One week to go...

We are taking our very first cruise for Thanksgiving and the much anticipated countdown is finally at t-minus 7 days as of this morning! It's become our family tradition to take the week of Thanksgiving and go somewhere awesome with the kids. This year it's Belize, Honduras and Mexico! And even more exciting, Joshua's Grandma Ruth is joining us!! So in the interest of anticipation, we drove out to the Port of Houston last Saturday to see our ship at dock as it was trading out passengers. Here it is. Kinda CRAZY HUGE, eh?!

I will have lots to share once we get back. But since we will be officially unplugged for the entire week of Thanksgiving, here's our Happy Turkey wish for everyone!! Hope you have a fantastic holiday and stay tuned for updates on our adventures when we get back!!!

(Carter and I at his Thanksgiving Feast at school yesterday!)

Happy Halloween 2013!!

The forecast all week had been for significant rain all day and evening on Halloween. I'd been seriously worried about what-the-heck we would do if it was too wet/dangerous to go trick or treating. (Yes...dangerous...as in there had been crazy lightning, serious enough that you shouldn't be outside for safety's sake...especially holding an umbrella over your head, ie. lightning rod lol. And that was beside the fact that we got 4 inches of rain in a couple of hours so it was not just WET, it was flooded!) Anywhoooo, about 4pm, the skies started to part, the clouds cleared off and the sun even peeked out. Trick-or-treating was ON!!!!

Super cute monkeys 1, 2 and 3!

Yes, Carter was a pirate...again! He's just so in love with pirates...still...that he couldn't imagine being anything else, even for variety's sake. So he got a new and improved eye patch, a gold earring and a pirate hook for his hand to spruce up his beloved pirate costume from last year.

Trevor was a green skeleton guy. Funny note...we thought it was hilarious that he didn't have to "smile" for my pictures cuz of his mask. Who knows what crazy face he was actually making as mom snapped away hahaha!

As you can see, the candy haul was very successful! And you should be impressed, Mommy and Daddy haven't eaten ANY of it...yet!

Emilee dressed up as Minnie Mouse so it was an ADORABLE coincidence that Mandi had picked the same for sweet baby cousin Austin. It made for some super cute pictures when they came over to visit later that evening!

And not to be forgotten, Reese wishes everyone a very Happy Halloween!!!

Almost Halloween!!

We saved our pumpkin carving for tonight, because here in hot and humid Texas (yup, it's still easily in the 80s here and STILL crazy humid) you can't carve much earlier or your creation will turn into a moldy, icky mess. So here's a few pics from our fun...

We started out in the driveway.

And had to move inside the garage when a downpour came through...

Emilee's boyfriend, Garrett, stopped by to help get the goop out of the inside of the pumpkins.

And here are the finished creations! One pirate ship (that also doubles as a pretty cool pumpkin face)...one pig...and one crooked smiling jack-o-lantern!

What's For Dinner?

Carter and I are on our own for dinner tonight (Em is at the barn and going out with a friend and Joshua and Trevor are scuba diving). So I gave him the rare treat of picking anything he wanted me to cook for dinner tonight. I was 100% sure he was going to ask for chicken nuggets and yogurt...his two absolute favs. So I was shocked when, after asking him what he'd like, he immediately and excitedly exclaimed "GREEN EGGS AND HAM!"

Yes, Boog, Mommy can definitely make you green eggs and ham! (Well, green eggs and sausage because that's what I had on hand, but he told me that was just fine lol!)

Geez he just tickles my heart with super cute out-of-the-blue requests like that!

Someone was also not in the mood to get his picture taken...

But he finally peeked all the way up for the shot!

Homecoming, Texas Style

So here's a new one for us! It's Homecoming Week for Emilee's high school. Celebrations and spirit activities are happening all week. Today is the much anticipated football game and it's tradition that all of the girls wear these Homecoming Mums. I was kind of like "WHAT??!!" when I was told about this tradition. We definitely didn't do anything like this when I was a kid in California. And I should clarify, these mums don't just show up or get handed out. They are HAND MADE. And PERSONALIZED. By CREATIVE PEOPLE. And that's pretty much not me lol! So I was super lucky to have an awesome creative friend who took me under her wing and helped me make made Emilee's mum while I watched (Miss Kelly, THANK YOU!!!). It might be a bit hard to see, but Emilee's is personalized with a pig for FFA, a treble cleff for choir and some silver western charms.

So here's Emilee as she headed off to school this morning, jingling and smiling and looking very school-spirit-filled!

First Week Of School

Everyone is out the door this morning for their last day of the first week of school. The week seems to have been a success. Everyone is fairly happy with their teachers, was excited to see their friends after the long summer, and we're adjusting to the get up and out the door routine fairly easily.

Here's their annual First Day picture from Monday. Each of them is seeming soooo grown up right now!

Emilee, 15.9 yrs old, Sophomore

Trevor, 13 yrs old, 8th grade

Carter, 6.5 yrs old, 1st grade

We are outta here in a couple of hours to go camping for the weekend. Yup, we are being THOSE parents and pulling the kids out of school
early :-)! Have a great holiday, everyone!!!

Committing

So it's been almost forever since I got something up on my blog. Well...two months...but still, that's terrible, when in the blog world daily or three times a week at least is much more the norm. Oh well, life is crazy/good here and I'm just not getting on my computer for much more than a quick facebook check, email triage and the handful of hours I put in each month for my awesome work from home job. Anyway...here I am! We are out of town hanging in OKC while Joshua works. The boys and I are going to have some fun, visiting favorite friends and hanging out in our former home city. And this morning, the boys are still snoring so I thought I'd shake a little dust off my blog link and check in.

Soooooo. It's already been said, I'm RIDICULOUSLY behind here on my blog. I have aspirations to catch up months of updates, but for this morning I thought I'd share a quick current project. I'm seriously trying to talk myself into embracing and committing to the fact that we just might be staying put for a while in Houston. 7 years of moving constantly has me pretty gun shy. But the radar screen says "nothing ahead" so I'm talking myself into tackling making my house look more "homey" and "decorated"...not so much like I'm ready to move next week if need be. So in the interest of baby steps I tackled our entry way bench this weekend. The cushion was SAD. The cover is not removable and it's been spilled upon over and over by various multi colored concoctions.

So, I pulled out some of the upholstery fabric I had leftover from our camping trailer remodel a year ago, sat down with my sewing machine for a few and gave it a new (removable/washable) facelift! Much better, right?!

Next projects...paint and decorate Carter's room in a pirate theme, paint and decorate Trevor's room in a Houston Astros theme, buy new furniture to fit our WEIRD/ANNOYING living room shape and paint the kitchen. Stay tuned!

Our Garden!

In February Joshua decided he wanted to try his hand at gardening in Texas so we hit Home Depot and a local nursery and got started on our new family project...

Carter was probably most excited out of all of us...he's alway had an affinity toward plants. He will care for any greenery he can get his hands on...from a weed to a nice fruit bearing or flowering plant. You can imagine how excited he was to be helping Daddy on a whole garden!

This is a glimpse of the garden growing nicely in a shot I took on Easter when the monkeys were hunting for their Easter Eggs.

Now you've probably seen a couple of updates from Joshua on Facebook. He has shared some of the earlier harvests there in short picture posts as I have not had much time this Spring to get at my blog. But tonight both Joshua and Carter were so excited that I had to share.

So here are pictures from today, four months later! First is our cucumber patch which has more than overgrown it's little area.

And Carter excited about today's harvest of potatoes, green beans, leeks and cucumbers! We had a 12 pound harvest today!

Carter was most excited about the cucumbers. I think because they are coming fast and furious now...today he picked SEVENTEEN which came out to be 10 pounds 14 ounces (thus the ten fingers)!

And the cool part of the cucumber weight is...that is exactly what Carter weighed at birth...so here's a newborn Carter sized pile of cucumbers!!

Hello? Hello? Anyone there on this cucumber phone?!

The past couple of weekends we have been canning cucumbers/pickles.  Stay tuned, I will update on our canning adventures soon!

Fresh air!

We are nearing the end of the beautiful weather here in Texas known as Spring. Summer will be here soon and going outside will involve nothing but sweltering temps, dripping with humidity and mosquitoes.

BUT!!! Tonight was gorgeous so we all headed down to the end of our culdesac to play on the green space after dinner. Joshua brought all the baseball gear and he and Em and Trev tried some hitting practice.

Em was first up at bat...


And she claimed that Daddy spent most of his time trying to bean her in the head with the ball instead of throwing fair pitches! Duck, girlie!!!! HAHAHA!


Thanks for being a quick catcher, Trev!! Gotta love those runners who can chase squirly pitches and tipped foul balls!!


Carter took his batting pretty seriously as he is in training right now for his new tball season...


And he made six hits tonight with Daddy pitching (this is a big step up from tball!) before we had to head in because it was getting too dark. Nice job, Boog!

More Easter

Today was a mixed day. One one hand it was sad. Joshua wasn't home as he was called out of town on a last minute work emergency on Thursday. And we've missed him alot as we celebrated Easter over the past couple of days. On the other hand today was pretty awesome! The kids enjoyed their baskets and egg hunt this morning. Then we went to church and it was an amazing service! And we relaxed with movies for the afternoon.

A big part of our family's holiday traditions center around Joshua cooking for us, so we definitely missed his presence in the kitchen. Partly because it's just wonderful to sit back and watch him being happy just because he's in the kitchen...and then partly because we definitely enjoy the results of his culinary happiness! BUT he wasn't here today so I had to step up, and I'm actually kinda impressed with myself! First I made Joshua's family's traditional recipe "Eggs Goldenrod" for breakfast from all the leftover hard boiled eggs from the egg hunt, and the monkeys declared it a success (they were pretty worried that their favorite breakfast was not to be this year). Then I made a yummy ham dinner with all their favorite requests as side dishes. The funny thing is that this is the first Holiday Dinner I have ever made in my almost 19 years of marriage! Joshua usually cooks or I've had my parent's house to go to. Prior to today, I was fairly proud of my "never cooked" track record (mostly cuz it is hilarious to see other wives' reactions when I tell them)...but now I'm pretty proud that in a pinch I can pull off a decent spread!

Happy Easter!!

We had a ton of fun today at a local church's Easter Festival and I got some nice pictures with my new camera!

A couple of pre egg hunt pics of Carter...

And a "where's Waldo" of Carter intent in the hunt of the most special egg...

Success! A basket FULL!

The boys strategizing for the silly string battle...

 

And the day wouldn't have been complete without Carter enjoying some time in the bounce house. I love how this pic came out even though it's technically a dud. I am still learning how to get my camera to focus on what I WANT it to (in this case I wanted it to focus on Carter, not the netting)...but I thought the shot came out rather cool, with the colorful netting and Carter fuzzy and mid air while bouncing!

And we finished up our day by decorating some Easter eggs.

Hope everyone has a fanatastic Easter!!!

Disney World Pt10

I'm going to go ahead and whack together my remaining semi miscellaneous pictures in one last post.  I'm so excited I've almost finished sharing about our Thanksgiving trip...just days shy of the following Easter lol!

Em and Trev posing in the gallows.  This was NOT a "mom prompted" pic...they asked me to snap it and are making their best "oh no we got caught" faces.


Funny thing...we thought that all the fancy Disney World-type rides were the big draw so we were going to skip the carousel.  But as we walked by it, Carter insisted on riding and he had a blast!


Trevor made this collage after we rode (several times!) another of our favorites... Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters!  And that number was Trevor's awesome high score!


Carter attempting to pull out the Sword In The Stone...


And no trip to Disney is complete without a Mickey Mouse shaped ice cream...


One day we had giant turkey legs for lunch, and Joshua got all three of the kids these weird apple cider ice cream float drinks.  Somehow Trevor ended up drinking all three of them...


This was the last monkey pic we took on the way out of MK on our last day, in front of a Mickey shaped topiary...


On our flight home, Carter also got to visit the cockpit and sit in the pilot's seat.


And did anyone doubt that Bunny came on our trip?  Funny tidbit... We tried to convince Carter all week to let us buy him a Mickey Ears hat.  You know, that classic hat that you see EVERYONE wearing?  Nope, he didn't want any part of it for himself but he did say "apparently, Bunny would like a Mickey Ears hat."  I thought that was going to be a far fetched item to find, but guess what I ran across in a tiny little odd shop towards the end of our trip?!  So here we are, Bunny in her new hat, on the plane ride home...


Hope everyone enjoyed ALL these posts of our trip.  I know it was alot to read through but I just couldn't help sharing so much because we had such a great time. 

And honestly what made our trip awesome wasn't totally because it was "Disney."  Don't get me wrong, we had a great time at Disney World, but our take-away opinion about DW is that we'd rather do DisneyLAND.  DW is huge, takes alot to time to move from park to park (and cost for several days and several parks), we didn't love Hollywood Studios much, we thought that we could have just about as much fun at the Oklahoma City Zoo as we did at Animal Kingdom, Epcot was cool but more like a museum day than an amusement park, and we prefer the compact layout of Disneyland having all of our favorite rides in one park.  So next time we plan an amusement park vacation, we are headed back to CA where we can also enjoy the West Coast beaches and see family.

What did put the icing on the cake of our trip was that all five of us really relaxed, disconnected from regular daily stuff like work and school (and electronics) and had fun doing something together...for five whole days!  And we've decided to make it an annual thing to travel on Thanksgiving so we've already booked a trip for 2013.  The five of us are going to take a cruise!  We are headed to Florida again and will sail for four nights to the Bahamas.  We've never gone on a cruise before, so it will be a new adventure...and hopefully just as relaxing!!