Gobble Gobble...a bit late

This year we went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving. It was so much fun to see my family and Stu's family. We headed our Wednesday night and had a jam-packed weekend. Thursday was so filled with food I don't know where to start. We had an early lunch with my family and then headed to Stuart's sister's house for a late lunch. In a two hour time period, we ate TWO Thanksgiving meals. Needless-to-say we were stuffed. Thursday night we hung out at my parents house and let the boys play with their cousin Kate. She is precious! She loved her Uncle Stu (he had a very calming effect on her) and was really interested in Tucker.

Friday morning we all got ready and attempted to take a Chisholm/Doss/Brooks family picture. Funny is a good word to describe it.

Friday night we drove out to Gruene,TX to celebrate a baby shower. We ate at the Gristmill. YUMMY! The town was so beautiful-covered with Christmas lights. The boys had fun running around and being outdoors.

Then Saturday morning I went shopping at Charming Charlie's with my mom-fabulous! It's like an upscale version of Sam Moon. Plus it has shoes and clothes. I should have robbed a bank before I went....

Sunday morning we drove home and were welcomed by 52 degrees and windy weather. Ahh, home sweet home!

Knock Knock

2Ts & 3Cs

Tyson, Chase, Cassi, Tucker and Ciera

T C T C

The boys

The youngest ones (soooo sweet)

Snooze

Ok, I'm just going to put this out there-I LOATHE the snooze button. I have never quite understood why people use it. I have always been the type of person that jumps up at the first micro beep of the alarm and promptly turns it off. There might have been a few instances where I slept a little later, but they are few and far between. Now that I am a SAHM, I don't really have a need for an alarm lock because a) my children wake up at an insane time of 6 am, b) I don't really have that many activities that require me to be up and dressed before my kids have me up and c) I have no life, thus refering you back to reason b.

My wonderful husband on the other hand has to be up and out of the house by 7:15 am. Not too bad. He sets his alarm for 6 am. I don't understand this really; our children are usually up at that time so why not get up when they/I do? Regardless, he sets his alarm. 6 am...Beep, beep, beep...Snooze. 6:09 am...Beep, beep, beep...Snooze. 6:18 am...Beep, beep, beep...Snooze. 6:27 am...Beep, beep, beep...Snooze. I come into the run, turn on the lights and pull the covers off my supposed-to-be-in-the-shower-by-now-husband and reprimand him for making me listen to the horrendous noise of the alarm. "I'm getting up honey. See, my eyes are open...." As he rolls over and tries to pull the covers back up. Ugggggggghhhhhhh.

Seriously, why not just set the alarm for the time that you ACTUALLY want to get up? So now my fantastic husband has to rush thru getting ready and runs out the door in a huff. See, if you would have just gotten up when you set your alarm to wake you, everything would have run sooooo much more smoothly.

To add insult to injury (not really, I just thought that sounded cool) Tucker spilled coke onto my laptop and now the space bar, shift, c, v, d, f, g, m, and , keys are sticking. Grrr.

Another side note-I am totally digging natural gas. Our electric bill was waaay better than I thought it would be from last month. Yay!

New Do

New Friends

Last weekend one of my friends from high school came to visit with her hubby and sweet little girl. This was my first time meeting baby A and it was so fun catching up and comparing life now that we have kiddos. The boys enjoyed playing with baby A, but Tucker got a little too aggressive towards the end of their visit and slapped her, twice. It was so embarrassing. Here are some pics from our visit...

Tucker sitting with daddy after his second slap

Trying to get a group shot

Tyson wasn't cooperating very well and Tucker wanted no part

Tyson and baby A

Tyson and baby A's daddy. He didn't quite know what to think of boys :)

Baby A and her dog (Turbo stayed locked up so he wouldn't make matters worse)

Here's to MY Vet

Mr. Pilot

Yes, that is a HUGE amount of cocaine. It was one of the largest seizures Stuart's ship had.

That's Stu in the very back (standing).

Stu and his brother

Being sworn into the Coast Guard by his father

This Is How We Roll

Blessed Sleep

When I was younger I adored daylight savings. I mean, who doesn't want an extra hour of sleep? Plus the whole when it was midnight it was really only 11 pm so I could stay out an extra hour. Those where the days. Now things are a little different. As one of my friends so aptly coined it, "whomever invented daylight savings did not have kids." Seriously. I knew we were going to have a hard time with this since last year it took about two weeks for the boys to get back on schedule. Luckily, Sunday was Stuart's morning to get up with the boys! I prepared him, but he wasn't quite ready for the 5:15 am wake up call. Ahh, blessed sleep.
The rest of the day pretty much followed the same awful guidelines. Tucker fell asleep around 9 am (which meant no nap in the afternoon). They were both ready to eat lunch at 10:30 am...etc. Both the boys were the definition of crabby and neither could be consoled with anything other than candy from Halloween. I never thought I would be one of those parents that gave in so quickly, but when you have a 3 year old and a 1.5 year old that have been screaming and crying for 2 hours straight and don't want to to anything you'll do just about anything for some peace. That lasts exactly 5 minutes or until the candy becomes a complete mess and isn't edible anymore.
Side note-along with the inventor of daylight savings not having any kids, they also conveniently placed it after the biggest sugar induced holiday. Come on.
We did have fun this weekend though. My parents and one of my sisters and her boyfriend came to visit. Although we had to share one shower (Stuart is still working on the second one) it was so nice to have people at MY house. Of course the boys were beside themselves to see Mimi and Peepaw plus they got to wear costumes.
My sister's boyfriend brought us some buffalo steaks (long story) and we grilled them on Sunday night. They were awesome! If you have never had buffalo-try it! Thanks SH!!
And lastly, here are some pics from the last few weeks....

Trick-or-Treat

We Did It Again

Tyson went pee-pee in the potty for the SECOND time today! Woo hoo! It was fantastic. Stuart bought some new Halloween gum and as soon as Tyson saw it he said he wanted to go. Sure enough, while retrieving a magazine for him to read (wonder where he got that from??) he went potty. Yea!

Sorry to all you non parents that are reading this-pottying is a BIG deal. Sadly it's the highlight of my day!

On other news, congrats to Brittany and Mike on the birth of their sweet baby girl! Also, good luck to Justin and Shannon-they are having their baby boy on Friday!!

My parents and sister are coming tomorrow to help us celebrate Halloween so be looking for pictures soon! Happy Wednesday!

Firsts

Phew-what a week! We have had a lot of firsts in our house this week on top of the continued unpacking. I finally got some pictures hung and decorated a little in the living room and dining room. Pat on the back for me. I keep putting unpacking off because I don't think this is really real. We can't own a house. We can't have our own appliances. We can't have neighbors that are so scared of our dog that they are putting up a new fence at not cost to us so that they won't be frightened by his huge head whenever they get in their car...I digress.
So here are our exciting firsts:
I got my first cold/virus/sickness of the year. Yippee! It was horrible. I hadn't felt that bad in a long time. Luckily this was a three day weekend so Stu was here to help.
I got my first BRAND NEW appliance! Our oven came in and it is bea-u-ti-ful! Too bad it's not hooked up yet.. (hint hint honey)
We had our first major homeowner crisis-our AC went out. Apparently a gecko thought it would be pleasant to crawl into the circuit board and electrocute himself and in the process fry our unit. Nice little guy. Luckily we happened to have a cold front this weekend so we were able to manage with windows open and fans on high from Friday till Monday. Don't problems always happen on the weekend??
We got our first electric bill. I'll leave it at that.
We got our first mortgage payment coupon/bill. Gulp.
Tyson went peepee in the potty!!!!! Woo hoo!! It was the greatest thing in the world. Too bad it hasn't been repeated, but at least there is hope that it will happen again. Plus the gum balls that we bought last night are really making him crazy, but he can't have one till he uses the big-boy potty.
We had our first house guest! Well, I guess Stuart's grandparents were our first. No, I guess Stuart's dad was our first when he helped us move. Either way, one of my greatest friends, Laura came into town to see her nephews. Aunt Lala as we affectionately call her got to play and see the boys in action. Fun fun!

3+0=30!!

Today is Stuart's 30th birthday! Three decades of life. What a ride! Happy birthday honey!

Tucker Tucker Tucker

So my loving, adorable, precious one and a half year old is a stinker! He is soooo much harder than Tyson. He gets into everything, he climbs on everything, he is fearless, he literally attacks everything that he does and usually ends up falling head first. Gotta love him!

Since we have been moving, I have let a lot of things slide because I'm either unpacking and just don't have the energy or care to "guide" him. SO here are the top three headliners from the tornado that is known as Tucker:

While letting the dog out he very neatly removed ALL the files from the filing cabinet (because it's still in the living room) and *organized* all the papers in a mosaic around the living room. (I still have yet to reorganize and put away)

While unpacking, Tucker found a sharpie and with an expert hand left his mark on the kitchen cabinets and the walls in the dining room (the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser has gotten most of it up, but it takes a lot of elbow grease)

While we were playing outside, I came inside to say hi to Stuart and left my cell phone outside. When I returned my phone was in my sweet son's hands and turned off. No biggie. Hit end to turn back on. Nothing. Hit end again. Nothing. Hmm, maybe it needs to be plugged in. Plug in. Nothing. "Stuart!!" After taking my entire phone apart, my handy husband deducted that Tucker had bent the phone so much that he severed something that controls something else and therefore my phone is fried.

How does this kid do it?

On a sweet note, he didn't take a nap today so he fell asleep on his daddy around 5:45 pm. Doesn't he look like an angel?


We tried to wake him up to eat and this is what happened....

Laundry

I finally got my washing machine and dryer hooked up!! It only took a week, but now we can have clean clothes. Our new house has gas hook ups, so one of the things that we had to purchase was a gas dryer. Anywho we've had it since we moved in but Stuart had to connect the lines. This meant that he had to spend 3 hours under the house last night. Then at lunch today he had to get one more part and now all is well. Now begins that laundry process. It's amazing how much laundry piles up when you don't do it for over a week! I was seriously on my last pair of undies this morning...