we enjoyed playgroup so much friday morning. the air was warm - almost hot - but there was a nice breeze. micah and rowan wore themselves out in the sun, then we went home and had a nice lunch and spent the rest of the day indoors. josh had planned to spend saturday night at his friend, brandon's house learning how to paint with oils... but, my dad decided at the last minute to join my stepmom, vesta, the kids and i in madisonville, tx for a bishop (that's my stepmom's maiden name) family reunion. originally just vesta, the kids and i were going to go, but vesta really wanted daddy to join us, so he decided to come along, but he needed someone to take care of callie. my brother already had plans, so josh was nice enough to switch his saturday-night plans to friday night, and he spent last night at my dad and vesta's, keeping callie company.

we had fun at the reunion! the family had rented a small recreation center on lake madisonville (a very small, manmade lake) next to a cool little playground. the kids (mine, plus about 4 other young ones) were only able to enjoy the playground for about an hour before it began to rain - and it proceeded to rain and thunder and lightning for the entire remainder of the day. we had fun indoors, though. we got to meet many of vesta's family members about whom i'd heard plenty of stories, but had never even seen any pictures of, so it was nice to see everyone. the kids amused themselves by running/crawling/skipping around the rec room, watching the rain through the windows, and spying on a nest full of baby birds in the eave around the building, right outside one of the windows. we watched the mama and papa birds (really pretty - some kind of swift, i think) fly back and forth with bits of food. as for what the people had to eat, the event was catered and we had BBQ, beans, chips, dip, etc. some folks brought dessert, and there were these incredibly yummy lemon shortbread cookies with lemon creme sandwiched in between. i ate sooo many of those!

after spending the day in the rec room with all the family, we adjourned to our motel rooms at around 8 pm last night. it took forever for micah and rowan to settle down, but they finally did, and we all slept like rocks. we woke up early the next morning, had mcdonalds and coffee for breakfast, then hit the road! we were back home by noon. we took some cute pictures, which i will post here (along with the long-overdue pics from our weekend trip to wichita falls earlier this month!) as soon as possible.

we are slowly but surely getting packed up around here and ready to move to our house! although, i'm finding we packed some stuff a little too early... micah is asking for some of her dolls and toys that we've already boxed up, and i needed a band-aid earlier and it took a little while to find one. but i'd rather be mildly inconvenienced now than in a mad, hectic, stressful rush at the end of the month!

i am having a heck of a time trying to figure out when and where to have micah's birthday party! a lot of our friends are going out of town in early-mid june, and i can't have it the last weekend of may, because that's when we're moving. i don't mind pushing it farther into the month of june, but i'm still not sure where i want to have it. i don't know that i want to have it at the new house, because we won't have anything fun to play on in the backyard yet, and besides, i don't really like having parties at my house... it's too stressful, and i work myself all up beforehand because i have this fear that no one is going to have fun, or everyone will think my house is messy and dirty, or that everyone will be bored... i don't know why. i really want to have her party at the little splashground at heights pool in richardson, but i don't know if we'll be able to afford it. we'll see... if anyone has any suggestions, let me know! this is the first year i've stressed out about this; maybe we'll just end up at a neighborhood park as usual. : ) that's always so fun and relaxed for me.