Yep, that's right, we are swimming in Houston!

Brian, Jason, Jacob and Gwyn braved the 78 degree pool today.  Annie and I proved again to be the smart ones of our bunch, and chose to set this one out until the pool reaches somewhere around 85.  The kids had fun, they have been asking for weeks now if they could go swimming.  I told them that if they would have gotten in a couple of days ago, then we could have officially said that we used the pool from March to October (and I actually believe they had gotten in in late October too).  Here is Gwyn loving it:

Brian has been playing volleyball on Monday nights, so I'm on my own for dinner, baths, bedtime.  I took the kids outside after dinner with their popsicles because Monday is my cleaning day and I had spent the better part of 3 hours on my house earlier that day (although you couldn't tell it even a day later!).  I took my camera outside to get some pictures of them, here are my little stair-steppers:

And here they are enjoying their popsicles:

John and Claudia had gotten Annie some twinkle toes for Christmas, and they run a little big and she just got to finally wear them.  I tried effortlessly to get a picture of her, but she was so mesmerized with them lighting up, that she couldn't take her eyes off of them, ha!  She loves to throw trash in the trash can.  This was great for me for awhile, because I could say, Annie go throw this in the trash and she would do it.  This week, I've had to dig out two bowls and three sippy cups.  If she is finished with it, or emptied her juice cup, she thinks it needs to go in the trash...I wonder what else she has thrown away??

 With the weather being so great here lately, we have been able to go up to the park not only on the weekends, but now since the time has changed, we've been going up multiple times during the week.  Here are the girls getting ready for a ride to the park (Gwyn called Annie peanut butter girl when she wore her outfit because it looks like peanut butter):

 Jacob brought his bat and balls up to the park to work on hitting, he's my little baseball boy!

 Two sweet little sisters.  Annie tries to do exactly what Gwyn does:

Here is a video that Jason got of Jacob reading, I still can't believe he'll be in Kindergarten in school all day next year:

For the second week in a row, I got to go to the zoo.  This time, it was with Gwyn’s preschool class.  It was a great day because it was supposed to rain (which kept many people at home), but it didn’t end up raining and it was even a little cool.  She had a great time, she loved the giraffes, and I think she liked the one on one attention she got with Mommy (as did I).  Here she is eating a snack before getting started:

Here is her cute class:

She is still a little bit more preoccupied with everything else besides the animals.  Here she is ignoring the elephants and checking out the construction equipment, they are getting a larger area prepared for the elephants:

And here she is perfectly content to continuously slide down this slide during our 45 minutes of free time:

Lastly, she LOVED the carousel and had the giraffe picked out before she even got on:

Here is a picture of the kid's artwork this past week...they have been busy!

Funny things the kids said this week:

Jacob:  Can we have a pet snake?  (uh...no)
Jacob:  Thank you Mommy for cooking me this burned bacon, it is yummy.
Gwyn (to the DirecTV guy):  Did you come over to our house to play?

Gwyn:  Daddy doesn’t stop at red lights (oh really!).

Me to Gwyn:  Your hair is just like Mommys.

Me (later that day, Gwyn overhearing me):  Oh my gosh, I have a grey hair.

Gwyn to Brian later that day:  Mommy’s hair is turning grey.  I have grey hair.

Jacob:  Do birds fly in the rain? 

Me:  Big ones do, but small ones don’t like to.

Gwyn:  Just like on Tinkerbell Fairy rescue movie! (Fairies can’t fly in the rain either)

Gwyn:  My next birthday party, I want a tea party with a Death Star cake (oh gosh!).