Breakfast in New Orleans

Guess who?

Procrasinating parent award goes to......

Me! Yes, we are now into April. Yes, Aidans birthday was March 9th. No, I did not blog about. Yes, I am doing it now. Bad mommy! Very bad!

Okay  here goes, Aidan had for several months wanted his party at McDonalds, so we set it up at the one right down the street from our house. Love having birthdays somewhere other than my house when it comes to having to wrangle 15 kids under the age of  5. No mess and less stress for me makes mommy a happy girl, and when mommy's a happy girl, well, you know.

Aidan was also adamant that it be a Cars themed party. Aidan is very much a boy. He loves his hotwheels and can spend hours playing with them, he even sleeps with them. He gets excited to see the garbage truck and school buses on the road. It's very intriguing to watch, since Sabrina had no interest in those things, and I also being a girl, could really care less as well. It is the evolution of a boy, and it is alien to me. I never had brothers that I grew up with to watch how early boy-ness starts. Case in point, the other evening as I was tucking Aidan into bed he was giggling and I asked him what he was laughing at. His reply " My hienis is sticking out of my pants!" me, "your what?!?!" him, "My Hienis, hahahaha!". At this point I realize he is trying to say penis and has somehow come up with a conglomeration of penis+hiney to describe his little boy parts.

I reach down, and find out sure enough the tip is sticking out of the top of his pants, I help him put it back in his pants so he doesn't wake up to pee in his face at 3am, and he giggles the whole time. Boys! Never had to do that with my daughter. And apparently penis, butt and fart humor starts at about 3 years old with men, no wonder we can't break them of their many years long habit when we date them later in life.

So back to the party, got off on a bit of a tangent about life with a boy. We had it at McDonalds, his little friends came, we had balloons and a Cars cake and party favors. He was happy. Enjoy the following pictures. The End. 

No really, theres not a whole lot of excitement to a 3 year old birthday party....

The last 3 pics were taken on his actual b-day, when we went to Chuck E. Cheese and then for ice cream.  My Sweet little man! 3 Years old!

Snow!

On Feburary 11-12, north Texas recieved a record breaking snowfall, recorded at 12.5 inches! It was amazing! The kids, Kevin and I got bundled up multiple times over the course of the two days to go out and play. Here are some pics!

The kids with their first ever snowman, Cowboy Frosty! This is Texas after all ;)

I love how pick Aidans lips and cheeks got and how the flakes would stick to his long eyelashes.

Kevin and kids with the second snowman of the day

I even got a pic in, I am usually the one behind the camera!

Snow ball fight!

Even Aggie got in on the fun!

He can't be contained....

So this week, Aidan has learned to climb out of his crib. Guess I can't say it wasn't coming, he is almost 3 years old. But I was so hoping he would be containable a little longer. Sabrina has stopped taking naps, for the most part, for about a year. Aidan still takes a nap every afternoon, or he did, until this week. In the afternoon, we would have naptime/quiet time. Aidan would lay down take a nap and Sabrina would stay in her room and either nap(rarely) or play quietly with puzzles, books etc. for an hour or so. This gives mommy some time to herself to breathe and accomplish things that are hard to do with two young children hovering around., you know, things like eating lunch without a little person begging for a bite of mine (even if we have the exact same thing, mine is always better apparently because it's not theirs) or going to the bathroom by myself. However today as I write this, Aidan is still awake and I have been up there 5 times to put him back into his crib. The boy not only knows how to climb out of his crib but he also can vault the baby gates we have in his and Sabrinas doorway like he was trianed by the Special Ops unit of the Marines. Seriously, last time I went up there he was in Sabrinas room and before I could even make it all the way up the stairs, the child vaulted the gate at Sabrinas door, ran down the hall, vaulted his gate and climbed back into his crib, and was laying there with his blanket pulled over him as though he was invisible and I hadn't just seen everything. Love that boy. But now I think my days of any peace and quiet, my small respite in the middle of the day, are gone. I will miss it. And more than anything I will miss my little baby boy, he's a big boy now and it's time we bought him a big boy bed. Where did the time go.....

Christmas 2009

Okay, so here is Christmas finally! We spent Christmas Eve with my husbands family at his sisters house where I took this pics of Sabrina and her cousin Evvy....

They adore eachother. I then tried to take a picture of all the cousins together but one little guy, my nephew Landon, wanted no part in it as you can see below.

Abby was trying to hold him in the shot and........now he's gone

At least we got a pic of the rest of them, John, Meagan, Evaline and Abby, and in the front, Jack, Sabrina and Aidan.

The next day was spent at our house and the kids were of course excited to get downstairs, here they are running torward the tree.

with their new jeep...

opening presents and stockings and playing a game Santa brought with daddy..

Sabrina and her new fairy wings from my mom...

After a nice, small dinner with just our family and Kevin and mines mom we took the traditioanl pictures we do every year, and every year it;s fight to get the kids to cooperate. Here is the best of what we took....

My mom, Gramma, with the kids

Kevins mom, or grammy, with the kids

And of course us.

Next I tried to get a few of the kids in front of the tree and my flash acting up and the kids acting up this is what I got....

While taking these I got frustrated but now I laugh and will for many years to come I am sure. I'm not so sure the kids will be laughing though someday when I submit some of these pics to their highschool yearbooks and also play them at milestone birthdays in a slide show. Payback! ;)

Lets not forget that this year we actually had a WHITE Christmas! First time in 89 years Dallas has seen a white Christmas. House on Christmas with the snow..

This was later in the day after a bunch of it had melted, should have thought to get pics that morning.

I hope your family had as  wonderful a Christmas, with many memories made, as we did!

Snow....Oops, I mean, SAND angels.

We recently took our yearly trip to Arizona to visit my grandparents. We have always tried to stop and see things along the way to break up the trip and make it a little more fun for the kids. This year, we decided to stop and see the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. I hadn't been there since I was a kid and Kevin had never seen it so we decided to take the kids for their first time. I did have to convince Kevin it was worth seeing though, he thought we would just be staring at a bunch of white sand out in the desert, which wasn't much different than the brown sand we were already looking at as we drove. But he admitted once we got there that it was really a cool place to see. If it weren't for the fact the kids are dressed in t-shirts, this could easily be mistaken for a ski trip.

Kids at White Sands , November 12, 2009

Making "snow" angels in the sand, for kids from Texas this is pretty cool! You don't even need a coat!

The kids would slide down the dunes on their bellies! You can actually buy sleds at the park entrance but we didn't since we only had about an hour to spend there, next time though!

The dunes go for miles before ending at the foot of the far of mountains.

These dunes really are huge!

Sand and sky. The sky was overcast that day which gave it a pretty gray-blue color. I can't decide if the dunes look like snow or more like a distant undiscovered planet. Either way, if you're driving through New Mexico, make sure you swing by and see this, it really is amazing.