Easter

On Easter morning we went to Kim and Matt's church for a breakfast and church.  We got to sign the Hallelujah chorus during church!  After we got back, the Easter bunny had to hide eggs.  Each kid got a certain color of egg.  Some eggs were hidden a little too hard and they were never found!  The Easter bunny made a mistake of putting chocolate in the eggs because some of it melted from the time they were hidden to when they were found.  Oops!  One of the Easter bunnies wasn't accustomed to Houston weather.

 At the end of the egg hunt, my kids tried to catch lizards.  I think Ian was much better at it than my kids.  He must have practice!

After a delicious meal, it was time for us to pack up and head home.  We had such a great time in Houston and Natalie and Noah loved playing with their second cousins and I loved visiting with my cousins. Thanks so much for your hospitality Kim and Amy!

Houston Day 6

We went to two different Easter events on this day.  We started out by going to Kim and Matt's church for an Easter egg hunt and a resurrection walk.  Amy brought Jaden and Cody so we ended up with 7 kids there.  We started by going to the resurrection walk and ended up waiting in line for quite some time.  The kids amused themselves by making piles and playing following the leader.  I like how the boys were all in blue and how Natalie (the only girl) is off to the side of the pile but yet wants to be in the pile.

We also tried to do a second cousin line up which is is not easy to do with young kids.

 We let them take a silly picture at the end.

The resurrection walk was really neat.  Volunteers and members of the youth group were positioned around the building and would act out various parts of the Passion.  We had a guide who led us from room to room.  This was such a great way to bring the story of the Passion to children to help them understand the story.  I wish somewhere around here would do something like this.

After the walk we went to an egg hunt (although it's hard to call it an egg hunt because the eggs are all over the grass and kids just have to pick them up, maybe I should call it an egg gathering).

After the egg gathering we played some carnival games and had lunch provided by the church.  My kids had a lot of fun!

Later in the afternoon we went to Amy and Jason's church for the helicopter egg drop.  There were a ton of people there!  We made our way to the sidelines to wait for the helicopter to come and drop candy.  The eggs were already on the ground (the eggs would have broken if dropped).  Jason was on stage which was in the drop area.  When the helicopter started dropping candy in that area, some of the people covered their heads so that candy didn't hit them on the head.  The helicopter dropped tons of candy!

 You can tell from the picture above that there were tons of people there.  I can't remember which of my kids only picked up candy (I think it was Natalie).  She realized she would get more candy by picking up what the helicopter dropped rather than going for eggs (that didn't all have candy in them).

After that I took N2 to the bluebonnet patch to take pictures.  It was a busy day but very fun!

Houston Day 5

We spent the remainder of our trip at my cousin Kim's house.  Kim and Matt have 3 boys-Ian, who is Natalie and Noah's age, Ryan, and Nathan.  We decided to lay fairly low on our first day at their house.  The kids enjoyed playing around their yard.  Natalie LOVED their battery powered car.  She could have driven that thing all day long!

We decided to dye Easter eggs that day.  It's nice that in Houston you can do this outside so that the mess isn't all over the kitchen table!

 I'm not sure what we did the rest of the day-maybe the older kids went to the park?  I guess I should have blogged much earlier.  Oh wait, we went to church in the afternoon.  But I'm pretty sure we did something else too.  I don't have any pictures of the rest of the day except for this one of Natalie after the kids played with water.  It did warm up in Houston on this day.

Houston Day 4

We left Amy and Jason's home in the morning and headed to NASA which we figured would be a highlight of the trip for Noah.  We took a tour of the inside of the space shuttle they have there as well as a tour of the training facilities.

 Natalie is standing by the astronaut's toilet in the picture below.  They thought it was interesting that the toilet was right by where the astronauts could move from one level to the other.  (Admittedly I felt that the location lacked a lot of privacy).

In the kid's area there was a a mock up of an Apollo capsule where people could crawl into and sit/lay in seats and watch a video of a take off.  I chose not to go in :)  Brian said it was a little tight sitting/laying in the chair.

 On our tour of the training facilities, we rode a little tram around the campus which is very large!

The training center was jammed packed full of simulators and other equipment.  There was no one there training when we went, bummer, but it certainly looked liked someone had just been there.  They didn't clean up after themselves, tools and hardware were just laying around all over the place.

The tour ended at the building where the Saturn V rocket is housed.

We then returned to the museum and looked around at the displays-I think Natalie was getting a little bored at this point.  Brian and Noah could have spent more time at NASA but Natalie and I saw pretty much everything.  We also wanted to leave to get to Kim's house before dinner-Houston traffic is pretty awful!

Houston Day 3

On our third day in Houston, we headed to Galveston to go to the beach so N2 could see the ocean.  It was supposed to be the warmest day that we were in Houston but it was still a little cool and breezy to go swimming.  The kids didn't seem to mind until they had played for a while.  We started the day by going on the free ferry where we saw dolphins in the water.  N2 stayed out on the deck the whole time and Natalie even talked Brian into going to the bottom level where they get very wet as a big wave came up and soaked all the people at the front of the boat.  I didn't get a picture because that happened as soon as they got down to the first level.

Then it was beach time!  It was awesome to watch N2's first reaction to the water.  They both just ran around and around through the waves.  The ocean was definitely different for them than all the lakes the have gone swimming in.  Even though it was on the cooler side, my kids played in the water for a long time!  They really loved the ocean!

Amy's boys liked to run in the water and follow what Natalie and Noah were doing.

 They loved trying to jump over the waves and run away from the waves.  They also tried to body surf through the waves but were not very successful :)

Jaden and Cody got a little cold so Amy took them to play in the playground while N2 continued to splash around the ocean a little longer.  On the way back to Amy and Jason's home, most people took a nap (Natalie is awake in the back).

Thank you Amy, Jaden and Cody for going to the beach with us even though it was on the cool side!  We had a wonderful time showing N2 the ocean for the first time!