Waiting on Santa

We had a great Christmas Eve with friends and cooking at the house. The kids Put out reindeer food, left cookies for Santa and we read Twas the Night before Christmas. They are exited for baby Jesus' birthday and their presents. This is the first Christmas they they "get it". Shawn and I are excited to see their faces tomorrow! Merry Christmas!

Pre-Christmas happenings 2012

We have been busy with Christmas parties, baking, family, etc the kids had fun at their school parties and I hit to attend them both. It is so cute to see them at school. They brought home goodies and precious pictures of them as Mary and Joseph. So cute!

Maddie as Mary

Cheese!

Max as Joseph

Hayride with the neighbors

Prou of his cookie with marshmallows, almonds, sprinkles, etc.

Cookies!

Growing like a weed

Maddie is growing so fast. In the fall I hit her size 8 and they are l fitting too snug now. Not only is her footing, but it's getting wider too. Thankfully her brothers Tony Lamas are the perfect fit. Love hand me downs!

P. S. Here is a picture if Maddie in her crib with all her buddies.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Thanksgiving cane and went, and we started prepping for Christmas. It seems like it took a while for December 1. With the kids at a good age we started putting up decorations, lights and fun outings.

Clark Griswold in the making

The kids love it everything about the lights

The kids were inspired to get our lights up after our trip to Santa's Wonderland. We went with the Currans on Thursday night. It was kind of a drive, but really worth it. The kids are still talking about it! The only real glitch of the night was the movie. They were showing The Grinch on the big screen. Max got scared and kept asking to go home. We had dinner there, sort of. I think the kids had coke and popcorn only. The trail ride was fun and it was actually my very first trail ride. The atmosphere was great. The kids and I even got on stage and sang Christmas songs and did the hokey pokey. Fun night!

Our first trip to Santa's Wonderland

Leah and Maddie - It was so fun to go to this fun place with the Currans.

It snowed and they loved that too!

They all got a fun treat from the candy store

Sunday we got together with our playgroup for our Christmas playgroup. Each of the kids got to meet with Santa and get their picture taken. I don't have our picture yet, but I hope to have it soon and I'll update. Max was anxious and excited to tell him that he wanted cars for Christmas. Maddie was excited at first, but then changed her tune. So we ended up all posing with Santa. The party was alot of fun and the dads got to hang out too. Great way to start the holiday season

Christmas party with our playgroup

Shawn has been disappointed he didn't get pecan pie at Thanksgiving, so I thought I'd make him one. I found a great Paula Deen recipe and gave it a try. It was so good, it's gone! Thankfully we shared with friends. This was so easy to make, I'll never buy another pecan pie!

Thankful

With Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow I have been reflecting on how blessed we are. It is so easy to complain about dirty dishes, fighting kids, dogs tearing up garbage or kids that won't nap. Ok, I guess I did vent a little. ;)

So here is a story. Tuesday I took Max in to the doctor since he has gotten sick often lately. I took both kids, they were pretty good, and I commented to the doctor how things were pretty good lately. They play well together and genuinely love each other. Of course we have our time out moments, but what can you expect. We ended up getting flu shots which was like torture for us all. Max was hiding under the chair (and he was first). I had to hold his arm and in went the shot. He screamed bloody murder. I gave him a quick kiss and then on to the next one....Maddie was saying "No", but poor thing had no choice. Her shot was quicker, but she screamed and yelled "owie, it hurts", for about 20 minutes. I felt bad, so I took them to their favorite place, Willie's. They love "playing" in the arcade and I got some quiet time. I was so thankful that they both ate after they played, then they decided to play in the sand pit. I watched them as they played and again, I just felt so thankful for my kids. And thankful that I get to experience the good and the bad with them everyday. I probably won't be a stay at home mom forever, so I really need to soak it all in. I was pretty proud that my kids were playing nice with the other kids and pretty friendly. I noticed that Maddie would look to play with the older girls and Max made a friend name Mason. It's cute to hear their conversations: Max- "My daddy is at work", other boy-"My dad went fishing and caught a fish". Then they smile and play race cars in the sand. Now Maddie tries to talk with the others and does a pretty good job of getting her point across. But she does not let the big girls run all over her. She holds her own and won't let them take her toys. Go girl! This day I just really sat back and enjoyed them, it was so nice. Sure they don't always cooperated, but they have wonderful personalities and I am over the moon in love with them. Not to mention their sweet daddy that we all adore. Maddie always wants her daddy, and typically tries to get her way with him. But he's seeing her terrible two tantrums and starting to hold his own with our princess. I am thankful to have met Shawn when I did. I truly believe we both helped the other to become better people and I'm proud of where we are. It's been an interesting journey so far and I look forward to more memories with my little family. I hope you all take a little time to reflect on how you blessed you are and give thinks to the Lord above. Happy Thanksgiving, gobble, gobble!

Aggie Game

Well as everyone knows, the Aggies are on fire! I was so excited to go to a home game with my cousins that went to college with my. Nice to have a little reunion if '01, '02 & '03. The day was perfect.

Flu season & Color Run

I am a little behind on posting partly because we've been keeping busy and also because the past week the kids were sick. It started on Sunday when we were at my parent's house. Sunday morning Max started coughing and had fever.  We tried the usual breathing treatments, nebulizer and fever reducer. It made for a long week since he stayed home from school Tuesday. I took him to the doctor and they gave him some antibiotics.Of course he didn't "seem" sick. He had fever for 4 days. I finally sent him to school on Thursday even though he still had a cough. Of course when I picked the kids up from school I got a kinda "bad" report about Maddie. Well come to find out she wasn't feeling well. She came home, vomited and was running fever. Here we go again! So we basically spent most of the week at home.

Max on Monday

Maddie on Thursday

All this being home got this mommy in a real funk! Thank goodness we had a busy weekend and some help ahead. Saturday morning started out right at the gym with Cycle. Love that class, well really I hate it, but I love feeling accomplished after.

Finally at Cycle Class



My parents came in to watch the kids so we could go and watch the "BIG GAME". We hung out with Cy, Emily, Nate and Patty and Nate's parents. The game was awesome! Johnny Football and the rest of the team showed up and showed everybody the Spirit of Aggieland! We were so pumped after. We talked about how awesome it had all been and enjoyed their hot tub.

Aggie Football

Having a blast watching the Aggies BTHO Bama!

The next day some friends got together to do the Color Run in Houston. It was fun, but I'd probably not do it again. Too messy, I'd rather run for speed. Another thing is that I am not suppose to be running for the rest of the year. I've been diagnosed with chondromalacia patella, fancy word for inflamed cartilage under the knee cap. Therefore, no running, jumping, squatting, etc. So this run was a walk for me, aka BORING!

Color Run over downtown Houston was fun, but dirty

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

Play date

Fall festival fun

This Saturday was full of fun things to do. We started our morning out at the gym. It's been our ritual lately, and the kids love it because they can play at the kid's club. After that we went across the street to Lucas' (aka baby Wucas) first birthday. The kids had a blast running around and jumping in the bounce house. It  was a great party and it was tough to get the kids to want to come home! 

Birthday Party!

After Maddie had a good nap we started getting ready for party #2, our community Fall Festival. My parents and Maritza came to join in on the fun, so we all headed out. They had hot dogs, sno cones, cotton candy, popcorn, slides, bounce houses, train rides and music. It really was a good time. Shawn got out of it because he was home getting things started for dinner and watching the Aggies BTHO Auburn (which they did)!! Anyway, Maddie loved the cotton candy and they both loved the popcorn. The music was fun too, we did some dancing. We spent the most time on the slide, Max went over and over. Maddie wanted to try, so I went with her. SCARY!! Maritza got a picture of us and my scared look. Maddie didn't ask to go again, lol. After that we headed home and grilled some bacon wrapped jalapeños and fried fish and hush puppies. It was a busy, but fun day. The kids were actually asking to go to bed and my sister, Shawn and I stayed up catching up and enjoying the cold weather on the back porch  Love family time!

Medieval princess and a Knight 

KODAK moment

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Popcorn anyone?

Sisters!

Train Ride Birthday Party

The kids had a blast at their friend Logan's fourth birthday party. It was at Zube park, where they have free train rides once a month. His mom Kristi did an awesome job with the cake. One funny story was with Max & Maddie. Maddie, being the adventurous little firecracker that she is, kept venturing off to where there was a small drop-off and ditch. Well Max was so worried about his little sister that he was freaking out. I guess he didn't want her to get hurt or lost. All my friends thought it was sweet, and it was. But after about 5 minutes of him freaking out, I was over it. At one point he tackled her to keep her close. Poor Maddie, she was just having a ball running around with her friends! #memories

My trip to MSP

It has been over a month but I finally decided to blog about my trip to visit my sister. She moved to Wisconsin about a year ago and now she's moving to Louisiana  so I rushed up there to see where she's been living. A good friend gave me the heads up about a great deal on United so I bought my ticket quickly. I flew in on a Saturday and Paul & Maritza picked me up. We did some sight-seeing on our way to lunch and St. Paul was such a cute city. It reminded me a lot of Ft. Worth, just a little smaller, less trucks and everybody was either walking or biking. Cute, cute!

Here I am with the cute couple at a quaint restaurant. Their pizza, wings and beer were pretty good. The service was great, actually all the waiters we had were awesome. Very welcoming, accommodating and eager to answer questions from a self-proclaimed Texan. :)

 After lunch we strolled along this street full of shots, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc. We went into Anthropologie and played around. There was no shopping happening there, that place was so overpriced.I'll take TJ Maxx over that any day!

 We did more sight seeing the rest of the day and went on to Minneapolis. We went to this really cool bar/restaurant downtown,The Bachelor Farmer. They these fancy cocktails and they were really yummy. They used all kinds of different liquors and the ambience was interesting  I kind of felt like I had stepped back in time. One cocktail in particular was and ""old fashioned". My sister even ordered one that had egg foam in it. Not my favorite, but she liked it.

 The next day we started the day with a run, a coffee and some more sight-seeing.

Us @ Dunn Bros Coffee

Had to do it!

Visiting First Avenue- where Prince got his start

 On my last day my sister took me to taste the deliciousness that is: fried cheese curds. If Guy Fieri has been there, it's gotta be good, or bad, however you want to look at it. I followed them with a huge burger, fries and a beer...whoa! After lunch we walked it off at a few shops then we headed to the Mall of America. It was huge and awesome. If I had more luggage space I would have shopped more.

Mall of America- a whole amusement park inside