Cambelle Elayne Boyuls

My sweet "little" new niece! What a cutie! Can't wait to meet her.

A New Niece!

Malachi and Shelby had Baby Girl Boyuls at 7:15 pm, today! She weighs 10 pounds, 5 ounces!! Big little girl! Shelby did great! She pushed for about an hour and a half, not needing a c-section!! So proud! God is good! They are still indecisive about a name as of yet, but once they name that precious little girl, I will post it! Hopefully I will be sent some pictures too, so I can post them!

Swim Lessons and Chuck E Cheese!

This week we have been very busy! We have been doing lots of fun things, but today, I am Tired! Monday started off with Ezra's first week of swim lessons. Our good friend Angie, who also teaches swim lessons, is teaching a class of 4 kids how to swim. The other 3,2 year olds, are all girls! Ezra is the only boy in his class. Two other moms are doing the lessons with us, and we are all really good friends in the same life group! It's a lot of fun. Out of all the kids Ezra's age in our life group, he is the ONLY BOY. All the other boys are 4 and up. So, we do a lot of things with girls. I wonder how much longer I am going to be able to pull this off before he realizes he is the only boy! Ha! I will probably have to put him in the older boys swim lessons next year. Tuesday was a fun busy day. We went to work out, headed to Chuck E Cheese for a playdate, came home took a nap, then got up to go to swim lessons! WHEW! Chuck E Cheese was so much fun. We have never been and Ezra and Emersyn were soo excited! I knew Ezra would be all over the place wanting to play each and every game, BUT, I did NOT anticipate Emersyn wanting to do the same thing!! She wanted to ride everything and play every game that involved hitting or throwing balls! We barely sat down to eat pizza! I was wiped out after that. It is a mini Las Vegas for kids! We are going AGAIN today for a birthday party. TWO TIMES IN ONE WEEK! Ezra and Emersyn are going to think this is a new thing we are doing! HA! Wednesday was just as busy! I helped host a Tupperware Party for one of my friends, at my house, and had so much fun visiting. After everyone left, I had to lay the kids down for a nap to get some sleep in before they had to wake up to go to swim lessons! Thursday was a little better.. we didn't have any scheduled outings, just swim lessons! Today, we are doing NOTHING during the day, but tonight we have the birthday party and life group! Hopefully next week won't be so crazy. We will have another week of swim lessons though.

Ezra has been enjoying swim lessons and doing a great job kicking, blowing bubbles, using his torpedo arms and jumping in and "swimming" to the side. Yesterday, I had to give him a little "talk" in the bathroom before we started swimming. He did great after the "talk", but towards the end of class he started crying for me. It was so funny. He was crying for me but doing everything she was asking him to do, just crying the whole time. All the girls were just fine!! He, the only boy, was crying! NICE! Haha! I will have to write that down so I can tell him when he is older!!

More Enchanted Rock Pictures

Group picture!

So, I just recently got an email from Brent's sister Melanie with more pictures of our "bear hunt" at Enchanted Rock. I thought I would share them!

walking up

first rest stop

more resting

going in the cave

coming out of the cave. Not sure if I was going to fit!

we made it out!

opa and some cousins growling like a bear to "scare" the other cousins

waiting for everyone to come out

we did it!

playing 

some of the crew

Emersyn's Birthday Party!!

We had a family birthday party for our sweet Emersyn! She turned the BIG ONE year old on Friday! How this moment is such a bittersweet time for me. It is so fun to see her grow each and every day with her words, her personality, walking and climbing! On the other hand, sad because she is not a baby anymore! She still loves to be held and rocked, but has her "big girl" time!

On Saturday we had both Brent and I's family in to celebrate our sweet girl. It was so fun to have the family over and just have a relaxing, fun party. As most of you know, with my family, it's only about a handful of people, however, Brent's family is a big family! I love it!! So, we had a good amount of people at the house for the party. Emersyn really enjoyed herself and LOVED her cupcake. She was stained pink from the icing for the rest of the day. You just know it's a great party when after you eat you cupcake, you are stained PINK from it and you crash in your crib for a 3 hour nap!!

Cupcakes

Some decorations

wagon rides

Master Griller

making homemade ice cream with Mimi

singing Happy Birthday

not sure what to do yet

first clean bite

decided it was delicious and to GO for it

wouldn't let anyone touch it, kept it against her chest the whole time

two peas in a pod (lincoln and ezra)

opening gifts

After the party all the girls from my side of the family went and got a pedicure for Mother's Day while the men watched the kids. That was such a treat to do with my family. I feel like we never really get to do fun bonding things like this because every time we get together, it is during a holiday rush. It was my grandma's FIRST TIME to get a pedicure! That was a treat, and I think we have her hooked! When the girls got back from pedicures, Emersyn was up from her nap so we opened gifts. I am not sure she really cared about the gifts, except maybe for her new rocking chair that she kept climbing into!( Thank you Aunt Ashley and Uncle Hunter. ) However, Ezra had a field day with her new toys.

The crew before we went out

That evening was an even bigger treat! My mom, her husband and my grandma decided to watch the kids while me and my siblings went out on the town with our significant others! We decided to live it up, well, as much as you can when you are older, married and want to go to bed around 10 or 1l!! HA! We went to Boudro's on the Riverwalk for some guacamole and drinks! We were there for about an hour and then had to load up and head to our movie at Alamo Draft House where we got some dinner and maybe one or two more drinks. We saw Iron Man 2. It was such a good night. We laughed and talked and laughed some more. I think we really needed that.
Sunday morning, we had a relaxing morning of getting everyone's stuff together and eating breakfast. The crew headed out around 11:30 and everyone made it back safely! It was such a good weekend!

Thank You Family for celebrating Emersyn with us! We love you guys so much.

VOTE FOR EMERSYN!!

Hi All! I had entered Ezra and Emersyn's picture into a photo contest with parents magazine for fun, and Emersyn's photo was PICKED!! NOW, we have to go to the website and vote for her picture so she will be picked as a semi-finalist. I need your help! The voting starts NOW and ends on the 16th! You can vote once a day, so PLEASE help us vote for her picture!
Here is the link:

Congratulations! Thank you for entering the Parents Magazine Cover Contest! Your photo is currently in the running to become one of our weekly Reader’s Choice finalists! The photo with the most votes this week will go into our semi-final Reader’s Choice round for a chance to travel to New York City for the Parents Cover Contest Photo Shoot.   Come back daily! Voting ends 05/16/2010. Get your friends and family to vote too! Just forward this email to them or share the link.http://photos.parents.com/category/vote/photo/279246

My baby girl is 1!!

Emersyn's birth announcement and 1 year old photo shoot

Emersyn's first birthday is today! I am am saddened that she is no longer considered a "baby", but a walking, talking toddler! This year went by so fast for us. I still feel like it was not too long ago, that I was holding my sweet little girl in my arms. Oh how things have changed and how she has grown! She is walking, not completely by herself, but definitely taking several steps and building her confidence daily! She has many words in her vocabulary: momma, dada, bubba, milk, more, no, yes, uh oh, whoa, ball (her first word and still favorite!), thank you, puppy; along with some animal sounds!
She loves to swing and race with her brother. She is such a climber and pretty good at it! She can climb up our slide by herself, is a master at the stairs, gets into her own chair to read and loves to play cars and ball with Ezra. She prefers to play outside and would stay outside all day if I let her. Her brother is the same way!!
She has several teeth already. I think at this point, Ezra only had two, maybe four! She has four on top, two on bottom with two more pushing through on the bottom. She is such a good eater! She rarely refuses food items and sometimes out eats her brother! She is still soo little. She weighs about 17 1/2 pounds and is tall. Her first year appointment is next week, so not sure about the exact height.
She is such pure joy and happiness. Smiling often and laughing much and cuddling more! We are so blessed to have been chosen by our Father in heaven to be her parents! We love her and look forward to this new year with her as she learns to walk, run, jump, climb, talk and grow into her toddler self!!!

WE LOVE YOU EMMY GIRL!!

Morning of her actual birthday!!

Bear Hunt!

Enchanted Rock from the bottom

another view of Enchanted Rock

Friday afternoon we left town and headed to Fredericksburg. We were headed to Enchanted Rock. The whole Eilers family was going to be there!! All of Brent's brother's and sister's came, including, husbands/wives (minus susanna), all the kids and Opa and Oma. All together there were 19 of us; 10 adults and 9 kids. Good thing we were still one up on the kiddos. We arrived at our destination around 4:30, ready to pick out our campsites and set up camp. Our crew was the first to arrive at Enchanted Rock, so we were set up and unpacked by the time the others started arriving. Brent did such a great job of picking our campsites. It was just a small walk to the restrooms (which were clean and had showers!) and a great play area for the kids, yet we were not in the midst of other campers!

By the time Opa and Oma arrived (they were the last ones to get there) we were all ready to EAT DINNER! Aunt Michelle and Oma were in charge of dinner and came prepared with fish, which they caught the weekend before, tortillas, cheese, black bean salsa and chips! YUMMY! While waiting for dinner and before it got dark, Daniel and Brent took some of the boys up the small rock for a fun adventure. They almost made it all the way to the top! Ezra was such a trooper and went all the way up with them and came back down without any harm. Then, Michelle and Bradley took a group of kids a little later..now it was getting a little more dark. When I came back from our tent, I realized Ezra went climbing the rock AGAIN! I was so proud. This time, though, he came down the rock crying. I guess on the way down, he kinda fell and hit his head on a rock! He was done after that. He wanted to go to the tent and go "night night" with his blankie! I mean, who can blame him? Both kids were down and out by 9-930! The rest of the night the adults sat around the camp fire talking until 11:30. We then headed to bed because we had a big rock to climb the next day!

 Around 2 o'clock in the morning, thunder started rolling in! It was crazy windy with thunder and lightning. Brent rushed out and with some other of our campers to make sure things wouldnt blow away. Well, the thunder and wind only lasted about 30 minutes or so with a very light drizzle. We woke up that next morning to a beautiful morning! 

Breakfast tacos were served, campers were geared up and we were ready to climb the BIG ROCK by 9am!! It was the PERFECT time to go. It was sunny but cool with a nice breeze. Oma, Fr. Brian (hurt calf muscle) and Emersyn stayed behind to "watch" our stuff and take a walk around the campground. All kids 8 yrs old and UNDER, did AMAZING!! We took a couple sit down breaks on the way up to catch our breath and take in the view, but made it all the way to the top in about 30 minutes!! Good job kids! 

Well, once at the top, we had to go looking for those bears! No bears in sight that we could see, but we knew they were out there! We walked around the top of the rock a little and found a couple of fun things. We definitely found the bears "drinking hole", that had tadpoles in it. We also found the bears HOUSE! Such a cool cave. All the kids wanted to go in the cave even though it was a little dark and "spooky". Fortunately the bear was out to lunch! It took some muscles to heave kids up and down some of the rocks to get out of the cave, but we all made it in ONE PIECE! 

As we were heading down the rock, we decided to go down a tougher path that didn't involve going straight down. It was so fun. We saw deer on the way down and got to climb up and down different rocks. I mean we had a great time! We were finished climbing and back at camp by 11! So, we prepared lunch and sat around to wind down. Some of  the campers went to check out the creek while the rest of us packed up to be ready to leave by 2.

We had fun! Ezra and Emersyn did GREAT and we would LOVE to do it again!

setting up camp

nice play area!

all the campers

such a cute camper!

only injury of the trip. poor guy!

ready for the climb

on the trail to the rock

half way up the rock (maybe :)

half way up with my climber

some one catch him!!! Haha.. the way he laid and angle of the camera made this pic look so cool

top of the rock marker

bears watering hole with the tadpoles

part of the cave

coming out of the cave

Our camera died right after this. We got some more great pictures with Uncle Kevin's camera that I will have to get from him and post!