Happy Birthday John!

Homemade Father's Day card

Seems like everything I do lately is homemade, but it's made with love and thoughtfulness so hopefully the gift receivers don't mind. I love the way this turned out. Bash & I made this oragami necktie and then pinned it to a shirt we made from scrap book paper. Then we made a pocket and inside it stuffed a piece of card stock that we signed and stuffed in like a hankie. I can't wait til John sees it.

Cuban Folktale

Well, we've been reading some Spanish books and when went to the library Fri. I came across this Cuban Folktale. The book is written in English, but it comes with a CD that reads it in English and Spanish. It is too stinkin cute! It's called "Martina The Beautiful Cockroach". I strongly recommend it. The kids really enjoyed it.

"She gettit from her mama"

Well, she does take after me & Bash, Mia got a super cute tan! I'm just glad she doesn't burn, like the other gene contributor.

Cub Scout fishing trip

Ok this fishing trip was way cooler than I expected. We all met at Jesse H. Jones park and nature center of FM1960 a little past Sam's. I would never have guessed that there be this beautiful park behind this little subdivision. It had all kinds of cool trails, gorgeous fishing spots, a huge playground and eating area. Despite the heat and bugs, the boys had a great time! The men found this little cave like dwelling for the mommies to escape the sun with the babies. I definitely want to go back soon!

Believe it or not, this was a swampy swampish area, with water snakes, we saw two

We called this the mommy grotto

Ready set...

GO !!!

This is what 102 degree weather will do to a baby

Merry go round, weeeee

Summer Reading Schedule

Our summer reading schedule is well under way and doing great. With the help of our library and a neat website called fly lady, the Ririe family managed to come up with a summer schedule right after school ended that includes learning (math, writing, history, and geography), crafts, play time and story time. Story time is reading which goes with learning but with Bash's dyslexia, I didn't want to make reading time a boring thing. One thing that has REALLY helped him want to read other than picking out his own cool books, is reading them to Mia. If I begin reading time, its sort of a boring task, but if he reads to Mia he can read non-stop, and I usually have to remind him when time's up. I have some cool pics from the library I need to post and I'll include some of the books were working on.

It's so cute, he's learning to do voices and really enunciate for her

Yohan Bash's 1st recital

I know Bach was an organist, but I thought it was a cute play on the name. Well, my baby had his first recital, tear. He did an amazing job and we couldn't be more proud! His instructor Ashley or Sister Fort, as he calls her, is an amazing woman. She prepared a fancy sit-down dinner for all of her students (with fancy china and all), then put on the most awesome recital, served lovely refreshments after, and then went out of her way by hand making the tote bag that you'll see in the pics with each students name and a little memento attached. She went above and beyond and I can't thank her enough for all of her hard work with Sebastian.




Huge incentive for Bash to continue lessons, see these girls are scheduled right before him, so while their waiting for each other and their mom, Bash gets all the quality time.

Rice Village

Well, I decided to be brave and take the kids to see the sites of downtown Houston. We went through the museum district then on a shopping spree down in Rice Village, and then also covered some of the Westheimer area. It was so much fun and there were a ton of sales. We went all through the Village, to antique stores, exclusive designer consigner shops, and I mean DESIGNER, like even resale the Chanel, Prada and Manolos were like 2-$300, and at one of them, they had the dress that Kevin Costner's bride wore, it was one of 5 made by that designer. It was alot of fun. I have to make little deals with Bash like ok if you do like 3 or 4 of my stores I 'll take you to one that interests you and get you a treat. He's obviosly outgrown those days when I'd strap him in the stroller, give him some candy and an icee and he could go all day long shopping with me. Well, for as many stores as we covered and all the long minutes of my trying stuff on, Bash got to pick two places to get a treat. The first place was called Candylicious, where I almost od'd on nostalgia and got a toothache just walking around in there. This place was the coolest with every candy ever invented and fully stocked. I mean anything you coudl think of. Then we went to a place called the Chocolate Bar, where I was almost forced into a diabetic coma. Here are some pics.

Like a kid in a candy store, literally!



Will someone please buy me one of these for my birthday? or just anyday.

I told Mia to "PRETEND" to sample, ok I really gave her some.

Do any of you remember my post back in May about our date to the Bombay Brasserie and I talked about seeing a woman in a Burka shopping at Victoria's Secret, well, guess who we saw, and guess where she was shopping, that's right! Yeah, fight the power!