Merry Christmas

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Happy Birthday Daddy! Big 3-5! We Love you.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

It's snowing in Houston! When we were in the process of moving, our realtor told us that we will NEVER see snow in Houston. Well today it started to snow. Josh was so excited. He exclaimed that Santa is going to come now. It doesn't look like there will be enough to stick to the ground. But it is really cool to see it snow.

Happy Holidays!

Vote Now! It took us all year, but our practice has really paid off. Click on the links below and tell us what you think.

Merry Christmas

and

Happy New Year!!

My Thanksgiving Indian

Joshua had a Thanksgiving party/feast at his pre-school. There are 9 boys and 2 girls in his class. I am sure it is wild and crazy days in his class. They had a really good time and looked so cute in their outfits that they had made. Their meal consisted of: McDonalds chicken nuggets, corn, macaroni & cheese & cheesestick and for dessert a cookie and a pumkin muffin. He wore his outfit all day and evening and tried to go to bed with it. I finally convinced him to set it next to him in bed.

How do you trap an Armadillo?

Yesterday the boys were running around the house playing and yelled for me to come and look at something. I went to check out their findings and saw a very large hole and below the hole more holesburrowed towards my house and my neighbors. After inspecting closer pretty much in every direction. My first instinct was that it was a gopher or mole or something. After researching, I decided that it was probably not a mole or gopher since they usually leave mounds. I called around today and one of the guys seems to think that what I am describing is an armadillo or a skunk. YUCK and YUCK! Neither sounds fun, but I am going to say it is an armadillo because I do not want to even entertain the idea that a skunk is living under my house. Pest Control wants to charge anywhere from $450-$550 to trap and remove the animal. So what to do? Apparantly these animals can do some really significant damage under your home and to the foundtion. Of course Michael is out of town for three weeks training for his new job.
Plan A: A little investigating of my own. I loosely stuffed the 8X6X8 hole with newspaper to see if this critter decides to come out to play tonight. This will tell me if he is still living under the house.
Plan B: Still undecided. I am considering calling Animal control to deliver a trap to see if I can catch it myself. Then it will only cost $100 for someone to come out and remove it.
Plan C: Flood it out of the hole. I am just not sure I can take on what decides to run out of the hole while I am flooding.
Plan D: Wait until Uncle John comes Saturday and see what he thinks. :)
Hmmmm........

Since Michael has been gone:

• Huge lightning storm came and took out my internet and tv for 3 days
• Furnice tripped
• Mysterious animal digging tunnels under the house
• issues with a boy on Jacobs bus
• what next........
  
  

This is not the Actual Armadillo at my house

Uncle Timmy's Wedding

Uncle Timmy got married a few weeks ago. Forgive me for taking so long to post. It was a very pretty wedding. The boys were Jr. Groomsmen and ring bearer. Jacob said that he was excited that Uncle Timmy was getting married, but was not excited about wearing the tuxedo. We had a great time visiting with family over the weekend.

Trick-Or-Treat Ya'll

Michael and I are very proud of our carving jobs. We had not carved pumkins in years and had so much fun. Jake the "clean freak" on the other hand did not have fun. I forced him to put his hand in the pumpkin. I don't think he will ever do that again. Josh loved it of course.

Halloween is one of the boys favorite Holidays. They were excited all day and could hardly wait. The new Outlet mall was having a thing for kids where they could trick-or-treat at all of the stores. So we headed up there first. Jacob had a minor meltdown at the first store when Josh received a scooby doo sticker and Jake got a cars sticker. Apparantly cars is not cool anymore. He quickly recovered when he discovered the next store gave him a handful of candy. We did have one other upset. Everyone kept calling Jake "bobafet" or "storm trooper". One even called him a "Power Ranger". So he was very annoyed and was sure to correct everyone.

We came home and ate dinner and then Dad headed out with Clone Trooper Rex and Raphael Ninja Turtle while mom stayed home to man the candy and greet all the cute little trick-or-treaters. I later joined them and had so much fun watching them run door to door.

Fun-filled weekend

We had such an amazing weekend with the boys. We had signed up Jake for a 1/4 mile fun run through his school at the beginning of the year. The run was this weekend and he was so excited since he is going to be an Olympic runner someday. They had the runners split up by grade so he was only running with the kindergarten boys. We were a little nervous for him but he did an awesome job. Not quite up to par for the Olympics yet but he has few years to work on it. I think our proudest moment was as he was finishing he seeked us out in the stands and stopped before the finish line and was jumping up and down and waving his arms in excitement and shouting for us. It was sweet and filled our hearts with joy! He is very proud of his ribbon.




Sunday we headed to the pumpkin patch. Mom accidentally looked up the wrong time so we arrived at 10 am and they didn't open until 12pm. Oh well, I was not the only mom who got the time wrong. I think there website is messed up. The boys had so much fun and the pumpkin patch was amazing. The only regret is that we saved the hay ride to pick out there pumpkin at the end and the boys were so exhausted I didn't get any great pictures.

Can you tell that Josh is in his non cooperative stage in photography?

Super Stars

Jake came home last Friday with a star half his size. On it read that he was chosen as Ault All star of the week and that we had to trace the star and decorate it with family pictures and stuff. He was so excited and we had fun decorating it over the weekend. Josh also made a star to decorate. He told me that only one other person had been chosen and that you get chosen for making good choices. We had our first parent teacher conference and she just loves Jacob.

On a side note, Josh's pre-school teacher said that he was the best kid in her class. Huh? I said "no way" and she said "yes!" The boys started Awana a couple weeks ago. This is Jacob's third year and Josh's first (which he was so excited about). The real kicker is, when picking Josh up from his class, the teacher said that he was"refreshing" compared to the other high energy children in the class. Michael and I both looked at each other in disbelief. That has never been a descriptive word used for him. We can't believe all the kind words all the teachers have said and are very proud of him. Keep it up Josh! Now we just need to work on your behavior at home. :)

Costumes are In

Can you guess who this is? He picked out his costume today -- Raphael, Ninja Turtle.

You don't see this everyday

It's not everyday you walk outside your home in a suburban neighborhood and see cows wondering the streets. Apparently there is a farm somewhere nearby and at least 50 cows escaped and were grazing in the soccer fields and some areas zoned for new homes. One of our neighbors said that during soccer practice that evening, the coach thought he stepped in dog poop. One of the kids said "coach, I hate to tell you this but it ain't dog poop". When they looked around they saw cow patty's everywhere. Someone needs to get their pooper scooper out. :)