Happy Birthday Josh

Josh turned 28 years old on the 13th! I love it when its his birthday because other than my girls there is no one that I love giving gifts to more than him. Even though I didnt get him much, just a card, a shirt, and a UT pullover, I still get excited to give him something for a change. He has surprised me several times at work with flowers and chocolate covered strawberries for my birthday, anniversary, or just starting back to school. (So thoughtful) However, he doesnt usually want anything that is within a reasonable price range. (Guns, Hunting Bow, trucks, lol) So its hard for me to just get him something nice that he actually wants. Well this year I wanted to mae him a special cake, and after finding an idea from another blog I made him this cake.

This is a picture of us on his birthday before I had to leave for work...obviously I was still a little tired, lol.

I am behind on blogging, so here is what I have to catch up on:

1. Brontes homecoming

2. Maddies Big Green Tractor

3. Kenzie will be 8 months on Sunday

Its Fall!!

I absoulutely love this season. The weather is perfect, there are football games to go to, and its the beginning of the best holidays!!

This year for Halloween Maddie is going to be Cinderella, and she hasnt even seen the movie. So before we actually dress up as Cinderella, we will have to rent the movie and enlighten her. I still havent decided what to do with Kenzie, but Im leaning towards recylcing Maddies costumes. I might do matching costumes for the 1st and 2nd year for all my kids just to be fair. If thats what we end up doing, Kenzie will be a monkey this year. If not, well...I have no idea what she will be if we dont do that. If they werent so expensive then I would probobly just buy something else, but $30.00 for an outfit they will only wear once is a little much for me.

Here are a few pictures of Maddies first Halloween in the monkey costume. She was only 2 months old, so it was a little big for her, but it should fit Kenzie much better.





On another wonderful note, I am now the proud owner of a 2010 Chevy Tahoe!!! It was very unplanned, but it was a good deal and we just couldnt say no. It only has 21,000 miles on it and was used as a program car (he thought maybe Enterprize used it for a rental) Our original plan was to pay off Joshs truck and buy a Tahoe at the same time, which would have happened right as we were having our 3rd child (at least that was the plan). However, we were going to buy a new Tahoe that would run us about $50,000 (eeeeeek!) Well we were driving home from Rosas and Mitchell Buick had a Tahoe out front that was the dark gray that I wanted, so Josh wanted to go look at it. So we get out, and of course a salesman comes over....and about 4 hours later. We ended up buying it. We got them down to a good price and they paid off the rest of my car loan so I wouldnt have double payments (we wanted to keep the car to use so we dont always have high gas bills). Its pretty much awesome! It has black leather seats, remote start, and 3rd row seating (which i didnt know some Tahoes come without). The only defect is a small scratch/knick by one of the back doors, but other than that....looks brand new!

Already?!

Kenzie had her first tooth come through on 9-9-10. Almost 7 months old....Maddie didnt get her first tooth till she was 10 months. However, Kenzie never acted fussy or got diaper rash or any of the effects that Maddie did. Just another difference between my girls, lol.



Its hard to believe we have already finished 3 weeks of school. I am hoping that the year continues to go by as quickly as the first 3 weeks. We will be busy busy for sure, but thats ok with me!



Josh and I have been dove hunting twice, and will go again tomorrow. I have only shot 6 from the first 2 trips, so maybe tomorrow will be a little better. We did buy Maddie some earmuffs, overalls, and hunting boots, because she keeps telling us that she wants to go hunting. I bet we try to take her next weekend....we shall see how that goes. If nothing else she will look like a hunter, lol.



I have been in the mood to clean lately, and have done what I can, but it seems as if I am making no progress. It is very frustrating to live in a messy house, but no matter what we do, it seems to stay that way. I have to remind myself that I am a full time working Mom and somethings got to give. Sadly its my house. I go to work and when I come home I want to spend my time with my family. Maddie doesnt go to sleep till 10-11 so as soon as shes out, I head to bed also. The downside to this is that I would like to have people over, but am to disgusted with my own house to let others see it. Another reason for our mess is that we have too much stuff!!! We are going to have a garage sale sometime, but who knows when that will be...until then we have boxes of stuff waiting to be sold which also adds to the clutter. OK. So I am done griping about this now, lol.

I have officially experimented with the Swagbucks toolbar, and it is totally legit! I will be recieving my first 5.00 Amazon giftcard shortly. And all I do is use the search bar. You get points for using their search bar and other ways, and then you can trade them in for prizes or giftcards. I choose the Amazon card because its the best deal. You can get Target and other giftcards too, but it takes more points. If you are interested in trying it, I put the link below. Its very easy and free!

They are growing up soooo fast!

Maddie 3 year update:

28 lbs. -18%
35.5" - 12%

As soon as we walked into the doctors office Maddie gently grabbed my face so I was looking at her and said "tell her (the nurse) that I dont need shots" HAHAHAHA!
Even though she was not getting shots, she still was extremely anxious and cried most of the time. We made it through the appointment, everything looks great, and she got a notepad, lol.

Maddies birthday party was AWESOME! We had a great turnout and lots of people came that I wasnt expecting! She got so many great gifts and loves them all. Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate her big day, she is still talking about it.

Kenzie 6 month update:

14 lbs. 14 oz.- 26%
26" - 56%
Head - 16.25- not sure the percentage, but they measured twice because its such a small number, but he said that her soft spot was still open and there shouldnt be anything to worry about, she just has a small head.

Kenzie is (and has been for awhile) pulling up on the couch and her crib, we had to drop her mattress down in her crib already. She is officially crawling now, but when she wants to go really fast she still prefers to army crawl. I am sad to say that she now says "dada", but she doesnt know what it means...so does it count? Haha, Im just kidding, its cute.

Kenzie- 6 months

Kenzie turned 6 months old yesterday, and what a wonderful 6 months is has been :)

• Her 6 month checkup is not until the 24th (I will have to leave early on the second day of school) so I dont have her measurements, but I will update them after her appointment.
• She can get wherever she wants, including up the stairs, by doing her lung or army crawl. She would be crawling if she could figure out how to work her arms.
• She loves to chew on everything she gets her hands on, especially paper. :( Our phone book only has a half of the back cover because she has got ahold of it several times and gnawed on it till it was soggy then tore it off.
• She can sit up by herself, but its more of a side way tilt.
• She LOVES Maddie...she will do the biggest belly laughs whenever Maddie decides to pay attention to her. Maddie has figured out that she is the reason Kenzie laughs and has started to pay more attention to Kenzie, which is wonderful.
• She is wearing 3 month and 3-6 month clothes and size 2 diapers.
• No teeth still, even though she has been acting like a teething baby for 2 months now.
• I still nurse as much as possible, but now that school has started back, she has started drinking alot more formula. Today for instance, I fed her before I dropped her off at Lacys house, she ate 18 oz. while I was at work, I fed her again when we got home, and will feed her at least 1 more time, maybe 2 before she goes to bed. However, she didn't have any baby food today.
• We have tried all the #1 vegetables and she ate them all with no reactions. We have tried bananas and pears for the fruits, so far so good. Up till now we have just been feeding her one tub a day, but I think we will start one fruit and one vegtable now that she is actually 6 months old.
• She still spits out a pacifier most of the time and inserts her thumb instead...this drives me crazy, but what can I do?

Bracing Myself!

August is a VERY busy month for me! Let me explain. (Warning, this may be very unorganized and bounce around a bit.)

• First of all, my sweet darling (independent and sometimes too big for her britches) daughter is turning 3 on August 22nd! So sometime this month, I think we will have a checkup with the pediatrican, but maybe not, because I dont have an appointment wrote down...Im calling Monday to check.
• My other sweet darling (fussy gussy) daughter is turning 6 months and she does have a 6 month check up the week school starts.
• I also have them scheduled for individual pictures at Sears (Kenzie on the 17th and Maddie on the 21st.) I like to have them as close to the actual day as possible.
• Then of course staff development starts on the 11th and actual school starts on the 23rd.
• Maddies party is at the Bronte pool the day before school starts.
• I have an orthodonist appointment on the 24th I believe.
• My classroom is very very far from being organized and ready for school....although I do have a plan in my head, and thats the hardest part for me. I have not been to thrilled with the way my room ended up the last two years, but with my pie shape room its been very difficult to find something that worked well. I believe I may have a good solution this year and cant wait to get it set up to see if I like it.
• This year for Maddies birthday, we have talked to some family and decided to get Maddie a cheap metal swingset (well, not really cheap, but not the really expensive wooden ones that I want them to have someday). Since we know we will not live here forever, I dont want to build a big wooden swingset, just to take it down in 1-3 years when we move. So as soon as I finish this post I will start looking online to get one ordered.
• On top of all the expected August to do items...we are still working on the bathroom remodel. So far the tub, faucets (sink and shower), tile around the shower, and new light have all been replaced. The only things we need to finish are priming (already started), painting, putting up the trim, and caulking the edge around the tile (we had to order it, so we are just waiting for it to come in)
• On a GOOD note, Josh and I will also have our 4 year anniversary on August 19th. What makes it even better, is that since Target was having such a good sale last month on Kitchen Aide Mixers we went ahead and bought it as our anniversary present to each other! So not only am I the proud owner of a Red Kitchen Aide Mixer, I also do not have to worry about shopping for an anniversary gift this month on top of everything else.
• Oh, did I mention that our friends Henry and Stormy will be headed to the hopital in about 6 hours to have their baby girl! Yeah! Shyanne will also be having Jaxon in the near future, so it looks as if we will also make time to do a couple of hospital visits to meet some very beautiful babies!
• I am also still having some issues that occured after having Kenzie, so I will more than likely be going in for a check up sometime myself.

So like I said...I will be bracing myself for a very busy yet WONDERFUL month of August!

On a Roll!

I have had so much to blog about lately that I am trying to break it up into parts. We have had quite a bit of trouble with all of our remodeling that we were planning on doing this summer. So here is the 411.
Problem #1- After installing the brand new oven, only 1 element was working. So I called Maytag and they scheduled an appointment for 4 days later. ok, I can handle that. Well we go out of town for Mallorys wedding and when we return there is a message on our machine that we have to reschedule, so I call the number and they say it will be another week and a half before they can get there because they double booked....(I dont think so!) So I called Maytag back and they said they would call another company and we should get a call the next day, well of course I didnt...so I called them back yet again, and finally they got another company (Kuntz) to come out and look at it the next morning. The Kuntz guy said whoever put the oven together must have been in training because several wires were on wrong and one was not connected...He fixed it, end of problem. For all of our trouble she gave me a 1 year extended warranty on the oven (4 calls to get problem 1 solved)

Problem #2- The stove top we purchased came in and after installing it, we noticed that the metal part on top (just cosmetic) was bent so that the edges came up on each side. It unit worked, but I think that when you buy something new it should look new. So I called Maytag again and asked if they could replace the top piece (this conversation took forever!) She finally said yes, and they shipped us one that would arrive in 7-10 days. We got it a week later and it looked as if they had pulled it down the street. It had paint chips knocked off and was dented in several spots. So I call back to Maytag and explain the problem. She sends another one express 4-5 day. It arrives and it is worse than the first one they sent us. So I call back AGAIN. She said she would send us another one but would ship it by freight which takes anywhere from 1-2 weeks. I said ok, whatever it takes, it wasnt a big deal because the stove actually worked. However, another week and half later we get our 3rd stove top and it has several scratches and seems to be bent like the original one that came on the stove. So now at my house I have 4 big stove tops that are usless, and my stove top is still bent, but Im tired of collecting stove tops so I gave up. She did sent us a 75.00 refund for all of these troubles. (4 calls to get fed up and quit trying on this problem.)

Problem #3- We thought we would have better luck at Home Depot this time, so we went there instead of Lowes. My shower has not worked in the bathroom since we moved in, and since it is tiled we haven't ever messed with it. We just used the bathtub and if we wanted a shower we would use the other bathroom. Well we decided since the tile would be ripped off to fix the pipes, that we would go ahead and replace our little bathtub with a whirlpool tub. So of course the tub we wanted wasn't in stock but the guy said he already had one ordered and it would be here in 7-10 days. So we went to San Antonio and when we got home there was a message that said "We just wanted to check to make sure that everything went well when loading our purchase"...HUH? So I call back and find out that they sold our tub to someone else, but she couldn't let us know until she talked to an IMA on Monday (It is Saturday). So I at 3 on Monday no one has called so I call back and talk to the same lady, and she said she forgot and that the IMA had already left for the day. ARG! So this morning Home Depot calls and says that our tub has arrived....hmmm...thats strange. So I explained to this new lady about the previous calls and she says that our tub was never given away and that it had just arrived (that's bull, because he said 7 days and it has already been 2 weeks). So after speaking to a manager, she said that she couldnt do anything about it (as far as a gift card, discount, etc. ) Well after about 5 more minutes of talking with her, she offers me a 50.00 refund. (Funny how 5 minutes ago she wasnt allowed to do that!). So we go to pick up the tub tomorrow. (3 calls to fix Problem 3)

So 11 calls later (several hours wasted off my life, I have 125.00 refunded to me, and extra warranty on the oven)

So needless to say our remodeling has not been going as smoothly (or as quickly) as originally planned.

Tomorrow we are taking my car to get the windows tinted, then to Concho Collision to get an estimate on the repairs for the fender bender I had in December. Next week some company is coming to my house to replace the front glass in my car that has been cracked down the middle for a year or two now.) Hopefully this process will go much more smoothly.

The good news is that we got an unexpected refund check from our Morgage Company because we overpayed in our escrow account, so that should cover all the repairs to my car!!!

______________________________________________________________

This is the same post but completely off subject. A friend of mine that I used to go to school with in Wink died on Sunday from a boating accident in Austin (Lake LBJ). They were riding at night and hit some rocks and all 4 people were ejected from the boat and taken by helicopter to a hospital in Austin and they were all in critical condition. Karah (my friend) died shortly after. Karah was 24 years old and had a 2 year old son. She was very close to her brother and parents and I cant imagine the pain they are going through right now. Please pray for her son Madden and her family.
http://www.kwes.com/global/story.asp?s=12835606

http://www.cbs7kosa.com/news/details.asp?ID=20711