Go Bobcats!

The Texas State Bobcats beat Angelo State tonight 21-14! What a great season opener to watch! We have season tickets, so we will be back of course and I'm sure I'll be posting more as the season continues. The kids did as about as well as they could. Andrew was happy the whole time and then conked out on Brandon. I supervised Lillian as she climbed up and down the bleacher steps and drank her soda! She was definitely ready to leave when it was over! Here are pictures from our outing...

2nd Night without Daddy

We made it through the second evening with Brandon working the evening shift. I took the kids to Babies R Us because I had some really good coupons that started today. We got Lillian a new carseat! Andrew is around 20 lbs and almost outgrowing his carrier seat. I'm just waiting on him to master sitting on his own so I can sit him in a shopping cart if I need to and I will be moving him to Lillian's old carseat. He will be comfy in that! Meanwhile, I already put Lillian's new carseat in the car and she likes it. I strapped her in on the floor earlier to make sure I had the straps in the right place. This carseat works for 20-40 lbs with the straps and then can be used from 30-100 lbs as a booster with the car seatbelt. I thought it was the better option than buying another carseat and then having to buy 2 boosters later too. Here is Lillia and her carseat.

And she was actually more interested in the box:

Happy Birthday to my wonderful mother! We all love you very much and can't wait for you to come visit soon!

Just me and the kids

This afternoon/evening will be a first for me and the kids. Brandon's job has him working evenings tonight and tomorrow night. It will happen again probably at least once a week from this time forward. As any parent can tell you, the fussiest time for kids is that couple of hours before bedtime. I'm trying to be optimistic, but am not looking forward to this evening.

I've tried to plan some outings the next couple of afternoons to at least get us out a little bit before we come home for dinner and bedtime. We'll see if that helps. Our mission today is to go shopping for Andrew some shorts to wear this weekend to the Tx State football game. We got him a little Tx State t-shirt, but the poor kid doesn't have any clothes! He just has onesies, so we are out to get him some pants this afternoon. Tomorrow, we are hitting up the big sale at Babies R Us to find Lillian a car booster seat. We have a $15 off coupon, so it is a good time to get that. Andrew will be needing to move up to Lillian's car seat in another month, so we are going to fix Lillian up with a little bigger seat for her to cruise in.

Well, as 5 p.m. comes around and until 7 when Andrew usually goes to bed, say some prayers for me! I hope things run smoothly. Brandon will be home around 11:30 and I'm sure 'll have been conked out for a while by then!

The Veggie battle is finally won!

I have struggled and struggled to get Andrew to eat veggies! He loves his fruits and rice cereal. He would just spit everything else out and give me a weird face! Well, the last couple of days I started mixing vegetables with the rice cereal like I do the fruits and he has eaten mixed vegetables! He ate the orange mixed veggies yesterday and today he ate his first green without spitting it out! We are going to just have to buy Gerber out of rice cereal!

Making my house more kid friendly

I've been thinking and thinking of ways to have a playroom for the kids. The toys have taken over our living room and it is hard to relax knowing you have all of that to pick up all the time...especially if you have company. We have an extra room upstairs, but it is a walk-through area to get to our room and the hallway to the other bedrooms, so we can't have toys out there or we would fall all over the place up there walking through.

I finally thought of a solution last week and talked to Brandon about it and we got it done this weekend. We had a sitting area when you first walk in the house where we just had our piano and computer. Because it is off to the side, it makes a really good toy area. We don't have to worry about people walking through the mess. So, we made this our play area. We moved our extra couch and tv downstairs from the loft area and all the toys into that room. Now Lillian can play and watch her Elmo or other shows and we can still have our living room to watch whatever we want with her just in the other room so we can supervise! I've very pleased with it and loving it more each minute.


My next project is to put pictures up of each of our family members to help the kids practice learning their names. It is hard for them to remember since we don't see most of our families but once a month or less than that sometimes. Here are some pictures of the before and after of what we have done so far. I don't have any of the loft yet as we are still figuring out what to do up there.


Sitting area before:


Sitting area or now play area:

Lillian got in a fight

Poor Lillian lost the fight with our coffee table! We knew it would happen someday, but not so soon. She is such a little acrobat! Check out my baby girl's new shiner.

9 years!

Brandon and I began dating 9 years ago as of tomorrow, August 25th! I cannot believe it has been that long! It has flew by! It is hard to remember life without him, though. We've been through a lot from his finishing up pharmacy school to his year living in Houston, to me getting through school, getting married, and now with 2 kids! It is amazing how your life changes so much in just a few years. I'm just so thankful to have him in my life. He's such a great daddy and husband. I love you, B!

I didn't have a photo of when we first

started dating, so here is one a couple of

months later on our first new years eve

together, Dec. 31st, 1999.

I almost forgot!

Happy 31st Birthday to my wonderful husband of 3 years! I love you and don't know what I'd do without you!

Jealousy this early!

It

seems that every time we bring out one of Lillian's old toys for Andrew, she reverts back to being a baby and wants it again. Andrew has been LOVING his exersaucer and even learned to scoot it across the kitchen floor while in it. We figured it was time to bring out the walker so he could really go. Well I finally made time to stop by storage today and get it to bring it back home. Andrew loved it! He was scooting already. Well, as soon as he was out so I could feed him lunch, guess who was in it!? And of course she didn't have the sense to realize which was the front. I guess this is just the beginning of more and more to come.

Trying it out

Since a lot of my friends and family are blogging, I thought I might try it out and see. I already have so much I try to update on the computer, so I don't know if I'll like having something else to tend to, but I'll give it a shot. I'm sure I'll have plenty to rant on about each day although it may be boring to some.



For my first post, I'll just add a blog I posted on my myspace today:



After a terrible hail storm a few months back, our yard went to heck along with all the beautiful flowers Brandon had bought and planted. They were all sliced and diced in the storm, so we just let it go and it hasn't looked like our usual beautiful summer yard. Brandon finally got a chance while we were gone for a week to till up the dirt and pull out all the dead stuff. He has planted some seeds that will hopefully grow and give us some flowers out there and has been growing some plants inside from seed to place there permanently. Plants are so darn expensive to be replacing so often! So anyway, he researched and found a hybiscus plant that is good for the kind of hot weather we have around here that should last in the ground and has grown a lot in little pots from seed. I wanted to share a photo I took today because one of them bloomed finally and it is so pretty! I can't wait for our whole flower bed to be full of these beautiful plants!