Happy Holidays!

Here are a couple of fall pictures that we took for our Christmas card this year. We actually had quite a few good pictures to choose from...thanks Suzie for making the kids smile in almost every picture...quite the feat, and thanks Tom snapping the photos!

When our next door neighbors first saw our picture, their response was "You guys sure like your football don't you?" We do like football, but that definitely was not what we were trying to achieve in the picture! First of all, we took the picture in UT and the clothes that I packed all clashed with one another. So plan B: Joe thought it would be fun to represent all the places we've lived in the past 8 years. That is the only reason why I would wear a sweatshirt for a picture we send out to our friends and family!

Did I forget to mention that we visited Joe's family in Utah for Thanksgiving? His sister, Bethany, also came with her hubby Allen, Taylor 10, Evan 8, and Alec 6. It was a very busy, but funfilled holiday break. Samuel loved hanging around the older boys and copied everything that they did. Samuel's favorite thing to do was spend time with Papa Tom in the train room. I've never seen him interested in something for longer than 5 minutes. He'd wake up in the morning and say "papa" than "choo choo"? On our last night there, we went to The Gateway shopping center to shop (if you can call it that with 2 kids) and then watched pianist John Schmidt play the piano before the Christmas tree lit up. It was quite cold that night and Mason made sure everyone knew he hates shopping, but other than that we had alot of fun. The best part was watching Samuel take in the music. He kept bobbing his head to the beat and would even tap his hand or foot to the beat. We managed to capture a little bit of it in the video.

When we got back from our trip, we went to a Christmas party a couple of moms in our playgroup put together. They all came in their Christmas PJs which was pretty cute. Notice that Samuel is the only one that cannot sit for more than 1/2 a second.
Along with eating yummy treats, the kids got to make reindeer shirts with their hand and footprints. I wasn't sure how do-able this activity would be with 7 toddlers running around but no paint was spilled! Most of the kids actually wanted nothing to do with the paint as shown:
But the shirts ended up looking really cute. Below is Samuel's shirt half done. We added eyes, a nose, and painted his name on the back.

Before I conclude this long and very late post, I wanted to add that Mason is now taking some steps! Yay!! He will only gather the courage to walk between Joe and I, but hey, at least we're getting somewhere! How different he is from Samuel. Samuel never wanted any help from us...one day he just let go of the coffee table and started walking across the room by himself. I am thinking that Mason will still take a couple of weeks before he gives up crawling and really starts walking everywhere. Enjoy grandparents! We thought this video was funny since Mason was able to make it across despite the distraction of Samuel streaking back in forth in his diaper.

Samuel...hitting those terrible two's!

Here is my dear Samuel, who is as usual squeezing out some tears for a dramatic effect. At this moment, his world is crumbling down because one of his socks came off and he cannot find it. And when I offer him other socks to wear, he gets even more upset and throws them and himself around on the ground. After 10 minutes of searching for the stupid sock with Samuel trailing behind me, he is so happy when I produce the sock. Yep, happy for about 5 minutes until the next meltdown begins when he wants to go outside to play while I am trying to get dinner started. And the cycle of mood swings continues...happy one minute and full blown tears the next...over and over it seems. Is anyone else as baffled as I am about the terrible, terrible, terrible 2 stage? Samuel is not even 2 for heaven's sake...I have a long year ahead of me!

Well, despite the tantrums, Samuel is at a pretty funny age where his personality is really coming through. Something Samuel really loves is music. He is always bobbing his head to the beat of the music when we're in the car and he will always start dancing if he hears music, even in public. Here is a video of Samuel dancing at the pumpkin patch we were at in my previous post. I wasn't able to download the video last time, so here's another try.

In this video, Samuel is wearing a pair of little girl glasses that he found at the pool. He loved them so much that he wouldn't take them off for hours, even through dinner. Once he decides he likes something, say a particular SOCK, Samuel becomes committed and there is no changing his mind. So here he is watching Diego, eating, and singing...all while wearing his new glasses.

So the terrible two stage: endearing and enraging...hilarious and frustrating all at the same time. All I can say is that I can't wait for Mason's turn.

Happy Halloween! Wait, that happened a week ago?

Thanks Grandma Suzy for the cute Halloween jammies!

So yet again, it seems that I am still a blogging slug. I almost decided to skip the Halloween festivities on my blog so that I could be "caught up", but there were too many pictures to ignore. Plus, the grandparents would probably have a fit for not being updated on our Halloween adventures. So here goes: We start off with Samuel the Spiderman...1 out of the hundred spidermen on my block alone. Thank goodness Halloween is a 1 night deal b/c Samuel split the back of his pants in mid-spiderman pose. Of course Samuel could care less. In fact, I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the breeze as he literally ran from door to door. We started off trick-or-treating with his little friend Emily, but after the 2nd house, Samuel was off to the races! At first Samuel invited himself right into people's houses, but he soon caught on and it was hard to catch up with him after that. He loved knocking on the doors and picking out candy. Samuel in action. Am I a geek for capturing his first "door"? Samuel literally RAN around our neighborhood for almost 2 hours. The boy never walks btw, he really only runs at full speed. I mean, how many 22 month olds can endure running for that long? Can you get a feel for what my days are like, trying to figure out ways to expend some of Samuel's energy?

Here is Mason in his dinosaur/dragon/lizard costume. We don't quite know what it is, but Joe picked it up at a garage sale for free. Hence, Joe's newest quote: "If it's free, it's for me!" So for those of you who remember Joe's frugal side, you can probably appreciate the humor in this qoute. And yes, we are still scoping out those garage sales come Friday and Saturday! We consider ourselves professionals by this point! Samuel of course got jealous of Mason's costume, so we gave him a turn in it. It put him in the cleaning spirit and he vacuumed in it for almost 15 minutes (vaccuum also a garage sale find). I just wanted to throw in a picture of the Halloween birthday party that we went to. The kids in our playgroup all dressed up in their costumes, made halloween masks, played and threw tantrums, and then ate cookies. My kids of course wanted nothing to do with the sweets. I had to eat both cookies...just so the birthday boy wouldn't feel bad of course! Here is a picture of Joe and his staff for Halloween. It was their idea to dress up in a theme around Joe's costume, so for that day, Joe was the prisoner while the women ran the show. Here are the boys at a haunted house at a pumpkin patch that we went to. I wanted to include this picture to showcase Samuel's 1st crush. Nope, not Mason, but the weird ugly looking witch that he is sitting on. While most of the other kids were too scared to even approach the witch chair, Samuel is holding it's hand and giving her kisses. Mason didn't even want to sit by the witch, but we managed to get a smile with Joe jumping up and down behind the camera. Samuel was too busy looking at his new friend. So now I am officially caught up on Halloween. Until Thanksgiving...haha.

What a fun week!

We went with our playgroup on our first visit ever to a pumpkin patch. This part is just the pumpkins, but we went on a hay ride, bounce houses, and a little hay maze. Samuel was very upset at first when he realized he couldn't pick up the "balls" since they were too heavy. Needless to say, he was very excited to find this little house full of small pumpkins. I had to pull him out kicking and screaming after he'd thrown a few "balls" around. I couldn't imagine explaining to Joe why I had to buy 50 damaged, little pumpkins. After several attempts, Mason decided to humor me and smile for the camera. Samuel is a little over stimulated at this point...I'm surprised I even got him to sit for picture time. I love the picture below of big brother showing Mason the tractor behind me. Now the best part of the week: My parents came to visit! We had such a busy, but fun time! Here we are at the BYU vs. TCU game. I never thought I'd see the Cougars play any time soon, but luckily they are in the same conference as TCU, which is located in Fort Worth. Unfortunately, we witnessed in person the Cougar beatdown and our dream to see them play in a BCS bowl went down the drain that night. What a disappointing college FB season!!! My Buckeyes lost AND my Gators lost. I better move on before I get upset all over again! During their visit, my dad helped us get our flowerbed in order...they dug out all the nasty weeds that had overtaken the bed, trimmed all the plants, planted flowers, and put up a stone border around the flowerbed. So here is the before (most of it looked like the side Joe is working on):

And here is the after picture. Thanks dad for helping us! You saved us so much money, time, and effort!

And here we are again at the zoo...we just love that place! It's always a big hit with Samuel.
And I just wanted to add that Samuel was such a huge fan of my dad's while he was here. It was so great to see this since the last visit, Samuel was terrified of my dad. Well actually, he was scared of anyone that wasn't me or Joe, so hopefully he is outgrowing this. I wanted to add a little video of my dad and Samuel playing the guitar. My dad is a wonderful guitarist and so we had lots of music time while he was here. I had him listen to all of Samuel's favorite songs and when he played the theme song from Diego or Popcorn popping, Samuel went wild dancing! Watch Samuel's wide-eyed stare as he plays with my dad. Also note Mason, ready to destroy the guitar.

Thanks mom and dad for coming to visit! We had such a great time and we already miss you! Can't wait to see you at Christmas time.

Life in Texas

I just wanted to start off with this picture to illustrate why I can't find time to blog. Aside from Mason never napping, my kids are destroyers!! I find myself constantly running around yelling "We only write on paper!", "Don't pound your car on that!", "No throwing blocks at the window!" Every day, actually every HOUR, you can find me mourning over all the marks, scratches, and dents on the surfaces of our furniture and new house...sniffle, sniffle. I'm beginning to think that I'm wasting my time and vocal chords trying to keep anything in decent shape around here. Anyways, by the time the kids go to bed I move into zombie mode, too tired to do anything except work the remote. As for the picture, we bought the boys a little tent for their playroom. Within minutes of playing with it, I found that Samuel had taken all the poles out and was scratching our walls with the ends of them. We then taped all the poles together so he couldn't take them apart, but it was no match for Samuel. He just had to get that tent through the doorway. Here's Joe and Mason enjoying the last day at our community pool. Isn't it awesome? There's also a 6 lane lap pool, another pool with a waterfall, other baby pools and slides shown below. This pool area was a major draw for us in choosing our house. We didn't get Crypto this time, thank goodness! Samuel and I going down the slide. Talk about a major fit when we have to leave the slide area!Joe and Samuel at the Fort Worth Zoo which is an awesome zoo. Samuel really loves animals so we've already taken him 3 times.
Here are some pictures of when our playgroup went to the zoo. I was not sure how fun it would be to take a bunch of 2 year olds and their baby siblings to the zoo, but we ended up having an awesome time. And, I swear my boys have more than 1 outfit! Our attempt at a group photo of the kids...Samuel trying to get as much space between he and all of the girls.

Samuel, not much of a socializer!
I just wanted to post this picture of my favorite grocery cart in the world. I absolutely cannot stand how most stores do not accomodate shopping with two babies very well. Samuel usually ends up in the basket part, either smashing my bread or throwing produce over the edge shouting "ball!" The big cars in the front are a pain to push and plus I can't monitor the hair pulling and hitting that goes on down there. So when I stepped into this expensive health food grocery store for the first time and saw this cart, I knew that I would be a frequent customer. Anything to make shopping with kids easier! Finally, my future golfer already in training. Just in case Samuel may one day want to go into the dental field, Joe wants to make sure that he meets the prerequisite of playing golf. Oh, and this is not a pose for the camera...this is really Joe trying to help Samuel connect with the ball.

I know, I'm such a slacker!

Well we made it to Texas! We are loving our new house and have settled into our new life here. To catch up on what we've been doing here for the past month, I will illustrate with pictures.
1. First and foremost, Samuel, Mason, and I got Crypto the first 2 weeks we were here. We couldn't wait to try out our amazing community pool facilities, so we went swimming the day after we moved here. The very next day, the pool closed down for Crypto. Wasn't it our luck that they couldn't discover Crypto running rampant in their pools the day before...when we decided to try out the pool for the first time? So the picture below...I had to run to Walmart for more pedialite and thought that surely we could make it to the store and back without any incidences. 5 minutes into the store and Samuel had diarrhea all over his clothes. It was supposed to be a quick trip so I didn't bring any spare clothing. So here is Samuel feeling miserable and half naked at Walmart. The only way he'd stop crying is when I let him hold his bag of poopy clothes. 2. We've been trying to unpack a little at a time, which has been a challenging task with these two busy boys. We've also been shocked at how much you have to buy when you move into a house...lawn mower, ladder, vacuum, security system, pest control. Things that are not fun to buy and therefore hurt even more to spend money on. Unfortunately, this means that I have not been able to decorate to my heart's content. This little table for our breakfast nook is one of the few things I was able to talk Joe into getting. And yes, we still have the yellow paint and have decided to live with it for a year. Neither one of us wants to put forth the labor so we will wait until we can afford to pay someone else to do it:) 3. Mason turned 1 on September 10! My sweet, sweet, naughty boy! We went and took his 1 year pictures and he was an absolute pill. He would not sit still for more than a few seconds. We went to the Rainforest Cafe earlier that week to celebrate, which was so much fun, I highly recommend it to anyone with kids. Then on his actual birthday, we sang to him and tried to give him cake, but it ended up on the floor after he gagged on the frosting. I'm starting to wonder if I've been a little too strict on the "no sweets" rule with the boys. I think I've turned my kids into party poopers! The video is long, but its entertaining if you want to witness the grouchy birthday boy diss his cupcake. To the grandparents, we missed you and wished you were here!

4. In the past month, my life has gotten dramatically busier with Mason being more mobile. Not only has he gotten more active, but he also has gotten more attitude, more assertive with Samuel (therefore more fighting), and naps LESS. This is pretty annoying b/c Samuel still sleeps like a champ, but I can never take advantage of it since Mason is always awake and creating havoc at that. Here he is caught red-handed with the toilet paper. He looks pretty guilty, doesn't he? And then on the next picture he is trying to crawl away from me (while giggling) since he knows he's been naughty. Oh my life! At least this wasn't a bad clean up.
5. We've been exploring around this area, trying to see what is out here to do. So far, there's a lot to do for families which has been great! We have so many things on our agenda to do and see that we will not be bored for a while. In the picture we are at an awesome outlet mall close to where we live and the boys are cheering for the good deals that we found that day. Plus, that mall had fun little rides that are perfect for little kids. It was definitely my idea of fun...a little shopping for me while Joe played with the kids at the mall!
So that's a little about us in the past month. So far we absolutely love it here and it feels like Keller Texas was part of our future the whole time! Our ward is gigantic...400 attendance on Sundays! So hopefully between church and all of my playgroups, I can meet some friends that are as wonderful as the close friends I've made over the past years. The most surprising thing so far though is that I haven't met too many people with southern accents. So many people have moved here from all over the place, its amazing. Well, I am going to regret blogging tommorrow morning when my early bird Mason wakes up at the crack of dawn!