Kindergarten Kutie

The kids had their first day of school on August 24th and their Meet the Teacher was the Friday before that.  It's probably good that I'm just now getting to this post because I was way too emotional when Alexa started school.  Now here we are, a month into the new school year.  We have settled into a nice routine.  I am enjoying the chance to get some things done that I couldn't do in the summer time and I am LOVING having alone time with Natalia, but oh how I miss having my little Alexa home with me.  Oh sweet girl, you have no idea the fun and joy you have added to my life and when you are gone during the day...this very big chunk of my heart is missing.  I miss doing puzzles with you, playing your jewelry game, playing Memory with you, running to Chik-fil-A.  I miss you cuddling in our bed watching SuperWhy, I miss taking you to preschool and singing Veggie Tales or princess songs.  I miss picking you up from preschool and having your teacher tell me what you were like that day.  I miss taking you to ballet in the morning and going out to lunch with our ballet gang.  How is it that five years have passed?  I still remember that day back in October 2003, when I was pregnant with you.  Daddy came home and told me that I could finish out the school year at Goodson and once you were born, I would not have to go back to teaching.  I remember thinking of all the fun things that you and me and Jacob would be able to do.  And once Jacob started school, we continued to have so much fun together.  Sometimes I thought those days were going to last forever.  And now you are in school.  You are such a big girl and are enjoying kindergarten.  You like your teacher Mrs. Fichtel and are making friends.  You are learning sight words and you enjoy riding the bus.  When I saw you and Jacob get on the bus on the first day of school, my heart melted thinking of how the years have flown by for you both.  But my heart also soars, because I know school is where you belong and you are having fun and learning and growing.  I am so blessed to be your momma.  I  always tell you and Jacob this and so I will say it again...out of all the little girls in the world, how did I get so lucky to be chosen by God to be your mommy?  I love you, sweet girl!

school bus orientation

checking out your new table at Meet the Teacher

trying not to dirty my pretty outfit that Ama bought me

when my tears started flowing

blurry, but I thought this was cute

the end of a long day

Welcome to Plasticville!

One morning I opened the dishwasher and this struck me as hilarious.  I laughed so hard I almost cried.  It's just so funny to me...thinking this is my life!  At the beginning of the summer, I started buying those Solo cups and I told the kids, you get ONE per day.  We would start off the morning putting their names on their cups with a Sharpie.  As the summer dragged on, I forgot and the kids forgot about our one cup/day rule.  And they ended up using several cups per day.  This was the result. 

Christmas in August

The tradition every year for Jacob's actual birthday is to see a movie. We always have his party with his friends on a different day but on November 7 every year, we see a movie. It's perfect timing because it's usually the beginning of the holiday movie season. Well, last Christmas season we watched the old Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. I had never seen that version and I figured it would be way too old-timey for the kids to enjoy or understand. Alexa liked it and Jacob LOVED it. We had to pause it several times to explain things and by the end Jacob was talking about how good it was. (He also loves It's A Wonderful Life). So back in the spring, Matt and Jacob were doing their Saturday morning surfing online for movie trailers and found that on November 6 A Christmas Carol (with Jim Carrey) comes out. Right then and there it was settled: that's the movie we will see on Jacob's birthday.

Way back in May, we found out that Disney was going to do A Christmas Carol train tour and they were coming to Houston. Matt and I said we had to take the kids and he planned ahead and took the day off. So one muggy August morning, we got the kids up and dressed and told them we had a surprise for them. They begged to know where we were going and we told them we would give them two clues. The first clue was we had brought a CD of Christmas music to listen to in the car. (For those of you that don't already know this, Matt and I are HUGE Christmas nuts. We usually break out the Christmas music around October. We don't play it every day...just when the weather starts to get cooler and it gets that FEELING in the air.) So anyways (although strange with the August sun beaming down on us) it was fun to sing along in the car with the kids. The other clue was we had stopped at Starbucks and got hot chocolate to drink on the way there. They never ended up guessing the surprise and were very happy to discover the train parked in downtown Houston. Matt was feeling very triumphant at this point...a day off, we had gotten out early, he thought it would be a quick wait...NOT!!!! We waited in line for 3 hours in 100 degree heat. At one point, I took the girls into the Amtrak station to get out of the heat, while Matt and Jacob stayed in line. Natalia's sweet little curls were absolutely drenched. When we finally made it to the train, we got to look at how they made the movie, models of the Dickensian town (which Jacob thought was the coolest), and got to morph each of our faces into the characters using this really cool technology. I'm not sure what we enjoyed more...the train tour or getting out of the heat. All in all, it was a fun day...just HOT, HOT, HOT!!!!

A Note to Grandparents...or anyone else annoyed by the music

I'm just letting you know if the music bothers you, scroll down to the bottom. When you see the music player, click on the pause button. OR TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME!! :)

Queen of the {WHAT}?

So what's with the blog title? First, of all I want to make it clear I do not think I am the queen of anything. The cute mommy at the top of my blog is who I ASPIRE to be like. She reminds me of the modern version of the Proverbs 31 woman. For those of you that don't know her, please consult your bibles :) . I will share a little bit with you starting at verse 10: A wife of noble character, who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.
verse 14 She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family verse 25 She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her BLESSED ; her husband also, and he praises her: "Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all." Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned... That was just an excerpt. If you go back and read the full chapter (starting at verse 10), she appears to be the perfect woman. I once did a Beth Moore bible study where she read the chapter aloud. I remember she told us not to be discouraged. We can't possibly do it all, but we can strive, can't we? Now back to the juggling woman at the top...she is doing it all! Some days when I go to bed at night, and I have DONE IT ALL, I do feel like the QUEEN OF THE JUGGLE!! There was one day, for example, when Matt had a function after work so I was in bed by the time he got home. I had started my day at 6 am and got in bed around 10:45 pm. THAT MORNING, I woke up, took a shower, did hair/makeup, and got dressed all before the kids were up. I had a busy day with Natalia, fixed dinner that everyone ate, spent time with the kids when they came home from school, we ate all together as a family(without Matt), had bathtime, read books with Jacob and Alexa, put them in bed, read to Natalia, put her down, made lunches for the next day, cleaned up the kitchen, worked out, took a bubble bath and got in bed. THAT DAY I felt like QUEEN OF THE JUGGLE!!! Everything went so smoothly. Is that the exception to the rule? YOU BET! Most days, things do not go that smoothly: I hit snooze several times and see my kids off on the bus with sunglasses on (at 8:20 in the morning) so the neighbors won't see my dark circles and lack of makeup; I fix 4 different meals because not everybody likes the same thing; the kids fight at dinnertime; Jacob and Alexa fight over what we are going to read; the kids don't get to sleep right away; and then I'm too tired to do ANYTHING when the kids go to bed. So my blog title is merely someone I would like to be in a perfect world or who I feel like only occasionally!

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my new blog! Ok, so my goal for the first week of school was to set up a blog. I thought I could use all of my digital scrapbooking skills to create a nifty new blog. I designed a header and was pretty happy with it, but I was so frustrated that I couldn't figure out all the other doo-dads, gadgets, and widgets. For those of you that know anything about html, then you understand what I am talking about. And for those of you that know nothing about blogging, it is not nearly as easy as it looks. I can't tell you how many hours I spent online doing searches that started with, "how do I? " I even bought two books on blogging and a beginners' html coding book. Much to Matt's amusement, I spent one Friday night studying html. I felt defeated, frustrated, and lost. So the following Monday, I decided that if my blog was not exactly the way I wanted it, I would never get to blogging. So... I went with a designer. I found an awesome website that designs blogs and one of their designers, Lauren, immediately contacted me. She worked with my vision and ideas, and after twentysomething emails back and forth, she came up with a design that I was thrilled with! I figured out some things on my own (the slideshow and music player) & I am starting to feel like I actually know what I am doing! So voila, here it is... my blog!!!!