Taste of Addison and Dallas trip

In May, we took a quick trip to Dallas to visit Kevin's parents (aka KK & G-Pa). Katie and Scott also went up the same weekend. The kids always get to fish and feed the ducks right by KK & G-Pa's house.

Here are our little fishermen... We also went to the Taste of Addison (for those that don't know, Addison is the name of a city near Dallas). It is a big outdoor festival with lots of different restaurants that set up booths. There is also a concert that goes on all day and into the night. Addison thought it was pretty neat that she was seeing her name posted on everything - the water tower (below), the police cars, street signs, shirts, banners, etc.

The kids did a lot of this while we were there...


Taking a short break to enjoy the music and hugs from KK & G-Pa...

And a quick hug from mommy too.

As we were leaving, Addison really wanted to do this trampoline thing...you can tell how high she got compared to the girl to the upper right side of the picture! Even though she didn't do any fancy tricks and barely touched the trampoline because of her weight, she had fun trying it out!

Another great visit with amazing family members!

6 kids, 6 adults

We just went on a mini vacation for 4 days to Galveston with the Rentfro and Simmons' families. We had a fantastic time with everyone and had the perfect beach house to stay in - thanks to our friends, the Butler's!

We were a little shocked when we arrived to find the beaches COVERED in seaweed! When the tide was high in the morning, it was not pleasant since the water backed right up to the mounds of seaweed and would take the seaweed in and out. The shallow water was taken over by the seaweed. But, you can tell in the picture below, when the tide was out, there was plenty of shallow water to play in away from the seaweed. And at least the section of beach where we were, they groomed it a few times so it didn't cover as much area of the beach.

Kevin, Joe, and Adam had fun catching fish, crabs, and sting rays with the fishing net. They would bring them into a huge bucket that we had and let the kids look at them up close. I think all the adults found it pretty interesting too. The sting rays were all over the place....sometimes, too close for comfort. We probably saw at least 20 during our 4 days there!




Of course, the kids had fun digging in the sand and building sand castles!

We even made sure we had a few indoor activities to enjoy after being in the sun all day. We made cupcakes and each kid got to decorate their own.

Addi is showing hers off below...

Even little Reid, who wasn't feeling great the whole time, seemed to enjoy his cupcake!

The kids all loved riding in the golf cart to and from the beach and around the neighborhood. It was a lifesaver to have this instead of walking back and forth to the beach a million times!

At the beach house, we played downstairs in the yard and under the house (of course that is on stilts). Parker and most of the other kids loved this awesome swing. He was all smiles while he was in this swing!

Since water balloons were such a hit a few weeks ago, what better place to play with them again? I guess this was Cooper's attempt to blow a balloon up for us!

I just love this picture of Tiffany and her babies...Rylee and Parker!

We also brought two bouncy houses to have in the yard. The kids enjoyed those - they thought it was fun when we were tossing the water balloons off the back deck down to the bouncy houses! Can you see Addison's excitement???

Rylee enjoying playing outside...what a sweet little smile! :)

This pretty much sums up the relationship between Cooper and Cole - even with their age difference (2 years), these two have a ball playing together! They are both wild and crazy, but super sweet and adorable at the same time!

The trip was a blast like always...it was hectic and stressful at some points. But what do you expect with 6 kids under 4 1/2, and 6 adults (some of which also act like they are kids!)!

Daddy's Day

How did this little guy...

And this little girl....

Get to be so lucky to have the best daddy in the whole world?

Not really sure what we did to deserve him, but whatever it was, I am sure glad we did it!

I am so, so, so thankful for what an amazing husband and father Kevin is to us.

Happy Father's Day, babe! We love you!

And Happy Father's Day to my dad and dad-in-law! You guys rock too!

Memorial Day weekend & Gymnastics

So those of you that have a blog know how annoying loading pictures is on here...I don't understand why it has to be difficult. Unless I am missing something (which could be the case since I am still a little new to the blog world), I have resorted to looking through my pictures and loading them from what I want to be the last picture to the first picture...and don't dare get them out of order because I have a hard time moving them up and down within a post. I wish you could just copy and paste them where you wanted them to go, but no luck with that! And sometimes it allows me to drag and drop and other times it won't! So, anyone that has any tips to making this blogging experience more "enjoyable", feel free to share with me!!!

Addison has loved our activites this summer - one of which was going to the Butler's beach house with friends on Memorial Day weekend. She and Chloe were loving this swing! We are going back again next week with 2 other families (Simmons' and Rentfro's) and staying for 4 nights - we can't wait!


Cooper has been loving this hat - and I just can't resist his little curls peeking out from under it! His speech has taken off again lately - he is saying many full sentences and it's made him seem so grown up now! He is not such a little boy anymore! :(

You can tell from Addison's shirt, she is in love with Hello Kitty. She also shocked me the other day when we went to my nephew, Trey's 5th grade performance. They sang several songs and some groups of kids danced (Trey and about 6 other boys danced to a Michael Jackson song!). There was also a slide show of the kids pictures with music. Addison amazed me when she was singing along with several songs that I didn't even know! Come to find out, they were Hannah Montana / Miley Cirus songs. They listen to different CD's in the classroom at school and that's how she learned them all! So, now the kids have a playlist on our iPods that include those songs and more! :)

Cooper was so into his boots on this particular night, he just had to wear them to bed! I wish I would have gotten a picture of a few nights later when we wore his sunglasses to bed...it was super cute! He surprised us the other day when he counted to 10 in Spanish! His new teacher tries to incorporate a lot of Spanish words into their activities! He has started to "try" to go potty now, with no luck so far. We bought him his first pair of underwear the other day and when I showed them to him, he yelled out "Chumpies". I laughed so hard - that is what his teacher calls them at school!

Cooper's gymnastics just finished up for this semester - HE LOVED IT! When we would be waiting at the stop light to turn onto the street where the gym was, he would start screaming "Nastics! Nastics!" and kicking his legs with excitement! Did I mention that he LOVES it?

This child is a HAM and he is not shy! As you can see from the picture below, he is accepting his ribbon on the podium and waving to the crowd!

On the other hand, we have Addison on her performance day at gymnastics. They were suppose to come out when their name was called and do a favorite trick on the mat. This is how she was introduced....she would not come out by herself - her teacher had to carry her because she was being so shy!

After a bit, she warmed up and actually did very well during the rest of the class! She loves her gymnastics class!

Addison accepting her medal - a bit different acceptance than her brother. She got up on the podium, they put the medal around her neck, and off she went to sit back down! It's pretty interesting that we have almost 2 extremes!

Our temporary pets

We have had some new pets in the Knott household in the last month or two. I got the idea for this from a friend's blog (thanks Jana!). For Christmas, my parents gave Addison a Butterfly growing kit. In the kit, you have coupons that you send in to the company when you are ready to start the process. We received about 10 caterpillars in jars in the mail with instructions on what to do and what to expect. Over the first week, the caterpillars started to turn into cocoons one by one and attach themselves to the lids at the top of the jar.

We had to leave them alone until we started seeing signs of them coming out of their cocoons.

And when we did, they had to be transferred to their new home which was a mesh container. The piece of material that was on the lid where they attached themselves had to be removed from the jar and pinned in their new home.

Then we waited for them to all emerge from their cocoons one by one.

We had to "feed and water" them like any pet. The instructions suggested watermelon or fresh flowers with sugar water on them... and they seemed to like it. Addison took this job very seriously and even reminded us on some days! Before long, they had all grown into beautiful butterflies (all but one or two - 8/10 is not bad!).

We enjoyed them for several days inside. They sat on the counter and many times we would hear a strange noise that would make us look around the house a bit scared. Come to find out, it was usually the butterflies fluttering around inside the net.

We told Addison that we had to let them go and she came very close to crying. We explained to her that we would probably see them again flying around in our yard and to remember that she helped them to grow from caterpillars into beautiful butterflies!

This was actually a fun family project and we all enjoyed the process! Kevin mentioned to Addison that if she showed us how she could take good care of these butterflies, that maybe someday she could have a pet fish. Oh good, just what I have always wanted! :)

Visit to the park

Another fun afternoon with our friends, The Simmons and The Rentfros. I have said it before, and I will probably say it again 100 more times - but we have such a great time any day we get to hang out. The 6 kids are all between 4 1/2 and 9 months so there is never a dull moment! Parker, the baby of the group, didn't come to the outing at the park that day...but I am sure we will have many more times to go! We are looking forward to our beach trip in June with these families!




Here are the 5 little ducklings making there way to the park!

The only girls out of the bunch - Rylee and Addison.

Cooper and Reid

Cole wasn't interested in pictures - he was very busy playing!

Miss Rylee

Cooperman

Addison working hard to pick up the mulch.

Few words, lots of pictures!

It was a day to celebrate this little friend of ours...Reid turned two!

Reid, Cole, Rylee, Cooper, and Addison relaxing in the bouncy house...


Time for dinner...

Who knew that this was going to be a bucket of fun and laughs for all of us!

Will, Rylee and Cooper waiting for their turns... Addison, Cole, and Matt wondering how this is going to work.
Aw, Matt just missed the water balloon...

Concentrate, Cole!

You have to open your eyes to catch it, Addison! You too Cole! :)
Rylee's turn to throw one!

Addison is trying to hide from the water balloon fight now!

Cooper wore this Astros batting helmet all afternoon - I guess it could serve as protection from the water balloon fight that was going on around him!

Even the dads had fun playing!

Tara, me, Ursula and Tiffany