Texas in the Spring

Means we enjoy the nicest weather we have all year!

We discovered this new park just this week and have been twice. Here are some photos of us enjoying the Space Ship Park!
Check out this play structure in the background!! It's 3 stories high and has these enclosed tube slides that are quite fast!! Sam likes to be up there but can't get down on his own and is too scared to use the slide. KP surprised me and did the slide though! Way to go my usually un-daring child!

Flooring Woahs!

So, let me just let the cat out of the bag if you don't already know.....the McKneely's are trying to move this summer. (GASP!!!)

I know, but we're thinking that 1800 square feet is feeling a bit snug and there are lots of bigger homes just sitting on the market in our area and the interest rates are so low......we're gonna make a move before Kaitlyn starts school in the fall.

So in all that comes the "fixing up your house to be nicer than you've ever had it so that someone else can enjoy it".

In that phase we knew we had a few of our ceramic tiles that had unsealed from the cement under them and needed to be re-cemented. Stephen's pretty handy and so we thought it would be pretty easy to take a day off from work and fix the tile. WE WERE WRONG. In lifting up a tile or two, the ones around it would unseal (pop, pop, pop) and then a few more (pop, pop, pop) and a few more. Before we knew it Stephen had pulled up 60 tiles and while breaking to eat dinner--because all that work had taken all day, the REST OF OUR FLOOR went (POP!!!) Sigh, have to replace the whole floor.(Lindsey thought I was taking her picture, silly girl!)

Because I hated living with my floors like this.....sand and rough cement, it was my challenge to find someone to do the work PRONTO!!!. A few months back I'd gotten an estimate to continue the tile where we only had linoleum and I called him. He wasn't available for a MONTH but his two brothers were and they were able to come a few days later.

It drove me a bit crazy last week to have my whole house turned upside down, having to keep track of which doors we could go in and out of, which floors were drying and curing. But we went ahead and did the ceramic throughout and I am glad we did it. They look gorgeous and I am so thankful to Elmer, Tommy and Roger for working so hard!! Gracias!!

Resurrection Morning

At the temple the day before the temple president said that he thinks the word Easter has been too commercialized and so in order to help him remember the sacredness of what we're celebrating he prefers to call it RESURRECTION MORNING, so thus the title of my post.

BUNNY RUN BREAKFAST wasn't completely a BUST. It did DOWNPOUR the night before so we opted for an indoor hunt. For those of you new to the McKneely tradition, our Easter Bunny leaves breakfast (small cereal boxes, bananas, yogurts, milk and juice) along with his eggs and you search for your breakfast.

Then because we have 9:00 am church it was a bit of a scramble to get us out the door, but thankfully dad took a moment to snap a couple photos of our kiddos in their new church duds!


I can't get over my Lindsey in her piggy-tails and my girls in their matching dresses....

The DRESS Story: I totally scored! Lindsey's dress is a hand-me-down from Kaitlyn. A couple years ago I spotted an almost identical dress in a second hand store that still had the tags on so I snatched it and have been pestered by KP ever since to wear it. But I saved it for this very occasion!

And of course Sam has his very first TIE! He desperately wanted one with sports balls on it but we found this car one and he's equally in love with cars so we got the tie and the matching socks and a white shirt so he can "look like daddy!"

Gosh I love these guys!

A Day at the Dallas Temple

The day before Easter our church's primary (Childrens Sunday School) planned an excursion to go visit the LDS Dallas Temple. Now we weren't able to go inside so to speak but we did tour the grounds and see all the flowers. Look at the spires and the fountains. Here is a shot of us sitting on some stairs outside while singing. Then we did reverently enter the foyer of the temple, sit on some stairs again and listen to the Temple President and his wife talk to us about the importance of temples.

Afterwards we were given a handout with some facts about the temple, like how many flowers are planted each year, how they employ 3 full-time gardners to care for the grounds and it takes a full 8 hours to mow the lawn. Here is Stephen talking to Kaitlyn about the Angel Moroni statue that stands a top of the temple.

And of course the primary made sure that each family got to take a family photo at the Temple. Here is ours:I am FOREVER grateful that I married the person I married, when I married him and WHERE I married him. We've been promised that if we're obedient and do what the Lord asks of us, we can be an ETERNAL family with bonds that last FOREVER. I can't imagine a life without my husband or my kids and am so grateful that the Lord loves us enough to make these relationships last beyond death.

If you're interested in learning more about temples and why they're important to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints, check out this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x_-TQivCx8

A Dappy Huck and a Gappy Handpa!

When my father was in college he wanted to write and illustrate books for Children. In fact some of the dates my parents went on were to the BYU library reading children's books. My father even proposed to my mother in a book of stories for children. That being said, it's a hard industry and it just doesn't always pay the bills so a life in the Graphic Design industry was a bit more stable. But my father kept his dream.

Since living here in Texas my father has gotten this idea for a charming little series of childrens books where a wacky word wizard switches letters around in simple little stories to make a game out of reading. He found a publisher and TA-DA!!!! He's a published author.

I couldn't be more thrilled for my dad to see his "dream come true", what was even more the treat is that during General Conference weekend he brought his book to our home and I video taped him reading it to my children. Now I have a treasure! A piece of our family history of my father reading his "dream" to his grand children.

So keep a look out for "The Dappy Huck" available on www.amazon.com and at www.highergroundpress.com. Go and buy 20 copies!

She's Stripping?!?!?!

Lately when I go in to retrieve Lindsey from her crib after naps, this is what I'm finding.....

And this is what she should look like:

Suffice it to say I'm grateful for zipper jammies, the ones with the feet on them. Last night she had thermal pants and a top. Before going to bed I checked on them.....you guessed it, her pants were off. Good thing it didn't get cold last night.