A Deep Cleansing Breath...

Ever since school got out on Thursday it has been a whirlwind weekend. Well, I guess if you include Thursday day, it has been all out crazy business. Oy. To start things off, we went to Bug's end of the year preschool party at the park and had a great time playing with friends.

 Second, I headed over (sans other kids) to Bird's end of year party at her school, and that was such a joyous occasion. She had a fabulous year in Kindergarten, and at the risk of sounding like EVERY OTHER MOTHER in the world: I can't believe how FAST it went...{tear, sniffle}.  I am so proud of her and I am amazed at the tremendous amounts of valuable knowledge she picked up.  She is pretty dang fly...

THEN, after that, I squeezed in a little trimmy trim at Salon de Holly, and then hightailed it to my mom's house where we began the weekend festivities.  

About 90 percent of my family resides in Texas now, between Austin and Dallas.  The one family of stragglers that remain in Utah make it hard for us to all be together.  The last time we were all together was THREE years ago. For us, that is a huge amount of time.  Chad and Heather and their freaking adorable boy, Grayson, were in town. I had not met Grayson prior to this visit, so I was relatively thrilled to meet the mini-Chad. Oh my goodness, he did not let me down. He is presh. 

And then, Ben and Jen (of Jen's Yummy fun) and their family (minus the oldest) were in from Austin. With Clay an Liz from Justin and the Young's from McKinney, we were complete. At last. 

We had a blast. On Friday, we hit up Costa Vida, and The Fort Worth Stockyards. Saturday the Rough Riders game, and then today, a massive BBQ, family photo shoot (which is hard to avoid with 2 photographers in the fam) and then LOTS and LOTS of swimming. All in all, it was a marvelous time spent with the people I love most in the world. I hate to see it come to an end. The weekend resulted in 3 round trip drives to Coppell, one round trip drive to the Stockyards, oodles of food, and a bunch of laughs. Good times.

(seriously NO ONE in my family can ever be normal...)

most of us

Benny and Jenny

My awesome folks

(My dad and I had a great time checkin out Chad's way cool shades. How versatile can you get? They look stellar on the old man and I think I look quite fashionable if I do say so myself...)