Enjoying the outdoors...

When we can, we've been trying to get outside more, if the weather permits. The temps have been changing from day to day. It'll be 66 one day and 52 the next but I really can't complain. Overall, its been great weather, except for the rain. I am just hoping for nice weather for this weekend. Why? Because my family is coming!! WOO HOO! I can't wait! So far the forecast is showing sun and around 62-65 most days! I hope it stays that way! They will arrive Thursday evening and will be here until late morning or so on Monday. Very quick trip, but at least we'll get to see them.

Here's Kenzie wearing her pink hat. She had it for about 3 days and now its lost. We can't find it anywhere. Good thing it only cost me a buck fifty :)
Goofy Aydan being ornery as ever! My little man turns 4 on Saturday!!!!!!!!! WHOA!!

Walking down the dock with the dog at the apartment.

This is at the park where we go a lot to feed the birds. There were a ton of them on this day. The area we live in is called a Bird Santuary and is known for the variety of birds, especially in the winter.

We even saw this little guy! We saw him swimming in the water and he even ate some of the bread we threw in. Then Hunter saw him and barked at him. That scared him so he swam away and hid. Later on we saw him venture onto land. Kenzie knew right away that it was a beaver because he had orange looking teeth. A little known fact I never knew?? But she was right...can you see his orange front teeth? LOL! Weird!

Well, I guess thats about all for today. Not much new going on, just wanted to share a few pics.

title changes

Just an FYI, if you notice my blog title changing often, please disregard. I've been wanting to change the title for a while, mostly just to get my last name out of the title, but I can't seem to come up with a name that I like. Its not a big deal, but I want the 'perfect' title. Weird, I know. So anyways, I may leave the one I have now, or change it again until I'm satisfied. Who knows. If anyone has any ideas, leave me a comment; I'd love any feedback! :)

Monster Jam!

Saturday night we went to Monster Jam at Reliant Stadium. This was the kids first time and they really enjoyed it-thanks to their ear plugs, lol! Along with monster trucks, they had 4 wheeler races, stadium trucks, and flip contests, which is where they had these street stock cars drive up a small ramp to see how many times they could flip the car. Only about 3 or 4 cars were actually able to flip over and I think the winner flipped twice.

Before the event started, they let people down in the stadium to look at the Monster Trucks and get autographs from the drivers. It was so packed down there so we didn't stay down long before we went up and found our seats.
This is the view from our seats with everyone still down in the stadium. This is the same field that the Houston Texans play NFL football and the crowd makes it look small!

Here's one of the trucks out on the track. The Monster Trucks raced and they also did freestyle performances, which is the best part.

Having a snack before everything started.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and whatever else I'm behind on...

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! We sure did but kinda glad everything is back to normal, although I loved my time off that I was able to be at home with the kids. Christmas was pretty laid back. We just stayed at home, ate good food, and the kids played with all their new toys. I have pictures, but not on the computer yet.

New Year's Eve, we hit up Chili's. We got a gift card for there from my sister for Christmas so we thought that'd be a good night to use it. We got there pretty early because I figured it'd get busy they later it got. The food was great (and so were the marguaritas! It's ok, I only had 1). Once we left there, we went home and hung out. We played the Wii with the kids most of the night. I think we were actually in bed before midnight because we're just cool like that.

Kenzie is still off from school. She doesn't go back until tomorrow! She was out for like 2 1/2 weeks, I know, crazy right!

Other than the holiday stuff, not much else has been going on. This Saturday, we are going to Monster Jam (monster trucks) at Reliant Stadium so that should be fun. Aydan is into watching them right now so he'll love it. Definately going to have the kids wear ear plugs though because it gets pretty loud and both of them don't do well with loud noises.

The last weekend in January, my brother, his fiance (oh yeah, my brother got engaged!!! Woo Hoo), Mom, and Dad will be coming down for a few days. The Houston Marathon is that weekend and my brother was going to run it however it was already full so he's just going to run the 5K race. I had thought about running it too but I haven't been able to go run in a long time and I'm feeling very out of shape so I don't think I'll do it this time. So anyway, we are looking forward to having visitors again. No one has came since we moved into our new apartment and its always exciting when people come visit!

That weekend is also Aydan's birthday so we will be pretty busy that whole weekend. I can't believe he will be 4 years old! I don't want him to grow up because right now he's so cuddly and lovable! When he's like 10 or 11 he won't be coming up to me all the time saying he loves me and giving me hugs and kisses. So sad! I guess all I can do is enjoy it while it lasts! :)

Well, that's about all I know right now! Hope you all have a great week!

Shots and x-rays....Yuck!

I took the kids to their check-ups at the doctor last Friday afternoon. They ended up getting flu shots, which Kenzie was not happy about. Apparently, she's very scared of needles. She hasn't had shots in about 3 years, so I think mostly she forgot about them. Aydan did ok with them, but he went first so he didn't really know what to expect. Here are their height and weight stats:

Mackenzie-8 yrs old- Height: 47 inches Weight: 57 lbs

Aydan-3 yrs (4 yrs in Jan)- Height: 40 inches Weight: 43.5 lbs

Well, they were a little concerned about Kenzie's height. They said she wasn't even on the charts for her age. She was well below average height for other girls her age. She asked me if we noticed that she was short. Well obviously we did, but I told her I thought she would eventually have a growth spurt. Kenzie has said that kids at school tell her she is short and she is aware that she is a small girl, but we tell her not to worry, that she is cute just the way she is. The doctor said that she wanted to run some tests on her blood and take an x-ray of her left wrist, which will give them her 'bone age.' I never knew there was a difference in bone age compared to actual age but I guess there is. She said if her bone age is less than her actual age then they would consider growth hormones for her. If the bone age was the same or older than her actual age, then she said the growth hormones wouldn't work.

So, Monday we headed off to get the blood work and the x-ray done, and of course we had to go to 2 diffrent places for each one. She had never had her blood drawn so she was pretty nervous about it but she did really well, considering they had to draw it from each arm because the first arm wasn't giving enough blood fast enough. Poor girl! She only shed a couple of tears. The x-ray went alot better! Fast and painless! We went out for lunch afterwards and got milkshakes to cheer her up.

So now, I'm just waiting to hear back from the doctor what, if anything, they found out. I'm not sure what to think about the growth hormone idea. I don't want her to grow freakishly large either ya know! I'm sure they wouldn't do that, but its just scary. I think its just a genetic thing. Danny and I are both fairly short and so are our families so who knows. Aydan, on the other hand, is a big boy so maybe he didn't get the 'short gene.' :) So, we are trying not to make a big deal out of it because I'm sure it will be fine.

Well, I will keep everyone updated on what we find out.

P.S. I finally got all my gift wrapping done! Oh yeah!! :)

Santa and snow on a 75 degree day...

No it wasn't Christmas in July but I was beginning to wonder. This Saturday was the Christmas festival at the park by our old apartment building. The weather was awesome, although it didn't feel one bit Christmasy. They had a truck come in and make a couple of patches of man-made snow for the kids to play in. The kids around here just think its the greatest thing ever! It never snows here (at least not enough to amount to anything.) I'm surprised the snow lasted as long as it did with it being so warm out. They also had cookies, lemonade, hot cocoa, popcorn, face-painting, and crafts for the kids to make. Best of all, Santa made his appearance.

Aydan, being shy at the moment, wouldn't stop making faces with his hands as you can see in the picture. Kenzie talked to Santa a bit but she did say that he kept pushing up his beard and she could see his gray mustache underneathe. I let her know that he was just one of Santa's helpers because Santa is too busy at the North Pole right now. I think she bought it, for now. Phew!

Well, these pictures are out of order but there was a boat parade in the evening along the water. All of the boats were lit up and some were playing Christmas music. It was very pretty. It was a calm, clear night for it, unlike last year when it was so foggy you could barely see the lights at all.

Before the parade began, there was a short fireworks show, which was also very pretty.

More boats.

More fireworks.

The kids had a great time throwing snowballs at each other, although they ended up being more like ice balls-Ouch!!

I'm so ready for Christmas to get here!! For one, maybe the kids will play with their new toys and stop asking to play with my iphone :) Aydan has figured out how to download more apps and one night while he was playing a game (or at least, I thought he was) he ended up downloading $4 worth of new apps. I'm just glad they weren't the expensive ones. I told him he owed me $4 and he looks at me with his eyes brows narrowed and says "Seriously?" I about died! Maybe you had to be there, but it was hillarious. I think I was just surprised that he even used that word. His vocabulary is definately expanding, lol!

Well, thats all for now. Keep checking back for more updates :)

******Merry Christmas to you all!******

bunk beds, stockings, and other things I accomplished this weekend......

The kids got a new set of bunk beds-Finally! I put them together all by myself, except for the beams that go across the bottoms. As you can see, Aydan helped out a little too! He is obsessed with this drill now! He did a pretty good job :)

Here is the finished product. They can be switched to 2 individual twin beds too, which will be nice when the kids get their own bedrooms eventually.

I'm a little bit leary of Aydan being on the top but we will see how he does-so far so good. Kenzie wanted the bottom so she can hang up blankets from the top bunk and have her own little "tent." They love the beds and so do I. They still have lots of room in their bedroom to play. Hunter likes the new beds too, as you can see he's made himself comfortable.

We tried something a little different than we've done before and I bought some plain Christmas stockings and some craft supplies and let the kids decorate them themselves. Well, I ended up making Aydan's because he lost interest after a while and went and played, but Kenzie did her's entirely on her own. Aren't they cute? ;)

Kenzie and I decorated one for Hunter too. Santa might bring him some treats this year.

~Have a great week!!~