Little Miss Marlie

We have been running so fast lately that I literally have to take things one day at a time so I don't go crazy.  I'm still mostly sane but my hair is turning grey fast! 

So I have a lot to update you on but let's start today with Little Miss Marlie.  She is Little Miss Sunshine about 90% of the time, the other 10%...well don't ask!  She is loving her new do and is still getting compliments from so many people. 

The Kindergartners have a big celebration on the 100th day of school and start the day off with a parade.  Marlie and I had fun working on her shirt.  Since it was close to Valentine's day we thought we'd incorporate that into our tshirt that had to have 100 things on it.  She looked adorable! Here's Marlie and Celia and we got a pic with Mrs. Grady too!

The next day was the Father-Daughter dance and boy did the Dads and girls have a blast.  Marlie said her favorite part of the night was dancing with Daddy to Butterfly Kisses.  Doug said the girls danced together all night and were adorable. Marlie was latched onto Doug the entire weekend after and said she wished she could do that again.  Too cute...Marlie's first dance. 

We hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's day.  I spent the day at the kid's parties at school.  I forget how fun this little holiday is...decorating boxes...deciding who gets each valentine...it's so fun.  I didn't get many pictures of the day but managed to snap this cute one of Marlie & Chloe.

School parties were followed by gymnastics, softball practice and a romantic family dinner at Chick-fil-A!  Happy Valentine's day to you!

Locks of Love!

Marlie and her friend Lauren have been growing their hair out for over a year now so that they can do Locks of Love.  Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis.

At first Marlie was nervous about cutting her hair.  So we got online and looked at the LOL website so I could show her the before and after photos of children with and without their wigs.  Then she seemed ok. 

Here are the girls a few weeks before the chop! I love long hair and both of their hair was gorgeous! But Mrs. Patty and I were ready to chop because the maintenance was getting crazy.  So many tangles!

Mrs. Megan was pretty nervous to cut their hair.  She said she was afraid that it might be a traumatic experience and possibly some tears.  But no way!  The girls were excited and smiled a lot!

The girls were so proud of themselves...it was funny.  We took them to Smashburger and Tutti Fruitti as a treat.  2 people commented on how cute their hair was!  And we have had comments from complete strangers ever since! 

Marlie we are so proud of you!  Marlie said she wants to do it again so we'll see!  It will probably be 2 years before it's long enough to cut again.  

Christmas is Here!

We really enjoyed Christmas this year.  Marlie started asking questions about Santa "really fitting down the chimney" and "delivering toys to all the kids in the world" and Matt reminded her that he is "magical" just like God! 

The festivities started on Snow Day in Fall Creek.  We got to see Santa, play in the snow, go on a carriage ride and eat donuts and drink hot chocolate!

Papa and Nona Lisa came up to visit and we went to the Zoo for Zoolights!  We didn't see too many animals but we enjoyed all the lights, the Christmas music and our hot chocolate!

We enjoyed the program at the children's mass at church and then came home to celebrate Christmas with the family.  Christmas started with a few performances from Matt playing his guitar and a few songs sung by Marlie.  Then we had our 2nd annual gift card exchange which is lots of fun with people stealing cards, forming teams, etc.  It was time to open gifts and the kids didn't even ask to start opening.  They were so excited about the things they bought for us at their little "boutique" at school! It was so cute.  Marlie got me a little hook that says #1 Mom, Matt was SO excited to give me a diamond bow ring and a Texans shirt.  Matt asked if I could wear the ring every day so I've been wearing it as much as I can. 

Marlie was so excited to give Matt this football flag and a Rubik's cube which he had on his Christmas list. 

Matt was excited to give Marlie her softball helmet, glove and softballs! Marlie was SO excited because she really wants to play softball...sigh!

The kids were happy to share the holidays with Nene and Papa & Nona Lisa.  Somehow everyone knew this year what was on the kid's Christmas lists so they were happy when they opened each gift!

I made my favorite cupcakes and we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus!

It was time for bed so we could get ready for the big morning.  Christmas morning Doug woke up abruptly and said "I think I heard something".  I was hoping it was a false alarm because it was 6:00am and I was so tired.  But sure enough...Matt was up and pretty much had already gone through his gifts from Santa.  He was really excited about his new bike and the beyblades he got.  Marlie however slept until 8 or 9 and then slowly came downstairs.  She just looked at everything in amazement.  She was excited to get a Jake ship with the characters and also to get a...

GUITAR! That Santa brings us neat things even though it's not on our list! Matt had already taught Marlie the names and numbers of the strings and the letters of her fingers on her right hand. I hope she can start lessons this summer, she can't wait! Santa also brought the kids a 4-wheeler and they had fun riding that like crazy up and down the street.

Christmas day is always relaxing.  Nene came over and made really good breakfast tacos and we all sat in our pj's and played with all our new things.  It's my favorite day of the year hands down. 

A few days later we met the Wellmann's for ice skating!  It was lots of fun.  Matt went around twice with the "walker" and then went solo.  As with roller skating he didn't know how to stop so he just plows right into the wall.  He and Caden probably fell 100 times but Matt really liked it.  Marlie just stood still with the walker for the first 30 minutes and we had to push her.  She finally started moving her feet but didn't want us to take the walker away.  By the end she loved it too.  And we also loved the hot chocolate here too!

The festivities weren't over yet...for New Year's weekend we headed to San Antonio to see the rest of the family! The kids had so much fun playing with their cousins and Doug and I sure enjoyed spending some time with them too. 

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!  May God continue to bless us all! 

Matt's Christmas Guitar Recital

Matt had his 3rd guitar recital a few weeks ago.  Although he missed a few notes here and there, he still did a great job.  2 of the songs were pretty new so he didn't have much time to practice.  And well...with the concrete incident, that took some practice time away too! 

He started the show with Good King Wenceslas which was one of my favorites!

Then he played a duo with Mrs. Kristi that I also liked...this was one that he hadn't practiced a lot before the big show. 

Next was Blue Bird which I thought was too easy for him, but he wanted to play it because...well it was easy!

And at the end, the kids picked names and had to surprise their friend with a song.  Matt picked Gabriel and played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

Matt won 1st place for practicing the most this fall and he sure was proud of that. The kids all did well and presented Mrs. Kristi with lots of fun gifts including this awesome shirt I found while we were in Grapevine.  Thank you Mrs. Kristi for being such a great and patient teacher.  We are loving having someone in our house to play live music!

 

Matt Meets the Concrete

You may have noticed some pictures where Matt looks like he's been in a serious fight...well he fell at PE and went face first into the concrete. 

When the school nurse called she sounded a bit frantic that one tooth had been knocked out but I assured her that it was hanging on by a thread anyway.  I assumed all was ok so thankfully Nene was home and could go pick Matt up.  Well when we she got to school and saw Matt it took her a bit to compose herself.  Marlie saw Matt and immediately said she felt sick.  It was pretty bad. 

Nene took him straight to the dentist and thankfully Dr. G could see him right away.  She had to pull the other front tooth but thankfully these were his baby teeth and the xrays showed no permanent gum damage. 

 

Matt teared up when he finally saw himself in the mirror.  Poor Doug was out of town getting pictures that looked horrible over text.  He was beside himself too! 

 

I finally got home and watched Matt take a long nap.  When he woke up he said he was okay and ready to get on the computer to play first in math!

 

Thank you to Nene for taking good care of Matt.  A week later and his lip was back to normal and the scabs had already fallen off.  And the tooth fairy gave him a bonus for losing 2 teeth at once in a traumatic fashion!!  I'm sure this is not the only scary phone call we'll get.  Matt plays hard and is not always the most coordinated little person.  We are so thankful he ended up being okay!

Marlie's Christmas Recital

Yesterday was Marlie's Christmas recital.  I love these performances...the girls get so excited and they are so very cute! Cousin Mallory, Duy and Uncle Jay came too!

Part of the fun is getting ready.  I decided to curl Marlie's hair since it is so long and beautiful and then put it in a side ponytail.  It looked great!  Now she wants me to curl it every day because she said it looks like Taylor Swift!  She also loves that I let her wear a little bit of make-up and sparkly lotion!

You are probably wondering what happened to Matt and I should probably do a separate post for that story.  Good news is he's fine...just missing a few teeth! Here are Marlie and Emilie all ready to go!

The performance was wonderful! Marlie did a great job and I was so very proud of her.  I am linking in a video although it's a bit difficult to see.

Afterwards the girls enjoyed their cookies! Sweet Lauren wasn't feeling good but I managed to get her cute smile in this picture...

Congratulations girls you did great!  We can't wait to see the big performance in the spring.  

Star of Hope

We had a VERY special night last Sunday...the girls in my bible study and all our families took a trip to the Star of Hope to serve cookies and milk to the folks staying at the shelter. 

We have been planning this for about a month and all of us were very excited.  The kids collected blankets and toiletries in their classes to take with us.  Matt's teacher, Mrs. Hathorn got all of first grade involved so we had lots of goodies!  When I went to pick up the donations from the school, every kid in Matt's class came out to my car with something in hand.  It was precious!  So M&M helped sort through everything to get it into boxes.

Then Matt and Dad loaded everything in the car.  We had so much that we had to ask Mrs. Aseena to come over and load all the blankets in her car.  Our trunks were packed!

We all met to say our prayer and set our plan for the evening.  We had 20 kids total and they were ready to go!

The older kids did a great job serving cookies and the younger kids did great handing out milk, crayons, coloring sheets and bible verses.  I didn't get the best pictures because I could not take pictures of the SOH guests.  But I got a few good ones... 

Thank you to all of the families that joined us and for Star of Hope for making this volunteer opportunity available for small children to participate. 

I wasn't sure if my kids would "get it" but they definitely did.  Matt was very touched, sad and concerned about all of the people that were sitting outside of SOH. He asked me what they were doing waiting on the front steps. I explained that the rooms at SOH were full, so those people were waiting until they cleaned up from our event because they were going to sleep on the floor in that large room. I explained that the blankets that we collected were going to be very helpful to those people. I could tell this really bothered him and a minute later he asked how come SOH doesn't build a bigger shelter so everyone could sleep in a room. I explained that they are working on that but it's
going to be expensive and they are raising money. He asked if we were going to give money to help build the new shelter and I said yes! At bedtime his first prayer was "please bless all the people that have to sleep on the floor at SOH and please help SOH get money to build a bigger shelter". 

Please keep Star of Hope in your prayers too.  It is am amazing organization that doesn't receive a lot of funding from the government because it is faith-based.  So many people that were staying at SOH thanked us for coming and that's what made it all special.