Lunch

I made Velveeta Mac & Cheese with hot dogs and broccoli today for
lunch. This is super quick and the girls really like.

Fossil Fest

Dad took Mason and Maggie to Fossil Fest on Sunday. They got to dig
for fossils and look at a bunch cool stuff. There were quite a few
neat fossils that the kids were allowed to touch and pick up.

School Pictures

Mason - Kindergarten

Maggie - Preschool

Perfect Attendance

Congratulations Mason!

Not always a princess

Maggie likes helping Daddy in the garage.

Chocolate chip cookies

Megan was very dainty while eating her cookie...

Morgan however, very much enjoyed her cookie.

Sisterly love

Halloween Party

Our twins playgroup had a Halloween party and I took the girls. They were dressed up as bumblebees and they were too cute! The girls had a good time but this picture of Megan was hilarious! She really was having a good time, really...

Our 2nd climber

Following in her sister's footsteps

Ouch

Morgan has a real sensitive scalp and doesn't really like having her
hair combed or put in ponies. And she HATES when we have to take the
ponies out since her hair almost always gets pulled a little. But
today she did this herself. She was playing with her cup strap and
tried to throw it. (This is a strap that attaches to whatever and I
tie around her cup so when she drops said cup, I can find it.) Anyway,
she attemps to throw the strap and it lands in her hair. The end of
the strap has Velcro on it and it got stuck in her hair. Ouch! I had
to pull little bits of hair away from the Velcro real slowly, but she
still cried. :(

Treasures

We were at Maggie's preschool Halloween party and I needed to keep the
girls in the stroller. They decided to check out Ms. Karen's
treasures...and I let them.

Megan

A rare shot of Megan with an actual smile.

The Peanut Bee

Attention hog

What happens when parents say, "oh X, you got chocolate all over your
face. Ha ha ha"? Um, Maggie takes her cookie and RUBS it on her
nose, so parents giggle at her too. She was looking around for someone
to notice and take her picture.

Cinderella's class

Maggie was Cinderella for Halloween at school today. The babies and I
made it just in time to see her Halloween parade. (She's in the center.)

Bzzz. Bzzz

The girls at our twins playgroup Halloween party.

Halloween Dance

Maggie's dance class - she is Snow White in the back row. (They still had to dance and I didn;t want her ripping her Cinderella dress, so we switched Princesses for the day.)

Carving pumpkins

Pumpkins are all done. Mason carved his own this year. He says his
looks very spooky.

Peek a boo

We see you

My 1/2 marathon training

After a lot of thought and discussion, I have decided to stop training for the Austin 1/2 marathon. I have been walking/jogging for 8 weeks now, but the marathon is still 4 months away. My biggest pitfall was finding the time during the week to train. And due to the lack of weekday training, my weekend runs just got to be unbearable. This last week I didn't want to finish (5.2 miles). Had I driven myself and not had someone else's keys in my pocket, I probably would have stopped at the little park along our route and taken a long rest. I'm tired of complaining about it. I'm tired of forcing myself to go every week. I'm tired of feeling like crap all day Saturday. I'm just tired. And to top it all off, I haven't dropped a single f*ing pound. Exercising, in any form, without losing weight sucks. I am proud of myself for doing it as long as I did. Heck, I went from zero exercise to walking 5 miles, and my mile time wasn't too bad at 19 minutes/mile. Unfortunately, that's not fast enough to finish the 1/2 marathon. And at only 5 miles, my time is bound to get slower as the distance gets further.

Anyway, thank you for supporting me and encouraging me. I will try this again next year. Hopefully by then I'll have a better plan for weekday training.

Maggie got her ears pierced today

It was fairly traumatic but Maggie got her ears pierced today.

Labor Day Vacation

I have a bunch of family in south Texas between Houston and Galveston and my parents are visiting/staying in their motor home in Santa Fe. So for Labor day we drove down south to visit with everyone. Matt hadn't met any of this family yet and I hadn't seen any of them since 2001, so we were both a little nervous. It's hard enough traveling with just our immediate family of 6, but we were going somewhere where all of the kids wouldn't know anyone (besides Grandma Brenda and Papa Bob) and we weren't really sure what we were going to do. We got a hotel for Saturday night and packed the van full.

(Picture is the kids jumping on the hotel bed.)

It was only a 4 hour drive, but with 4 kids, it felt like 4 days. We drove to my Uncle Litton's house in Bayou Vista, just on this side of West Bay. Cute little house right on the water. I was nervous with the kids since none of them know how to swim and we were steps from the canal. I brought a pack n play and tried to keep the babies in there as much as possible.

We ended up discovering that the babies very much enjoyed playing in the inner tube. There were plenty of people though to help me keep the kids entertained. Aunt Debbie, Aunt Vicki and cousin Mindy all took turns with Megan and Morgan. Morgan is so content she'll go to anyone and as long as Megan couldn't see or hear me, she was fine. Uncle Litton and some other guys (sorry can't remember every one's name, nor the relation for that matter) did up a huge fish fry. Papa Bob was so good and bought chicken nuggets and fries for the kids too. (He's like that though, always thinking of the kids. I LOVE it!)

Uncle Litton has a paddle boat and Matt and the big kids took a little ride in it. They had fun.








Mason and Maggie even went swimming in the water. They've been in our community pool here at the house before and have both been real hesitant in the water by themselves, even with their life jackets on. But here, no problem. They were like little swimming fishes. You'd think they did this all the time. They didn't even mind the actual fish swimming all around. The kids even got to ride in Grandma Brenda and Papa Bob's boat a couple of times. (Every time they ride in the boat, they tell Matt & I we should get a boat too. Sorry kids, Mom and Dad won't be getting a boat anytime soon.)

So our plan was to only go down for Saturday and Sunday and come home mid-day Sunday. But we were having so much fun and the food was so delish, we decided to stay another night. We had a sleepover in Grandma and Papa's motor home the second night. The kids enjoyed this too since Grandma and Papa have a tv (with satellite) in the motor home. (Our tv crapped out on us the week before and the kids had been without television for a few days. They were having withdrawals I think.) Maggie did real good with Angel, Grandma's dog, too. Angel even slept with Maggie for a little bit.

Our mini-vacation wrapped up on Monday morning and we headed home. Back in time to unpack, toss in a couple of loads of laundry, and prepare for the next week of school. We all really did have a good time. And since we didn't have any major disasters, I think we might even try a mini vacation again.

Thanks Uncle Litton, Mom and Dad for your hospitality and all the good eats.

Morning bottles

Go-gurt

Megan tried it first. She really liked it. I didn't like the mess so
Morgan missed out.

Happy Megan

This is sitting in the car in line to pick Mason up from school.
Morgan & Maggie were napping.

Maggie likes helping

Growing up

and already accessorising

Maybe we should move the end table away from the couch...

T R O U B L E

Megan has become quite the master climber

It was at about here that I yelled "Megan! Get Down!" all while trying not to burst out in laughter.





**Since these pictures were taken, the toy was removed from the baby jail and the baby jail has come down. Can't risk Megan climbing up to get out and then falling.

Side Ponies

The girls really know how to rock the side pony

Helping hands

Maggie's first day back to preschool

September 2nd