephant. Who knows. We were about to leave when Lennon of course needed to use the bathroom. Mind you we are in a open pasture a good five minute walk from the car, in front of 30 other people and of course 30 buffalo. I walked her out into the field behind a mesquite tree as discretely as I could and Miss Lennon got her first experience popping a squat in a field. I was horrified for her but of course she ran up to everyone and yelled "I went pee pee - OUTSIDE". Everyone nervously laughed ... thank God.

It was a fun afternoon and a beautiful day. I am glad that they are slowly but surely building up herds across the US. They estimated that during their prime they were 30 million strong. Mate on buff-a-lents, we sure would like to see you around more.

New Orleans Trip

Andy and I took a mini trip the first weekend in January to New Orleans. I was in town for a meeting and Andy flew in on Saturday to hang out with me for a day. We had such a fun time. After walking around trying to get our bearings we stopped in an awesome patio restaurant and had yummy etouffee and of course some huge beers. We spent the afternoon just walking around and then later that night we took a vampire tour. It was SO creepy! A front was coming in right as it started so the air was all the sudden chilly, there was a full moon and as we were walking up to the meeting point the bells were ringing at the cathedral. The tour was a tad bit cheesy, but fun all the same. We met up with his cousins a little later that night and bar hopped and ended up at the Casino. When we lost $100 bucks in 20 minutes it was time to leave :)

I stayed a few more days there and had a GREAT time. I love love love NOLA. The food, the people, the music, the atmosphere ... all of it. After I got home I did extensive searches on the flood damage caused by Katrina because it blew my mind that you just didn't see any sign of it anywhere. I found out that the main damage was just a few blocks away from where we were. Crazy and extremely sad. Andy and I want to go back and try to donate some of our time to the rebuilding efforts. After visiting I definitely realized why it's so important that this town be restored. We can not lose it's magic!!

I had to laugh at this sign in one of the bars we stopped in. Apparantly to get on the list you had to be super skanky because we saw some hot messes in that bar that didn't make the list.

Here we are taking a carriage ride through the French Quarter. This was really cool! The guide was great and we bribed him into taking us by Brad and Angelin'a house. It's right in the French Quater. Driving by it doesn't look like anything special but I looked it up on line and OMG it's georgeous!

Some Randomness

Wanted to share with you all the strangeness of my children.

Lennon and her "friend" stick. She carried this thing around for a few days and FREAKED out when Dora found it and ate it.

I love this shot. It totally shows all their personalities. Rylie the poser, Lennon the goof and Lucie the giggly baby.

Just threw this in so you could see my new bangs!

Yummy...there is nothing better that clean kids right out the bath in diapers attacking you.

And doing flips.

~

Oh and Lucie got her hair cut. And I really mean hair. Like one strand of hair. Poor baby. Her "lady" as Lennon calls hair dressers is Miss Saint Teressa. Second mother to my children, God send beyond all things Holy. Best thing to ever happen to our family, well except their awesome Grandparents.

I love me some Teressa.

One Million Photos to share

I'M SO SORRY it's taken me so long to update our blog. One of my many resolutions is to make sure to stay of top of this this year.

I thought instead of a big long post with all the details of what we've been doing since November I would just give you the photo montage.

Enjoy. There are a ton of pictures. The quality of most of them suck. I need a new camera. If anyone would like to send me a free one I would gladly accept. Seriously.

Andy and I voted for the first time ever. Now Lennon is OBSESSED with Obama. Nice. My great and seriously missed friend Lori came into town and ran the Turkey Trot with me. I finished in 30 minutes and didn't stop once! Best part...seeing Lennon jumping up and down at the finish line screaming "Go Mommy Go"!We had Thanksgiving at Grandma Candy's and the Frey's complete with our long lost cousins Kia and Little David...

and a bonfire...

and Lennon and Lucie playing with a wild hog skull. Crap. Not one of my best mom moments, but they didn't get worms so back off CPS.

And then it was Christmas. Lucie playing with her Elmo.

Santa brought Lennon a Little Mermaid doll. With willy willy willy long red hair.

Cheese balls
And their favorite. A rocking horse that makes a rocking noise and neighs (well not anymore since I took the batteries out). They seriously fight over this thing. Thanks Papa Pez.

fter Christmas a few folks from my office took my boss Bob out to Glen Rose for his 50th Birthday! So much fun and I highly recommend visiting the lodge if you ever get a chance -http://www.roughcreek.com/. I had to share this picture with everyone so you could see my lodge chic outfit ...which I was later told looked more like an Elmer Fudd outfit.

~

And then Rylie came for a visit. We had so much FUN with her this year :)

I swear they "made" me get dressed up with them.

Andy very deep in thought playing the egg game, and Rylie posing as always. Damnit she's getting big.

Balloon drop at um midnight...well maybe it was 10pm :)

I swear ... a new blog is coming!