And on it goes

Since the kids have gone and outgrown trick-or-treating (why do they do that?) Dax and I like to go sit and have coffee in town at the square (that's downtown for our little town) and watch the little trick-or-treaters. The last couple of years Addison and Kirsten have gone with us. We love seeing all the little kids in their costumes and being so excited about the candy.

This was my favorite costume this year:

He's a half gallon of ice cream. So creative!

I'm usually a little sad that the kids are too old for that kind of thing, but then I remind myself of how much work I don't have to do anymore. Ha!

We also welcomed two new critters into fold.

They are adorable, but get into everything......like the dishwasher....

Unfortunately, we also had to say goodbye to a family member, as my uncle passed away. It still seems hard to believe and I know his presence is missed by all.

The kids managed to sneak in a birthday and are now seventeen. SEVENTEEN! What the heck?! I'm tired of them doing this growing up thing. Next they're probably going to want to move out on their own or something.

Regardless, we celebrated with cheesecake.

.....and sundaes......

It was fun.

Sweet 16

The kids turned 16!! How in the world did that happen? Times goes by so fast, but it's been a blast this far. We're so fortunate!

The day started with balloons. Lots and lots of balloons.

Before:

During:

And after:

Now that was a lot of balloons! Dax and I used little hand held pumps to blow them all up, but our fingers were sore for days afterwards from tieing all those knots.

We let the kids skip school that day so we could spend it having fun. We took them to do a little shopping, then to a favorite Chinese food buffet.

Then we followed that up with a hockey game to see the Texas Stars play. It was great. Our seats were close to where the players came out of the locker rooms so the kids got to give them high fives. They loved it!!

It was teddy bear day, so after the first goal by the home team everyone throws stuffed animals out into the ice. They are gathered up to be donated to charities for children. They collected over 3,000 animals!! Awesome!

Then they had the kids names on the jumbo-tron announcing their birthday. They thought that was pretty cool too.

All in all it was a great day.

Birthday Celebration

Since I checked in last we've been busy, as usual. But, it's all good.

As part of her pageant winnings, Addison had to ride on a float in the McDade Watermelon Festival. It's a long way from home for us and we have to be there far too early in the morning, but she likes it anyway.

Then, last week was Dax's birthday. We celebrated his big day by closing the office and taking the day off. We got up early and headed to Corpus Christi to the beach. Dax, Wyatt, and Kirsten toured the USS Lexington while the rest of us played around on the beach.

When they were done, they joined us and we continued to play in the sand and water.

Fortunately we were able to save them from the mouth of this giant shark!

As you can see, they were terrified!!

Once that was under control we headed to Blackbeard's to eat dinner before heading home.

It was a good day! I love that we can go do something like that with no fighting or whining from the kids, just an all around good time. I hope the birthday boy enjoyed the day as much as the rest of us did.

Fifteen!

I  can't believe how quickly time passes. Or how busy we are, but I feel like we weren't really doing anything interesting.

Anyway, I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that my babies turned 15 last month. That's just crazy!! It seems like just yesterday that I was finally coming to terms with the fact that we had four babies at once. Now they're practically grown.

We celebrated their birthday in the morning before school. We had to do it that way because Kirsten had asked for concert tickets to see Hunter Hayes. The concert was in Dallas on Friday night, so right after school on Thursday I took her to meet her Poppy (he met us half way) to go back home with him. Her Aunt 'Manda took her to the concert and they had a fun 'girls' day out.

 

They had a good day for the most part. They were all upset that they had to go to school on their birthday because they've never had to before, but they survived it.

Fourteen Already!

I can't believe how quickly time passes.

It seems like just yesterday that I was even finding out that I was pregnant. Now these children of ours are fourteen years old. ALREADY!! Who told them it was okay to grow up?!

This is how I still tend to think of them:

But look at them now:

(they're not in the same order as the photo above)

I mean, they're wanting to start learning to drive!!!

But, even so, I can't imagine how boring our life would be without them. They bring us lots of joy and laughter (and exhaustion) and I hope they have a wonderful birthday. We couldn't have asked for four better children.

Happy Birthday!! to Addison, Kirsten, Abigail, and Wyatt

THIRTEEN

I can't believe that my babies have turned 13!!


Where have the years gone?


And how can we suddenly have a house full of teenagers?


They got money for their birthday so we spent the day out shopping yesterday.


Well, the girls and I shopped. Dax and Wyatt mostly waited around on us.


The girls hit all kinds of stores and 'You're Welcome' to Bath & Body Works.......yesterday's sales numbers should be way up after Addison's visit.


After all of the shopping we went out to eat, then hit one last store, and headed home.


I think they all had a great day. After we got home, the girls tried on their new clothes and then painted their nails with the new stuff they bought. Once the adrenalin wore off, they crashed and were in bed before 9:30.

Wyatt used his money to buy and Xbox so I don't know how late he stayed up playing, but he was all smiles.

Me. I just can't believe that they are already thirteen and how fast these years have gone. Wow!

A Catch Up Post

Let's see......where did I leave off?


I think we've gotten the scorpion problem under control. At least for now. It would certainly help if we could get some rain.


My birthday was weekend before last. We didn't do anything special. Just went out to eat and did a little shopping at the mall. It was wonderful not to feel like anything needed to be taken care of!


Kirsten drew a card for me. She knows how much I like Snoopy so she decided on this:

How cute is that?! She does love to color and kudos for attempting something so challenging. I think she did a great job on it.

Abigail made this for me:

Isn't that cute? In case you can't see the antena, it's a t.v. to go with my initials. And there's that cute little girl again! Now she's wearing make-up. It's just not right.

The kids had to get shots in order to attend the 7th grade. It turns our that each one of them needed four shots!! That's a lot for one visit.

Addison is the only one that wanted to play in the children's area at the clinic. I told her that this looked like she was on some kids' show.

Our trip to the clinic started off fine. Addison and Abigail both got their shots with no problem. Then Wyatt went back to get his shots. He did fine, was talking to the nurses, and then passed out cold. He was sitting in a chair and fell forward. He stopped the fall with his forhead on the hard tile floor. That hit caused him to have a seizure. I was beside myself!! It took everything I had in me not to shove the nurses out of the way to get to my baby. It was such a helpless feeling knowing I couldn't do anything to make it stop.

He almost passed out again a few minutes later, but they were finally able to give Kirsten her shots and helped me get Wyatt to the car. I kept a close eye on him for the rest of the day. It took about an hour for him to really get his wits about him again. Later he told me that when he passed out he dreamed he was having a seizure. I guess that means that he was somewhat aware of what was happening? I'm pretty sure that by the end of the day he was tired of me asking him if he was feeling alright, had double vision, etc. He's just lucky that I didn't sit and watch him sleep! lol

Addison took this picture with my phone on our way home. It was so that I could check on his color without having to turn around while I was driving. You can only see the knot on his head a little bit in this picture.


School starts next week and I'm hoping that we can get there without any further excitement. At least not that kind, anyway.

Birthday Celebration

Fortunately the powers-that-be for Dax's state guard regimen didn't have things well planned out so he got to come home on Saturday afternoon in plenty of time to celebrate his birthday. Woohoo for lack of planning on their part. lol


We celebrated with pineapple upside down cupcakes. (Trying to limit the portion sizes for Dax and I.) They turned out really well. Especially since I wasn't following any recipe. Just making it up as I went.


Wyatt, as usual, wrapped his gift in paper that didn't fit the occassion.

He's so goofy!! (Wyatt, that is.)

OK! Yes. Dax too.

 Nice picture,huh?

Addison used popsicle sticks to create this.

 She also got him this cute stapler for his desk. It's a little, fat, round dog.

 Abigail out-did herself with making gifts for his birthday.


She made this pop-up card.

This cute little camera made with construction paper. I suspect that the lens is a pan from the easy bake oven. But it's pretty cute with that picture of her and Dax from when the kids were probably about 3.

 *sigh* I do miss those babies. But these kiddos are pretty great too, so I guess we'll keep them.

And then she made this 'beer' for him.

The mug is filled with Lindt white chocolate truffles (his favorite) and the head on the beer is large marshmallows. She did a great job on all of them.

Kirsten created her own work of art. She drew this picture for her Dad. She was looking at a picture on her Ipod and drew this one and colored it in. She did a fantastic job!

My Dad is a great artist, and it evidentally has skipped a generation here because I certainly didn't get any of that talent. 

It was fun to see what the kids came up with and I hope Dax enjoyed his birthday.

On Sunday we packed the kids up and shipped them off for the week. Their grandparents met us at Wyatt's hockey game (they tied). After the game the grandparents left with the kids and Dax and I headed home to get ready for the work week ahead.

How can it be?

How does time pass so quickly without any updates to this blog? Sometimes we're just so busy that there isn't the time or energy that it takes to make a post. But then, it seems like we're so busy but there really isn't much to tell. How can that be?


Well, it's official now. We have less than one year left of having 'kids.' Next year we'll have teenagers.


I shudder at the thought!


My babies turned twelve last month.


How can it be?


We surprised them for their birthday with dinner out and then to a hockey game. We told them that we were going to dinner at a place that Dax had seen in Austin and wanted to try. After dinner Addison asked if we could go watch a movie. I told her that we would go watch 'something.'


Since we wanted this to be a big deal because of their birthday, Dax and I both contacted several people about having their names on the jumbotron (without knowing the other was doing it.) I think that between the two of us we must have contacted everyone in the organization!


It worked out to our advantage though.


I had bought tickets at center ice only about 5 rows up this time since it was a special occasion. Two different people from the Stars showed up at our seats with gifts for the kids.


They were thrilled to get autographed pucks.

They also got other pucks, some championship banners from last season, and a blanket. It was great!


Wyatt and Dax even got to see their favorite players out on the ice.

And they did get their name on the jumbotron and announced during the game.

All in all it was a good birthday surprise for them.


Not to mention all of the other great gifts they got.


But, I still can't believe they're already 12. How can it be?

Birthday Boy

Last Friday (the 16th) was Dax's birthday. I've been lazy and haven't gotten the birthday boy's photos posted.


He had what I hope was a nice and relaxing 40th birthday.


We had our usual Friday morning breakfast with friends. Only this time I wore a shirt advertising his 40th birthday, I made cupcakes to hand out, our friends brought balloons, he had a special '40th' coffee cup to drink from, and the waitresses sang to him. Other than that, it was the same as always.


After breakfast we headed back home and Dax and the cat took a nap.

I had to take a picture because the cat never has anything to do with Dax and now she's sleeping on his butt!!

Later in the evening we had ice cream cake and opened presents.

Okay, I have to confess.  We couldn't find anything to light the candles with so I made him make a wish and fake blow out the candles so I could take the picture.

Here he is with his gift from Abigail. You can't see the gift because I was trying to get in close enough that you couldn't see Wyatt in the background.

It obviously didn't work!!

Here he is with Kirsten. This time I managed to keep Wyatt from showing up in the picture, but still no sign of the gift.

After that my camera battery died so there are no more birthday pictures to show.

It's taken a lot of years to learn to just go with the flow when these things happen, but we can't change them so it's just as well to not get upset about it. Besides, the kids decided that we could just save the candles until next year for his birthday since we didn't light them. I guess he'll be 40 again next year and we'll have another chance, right?

11th Birthday

Okay, so now you know the story of the day they were born. So here's some pictures from their party this year.


We just had a party at home with family this time. I thought it would be easier that way, but I don't really think it was.

Some of the enthusiastic party goers.

Even the paparazzi were there.

All in all it was a good day and I think everyone had a good time.