Galveston, Kolaches and Fish Stories

We had the pleasure of going to Galveston last week for a few days. Joe has a bunch of vacation time left, but it's hard to get it to fit around his projects at work. We scheduled this trip for after labor day to avoid the crowds and to get a good deal on a hotel room, etc. Traveling in "off" times is one of the benefits of homeschooling. We spent two nights and Grandma & Grandpa came with us. We had 2 hotel rooms with 2 king-size beds in each room. The boys slept G&G's room, Zach was in his pack n play so that left Abby with her own king bed. The hotel had a nice breakfast too.

We ate some great food, spent time on the beach and at the pool and even fit in a round of miniature golf one afternoon while Zach & Abby napped back at the hotel with G&G. It was a great get-away.

This pic is outside at Mario's, and Italian restaurant. Super yummy food (the kid's Mac N Cheese it to-die-for) and they bring out balls of dough for kids to play with!

Zach discovering sand for the first time.

Sam packed his "vacation" shirts (Hawaiian). He hasn't worn them much and now I know why...he was saving them for their proper use!

We got home from Galveston on Friday evening and then went to the Kolache Festival on Saturday morning. I think the little ones were a little too worn out from the trip to really enjoy walking around in 93 degrees. We met BillyBekahSteven (cousins) there and Gramby & Pa too. It was much more crowded than last year (when it was pouring rain), but the kolaches were just as yummy. Everyone came back to our house to celebrate Steven's birthday.

The boys have been wanting to go spend the night at Gramby's for a long time, but she and Pa lived in LA for 1-1/2 years for a job. They're back now and Ben got to go spend 2 nights there. He watched some movies and got to go out on the boat (they live on Lake Belton) and caught his first fish...a big-mouth bass. They put it back in the water so it could grow a little more. He had a great time and Sam is looking forward to his trip this weekend.



Birthdays

I really don't know why it's so incredibly hard for me to post things out of chronological order, but I'm not doing a very good job of catching up so I'd better just pick up again with what's been going on lately.

Sam turned 7 at the end of August. He had a friend come over to play and then we went to Gattitown (like Chuck E. Cheese's) for pizza and mayhem. I think he had a great time and is very excited about playing with his new Legos (I'm probably supposed to put a trademark or copyright symbol on that word, but I don't know how to make them, so consider yourselves warned that the word Lego is proprietary).

About 8 days later, it was Abby's 3rd birthday. We went down to Cypress to visit some friends we hadn't seen in a long time because their daughter turned 6 on the same day. It's funny how the little present that you throw in at the last minute that is cheap and wasn't on your list is usually the one the kids get most excited about. For Abby it is a box of "Dora games" that includes Dora Bingo, Dora Go Fish and a Dora puzzle. What more could a little girl want, really? Forget the new bike!

Saying Goodbye

Just as I had finally gotten around to posting about the wonderful girls our friends adopted, we found out they would be moving to Virginia! They left 2-1/2 weeks ago and we miss them tremendously. Here are a couple of pictures of the kids' last play time together. (Zach is missing because he was home sick.) The girls have changed so much in the 6 months they've been here in the U.S. It seems like we'll hardly recognize them the next time we see them!

(And just so you know, my friend "C" always has the girls' hair done up really cute, but she was neck deep in house projects and packing on this evening so it didn't happen.)

Amazing Opportunity

I want to talk about all our Spring happenings, but I think this part deserves its own post. I had the incredible opportunity to go to Kiev, Ukraine the first week of March. Why would I want to go to Kiev, you ask? Because good friends (I'll call the husband "L" and the wife "C") of ours adopted 3 beautiful little girls! It was an incredibly long process for them...way too long to document here. They were "expecting" for 9 months (and that's after all the paperwork was approved) and had many complications along the way.

The end of the process should have taken 6-8 weeks, but they spent months in Ukraine (L is originally from there but a U.S. citizen now) and made 3 trips over there. L could do most of his work from over there, but had to get home for important meetings, which would have left C to bring home 3 very active, excited girls, ages 2, 3 and 4 by herself. That sounded pretty scary to me so I went over to help her bring them home. The girls are so precious and very loving! It breaks my heart to think that if they hadn't been adopted there's a good chance they would end up doing drugs or be involved in prostitution. I am so thankful to the Lord for giving these girls the best possible parents they could have here on earth!

We were able to stay with some American friends in Kiev...this is at their apartment.

At the airport at 3am with a very helpful Ukrainian friend.

The whole family watching July 4th fireworks.

Winter 2010

I'm not sure the following events are in chronological order, but this is what happened in Jan & Feb of 2010...

Sam had his first basketball game right at the beginning of January. He improved a lot over the course of 2 months of practices and 8 games. We love the Upward program because it incorporates the gospel and scripture memorization. And the coaches have all been amazing...extremely patient with the kiddos! It's hard to get a good picture, but this one was the least blurry. Sam is the one attempting to dribble the ball.

Right before his 5th birthday, Ben learned to ride his bike without the training wheels! He was a little timid at first, but he picked it up quickly. For all you Northerners, this pic was taken on Feb 1st (note Joe's short sleeves).

I decided it was about time to get some decorations up on Abby's walls in her bedroom so I decorated these letters for her room. I'm not a crafty person, but I had fun with these because I just cut scrapbook paper to fit the letters and then glued it and other fun things to the letters. She has really enjoyed them and now she knows how to spell her name backwards b/c that's the way she always reads them.

Ben turned 5 in February and he got to have a fairly big party (at least by our standards). We've decided that the kids will only get to have big parties on certain birthdays (most likely at 5, 10, 13 and 16). That will keep us to about 1 party per year, which feels more managable to us, both financially and sanity-wise. Sam had his 5th birthday at the splash pad, so Ben wanted to do that too, but even in Texas it's a little too cold for that in February. So we rented a bouncy house and let the chaos begin! (It turns out you can get a good deal on a bouncy house in Feb.) We had Transformers cupcakes and lots of fun. Below Ben is showing off his new Bible, which was something he asked for as a gift, along with a scooter and cowboy hat, of course.

 

 

 

On Valentine's Day, Joe officially became a deacon at our church. I'm so proud of him and so thankful to be married to such a wonderful, godly man!

Of course Zach was busy exploring and beginning to roll around during this time. Here are a few pics of him.

And Abby is into her "bee-you-tee-ful" dress phase. She wants to wear a dress every day! Note the red, sparkly shoes, too.

One of the most exciting things to happen was probably that we got SNOW at the end of Febuary! It snowed a few inches in 2008 and the kids had so much fun and they kept talking about how they couldn't wait for it to snow again. I kept trying to tell them that we hadn't had that much snow in our part of TX since I was a little girl, but they didn't get it. I was trying to figure out how to explain it to them, but then it snowed again this year! They even got to build a snow man.

 

Another First

Joe has been wanting to cut Zach's hair for months now so I finally gave in over the weekend. He kept teasing me by saying that Zach looked like a hippy. Every time Zach would fuss, Joe would say, "I know, Zach, but mama won't let me cut your hair" as if that was the reason Zach was upset. We used the 1 inch guard on the top and the 3/4 inch on the back and sides. You can't really tell that his hair was cut, but now the "comb-over" in the front is gone and it doesn't hang over his collar in the back. Here are "before" and "after" pics. I love this "before" pic. Such a funny face!

Joe and I were at Target on our date last night and found these "jeans" diapers. Of course they were more expensive, but we couldn't resist! Now I can just put Zach in a diaper and he looks kind of like he's wearing pants. It amazes me what they come up with for babies. So many new things even since I was pregnant with Sam 7 years ago.

Christmas 2009

For the first time we went to cut down a Christmas tree as a family. We loaded everyone into the van and barely made it to the Christmas tree farm before dark. It's right outside of town, but we were waiting until after nap time to leave and of course Abby & Zach took long naps that day. Anyway, we got all the equipment and found a great tree. We took some photos and ended up using one as our Christmas card picture for the year. I was glad about that because I was kind of dreading trying to get all the kids looking decent in a picture at the same time. The boys thought it was really fun to watch Daddy cut down the tree. Of course they wanted to decorate it the minute we got home, but it was too late so we waited until the next day.

Our Church had its Christmas celebration on Dec. 13. We do it early before all the students leave town since they are such a big part of our congregation. The kids all got dressed up for it, which is fun to do once in a while. Here's a pic of Daddy & Abby. I think she had been crying because she had fallen down.

We love having a fire place, especially at Christmas time, and I love seeing all the stockings hung on it. On Christmas day Grandma & Grandpa came over and we had a breakfast birthday cake for Jesus. The kids really seem to enjoy singing and blowing out the candles. We opened presents and then later in the day Joe's brother and his family came over.

On the 26th, we went to Gramby & Pa's house in Temple. Just about all of Joe's siblings and many of their kiddos were there. It was good to see everyone and Gramby was really glad to have everyone together. She and Pa have been living in Gonzalez, LA for a year for Pa's work and they hope to move back to Temple in the spring. Here is a pic of Gramby & Zach and one of Gramby, Joe, Dan, Wendi & Jami.

We received a ginger bread house kit as a Christmas gift. I confess I was not particularly looking forward to putting it together because I thought it would make a huge mess and probably not work very well. I was surprised, however, at how easy it was and how well it held together. Of course the kids enjoyed the candy and it was a blessing to see their creativity coming out! Maybe we'll even do it again next year.

Thanksgiving 2009

Our church has an English Converstation class for international students. One of the fun events they do each year is have a Thanksgiving dinner for the students. Our homegroup hosted one last year and we did it again this year. We have it at our house and everyone from our group drops off a dish. Then we let the helpers and students from the class just enjoy the food. It's fun for us to host and hopefully it's a blessing for the class.

Our kiddos went to Grandma & Grandpa's house during the dinner and then came home around 8:30pm. The students seemed to have a good time visiting with our kids and our kids loved getting so much attention from the International students. It blesses me to see the kids making friends so quickly.

On Thanksgiving Day, we went to Joe's niece's house in Hutto. There was a large crowd with most of Joe's family and Kerri's husband's family too. It was a nice day so we were able to eat outside. Of course there was a TON of yummy food! The kiddos had a great time playing and Abby loved wearing her sparkly red shoes for the first time. Zach was a little more laid-back about the whole day.

November 2009...Homegroup kiddos

I don't think I've posted anywhere that we had 3 babies born in our Homegroup over the summer. One girl was born in May, Zach was born in July, and another girl was born in September. We finally got around to taking a picture of all of them at homegroup one night. This was taken when they were 2, 4 and 6 months old. The other babies shall remain nameless to protect their privacy.

We also had one couple leave for Ukraine in November to adopt. They didn't know anything about the kids they would end up adopting and they didn't expect it to take 4 months, but they did end up with 3 beautiful little girls. So, our Homegroup went from our 3 kiddos to 10 within one year, but you'll have to read more about that in my Spring posts (whenever I get around to them). When the above picture was taken we were at 6 kiddos in our group.

October 2009

My mom's good friend, that I've known as Aunt Bonnie all my life, came for a visit in October. The kids love Aunt Bonnie and we all enjoyed her visit. We hope she'll come back soon!

The high-light of the month for me was having my brother and his family come for a week! We hadn't seen them in almost 2 years. The kiddos had fun with their cousins. It was so wonderful to have teenagers around...my nieces took the kids to the park and babysat one afternoon so that all the adults could enjoy a nice lunch out. We cooked lots of good food and just generally enjoyed each others' company.

September 2009

Ben started gymnastics lessons in September. He is such a monkey that we thought we'd try to channel that energy. He loved it, but decided to play soccer in the spring. (We only let them do 1 activity at a time since we know it will only get crazier as they get older. Might as well get them used to that rule now.) Sam played soccer again in the fall and had even more fun because he scored more goals. We try to remind him that playing your best and having fun are more important than scoring goals, but it's still fun for him when he does score.

We went to the Kolache Festival in Caldwell, TX on September 12. It hadn't rained in about 3 months, but it poured that day. Joe's brother and his family met us there and we ran into several other folks that we know. We left Zach at home with Grandma & Grandpa. Of course the rain didn't stop the kolaches from tasting fabulous!

How did 9 months slip by me?

I suspect many bloggers run into this dilemna. You're thinking "It's been too long since I've blogged so I'll need a big chunk of time to fill in everything I've missed blogging about." But you never get that big chunk of time and then you just need an even bigger block of time so you never get around to it. Well, that's what's been going on around here so I'm going to just pick up where we are right now and try to keep things short and to-the-point so that I might do a better job of keeping up with things. Since I have a little time today I may make some entries about what's been going on the past 9 months, though. So, if this is out of chronological order, that's why!

A couple weeks ago Abby was playing in her room after lunch. The boys were busy and I was busy with Zach and dishes. I realized I hadn't heard from Abby in a while so I sent the boys to look for her. They couldn't find her anywhere in the house so we checked outside too. Just as I was starting to get a little nervous, I found this...

She was asleep under her bed. Sometimes the kids pretend that under her bed is a camper (we got a great deal on a used camper in December). You probably can't see it, but she has sunglasses on and everything. I wasn't sure what to do so I just left her under there. I was a little frustrated because it wasn't nap time yet, but she still took a 2-hour nap, so it was all good!

The kids are having a "picnic" in the playroom right now. They brought the play food, plates and napkins from Abby's room to the playroom and are sorting through it all. They informed me that the healthy food goes on the big plates and the unhealthy food goes on the little plates. Now, if only I could remember that myself. I don't think Abby was understand the whole sorting thing if you're wondering why a pineapple is on the "unhealthy" plate. And I guess Ben thinks mushrooms aren't very good for you, either.