Did someone say car?

Over the Labor Day weekend Tom went to Utah to get his 67' GT convertible mustang project car that was left behind at his parents.

Tom rented a U-Hal truck and a trailer and packed every thing in. Then him, his dad and brother had a fun "little" road trip back to Houston.

By the time they made it the 1,668 miles, all three were very exhausted as you can imagine but they had a good time with the time they had together.

Unfortunately Steve and Jason were not able to stay too long because Jason had to get back to work but the time we did have with them was nice. We ALWAYS enjoy visitors no matter how long they are here.

~~~~~

Now that everything is here, and I mean everything, I have no room to park my car in the garage! Sheesh, I don't even have room to walk into the garage. Needless to say he brought more than just the parts he needs for his car but enough to do two full cars and then some! I need to take pictures just to show you how bad it really is! Actually, I am surprised they fit it ALL!

Oh hum...one day I will have a garage to park in again. It's just a good thing it doesn't snow here or Tom would be in T-R-O-U-B-L-E!

Here are picture of the car before everything else got cramed in.

It's a Race

Saturday August 22nd Tom ran a sprint triathlon. He did great! He had a goal of finishing it in 2 hrs. and 10 min. and beat that by 9 min. & 56 sec.

Awesome job Honey!

Cole & Benjamin having some fun while we waited

Some of our other friends who did the triathlon as well
(Lincoln, Rod, Tom & Mike)
They all did a great job!




Avery and her Hero

Poor Mana being made fun of for skipping out on the race at the last minute
I should mention though, his wife had a baby just two nights before!

Congratulations Mana & Annette!

Congratulations to those of you who swam, rode and ran!

Kids in Box

As we are preparing to move yet again the kids had a little fun in between packing.

Can't you see the excitement on their faces!
They really were having fun, I promise!

Come and Gone

Over the summer we had a couple, couple interns move into the ward, Michael & Kristin and Adam & Elizabeth. Both great couples but we became great friends with the Calls, Michael & Kristin!

We had some good times while they were here and we all got along really well! Only problem is the summer is over and they have gone back to Provo, Utah where Michael has been going to BYU and is in his last year of school! :( We are going to miss you, actually, we do miss you!

I am so glad we had the opportunity to become wonderful friends!

Hungry?

Oh...you said READ the book NOT EAT the book! Silly me!

This morning Cole got up early, 6:45, but Tom and I were not done sleeping so as the "good" parents that we are we turned on cartoons for him to watch while we got a little more sleep.

When we woke up I went in to check on Cole and found chunks of his book missing! He ate 9 corners out of the book! Apparently we don't feed our children either!

Video Time

Here are a few small clips of Avery (sorry it sounds like we have aliens landing in the background)

Army crawl



Pulling herself up with a little dancing and growling



Being cute

Our Little Miss....

...is 9 months old!

I can not believe our baby girl is 9 months already! It seams like just yesterday I was in the hospital pushing for an hour and a half trying to get that big head out!

Now look at her

~~~

We had her 9 month check-up on the 29th. She is 29 & 3/4 in. tall (96 percentile) and weighs 20 lbs. 15.5 oz. (80 percentile)! Her head circumference is 18 in. (89 percentile) Big Head, but I already knew that!

I have a baby on each end of the spectrum, Cole is small and Avery is huge! Who'd a thunk it!

She is doing so much!

*She army crawls to get from point "A" to point "B" and is very fast doing it.
*She pulls herself up to furniture.
*She say's mama and dada.
*She has so many cheesy expressions it cracks us up!
*She is eating soft table foods and loves it! (no teeth yet)
*Her hair is finally growing in!
*She has started taking baby steps.

She has been such a joy to have in our family! We love you Miss!

video to come of her army crawling and pulling herself up!

Bath for Two

Life has gotten a little easier!

Now that Avery is older and can sit without falling I figured now would be a good time to let them start bathing together.

It really has made things easier on me! Now I don't have to fill the tub, bathe Avery let the water out, fill it again then bathe Cole! WONDERFUL... and plus they have a lot of fun together!

Uh....hello

Cole just looks so cute to me in this picture



Avery gets really excited when she is in the tub



The look Cole is giving Avery cracks me up!

Cute kids!

Cooling Down

Our Little Stud!

July 4th 2009!

I love the 4th of July! All of the festivities, family, friends, food and fire works! Yeah for the forth! Sorry, just noticing a bunch of "F" words there!

~~~~

Our 4th celebrations were great!

With any celebration there needs to be food and there was, lots of it! We met Mike & Rachel over at Mana & Annette's house, deep fried a turkey and had lots of yummy side dishes to go along! We all stuffed ourselves pretty good.

After our delicious meal we met up with Brent & Anya and headed to Galveston to play on the beach, enjoy each others company, let the kids run out their energy, watch fire works and eat some more food!

After the fire works Mike was wonderful enough to make us funnel cakes while we waited out the traffic. No celebration is complete without funnel cakes!

Cole was so much more into the fire works this year! It was so fun to see his excitement!

I think this was the start of a new tradition for our family, at least while we live in Houston!

Avery having a grand old time!



Cole & Caralyn being rambunctious toddlers



Cole loves eating watermelon!
Can you tell, look at that belly!



Our attempt at a family picture



Cole tripped in the sand and got a mouth full!
Poor kid!



Cole watching and loving the fire works



Mike making funnel cakes

~~~
There really is nothing like being up close to the fire works with the people you love in this great nation we live in! I know it is a hassle leaving afterwords with all of the traffic and tired kids but to me it is worth it! I love the feelings I get as I watch those big, booming lights in the sky and remembering what we are celebrating!

I Did It!

I have created a new blog just for giveaways! I wanted to keep our family posts separate from my giveaway posts so booth happenings didn't get over run by my addiction to giveaways!

Please visit my new blog @: givemegiveaways.blogspot.com!

Play Set

For Cole's birthday Tom built him a GREAT play set!

We looked around at quite a few different sets and all of the cheaper ones seamed to be built cheap and the good quality sets were too expensive so, Tom used one of his many useful skills to build our own! He did an awesome job, like I knew he would! There isn't anything he can't do!

It still has a few finishing touches, like a roof, but it has the slide, a climbing wall and three different swings. As the kids get older we will build onto it to make it more big kid fun!

Cole loves it and I think this play set will get many, many years of use out of it!