Happy 2nd Birthday Laney!

This little girl is so full of personality and spunk. She is learning to talk and tell us what she thinks about things. She calls us "Daddy" "Mama-y" "A-E" and "Tay-tay". We call her our parrot because she will copy anything we say and Avery and Tatum have learned to use that skill to drive each other crazy. She is very independent and a little stubborn (okay, alot stubborn, but this is her birthday so I'm trying to be positive), she is a clown, especially when she looks up at you with her "mean eyes" then you see the little twinkle in her eyes as she breaks into a grin because she's just messing with you. Little mess.

She has the sweetest kisses in the world. She sometimes licks you in all her excitement about giving kisses. She is still in her crib because she screamed for two nights straight when we tried to let her sleep without rails. So she and Tatum share a room now. She sings "Twinkle twinkle little star" at the top of her lungs at night until she falls asleep. Then she wakes up early in the morning and starts waking up the house by singing it again.

She wants nothing to do with the potty... won't even go near it... but does like to watch from a distance when me and her sissies sit on it. Her hair makes me happy on a daily basis. It's not as curly as it used to be, but it's still so pretty. She wears a size 9 shoe now, which is about normal for a 3-4 year old (Tatum wears a 9.5). She wears size 3T clothes. Our pediatrician says she is going to outgrow her sisters and be the biggest of the three girls when they hit their teens.

She is crazy about her sisters. She loves to be near them and watch what they do and try to imitate them. Beans and rice is her favorite food of all time. When we go eat Mexican food, which is pretty much our staple, we get Laney a plate of rice and beans and watch her go. She usually eats about 3 plates of it. She also gets her own bowl of salsa, even if it is hot, she will dip those chips and eat it right up.

She doesn't like to get her picture taken. The smile above is only because she had just eaten her chocolate cookie cake. She loves playing with baby dolls. She always has a baby in each arm. For Christmas, she got a little high chair with bottles, bib, cups, etc. It was precious watching her feed her baby in that high chair and take care of all her little needs. That "mama instinct" God gives little girls is amazing. I hope this means she will like her baby brother.

Laney Hope is her name, but we usually call her "laney-lu", lu-lu", "hope", "lu-lee" or "lane."

I am so thankful for her. She is a blessing to our family and we all adore her. I love you Laney!

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.