Mother's Day fun

So this is what mothers do for Mother's Day. . . they act like mothers and take their daughters out for a special trip and lunch! Last Saturday I took all four of my beautiful daughters to the American Girl Place in Los Angeles and bought a Samantha doll and a Kit doll for Melody and Hannah respectively. We truly had a wonderful time and it was fun to see the girl's wide eyes and smiles at all the beautiful dolls and clothes. I must admit I had some inner turmoil about taking this trip and buying these dolls because it seems at times excessive. Who needs to be spending that much money on a doll? Both Hannah and Melody had earned the money for their dolls but I still felt a little troubled to see how much of an "I want, I want, I want" sort of culture the whole store creates. Still, my girls are now officially members of the American Girl world and hopefully we can enjoy it all in God-glorifying moderation.


Here we are having lunch together at the Corner Bakery where each girl got her very own dessert! Just like moms do, I didn't order one for myself but ate bites of each of theirs.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day!

Grandma's birthday

Okay, now I'm starting to get the hang of this! I finally figured out how to get all the text and pictures where I wanted them. I feel kind of silly just figuring this out when millions of people have been doing this for years. But hey, there's nothing like learning a new skill to make me feel young again!

Here's Grandma celebrating her 69th birthday with the family in California. I thought maybe family in other parts of the country might enjoy seeing her with all the little ones!

Rosann Collins in the house!

Here's my beautiful and wonderful Godly friend Rosann from high school, many years ago! She just came to visit two weekends ago after seven years in between seeing each other. But, as MK's are so adept at, we were able to pick up right where we left off. The girls thought she was the greatest, and of course, being a second grade teacher she is fabulous with kids. We had such a wonderful time together and made renewed promises to try and get together at least once a year.

This was in Long Beach where we all just hung out by the ocean and Rosann basked in the sunshine that comes so rarely in her hometown of Seattle.

Lisa and Rosann being kids again!

Pictures from Texas

Finally, three years after having a really bad experience with blogging, I (Lisa) felt ready to try again. The first time around it just felt way too vulnerable but now I realize I have control over what to say and since it's mostly for family or friends far away I won't worry about strange internet characters finding out too much about me. After all, with family all over the world I thought we really should have some place to put pictures that everybody can see since I'm so bad at emailing them to individual addresses.

So I called Tim at work and told him I was ready and next thing you know, before he even gets home, he's got this thing set up! Made me wonder if he'd just been waiting for a green light from me.

We just went on a 10 day trip to TX and AR at the beginning of April so here's a few pictures to show for it. I could hardly believe what a great time we had -- I guess since the kids are older they travel more easily and we loved meeting all kinds of family as well as old friends in Dallas.

Here we go ...

Looks good from here ...

let the verbage begin ....

Soon to appear will be the rantings and ravings of Tim & Lisa Gray and of course pics of the little darlings!