It's been a while

well, we've been one busy family. not too much has happened since the last blog and then all of a sudden i have too many things to blog about. where do i start? spring break sounds good. B, A and me left f-dub for H-town on wednesday. we went straight to see my uncle james (not really my uncle, but that is what i have called him my whole life). he is battling cancer and had just received his second dosage of chemo (sp?). he has a total of 12 rounds in 6 months. this past wednesday was only round 2, 10 more to go. please keep him and my aunt jo ann and their families in your prayers. it was great to see him and hear his hysterical laugh!

thursday...me, the kids and Mimi set off for the Houston Aquarium Adventure downtown. it's a neat place. it's owned and operated by Landry's restaurant chain. they house tons of aquatic animals as well as a rain forest exhibit. there is also a train ride and merry-go-round and a few other fun things to do. best of all, it was only $2 more to valet park! so worth it! we spent the morning checking out the sights and then hit up B's fave Chuck E. Cheese for lunch. i know if A could tell us, she'd say it's her fave too. before the lunch stop, we went by my aunt norma's house. we got to see carrie, stanley, evan and uncle buddy for a quick minute. B was excited to get some pocket change for CEC and A got some clothes!

my mom and i were thinking the kids could do about 2 hours of CEC, but little did we know. i happened to check the time and we had almost been there for 3 hours!! B spent his pocket change on not one, but two ice creams and he ate them all. he also shared his money and bought A and Mommy an ice cream too. he was going to get Mimi one, but she passed. We finally got them out of there and had to catch a nap.

For supper, we were meeting my dad for what he "thought" was his birthday party. thursday the 19th was his actual 60th birthday. we stopped and got a small cake and some candles for him to blow out. we got to see uncle michael, aunt stacie and antone for supper! dad picked a chinese place that he loves to go to. and they didn't have an "american" kids menu, but B liked some kind of ribs and A liked the fried rice. when we did the cake, A kept singing "happy birthday to you" just that one line, over and over and over again. it was really sweet. we went back to my dad's for a little family play time and then we headed back to Mimi's house.

Friday I wanted to sleep in, but HA! not going to happen. me and the kids all slept in the same full sized bed. yes, the big 29 week pregnant belly with A in the middle kicking me most of the night! not to mention the punches and tosses and turns from the unnamed baby in my belly. back to Friday...my dad wanted to see us one more time since he "thought" we were leaving on Saturday to head back to f-dub. but i had to somehow get his cake made for his surprise party on saturday. so friday AM, he wanted me and the kids to meet him at our old place in Cut-N-Shoot...yes, folks that is a town in Texas. Use your imagination on that one. I grew up going there all the time as a child and lived there in high school. now my dad rents out our house until he really retires and moves out there permanently. back to friday...the kids fished, rode the gator and ate lots of stuff. they were having a blast! they didn't want to leave, so my dad offered to put them down for a nap in what we call the "well-house" or "budka" a polish word for barn or shack...not sure. i told him i had a coupon for the outlet mall, so i would go shop. that was my one lie....i went back to my mom's and baked the cake. then, so it wasn't a true lie i did go to the outlet mall. i hit up the motherhood outlet. i found a cute swimsuit that is long enough to go over this expanding belly. my current maternity suit is not cuttin it for my water aerobics class. and for 11 more weeks (plus the summer-post partum), i wanted something longer for my belly. got a great deal too! went back to C-N-S to get the kids. still didn't want to leave, but no choice. i needed to get over to Ginny's to decorate this cake that was hidden on my passenger floor board. finally we made it over to Ginny's. got the kids fed, cake decorated and headed back to my mom's at 10 pm. yawn. i was one tired girl after all this activity!

Saturday was the big day of the party. we did sleep in a little. me and the kids went to the park. i love candy cane park in conroe. we go there often when we stay with my mom. there's two nice playground areas and lots of shade! the kids played their hearts out. the highlight of the morning was the squirrel that ate the core of our apple, then did a few back flips off the tree. i thought we are all going to bust a gut!

we headed off to the party later in the afternoon. it was a 60s them, so several people dressed up in costumes....kudos to my bro and SIL. my dad was very surprised and had no idea! it was a success. i could tell more details, but my fingers are getting tired.

headed back to f-dub sunday. C and the kids went onto weatherford to check out the ponies that Papaw and Marner bought. I stopped in Hillsboro and outlet shopped for summer clothes for the kids. I got some great deals and now A has some short sleeved shirts that fit her. yeah.

and then, 5:30 Monday morning hit. yawn. i wonder why i am so tired!!

how are these colors?

i stayed up later than i should just to make sure the font color was easier to read...for all viewers. wink, wink.

if anyone has any other great places for free backgrounds, do share. the ones i am now using seem to only come in one size--ginormous! i read in their FAQs section about how to fix it and it basically tells you to get a bigger monitor...LOL.

6 month check up

I am getting behind! Last Monday I went for my 6 month check up. Everything was just fine. This time I did pay attention and the heart rate was 136. My countdown is 13 weeks and 5 days left, putting me at 26 weeks and 2 days as of today the 1st of March.

Please say a prayer for me. Tuesday is our TAKS testing day! My kids have worked soooo hard. This will be my first time to "actively monitor" while being pregnant...6 months pregnant! For those not in education (smart people) active monitoring basically means that you can't sit down. This chick will have a chair with a foot rest set up for me to at least sit for a few minutes at a time. Hopefully all goes well!

potty training a girl

i am thinking about when will be the "right" time to potty train A. any ideas? i'd like to have her trained by the time numero tres makes the debut june 5th. She would nearly be 2.5. B was waaaay trained by then. I guess I expect the same with her. He was really easy to train. A however, is so hard headed and strong willed. So, anyone out there that is reading this if you have some awesome tips for training a girl, send those tips my way! Hopefully it won't be too painful on us all.

and the winner is...

this page doesn't have to be all about my kids, right? so tonight i went to my water aerobics class. it's twice a week for an hour. my goal is to attend each week regularly up until i deliver. i need to keep my back as healthy as possible. it is a fantastic workout for people with back problems and of course being pregnant. one of my favorite things we do is push ups. there are 3 levels. level 1 is just standing near the side, hands on the edge of the pool and you simply do a standing push up. level 2, you put your palms on the side/edge of the pool and using your feet and arms, you push yourself out of the water, arms extended and repeat (that's what I do!!) level 3 is you push yourself out of the water and stay out, just lifting up and down (impossible!) what do we do you ask? Push ups for 30 seconds (as many as you can do) and then hold onto the side of the pool and kick as hard as you can for 2 mins. then we do it again (repeat drill 3 times). tonight our teacher had some V day presents she wanted to give away in some mini-contests. the first one was the push up contest. she didn't tell us until after the 2nd set. when we started the 3rd set, i was thinking we'll I'll try and see how far i get. i can usually do 18-20 level 2 push ups in 30 seconds. but it was a contest and I'm thinking the prize is chocolate hence the holiday. So, off we go and our 30 seconds started. I heard her say 10 more seconds and I kept pushing myself...I did 21!! and I won the prize!! LOL. this 24 week pregnant chick won the push up contest! and the reward was no chocolate at all. it's a cute little beaded heart with the breast cancer ribbon as the design. If I were Christy I would post a pic of it, but I don't think of things like that. I'm not really sure what to do with my prize. it's on a long pink satin ribbon, kind of like a Christmas ornament. I think I may take it to school and tell my class. I'm sure they'll get a kick outta my story.

one more thing...

as i went to do the dishes just now, i thought of something else i could blog about. so i haven't been really known to have cravings with either pregnancy nor this one. my only true rememberance of cravings that I had with B & A were in the first trimester. i would have hurt someone for a whataburger with cheese, bacon and it must have had jalepenos (i can't spell Spanish, Maria!) on it. I ate several of those only to find come second trimester and beyond in life I didn't want it. With this pregnancy I had been getting back into the gym and focusing on shedding a few lbs before I was planning on getting pregnant. Then, the whole thing happened where the doc said guess what, you're pregnant! to prove it to myself, I drove straight to a Taco Bueno and ordered nachos, queso with jalepenos. i ate those little suckers like they were chocolates! i knew then, that indeed i was pregnant. other than that, I don't recall many other "i-will-hurt-someone" cravings.

today about 9 am, i had a strong craving hit. i wanted/needed a blue bell ice cream sandwich! it was all i could think about all day long. as soon as i got home, i didn't stop to get an ice cream sandwich so i had a BIG bowl of Blue Bell Chocolate Extreme! it is my second favorite flavor. Blue Bell Fudge Brownie Nut is hands-down the best ice cream flavor on the planet. Chocolate Extreme is really inching in on it's territory. The bowl of ice cream settled the craving, but i'm afraid it will come back tomorrow. What's odd to me, is how I feel like i could hurt someone for chocolate about 4:00. By 7:00, don't even want to look at chocolate--which is very rare for me.

Happy Eating!

days of our lives

well not much is going on with us. i thought i would record some crazy and cute things going on with B&A.
*B is suddenly interested in what is going on with my belly. usually every evening he wants to feel the baby kick. he wants me to fully expose the belly (and ever expanding belly button) and put his hand on it. although he keeps his hand on for about 5 seconds, he doesn't really feel a kick. but he says he does. he also likes to say he wants to "hear" the baby. he puts his ear to my belly and says he can hear it. occasionally he speaks to the belly, but the belly hasn't spoken back to him. A is still clueless about what is going on with the belly.

*Last Friday C and I had to have a conference with the daycare folks. A is a biter, scratcher, fighter, etc. She has probably bitten about half of the month in January alone. Those poor kids in her class. My heart goes out to their parents. So, I wanted to meet with the teachers and director to come up with a plan. Last week she only bit once, good news. Today is Wednesday...3 days in and no bite, but today she kept telling all the teachers "no!" and hitting her friends. Needless to say, she became one with the time-out chair today. hope she grows out of this soon.

*this week B has been showing us how to say the colors in sign language. it is now a regular thing for him. tonight we briefly watched a thing on the history channel about bears. so any time there was one, he would show me how to say the color in sign language and want me to do it.

*this morning when i went to wake A up, she had no diaper on! yep, that's right. at some point in the night, she got up, went to the bathroom, took off her diaper and got back in bed. i found her in the nice puddle of wet this morning. when i asked her what happened, her response "i poo-poot" over and over again. luckily, there was no trace of "poo-poot" around. i thought the nightgown was cute, but not if she will take her diaper off--not so cute. we'll see what she does tonight. i made sure she was wearing a pant set tonight.

*B has begun to "read" his first book. we were beaming with pride just a few nights ago. At Christmas this year, I got The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton. We have Barnyard Dance and it's a classic in this house. So, I thought I'd get another one. C and I only read it a few times to the kids. About a week ago, B said "no mommy I will read Going to Bed Book." I'm thinking OK, yeah right, it's not a repetitive text book, so he can't do this." he fooled me!! This book is really a story without repetition. he didn't read it word for word, but he got the gist of it down. Here lately he wants to read it to us every night. We'll just keep working on it.

*And of course A has to try to read something as well. Her fave is Brown Bear. So she usually picks up Brown Bear and will "read" it is a big scary voice. It's hilarious. She reads it really loud too. All 3 of us sit and laugh at her, so she loves it. The really funny thing is that she picks up any other book...for example The Story of Jesus was just the other night. She opens the book and says "Jesus, Jesus what do you see" turns the page and goes with whatever is on the page. It was so funny. Now she does it with any book she picks up. They all follow the pattern of Brown Bear. She is a mess.

that's about all for now. i am gearing down for the big 3rd grade TAKS test on March 3. i can't wait for it to be over!! then it will be time to hunker down for the Math TAKS at the end of April. teaching is supposed to be fun, right?