Blue Bell Ice Cream Creamery

On one of our trips to Houston to visit gerson's family, we decided to treat the girls to a stop at the Blue Bell Creamery.  The creamery offers tours, free bowls of ice cream, great photo opps, and silly little hats!! It was a nice break from the car and who doesn't love ice cream?!?

Love the hats!

 

There were a few field trip groups at the creamery waiting for the next tour to start so we decided to skip the tour and went straight for the ice cream!!!!  Delicious!!!

 

 

 

Visiting bessie the cow!  I don't know if that is really her name, but its a perfect name for a cow!

 

 

Think Pink!

Anyone with a little girl is all too familiar with Pinkalicious, a series of children's books where the main character loves pink and pink cupcakes and eventually turns pink!!!  Killeen's community theater put on a musical production of Pinkalicious.  We had a girl's night out and all went to the play.  The girls enjoyed it so much!  Sophie was devastated when it was over!!!  It was definitely worth it to see the joy and excitement of the girls!!

The Searls Girls ready to go!

Excitement before the show!!

Enjoying cupcakes during intermission

Highlights from the night!

Highlights from Maggie's first year of school

Maggie's first year of school has come to an end.  She attended a private preschool this year that had a 3 day a week program.  I am amazed at how much she grew and learned over these past few months.  She has developed a love for art and is blossoming into a great reader.  She loved her school, friends and teachers, but is really looking forward to being in kindergarten this fall.  I just wanted to make sure that I documented some of the fun that she had while at school this year!

Maggie with her best friend, Isabel.

The school had a week of Olympics.  They kids helped make the tie-dyed shirts.

At the Family Picnic

They find so much joy in running!!!

Maggie participated in her first graduation ceremony!  They wore caps and gowns and the ceremony was followed by a reception for the families.  I am so proud of my little girl!

During the ceremony

Pictures with the grad!

Pictures with the family.  Maggie quickly grew tired of taking pics, so her and Scott made grumpy faces.

Her Preschool Teachers:  Mrs. Bickford and Mrs. Carthey

Sophie's favorite picture face...

Sophie is in that phase where she has to make the same silly face every time someone gets the camera out!!!  She may be strange, but she sure is cute!!!

Spring Break 2012

For spring break, we took a few days and went down to Marble Falls to enjoy some family time.  The girls were beyond excited!!!


The first stop was Sweet Berry Farms for a little strawberry picking!!  Maggie and Sophie really enjoyed picking the strawberries!  I had high hopes of doing something productive with the strawberries, but didn't.  We did get to eat a few, but no jam made this year...

 

Mom & Dad joined us at the farm...

This kids decided to ride the little "train", but Sophie started to get scared, so Daddy to the rescue.  Gerson was a good sport and sat with Sophie as they chugged around the farm....its a wonder he fit into that barrel!

A new addition to Sweet Berry farms is a huge trampoline...I don't know what it is about jumping,but the girls LOVE it! 

Later that day we headed to downtown Marble Falls to enjoy the scenes and take a few silly photos.  There were a lot of art sculptures along the strip.  Our favorite was to homage to feet!

Of course no trip is complete without delicious Blue Bell ice cream and Gerson trying to sneak a few licks from the girls' cones! 

I loved these pictures of the girls!  They were having so much fun and were in great moods!

Dinner on the lake with a beautiful sunset and a couple of beautiful little girls to match!

 

 The next day we headed to Inks Lake for some hiking and rock climbing.  I have many fond memories from my youth involving Inks Lake.  We took several family camping trips there and I wanted to carry on the tradition with my girls.  Unfortunately, my husband is completely against the idea of camping, so we just spent the day and got the girls really worn out!

Maggie LOVED the hiking and climbing!!

Sophie was ok with the idea, but ended up on Gerson's shoulders or my back for most of the hiking!

We rented a paddle boat and went around the lake a few times.  Thankfully no one fell in the lake on this trip!

Definitely a good time with some happy memories!

Soccer!!!!

This year marked the second year that Maggie played soccer.  We opted for the indoor option again this year.  Even though Maggie was technically too old to play in the little tykes league, Gerson had offered to coach and when you coach a bunch of crazy kids for free, you can pretty much do whatever you want!!!  Maggie was the oldest and tallest on her team, but she was very patient and did a great job sharing the ball.  Gerson was great with the kids and tried to teach them more than to just run after the ball.  He is anxiously awaiting the fall when he can put Maggie in the local city league, but she is requesting dance lessons instead of soccer (sounds vaguely familiar to last year...)

Here are a few highlights from the season in their BRIGHT yellow shirts:

 

 

Gerson handing out the trophies and posing with the team:

Sophie can't wait until next year when its her turn to play!!