Beaux and Dixie

UPDATE: Beaux and Dixie are in their new home! Never doubt that God has a hand in everything. All day I had e-mailed and texted with a lady about 45 minutes away. It sounded like the PERFECT set up for our pups. In the final hour, I started having some doubts about the situation. Insert God moment. I received another e-mail from a nice lady saying that she was interested and that she had previously had a sheltie that had died suddenly back in the spring. In her e-mail, she also mentioned that she is a teacher in our district. After a little more conversating, we discovered that she teaches with my mom and we have lots of mutual friends! She lives about 20 minutes away, and has 3 boys that are over the moon about having Beaux and Dixie. The decision didn't come easily, but I'm SO thankful for God's blessing of the perfect family!

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It's a sad day in the Owens' household. We have made the tough decision that we need to find a new home for our first babies, Beaux and Dixie. We are only becoming busier, and feel guilty that we can't give them the time that they deserve. They are VERY well behaved, and have done so good with Trey and Emery. They are kennel trained, and very gentle. They LOVE their walks on the leash, but are also so excited when they get to just run around in the backyard. We would prefer that they stay together, so they can continue to keep each other company. If you know of anyone looking for a great pet, that is already trained and well behaved...I promise, Beaux and Dixie won't disappoint. They both sit on command, shake, speak, and Dixie even plays dead when you pretend to 'bang, bang'. In a perfect world, I think Beaux and Dixie would make a great pair for a retired couple that can spend lots of time with them, or out on some land with room to run. :) Please share if you know of someone who may be interested. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions! {kristyo15@yahoo.com}

Slow Berry Cobbler

Holy smokes, almost 2 weeks since my last post. Can you tell we've been a little busy?! I thought I'd share the cobbler that I made for the party we attended for July 4th. When Grandma asks for the recipe, and asks if I picked the berries myself...I knew it was a success! I came across this recipe, and knew it was for me when I saw that I could dump it all in the crockpot and leave it for hours while in the pool...well, that and it's a Paula Deen recipe. I doubled this, and y'all...there was one little spoonful left at the end! I promise, you won't regret making this!

Ingredients

Filling:

• 1 (10-ounce) bag frozen strawberries
• 1 (10-ounce) bag frozen blueberries
• 1 (10-ounce) bag frozen raspberries
• 1/3 to 2/3 cup sugar, depending on your level of preferred sweetness
• 1/2 cup baking mix

Topping:

• 2 1/4 cups baking mix
• 1/4 cup sugar, plus 1/4 cup
• 4 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

Spray the insert of a slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, toss together all the frozen fruit, sugar and 1/2 cup baking mix. Transfer the fruit to the slow cooker. In another large mixing bowl, stir together 2 1/4 cups baking mix, 1/4 cup sugar, melted butter and milk with a wooden spoon. With your hands, drop bits of dough on top of the fruit in the slow cooker. In a small mixing bowl, stir together the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and ground cinnamon. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on top of the dough and place the lid on the slow cooker. Turn the power onto high and slow cook for 3 to 4 hours until the topping has puffed and the fruit is bubbling.

Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Emery's Turning 3!

Besides wrapping my mind around the fact that Trey will be in Kindergarten this year, is the fact that in two weeks Emery will turn 3. Where'd my babies go?! We have to have a photo shoot for the kid's birthdays, so a couple of days ago it was Emery's turn. {of course Trey couldn't be totally left out...}

Emery has developed quite the personality. Joe and I constantly find ourselves dying laughing at the things that come out of her mouth {and Trey's too}. She is almost potty trained...I made the mistake of pull ups {I knew better, but thought she might like them}...she LOVED the pretty princess diapers pull ups. Luckily, we used the last pull up today, and I won't be buying more. If we could tackle the nap time and bedtime, I'll be ecstatic! We have decided to not start Emery in kindergarten until she is 6 {mid-July birthday, I don't want her to be the youngest}, so this year she will get to stay at Grammie's all by herself while Trey is at school. I don't know who's more excited, Grammie or Em. I'm sure there will be lots of sweet stories from all of their girly adventures.

We are going to have another pool party for her birthday this year...what else is there to do in Houston in mid-July?! :) I'll share pictures once we have her party!

Have a great weekend!

{Coaches Outreach}

We just returned home from another fabulous weekend with Coaches Outreach. If you're not familiar with Coaches Outreach, it is a ministry geared for coaches. They offer a weekly bible study for coaches, that usually take place in the field house once a week and all of the coaches are welcome. They even invite the wives to do the study from home, so that you can be on the same page as what your spouse is doing. Then, during the summers they offer about 4 marriage retreats to coaches and their spouses. We started going about 5 years ago {thanks to the B family!}, and we have come to realize that it is a MUST for us. It is a weekend, with no kids allowed, where you get reunited with your spouse and are surrounded by the Lord and by couples that are walking the same walk that you are. To say that it was a great weekend, is always the understatement of the year. We had a great speaker this weekend {Pete Chiofalo from Hillside Community Church in Keller}, who spoke about ways to come thru crisis during your marriage. One mainstay during our 4 retreats has been the breathtaking worship music from Michael Bridges...he's from Sunnyvale First Baptist Church near Dallas. {If you're near Dallas, I would highly recommend visiting and listening to both of these awesome guys}

Another huge blessing, is that Coaches Outreach uses donations/contributions to underwrite the cost of the weekend to coaches. It costs us money to go, but much less than what a weekend like that should cost. We are so thankful to those that choose to give to Coaches Outreach, they have no idea of the impact that it makes. If you're looking for a cause that you would like to get involved with, Coaches Outreach is amazing. They are always looking for people who might want to help lead the studies for the coaches, as well as donations to keep the marriage retreats going. Go check out their web site to read more about them: Coaches Outreach.

We are looking forward to next summer's retreat. We already have plans to sponsor another couple that hasn't been on our staff, to go with us next year. If you or your spouse is a coach, and you love Christ....then these retreats will breathe a new life into your marriage.

Scatter.brained

Watch out, I'm warning you...this shall be a scatter brained post. I decided to download some of my Instagrams from FB and share over here.

We spend 5 days out of the week a few afternoons during the summer hanging out at Deedee/Brew/and Aunt Shannon's house trying to stay out of the ridiculously, absurd heat. This is what we resorted to the other day...

Yep, that's a baby pool in the big pool...don't be jealous. Emery was pumped to be out of her little raft and have that all to herself!

Last night, we promised Trey that he and Emery could have a 'slumber party' in his room. We got the trundle all pulled out and set them free to have their fun at about 8:00. So, at 10:30 the room finally got quiet. Before I crashed, I did a quick walk thru to find them like this...

My heart melted. As much as these 2 are a mess, it just doesn't get any better. I may or may not have turned on the light to take a picture of this. It's a good thing that I have hard sleepers!

Friday, was Mimi's {my mom} birthday. She didn't want us to do anything over the top, so we went out to dinner and then had dessert at her house. I decided to make her birthday cake...she requested chocolate and white icing. I jazzed it up a little bit and did a raspberry filled chocolate cake with buttercream icing. I'll have to share the recipe, I just need to find it again. It was way yummy! Don't judge my icing skills, that has to be my least favorite part of baking...

Last, but not least...when you have kids, one of the most asked questions is 'who do they look like?' Poor Emery is going to look like me, at this point I think it's safe to say she doesn't have any hope. The following picture is of me at about Em's age now...

To finish up, I have to share one of my FB statuses from this weekend. I thought Joe was going to pull the car over he was laughing so hard...here's the status:

As we are driving by Target, a {grown} girl walks out in a bikini top, basketball shorts, and some kind of cartoon crocs {not lyin'}...Trey's response? 'nuh uh, that is unacceptable! A girl is not supposed to wear that!'

Don't say I didn't warn you that this post would be scatter brained!! However, if you hang out with me long enough, you'll know that's how I roll.

{Summer}

We are enjoying the first few weeks of summer. Why, you ask? Because we've been doing a whole lot of nothing! I take that back...last summer the picture takin' business was s.l.o.w. Not this summer! We are loving it, we've picked up some new props and can't wait to start working them all in! We are going to hit up the garage sales in the morning to find some more!

I am trying to brainstorm ideas for Emery's 3 year pictures...can't decide what 'theme' I want to go with, or which Etsy shop to buy it from...decisions!!

I can't wait for next Friday to get here....COACHES OUTREACH! It's one of our favorite weekends of the year. This year, several of our coaching friends will be there...SO excited. There will be a trip to Fredericksburg on Saturday which is never boring.

While we're gone to Coaches Outreach, Trey and Em are taking their first flight on an airplane with Mimi and Grandma. I'm kind of sad we won't get to witness their expressions, but I know their grandma's are excited to get to witness that.

I cooked yesterday and baked/iced a cake for my mom's birthday....write it down, it hasn't happened very often. However, I finally made a meal plan for the week 3 days...baby steps y'all. I'll share the recipe of the cake if it tastes any good tonight. I made a raspberry filled chocolate cake with butter cream icing and raspberries around the bottom.

One of these days I'm going to have something exciting to blog about, I hope.

Well, Hello Blog...

Oh, my goodness...2+ weeks with no post. SORRY!

We are still alive and well, just super swamped. The last 2 weeks, I have had 3 shoots a week! I am NOT complaining! However, when you mix in the end of school with that, and a trip to Sea World...whoa!

Here's a little bulleted recap of the last few weeks, and then I should be back in the swing of things this week:

• The end of school was uneventful...hallelujah.


• Data Recovery LTD...RECOVERED MY PICTURES FROM MY HARD DRIVE!


• We've been in the pool a few days each week. Trey up and decided that from one day to the next that he no longer needed his vest, and that he could swim. NO lie. He is swimming across the pool unassisted...so proud.


• Emery is in the midst of potty training. We have our good days and bad days. She is a mess though, and when she's tired of thinking about it she will just bring me a diaper and say, 'me want diaper on, no more panties'.....wonder where she gets that laziness? {don't answer that}


• Joe and I celebrated our 8th anniversary yesterday...we celebrated by driving home from San Antonio and going swimming. Don't be jealous of how romantic we are! :) No worries, we decided we would celebrate Friday!


• We used the teacher fun passes to go to Sea World on Monday, and had a blast! If you don't have coupons to get in to Sea World....holy cow, it's expensive!!! The only ticket we had to buy was Trey's and it was $49.99 + $20 parking. Adults are regularly $59.99! We had such a good time with the shows, and letting the kids pick what other little things we saw. I loved seeing their faces when they saw something new, priceless. The pictures are over here on Facebook, {You might have to friend me to see them, but let me know who you are...I have to practice what I preach to Trey and Emery and not talk to strangers!} I am too lazy to put the pics over here at the present moment. Again, I'm not quite sure where Emery gets that trait?!


• Last night, we put Emery to bed in her pj's. I did my rounds to check on the kids before I went to sleep. I found Trey sleeping peacefully in his bed looking so sweet. However, I had to put my hand over my mouth when I went to check on Emery. She had stripped down and out of her pj's and was passed out across her bed in her bathing suit. This girl y'all...is giving me gray hairs.


• We are home now, and counting down the days until our Coaches Outreach Marriage Retreat...can NOT wait!!

Off to bed, and to gear up for 2 photo shoots this weekend!