Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, as for us, here goes! 

Christmas was SO fun! We actually had a white Christmas!  It was awesome! Noah was totally interested in the snow (which was great!) and we went outside a few times so he could look at it and touch it. Scott even let him taste a tiny bit.  He loved it, but he likes ice, so how could he not?!

Here is Noah in the snow, my happy little bee

And here is the view from our back door, so white, so peaceful, I love the way outside smells and how quiet it gets when there is snow/when it is snowing.  Scott got the kids and I hot chocolate from Starbucks which made the day perfect! 

Brooke noticed that Avery is now as tall as her and we got a picture of the exact moment when she realized it - hilarious! 

All four kids are all well, enjoyed their break from school and got tons of gifts that they loved! Such lucky kids! 

Noah, Avery and I stayed with my parents for about a week and a half and we had a blast!  Old friends and family visited and we spent some much needed time with Papa and Mamoo! 

Here's Noah playing with Zoe and Kalista, they are the daughters of a girl I have known since 8th grade! 

LOVING on Julia, but in all honesty, who doesn't love her?!

Snuggling with cousin Hope

Playing with GG

Practicing crawling with Papa

The deer my mom and I started feeding which lead to more deer showing up to be fed, and now there are somewhere between 15-20 that now sit and wait to be fed, peering through the gate. Starving. With their babies. Making us feel like total jerks because there was only so much deer appropriate food in the house  we could give them. And believe me they stared.

Avery and his baby kitty!  She had to go back to my parent's house because Noah is allergic, actually, we all are.  But I am such a cat person, I'll suffer through it for the sake of having one.  However, it isn't an option right now until Noah gets bigger.  Bella (the cat) followed Avery around for 2 days after we got there and the first night did not move from the pillow next to him.

Noah with his uncle Al, holding a Mexican Coke with a big smile, because, Mexican Coke is the BEST Coke, duh. 

Playing under the Christmas tree.  Too cute! 

Visiting Papa at work pretending to be the boss 

That was pretty much the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013 for us!  Here is hoping and praying that this year is awesome!  We have a lot to look forward to! 

OH! Noah got his first tooth New Year's day.  Then he got his second tooth, the next day. Um, yeah.  Big things are surely in store for us this year!  He is also, crawling in a one two pattern then stopping.  I think he is scared a little about going further. I don't think it'll be long until he's off getting into things.  

Scott and I are well too!  Other than trying to be better about staying in touch with our family (my goal), we both are going to try to live out the wisdom of 1 Corinthians 13 4-7.  Its a few verses that I am sure everyone knows but living them, that's the tricky part. Wish us luck! 

Well friends and family that's it for now!  Lots of love to you!

figuring out how to spell column for this post was hard

I'm not kidding, I tried spelling it ten times, and I used the dictionary on my iphone and still could not figure it out!  I even asked Scott who has the super strength of being a decent speller and he tried three times and then said I don't know.  Finally I typed how I thought it was spelled into google and the predictive psychic genius that it is, knew what I meant. Yay google!  Google's psychic powers never disappoint, sneaky sneaky!

I hope everyone had a lovely and happy Thanksgiving, yes, I know it was like a month ago, but I still mean it!

Our Thanksgiving was great!  Everything went according to plan, no disasters, no drama.  Thank God!  I of course planned and planned so that I would not have to stress out because I do so very easily.  The entire family helped cook, my momma decorated and my mother in law cooked the turkey.  You have NO idea how much this made me happy.  I'm a vegetarian. The thought of having to touch raw turkey parts was not only super intimidating to me but also made me want to gag.  I am not kidding when I say I prayed several times hoping that I would not have to cook it.  Let me be clear - if I HAD to do so, I would have. I just did NOT WANT to.  I am super THANKFUL I didn't have to.  Noah got to play with his little cousin Essie and it was funny to see Noah's reaction to her playing with his toys.  I think he got a little jealous.

Here's Noah attempting to take his toy from her. Ugh.

All three of the older kids are doing well.  Avery cut off all his hair before Thanksgiving and Brooke had some dental work done to help pull a tooth up that wasn't coming up on its own.  Alec is continuing to work super hard in school to stay on the A-B honor roll.  

I found this little armadillo bobble head thing in a gift bag with all our wedding cards, that Scott bought each of the kids when we went to San Antonio together and it made me think about how Brooke, Alec and Avery have all grown up so much and changed so much since Scott and I first met.  They were all in elementary school.  Next year they will all be in high school. 

Here they are, literally, the day they met one another

And right before Halloween

I love them all so much! 

Noah's aunt Ginny bought him a pacifier with a mustache. Although Noah hasn't taken well to having a pacifier at all, he does like to stick it in his mouth of a few seconds and then spit it out.  I think he looks really cute with it! 

Okay so Avery and I enjoy memes, a lot.  Sometimes he and I will copy them just for fun.  One night we decided to put a piece of bread on our family cat, Bella, and of course she was completely dissatisfied with what he and I had done to her.  We thought it was funny though.

We put up our Christmas tree and Noah was super interested in it!  Here he is inspecting it!

We chose red and gold ornaments this year because red is my favorite color and red and gold happen to be the team colors for Scott's favorite football team.  Ten points in the cool wife column for me!

My parents will be here Saturday and we will begin celebrating Christmas, I am excited about that! I hope everyone reading this has a wonderful holiday!  

Lots of love to y'all! 

a little of everything

Hi guys!

I am sorry I haven't updated in FOREVER, but I honestly haven't felt like getting on my computer.  See, all my online activity happens from either my iphone or ipad, and when I update my blog I have to get on my laptop and sometimes, rather, most of the time, I am just too dang lazy to do so! Sad, but true.

Here's what we have been up to:

ACL - The Austin City Limits Music Festival - Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE music! I love live music and I always look forward to going to ACL. Last year I was a few weeks pregnant with Noah and if you did not know, I had the worst morning sickness - ever!  Not even two weeks after Noah was conceived I started getting sick which led to 4 months of round the clock throwing up.  I could not do anything. I spent 4 months in bed, hating life, because no one likes throwing up and I am oh so dramatic.  Anyway, I was lucky I got to go to ACL last year because I was so sick. And I had a great time. I was really looking forward to going this year simply because I would not be sick and I could go all day and stay all day and it would be delightful. The thought never crossed my mind that me going all day or at all really wouldn't even be possible because I was breastfeeding Noah. See, if you haven't noticed I live in my own little world.  Its a tiny problem if you ask me but this tiny problem sometimes leads to big uh-ohs. Just ask Scott.  He'd know.  So,  Scott and my dad went all three days and both thought maybe, just maybe, I could go and bring Noah for 1 hour on Sunday to see one person perform and then leave right after.  They saw lots of other kids and babies of different ages and figured it would be fine. Reluctantly, I agreed.  We took every precaution to make sure Noah would be comfortable and have all the things he would need and headed to Austin.  We walked into the gates and Noah instantly got excited, started cooing and kicking and I thought okay, this will be fine, one hour and he will be fine.  We ended up staying 20 minutes.  Noah got a little anxious with all the people which made me anxious and then we got stuck in a crowd of people and I was like I am done, Noah and I need to leave.  I apologized to my dad like a bazillion times and we headed back to my parents house.

Pumpkin Patch - Going to the pumpkin patch was so fun! I was so excited about going and all three of the older kids were such great sports about going and participating in taking pictures which was like SO AWESOME of them! Here are some of my favorite pictures from that day:

Avery turned the big 13! He is just growing up so fast!  Its so funny hearing him share his opinions on things because I am constantly blown away by what comes out of his mouth.   I am always thinking "oh hey, you're not the little guy I think of you as."

He is forever in my mind this guy:

Halloween - Because we live on a street that only has one side, we got like 5 trick-or-treaters.  This meant that even after promising my sister I would send some kit-kat bars down with my parents for her, I ate the WHOLE bag in TWO days. I ate them with breakfast, while making breakfast, for snack, just because, and whatever other perfectly logical reason I could come up with to have another. Whatever.  

Here are the kids in their costumes:

Brooke and Taylor - cute kitties, duh! 

Avery, Alec, Evan and Austin - Nerds (such a stretch), Brian from family guy (the peanut butter jelly song) and the grim reaper

Noah - A happy little Skeleton 

Noah is doing great!  Growing and growing and learning and learning!  I think something new happens everyday! He can say mum, da, and he makes a weird noise at the cat!  I think it's his version of a meow.  If placed on the floor he will roll and roll all over the place and even across the room!  He is getting the basics down to start crawling.  He knows how his legs should move when placed on all fours, and he can stay on all fours for quite a while before falling.  He just does not have the arm strength yet, but we are working on it!  Noah is also becoming a little independent.  He is perfectly fine sitting on a blanket playing with his toys.  In fact, he will try to wiggle out of my arms if he wants to be on the floor and if I try to play with his toys too he looks at me like "no, you had better stop and move away."  I ordered a play pen for him which should be here any day and I am excited for that!  I know he will be too!  

Everyone else is doing great too!  Alec made the honor roll which is a huge huge HUGE deal because he's dyslexic and everyone couldn't be happier for him!

Scott and I are hosting our first Thanksgiving dinner and we are both looking forward to it!  We will have a house full of family and we love that! 

I will post again after the holiday! 

I hope your Thanksgiving is lovely!

feeling MEXcellent

Hi guys!

Last weekend my parents came.  They come visit every two weeks so if reading that gets redundant - you have been warned.  The most awesome thing about them coming other than getting to see them was that they brought my baby sitr! No, that wasn't a typo, you read that correctly, my sister and I call one another sitr and refer to one another in all we do as sitr.  We call each other that because when she was in the 3rd grade she wrote a Cinderella type fairy tale about me and since she could not spell sister correctly she spelled it "sitr."  Years and years later, we found the story and read it and laughed and started calling each other sitr.  Anyway, I was so excited that Nell came to visit! This is a big big BIG deal because she hates to travel by car on a highway or be in a car longer than 15 minutes.  Why?  Once she was run off road by a big truck and even though she was fine and her car was fine, it scared her and she has been anxious about being in a car ever since.  We had such a great time with her here.

The one thing Nell was looking forward to the most was getting to feed Noah bananas like she did with Avery.  Here she is feeding him and he loved it!

My parents bought Noah the cutest PJs that glow in the dark and I love them SO much I think they will end up being his Halloween costume while he passes out candy this year.

I am really fond of Noah's little face when he looks up and I finally got to snap a quick pic of him doing so.  I am SO in love with him! 

All of Noah's older siblings are doing well.  They all got new cell phones so they are pretty stoked.  Brooke and Avery got new iphones so the two of them are especially excited.  Alec got a way cooler phone than he had and he is excited about that! All three of them got their first progress reports and every one has either A-B or all A's so far.  We are encouraging them all to keep that up the whole year and then Scott and I are doing something huge for them!  Alec and Avery got new beds too! My parents brought the beds up with them when they visited and the boys got to put their own beds together.  A little man-training there. Ha!  My mom wanted to do all the kids' rooms and since Noah's is finished she moved on to the boys' "man-cave".  She is making all the kids' comforters, pillows and curtains.  So far everything looks AMAZING!  One day I will do a post of our house because I know some of our family wants to see it.  

Scott and I are good too.  Nothing interesting or exciting on our parts. He is mostly busy with work and I am busy with Noah.  Scott is taking me to see the native Texas butterfly exhibit at the museum this weekend that I have wanted to see since March.  I am SO excited! I am excited for Noah as well because he is starting to become aware of all kinds of  things around him, so I hope it'll be a good time for him too!  If I remember to take pictures I will post them. 

Now to the reason I titled this post "feeling mexcellent" -  The other day at lunch I made myself a bean burrito and I wondered if I could give Noah some of the re-fried beans.  I checked a website and it said he could have a little, like a taste of them and be fine.  So I let him try them.  Here is the video:  I am not sure it works on iphones or ipads, as I can't see it on either of my idevices.  Enjoy!

Lots of love to y'all 

Four month check up

Hi All

Last weekend we had a full house, something that Scott and I both love and want to be a constant in our lives.  Friday night we had Zerick (I think that's spelled correctly) and Soren over to spend the night.  They are Scott's late friend Darren's boys.  They are both SO cute and we love when they come over.  Alec and Avery love it too.  It's basically junk food, video game and computer game night when they are all together.  Or geek time in short.  My parents came up for the weekend and stayed the night Saturday and Scott's sister Ginny came and stayed the night as well.  Saturday day Scott's mom and Aunt Netti came over for a few hours. I told Netti about a recipe I found on Pinterest for mint brownies and she basically told me to make them immediately. Ha!  They were really good.  I had to modify the recipe a little because some of the desserts on Pinterest are ridiculously terrible for you.  As in, fattening to an extreme even I gag about and my friends, I LOVE fattening desserts.  

This week has gone by pretty quickly.  Noah had his 4 month check up and shots yesterday.  It went pretty well.  And by well, I mean, no panicking or freaking out for me (God does answer prayers). Although, I have to admit I was a little nervous. Noah pulled all his best tricks for the doctor - cooing at her and rolling over for her.  He did cry getting his shots and was fussy last night and has been so a little on and off today.  Poor baby. Here are Noah's stats: he is still in the 25th percentile for weight coming in at 13 1/2 pounds and is in the 95th percentile for height at 26 1/2 inches.  He is long and skinny.  Not a big surprise. Scott is long and skinny and I am long and semi-skinny, well, mostly kind of skinny.

Here is Noah getting his check up from his doctor

And here's what shots do to Noah

Brooke, Alec and Avery are all adjusted to being back in school.  However, they are not adjusted to the homework.  This year it is a lot for all three of them.  Brooke has hours of homework each night and Avery and Alec are not too far behind.  All three of them have committed to making the honor roll this year, so we are hoping that they all reach their goal.  

Some pictures of our week so far:

Noah playing in the car with Scott before taking Avery to school 

Noah helping daddy work (I think) they may really be checking football or baseball scores

These last four I took this morning - they are blurry but he was playing with his blanket and laughing and cooing at me, in other words, being SO cute!  In the last picture, please excuse and ignore my witch hand. ;D

Love to y'all

First day of school and all

Here goes!

Last Monday was the kids' first day back to school.  Brooke started high school and was not nervous a bit!  I think I asked her at least a hundred times if she was and she kept telling me no.  She is much braver than I am!  I was always super nervous weeks before school started every year. Avery started a new school, again.  His eighth one (he likes to point that out.)  Last year Avery was able to go to the same school as Brooke and Alec even though it was out of district for him.  However when Avery's 8th grade schedule came in the mail, he had been automatically enrolled in the school closer to our house.  After inspecting his schedule a few times he decided he wanted to go to the new school.  His decision was based on the fact that his schedule had "cool" classes.  All three of the kids had a good first week and Avery has made a friend.

Scott continues to improve daily!  He is eating a hundred percent normal and has not had a single problem in months.  Yes months.  I am very happy about that!  Work is beginning to pick up for him again too which is nice!

Noah is getting bigger and bigger by the minute.  These past four months have flown by and he learns something new everyday!  He loves music and reading the most out of all the activities we do daily. He recently discovered the cat and now she catches his eye a lot. I have started letting him have a half teaspoon of mashed banana in the morning because for the past few weeks he has been lusting after our food. He will sit and watch us eat and attempt to grab things off our plates or out of our hands.  Speaking of grabbing, Noah wants to grab EVERYTHING!  If something catches his eye, he wants it and then will turn his whole body to try to get it! While being changed he grabs for the wipes, while laying in bed, he grabs for Scott's or my iPhone.  He wants my cup and he wants to turn the pages of whatever book I am reading to him. I could go on and on.  I started taking Noah on morning walks and he enjoys them as much as he can, we have gone everyday for the past week and a half and today was the only day he got upset and we had to turn straight around.

I am doing well too! I am finally starting to feel like myself again. A little less crazy but still just enough to keep things interesting. I'm kidding. Kind of.  Noah has his 4 month check up and shots next week, and I am NOT looking forward to that.  Maybe the crazy will come back after that?! Who knows?!

Lots of love to y'all!

Pictures!

Hi Everyone!

Here are some pictures I wanted to share with y'all!  I'll do an update on everyone in the next post as I am not sure how long Noah will be napping.

Here is Noah and his daddy playing which is Noah's absolute favorite thing to do.

Noah does NOT like mommy to interrupt his play time with daddy and when I do, I get this look:

Noah has begun teething, he loves to chomp and chomp on everything!

I LOVE this picture SO much! 

Reading with Avery - notice how he is giving me that look again. Ha!

Just hanging out!