April/May Highlights

During the month of April we had renovations done to our kitchen. It was way more stressful than we thought it would be. I did not realize how hard it was going to be having our kitchen out of pocket. Of course, I was so thankful that we were doing it, but it just ended up being quite the challenge.

This is them taking out our old tile. There was dust every where and I mean every where!

Here is our finished kitchen. It was all worth it! It took about 20 days from start to finish. After it was all said and done we had our carpets cleaned and house cleaned to get rid of all the dust. It really helped and it made our house finally feel like it was done. In this picture we had not replaced all of the knobs yet. That came a little later.

Mom brought Ellee up to Kate's school in April to eat lunch with her. It was a nice treat! I had Claire with me there, too.

This was Easter weekend. I am doing the Resurrection eggs with the girls. I really enjoy this tradition and getting to talk about the real meaning of Easter.

Of course we had to dye the eggs, too.

Looks like the Easter bunny visited the girls, yeah! He knows them well since they love to collect beanie boos.

The girls loved looking through their baskets on Easter morning.

Here is our family picture in Grapevine.

Tate cousins

Unfortunately, I left their Easter baskets at home. Luckily, Nana had enough bags around their house to help us out for the Easter Egg/treat hunt.

Claire had fun collecting her eggs.

Carly collecting her treats.

Claire had not gotten a chance to look through her Easter basket that morning so she was playing with her Easter gifts that night after baths. The girls were enjoying coloring and looking through all their fun toys, too.

Mother's Day Tea up at Kate's school. It was so nice that my Mom was able to come up, too.

Kate and her good friend Mckinley.

 Here we are celebrating Zack's birthday in Grapevine.

We were also celebrating my Dad's birthday along with Mother's Day.

Unfortunately, the month of April and some of May we dealt with a lot of illness in our family. A couple of times it was with me.  We don't know if the dust from the renovation was contributing to that, but it was not fun. One weekend I got so sick that my fever went up to 103. It was awful! It turned out to be just a virus. All three of the girls got the stomach bug. It was the hardest to see Claire go through it. She started one evening around 5:00 pm and it did not stop till around 10:00 pm that night. She was throwing up every 30 minutes. We had to just hold her and keep her near a trash can. At the same time she was having bad eczema. We finally realized that we needed a prescription cream for her eczema. We did everything over the counter and natural we could find, but it was not until we got the prescription cream that her eczema healed some. This picture was taken the evening that she had the stomach bug. It was at this point that she finally seemed to be done. You can see the redness from the eczema and sickness around her eyes. It was so sad! I am glad I was able to capture this sweet picture of her with Zack.

After all of the cleaning out from the kitchen, we decided to have a garage sale with the Cox's. We made a little bit of money and we were able to get rid of a lot of things, so it was nice.

I walked into the living room one day to see this sweet moment between Kate and Carly. They were taking turns putting lip gloss on each other. The were putting it on their cheeks, too. 

Mom's breakfast at Carly's preschool. Notice the muffin on Claire's face. She enjoyed the muffins!

Carly and her good friend Harper.

My Mom came up one day to babysit Claire and Carly while I went on a field trip as a chaperone for Kate's class. I was so thankful I was able to go! They only allow two Moms to go on their field trips. They have two field trips a year. This was  really a fun one! We went to Safety Town in Frisco. Kate loved me being there with her.

Here she is on the Fire Truck.

Here Carly is with the only four precious girls in their class. Carly, Kaelee, Harper, and Emily. They had a Splash Day and had a great time!

Carly with her sweet preschool teachers on the last day of school, May 22.

Some of the Tate family drove out to the Ranch on Memorial Day Weekend. Zack kept Kate and Carly at the ranch and I brought Claire with me to the hotel. Unfortunately, an incredible rain storm came through that weekend that made it difficult to do our normal things. The girls still had a great time! They stayed one night at the ranch and one night at the hotel. On the first night Zack put up a tent and they started the evening behind the house. Then, the huge storm came through and they had to come inside to sleep. This picture was taken before the storm came through. They had fun riding around in the jeep and the four wheeler. Carly was playing in the jeep.

Here Kate, Aubrey and Ellee are in the back of the jeep.

This was the sky before the storm came through.

 That Sunday night we ate at a restaurant in town. We were wearing our patriotic colors for Memorial Day. At this time the rain was mostly finished.

Look at the joy on this face! This was the first night when we were all out at the Ranch. Look at all that dirt on Carly's face!

Carly's school was out a couple of weeks before Kate's school ended. I tried to plan some fun things for Carly and Claire since the summer had already started for them. Here we are at McDonalds eating ice cream and playing on their indoor playground. Claire was beyond excited to have her very own ice cream! I love these happy smiles!

We had some good memories in April and May!