Random Menagerie of Topics

Brady truly tortures our dogs, but it's all with love. He's been filling up Daisy's water bowl in our bathroom and then walking the flat dish back to the kitchen (which is a messier than I'd like). He also entices Daisy into her crate and then crawls in there with her. He loves the dogs so much.

Brady is really starting to wear me out. Yesterday he flooded the bathroom while I was taking a shower. His new favorite thing is to grab every pillow in the house and pile it in his closet for a cozy getaway. We tell Brady not to wet the bed, so for the last 2 nights he gets out of bed and wets his pants while standing on the rug in his room. He spilled my tea all over my lunch before I could eat it. After Brady pooped this morning, I came over to wipe his bottom and he said, "I can do it!" and immediately wiped his bottom with his bare hand. He touched a few things (including me) before I could throw him in the shower. All of this is just in the last 24 hours!

He senses when my nerves are wearing thin. After he spilled tea on my lunch he kept saying, "I love you, Mommy" and giving me sweet hugs while I cleaned up. He's such an endearing child. I think God made him that way, so that his mommy would be inspired to persevere with love and patience.

This morning I felt like super woman when I pulled out about 40 feet of our steel edging. The back part of the walk path has been a bear to weed. We decided to leave the flagstone path, but let the grass grow over the gravel part.

Earlier this week we cleaned up the river rocks along the path. I find it sort of therapeutic.

Now to figure out how to dispose of the steel edging...

Saving my favorite part for last... Another tutu photo shoot... this time Anna Belle's 6 months. My first year with my baby girl is going too quickly.

Never too early to start yoga training. "Downward dog" is a good start, right?

Anna Belle's not really crawling yet, but she's definitely getting close. She rocks on her knees a lot. I adore this innocent face.

Sweet faces

My sweet girl didn't enjoy the whole photo shoot.

Feeding the Ducks

I'm grateful that the ducks are no longer quacking "Dueling Banjos" in our back yard. With that said, I like having the ducks nearby. Once every other week or so, we've been going one street over to feed the ducks in one of the neighborhood ponds. There's also a small crane (or maybe it's a lost cow bird) and a lot of turtles. Brady enjoys himself thoroughly. Anna Belle was in sort of a daze and fell asleep as soon as we returned to the car.

Brady keeps saying, "Mommy, I wanna be a funny guy!" This means that he wants us to wrestle with him or tickle him until he laughs so hard he can't stand it.

Our other favorite Bradyism is when he wants to play, "Scratch the big ball." This is where we tickle him while he tries to balance on the giant green exercise ball.

Zoo, Carnival, and Birthday Parties

Last week, we went to the zoo with the Smoters (and a few other families).

The highlight was getting to watch the elephants get their morning baths.

Last night, the Wetterauers and Dachs came over for dinner and to watch the Texans football game and celebrate Thomas's upcoming birthday.

Kylie came over in these overalls, and Anna Belle so happened to have the same ones. When Anna Belle was done "swimming" I dressed her to match Kylie and snap a few photos.

On Saturday night we celebrated Megan's 24th birthday. She said she won't feel old until she's 25, because that's a quarter of a century.

On Friday night, we went to the Cy-Woods Carnival. Becoming a part of this community is one of the main reasons we moved out here. I'm always happy to see what nice kids go to our high school.

My mom was a "Pie Throwing" target for the first 15 minutes of the carnival. Everyone kept saying, "Who could throw a pie at Mrs. Puckett?!" I guess the bad part of teaching Juniors and Seniors is the young 'ens didn't know who she was and pied her without shame. Brady felt left out of the festivities, so he "threw" a pie too.

Our neighbors, the Skidmores (2 doors down) are super talented. Not only is Daylin star of the football team, but his dad designed our landscaping, mom sculpted the bronze wildcat in front of the school and she crafted this giant boot for the carnival.

Anna Belle's moving around a lot more lately. Both the kids love to play with my phone. On Friday night, Brady took my phone off the charger to play his games. I knew it wouldn't last long and I was already in bed and didn't want to argue with him. That was the last I saw the phone until late Sunday night on a wild hunt for it. Taylor found it in Brady's toy garbage truck... I should have known.

Brady now loves taking all the cushions off the couch and throwing himself upon them. He laughs and giggle hysterically and proclaims, "I want to be funny mommy."

Here's a video of my baby girl laughing at and talking to her daddy. She's just now becoming a lot more vocal and we're hearing her laugh and interact with us a whole lot more. What a cutie pie?!

Proud to be an Aggie

For those of you looking at what college to attend (because maybe you're touring colleges at Thanksgiving in lieu of going to Disney), I want you to consider this. Texas is a great school, they're slightly bigger than A&M, their academics tend to be a little stronger, their football team has multiple national titles, they are in the beautiful city of Austin, blah, blah, blah. Last nights Texas game reminded me why I love being an Aggie.

One of the things I love about A&M is that when I looked at my fellow high school graduates attending A&M, it was all the, what I will call, "normal" kids. Just plain old, good, upstanding citizens who were approachable, honorable and down to earth.

I am very proud of A&M's former students. Not only is their support for the school unwavering, but our "normal" students go on to be exceptional leaders in the business place, military and political realm. One of the sayings on the A&M campus is that the A students come back and teach. The C students come back and donate buildings.

Today's Texas fans (including the current and former students) tend to be a little fair weathered. I include the current and formers students since a great majority of people walking around with Texas gear are HCC drop outs and Houston Cougars in hiding.

To get straight to the incident that inspired me to write this blog, who BOOS AT THEIR OWN TEAM!?! These kids go out to play ball, but when times are tough, they can't even count on their own team to support them during the game. The worst part of it is, this is not the first, and definitely wont be the last time it happens.

Furthermore, as we honor those who died on 9.11.01, I'm reminded of how 80,000+ Aggies came together in less than a week to honor those who died by wearing red, white and blue to the football game. The logistics were tough, but you can always count on Aggies to join together and support one another. I may not love football, but I'm darn proud to be an Aggie.

And Texas, you should summon your inner "hippie" roots and give your team some free unconditional love. They have earned it.

Thanks and Gig 'em!

Product Review

Last night, a few Kirby vacuum reps came knocking on our door. A "slick salesman" looking guy and a really cute young girl (with big "eyes") came into our home to demonstrate the vacuum's many features. Slick left the house while the cute girl did the demonstration.

They initially handed us the price sheet and the 100 ways they could finance the same ridiculously high cost. They told us the makers of Porsche designed the vacuum's 2 motors and NASA first used this lightweight, beautiful aluminum. They pulled up all kinds of gross stuff from the carpet, and then they vacuumed our mattress... which is their real selling point. This vacuum also changes light bulbs, acts as a blower, inflator, deflator, will shampoo your carpet and scrub your grout. They were here for quite awhile. It really felt like an infomercial.

We were ready to sit down for dinner, and they were ready to close the deal.

During the endless presentation, I googled consumer reports reviews. Someone named the approximate price they paid, and we told them that's the price we wanted (a 60% discount). The cute girl made 3 phone calls before Slick came back to the house. Slick reaffirmed that our price was ridiculous and the most he could do was a 20% discount, but they wouldn't leave.

They wouldn't even go down to the MSRP posted on the box (both reps acted as if they'd never seen the box before). They said the MSRP was their cost. I thanked them for coming, gave them a bag of cookies and asked them to leave our house because they were interrupting our family time, telling us lies (MSRP) and not selling it at a price we were willing to pay. I went back outside to finish dinner with my mom, Brady and Anna Belle while Taylor continued to stay inside. Slick went to his car and upon his return he told Taylor he could take our offer. Taylor came outside with the cheesiest grin I've seen in a long time to share the news.

I still can't believe we actually purchased it (though I'm glad we did). My mom told me my Great Grandma Nelson always had a Kirby, but she was most impressed with how pretty the new Kirby is. I have to agree : )

I've also started cloth diapering Anna Belle. With every wear, I end up spending about an hour resizing all the diapers to try to get the perfect fit. Aside from that annoyance, I'm happy with the overall product. Though slightly bulky and a lot harder than disposables, I feel like I'm doing a good thing for Anna Belle's skin, the environment and the good old pocket book (the pocket book needs the cloth diapers to recover from the vacuum purchase). We still use disposables when we go out.

Sorry for the boring post, but I couldn't help myself. I'll return to pics of the kids next time.

Congratulations to Kelly and Anthony!

This weekend, my mom, Anna Belle and I drove to Bloomington, IL to watch my cousin Kelly get married. I was delighted to meet her groom, Anthony for the first time. I know they'll have many happy years together. In lieu of bird seed, they had guests write prayers and blessings on little paper airplanes made from scrapbook paper.

I video taped the ceremony from the balcony while Grammy watched Anna Belle. It went pretty smoothly minus one time while I was holding Anna Belle, she tilted the video camera down at the crowd... sorry Kelly and Anthony! The wedding was beautiful despite my flawed taping abilities : )

This is an old Camaro Anthony fixed up. Everyone oohed and awed over it while waiting for the bride and groom to come out. Aren't they cute?!

After church on Sunday, we went to a nice Italian restaurant with the Bowers and Nelsons. Grammy and Anna Belle had good bonding time.

Daddy and Brady stayed at home for the weekend. They went to a high school football game (our neighbor 2 doors down, Daylon, is the star football player for Cy-Woods) and watched the Aggies play on TV. Before we left, Brady and I made a paper bag monster. You can just barely see his eye peeping through the hole on the right. I missed my boys and am glad to be home with them again.