While the cats away the mice will play.

Last week I went to Utah for my grandma's funeral. She was 96; fiercely independent, loyal, generous and a wee bit irreverent. Just my kind of woman. I ended up staying six days and on the last day I went skiing with my friend Tara. While in Utah we ate (a lot), cooked, hiked up the mountain at my aunts, played basketball with my brothers and cousins, and enjoyed talking about grandma.

Chad was very anxious for me to get home. One conversation went a little like this, "yeah I'm pretty frazzled, Lily is super destructo baby. They just don't ever seem to slow down."

. . .you don't say?

Even baby was at the end of her rope.

And the kitchen, well, it missed me too. Even though this is the morning after I returned with some groceries. The kitchen upon my return was "Chad clean", and I am very grateful for that!

So did the laundry.

Bless their little hearts though. They did try to pick up. They just stuffed everything into baskets meant for books, garbage, dirty clothing, my shoes, suckers, valentines. . .you get the picture.

Owen gives me a heart attack.

Not literally, but figuratively. On Valentines day we woke up to hearts all over the kitchen with statements of love and "you're cool". My sweet boy.

Snow day. Most snow in Texas ever recorded. Now we are officially famous.

Snow day in Texas, time to call friends over for a rip roaring good time. School was let out Thursday due to the constant pouring down of snow and then canceled Friday from that accumulation. MOST SNOW IN RECORDED HISTORY IN TEXAS. Great, now we have some fascinating stories to tell our great-grandchildren.

Notice in Texas we do not have boots. We have cowboy boots! Ya'all.

If you look closely, you will see the Pam cooking spray in hand. Used to propel small children.

Look at the native out of his element.

Showing these children how it's done.

No waterproof coats. But plenty of trash bags.

The process of fun-making.

The snow may not look like tons to you northerners but the city is officially on high alert. No stores are open and everyone is hyper aware of any type of danger. Thank goodness this is Texas and we all own multiple automatic weapons. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

We all decided that Harrison looked similar to a Transformer.

Snow inside the barrier leads to tears. Little brothers are always such easy targets.

A great time was had by all. We are recovering from our various exploits and the local vegetation is on strike. We lost a couple of large branches but no trees, not the case for many of our neighbors. Approximately one out of two homes lost a large tree from the storm. Mother nature, one point.

I tried being resonable, I didn't like it.

Meet, Mr. native Texan. He is charming, smooth talking, wildly strong and brave. But he has enemies you know. A foe that is so formidable that even the strongest bravest native cowers in fear inside his mothers automobile.

So, here we find ourselves. Pondering tactics for defeating our enemy. He is a new foe for me(my blood has officially thinned) and an unimaginable enemy of the native. Slowly building power over us these past eight years of living here in Texas. I try to encourage my native Texan to have strength. Share stories of my many experiences with the enemy in my previous life.

Game plan. Run. It is our only hope against what is our form of kryptonite.

Snow. The mortal enemy of the native Texan. And my original plan for these pictures and this post title was, "Texas schools finally grow a pair and holds school." But. At eleven in the morning they held an emergency release due to snow. Then about two hours later news came that there wouldn't be any school the next day either. So. The enemy remains in power.


. . .In our defense you will see in the snow day post that this is the most snow Texas has ever had on record. Did you comprehend that?, yes I said EVER.

Yes, I am ripped. Well not ripped at all but able to carry a very large handbag.

Large enough for all of my important items.

Like this precious cargo. And the bonus? I know that while I'm carrying around my cargo other precious household items are safe.

No matter how long you carry them around it's just never enough.

Random photos from the week.

Isn't he the coolest looking cat? He is an interesting personality mix also, chill enough to sit on a kids lap (tummy facing up, something you have to see) but also super playful a feisty.

Luke posing during chores.

Okay. We have been meaning to get a picture of this exact pose for weeks now. See how she is looking over her shoulder, hand cocked up at her side and sticking her bum out? Well we see this pose at least once a day. This is her I'm poop y stance. She will come up to us and bust out this pose (every single time) and loudly say "I poo-py!" or sometimes she mixes it up with "Mama, I poo-py!"

...think maybe it's time to potty train her?

She was just too cute to resist here. Especially when she is stuffing her face. Which, forgive me dear Lily is ALL THE TIME. We already feel like we have a hungry teenager in the house. She is a growth machine. Especially when you see her standing taller than four year olds, (she's two). Guess that 6'2" stuff was NO joke.

Putting her beloved Zu zu pets in a hat for some safe keeping.

Some really safe keeping.

Her eyes are the neatest color. They are green with brown flecks in them. If I do say so myself. Which I do. So I will. ....name the cartoon character which originally made that statement.

So happy when daddy comes home from work! While looking at this photo just pretend you can hear, "Daddy daddy daddy!" Being screeched out by multiple children.

O's bball game and Lukes new toy (that is already lost).

Owen (the big O) as he is known on the court, running out of the tunnel on Saturday's game.

I was so happy I got this shot, Owen had just stolen the ball and ran it down court and made a basket. He was thrilled and Luke cheered SO SO loud for his brother. A very exciting point in the action.

Warming up. Currently Owen is playing two sports, tennis and basketball. I need to take some pictures of him on the tennis court because I'm amazed at how good he is. He's serving overhead and can rally back and forth like twenty times!

This is our cheering section, Luke and Mr. MnM. Mr. MnM came into out lives a week ago. Luke saw him at a store last Saturday and asked for him for his birthday (which is in November, we adhere to pretty strict rules of no toys except your birthday or Christmas).

As you may know our dear sweet Luker has a bit of a problem with crustiness. He tends to scream and get frustrated fairly easy and you definitely DO NOT want to give him a reason to defend himself. Just trust me on this (we (anybody that even remotely knows Luke) think his sport is going to definitely be football...he's just got the killer instinct). So I thought I'd come up with an incentive to come to the sweeter side of relationships. Enter Mr. MnM. Luke got three strikes for one week and if on the last day he still had a strike left he could get his new toy. The rules were no screaming, you have to talk your problems out. And no whining and crying if something doesn't go your way, just get over it.

So he did so great! He got two strikes, one a few hours after system was devised and the other on Wednesday. He played with the toy constantly and brought him to the game. Which is where he consequentially lost it. Should I buy him a new one or have him learn a life lesson on being more careful with your toys?