Fun in the box

It's true what they say about getting your kids an expensive toy, and all they want to play with is the box. Boxes at our house are pirate ships, cars, houses, rockets, and here it was a lion's den.

The Children's Museum

You always have to make a stop at the carousel ride at the mall when you go to the Children's Museum. Austin chose to ride the lion. "Look Mom, no hands!"

Braeden picked a horse, of course, of course.

Dress up time at the museum. A lion and a king sitting on their thrones.

Here is our sweet friend Addison who joined us at the museum. We really like her.

King fireman!

It was next to impossible to get Austin to take this lion costume off. He just might be the friendliest lion you ever met.

When you go to the museum, you must dig for dinosaurs. Here is our paleontologist, with arms full of dinosaurs he dug up.

Braeden helped dig for dinosaurs by scooping the "dirt" (recycled tires) into a dump truck.

Kara's shower

Some of Mommy's best friends from Austin came to Houston for a shower honoring Kara and her Bebe, due in November. From left to right, Lisa, Kara, and Jenny.

Beautiful blondes...Jenny and Kara.

Brunettes Mommy and Lisa. It was just like old times. What a fantastic weekend catching up, and reuniting. Only two things were missing...Jenna and Ruthie. Love you girls!!

Another butterfly..

So far we have had 5 beautiful butterflies come out of the caterpillars we kept. There is one more that still hasn't come out. Honestly I didn't think the last two would come out, but they did. So I will keep the last one safe until it decides to come out too. Aren't they beautiful?

Galveston

In the beginning of August, we took a day trip to Galveston with Lisa and Mariana. The kids had a great time flying kites, building sand castles, and splashing in the waves. Austin was really good at flying his kite, and the wind was perfect.

Notice how Braeden is watching Austin. He is learning so much from his brother, good and bad. I am constantly saying, "Anything you can do I can do better!" about them.

Look at that teamwork.

Braeden, Austin, and Mariana sitting in the water. I love this picture!

Look at that sweet face.

I am truly so blessed to be a mommy to these precious boys. Nothing is better or more rewarding than the love they give me.

The Circus

Ok, so we went to the circus in July. I know, I know, it's been FOREVER since I uploaded pictures. There has been so much going on (summertime=no school=no uploading, a baby shower, a trip to Florida, my grandmother passed away, we lost our hard drive and many pictures, and Ovarian Cancer Awareness month took a lot of my time, but I am back!!

The boys had a blast at the circus of course, and the horseback riders were Braeden's favorite, while the tigers were Austin's favorite. Unfortunately, pics of the tigers were too dark. Both boys loved the elephants.

This shows Braeden's personality so well. He is such a joker!

Cutest ring master I ever saw!

Here we go, swords in hand, to the circus!! Hooray!

We're still here!

Where are we you wonder? I promise we are still here. I have months of pictures to upload to the blog, but just haven't had the time. I promise to get to that very soon. In the meantime, we are still here. Here are the boys today in the t-shirts they made for Ovarian Cancer Awareness month. They made butterflies out of their hand prints, and the shirts say "I wear teal for my Mimi."

3 peas in a pod

Austin, Braeden, and Rylee, just chillin' on the floor watching a movie. Too cute!

Austin's swimming lessons

Our proud swimmer!

Day 1 of survival swimming lessons. This video doesn't give the real picture because I just couldn't video the first 10 minutes of lessons. Austin put up a fight when she was teaching him to float on his back, and kept getting water in his mouth and nose while yelling and crying. I was trying too hard to just smile from the side so that if he looked at me he would know I was fine with what was going on, which I was, but every Mommy wants to help their child when they seem to be struggling. I actually had to call my friend Susan during part of this to have her support (her daughter Addison had just finished the lessons a few weeks before). It was hard to watch, but I knew that he was in the best hands. Glendy has been teaching survival swimming for 40 years! She is a remarkable teacher, and says that her gift is from God, so she continues to do it to glorify Him. When you see Day 4, you realize just how much it is worth it!

Day 2, is much like day 1, but not nearly as much crying.

Day 3, Austin swims across the pool by himself. Amazing!

Day 4, Austin is jumping off the diving board! It is amazing that he has the skills to survive now in the water. I still have a lot more to do with him for the rest of the summer, but he has a fantastic start. I don't have video of Day 5 because it was spent with me in the water and Glendy teaching me how to work with him so that he can continue to gain confidence in the water. Survival swimming is just that, surviving in the water if you were to fall in. The goal is to learn to swim on their backs, get to the side, turn and grab on, and get out. Austin can do all of these things, but as with any other skill, he needs lots more practice before he can go swimming with others, so my job is to keep taking him at least 3 or 4 times a week to work on it.

This picture is from day 5, when I got to swim with him. I'd say he looks pretty happy, don't you think?

Mommy's birthday

For my birthday all three of my boys took me to an Astros game. It was great! I couldn't get Daddy to pose on the baseball, but the boys were willing to cooperate. The only bad thing we did was put Austin in his favorite t-shirt (pirate) when the Astros were playing the Pirates! Oops!

The Fourth of July

The Fourth of July started out great. We took Daddy's new toy out on the deer lease and drove it around looking for all sorts of animals. It was a blast while it lasted.

A few hours later this is where we ended our day. Notice there is a tail light missing (totally melted off). You can see the other light still there, just so you see the absolute melting that happened here. Polaris now has an official recall on this vehicle to repair/prevent this from happening again. Our melted tail light caused a fire that spread for 47 acres, coming within 200 yds. of homes. We put the fire out on the vehicle, and stomped out all of the grass fire under it, but then we looked back at where we had driven before to see the grass and land all on fire. We had to get our children out of there for their safety. We were praising God for keeping us safe and all of the firefighters as well. The reality of the situation and what could have happened sunk in as we were putting the boys to bed. Before that, we were just concerned with the land fire and people living near by. Praise God for watching over all of us.

The fire trucks showed up after we called them, and the boys loved seeing that. Needless to say, we didn't make it to any fireworks this year. We had enough excitement for the day.

All God's Living Things, part 2

The sunflowers have now all bloomed. I don't have a picture of the biggest one blooming, but you can see it here last week. It grew as tall as the window, and has a flower as big as Austin's head. This was fun to see them grow, but I have taken them all out as the bloom fades, because I don't want them to spread like crazy. Our pumpkin plant has 3 blooms on it, so we might have 3 pumpkins. We'll take pictures of them as they grow.

After we got home on the fourth of July, we had a butterfly that came out of it's chrysalis. Isn't it just beautiful. The other two haven't come out, and I am afraid they just might not. A few days ago the boys spotted more of these caterpillars on my lime tree, so we have started the process all over again with 3 more caterpillars. I don't know if I can do it again. It's a lot of work cleaning the cage (they really poop a lot!) and getting leaves every day for them. If more caterpillars show up after this, we'll see what happens.

Galveston Summer 2009

So we took a trip to Galveston and stayed in a beach house with some of Mommy's high school friends and their kids. It was a blast, and we are thinking of making it an annual trip. As you can see Austin has no fear of the water, so he wore his life jacket pretty much the entire time, and this was the absolute deepest he got while we were there. A shovel was in his hand the whole time we were at the beach so he could dig for hermit crabs, which he found! Mommy actually got really good at finding them too, and we had about 6 at one time, but we let them go.

Young love....Braeden and Mariana.

Young love part 2....Rylee and Austin.

What's gonna work? TEAMWORK! You can see the beautiful white house behind us that we stayed in. It was built in 2005, and didn't get destroyed during Hurricane Ike. The house on the left was the only other house near us, so we had a private beach. It was fantastic! We'll probably go back to the same house next year. It was very kid friendly, plastic plug covers on every outlet, plus lots of toys! Well worth the money.

I love this picture. Braeden is getting so big and turning into a little boy.

I'm watching you....

I'm watching "vewwy cwoswey"....which is "very closely" for those who don't speak toddlerese.

Happy Father's Day

Daddy, you are the best. Thank you for being such an amazing man! We love you to the moon and back! Happy Father's Day!

xoxoxox,

Austin and Braeden

All God's living things....

Ok, so you already saw this. But here is the latest picture of our ant farm. They have made tons of tunnels, and seem pretty happy with the ones they have made. Just some of my observations. Did you know that once they build their house, they pretty much just sleep? Also, if you want to see them move, then just gently blow in the air holes on the lid, and that makes them really mad! They all come running to the top ready to destroy whatever it is that is threatening their home. They are interesting, and soothing to watch....if you can get past the whole creepy crawly thing, which I am working on.

Our newest project is to grow some veggies. We already have 3 pepper (jalepeno and habenero) plants, a lime tree, rosemary, and basil that we use. Now these are our newest additions. From left to right, cucumber and two tomato plants. There are 3 tomatoes on each of our plants. I am going to have to get some netting to keep the critters off of them, but I can't wait for them to grow so we can have our own veggies. Next year's plan is to make an above ground garden in the back yard so that I can do lots more of this! I love gardening, and the boys are really enjoying helping me water the plants now. Our sunflowers are about to bloom, so we'll add those pictures soon.

The large three-pointed leaf plant on the left of the tree is actually a pumpkin vine. We planted some seeds from our pumpkin last October, and it has really taken off. We can't wait to see if we get a pumpkin!
Lastly, but so not leastly. I was taking care of my lime tree when I noticed these guys eating my leaves like crazy. I will kill a bug in a heartbeat if it is hurting my plants, but I couldn't kill these 4 little caterpillars. I say little, but really they are nearly 3 inches long. They are "orange dog" caterpillars, given that name because they can kill a whole crop of citrus in a hurry. But, I couldn't kill them because they turn into Giant swallowtail butterflies. So we brought them inside, put them in a butterfly net, and have been feeding them leaves from my tree every day. Last night they got in positions to start making crystallis, and hopefully we will have butterflies in about a week. I'll keep you posted. One of the caterpillars put himself in a bad position, and I don't think he'll make it (this happened when I had them in my classroom before), but the other three look pretty good.

So, my side note on why I can't kill them. Ever since I was a little girl, my mom taught me about how caterpillars are like us before we are Christians. Once we believe that Jesus died for us on the cross, we change like the caterpillar into beautiful butterflies, removing all our sins. This is why I have a butterfly tattoo for those of you who always wondered. Butterflies are our special bond. We have always shared our amazing butterfly sitings (taking pictures on trips, in the garden, or wherever we see them), but over the last 4 1/2 years we have told each other about the butterflies we see each day. We tell each other that is God showing us that He is there with us in this battle against her cancer. Maybe you'll look for the butterflies each day and see God with you too!

Noah's Ark Pool

Last Friday, we got to go to Noah's Ark pool with Aunt Lisa and Grandma. It was a blast! Aunt Lisa went down the slide with Austin until he was comfortable enough to go by himself. What a great Aunt!

Grandma was showing Braeden the holes that shoot water back into the pool. He loved plugging them with his fingers.

Austin got up the guts and had a blast going down the slide all by himself!
Here is what the ark looks like. The rope ladder they climbed up is on the right side below the alligator, and the slide they came down was on the left side. You can see a little boy about to go down. It was quite a climb up there, and so much fun. We'll go back again!

Ahhhh, how cute.

Playhouse

Not sure who is more excited....the boys or me! Thanks Daddy for our new play set! Fun in the back yard!!! Yippee!!!