Gram & Papa Howie Visit the Baseball Star

Gram & Papa Howie came up so that they could catch one of Matt's Tball games before the season is over. At one point Matt looked at the sidelines and saw everyone including Great Granny & Tia Virgie who were in from Laredo. The smile on his face was priceless! Gram and Howard thought the game was hilarious too. Wish they could have seen the first one! Matt was SO excited they were here.

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!

What Beautiful Children

We had a few people over the other night and I think my kids are adorable but man you guys have some really beautiful children too. Here are just a few of the stars....is this the cutest Elmo you've ever seen? His sister is just as beautiful as he is handsome. Way to go Mom and Dad!

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".

Their smiles are much better in the above picture than when the Moms tried to take pictures with them. We couldn't get them to be still for a second!

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!

Happy Halloween

We've been preparing for this day for weeks! It was a busy day but we had a blast. Matt had a party at school and then Marlie had a parade at her school. Then we FINALLY got to go trick-or-treating! Here's my favorite picture of Matt and Marlie. Of course Matt had to be a Cowboy and he wanted his sister to be a Cowgirl. 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!

Nene's Birthday

We HAD to have a party for Nene's Birthday. It was so much fun and the food was great (thanks Doug). We wore party hats and had balloons and...well...no cake because Nene likes turtle brownies so we made those instead. Marlie refused the hat and Matt insisted that the card he gave her was HIS because he had his name on it (I had him sign it the day before). And he wouldn't let it go. That was HIS card with HIS name! Maybe Nene will get to have her card next year!

Changing Minds Foundation

I was touched last week by something I'd like to share.

I was very lucky to be invited by a friend to a movie premiere about a new treatment for children with Down Syndrome. The documentary was fantastic and it's making its way around the world. Even better, one of my friends was able to come with me and she has a little man who does not have Down Syndrome but may in some way be able to benefit from this new treatment.

I have 3 friends now with children that need extra care. All are wonderful and I admire them as parents. Life with small children and balancing work is challenging but these parents do it and with a smile on their face. You all have touched my life though you may not know and are always in my prayers.

I'd like to ask you to take a minute and visit the website and watch the trailer....http://www.changingmindsfoundation.com/. If you haven't made your charitable contribution this year this is a great cause to support. They are now using this treatment to treat children with Autism and people with Alzheimers. All because of one Mother's fight to make life better for her son!

Pumpkin Patch Take II....As Promised

If you haven't read the blog post before this one you should.

Found the outfit. Was as cute as I remembered but too small. Too cute to pass up so I put it on Marlie with her kicking and screaming. For some reason she DID NOT find it as cute as I did. Maybe she was scared of the spider on the front? She definitely did not like the trim at the bottom. Oh well......I continued anyway.

Pumpkin patch was closed and fenced off. But we broke in. Managed to get a few really good pictures before an old lady came out and yelled at us for being there ( I should note this is church property we broke in to. Surely God would think this moment was important and forgive us. I'll have to check in with him later). Anyway, the lady was probably wondering why we waited until the last minute to do this, but I didn't have time to tell her about the diseased pumpkin fiasco. Then when she saw Marlie's outfit she kinda soften up a bit. Now that we found the outfit we'll be wearing it all weekend! Enjoy!

It's Pumpkin Time!

After the kids were in bed a few weeks ago I put up our Fall decorations. That next morning Matt came downstairs and yelled "it's pumpkin time"! So last weekend we drove all the way downtown to the pumpkin patch we've gone to for the last few years only to find that there were hardly any pumpkins left and the ones they had looked like they had some sort of pumpkin disease. Even the kids noticed. No kidding these were the first pics we took. Their faces say "Mom really...you drove us all the way here for this?" Good thing they can't really express their thoughts yet. My Mom of the Year award would have been revoked for sure.

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!