Roommate

Lucky for me my college roommate and best friend has a brother that lives in Austin, TX (about an hour up the road). I got to see her when I was in Washington DC for job training, and again when she was in TX visiting family. What a great holiday treat! Crystal and I have been best friends for the last 11 years, and we were fortunate enough to spend the last 4 years living nearby in DC. During that time our families grew closer together also. Her two girls, Joey (5) and Dani (3 1/2), are close enough in age that it made for fun social gatherings. It has been 8 months since the kids have gotten together, and it was so great to see them form even stronger bonds because they are a bit older and can play better together. I think Crystal and I will do our parts to help encourage their friendship. I am not sure where Casey will fall into this whole mess, but hopefully the four girls don't cause any permanent physical or physiological damage. P.S. Ava started the whole no shirt thing. I pray that won't continue into her teenage years.

Santa Claus

Thank you family and friends for helping make the kids' Christmas wonderful. They are blessed with so many grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and close friends that there is always a plethora of good things under the tree. There is nothing like the wide eyes and bright grin on a child's face Christmas morning. Obviously, they had you all fooled, because they probably didn't deserve anything other than coal this year. There are definitely some rough days trying to keep up with 3 kids under the age of 4. Christmas week was no exception when all three kids came down sick. Thank goodness for Tylenol, Motrin, and cough syrup...and lots of it. We were able to get them a point of medicated bliss, so that they could actually enjoy the holiday.

Ava looking a little out of it, but trust me, the see-saw is one of her favorite toys. She doesn't even like to let her sister use it.

This will probably be our last mellow Christmas. Elizabeth is now at an age where she gets pretty stoked about Christmas.

Another masterpiece!

She starts her list early in the year, and loves the whole concept of Santa Claus. She was the one who called out with glee upon seeing scooters, motorcycles, presents, and a picnic table under the tree on Christmas morning. At least, she remains grateful and wants to call Santa and thank him for all the great presents. (I told her she has to write him a letter.) Ryan even heard her and Ava a few days later chanting "thank you Santa" while riding their see-saw. Next year Ava will be three and we think Christmas will be a flurry of wrapping paper and screams as Captain Destructo really gets into the action.

Despite their illness, there was still some holiday cheer. My little mermaids checked out their stocking stuffer, color changing tablets for the bath tub.

Elizabeth is still a fan of pirates. With costumes, ships, and action figures for Christmas, what more could a girl want. Casey even got into the action. He thought the fish tank was pretty cool. Actually just to bow which he kept yanking off and eating.Ava's favorite gift was pink and purple underwear. I can now say with some confidence that she is potty trained. We have been working on it for the last month and a half, and I think she finally has it. She is just so pleased with herself to be wearing undies now. That and pink glitter shoes. Happy New Year!

It is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

Yesterday, it was 76 degrees and we went to buy our Christmas tree in shorts and a t-shirt. I am not sure how I feel about this. I like being able to enjoy the outdoors for so many months out of the year, but I do like snow. There are some other big differences between D.C. and Texas. Last year, we went to buy our Christmas tree on December 24th at 4pm. The salesman seemed insulted when we asked if there were any discounts on their trees. No discount, slim pick'ins, and we sulked away with a $50 tree. Trees were always overpriced in DC, but I was still a little worries about what we would pay in DC since the evergreen tree isn't native. This year there were still slim pick'ins because we procrastinated so long, in fact the first place we stopped had closed up shop. So, we drove over to a local nursery, they had 42 trees left to be exact, but they were all half off. The original price on most was $75. We had narrowed down our selection when one of the sales ladies mentioned that there were a couple of trees up front for sale. That had been decorated and used in the background for their pictures with Santa promotion. Ryan and I took a look, one of the trees was about 4ft tall, but he other one was great. A 7ft tall Douglas Fir with lights, tinsel, some ornaments, a big bow, and fake snow all for the special price of $27. Merry Christmas, who doesn't love a good deal! You will be sure to see some pictures of this fabulous find on Christmas Day. Happy Holidays! P.S. Today it is in the 40's and very windy, so much for the balmy weather of last week.

He moves!

It is official, upon me returning from Washington, D.C. Casey is on the move. He can now crawl all over the house, and even climb the one step up and out of our sunken living room. He can even pull himself up and get into all sorts of trouble. He isn't climbing out of his crib yet, but he is pulling stuff off of bookcases.

Here are a couple of pictures of our happy little guy, and I will post some video of him on the prowl soon.

More visitors

Immediately following my mom's departure, Annie, Billy, and Reina flew in for the week. We were able to get everyone together at our house for lunch before Ryan went to work, I flew out of town, and kids had naps. I don't think the girls consumed much food, but they were successful in pulling out every toy we own. As I mentioned above, I had to jump an airplane and head out of town, so this is where our adventures separate. While I was in DC for job orientation, I got to spend some time with my other sister-in-law Lauren and her son Milo (Andrew was out of town) and my best friends Crystal and Siusan. Meanwhile, back in Texas, the kids and Ryan celebrated Bub's and Reina's birthdays and Annie and Billy volunteered to watch kids one day while Ryan worked. Four kids under the age of four!!! Wow... thanks again for helping us out. Before Annie, Billy, and Reina flew back to Ohio we were able to meet back up with them as a family and enjoy a nice dinner, plus Gram and Bub. The holidays are all about family and friends, and it has been nice to see some many of you during the month of December.

Visit from Grammy

Before I headed back to work full time, we were fortunate enough to enjoy a visit from my mom, aka. "Grammy" to the kids. The kids had a blast with her. The girls showed her all their toys, drawings, and chatted up a storm. Casey was content to smile endlessly, and he continued to make progress towards crawling. Some of the highlights of her visit included: A Christmas Play- where the girls got to participate in the play by helping "Dolly" find her hair, and helping Santa put some presents under the tree. Afterward, we took some obligatory photos with Santa. Ava was more excited about receiving a candy cane, rather than a photo op. An early Christmas-Grammy, being much nicer than I am, allowed the kids to open their Christmas presents from her early. Elizabeth wasn't a big fan of a princess wand, but his costume went over great. She proclaims herself a "King-Horser," from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty ("All the King's horses, and all the King's men").Ava on the other hand was a big fan of the princess wand. She also enjoyed playing with her new fairy doll (now named Pink Girl), and some bottles for her Baby Ava. I am not sure why I don't have any pictures, but it is probably because she never sits still. A trip to the New Braunfels Children's Museum-I had taken the girls to the Children's Museusm in North Carolina before and we had a blast. It still remains my favorite Museum for children. However, we thoroughly enjoyed the one in New Braunfels. They had lots of activities for the kids, including ones that the them get dirty and wet.

Right now Elizabeth is a huge fan of painting and dress up.

Ava on the hand has a more nurturing side. She was content doctoring baby's in the hospital and pushing her baby all around the museum in a shopping cart.Casey had a good time with blocks in mirrors in the "under 3" area.Overall a successful outing that entertained all age groups for a good 3 1/2 hours.

Rub-a-Dub- Dub, Three Kids in the Tub

Casey loves the bath tub. He gets a blast out of splashing and it always brings a huge smile to his faces and gets him talking. Today, Ava was enjoying getting into the action as well. Elizabeth on the other hand was a crabby from not napping and wasn't enjoying bath time very much. Needless to say, immediately after this video was shot, I yanked her out of the tub and made her stand in the corner for her antics. Why can't they all just get along!

Birthday Mania

As I mentioned previously, the kids had another friend's birthday party coming up that they were really looking forward to. Their friend, Rich, celebrated his 3rd birthday this weekend at Lifetime Fitness, a national globo gym chain. The party started right by fueling the kids with pizza, juice, ice cream, and cake before proceeding to the party games. The gym staff coordinators tried to wrangle a bunch of 18months-5 year olds into two teams for an organized game of soccer. That lasted about 5 minutes and was not a pretty sight. The staff quickly decided they need to take this party in another direction and brought out a giant parachute which the kids loved playing with, under, and on. They probably got about 15 minutes of fun out of that one. Then came the scooters!I don't know if anyone else had used the scooter before, but we had them at my elementary school and would have a blast during gym class playing scooter hockey, where you sit on your butt and scoot yourself around backwards and forwards and hit a wiffle ball with mini hockey sticks. At this birthday party, the kids didn't play anything that advance. In fact, they couldn't quite figure out how to get the scooter to move while sitting on them, which resulted in "Mommy, push me!" They did manage to figured out that if they laid down on their tummies they could spin themselves around in circles. Then some how the two activities were combined., an before you knew it parents were slingshoting their kids around the gym. You just grab a foot or two, spin around in a circle and then let them fly towards a wall (preferably padded).That lasted for quite a while, and then while I was taking Casey for a ride on a scooter, my girls came over to request another ride. These scooters are a little more high tech than the wood ones from my elementary school days, and hook together. So what started as a 4 person train with my kids and I, quickly turned into me trying to push all the kids at the birthday party across the floor on a mega scooter train.At its largest, I think we had 10 kids on nine scooters racing across the gym floor. Fortunately, a couple of the other parents took a few turns pushing the train also, because it was a beast to get moving. I know I worked up a sweat. Even little Casey got his exercise, practicing crawling across the gym floor. Don't be fooled, he still isn't going anywhere.

Happy Thanksgiving

Aw, some quiet time to update this site. All the kids (including Ryan are napping), so I actually have a little over an hour to myself. As much as I would like to take a nap too, I can think of more productive ways to spend my time. Ryan has been working the night shift for the last 3 weeks (11pm-7am), and Thanksgiving was no exception. Since Ryan worked Wednesday night, I spent Thursday morning keeping the kids quiet, so that Ryan could get some sleep. Still, I had to wake him up early, so that we could make the trek to Gram and Bub's house for Thanksgiving Dinner. The Knight/Friesenhahn crowd could rival a Melink gathering. There were probably 30-40 folks for dinner. We enjoyed turkey with all the sides and about 8 different desserts. As you can see, the party wore everyone out.

If I would have only had my camera...

Miracle of miracles, I actually got Elizabeth to dress up like a princess! The girl who owns 1 pair of Batman pj's, one Batman T-shirt, 2 Spiderman T-shirts, one Spider-man basketball uniform, one Batman cape, and a Spiderman Halloween costume, actually donned a princess dress and shoes to attend a birthday party. Note, she would wear her super hero outfits everywhere if I hadn't put my foot down and said that she could only use them as pajams. One of her friends, Lily, from school invited Elizabeth to her 4th birthday party. The theme was a princess tea party for girls only, and they were all asked to dress up as princesses. Upon first recieving the invitation, Elizabeth informed me that she was going to dress up as Spiderman and everyone else could be princesses. It took me a couple of weeks but she finally agreed to be a yellow princess (the dress belonged to Ava). Poor Elizabeth wasn't her normal chipper self at the party and was looking pretty glum until she found some binoculars with an attached flashlight in Lily's brother's room. She then proceeded to shut herself in the bathroom with all the lights out so she could try out the binoculars. I think those binoculars and cake and ice cream were the best part of the party, because she wasn't to into decorating princess crowns with stickers or eating finger sandwiches. In fact, there were even tears because she thought I had left her there. Anyway, she survived the birthday party, and she is still good friends with Lily. They just have different interests. On the other hand, Elizabeth is really looking forward to her friend Rich's birthday party next weekend, since it is a sport's party and she can wear her football jersey.

Beach in November?!?!

While my sister who lives in upstate New York enjoyed a foot of snow before Halloween, and even our beach condo in North Carolina had a dusting of snow last week, we were able to relax on the sunny shores of Texas beaches this past weekend. However, I do have to admit that we did have a bit of a cold snap and the highs were only in the low 70's and Saturday was pretty gusty. Still, it was great to be out at the beach in mid-November.Lizzy came up with the idea the other week that she wanted to go to the beach, we all agreed that it wasn't a bad idea at all. Luckily, Ryan had a free weekend (this was the first time he's had two consecutive days off in a row since starting in July), so we were able to meet up with Gram and Bub at their place in Port Aransas. We check out the Texas State Aquarium on Saturday, and took in some of the local dining establishments, and played at the beach on Sunday. It was a nice weekend get away, and we had a good time with the kids.

Leftover Halloween Fun

A few days after Halloween I hit the thrift stores to see if I could find any discounted costumes for the girls dress up box. I had some luck and picked up a purple princess outfit, a spider costume, and a clown outfit complete with a big bow tie and face paint. The girls were begging me to let them paint their faces, so I figured the bathtub was the safest place to conduct this activity. They had a good time and we have pictures to remember it. Luckily we used up all the paint so I don't have to repeat this activity anytime soon, because I still have a red ring in my bathtub.

All clean!

Greetings!!!

As you can see we are still alive and well (even Sam). We are still enjoying 80 degree days in November. It is "paradise" down here, you should all move here, or at least come for a visit. We miss all of you!

Halloween Horrors and Fun

For the past 4 years I have made the kids Halloween costumes. (I did cheat one year and got Ava a store bought costume when she was 2 months old). I don't proclaim to be "super mom" and I don't consider myself that crafty, but this was my way of doing something extra special for the kids when I was working full time. Since I am a stay at home mom right now, I decided to tackle making costumes for all three kids this year. I must say that the level of stress this project brought about and lack of sleep ranks right up there with some the convoy operations that I conducted in Iraq. First, I waited way to long to start this project. Finally on the Monday before Halloween, I took the kids to the fabric store. My original idea was to make they 3 little monkey, but the store was out of dark brown fake fur. My sister later suggested that I could have made purple or orange monkeys but I am not that daring. Therefore, I opted to make them three little mice, put some sun glasses on them and they are the three blind mice. By late Monday afternoon, I had a pattern, fabric, and my sewing machine out, but I am sure many of you can relate to how hard it is to get anything done with little kids under foot. "After feeding them broth, without any bread, spanking them soundly, and putting them to bed," I was able to get down to work. Monday night I was up until 2am, and then on Tuesday night around 10pm my sewing machine broke. It wasn't the best machine in the world and I have used it a bunch in the last 5 years, but it wasn't a good time for it to break. On Wednesday, I took all the kids to Walmart to buy a new sewing machine. For those of you who are wondering where Ryan is in all of this, he was working at Fort Hood for the week, 3 hours away. Anyway, I stayed up until 2am again on Wednesday, and 1am on on Thursday in order to have all three costumes ready for Halloween on Friday. Well, I got them all done and they were absolutly adorable, both the kids and the costumes. Ryan came home for the weekend. I took the kids to their school party first, and then we all hung out in our cul de sac handing out to trick-or-treaters.

Here are my three little mice raiding the pantry at their school's Harvest Festival. (Don't worry, I will post some additional pictures of the kids all dressed up.)

Earlier in the week the kids had a Halloween party with our playgroup, since my sewing machine broke mid-week and the mice costumes werent' finished yet, I let the kids dress up in their back up costumes. Lizzy of course had a blast being Spiderman. Ava was just into "juice and cake." Casey is just one laid back dude.

Pumpkin Patch

No Halloween is complete without a visit to the pumpkin patch. The kids got to go with Gina-mom and Michael-dad over the weekend, but we still wanted to take the kids as well. Lizzy informed me that they had more fun with their grandparents and that the other pumpkin patch was cooler (since we found out that most of the extra activities are not open on weekdays). However, after bribing them with cookies they thought that this pumpkin patch was okay also.

Chillin' on a stump with cousin Reina.

Staged hayride can still bring some smiles.The girls with Ryan's godson, Luke. (By the way, Lizzy tells me all the time that she has a baby in her belly named Baby Luke) Forced photo with pumpkin, they were much happier eating cookies.