Kids These Days

Yesterday, in the car, Tyler asked, "For my next birthday, can you get me a cell phone?" I just started laughing. He laughed with me for a little while, and then he asked again. So then we talked for a while about how he could get a cell phone when he could pay for it himself. He was pretty bummed.

SNOW!

So on Friday, it snowed here in Houston, like ALL day, very little stuck for not very long, but it was still fun. Tyler got to play in it at school and Brandon didn't want to go outside at all, and Ashley loved it. Here's our Houston snow.

Silly smiles.

Kiddos

As requested by my sister, here are some kid updates. Sorry so late!

Christmas Tree shopping, we found the winner.

Brandon wants to be just like Tyler

One of our rare moments juntos.

Recently Ashley has been a great artist drawing people, letters, and animals.

Go Cougars!

She's so silly.

A month with Amber!

Is it ok to blog monthly? It has been a great month. My sister and husband came to visit this month. They were working in San Antonio and came to visit on the weekends and then after Halloween, Amber and the kids spent the week here. It was just a little slice of heaven (a really loud heaven - huh Am?). We got to go to San Antonio and party there seeing the sights etc. And on their weekends here we went to many parks, shopping trips, watched football games, YMCA, House Projects, cold-hot tub swimming, Halloween partying etc.

She has a lot of the pictures, but I have a few to share so here it goes:

Update finally

The Saturday after finishing "the box" we filled it with sand and soil. It took many loads with a truck and a wheelbarrow.

Then we planted our Fall garden. Now we start watering, feeding, weeding, de-bugging, and praying.

Once the rain stops, I'll take a picture of how it's doing now, but ALL of our seeds have come up, which is very exciting. And we are BATTLING the bugs, they are relentless, they chew off whole stalks. Any suggestions? I've been using Organicide, and it seems to work, but it says to spray weekly, but they still eat in-between.

Brandon's "glasses"

A kind of recent picture of the belly.

Ashley just got some bows from Aunt Leah, and she and I just love them. Thanks Aunt Leah.

What does Chad do on his days off?

Let me preface this by saying that Chad has worked a grueling August at work. He would come home at midnight and get up and go again before 8. Then he would work Saturdays as well, poor guy. Chad finally gets a few days off for Labor day. He has company holidays on Friday and Monday. This is what Chad has done with his days off so far.

Friday he started by walking Tyler to school and going for a run. Then while I went and got some sod for the last un-sodded portion of the backyard, Chad used his little giant ladder to start cleaning out some gutters. He started to clean one of the gutters and a swarm of wasps comes out (Chad is VERY allergic to wasps). He jumps off the roof (literally), grabs a can of wasp spray and then climbs back up and kills them all and gets rid of their nest, and didn't get stung. He's so brave. After the gutters, he lays down all the sod. Then he starts working on my latest request, a tall raised garden bed.

The YMCA has been doing a big remodeling job and when I was leaving one day they were tossing all these 4'x4' floor pieces. So in typical "Peggy" (mom) fashion I ask if I can have them, borrow a truck and take some home. It seems kind of strange to put nice hardwood floors up as walls for a raised garden bed, but it'll look great and it was free.

First he measured and prepped.

Then he cut. Yeah for power tools.

The kids loved walking on these floors outside.

Dad, we almost wanted to make a kitchen table out of these ;) but we didn't have any tractor gears for a leg post (My dad made our kitchen table out of a gym floor - taken apart, sanded, glued together and finished - and a tractor gear for the leg - he's brilliant, click to see the table and all of his other amazing much more recent projects). Aren't Chads and Dads great?

Brandon had to be there for all of it.

We all helped to clear the ground. I spent about 3 hours removing a bush and then we had to do some leveling of our flower beds, the kids loved digging, they got it everywhere.

This is Brandon after a face-plant in the dirt, he was so funny.

Ashley "helping" Dad. We had to move a lot of the dirt from the original flower bed with a wheel-barrow, the kids loved it.

Tyler "helping" Dad.

Our first back-yard project was to remove a BIG oak tree. Every yard project we've had since then (french drain, sprinklers, sod and now raised bed), we've spent a lot of time running into and digging up MORE really big tree roots from that blasted tree. This one was the hardest of all I think. It was log size and had two off-shoots, it took hours of digging, hacking with an ax and sledge hammer, and finally a chain saw to get it out. Even the chainsaw could barely hack it. This wood was so hard it took a good 30 minutes of just chain-sawing to get this thing out. But...Chad won, the root has been removed!

And then we finally put up the box. Chad said that I can fill it, he's done :) Doesn't that look good enough to walk on?

Of course afterwards we had to do some partying. Here are the kids under their "tent."

We had some burgers, played in the play place at Burger King, had some chocolate shakes, and to top it all off, we had the best time watching BYU beat OU ranked #3. GO COUGARS!

That is what Chad has done on his first two days off. That is a little bit of why we love Chad.

Happy Birthday to Brandon

Brandon turned 2 and we had a little fun. In the morning he opened a couple of presents including a box of cocoa puffs. He loved them. Then at night we had cake and icecream. We let the kids decorate their own cupcakes, they loved it. Sprinkles galore.

We didn't actually eat the cake, it's in the fridge, but he had to have something besides cupcakes for his birthday (poor third child, there's never enough time to do it all for them like there was for the first).

We love Sundays, it's the one day that we really get to see dad (for a couple of hours).

I'd like to see you all make this face.

Ashley came out of the hallway all dressed for the sunny day outside. She cracks me up.