Hanging out at Summer and Isaiah's

Summer (Erin's cousin) and Isaiah just moved to Lubbock a few weeks ago and we are LOVING having them here in West Texas! They invited us over for dinner and we found out what a great cook Summer is! It's sad, but I don't have any pictures of them for this post....just their dogs!!

Cayden found his new best friend....their dog Tug. He is huge, but seriously the most precious dog I have ever been around. Here is a picture of Cayden and Tug resting:

Avery found a rose that she wanted Daddy to smell:

"Daddy, this is how you smell it!"

Summer and Isaiah's other dog is named Murphy and we love him too...It's funny how he is so little but he bosses Tug around! :)

Cayden and Murphy:

Cayden and Tug:

Thank you Summer and Isaiah for a fun night at your house! WE LOVE YOU!!

Cayden is 4!

Well, I will warn you...there are a TON of pictures in this post. It was hard to narrow down which ones I wanted to post and I didn't want to leave anyone out. This first pic is one of Cayden's 4 yr. pictures that we had taken a couple of weeks ago. It almost makes me cry because he looks so much older and taller than his last year's pictures. We have started to going to Portrait Innovations the last 2 times and we really like them a lot better than "the other place" we were going... I'll just say it starts with a "S" and ends with "ears"!

The rest of the pics are from Cayden's birthday party with the family. We were so excited that so much of the family got to come.

Here is Avery with her Nana and Papaw:

D'Lynn, Cindy and GG:

D'Lynn, Cindy, Dustin and Brian:

Papa and Granny:


GG, Larry, Nana and Papaw:

Cayden, Patsy, Gammy, Avery and Ryan:

Lorrie and Andi:

Isaiah, me and Summer

Cayden with his Bolt cake:

A family picture:

D'Lynn and Dustin:

Cayden showing off his new undies:

His Boz puzzle from Andi:

Avery and I:

Cayden reading his new Bolt book with his Gammy:

It was a GREAT day with lots of fun!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET BOY!!

Busy Saturday

A few weekends ago Cayden and Avery stayed with their Gammy and Papa (my parents-Erin) while Damon and I worked on a couple of projects at the house. The first one was installing a new potty in our bathroom because ours rarely would flush properly and constantly ran water. I didn't have anything to do with this first project...except that I have to claim responsibility for the very poor paint job behind the commode that we discovered after taking the old potty out. Here are the before and after photos:

Way to go Damon!! Our new potty is awesome! It flushes and doesn't waste hundreds of gallons of water! Woo hoo! (One extra FYI...on Damon's birthday I told him we could go anywhere he wanted and he said Lowes, which didn't surprise me, until we went right to the commode section and he showed me what he wanted to buy on his birthday....a man and his throne, I guess!)

Our next project turned out to be a lot more involved than we had anticipated. Cayden decided for his birthday that he wanted a swingset ("playground" to Cayden). Well, the only ones we could find that were nicer and would last more than one summer were REALLY expensive. Until our dear Jared and Carla told us about one that had found for their son Jakob...(Thanks guys for letting us copy you!)

So, my parents and grandparents and Damon's parents and GG all went in together and got him his "playground". THANK YOU!!! Unfortunately this is how we bought it:

Damon started working on it by himself at around 3:00 while I did some girls makeup for Prom. Then this is us at around 5 (not really realizing how huge of an undertaking this was going to be):

And this is us at about 11 that night after it had been raining on us for about an hour:

But we FINALLY got it finished and here is the finished product:

I told Damon that it probably shouldn't be this way, but I'm more afraid of our kids playing on it realizing we put it together than if someone else had! :) Cayden LOVES it though and asks to play on it every morning when he wakes up.

There is this cool little bench and table that they love to have their snacks on:

Avery is our little dare devil so we have to watch her pretty closely!

Budding Photographer

This is Cayden taking a picture of us...and the one below is one he actually took. He even said "Say Easter eggs!" before he took it...

Grandma and Grandpa!

Grandma and Grandpa Balko came in to town for the wedding (from Las Cruces, NM), and came over to the house for an afternoon to visit. Here's a couple of pictures of Grandma with the kids.

D'Lynn's Wedding

Sorry it's taken a while, but here are a few snapshots we got at D'Lynn and Dustin's wedding. You can see a few from the photographer, Lauren Clark, by clicking here and scrolling down the page. It's worth the extra effort, I promise!

More Pictures

Here are a few random pictures from recent days.

Here's Cayden jamming on the djembe...without any extra clothes to weigh him down!


The kiddos in their wagon.

Cayden excited about sister on his slide.

Cayden taking Avery for a walk.

Our New Neighbor

We noticed the other day that we had a new friend on the back porch. Can you tell what Cayden is pointing at in the hanging basket?

Yeah, it's a dove that has to be wondering what in the world it was thinking...

...when it laid its eggs on the back porch of a home with two preschoolers. But we've enjoyed it!