Happy 3rd Birthday!!!

Tarren turned 3 today, but we had the party on Friday. He has been so excited to turn 3 and has been talking about it the last month. I asked him what type of party he wanted and he told me cars. So, that is what we had. We just had a simple party here at the house. I bought a few cars decorations and then made a cake and decorated it with car toys.

He was very excited. He kept saying "ooooooh" "wow". It was cute. We had hamburgers and hot dogs and let the kids play. It is a lot of fun because all of the kids are about the same age so they have a blast playing together. Tarren was very excited to blow out his candles and blew out the first one before Spencer even finished lighting the rest. So, we had to relight.

He got lots of cool toys and has been playing with them ever since.

EASTER
We went to Pearland yesterday to celebrate Easter. We had a wonderful dinner with all of the family and then we had the Easter egg hunt. Tarren understood it much better this year and kept telling his daddy, "we got to run to get the eggs".

Samuel grabbed an Easter Egg or 2 with the help of his Mimi.

He doesn't like the feel of grass on his legs, so he will take turns holding each leg up.

After all the eggs are found, we bring out the confetti eggs. They are fun, but you find confetti for days in your clothes and on your body. Tarren had a blast getting Mimi.

One long week...

This past week has been one of the longest weeks of my life. We found out that they were going to be doing lay-offs in our district. I was a little stressed out. We are not quite in a financial spot where I could not work yet plus we want to have a third child and I am not so sure we could afford that on a single income. Anyways, they came to our school to do the lay-offs on Wednesday and talk about being stressed. Everytime I heard a door open, I thought they were coming for me. They never came down to talk to me, so I guess for now I am safe. They laid off 7 people at our school. They are suppose to come back next week to do reassignments. I have a feeling I will probably be reassigned to another school because we have 3 PE teachers and I think they are going down to 2. We will see. I am just happy for now I have a job. On Thursday, the high school students decided to do a walk out and since our junior high is right next door to the high school, our kids decided to do the same. Friday a bunch of them just never came to class. It was one crazy week. It will be interesting to see how the next few go. On a positive note, we only have 7 more weeks until Summer vaction. I am looking forward to that!

So, these last few days Samuel has started to be a little more mobile. He is now laying on his stomach and dragging himself along as he pulls with his arms and pushes with his feet. He has quite the temper. He is WAY different than Tarren. You could Tarren no and he would stop, but Samuel seems to not really care and continues to do whatever he wants. He is a mama's boy for sure. He loves to be held by his mama.

(The red eye in my camera is about to start driving me crazy!)

Tarren is turning 3 in a week. I can not believe it has already been 3 years! He is so excited! He keeps telling me that he wants a cars birthday party. So, we are just going to have a simple party with a cars cake. I caught him today singing happy birthday to himself. It was cute.

Samuel is 9 months!!

My little baby is growing up way too fast! He is officially 9 months today. We took him to his 9 month appointment yesterday and here are his stats:

Weight: 19lbs 12 oz - 40%

Height: 29 inches - 77%

Head: 18 inches - ?

He has quite the little personality. He loves to laugh and smile. He loves to be held! He chews on anything he can and especially loves to put paper in his mouth. He has 6 teeth now. The top four all came in at once. That was fun times. He loves his older brother and will laugh and laugh when he is around. He loves to grab his hair and just touch him. He loves taking a bath. He loves to play peek-a-boo and clap. He loves this little piggie on his toes. He has not started to crawl yet, but he is starting to do the rocking forward. He does not like most baby food. He will clamp his mouth shut and not open it. He would much rather have our food or his brothers. I love this little boy and I can't wait to see more of his personality.

Rodeo!!! Alan Jackson

We went to the Rodeo on Friday. We got there around 1:00. We usually get there later and don't have enough time to do everything, so this year we went earlier. We were able to do everything and then have some time left over. So, next year we are going to go around 3. That should give us plenty of time plus the kids can take a nap. They did a pretty good job until right before the actual rodeo. Tarren started getting really cranky. We let him run and play in the grass and that seemed to help. Samuel was cranky in the rodeo, which wasn't fun. He slept for about 20 minutes on Spencer, but then he woke up. I took him upstairs for a little bit, but he never feel asleep. He goes kind of crazy when he is tired. It was almost like he was on a sugar high. He was jumping up and down all crazy like. He also kept rubbing his head on me like a cat. It was kind of cute. When the fireworks went off he would scamper up me like a monkey, but he never cried. Tarren had a lot of fun when the rodeo started. He really likes music,so he was singing along. He would close his eyes and really get into it. I wish I had videoed him. He woke up this morning singing the chorus(or a couple of words of it) to one of the songs. Anyways, here are a few pictures from it.

PETTING ZOO

FUN ON THE FARM (Samuel fell asleep)

BUTTERFLY EXHIBIT

Two Happy Boys

First part of Spring Break....

We had family come into town on Friday March 11th because Spencer's Mom was getting married on Saturday. We went to the wedding on Saturday and it was lovely. I did not get any pictures of the wedding...sorry. On Monday, we went to the Rockets game with Spencer's brother's family.

After the game we took a group picture. Spencer, Texann, Samuel, Jared, Tarren, Jana, Ty, KaLynn, Trevor and Ryan.

Spencer's crazy hairdo. The best part was watching people's eyes as we walked by. When we got to our seats, there were some older women that wanted to take a picture of Spencer's hair. It was funny.

Our family picture.

On Tuesday, we went to the beach. It was pretty windy and chilly. We let the kids play in the sand for a little bit and then we took a ride on the ferry to feed the seagulls.

Samuel LOVED the sand. He just kept raking his fingers through it. Afterwards, he was trying to eat it off his hand and would get mad every time I tried to wipe the sand off.

Samuel's HUGE cheeks. It took me a long time to get him to look up. He just wanted to keep playing with the sand.

Family picture on the rocks.

Tarren loved throwing rocks in the water, but it was really cold. So, when the water would come rushing up and touch his feet, he would FREAK out.

We went on the ferry to feed the seagulls. Samuel had fun holding the bread because it didn't matter if it was squished.

We had a lot of fun having family in town. Tarren really got attached to Jana. He woke up this morning asking, "where's Jana"? I told them they went home. I can't believe Spring Break is already half way over. There are more pictures to come.

Fort Fun

We got these big coolers at work and they came in these big boxes. I thought I could take one home and use it for Tarren to play in. So, Spencer put it together and cut out the windows and made the door. My job was painting the letters that spelled out Tarren's House. We let Tarren paint on one side of the box and he loved that, but what he loved most of all was going in the box and playing. Once it was all finished, he played in there until it was time to go to bed. I went in the bedroom to lay down and Tarren came in and tried to bring his box with him. It was cute, but it does not fit through the door. So he had it right outside our bedroom door and played in it there. Spencer climbed in at first and he freaked out until he realized he could get in there too.

New Years Eve

Spencer and I decided that for New Years Eve this year we were actually going to go out and do something with just the two of us. We kept meaning to go out on dates all last year, but we usually ended up taking the kids. So, this date made up for all the dates we missed through the year. My mother-in-law babysat the kids for us and we stayed the night at the Hyatt hotel downtown. It is so big! I have never been in a hotel like it. We got there at 5 and went up to our room. We had dinner reservation at 10:00 in the Spindletop and so we decided to relax a little before we got ready. We got the Supermario brothers for the Wii for Christmas and we love playing it. So, we brought the wii and plugged it into the big tv. We played for a little while and then got ready. They brought us champagne to our room, but since we don't drink alcohol they took it back and brought us sparkling cider. We went down to the lobby and they had a DJ going. We had drink tickets and so we went to get a non-alcoholic drink at the bar. It was funny to see their reaction when we asked for a non-alcoholic beverage. There was only one bar tender that made us a fruit drink. The rest didn't know what to do. They told us they had water. So, we had to go back to that bar tender if we wanted a drink other than water. We danced there for a little while and then we went to the 3rd floor and they had a band called the fab 5. We stayed for a little bit and then went to the basement and they had a latin band. We went to our dinner reservation and it was pretty neat. The whole restaurant spins while you are eating. It is a slow roation, but it is fast enough that you make it all the way around before dinner is over. It was really neat to see all the lights and buildings of downtown and on. After that, we went to an all you can eat dessert buffet. The desserts were pretty fancy. By the time we finished, it was about 15 minutes before the balloon drop. We went back to the lobby and dance. It was sooo crowded. We did the countdown and then over 50,000 balloons dropped. It was literally raining balloons. There were so many they were coming up past our knees. They had balloons the size of an exercise ball. We danced a little more and then went up to our room. It was an amazing night!

This is right after we got ready to head out.
This is where our hotel room was on the 24th floor.

Spencer in the elevator. It went really fast.

Sparkling Cider delivered to our room.

Dinner at the Spindletop

The dessert buffet. YUMMMM!!!

The sexy man I love!

Balloon drop

The balloon the size of the exercise ball.

I am glad it is a New Year and I look forward to our adventures together as a family. I am also thankful for all of the memories we made in 2010. I have made a few resolutions for the year.

1. Get back in shape...isn't this everyones resolution

2. Get our finances in order...I want to pay off any debt we have and get our mortgage paid down significantly.

3. Go on a date with my sexy husband at least 2x a month.

4. Work on the kids savings accounts

These are just a few...there are plenty of more, but I figure I need to do baby steps. Here is to a fantastic year!