Wild West Fest

The city I grew up in, and where my parents still live, has a fun little festival every year around Easter called Wild West Fest.  It is a lot of fun, and I love it because not many people outside of the city itself know about it.  So they always have lots of fun things to do, and the crowds aren't bad at all, which means there is generally no wait time for anything!  Throw in the fact that my parents always go, and it's a winning situation all around!  :0)   

This year, the city is building a new fire station!  (I can't wait to take Jay to the grand opening tour!!) 

This year they let the kids play with the fire hoses to "put out" fires in a little wooden house.  It was pretty cute, and Jay thought it was sheer greatness!  

Here are Papa and Jay, they're pretty good buddies:

My boys:

 And of course, what would a Wild West Fest in Texas be without armadillos!?  They had armadillo races, and the kids could pet the armadillos too:

I am also VERY excited to say that we finally convinced Jay to go into a bounce house!!  Hooray!!  It might have had something to do with the fact that I convinced him to go hunt for the dragon inside of this one, but hey, whatever works right!?  He had a blast jumping and sliding!   

 

 Ha ha they also had a mechanical bull, and Jay was beyond excited to ride it.  He stayed on the whole time, and I think he was pretty proud of himself!  His Daddad will be proud! 

Jay and Papa also went on a train ride, and they had front row seats!   

We had a really good time, and Jay was one tired boy by the time we left!!  (And so was Papa)  :0)

We're Turning Into Popcicles!

We had a nasty ice storm blow in Monday, and have literally been freezing our heinies off all week.  Our daily highs have been in the teens with wind chills around zero...sometimes below zero!  Yikes!!  It hasn't been this cold here in like 15 years!  And as for as I'm concerned, I can go another 50 without ever having it be this cold again...


Ha ha Yesterday Jay took about two steps out the backdoor before deciding it was way too cold, and coming back in.  Today he lasted about 10 minutes.  We're just not built for this kind of cold!  But we have been holed up in our house drinking hot cocoa and playing all sorts of games.  :0)   


Now the state has implemented "rolling blackouts" where different areas around the state lose power for "15" minutes (really more like several hours) so that they can try to keep the power on the rest of the time.  I'm telling you, we just don't know what to do with this kind of cold!!


Here are a few pictures of the snow:

The Hubbs took Miss Fancy Bunny out to see the snow, and surprisingly, she loved it! She didn't want to come back inside!

Jay loved throwing Dutchess' soccer ball and watching her run through the snow to get it:

 

This is ICE on our front door.  The storm door was actually frozen shut when I tried to go get the mail earlier today.  Yikes!

The front of our house after some of the ice melted:

Thankfully, in the midst of all this cold, our first tomato seedling popped through the soil (inside our house of course!)  Yay!!  It's one of the sweet 100 plants: 

 

If it ever warms up again, I have GOT to get going on my garden!  My garden area in out new house is the size of the entire back yard in our old house, so it should be quite an adventure!  :0)  But for now, I am going to sip my cocoa and turn on a good movie! 

   

Stock Show Time!

It's that time of year again here in North Texas...and no, I'm not talking about the Super Bowl. I'm talking about the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. I think every kid in this area grows up going to it every year, and Jay is certainly no exception. This year the weather was perfect on the weekend we went! It was sunny and warn, perfect for walking through all the barns and shows. 

Here Jay is very intently picking out which baby chicks we should get for your yard. Ha ha he was quite disappointed when he realized that these chicks were not for sale!

They always have multiple displays of all the latest and greatest tractors and big boy farm toys at the stock show, and Jay LOVED them! 

He climbed right up there and said "let's go!"

He loved petting all the animals too!  They had all sorts of beautiful palomino horses there this year:

Here is one of the chuck wagon teams getting ready to race.  We didn't go to the rodeo this year, we didn't think Jay could sit still that long, but we plan to go next year.  Ha ha and with Jay's recent bull riding obsession, God help us, we probably should have taken him. 

(Just to give you an idea, he has decided that when the cowboy riding the bull busts his nose, the bull wins.  And even after seeing that...Jay still thinks it looks fun... So fun that he pretends his bouncy horse is a bull all the time.  I think we had better make it a point to always have really good health insurance!!) 

And of course, the stock show wouldn't be the same without all the fun food!  The Hubbs and Jay practically ate their way through the stock show this year.  Every time I turned around, The Hubbs was coming back with a cinnamon roll or some dippin dots ice cream.  It worked out for me, because I get to try bites of all the yummy food they ate!  :0)  Here is Jay with his Dippin Dots:

We had so much fun!!  If you have never been to the stock show here, it is definitely something worth checking out!  You get to see people at their best.  For a lot of area kids it is the culmination of a years worth of hard work raising cows, chickens, pigs, sheep etc.  You can buy everything from tractors and barns to boots and jewelry.  I know that I'm kind of partial, but I sure love it!  :0) 
 

New Boots

Jay finally outgrew his first pair of boots back before Christmas...and it's probably a good thing he did because they were getting pretty ragged looking.  I never guessed a little boy could be so hard on his shoes!!

We always take Jay to the same store that The Hubbs and his brother got their boots from growing up.  It's a Justin boot store, of course!  We are kind of partial to Justin boots because they are made in Justin, Texas, just a few blocks from the little country church The Hubbs and I were married in.  :0)  Anywho, we took a trip over to the boot store this weekend so that Jay could pick out a new pair of boots.  They had tons of them to choose from:

Aren't they cute!?  I would have had to try on about 20 pairs of them before settling on a pair had they been for me!  But Jay looked through a few pairs and picked the ones he wanted right off the bat.  They were the only ones he even tried on!

He wears a toddler size 10, crazy huh!?  What ever happened to his tiny baby feet??

 

Ha ha and he really loves them!!  He wouldn't even take them off so we could pay for them...so The Hubbs had to lift him up onto the counter so we could show the cashier the tag.  Needless to say, Jay wore them out of the store.  Here he is clomping back and forth so we could make sure they were a good fit:

Here are Jay's new boots in all their glory:

 

He is already working hard to scuff them up and break them in...

I think they are pretty cute!  :0)  Is it just a Texan thing, or do your boys LOVE their boots as much as mine does!?

Meet Fancy Bunny

Jay decided that this year for Christmas, he wanted a pet bunny rabbit.  He has been VERY consistent with this idea for months.  He never once faltered and said he wanted anything else for Christmas.  I was all for him getting a nice stuffed "pet" bunny...but Santa had much bigger ideas!  

Santa found a local 4H breeder that was selling baby Mini Rex bunnies.  And y'all...they were SO cute!  They were born October the 14th, which meant they would be ready just a few weeks before Christmas.  Luckily, Grandma helped Santa out and kept the baby bunny at her house until Christmas Eve.  (Santa had waayyy too much going on at the North Pole to properly socialize a baby bunny!!)

So Christmas Eve, this showed up at our house:



Santa even left a trail of carrots from Jay's bedroom door to the bunny cage in the living room:



Christmas morning dawned and Jay was one happy little man!!  Ha ha I don't think he even cared about his other presents.  (Until he got to the swing set from Nana and Papa, but that is a whole different story!)  Grandma asked Jay what he was going to name his bunny.  Jay thought about it for a few seconds and said Fancy!  Ha ha and Lord only knows where he came up with that, but it certainly fits! 

 So without further adieu, I would like to introduce you to the newest member of our family:

Fancy Bunny

   

She really is a cutie!  She loves to frolic and hop around our house, and she even tries to play with Dutchess!  She is a bit of a priss, and definitely has a little bit of an attitude.  Her favorite spot is under the Christmas tree, so she will probably not be too happy when we take it down.  And, most importantly, Jay absolutely LOVES her!!   

Oh Christmas Tree

Much to the Hubbs' dismay, I LOVE real Christmas trees!  And the bigger they are...the better. 

This year, our ceilings are two feet shorter than they were in our last house, so it was difficult for me to pick out a tree, but we managed to find a really great one!  We usually buy a Douglas Fir, but this year they all looked awful, so we ended up with a Noble Fir.  I liked it so much, that we might get the same kind again next year!!

Jay had a blast running around through the trees, and using stray branches to "sweep" up pine needles. 

Here is our tree tied to the top of our car:

We got the tree inside, but once we got it into the tree stand...it was too tall.  So we had to cut off a few inches from the top.  Oops! 

Jay was very excited to decorate the tree!  With the exception of the lights and bows, he decorated the entire bottom portion of the tree by himself. 

  

  

I made all of the stuffed ornaments for Jay's first Christmas.  I wanted our tree to be safe for him to play with!

This is the tree on Christmas morning:

I know some people are big into themes and their trees have to be *just* so, and that is all well and good...but I am not that kind of person!  :0)  Every ornament on our tree means something to our family.  They have been made by a loved one, or were gifts from people that mean a lot to us.  Jason's aunt showed me how to make the bows. And the star on top of our tree used to sit on top of my Grandma's tree.  To me, our trees will always be perfect! 

I am proud (or should I be embarrassed?) to say that this is the first tree that we have ever had that was not a dried up mess by Christmas day!  Hooray!! 

The North Pole Express

 Jay has a bit of a thing for trains, so this year we decided to take him on the North Pole Express.  There is a local train in our area that really goes all out for Christmas!  They decorate the train inside and out, and the kids are encouraged to wear their pajamas for the train ride.  They get to sing Christmas carols, listen to a reading of The Night Before Christmas, and Santa even comes onto the train for a visit!! 

I tried and tried to get Jay to wear his train pj's, but he wouldn't!  He insisted on wearing his alien space ship ones.  Ha ha I tried!!  Here is Jay waiting in line with his hot cocoa:

They do this live stage performance thing before you ride the train, and honestly, we could have done without it.  Ha ha Jay asked me the whole time when we were going to go onto the train!

My boys heading to the train!  You walk through a tree lined path to get to the train, and they even have a snow machine.  :0)

The inside of the train:

Jay LOVED the train ride! 

The Hubbs and Jay looking out the window:

Santa!!  And Jay made sure to ask Santa (again) for a bunny rabbit.

We had a lot of fun, and Jay definitely loved the train ride!!  We also played in the North Pole Village when we got off the train, and it was kind of neat too.  Jay tried his first piece of funnel cake, and watched a real blacksmith at work.  :0)