Here's Matt opening a Texans helmet and uniform from Dad and I. He loved it! He's been wearing it all weekend. Notice the Tom Brady jersey he's wearing. That was his first gift that Daddy bought him. He wore it the next day and told the ladies at the store "but I'm not as handsome as Tom Brady". They all laughed and of course told him he was! 
And here is Matt opening up his BIG TRUCK from Nene. He loved it! 
We have a sad story to tell in our blog today. Our dog Precious is no longer with us. She was having trouble breathing last night so I stayed up with her until about 2am when I thought she had fallen asleep. Doug found her this morning. She was 15 so she lived a long and happy life.
We are all very sad but as we told Matt, she is in doggie heaven now and having all the treats she wants. When I told Matt that Precious left this morning to live in heaven with God he said, "but you and Dad bought Precious and Hannah to live here in our house". It was really cute. I told him we had to share with God too. So he said he would take good care of Hannah since she doesn't have her sister around. Please love your pets tonight!
Here is an old picture I found of Precious. It's from Christmas 2004! She is the one on the left. Hannah is one on the right.
Yes you'll also notice we are on our way to having a Griswald yard. To be honest I hate those blow up things. They are nice up but during the day the whole neighborhood has deflated Santas and Snowmen in the yards. The first day Marlie saw it down she said "uh-oh Santa". Our new neighbors have 2 year old twins and apparently one of them freaked out too when she saw Santa head down in the dirt. BUT Matt really wanted one so Santa will stay. Matt had a Christmas program at school and it was fantastic. I'd pay more to see him on stage than I would a great Broadway show, no offense to all the amazing men and women who have those talents that I'd dream of having, but this is my baby on stage!!! The PreK-3 kids sang about 4 really short songs but it was really neat. And Matt did great. He was a ham and had the biggest smile on his face the entire time. 
Speaking of singing...Marlie will be the smallest Christmas caroller I've ever seen. She sings "Jingle Bells, jingle all the way" and then joins in on the "Hey" part at the perfect time. We were singing "Santa Claus is coming" and she blurted out with "to town"! I didn't even know she knew that song. And she sings bit and pieces of Rudolph of course. We like to play Christmas music and drive around and look at Christmas lights so I guess she's caught on.
Marlie has continued to amaze us all with how fast she seems to be catching on to the world. I suppose she's trying to keep up with Matt. My friend bought the kids Advent calendars (thank you, thank you) and the other day Marlie had hers and was saying something. I was busy but after about the 5th time I turned to see she was pointing to the Baby Jesus saying "Jesus" but sounded more like "e-suh". It was great. We're trying real hard to make sure that the kids understand the true meaning of Christmas. It's so easy to get wrapped up with gift giving, parties, etc. So I will make a cake and we'll sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. Matt is already excited about the party!
Here's an "okay we have to smile but are tired of this...cheese".
Here are few with us and Matt. Marlie would not cooperate so we don't even have any blog-worthy pictures of her to post.
Marlie had a parade at school and each class had a wagon decked out to lead the class with all of the kids footprints on it. It was so cute. Marlie made it about 10 steps until she spotted Mom and Dad and then started crying!
Dad was so proud of her. She was still not too happy about the whole thing but we thought she was the cutest Indian we'd ever seen!
Matt had his last TBall game on Saturday. We sure are going to miss watching the kids and all the new friends we met. It was interesting to see the progress they made during the season. The first game we had parents on each base directing them where to go. On Saturday they pretty much did it all by themselves. It was great. Matt's been talking about wanting to play soccer next Spring but we might try baseball once more and return to soccer in the Fall. It's so much fun!!!
We had a wonderful visit and ate lots! We'll have to find more excuses for Gram to come visit. She never shows up empty handed and the kids LOVE it. She bought Matt colored socks and he thinks they are the greatest. I had to do laundry early this week so he could wear them again.
Matt is going through an "I am the coolest, sweetest, most loving child" stage right now. Not sure how or why this comes along periodically but I soak it all in when I can. He's an absolute gem. Now Miss Marlie on the other hand won't stop biting. She got in trouble today at school for biting and I had to send her to "time out" twice this afternoon for trying to bite Matt (although sometimes I pretend I don't see it happening when he deserves it). She cries SO hard when I say NO and her face is SO stinkin cute I can't stand it. But as soon as she walks out of time out she'll bite again! This too will pass but I just feel bad for the kids on the other end of the bite. Sorry in advance!
And this is little Emma. Cute her parents picked the name because it is pronounced the same in English and Spanish. This is my Colombian friend Patricia who had a look of terror on her face when I once was so excited to go on vacation and I said "I can't sit still....I have ants in my pants". I'm sure you've heard this story...it's funny every time I tell it. 
Here are Matt and Payton playing in the sandbox. After Payton came inside she told me that they were up to "wild business". Wish I had that clip to post on YouTube. 
And then I heard this beautiful sound coming from the other room. It was my daughters laugh. Her and Ashdin were wrestling with Ashdin's Daddy. I call this picture "drinking and...playing with children". 
Anyway we had a really good time and I think the kids did too. These were the only troublemakers at the party that went home toasted. Just kidding. Actually Rajesh was holding Marlie at the end of the night and she would not come back to me. She was resting on his shoulder, exhausted and comfortable. It was really sweet.
Other than that Marlie has turned into a 2 year old (she's only 17 months). All we hear from her lately is "mine" and when she gets mad she bites. She has now moved up to an older class at school and the transition isn't easy but better than I expected. I really loved her old teachers and she's been with them since she started school so it's hard for ME to let go. Another neat thing happened this morning....Marlie said "momma look". I know you're wondering why that was neat but it's the first time I've heard her put 2 words together. It was great!
Matt is still going strong with baseball (although he had a blast playing football with everyone at our house). My Dad was able to see a game when he was up last weekend and as everyone else he thought it was comical. It started to get cold so it was a good excuse for Doug to finally buy Matt something UnderArmour.
Matt says funny things EVERY day...I just can't keep up. But one really funny story happened today. I asked Matt if he could let the dogs in and give them a treat. Well Doug just bought these new dog treats that they don't like so Matt told them that he couldn't find the other ones so they had to have the ones they didn't like. Then he said "you get what you get, don't pitch a fit". It was hilarious!
AND he made his Dad dress up too. At some point while we were out that night Matt got mad at me because he said "Mom I thought you were going to be a jockey". So maybe I'll have to dress up next year too. This year I went as Mom which meant that I pretty much looked tore up from the floor up as usual. 
Marlie's pink boots were the cutest. Hopefully you can see them a little in this picture.
Marlie figured out how this all worked pretty quickly. This is at Ms. Kathay's house. She is one of our favorite neighbors. She let Marlie dig into her candy bowl and it was cute to watch her pick out one at a time and put them in her bag. She didn't want to stop!
There are so many other cute pictures so I had to put all of our Fall pictures in a slideshow. You must check it out! Hope everyone else had fun!
Pics from the pumpkin patch are my FAVORITE of the entire year. So we managed a few pictures but none turned out great since the pumpkins looked sick. Look at the one below with Matt and the diseased pumpkin....
At some point this is just comical. But we managed to have fun and at least we walked away with a few little pumpkins that still looked disease free. We attempted a few family pics and the kids thought it was funny to put the pumpkins on our heads which I thought was fabulous.
Nene came with us and these pics turned out the best of course because I took them. Nene was a little scared of these pumpkins too!
We also hit 3 Fall Festivals! Yes I said 3! And poor Marlie was sick as a dog all week! We thought she was getting better and this past Saturday we went to our neighborhood Fall Festival. One minute she was dancing with all the little girls near the DJ and the next she's throwing up in the bushes. I thought those stories would come when she was in college, not at 16 months. But Matt had a blast and I love to see him smile like this. I'm afraid some sweet girl will get scammed by this smile one day. 
So with Marlie sick we never made it to another pumpkin patch. But as I'm writing this I just realized that I have the cutest outfit that was passed down from our cousins that I completely forgot about. If it fits her we're just going to have to put it on and make another trip back to the patch. Doug will kill me for sure. I can't believe I just remembered that. I should be fired as a Mom. You'll see why on the next blog when you see her in it.
Baseball game was great again this weekend. Parents were grumpy because it was 8:00am and pretty cold. Kids did great though. We were SO proud that Matt stayed on his feet during the game. No rolling all the way to first base. He was pretty proud of himself too! One step at a time!
And of course we were up EARLY in the morning for our 8:00am TBall game. Why at 8:00? I mean really.....the grass is still wet everyone is grumpy....who likes playing baseball at 8:00am? Oh well I should get used to this. It's only the beginning. The game was great again. I really thought that Doug and I would get the most joy out of this but honestly, Matt is loving it! And each week he gets a little better. Uncle Jay was at the game this week! After the game we went out for breakfast and we each had our "No the best part of the game was" thought. Uncle Jay said it was when Marlie cheered really loud for her brother. Doug thought it was when Matt was in the field and I yelled to him to get in the "baseball ready" position and he did it and yelled real loud like a linebacker would after sacking the quarterback. I thought the best part of the game was at the end when Matt realized our team wasn't organized and no one brought drinks or snacks for the kids so I looked back and saw Matt digging in the other teams ice chest. He already had a snack is in hand from the other team's coach too. My Mom thought the best part was when Matt was making snow angels in the dirt at home plate at the end of the game. I could go on and on. 
