"I'll dress myself"

Yes, we're in that phase. Elizabeth has been wanting to pick out her own clothes for quite a while, but she usually will pick out a shirt, and then I can pick out a skirt, shorts, or pants that match and shoes that match. Well, lately she's been choosing more often to pick out her whole outfit. So, here she is at the vet the other day.

Granmama & Beto Pictures

I realize regularly that I rarely take pictures of the kids with my family since we are with them a fair amount. I just never think about it. So, I decided I was going to change that this Memorial Day weekend when we would all be together. Great idea except that I spent the whole weekend with James glued to my chest and got very few pictures taken. But, I did take some on Friday while we were swimming before James got sick.

Elizabeth and Granmama

James and GranmamaBeto, Elizabeth, James & Granmama"Hey Beto - do you want my pacifier?"Deep in discussionLet's all pile on Beto

Goodbye dusty rose

You may recall a few weeks ago Dave and his dad were working on our house - cleaning it to get it ready for painting. Well, the original idea was that they were going to paint it, but they decided just to have someone do it. Good choice, b/c the guys spent 3 solid days working on this week and they had 3-4 guys that whole time. They did a great job and it looks great. Gone is the dusty rose color that I loved so much. YUCK!

Now, there were still some things to do before the guys could paint it like repacing some boards. So, Dave went to home depot and picked up some new boards. He was pretty proud that he was able to get them home with my car.

Then my big manly man took off the old boards and replaced them with the new boards. My dad also came over to help, also.

And here's how it looks now. The painter's stained our front door for no extra charge and it looks SO much better.

You say potato...

A few days ago James was crawling around in the kitchen. He was in the pantry and found the potatoes on the ground. He grabbed one and started chewing on it. I'm sure it felt good on his two top teeth (front right, and the one to the right of that, his right) that are making their way through his gums. Anyway, here is a pix of him eating it. What's funny is that I took several pictures of him eating it and he was making this face every time. "I'm gonna get you potato, if it's the last thing I do."

Filing - part 2

Well, you may remember a week or 2 ago, I blogged about my filing pile here. I have continued to file 5 minutes a day. Except that this week I didn't do it much because of all the craziness going on, but anyhow I finished that box of filing yesterday. Woohoo! Now, I have several other piles of filing in different places, so I'll work on those. But, one pile down.

Recovering

That's what we're all doing this week. We were all exhausted after the weekend, except Elizabeth who seemed to handle it all in stride.
James seems to be getting a little bit better, but he is far from my happy, go lucky baby that I had before he got sick.
Stache is feeling much better - moving around much more easily. The unfortunate part is that we have to keep him contained for 2-3 weeks so his back can heal. Ugh - he's not going to like that.
And Dave and I are finally beginning to feel human again after a couple of nights of the kids going down early and us just vegging.
Plus the Spurs are winning right now.
So, life is on the upturn. :)

The weekend

Well, I just wrote a super long post about our crazy weekend, but it sounded way too whiny. So, suffice it to say that the weekend didn't go exactly like we had planned. Just a brief overview of the things that weren't planned - James ran a high fever all weekend and was super lethargic, Stache got hurt b/c of a little scuffle with his dog cousin, and I got bit by Stache when I touched him where he was hurt.
But, there were lots of fun parts of the weekends - swimming, spending the weekend at my parents' house with Evan and Amy, lots of good food, watching the Spurs win.
Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend. And I hope you spent some time thanking God for this amazing country that we live in and for the people who have fought to make it that way.
Thank you to all the people who have sacrificed their health, time with families, lives, etc. so that I can enjoy all of those things.

Pool Pictures

Weekend Trip

So, this will be a long post, because we had a long trip this weekend. Well, it was actually just over 24 hours, but we packed a lot into those hours. We drove to Houston Saturday morning and went to my brother's house. Amy was actually in SA for the day, so we missed seeing her, but we had some fun time with Evan.
We helped him replace some outlets and light switches in their newly redecorated bathroom. Yes, that's a flashlight thingy on his head. Is he cool or what? It was really funny because I told him that when Dave first met him, he never would have worn something like that. You see, Dave and I started dating when Evan was 14. He was in his "I'm too cool for everything phase" and Dave was way too goofy most of the time for Evan to be interested in him. But, as Evan has grown up - thank goodness most of us grow out of who we were at 14 - he has gotten just as goofy if not goofier than Dave. So, now we all have lots of fun being goofy together and we're glad none of us are 14 anymore. We played a little wii - see Evan being goofy.
And just hung out.

Saturday night we went over to Ali's house and hung out with her and Mike and Joyce.James liked playing in Rowdy's water bowl. Poppy and Elizabeth told stories on the couch for quite a while before bed.The kids love Rowdy.Sunday morning we were able to go visit Dave's Grandma.And see Aunt Geraldine.And Aunt Diane.Then the whole reason for the trip...When I was at A&M I worked with the jr. high girls at my church. One of my girls was Valerie. She just graduated from Arizona State (with a 4.0) and so we went to College Station for her graduation party. It was such an honor to be invited and so much fun to get to see her. Val - I'm so proud of you girl! We got to eat at Wings n More - that's where the party was - and it was delicious. YUMMY!



So, that was our weekend. Needless to say we were exhausted, but it was fun. We got to see lots of people and enjoyed spending time with all of them.

James' quilt

Well, we had a fun, busy trip this weekend, which I will have to write about at some point. But, it's going to take a little bit of time, so I'll just do a quick post right now. I actually started cutting fabric for James' quilt yesterday. It's exciting to finally get started on it. Here's what I have so far.

12 squares cut, 23 to go. Plus embroidery a lot of those and then sewing it all together. should only take me another year or 2 to finish it. :) Maybe I'll have it done by the time he leaves for college.

Happy Mother's Day (A little bit late)

I wanted to say Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. We had a fun day. It wasn't exactly how I thought it would go, but what ever is? Elizabeth and I went and had pedicures while the boys stayed home. It was lots of fun. This is the first time Elizabeth has had her nails done at a place. We usually just do them at home. I told her she could pick whatever color she wanted and so what does she pick? Pink, red, white, maybe even silver??? Oh no, orange of course. Why orange? Well, I'm not really sure except she did say - "hey they'll match my flip flops." Perfect! At least it wasn't burnt orange.

I also want to say a special Happy Mother's Day to the 2 moms in my life.

Mama - Thank you for showing me what it means to be a godly wife and mom. You continue to show us your growth as God molds you daily. I am blessed to be so close to you and to have your input in my life. Thank you for teaching me that respecting my husband doesn't make me less of woman, but actually makes me stronger because it is exactly where God calls me to be. And thank you for teaching me not to be a perfect mom, but to be a mom who seeks the Lord and asks for forgiveness when she steps out of line - from God and her children. I love you!

Joyce (my mother-in-law) - Thank you for raising an amazing man, who is a daily blessing to me. He would not be the man that he is without your influence. Thank you for teaching him the things that you did - to love books, to help around the house, to love his family, and so much more. Thank you also for your relationship with me. Thank you for telling me that you appreciate the way I raise your grandkids - even though I'm sure you don't always agree with me. :) Thank you for being willing to offer help, but not always telling me "the right way to do things." I am blessed to have you in my life. I love you!

So, Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there even if it's a little late.

Filing

I am not really a big fan of filing papers and I put it off for long amounts of time. But, I'm trying to have a different attitude these days thanks to Flylady. So, I've been filing for 5 minutes every day. I took pictures when I got started. I think I took this picture last Tuesday. This is what my pile looked like when I started.

And this is what it looks like today. That's only the bottom box that's left from the original stack. All because of 5 minutes a day, and I don't do weekends.

I am posting these pictures to show y'all what I've been doing, but also because maybe it will motivate someone to work 5 minutes a day on something they have been putting off. I can't believe how much the pile has gone down.

Unfortunately after I took the original pictures I realized there were 2 more boxes somewhere else of stuff that needed to be filed (I told you, I'm a procrastinator), so I'll work on those next. But, I have hope that they will get done too since this pile has gone so quickly.

Princess Snow White

My sweet parents took all of us to dinner Thursday night to honor me as a mom. Little did we know that Snow White would be joining us.

And Snow White's Daddy was there also. This was the first time Elizabeth has really shown much interest in dressing up on her own. She brought me that whole outfit and asked me to help her dress up as a princess.

GO SPURS GO

Elizabeth and Daddy go to the park

Dave and Elizabeth went on a date to the park last week. They had lots of fun.

Got a little question for ya Ags...

Ok, this is for all of you Aggies out there, or anyone who has ever eaten in College Station...If you were going back to CS and had one meal to eat there, where would you go? Please leave your responses in the comment section.
I ask this question for several reasons.
1. I'm desperate for some more comments. :)
2. We encountered this question a few weeks ago. We were driving through CS and had time for lunch. So, where do we go? Now this used to be a no-brainer, Freebirds of course. But, now that Freebirds has branched out and I can get one by just driving over to I-10 and Huebner it's not such a huge need. So, we decided on Honey B Ham. It sounds kind of lame, I know, but the bread that they make their sandwiches with is SOOOOOOOOOOOO good. (On a side note: I'm on a mission to recreate this bread. I've only made one attempt so far and while the rolls were good, they didn't even come close to the Honey-B ham rolls.)
3. And we will find ourselves in CS again in a few days and may have time for lunch, so if you have any brilliant ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Thanks and gig 'em!

This girl blows me away

Elizabeth is constantly blowing me away with the things that she says. Here are a few examples of her deductive reasoning skills, or some kind of skills.
#1. She and I were having a conversation the other day about soup. She was eating homemade vegetable beef soup and asking if James could eat it. This is pretty common. She's always asking whether James can eat this or that. So I told her that he can eat some of the stuff in the soup but not all of it. She asked what kind of soup he could eat and I told her he could eat chicken noodle. And she says, "to make chicken noodle soup you just cook spaghetti with nothing in it and then put chicken in it." WHAT? I couldn't believe it. I have never cooked chicken noodle soup from scratch. We just eat it out of the good old Campbell's can, so it just blew me away that she thought about what it had in it and then figured out how to cook it.
#2. Last night she and Dave were doing bedtime routine and she asked him when he was going to stop working. This is also a common question. She would like for him to stop working so we can all stay home and play all day. Believe me, this would be my idea of fun also, but so far it just hasn't worked out. That pesky thing about money. So, Dave told her that usually the Daddy doesn't stop working. And then she said, "what if you got a lot of money?" We have told her before (but Dave didn't say anything last night) that Daddy works so that we can have money to pay for things like food, our house, etc. So, last night I guess it all clicked that if Daddy got a lot of money, he wouldn't have to go to work and then we could all stay home and have fun together. So, if any of you have a large sum of money that you would like to share to make Elizabeth and my dream come true, feel free to pass it on. :)
#3. I'm not sure that this is deductive reasoning or whatever, but it is a funny quote from Elizabeth. Saturday she said to Dave, "You know why I talk so much? Mama says it's because I'm having energies." Now, I don't think I've ever actually said this to her. But what I probably have done is on a day that she is talking non-stop said to her, "wow, you have a lot of energy today."
So there you have it. My little girl who is not so much a baby or even a toddler anymore, but growing up and acting like a kid. Wow, where did the time go?

Baby Godzilla

We set up Elizabeth's train set for James to play with. It's been set up before but this is the first time he showed any interest in it.
He liked it until it went down the ramp right next to him. It was kind of loud and I guess it scared him. Hence the sad look on his face in this last picture.

James goes down the stairs

James goes down the stairs in our living room now. Thankfully there are only 2, they are small, and there is carpet at the bottom. This is good because he often ends up kinda falling down them. But, it doesn't seem to bother him. He also usually puts his head down on the stairs while he's going down. I don't know what that's about. I tried to get a picture of him doing it, but once I pulled the camera out he kept posing for it.

Trip to the Strawberry Patch

Sunady we drove 1 1/2 hours to go pick strawberries. Now we figured out that when you figure in gas, the price per pound of these strawberries (and onions and potatoes) is really high. But, you can't put a price on fun. So, we picked strawberries. They were very small this year and a little bit sour, but still fun. And we dug potatoes and pulled onions. It was our first time for the onions and potatoes so that was kind of cool. James had a big poopy diaper on our trip up there and got it all over his clothes. So, we had to change him and undress him when we got there. Well, guess what? We had no extra clothes for him except a little jacket. And it eventually got too hot for him to have that on. So, we were that red-neck family with our naked baby at the strawberry patch - nice.

Oh yeah... and I got a new camera Sunday morning. It's little so I will be keeping it in my diaper bag and be taking lots of pictures.