Mom and Dad Audi's visit

I know. I know. I've been tardy on my updates lately. I'll do my best to get somewhat caught up tonight.

Daniel's folks came for a visit several weeks ago. Daniel's dad is Arab which means he comes from a family that loves to be hospitable. And hospitable he was! We went out to eat at the steakhouse and had pizza and barbecue and... I mean, aren't we the hosts/hostesses supposed to be the hospitable ones? We of course didn't complain! We had a great time with them and with Josh and Elizabeth.

We took them down to the Stockyards, the place out-of-towners 'must see' in Fort Worth. Mom Audi even got on the back of the longhorn!

Then we took them to the Water Gardens in downtown Fort Worth. I had never been before - here we are, after having walked down maybe 50 steps to be in the center of water falling down the rocks that surrounded us and flowing into a drainage system at the bottom.

This was their first time to come down for a visit other than coming down for Josh and Elizabeth's wedding. We think we enticed them to do it more often, though.

Happy Birthday to Me - belated posts...

I turned 29 on March 2 and we've been going full throttle since about February 2, so this is my first chance to post anything. We've either been out of town or had company in our home for the past 6 weekends, with one weekend in the middle that we had a breather. So, I'll try to catch you up in the next few blogs.

bowling, childhood camp games, and snow

The day after my birthday several friends got together at Main Event for a night of bowling. We had reports that day that there could be snow in the air that evening.

And snow there was. Small white flakes fell from the sky and landed on my black coat as we walked into Main Event. And when we walked out 2 hours later, we saw this:





Meanwhile in the bowling alley, 11 of us played a mean hour of bowling. I was the winner on my team with a big score of 89 points!!

Josh, me, Elizabeth, Callie, and Daniel.


And Brendon led on his team with a grand total of 117 points. Nikki came in 2nd with 99. Needless to say, I ended up on a good team - afterall, aren't you supposed to win on your own birthday!?!?!!? I couldn't have hung with this team!

Jen, Nikki, Charity, Brendon, Sandy, and Amanda.


Following bowling was birthday cake. My sweet husband got a cake made for me with Arabic written on it, literally saying, "Every year and you are kind," which is the Arabic saying for birthdays and holidays alike.




Then we played a few rounds of "Down by the banks of the hanky-panky where the bullfrog jumps from bank-to-banky singing A, E, I, O, U bam-boooom!" (If you don't know this song, then just don't ask...I learned it at a camp somewhere and thankfully I wasn't the only one who had heard of it!)





And our last game of the night was "gossip" or "telephone" or whatever you choose to call it. Daniel started a round with a Turkish phrase and I started a round with an Arabic phrase, and of course there were a few English phrases. Needless to say, we were rolling with laughter during both games as we all enjoyed a bit of immaturity! :-)





Thanks, friends, for a fun birthday night at Main Event!

sunday at granny's

Four generations...



We were in Ruston the weekend of my birthday. We had a scavenger hunt on Saturday and all of us were at Granny's for lunch on Sunday - the weather was so nice so we enjoyed some time in the backyard - cousins and the 3 babies, swings, & the trampoline!


Meredith was ecstatic about the trampoline!


Annie and Allie didn't have quite the same expressiveness.

birthday for two

Mom and I celebrate our birthdays in March, and for the first time ever, we had a joint birthday celebrations!

If you remember, last year we had a scavenger hunt with my family for my birthday (see archived blog here)Well, since we had a small turnout last year, we decided to have 'take two' this year, complete with new clues, new teams, and new winners! It was actually quite amusing to watch my parents, grandparents, sister, brother-in-law, cousins, and friends compete for first place! The clues were hidden inside and outside both my parents' house and my granny's house. We live on about 100+ acres of land between the 2 families, so people were driving cars back and forth between houses and clues. Some ways the competition got a bit 'heated' was

-by hiding clues a little harder than they originally found them
-stealing keys from a running car
-locking the door to granny's house behind them to make sure the next person had to use the key to get inside!


Laura and Annie running to find the next clue:

the grandfather clock clue:


Heather, Hannah, and Jenny looking in granny's mailbox for a clue:



And the winners are... Laura, Mamaw, Annie, and Mom:

After the scavenger hunt we had birthday cake and ice cream. Mom turns 56 on March 14 and I turned 29 on March 2, so we had a joint birthday weekend - complete with blowing out candles together!


Annie and Hannah enjoyed dessert the most I think!



And after dessert, we made dinner for everyone - well, mostly Brian made dinner for everyone. He and Jenny brought ready-made kabobs, both chicken and steak, to grill for dinner. And they were mmm...mmmm....good!