Livestock Show & park with Ellie

It's a beautiful day today! Quite chilly this morning, as we discovered as we walked to school (Gracie & Katie in shorts!) but it's already warmed up with just a bit of chill in the air. They'll be fine by this afternoon I'm sure.

I thought about taking Ellie back to the zoo again (loving having the zoo passes again this year!) but then I remembered that our town was having their Livestock Show & Rodeo this weekend. (The big Houston one starts next week! I have plans to go 3 times! For some reason, I love a good livestock show & rodeo. Not like I got a lot of that in Atlanta, so I'm not sure why I like them so much!) Since our town's one is right down the road, I decided to check it out. It was fun! Ellie & I walked around, looking at the animals. After she called a cow a horse, and a goat a puppy, I decided we need to spend a bit more time learning the names of the animals...ha!

They were having a Special Rodeo, which was a rodeo for some of the district's special education students, but it ended up being just a time for the students to walk around to different areas of the rodeo field looking at different animals, etc. It wasn't really anything for us to watch, so we went back to the livestock show again and walked around, looking at the pigs, cows, goats, & sheep.


It may sound funny, but the cows were so pretty, the way they were brushed & clean.

I don't trust the goats...ha! I watched her closely around them because I think one might have taken a bite if she'd gotten too close! LOL

After we left the Livestock show, we went to a great park over near that area of town. We haven't been there in forever, but it has an awesome playground. She loved it, of course. It was full of moms & preschoolers.

I was surprised at how well she did here.

Here are my other 2 sweet girls,who were slaving away at school while Ellie & I played. LOL I love that Gracie, who used to wear bows all the time & then banished them from her wardrobe, is now occasionally bringing them back..on her own! She brought me a ribbon this morning and asked if I would put her hair in a ponytail and put the ribbon in it. Yea! A few of the junior high, and even some of the high school & college girls around here are wearing bows these days. Yea for this kind of peer pressure. :)

Valentine's Day 2011

Valentine's Day 2011 was a fun time for the Shanks. Chris & I were able to go on a date the Saturday before, and then our family celebrated on Monday. Here are some pictures, in no particular order.

Ellie waiting to eat our Valentine dinner. Notice she has no nice china! :)

Katie had a meltdown episode when her Fun Dip was thrown away before she felt she was through with it!

Valentine's Day dinner was eaten in the dining room on some of the good dishes. (Doesn't happen too often!) Katie was really nervous about using the nice glass, so she opted to get one of her plastic ones! LOL

Yummy!

The girls made some sweet cards this year!

Katie's card for Chris, made with duct tape, cracked us up!

Katie's cards to her sisters.

cards from Gracie

Katie's card to me!

Our sweet girls before school on Valentine's morning.

Valentine's breakfast table

Chris's Valentine's treats

treats for the girls

Doesn't every little girl love a balloon?!

These pictures are way out of order, but here are pictures from Chris & mine's date the Saturday before Valentine's Day. After dinner, we visited Starbucks & Crave Cupcakes. Yummy!!! We had never tried this cupcake place before, and it was really good!


This was MY Valentine treat from Chris. :)

We ate at a place in downtown Houston called Sambuca. I had salmon.

Chris had steak. He said it was possibly the best steak he's ever had, and that's saying a lot given how much he likes Taste of Texas!

Me & my Valentine!