My Matt

Have I told you how much we love Matt's school?  Yes I know I have.  He has had the best teachers and we have met some wonderful families.  Seems like every day they do something fun.  Last week they had to dress up like pirates.  So I grabbed an eye patch (which happened to come with earrings) and we threw a bandanna on his head and that was our costume.  Turned out cuter than I expected.  He let me put the "earring" on for this picture before we left the house but insisted that he was NOT wearing it to school.  He said everyone would think he was a girl.  I tried to explain that pirates wore earrings and he didn't care.  Then I thought...I'm going to back off.  This is a good thing that he's so against and I'm going to be thankful.  This is the first time in his little life that he would not give in.  I'm proud of him!

I also got to watch Matt do a gymnastics show for me today.  He does a little gymnastics class after school once a week.  It's pretty basic but his friends are there, he has a blast and it gives Mom one day where she doesn't have to rush home from work to be there right after school!  He can do a pretty good cartwheel and a great dive roll.  He's also really good on the beam.   

This next one is funny.  They play this game called "Master of the Beam".  Miss Karen gives them all sorts of things to do and whoever stays on the beam the longest wins.  They struck this pose when she told them to do the "teenager".  It was pretty funny.  And yes, that is Matt's friend Brandon that is almost a head taller than Matt and Evan and 2 heads taller than Caden.  Brandon is 5 believe it or not and is a sweet kid.  Matt talks about him all the time!!

Thank you to Matt's teachers for an amazing year.  I can't believe in one year that he learned to write all his letters, numbers and is already starting to read.  You ladies are amazing!!! 

My Little Sunshine

Marlie is almost 3 now and is everything I ever imagined when I thought of having a little girl.  We have been home together the last 2 days and had so much fun!  She laughs a lot, tells me she loves me at least 10 times a day and says the funniest things.  Here are just a few that I can remember:

• "Momma I'm not sick anymore.  God and Santa Claus made me feel better."
• "Momma you make my heart beat happy."
• To Daddy as she holds Matt's sword up to his face..."Daddy don't worry, I won't kill you, I will protect you!"
• On our daily drive to Matt's school...they are clearing some land to build a church and my little tree hugger says, "The trees are gone!  Someone is going to jail!"
• We are in the parking lot at church and we see Father Mike walking on the sidewalk..."There's God.  He's walking."  She was as serious as could be and Doug and I tried so hard not to laugh. 
• After the big Baylor basketball game she thinks everything yellow is Baylor-related.  She was wearing a yellow shirt the other day that says "Little Sister".  She reads the letters aloud, "S-I-S-T-E-R" and then says "Baylor bears fight!"  Hey I was just proud that she knew all the letters. 
• Marlie was excited to be home with me the last 2 days.  I told her we had lots of work to do and she had to help.  When I asked her to help with the laundry she said "Mom, how about you go get the laundry and I'll turn on cartoons."  Then today she walked into the laundry room as I was putting clothes into the dryer.  She said "Mom you did it! Here is your trophy!" 

The other thing she has been really excited about is her first pedi!!  As you know I am extremely frugal.  But I had a gift certificate to get a pedicure and really wanted to get it done.  I have been in there a handful of times and am horrified to see Moms that bring their children in there.  But what was I to do?  It was last minute and it was now or never.  So I grabbed my Mom and off the girls went.  As I was picking out my polish color Marlie pointed to the pink one and asked if she could please have it.  They said they'd be happy to polish her toenails.  She was nervous at first but when the girl asked her to sit she did and immediately handed over the pink polish.  She sat as still as could be and was so excited when they were done.  She has shown everyone we've seen since then.  In the bath tub last night I noticed she wasn't putting her feet in the water.  I told her she could but she insisted she would not because her polish would come off.  I convinced her it was okay and when she finally put them in the water she was amazed that the polish was still on.  Let me tell you...it's the best $3 I've ever spent!  You all know I hate feet but had to post this picture...

She is my little angel!  Thank you God!!

Another Season Ends

This week was bittersweet.  We celebrated the end to a couple of great things...Friday was my last day with my client that I've been working with for almost 2 years.  The plan was for me to help them for 3 months and I was so blessed to have been there much longer.  It was such an amazing experience and I met some of the most wonderful people.  I am going to miss you guys terribly but will keep in touch of course!  I hope our paths will cross again, but for the summer my focus is on my fast growing babies! 

We had our last Tball game on Saturday followed by an amazing end-of-season party at the Koenning's Kasa. The kids (and parents) had a blast. I wish you could have seen the look on each of the kid's faces as they walked up to receive their trophies. It's like they had won the World Series. Probably helped that "We are the Champions" was playing in the background! I'm starting to love these kids like they are my own which is way too scary. These kids are gorgeous, silly, sweet, feisty and goofy all at once. Here are a few of my favorite pics. You can see more from the season in the slideshow. Thank you to the best group of parents for all your help.

And here's Miss Marlie and Annie, no doubt checking out the boys!  Taking it all in and loving every moment.  If you look at most of the pictures of the boys you will find Marlie in the mix somewhere.  It's like where's waldo. 

I will blog tomorrow about my little sunshine.  I have too many funny things to tell you about her and I'm sleepy!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to ALL the Mother's out there!!!  It's a hard job.  Honestly, the hardest I've ever had.  But it's the most rewarding too.  On Friday I went to a Mother's Day Tea at Matt's school.  It was awesome!!  The kids walked us into the hall that had tables all decorated with their art work.  They pulled out our chairs so we could sit and served us a nice breakfast with tea.  They sang songs for us that were SO sweet.  I'd write down some of the words if I could remember them, but I was too busy trying to hold back the floodgates.  Here's a pic of Matt and Hannah singing.  Hannah is adorable and ALWAYS finds Matt to say hello...at church, at tball, at school...and Matt is so shy that he will barely look at her!  And you all know Matt isn't shy.  So I think this might be his first crush!  Thank you to the PreK-4 teachers that planned this great event for us!! 

Then I picked Marlie up from school that day and every thing she could pick up she would give to me and say "Happy Mother's Day".  I got rocks, trash, paper...you name it!  We had a great day.  Doug made my Mom and I a wonderful dinner.  Thank you!

Our weekend was wild and crazy as always.  We had some friends over Friday night for desserts and sangria and had a wonderful time.  The kids spent the night at Nene's house and pulled out some veggies from their garden.  They were very proud of their broccoli!  They ended the night with a "sprinkler party" in their underwear and thought that was hilarious.  I thought so too since Nene said this was her version of a "bath". 

Matt and Dad went with Mr. Scott and his son Trevor to the Astros game on Saturday night.  The boys had a blast.  Apparently they weren't watching the Astros???  Thanks Scott for inviting my 2 crazy boys to the game!  The girls decided to go on a shopping trip so we could buy Nene something for Mother's Day.  Marlie got a tiara and Nene got a new top.  We had fun!!!  

Crazy Fun

I was talking to a friend that has 3 kids.  Her son plays baseball with Matt and her husband, Coach Dan, helps coach the team.  They are an awesome and beautiful family.  Both parents work, so like us, life is a bit crazy.  We were talking about how we run from place to place but it's always fun.  Crazy fun...that's our life in a nutshell.

Marlie and I went to Kylie's party and the girls had a blast!  Marlie was still pretty shy but she's finally warming up.  I mean really....she spends more time with these girls at school than she does at home with me! 

I also was excited last week to go with Matt on his first "real" field trip.  I say "real" because we got to go on a bus, which the kids were SO excited about...and we went to the Museum of Natural Science!!  Let me warn you parents out there that haven't been on a bus since elementary school that those things don't have shocks!!  It was like a roller coaster ride!  Anyway...since the kids were studying bugs we got to see a Bugs IMAX movie.  At first I was excited at the thought of being in a theater, even if it was with a million kids.  What I didn't realize is that I was lucky enough to see in 3D lots of scenes of bugs eating other bugs.  It was pretty gross.  And the main story was about this cute caterpillar that turns into a beautiful butterfly...only to be eaten at the end!!!  Goodness.  And the class "bully", well that's a bit harsh but you get the idea, at one point in the movie was balling and saying he wanted his Mommy.  Poor thing....luckily I had coached Matt and Evan to take their 3D glasses off when they got scared and well, they had them off most of the time.  But at least no crying.  Then we went into the butterfly exhibit which was so fun.  I love that place.  That was followed by a picnic in the park.  There was a huge hill and the kids had a blast racing their teacher down the hill and playing hide-and-go-seek.  Matt said his favorite part of the day was running down the hill with Ms. Melissa.  She is awesome!!

And of course how could we let a weekend go by without a Tball game?  As you know (if you keep up with this blog and I know you all do!) this year the boys decided they wanted to be the Yankees.  And with the Astros performance this year...can you really blame them?  Well the YMCA issues all the teams standard jerseys and Astros hats.  So one of our dear moms, Cindy, decided that they couldn't be the Yankees and have Astros hats.  On a trip to NY she stopped at the field and got all the kids AND coaches REAL Yankees hats.  Cindy you are awesome!  So the kids took their pictures this week...with their Yankees hats!  Too cute!  Here's the crew....and our 3rd base coach! 

 

The best week this year!!!

We had a really amazing week.  So get your popcorn and get ready for some fun!!

After 3 years of Doug playing catch with Matt...or maybe I should call it "chase", Matt can catch the ball!  I know this probably seems silly to most of you, but it was a big deal in the Maziur house.  We were all outside on Monday and as always, Doug and Matt were playing catch while Marlie and I played.  Me with one eye on the ball to make sure we don't get beemed in the head.  Then I realized that there they were...throwing and catching the ball.  It was so awesome! 

Then my shy Marlie came out of her shell.  She spent all of tball practice playing with Emma instead of standing right by my side.  She is also speaking much more clearly and I'm starting to understand all her songs.  At dinner she busted out with the pledge of alliegence followed by "your a grand old flag...".  She knew every word!  It was so cute and she taught me the words.  Great song by the way.  She also sings the months of the year.  She is learning so much every day. 

We spent a few days out in the yard pulling weeds.  Matt is the best helper ever.  When we started he told me there was "like 60 100 (yes we don't understand thousands yet) weeds and it would take 60 days to pull them all".  It got sunny and hot so I told him we needed to go inside and he insisted on finishing the job.  He's got a great work ethic... I can tell already.  Of course it will take us 60 days to get all the weeds, but at least it's a start.  Marlie was not interested at all in helping (as usual) but sang for us the entire time. 

Friday night we went with Uncle Jay, Miss Lynette and Jordan to the Astros game.  We had so much fun (although the Astros are horrible).  The kids (well not Marlie she was terrified) got to take a picture with the Astros...rabbit???  I'm not really sure what that is.  Why a rabbit?  Anyway...Uncle Jay took the kids to play and on their way back down to our seats guess who caught a foul ball?  Uncle Jay!!  I think he pushed a grandpa and his granddaughter out of the way (just kidding), but Matt has his first foul ball!!  Everyone was high fiving him on the way down.  He was pumped!  The kids made it through the entire game and we watched a great fireworks show at the end.  Thank you Uncle Jay...we had a blast! 

Our game got cancelled on Saturday due to rain.  Matt's face was so sad.  He loves baseball.  But Sunday morning we headed down to the Children's Festival with our friends.  The kids had so much fun!!  It was Annie's birthday so we sang happy birthday during lunch and just went crazy.  Of course now we're broke because they charged a fortune for everything.  I'm surprised they didn't charge us to use the nasty port-o-potties.  That was a first experience for Marlie and luckily I was able to convince myself and her that it was okay to go potty in there.  Here are Melissa and I with the kids watching the Big Top Show...

The kids had a blast on the swings.  Marlie loved it too.  The boys LOVED racing down the slide.  The girls were a little more scared.  Heck after the rodeo slide I bailed out and forced Jenny to go down with the girls.

We ended the day with ice cream and snow cones.  Does life get any better?  No way!!  We are blessed!!

 

Here are a few other cute pics from our fun day!! 

Egg Hunting

We headed to SA for Easter.  We had a great day Saturday at Papa and Nona Lisa's house with our family!  The kids had an Easter egg hunt, they swam in the pool and we ended the day with a nice trip to the park.  Marlie was a little slow on the egg hunt and did not like the cascarones cracked on her head but she looked cute!  Dad helped Matt get the eggs way up in the trees and he thought that was so fun!!

I snapped this picture of Doug and his sisters when the adults were out hiding eggs.  I thought it was cute.  This is at the point in the weekend when they all liked each other!!!!  Aren't they cute? 

This picture of Papa and Sam was too cute.  Sam is the oldest of the group and she is hilarious.  She gets her sense of humor from her Mom (or maybe her Papa) and she's so fun to be around. 

On Sunday we woke up early hoping to beat the crowds at an early mass, but no luck.  It was packed! Here's a funny picture of them all dressed but half asleep!

The kids were exhausted but they were excited about one more egg hunt at Grams.  By the end of it Marlie had figured out how it works.  Hopefully she'll be ready for next year.  Here are some cute shots of the kids after the hunt!!