Christmas 2010

We had such a fun and busy Christmas break. Here are a few of the highlights. We went to San Antonio two different times, the first time for my families' Christmas, and the second time to welcome Martin & Dominique to Texas! Martin moved last week and Dominique will be moving here permanently when she finishes school this summer. It is going to be so fun to get to see them whenever we go to SA for a visit! The girls love their Uncle Martin & Aunt Nikki! We also had alot of fun hanging out with Brian's family, especially our new nephew, Matthew Ray! We especially enjoyed just being together as a family and spending lots of time just playing and hanging out with each other.

Playing at the park in SA

Milking the cow at the SA Children's Museum

They all loved getting a turn to be the captain of the airplane. Here's Captain Avery.

Captain Laney

Papa & Nana with the girls on the Riverwalk

My school friends had a playdate at my parents house, which was so much fun! These are the girls that I grew up with and went to school with from Kindergarten -12th grade. So they are pretty much like family. Pretty crazy all the kids we had running around, but it was fun to see all my girls and all their sweet kids. Some of the babies I hadn't met at all yet, so it was very special getting to meet all the little ones and catch up with my buddies.

Driving back home from SA, we turned around to find Laney looking like this:

Our first nephew, Matthew Ray, was born on Dec. 18. Here's Brandon (Brian's youngest brother) and his wife Adriana, with their sweet Christmas present from God. Matthew is beautiful and healthy and we are so excited to have him join the family. He and our son will be about 3 months apart, so we're hoping these cousins will be best buddies as the grow up.

Here's Laney pushing cousin Tara in the doll stroller. These two are about 4 months apart and are already forming a sweet friendship.

Uncle Brent & Aunt Jenn gave the girls dress-ups for Christmas, so here is princess Laney, Doctor Avery and ZooKeeper Tatum. They loved themselves in these fun costumes!

Avery got to be a sheep in our Christmas Eve service at church. She did a great job, and so did the rest of the nativity crew. Here's our little sheep practicing before the service started.

We were so proud of this little lamb!

After the service, there was hot chocolate in the lobby, so we all played and talked with friends while we drank (and spilled) hot chocolate.

Here's GiGi and Tatum after the service

Nana & Papa drove to Houston on Christmas Day to spend the day with us. It was so special to have them at our house, and the girls loved showing them all their new presents.

The biggest present this year was a new trampoline! Brian put it up the day before and covered all the backyard windows with blankets so the girls couldn't see outside. They didn't really question why there were blankets on the windows, which we were very suprised about. But the reactions were so cute and funny when they looked behind the blankets and saw the trampoline outside on Christmas morning. Even though it was cold, we got bundled up and tried it out. Even Nana got in on the action. She actually helped Laney learn how to jump on it, which was so cute!

Laney moved out of her room into Tatum's room. Avery decided she wanted to move into the guest room, so for now, she has her own room, and Tatum & Laney are sharing a room. Laney was not crazy about sleeping without rails, so we decided to move the crib with her. She is much happier being caged in. So Brian worked on baby boy's room over the break and here's a glimpse of his work. More pics to come...

This was at Avery's Girl Scouts meeting over the break. She is doing Daisy scouts now, which has been really fun for her the past few months. They rented a snow machine, which they loved! Since we rarely see real snow, they couldn't tell the difference. They loved throwing snow balls at their baby brother, which was not so much fun for me.

So Martin & Dominique have a Great Dane named Tex, which the girls are now in love with. He really is such a good dog. Very well-behaved and sweet.
Tatum and Tex were about the same height, when he has his head up.

Avery loving on Tex and Aunt Nikki

My two sweet big brothers and I outside Mi Tierra at the San Antonio market. Seriously some of the best Mexican food in the world. YUM!

Morgan's Wonderland is an amazing new park in San Antonio, built especially for kids with special needs, but open to the public. My brother, Matthew and his girlfriend, Tracie, helped build the park over the past couple years and it is amazing. For kids in wheelchairs or with other handicaps, who have never gotten to swing or see-saw or feel "normal", this is a place where they can do all that and more! Here's Avery in the sensory village, where she got a butterfly to land on her shoulder.

Aren't these the cutest weather reporters you ever saw?

Here we are aboard the Wonderland Express train. Tatum is sitting with Dominique's parents, who drove down from Michigan to help them move to Texas. Dee & Duane were so sweet to the girls and we really enjoyed getting to know them better. My brother, Matthew and his girlfriend Tracie and Avery, and my mom & I with Laney.

Here's Tatum getting to hold our new little Matthew in her lap!

Tatum needed to try out her new "big girl" fishing pole and they both needed to try out their new bait, so here they are fishing at Copper Lakes. No bites, but Brian said Tatum did a good job casting and they had fun wearing their new fishing shirts and hats he gave them.

We feel so blessed and grateful to have family so close and for our kids to have so many opportunities to be loved on by family and friends!

Playing Outside

So it was 80 degrees yesterday and now it's 50. Gotta love this Houston weather. Yesterday, I finished giving final exams and the girls had their last day of school, so today we are home and we are happy!

Tater-tot makes me so proud... there have been many times in her 3.5 years that I have had random people approach me and say "Are you Tatum's mom?". I proudly say, "Yes." And they usually say something like, "I love Tatum! She is the sweetest, funniest, happiest little girl!". And I agree. She is a joyful blessing to our family.

Avery is a very responsible and loving big sister. She is also becoming very independent and sometimes I can't believe she is only 5... it seems like she is 13.

Laney is the pride and joy of her two big sisters. They are both so enamored with her and want her near them all the time. They fight over who gets to sit next to her and who gets to help wipe her nose when she has snot. Precious.

8 days until Christmas! We can hardly wait!

What we've been up to...

well, back in august, our women's ministry coordinator at our church asked me if i would be interested in facilitating a women's bible study later on this fall. i have no idea why she asked me. i don't mean that to sound falsely humble. there are a ton of talented, Godly women in our church who have actual experience doing things like that, and i have never done it, so i really don't know what made her think i would be a good candidate for it, but for whatever reason, she asked me. so i talked to brian about it and we prayed about. he really encouraged me and said something like "you're always preaching & teaching us here at home, i think you were born to do something like this." so i told her i would do it, without knowing what on earth i was getting myself into.

so on wednesday nights at our church, the girls do AWANA, which i am so excited about. avery & tatum are both memorizing Scripture each week and laney gets loved on in the nursery. brian does the men's bible study and i do the women's bible study. we did a Motherwise study for the first part of the fall semester, which was led by a very talented and energetic speaker. So at the beginning of November, that study was over and it was time to start the study i was to facilitate.

so for the past 5 weeks, i have been studying and preparing like nothing i have ever done before. it has consumed pretty much all my "free" time, hence my long seperation from my blog. i don't know if it's supposed to be this much work to prepare a weekly bible study. i have told brian all along that i enjoy the studying and researching and i enjoy the leading of the Holy Spirit while i'm typing up notes on whatever the topic is each week. it has been a learning experience in many ways, which i am very thankful for, but i must admit, i am super glad to have a month off from our regular wednesday night routine so i can decompress from all of it.

if i have learned anything through this first month of leading a bible study, i have learned how very little i have to offer. i am pretty much the least creative, least motivating, driest, emptiest, weakest person i have ever met. i have always known i needed Him, but i have experienced that desperate need for Him more through this experience than i have in a long time. so that is where i've been. trying out something new. not sure if it's a good fit for me. but nevertheless, thankful to have this opportunity to try it out.

so besides all that, we are excited to meet our first nephew in less than a week. brian's youngest brother brandon, and his new wife adriana, are expecting their baby boy to arrive sometime this week. if he doesn't come on his own by thursday, i think they will be induced on thursday. not sure about his name yet, but they are liking Matthew right now, which I of course love, since it is my oldest brother's name! his middle name will be Ray because brandon is a little bit crazy about stevie ray vaughn.

speaking of baby boys, our baby boy is still doing great! he is not making me feel too uncomfortable yet. i did have to switch to the granny-panties a few weeks ago and i have already outgrown about half of my maternity shirts. i do have cankles pretty much every evening and i never know each day if i'll be able to wear my rings or not. his sweet little kicks make me so happy and thankful that he is alive and well inside me.

we got rid of laney's paci over the thanksgiving break. it wasn't nearly as bad as i imagined. she cried a little bit for about the first 3-4 days each time i put her down without it, but that was it. after a few days, she didn't act like she missed it. now our goal over the christmas break is to get her out of the crib and into the girls' bedroom. our lofty goal is for all three of them to share one room. we have a bunk bed in their room with a twin bed over a full bed. avery is on top in the twin bed and we are hoping tatum & laney can share the full bed. we do have a back up plan, but i'm really hoping it works. we are excited to start turning the nursery into a sportsy room for our son. i have never seen a man so excited to shop online for nursery bedding as i was to see brian get on potterybarnkids.com looking for baby boy crib sets. he is being very particular about color pallettes and level of coolness of embroidered baseball gloves on quilts, etc. it's pretty funny.

here he is with our two little ones.

the one above is tatum (second row with the two white bows in her hair) singing "hush little doggie with your bow-wow-wow. baby Jesus is sleeping now." and below is avery singing "super duper christmas" at their school christmas pageant last week. it was very cute, and they both did a great job.

the highlight of this weekend, amongst a work christmas party, a sunday school christmas party, a golf tournament fundraiser and "road to Bethlehem" at church this morning, was that we got to keep Avery's kindergarten class bunny, Patches, all weekend! she has been counting down since September waiting her turn to bring Patches home. forget counting down to christmas, she has been counting down to Patches' visit. so this was finally the weekend. we have enjoyed our little furry friend's visit, but i will be inwardly happy to return her to the kindergarten classroom tomorrow. and finally sweep the kitchen floor of all the rabbit hay, wood shavings, etc.

(and yes, i do brush my children's hair daily. tatum & laney just woke up from their naps in this picture. :))

Last weekend, we went back to SA because my mom got us tickets to see the Nutcracker ballet! it was so much fun for the girls and they even got their picture with the Sugarplum Fairy and the man in the white tights, that i really did not want a picture of, but i would've felt rude telling him we just wanted the Sugarplum fairy in the picture. i guess he does deserve some respect for dancing and walking around all night in tight white tights! i will never understand. but anyway, the girls love the storybook of the nutcracker so it was very exciting for them to see all the characters in real life dancing on the stage.

only 4.5 days of school left. "cinderella man" for two days and finals for the other 2.5 days. so thankful to have almost reached the end of this semester! good night!

Random Pictures

Well it's been awhile since I've uploaded pictures so I'm throwing a bunch of random ones in here. Avery made me this grocery list one day last week while I was taking a nap. It took me a minute to get it, but I was very impressed with her creativity. Here's what it says: "1 apple, 2 oranges, 3 bananas, 4 mangos, 5 pineapples, 6 strawberries, 7 raspberries, 8 grapes, 9 blackberries" - obviously with "Avery-spellling". I'm so proud of my little Kindergartener!

We went to a fall festival on Halloween with our friends, the Spenn's.

Here's Avery as Belle and Rylin as Snow White.

This is the Sugarplum fairy, as sweet as sugar!
Here's the whole slew of little characters...

My little pumpkin

Her poor little nose and lip met the driveway... this was just last night, so it's still pretty gooey.

Sweetness

This little almost 2 year old and her mama are pretty much attached at the hip these days.

I love that she loves me. I could go on and on about all the cute things she does these days, but I just have to say, she melts my heart and I love this stage with her.

Brian took Avery and Tatum camping in our backyard a couple weeks ago. Yes, he set up the tent, blew up the air mattress and went all out. They were SO excited. Laney and I slept inside. I completely expected them to only make it out there for an hour or so and them come back inside. But they slept out there until about 4 am... Brian said the dew was making them all wet and it was getting pretty cold, so they came in and snuggled in their warm beds.... major perk of camping in the backyard.

Prepping for the camp-out

Me and my new sister-in-law, Adriana. She & Brandon's baby boy is due in December and ours is due in March. This was at her baby shower. And yes, I know it looks like I am the one who is due in December. Fourth baby... maternity clothes came out when I was 7 weeks prego, so yes, this is what I look like at 4.5 months prego. So excited to meet our baby boy, I do not care what havoc he wreaks on my body.

Storybook Land at Avery's school

Avery and T.Bear, her class teddy bear. The kids get to take turns taking it home each day and she always wants to show him a good time. So we took him to Daddy's volleyball game that night.

I just love this little face, it's so beautiful to me, even with the remains of the black eye she got a month ago!

I am so thankful for these girls and the sweet uniqueness of each one. Being a mom is such a blissful and joyful experience, but I am finding that to be good at it is a lot of hard work, not only physically, but mentally. Figuring out which strategies work and don't work for each child and putting myself in their very unique shoes so I can better understand what makes each one tick. I can't believe these three children all came from us, they are so incredibly different. I feel so blessed that God decided I was the right mama for each of them.

Tobymac "Love Calling (Get Back Up)"

BOY!!!

Exhibit A
So one day back in July, I went to Wal-Mart to buy my mom a birthday card. Her birthday is July 17, so it was probably a week before that. I took the card to the counter to check-out and when the lady scanned it, she accidentally dropped it through the crack between the scanner and the counter. So she reached down and got it and put it in my bag and I went home. Well, when I got home, I got the card out to sign it and this is the card I found in my bag:

Apparently this card was already down in that crack, so when she reached down there to get my mom's birthday card, she accidentally pulled this one out and put it in my bag without either of us noticing. This was the exact time we were suspicious that I might be pregnant, but weren't sure yet. Sure enough, we found out shortly afterwards that I was pregnant. I put this card in my drawer, thinking how funny it would be if someday we did have a son and I could give it to him.

Well, last Friday, Brian, Avery, Tatum and I went in for our sonogram, and we heard the technician say, "You have a son... 100%" After all the screaming, laughing and crying, it is finally starting to sink in that we are going to get to have the wonderful experience of raising a little boy and our girls will have the awesome experience of having a brother!

Exhibit B
When Brian's Grandma Kratky passed away last summer, he went up to New York to spend some time with his grandpa and family up north and came home with a lot of Grandma's things that she had saved from his childhood. One of the things he brought home to the girls is this BOY Cabbage Patch Kid that he had played with at Grandma Kratky's house back a long time ago.

Over the past year, our girls have loved this doll to pieces, literally. My mom had to sew his arm back on a few weeks ago when she was in town. And he is such a cute little doll. He has been our "little brother" up until now. I often find Laney cuddling with this doll at night when I go in her room to check on her. I hope that's how she feels about her real little brother when he gets here!

Exhibit C
If you would've asked me what I thought the baby was before we had the sonogram, I would've told you I really thought it was another girl, since I have felt almost exactly the same as I did with my three girls. But deep inside I really thought it was a little boy. I have prayed for a little boy and even though God doesn't always say "yes" to all our prayers, He does delight to give His children the desires of our hearts. As I have "pondered these things in my heart", I have felt like that card that's been sitting in my drawer for the past few months was more just a little "accident"... it was all part of God's amazing and gentle love and leadership in our lives. He is the One the wind and waves obey, and yet He still cares so much about my little wants and needs. I can't wait to give that card to our son someday and tell him the funny story behind it.

MeMe

Lezette McReynolds

1923-2010

My sweet MeMe met Jesus early this morning. I know it was a grand celebration in Heaven as all her friends and family were there to greet her. While I am so happy she is Home, it is hard to wrap my mind around it, it happened so quickly.


She turned 87 on Sept. 6, so I called her to wish her a happy birthday. I was about a week late, but I knew she wouldn't mind. We talked about the girls. She asked about our new baby. She was very hopeful we would have a son, but assured me that another little girl would be a great blessing too. She raised three boys... my dad is her oldest son, so she knows about raising boys. She reminded me that she was born in 1923 and PawPaw was born in 1922. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. She's been telling me for 10 years that her cedar chest is mine when she dies. She reminded me of that again while we talked on the phone. She asked me if I wanted the photo albums she keeps inside of it. I said sure, I want anything and everything inside of it if it's from you. We joked about how I don't want it anytime soon and she said she hoped not either.

So the past couple weeks have come as a complete shock. She fell a couple times due to dizziness, and hit her head. I talked to her on the phone after her falls and she said she felt fine, she just couldn't stand up or walk because she felt so dizzy. She got a CT scan and it was normal. Then Sunday she started feeling really bad, so my parents took her to the hospital. There they discovered her heart was beating way too slow. So Monday they gave her a pacemaker. She was doing fine for about day. Then Tuesday morning her kidneys and lungs were showing signs of distress and failure. So I drove to SA on Tuesday after work. PawPaw was bringing MeMe home so she could pass on at home. She was fighting sleep, but she did wake up to ask me about the baby. Then I said, "I love you MeMe" and she clearly said "I love you too" and I said "I know you do." I sat beside her bed and held her hand and stroked her beautiful hair and hummed her some songs I knew she liked. She fell asleep very peacefully and slept on for the next day and half. By last night, all my uncles and cousins had come to visit her and spend time next to her. I know she heard everyone around her even though she couldn't respond to anyone anymore. So early this morning, a little after midnight, she went Home to her mama and daddy and Jesus.



Here's a short list of things I loved about MeMe:

• She adored my PawPaw and thought he was the funniest, smartest, bravest and most clever man in the entire world. We all agree, by the way. And he was crazy about her too. I've never seen a cuter couple in my entire life. They each thought the other hung the moon. And the thing I loved best is how they cracked each other up. It was true love at it's finest.
• She's been legally blind for years, but she never gave up on learning new things, even though she couldn't read. She always wanted to have things read to her aloud so she could learn them or remember them.
• She could tell you the name and birthday of anyone in our family at any time. Whether it was an ancestor who's been dead for 50 years, or each of my own three daughters, she knew their entire names and birthdays - month, day and year of birth.
• Memorizing Scripture and teaching her kids and grandkids to memorize Scripture was her passion.
• She even offered us money if we would memorize a certain amount of Scripture. I guess she knew the end justified the means.
• When I was a little girl, I remember sitting in between PawPaw and MeMe in their truck. I would sing them all my camp songs and MeMe would always tell me how amazed she was that I could memorize all those words to all those songs. She made me feel like a superstar.
• When I was in elementary school, she would have me over to spend the night at her house once or twice a month. We would play UNO and just hang out together. She would let me sleep on the little fold-out couch in she and PawPaw's bedroom. She also had a schedule set up where she kept my brothers and each of my cousins once a month or as often as possible. She poured her life into her grandkids.
• When I was in junior high, I remember going out to "the place" one weekend and MeMe taught me how to drive PawPaw's big truck. I couldn't believe she actually let me drive it all by myself. Although it rarely came out, she did have a bit of a wild streak in her.
• When I was in highschool, I went to her house after school once a week and she gave me cooking lessons. Her recipes were not low-cal, but they always tasted great and made you feel warm and comfortable.
• You couldn't go into MeMe and PawPaw's house without her making you something yummy to eat, even if you swore you weren't hungry. She would get up and start cooking you something, and it was usually lots of something.
• Shortly after Brian and I got married, PawPaw and MeMe decided that they owed us a trip to Big Bend. So all four us loaded up in their van and spent a week in Big Bend together. They didn't even ask us if we wanted to camp... even though they both, in their late 70's, would've been fine camping out, they knew their 22 year old granddaughter was a little too much of a city girl so they just told us they were getting two rooms in the little campsite motel. We thouroughly enjoyed that week with them.
• MeMe loved nature and she loved history. Besides the Scriptures, I'm pretty sure those were her two favorite subjects. I always learned something new about those two things when I was with her.

When our little Laney was born, for the longest time we couldn't figure out who she looked like. Finally, we discovered who she looked like... When God created Laney, I'm so glad He decided to make her from the same mold as MeMe, especially her eyes and her hair.

These two photos are from our family reunion this past July. PawPaw is 88 and MeMe is 86 and Laney is one and a half. Laney had been wandering around the patio at my Uncle Don's house, when she came upon MeMe's lap. She decided that was the lap she wanted so she crawled right up into her lap. She stayed content there for a long time. I'm so thankful my cousin Sara got these two photos of those moments.

So goodbye for now, MeMe. I can't believe you're really gone. You made a lasting impression on everyone who knew you. So as you go, I want to say this Scripture over you... Your children (and grandchildren and great-grandchildren) rise up and call you blessed; Your husband also, and he praises you: “ Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all.” Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates. Prov. 31:28-31