Ice Skating!

So I begged and begged Jon to take me ice skating during the Christmas holidays...

so when a Groupon showed up for 50% off ice skating- 

I snatched it.

BUT we didn't make it until the last day of April.

(Somewhat AFTER the Christmas season)...

No matter! We still had a blast!

Putting on the shoes...

 

(Please excuse the nerdy glasses... allergies in Houston are killer and it causes my contacts to feel like gravel in my eye... Which is a rather unpleasant feeling, in case you didn't know.)

 Showing off our moves...

er... or just trying to ;)

 Winter Olympics 2014 here we come!

*Blessings*

You know when you have one of those days where it seems like everything in the world just goes your way? 

They don't come often enough...

But today was one of those days.

First off- we woke up to a cool, breezy Houston... it was 58 degrees this morning. 

Beautiful.

Definitely a blessing.

A couple days ago I noticed my Utah Drivers License was expiring in one week.

So I went to the DMV today to get a new license...

In and out in one hour.

Not bad for a government office in the 4th largest city in the nation.

Definite blessing.

My cousin and his wife moved to Houston today.

It's so nice to have some family close...

AND they bought me Chipotle for helping them move their stuff.

Definite blessing.

Jon has been needing surgery for the past two years.

We've put it off and off because we were afraid of the costs.

We finally decided to go do a pre-op appointment today and guess what?

Jon gets his surgery for free... FREE!

Saving us thousands of dollars.

HUGE blessing.

And to top it off- 

I didn't have to work today.

(Although I do have to work Saturday... lame.)

But blessing, nonetheless.

For all the crummy days out there- 

it sure helps to have one of these days once in a while :)

Glorious Easter

Easter is wonderful.

The message of Easter is wonderful, the warm weather is wonderful, the colors of Easter are wonderful, the candy is wonderful...

We just really love Easter here at the Brame house-

The Easter Bunny hid our Easter basket...

where could it be?

 Is it in the closet?

 Is it under the bed?

 Is it in the bathroom?

 Found it!

It was in the laundry that we still need to fold.... hmmm....

 Matching Easter clothes for church...

hahaha

 Easter dinner with friends...

 Dyeing easter eggs so we can play a grueling game of....

 

EGG WARS!!!!

This tradition is kind of a big deal. 

We've done it every Easter that I can remember.

We don't throw eggs at each other or drop them off balconies, it's a little more tame than that...

BUT fun nonetheless.

Notice the double elimination bracket...

Yep, we don't mess around.

 You have two people across the room from one another with their egg of choice.

Holding your egg you say "1, 2.."

and on "3" you let go of your egg as they roll with lightning speed towards each other.

The egg cracked= loser

The egg not cracked (or least cracked)= winner

Make sense?

 And the games continue!

 Until you have a bracket that looks like this!

All the girls won, and all the boys are in the loser's bracket...

What irony.

 On to Round 2!

 Inspecting the eggs...

 

Who's it gonna be? Who's it gonna be?

 Crack!

 On to the FINAL match...

 

Kim and Megan

 And Kim emerges victorious! 

Congrats!

 Photo shoot with the Egg War 2011 Champion.

We love Easter.

Good Friday Camping

Sooo- living in the South is great. 

For many reasons.

One of them being that everyone loves Jesus... do you know what this means?

Easter weekend turns into a FOUR day weekend-

Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Resurrection Monday.

Which in turn equals awesome.

So we went camping in honor of Good Friday.
We got all this camping gear for our wedding, and we are finally using it...
 (two and a half years later... go us!)

Setting up camp...

Playing a little soccer...

Eating yummy food

Exploring...

TC found us a vine swing! No really- it's legit.
Tarzan would have been proud.

We took a couple swings ourselves!

So, all these Texas wildfires have caused an unfortunate fire ban in all state parks... so we played games by flashlight :)

And had a good nights sleep... 

well mostly good.

The low was 75 and a bit sticky.

But we woke up to a beautiful morning!

 And hiked over to the Brazos River...

And did a little more exploring...

So yes- even though we do miss the mountains-
I'd say "mountain-less" camping was a success!
Bugs, spiders and all :)