The Hendricksons

Gymnastics & Tumbling

Ava did great at her Gymnastics Event for Tumbling

Brynn's first attempt at a handstand- I will never stop laughing at this.

The girls love family movie night, family game night, slumber parties in our bed, slumber parties in their rooms, Saturday morning gymnastics, Kids Bop, the library and frozen yogurt! Here are a few pictures from our summer :)

The most beautiful little Elsas I've ever seen

Gymnastics Time

Family Game Night

Fun times at the dentist

Slumber party in Brynn's room. Complete with puppy surprises and American Girl Dolls

Brynn's picks at the Library

FroYo!

Ava riding her bike

In May Ava finally got brave enough to ride her bike all by herself with no training wheels!

Ava Michele- My kind little soul

Ava has the kindest heart and is highly creative and sensitive. She cares about everybody's feelings and all of God's creatures. She even cries if Magnum kills a Lizard in the yard or when she see's a pet that needs to be adopted. When the storms were coming all Ava cared about were that the horses, cows and all of the strays were going to be okay. I'm proud of her for that. She is a beautiful human being. Sometimes at night she wants to sleep with me so Steve will let her and he'll sleep upstairs. Well, then she'll say she feels sorry for daddy that he's all alone. So she'll make Brynn sleep with me so I won't be alone and she'll go up and snuggle with her daddy.

She is my little helper around the house too. She cleans her room, the playroom and helps Brynn clean her room. She vacuums the hardwoods and she makes the beds. She likes things very nice and neat. She told me one day that I needed to organize the pantry because it was a mess and she couldn't find any of her snacks.

Helping Dad with the yard

Her latest thing is Youtube kids and she's always asking me to video her while she talks about her various toys. It's so cute! I'll post a few later.

Every morning while they eat breakfast I read them a devotional from a kids bible devotional. Last week the lesson was about being kind and what you give is what you get in return. That day Steve picked them up from school and a fight ensued in the back seat. Ava had punched Brynn and Steve got on to her and told her that she could not hit Brynn like that. Ava got really upset and said "that's not what the bible says! They bible says you get what you give and Brynn hit me so I punched her!" Steve had to hold back his smile but said "Ava I'm pretty sure the bible doesn't say to punch your sister."

She begged me to buy her this maxi dress and wanted to put it on as soon as we got in the car. Here she is modeling it proudly. She felt like such a big girl in this dress.

She is obsessed with forts! If there is a blanket in this house she will find it and make use of it.

This is her best friend at school- Ava M.

I'm so proud of this child

This is the party she had set up for Steve and me

She and Brynn made sure they dressed in their party dresses for the big event and even had the proper signage made (see behind Brynn).

All dressed up for the party

Ava and Trent are two peas in a pod. They play so well together.

Brynn Elise's personality

Brynn has the cutest personality. She is such a mommy's girl and some of the stuff that she loves makes me laugh and I often think how cute it is that she picks up on things that I don't even have to talk about. She loves doing Yoga. One night she told me I was the best mommy ever for letting her watch PiYo. She loves essential oils and every night reminds me to put thieves on the bottoms of her feet. She picks out the oils that she likes best (lavender and lemon) and helps me put it in the diffuser in her room. That was at her request. At bath time, she runs to my cabinet and pulls out the lavender or chamomile Epsom salt and sprinkles it in the tub. She also loves fruit smoothies. She begs us to get her a smoothie or make her one all of the time.

She constantly begs me to take her to the nail salon and if she finds out I've been without her, Lord help us.

When she has a stuffed up nose she comes to my room in the middle of the night, gets in my face and whispers "mommy, it's me Brynn. I need nose spray (saline mist)" In the winter when she gets stuffy she asks me to get her "midifier" and plug it in. Future wellness expert I tell you!

Tonight she was helping me load the dishwasher and she was putting the utensils in. When I put a spoon in she said "no mommy, no keep it organized!" She wanted it organized to her liking.

The other night Steve was trying to put Maleficent on in our bedroom (this is her all-time favorite movie) and he wasn't able to find it. We realized we need to watch what we say around her because when he couldn't find the movie she said "Damn, mommy's TV is a crapper"

Her favorite song right now is Cool Kids. We were listening to it in the car one day and she said "mommy I wish that I had cool clothes like the cool girls do" What??!!

Off to the splash pad

The girls love doing Yoga and PiYo with me.

Brynn's summer do

After her haircut, she was super brave and decided to get her ears pierced. She didn't even cry!

Getting her ears pierced

Beautiful Earrings

Family movie night watching Maleficent

10 year Anniversary Trip

For our 10 year anniversary, we wanted to take a big trip. We originally planned on going to Europe, but I wasn't ready to go that far away from the girls yet so we chose to do something else we've always wanted to do, a Wine Country trip!

Steve booked the entire thing and he did it up right. He is the best trip planner and let me tell you he was so organized and had everything completely planned out. We flew into San Francisco early in the morning and picked up our rental car. From there we drove through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge on our way to Sonoma.

We stayed at a cute boutique hotel that had a complimentary breakfast every morning. The breakfast was amazing and they waited on you and brought you the best food. Each day had a different menu. Our first full day there we went on a wine tour with a group and went to several small wineries and one cave tour. We learned so much we never knew and bought bottles at every vineyard. That part I wasn't expecting, but we came home with a nice stash!

On the 3rd day, we packed up and drove to Napa Valley. That was the scariest drive ever! We were literally on a two lane road with a cliff on my side of the road. I was a nervous wreck! Steve said if I didn't stop whining and nagging him about slowing down that he would drive off the cliff on purpose. LOL. I had him driving so slow all the drivers behind us were passing us and flipping us off. Once we got there we went to some of our chosen wineries. Duckhorn was our favorite and then we went to the tasting room for Orin Swift who makes several of our favorite wines. They have the coolest branding too, I love their style!

One thing I never knew about Napa and Sonoma, they have NO bugs! They never have to use pesticides in their vineyards because they have NO bugs. How crazy is that?? Another thing I didn't realize is that water is like liquid gold in California right now. I didn't have any clue how severe their drought is. I mean it was like an act of God to get a freaking glass of water at a restaurant around there. We were so dehydrated and thirsty, but every time we asked for water they gave us the stink eye. Not only that but when they did bring it to you it was a tiny shot glass of tap water with no ice. I would guzzle it down and they would give me the stink eye again as they brought me a refill.

Steve booked us a room in Yountville, coolest little town ever! Our room was so nice! I took advantage of the jacuzzi tub and bath salts every night. We walked around in the evenings and hit the wineries during the day.

The last night 2 nights we stayed in San Francisco. I've been before but never realized how trashy that city is. Not that Houston is clean or anything but San Francisco was just a western version of New York to me. Everyone lives on top of each other and everything is covered in bird poo. I may have had a bad taste in my mouth to start off with though because as soon as we got there some man tried to trick us into thinking we ran over him. Scared the hell out of us and then he tried to scam us out of money. After that, we got to our hotel and hated it. It was so not our style and our room was facing a wall.

The good news is we got out of the hotel, rode the trolley, went to fisherman's wharf and the next day got to go to Alcatraz!! Steve knows I've been wanting to do that for years so he booked tickets weeks in advance. I was sooo excited I could hardly stand it.

By the last day, we were ready to get home to the babies. Gigi stayed with them while we were gone and made sure that Ava got off to school, had all her homework done and got them both to gymnastics. She also ended up having to take care of Magnum who came down with a stomach virus the day before we left. The girls enjoyed getting to spend all of that time with her and we enjoyed getting a few days to ourselves again. Thank you Gigi!!!