At the lake in Illinois

Yep, I found more photos folks! Like I said a few weeks ago, I am going to try and post more blogs, which means I have to space out the photos that I take!

Lilah and her boys at the lake: Uncle 'Ry-Ry' (Ryan), Uncle Philip, and Daddy. Oh this girl is sooo spoiled!

Yep, this is what her and daddy like to do now! He can spin her twice while she is in the air, and this is the best shot I could get of her spinning!

Lilah LOVES to do the ittsy-bitsy-spider, thus the reason why Grandma Vonda is patiently singing this song over and over and over again!

Waiting for the boat ride to begin!

Here with daddy, still waiting to see if this is the boat we are going to ride, or if we need to move on to the next!

This is the view of the lake from the balcony of a friends house. It was such a nice night out, the weather was perfect!!!

yea, I know that there are not to many pictures of me on here, but Trent actually captured a decent photo, so why not post?! I'm usually the one Behind the camera, not Infront of the camera!

I hope you have enjoyed our photos thus far! Oh and I want to send a very big

WELCOME HOME to our cousin Jeremy Ward. He just got back from his long deployment - WE LOVE YOU!!!

A Little 'Petti'

Recently my mom and I have been making pettiskirts for the little girls in our family, and most of them have been worn on their first birthday. Well, this time I made one on my own! Whoot! It was a real time crunchers because I had about 2 weeks to do this, all while on vacation and working on school! You would think I would have more time considering Trent was on leave, but no sir!

Here is my most recent pettiskirt that I did for my little cousin's 1st birthday!

Her mommy got to choose the color scheme, and I think it turned out very well!

I hope to do a few more of these in the future, but for now will stick to here and there. They are very time consuming, as is any sewing project-but once you get the first few done, they get easier with time! Now if I can only finish the 2 quilts I have been working on!!!

Trip to Illinois

As many of you know, we spent some time visiting with Trent's family. It was a great visit with them. Liah and I went to visit over Thanksgiving break last year while Trent was deployed, so they were waiting on Trent to get back from deployment before he would be able to see them again. The trips really aren't about us anymore, but we still enjoy our trips there! As you will see from the photos, the trip is all about LILAH!!!

I think at this point, her Papa Danny was ready to get off of the merry-go-round!

Lilah's face here was to priceless! She loved to go on the swings!

Spending more time with her Papa Danny.

Here she is with her Great Grandparents David and Judy Ward.

And even more photos with more Great Grandma's! Great Grandma Judy Ward and Great Grandma Monnabelle Beadles.

Looking so innocent on Grandma Vonda's lap!

And Grandma Vonda and Gary had to get there photo's in also! Oh goodness, she was full of photo's that day!

Thankfully the swing set and cousin Caryn were near by to help save the day from photos!

I wish I would have gotten more photos while we were there! But I was not able to, we were to busy chatting away and catching up with friends and family! I will have to 'steal' some photos from other family members in the near future and post those as well!!

New Brick!

I meant to post this before we left for vacation, but got bogged down with all the packing we had to get done! Lilah decided that she did not like the color of the brick on our house, and decided to recolor it! Yes, she was determined to get as many bricks as she could reach, unfortunately, it was less than 3 feet of coloring done to the brick!

First, she had to get the window seal area, the easiest to reach!

Next she was on to the column infront of the house!

Still working on the window seal area! The most important part I assume!

We hope that you all had a great weekend... on to more post! Oh, we did get lots of rain while we were gone, so Lilah's 'paint' job did not stay for long! Thank goodness for that pink chalk! ;o)

First Day of School/MDO

As promised, here are the photos of Lilah's first day at MDO! She was VERY excited to be going to school-I think more so because she finally got to carry her back-pack and her lunch bag!

Daddy not wanting to take her to school. His words were, "she can't go to school yet!"

This is a funny face, but she was trying to lift it up so I could take a picture of it, whiel she was lifting she was saying "Heavy!" Guess I packed to much for the first day!

Waiting patiently in the car to go in! Daddy is a stickler for time, so we were almost 30 minutes to early to even go in the classroom!

Yep, Daddy getting to walk her in on her first day. We're not to sure how many times he'll be there for her first day's of school, so we made sure that he was able to go to this one atleast!

Ok, here is her teacher for the classroom. She was trying to show Lilah that that was her chair, the one with the pillow on the back, but Lilah is clearly not interested! She'd rather play with the baby dolls! This is a bad shot because Trent was literally pulling me away as I tried to get some photos of her in the classroom!

All in all, the teacher said she did great the first day, no tears at all! She ate all of her lunch and her snack for the day, only one accident also! YAY! Bu the other two days, she did just fine, without any accidents either! She loves going to school now and we don't have any trouble when we drop her off.

We are in IL for the next week, so look for more post between now and then! Until next time, have a fun and safe Labor day weekend!

Strawberry Kiwi Truffle

How I made this yummy dish:

Into this yummy dish!

I saw this recipe in the H-E-B Texas Life Magazine. I am all for trying new recipes and desserts, and this one has two of our favorite things in it, strawberry cake and strawberries! This is also a figure friendly version because there is NO oil in it!

ingredients:*
1 box (18 1/4 oz.) Strawberry Cake Mix
3 large eggs
1/3 cup Strawberry Jam
1 can (12 oz.) Red Soda, regular or diet
1 container (16 oz.) Frozen Whipped Topping, thawed
8 kiwi fruit, peeled and thin sliced
1 package (16 oz.) Frozen Strawberries, thawed (or you can use fresh strawberries sliced to whatever size you prefer)

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Spray 9" x 13" baking pan with nonstick cooking spray or grease with softened margarine and dust with 2 tablespoons fl our, then shake out excess.

2. Combine cake mix, eggs, jam, and soda. Mix for 2 minutes on medium speed with electric mixer. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake on center oven rack for 35 minutes or until done. Cool completely in pan on cake rack *and then cut into 1-inch cubes.* since I don't have any nice truffle dishes, I let the cake cool completely and left it in the pan.*

3. For assembly: Cover bottom of large trifle or punch bowl with half of cake pieces. Spread 1 1/2 cups whipped topping over cake pieces and sprinkle with half of kiwi slices and half of strawberries. Repeat layers and top with remaining whipped topping and fruit. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 15 minutes or more.

Alternate: Since I left this in the baking pan, I put about half the container of whipped topping on the cooled cake, then spread the kiwi and strawberries on top. I left the rest of the whipped topping for individuals to place on top of the cake if they wanted extra!

Add-ons: 1/2 cup sliced Almonds or Pecan Pieces

*I took off all the brands of the ingredients and went with more budget friendly ingredients!!!*

I hope you guys enjoy this just as much as we did!

Yoga at Enchanted Rock

I have been trying to convince Trent for the longest time to take me somewhere, just the two of us, and this weekend, he decided that he wanted to go to Enchanted Rock. It is located about 20 miles outside of Fredericksburg, TX, and old German based town. We decided to take the summit trail, the shortest trail up to the top of the rock. We had a blast, and I must say the walk up and down was a lot easier than I had imagined it to be!

Trent taking the first breather of the walk, from far away this rock looked like a baseball glove.

This was about 300 feet or so from the very top of the rock. If you look far enough back, you can see how far up we are, and the beautiful rocks behind us.

We decided to walk to the other side of the top of the hill, the steeper side, where I choose to sit down, kick off my shoes and enjoy the view!

Yep, this is the part where I decided to do Yoga! It was way to hard to resist! The hike up there was so refreshing, the view was amazing, and the feeling to do some deep breathing was overwhelming!

More breathing, focused, very focused! Ahh, that felt so amazing!

This rock makes Trent look so small! This was one of the steeper rocks that we stood in front of-as you can see, it looks almost straight up and down.

Hehe, my mountain man! This photo reminds me of the new book that I am reading called "Danger Close". It is a book that Trent got a while ago, which will describes in very great detail what his new job will entail. All Trent needs in this picture is the beard and more gear around him!

I did not notice this rock until we were on our way down, but by the way I looked at it, it appears to be an angry fish! hehe! Trent attempted to climb this one, but the spaces were to close for him to get into!

I had a blast today, and I am hoping he and I can do this again. We are thinking about taking kiddo on one of these hikes and camping out there. They have quite a few trails and camping grounds that are child and pet friendly. Oh, and I want to add a BIG THANK YOU to KELLIE and her family for watching Lilah for us while we were hiking!!!