Brenham Ice Cream Festival

On Saturday (April 24) we went to Brenham, TX for the Blue Bell Ice Cream festival. For those of you you who don't know what Blue Bell is, originally it was a Texas only brand of ice cream. Now it's expanded a bit, but you still can't get it everywhere (especially not in Utah!). We like it and think it's one of the best ice creams around. Some of the locals think it is the BEST ICE CREAM EVER!!!!!

The Blue Bell factory is in Brenham, so every year they have this one day festival to celebrate their ice cream. About 4000 people show up each year for the festival, so in small town Texas, it's a pretty big deal. They set up booths and shows around the court house square. The best part is that for $6 you get a wristband that you can show to get all you can eat ice cream all day long at booths set up around the court house square.

Here's Toby enjoying the first of his six scoops of ice cream that day. At the festival the kids learned that they actually don't like it when they can eat as much ice cream as they can.

This is Thomas, Abby and Molly enjoying the first of their ice cream. Molly only ate 2 scoops. Thomas and Abby both ate between 5-6 scoops, before they started to feel sick. So, they ate a deep fried Snickers bar to help wash the taste of ice cream out of their mouths. Suprisingly, we only had tummy aches on the way home, no one got really sick.

Molly loved this grate. The holes looked as though they were big enough to swallow her feet. So she slowly walked the "tight rope" over the gaping hole in the ground.

There was a "train" for the kids to ride. It took them on a loop around a couple of streets in downtown. We piled all three kids in, and they had fun.

Here is the train being pulled by the City of Brenham, Parks Department John Deere lawn mower. There was some poor volunteer who got to drive cars full of kids around all afternoon in the blazing sun on a lawn mower.

Here are some of the booths along the court house square. We bought the kids wooden frogs at one of the stands. These hand made frogs have ridges on their backs and a wooden stick that you rub over the ridges. If you do it right, the frogs start to croak!

This is the art deco entrance to the county court house. Every Texas county has a court house, and most of them were built around the turn of the century (the 1900's, not the 2000's). So many of them are this great art deco style. Notice that the Christmas lights are still up on the Court House. You might be a redneck if...

There were over 20 classic cars that had been brought out for the Ice Cream festival. The cars were all on display all morning and into the afternoon. I couldn't believe how much time and effort these guys had put into their toys.

There was a stick horse race for the kids. When we saw it Abby and Molly wanted to race. Thomas was too "cool" for any of that nonsense. Here we see Abby in third place as they round the first curve.

And here comes Molly bringing up the rear. After the race Molly was a bit sad to have to put her faithful steed away, but she was finally willing to just wave goodbye and leave.

Jump Jump

On April 15th, we had the Pullmans and the Watsons over for dinner. Between the three families we have 8 kids. Here are some pictures of most of those kids jumping on the trampoline together!! They thought it was awesome to have that many kids on at the same time!!

I think Liam was the only one who never went out to jump, he was happy inside playing with Thomas' Nerf Shotgun!!

Easter 2010

Easter morning the kids awoke to the baskets that the Easter Bunny had hidden in their rooms the night before while they were sleeping. They were all very excited!!!

After church we were invited by the Pullman family to come over for Easter dinner and an Easter Egg Hunt. We always have a great time with them, but sharing Easter with them was especially fun. We played a game called "Ticket to Ride" which was really fun and Thomas has been begging ever since to buy one for ourselves. Here are a few pictures of the Easter Egg Hunt.
Thomas, being the oldest kid, was the last to get to come down the stairs, so he was pumped up and focused on finding eggs!!



Here are all 5 kids together after the eggs were all found. Thomas, Molly, Abby, Zoey, and Liam. Later in the evening Molly got into Zoey's finger nail polish that she got from the Easter Bunny. She painted her face and nails and legs and toes!!!

A new pet

Today, before Conference, I was working outside in the backyard. Over on the patio table I noticed a small lizard looking at me. At first I was going to just get the kids to come see the lizard, but then I realized that it would take forever and would involve lots of screaming and yelling. So, after chasing the lizard around the yard for a few minutes I caught him.

The kids were so excited to see the lizard and immediately asked "Can we keep him???!!!!" As Amy didn't mind, we cleaned out the old fish tank (from our Canadian fish, eh) and made it into a terrarium.

Thomas proposed that Molly get to name the new pet. Right now the two suggested names are "Pet" and "Lizard", so I think someone else is going to name him.

We think its a Carolina Anole which, despite the name, seems to be native to the wetter parts of Texas (which Houston is).