New Years Weekend

The weekend before new years was spent down at my parent’s house. We got to chat and later we all ate my mom’s runzas. She usually makes a bunch of these and they are pretty time consuming. I think we decided to make it a tradition to get to eat these once a year on the weekend of or before new years. It was a nice time. The girls got to play together for the first time. Amaylie would sit and watch as Kaitlin kept taking all the things that Brooklyn would pick up. Brooklyn would then pick up another toy and Kaitlin would drop the first toy and take the newest one Brooklyn picked up. Then Brooklyn would take the toy Kaitlin just dropped. I found this amusing.
On Sunday I headed back down for a girls day out. We went to the after Christmas sales and then we all ate Chinese food. I ate way too much here but the food was so good. Rarely do I go to a Chinese buffet and find a lot of things I like. Usually just one big hit and I fill up on it. This one had so many that I didn’t get to try it all because I ate all of the portions I put on my plate. My favorite was this seasoned steamed crab and shrimp mixture. It was so good. I will definitely crave this place in the future.
Here are the pictures from the weekend.
I forgot to mention that we had home made ice cream with our runzas. It was actually a wendy's frosty recipe. It was very good. The bad part was that it wasn't going to save well so naturally we ate what we could so that it wouldn't go to waste.
















This next picture is of my nieces. I wish I would have been thinking when all the girls were playing together and grabbed my camera. That would have been a great moment to capture. Anyhow, here is Kaitlyn with her Grandpa and Amaylie with her very annoying popper toy. It is impossible to have a phone conversation with my mom when Amaylie has this going in the back ground, lol!




















This one was taken in my parents front yard at the big cedar tree. She loves to be out there to run around and we enjoy the nice peaceful dog all that running around makes her.















These next pictures have a little story. A long while back at our first house... (the first house that I remember living at).. I was out bike riding around the neighbor hood. There is this nice hill where the side walk is lined with great big oak trees. I loved to just coast down this after riding around a long time because it was shady from the sun and the breeze was so wonderful. You could go a long ways with out pedaling once! Anyhow, I parked my bike one day and picked up these big acorn looking seeds. I took them home and saw a brown pot with dirt in it. So naturally I decided to put all of my seeds in dirt in this bucket. Of all the seeds I put in only one wasn't a dud. I had grown a little oak tree of my very own.

My parents bought some land outside city limits that we will forever call "The Property". Since my little tree was starting to out grow the pot we picked a place out there for it. We would be out there often watering it and all the other trees we planted. (Just a little note... all of this was after clearing the 7 acers of brush and tons and TONS of Mesquite trees. That was one hard summer!) Back to the story. My tree was growing so good. Soon all the land was cleared and fences were put up. The property was ready for my mom's horse to go out there.

One day when we went to water Loni's Oak Tree tears ran down my face because my tree being only 3 years old was split in half from the horse trampling it. I was so upset. My mom decided to try and save it so she propped up the little tree and taped the split trunk together. We kept it watered and gave it plenty of horse manure and THE TREE LIVED!!!
I was admiring how big my tree had gotten so I went to take a picture of it. My tree also had two seeds come off of it this year. The proud parent of twins! I also noticed that some birds thought my tree was pretty grand because they decided to build a nest in it. I am so honored. My mom and I calculated it up and my tree is now 12 years old.