Tuesday, November 27, 2007

We're Elves!

My BFF from China, Anita, sent me an email of her family as elves, and I have never laughed so hard! I had so much fun making this of us....If you "elf" your family, please send it to me, I get such a kick out of silly stuff like this! Just click on the link http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9618431069 Enjoy!

Monday, November 26, 2007

Turkey Day Recap



There were 46 of us for Thanksgiving this year (not including dogs). There was SO much good food and lots of laughs.



Jason was in charge of the fried foods for Thanksgiving. He fried a turkey (which everybody loved) and here he is frying Twinkies...which as you can imagine were also a big hit!





For some reason JR felt it necessary to offer after dinner check-ups to our family for Thanksgiving. Here he is giving Cousin Sarah a shot. You can see Cole (Sarah's nephew) trying to make his escape from her lap. I'm guessing that's because JR had just told him, "Now, Cole, this shot is going to hurt- A LOT!"

JR and his favorite cousin, Caleb, were more into playing than eating this Thanksgiving. Although Caleb made reindeer cookies that JR just loved. This tree house they're playing with was mine when I was little, nice to see that it's still a big hit.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

This Week in Birthdays!

Today, November 25th- Happy Birthday Jason! JR says his daddy is 20 today....that sounds about right.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Pre Thanksgiving

We are getting ready to spend Thanksgiving at MawMaw and PawPaw's house. JR is very excited about going. He starts screaming, "I see MawMaw and PawPaw's house!" when we get to about Conroe, so hopefully we can keep that to a minimum this trip. The last time we came through New York from China our flight to Houston was delayed for hours. We were landing in Houston at about 4 in the morning and as we were descending JR looked out the window and screamed at the top of the lungs, "I see MawMaw and PawPaw's hooouuusseee!" Of course when I told my parents this story my mom said, "Oh, I bet everybody on the plane thought that was so cute, did everybody laugh?" Ummmm....let's see: flight was delayed for hours, it's 4 A.M., and a 3 year has just woken the whole plane up.....yeah, pretty safe to say nobody was laughing. We did get exciting news about MawMaw and PawPaw's house today. They just got a letter saying that their land is getting its 100 year plaque. 2007 marks 100 years that the land has been in the family, so we get to go to a ceremony in Austin at The Capital in April. Here's wishing everybody a great Thanksgiving!

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Soccer Season

Soccer season is over! Can you tell I'm excited? JR played with our church's Team Kid program, and since they had green uniforms, their team name was "The Bullfrogs". They actually made it as easy on us as possible. Our games were on Saturdays, and the kids practiced for 30 minutes and then played for 30 minutes, which was plenty for JR. As aggressive of a kid as JR is, he was never aggressive playing soccer. He preferred to run behind the pack of kids and practice his karate moves. (Which was pretty funny.) I think he did score a goal this season (it was just for the other team). His favorite part of soccer was getting donuts before the game and a snack and a drink after the game...just like me!


Saturday, November 17, 2007

Train Party

It was a very fun day at Megan Urban's 2nd birthday. (Megan's dad, Mike, and Jason have been friends since junior high.) JR LOVES Mr. Mike because he's a policeman and JR saw him in his uniform once. So it was a pretty exciting day all around. We started the party at Zube Park with a train ride. I didn't go on the train, but it was a really long ride and Jason said it was great, "much better than the train at the zoo". JR loved it and couldn't wait to tell me about all the things he got to see on the ride.












After the ride, we went back over to the Urban house and it was decorated so cute I had to take a picture. This is JR doing his excited dance about the railroad tracks outside the house.


The cake was just too cute and JR had a blast being the conductor of the train around the cake. And, yes, that's a train moon walk you see outside the window!



Here's JR with all his party favors...What a fun day!








Friday, November 16, 2007

Thanksgiving Feast

It was Thanksgiving Feast Day at JR's school today. He has been upset all week about having a name that is only 2 letters long. I finally figured out today what that has been about. The kid's feathers in their headdresses spelled out their names...JR just wanted more feathers in his headdress! He was pretty proud of his macaroni necklace too. Speaking of macaroni, Jason and his dad are still talking about the mom who brought 10 macaroni shells to the party. Not a serving for 10, but 10 cooked shells. We were supposed to bring enough food to serve 12. I guess she figured only 10 people would be interested in eating one shell of macaroni. She really needs to hook up with the lady who showed up at one of our church parties for 50 with 11 deviled eggs!



Yum! JR ate cheese, jello, crackers and cookies




I was so proud when I started reading that JR was thankful for his church, and then I got to the "because" part! Too funny! They really do have a transformer car in his Sunday School room...he even calls it "the transformer car room".


The party is over; JR and Timothy ready to go home.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Candy House

All of the Sunday School classes (I know they are called "Bible Study" classes now, but I just can't break the habit of calling it "Sunday School") at our church are having to make Candy Houses to display on campus. It's a really big undertaking, as the church only supplied a set of blue prints. We went to help out the other night, and actually had a lot of fun working on it. We took JR with us, and between playing with the other kids and sneaking candy to eat, he had an absolute blast. He keeps asking when we get to go work on the candy house some more. If you need something to do with your kids this Christmas season, they are going to have candy house tours at all 3 campuses (Woodway, Kingwood, and Katy) from November 26-December 30th (with no tours on the 24th or 25th) http://www.second.org/

I guess I'm really into making these porch steps, I look like I'm concentrating pretty hard!


Here's Jason hard at work caulking the chocolate bar roof.



It's almost finished....







Monday, November 12, 2007

This Week in Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to....Allison- Wednesday, November 14th.
Allison and I have known each other since 1985. (We must have met each other when we were just tiny babies, right Al?) So, I'll spare everybody all the bad eighties hair pictures we have together and post this one when Allison was my maid of honor at our wedding (in 2001), and caught the bouquet. It must have worked because Allison became a Mrs. in 2003. I'll NEVER forget Allison's wedding....I had JR 5 days later, so you can imagine how large I was....my mom's biggest concern was that I might go into labor at the wedding and she (my mom) was going to miss the cake! Happy Birthday, Allison!

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Let's Decorate!

We've been getting our Christmas decorations out around here. In fact, we spent most of the day trying to get the outside lights up. Jason and JR spent most of the day outside working on the outside lights, although JR spent most of his working time riding his big wheel up and down the driveway. I've been slowly getting some things done inside, and I have finally given up on rearranging our Nativity scenes. JR loves to play with them; so I'm just going to let him arrange them however he wants. This one from China is his favorite. I had to take a picture because he is so funny with it.
For some reason JR thinks that everybody needs to be in the bed with Baby Jesus. He has to use the stable to balance everybody in the bed, which is why it also looks like the Nativity characters are on the roof. In this picture Baby Jesus is actually near the top (just a camel and a sheep are on top of him). I asked JR why everybody needed to be in bed with Baby Jesus and told me, "Because they're sleepy." Well, Can't argue with that!

And here's Jason doing his main Christmas decoration duties. The lights. I've got him doing outside lights and inside lights. Thanks, Jason!





Friday, November 9, 2007

Nutcracker Market

I made my first trip to the Nutcracker Market today, and judging by the amount of women that were there, I'm guessing I'm one of the few that hadn't ever been before. Allison invited me to go with her, which was awesome because Allison always has VIP tickets to everything, and this was no exception. I felt pretty cool when we flashed our special white tickets and got to prance right past the crowd waiting outside. Women were literally lined up waiting for the doors to open! Since we had the special tickets, we got to shop before it opened to the public. There were SO many beautiful Christmas things; and I made it a point to try all the food samples...yum! Women were definitely in a buying frenzy today. Allison and I were standing in front of a display that had 3 reindeer on it talking about how cute they were, when two women pretty much knocked Allison down to grab two of the reindeer! We figured we better act fast if she wanted one. Being that I'm not much help with lifting or stretching these days, poor Allison was trying to reach the last reindeer up on a pedestal without knocking the rest of the display down. She finally got it with a little help from some nice women who were passing by, and she literally got at least 25 compliments on it from the time she bought it until the time we left. So here she is with the must have reindeer of the season!

I didn't buy anything, but I had a blast looking and hanging out with Allison...Thanks, Al for the great tickets and fun day!!

Thursday, November 8, 2007

In Recovery

I'm still trying to recover from the fiasco that was "parent's night" last night at church choir. Of course, the one kid who has only been to choir twice this whole year was the first to show up with mom, dad, and 2 brothers in tow to watch him perform....not sure what they were expecting him to perform since he hadn't been there to learn anything we were doing. This paticular kid is in JR's Sunday School class, and JR LOVES him, so that sent JR right over the edge. It's been awhile since I've seen JR act that crazy. We started out in our choir room, so the kids weren't on risers yet, they were just standing next to/on top of each other. For the first song, I passed out these little lights for them to have while they were singing and dancing to the first song. So can you guess what they did...Let's see...some cried, some stood there, some moved around a little bit (then came and told me they were tired during the middle of the song), but pretty much none of them did what they were supposed to be doing. JR, the boy that never comes, and another little boy took their lights and used them to hit and slap each other the whole time. Of course they had somehow positioned themselves next to the little girl who never talks and cries every week. So with all the hitting, slapping, and acting crazy they were doing, she got knocked down, or hit her in the face, or something else to put her into hysterics. They next 20 minutes was pretty much more of the same, just different songs that they acted like they had never heard before and had no idea what to do. After that was over, we walked them down to get on the risers so they could perform Away in the Manger and Jingle Bells.

Here they are doing Away in the Manger.




Now, check out JR's face during Jingle Bells. He is furious at me for not letting him stand by his friend and putting him between 2 girls.



Is it possible to get fired as a church choir teacher? And if not, can they at least find me a helper?!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Back to Work Again!

Today was my day to work in JR's classroom. Quite a week for me since I had 2 days in a row of JR's class. They were all excited to see me, and it seemed each one individually had to scream out, "JR, Your mom's here!" All the kids were still on a high from the zoo, and every so often they would holler things out like, "We didn't see the rhinos!" "We saw a lion yesterday." Even though the teacher was trying to teach them about the letter "G" and in no way was talking about the zoo trip. After sitting through the "G" lesson, where I had Miracle climb in my lap, and needed me to tie her shoe, it was time for their centers. I helped out in the "sequencing center" and then when we had finished our work I read to them. It was another exciting day at school, as the firetruck came to visit them. JR was more interested in their Dalmatian, Shadow, than the truck. It was a very sweet dog. They all got to walk through the firetruck and pet Shadow if they wanted to. I think JR actually gave the dog a hug! After the firetruck show my time was up, so I headed for home. I'm now getting ready to go to church choir as all the parents are coming tonight and I am supposed to show them what I have been teaching their kids. I'm sure you can guess how excited I am about that!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

It's a Zoo!

I just got home from chaperoning JR's field trip to the zoo. It actually wasn't that bad, we weren't really there that long. As a former teacher I knew they wouldn't give me the "bad" ones to keep up with. I knew those would be grouped with the teachers. My group of 5 were all nice and easy. Here they are: Hassan, Kinzah, Cadance, JR, and Rafael. That's Angela on the end, she wasn't in my group, but needed to have her picture made. Cadance was scared of all the animals and didn't want to run up and look at any of them, so she was really easy, she didn't get 2 steps away from me! We only had one run off and get lost today. If you are a regular reader of my blog, I'm sure you can guess who it was....Yep, Miracle. They found her after about 5 minutes of looking for her, she was mixed in with another class, but it gave the teacher a scare for a minute (especially since Miracle was in her group!)


Here we are at the petting zoo. That's Miracle on the end (sans balloon hair), Rafael, JR, and Mateo (the one they call Tomato) in front.


Here's the whole class. Is this diversity or what?!



I took this picture specifically to prove my point about Hassan. As you will recall from a previous blog, I talked about the huge child that couldn't possibly be 4 years old. Now look at that child! You know how big JR is for 4 and this kid is a whole head taller than JR. I'm thinking he's more like 6 or 7....I don't even think 5 year olds are that big!


And finally here are some of the guys sitting down for lunch. You'll see JR's friend Timothy is sitting next to him, and you can see Kevin in the front....Remember, JR thinks he looks like Timothy and Kevin!

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Renaissance Festival


We've been meaning to make it out to the Renaissance Festival since opening weekend, and we finally made it out there today. Jason LOVES the Renaissance Festival simply for the food. I couldn't believe he didn't have a giant turkey leg today, but not to worry he did have: 2 sausage on a stick, a chicken on a stick, an empanada, some beef jerky, and an ice cream sandwich.


JR wasn't sure about all the food his daddy was eating, but he loved the sausage on a stick and ate most of Granny Sherry's kettle corn.

Both Jason and JR really enjoyed all the games! Here they are shooting arrows at dragons.






Check out JR's face in the first picture! He's not quite sure what to think about the knight on the horse ride, but he did hit the flag with his sword.


Here they are catapulting frogs.


Of course his favorite game of the day was shooting paintballs at a knight. I should have known his favorite would including shooting!





My favorite was watching them try to be "King of the Log". The videos of them are too funny!











It was a beautiful day and we all had a great time!

Friday, November 2, 2007

Ingy Babies Update











I went to the doctor today and the babies are doing great. In fact the doctor said, "things couldn't be better." One of them weighs 1 lb. 11 oz. and the other is 1 lb. 9 oz. They couldn't get a good picture of them together because they were moving around so much...and yes, I can feel them jumping around like crazy! I'm not sure if Baby A is the "me" or the "Jason" in the family. He made sure to at least try and get in both pictures like I would do, but then if you look closely at the second picture you'll see that Baby A is actually mooning the camera! Now I know that's more Jason than me! When looking at the second picture you'll see Baby B's profile, and then if you look to the right, those are 2 legs and a butt that belong to Baby A! Full Moon!! And I thought JR was going to be the "bad" one! (To get a good look at the "moon" just click on the picture to enlarge.)

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Father/Son Adventure

I had forgotten to write about Jason and JR going on their Father/Son Adventure. It happened back in early October, but Jason just got the pictures today. This is just another example of the really nice activities Second Baptist has for kids and families. JR was super excited about going and told me at least a dozen times that "Mommys are not allowed!" I tried my best to look disappointed, but inside I was saying "Woo-Hoo!"

Here's JR painting his pet rock. He really likes his rock and actually named him "Tiny". He wanted me to put Tiny in the office next to the ladybug rock paperweight he had made me, so Tiny wouldn't be lonely.


Here he is with all his projects and winnings. They went on a rock hunt so the blue bag is literally a bag of rocks....come to think of it, I still need to find those rocks a new home....outside! You can see the picture frame that they made in his lap, and if you look at his mouth you'll see what was clearly an ice cream sandwich that was eaten right before this picture was taken. JR is sitting on his big prize of the night. His raffle ticket won the Go, Diego, Go tricycle. You can see he's just a smidge big for it, but he doesn't seem to mind....and with two more on the way, I'm sure it will have lots of miles put on it!