Thankfulness.

It's not Thanksgiving yet.

I've joked that I felt cheated out of the month of October, and November seems to be a race.

It crossed my mind to post something I'm thankful for every day like those crazy facebookers, but it was just a second and I giggled a little.

Recently being thankful was brought to a sobering and heartbreaking reality.

A friend and her family are walking a road that we all fear as parents, grandparents, as humans.

Things can change so absolutely and without warning.

As a Christian I know without a shadow of a doubt that our God is big, has a plan, gives us promise of hope and future.

There are no promises of understanding.

No guarantee that heartbreak will pass us by.

This week I hold my kids closer.

I appreciate the mess

the chaos

the laundry that never ends

the penny pinching

the goofy questions

the quirks that make each so individual and unique.

I hold them close, because tomorrow isn't promised.

Lifting my heart to the Lord tonight.

I have much to be thankful for.

"Give thanks to the Lord, our God and King.  His love endures forever."

Halloween.

Behind again...surprise, surprise!

Here's a quick peek at our Halloween...

the boys went we as Duck Commanders!

 and as hard as we tried to get Bug to be Miss Kay,

she insisted on Tinkerbell...

 Sweet girl joined in on the Fairy look!

I mad the boys beards from a free pattern online.

Ace wore his reluctantly.

 Sadly, I had to work, so here's the gang passing out candy at Grams.

FREAKY FRIDAY...

ON SUNDAY.

BECAUSE I CAN'T MOVE ON WITHOUT SHARING.

EXHIBIT A:

EXHIBIT B:

 EXHIBIT C:

SURE, YOU COULD NIT PICK SOME DETAILS, BUT JEEZ LOUISE, I CAN'T GET OVER THE RESEMBLANCE!

One Brave Man...

This loving, wonderful, awesome, caring, manly man is the bravest guy you've ever come across.

What, you didn't know??

This handsome, loving, smart guy is the best son, brother, dad, uncle, friend, son in law, brother in law, husband, that you'll ever meet.

And brave.

Brave enough to be married to ME for 10 years.

Hates heights

terrified of snakes,

not fond of bad weather...

but loves me.

GO FIGURE!

So, in honor of our 10 years of wedded bliss, I've decided to make a top ten list.

Yep...a sappy, goofy, love filled list

TOP TEN REASONS I LOVE HUBS

1.) If I can break it...he can usually fix it.

(you'll probably figure out soon that his list of reasons to love me would be completely different...just sayin!)

2.) The man can bake.

Ask the girls at my work...pies, cookies, sausage balls, whoopie pies, home made ding dongs...they request it, he brings it!

(and now, it's late and I'm giggling that I just admitted that my co workers like my husbands ding dongs and know he makes great whoopie (pies!))

3.) He has given me 3 beautiful children

Look at them.

A variety of beautiful, happy kids.

4.) He helps people.

Sure, it's part of his job...but, if you've got a problem he'll be one of the first people to help you out.

5.) He's patient.

The most obvious illustration is that he's put up with me for 10 years!

6.) He knows just when to lay down the law.

Lately, he's been such a stronghold in times when I've struggled.  He's got a knack for laying it out and snapping me back to what matters.

7.) He can bury me in basic math.

Laugh if you want.

I can do Algebra...he can round to the nearest dollar or figure averages at the speed of light.

8.) He switches side of the bed with me on a whim.

Translated...I can be random and discombobulated, and he's the perfect balance of going with it and reigning me in that there is.

9.) He can gut stuff.

My brothers made it clear.

Any man worth marrying had to be able to gut stuff.

10.) Even though we've given him a ton of grey hairs, he loves and takes care of his family and does it well.

Hubs and I were blessed to be able to celebrate our anniversary in our favorite vaca spot thanks to our amazing family (most especially Gram who moved into our house with the kids for a week!).

  Hubs...

it's been an amazing journey filled with more love and laughter than a girl could ever hope for.

Thank you.

He Did It...

In case you've been hiding under a rock this week, you know that the Great State of Texas went back to school this week!

I've got to say, I was none too thrilled.

I like to sleep late.

But, Ace was ready for his big day!

(Daddy was probably most ready for the day.)

Check out my fabulous Kindergartner...

 and his stylish and super 3rd grade sister...

 and his super confused and slightly lonely "brudder"

Carlos cracked me up the first day, after his nap he took to chasing poor Libby, randomly yelling out (I guess to make noise) and at one point spent a considerable amount of time in front of the dryer...

I'm guessing he was contemplating the logistics of climbing in :)

I'm so thankful for such a smooth transition back into school.

Hope everybody else's was a big success too!

Picture Dump

I mentioned before that Aunt Bec up and moved away with the new baby.

Well, we went to visit her not long ago.

It's no secret that we're baseball fans around here, so when researching affordable things to do with our time in the Corpus Christi area, I came across their Minor League Baseball team.

I am so glad!

If it's any indication how awesome they are...they play at Whataburger Field!

Which, after Dr. Pepper, would be the next best thing about living in the great state of Texas!

(I guess technically that could be argued, but for blogging sake, just go with it!)

We were even more shocked that, when we went to buy tickets, they were super affordable and we sat 3 rows directly behind home plate!

So here's a dump of my favorite pics from the night!

 Our whole trip, the kids did a spectacular job of not asking for things everywhere we went, so we hit the ballpark gift shop and picked up some fan gear.

Carlos, as you'll see, wore his hat the whole night, we couldn't believe it!

 The view from our seats!

Love me some shade :)

 One of the concession stands was a real live Whataburger...

In LOVE!

 Carlos traveled by Ring Sling all night,

thank you to Gram who whipped this puppy out the week before we left as a light weight easy baby wearing option!

 My next baseball obsessed fan in the works.

 I think this should be the Hooks new advertisement promo!

 This one cracks me up.

It looks sweet.

But, in reality, he had crawled up in her seat, wormed his way behind her, and proceeded to try to push her out with both hands and feet.

When I pulled out my phone to document this event, he stood up and went all "oh, I love  my sister" on us.

Mark my words, that kids gonna be my clown!

 My serious ballgame watchers!

(I finally moved over and gave Carlos his own seat.  He thought he was some big stuff!)

After the game, the kids got to run the bases!

We had an awesome night, and even got to see a Grand Slam Home Run!!

And, all that Dr. Pepper Carlos go into...

never again!

That was him at about midnight that night!!

In the 1.2 seconds he stayed still before a very tired set of parents finally let him cry it out in his pack and play!

Blog Fail 101

Once again, I've fallen off of the blog train.

A series of events beyond my control took over and I haven't blogged.

I've failed a few things and succeeded in others.

My greatest accomplishment to date went like this...

Ace: "Hey Bug, we've got to get up early tomorrow to make it to R's birthday party at 10:00(am)"

Bug: "Seriously...I hate getting up that early"

Yup, I'll be writing a new parenting book soon titled something along the lines of

"Sleep training your kids: The anti morning approach"

Or

"My kids are better than yours"

or

"I like to sleep...and my kids do too!"

So, our summer has gone like this...

Kids get out of school

Sister has a baby

Good friend gets married

Signed up for the "big bonus" plan at work that has me working a bunch-o-extra shifts

work

work work

birth babies, birth babies, birth babies

Carlos turns 1

Go camping

Carlos gets a hair cut

Go visit sister and nephew

Turn 32

Go on much needed date with hubby

Still waiting on 

SIL to have baby

kids back to school

Big anniversary trip.

So, I'm not going to catch up on all of that, so I'm going to take you on a brief picture tour of our life as of late.

(new nephew)

(new nephew moves, Ace's face sums up our feelings)

(kids are in a wedding)

(sums up life with my kids)

 (BE STILL MY HEART, he can't be this old)

(camping)

edited out...all of the vomitting and other problems involved...

you're welcome.

before

 during

after

A picture is worth a thousand words...

which is how many I'd need to describe this kid.

 my beach bums!

 My hot date!

Honestly, we're living life and loving it.

I remind Hubs regularly that we're 

"Living the dream, baby...

Living the dream"

Sneaky, sneaky.

We did something last week that I feel bad about.

I feel bad, actually, because I didn't really feel bad at all.

We had us another first, which actually ended up feeling like old times...

Got you wondering, huh??

These two were in on it...

Well, don't tell Carlos,

but we left him behind with a sitter and went to a ball game.

We went with Ace's base ball team to celebrate the end to a great season...

The weather was beautiful and our team won.

Add in all you can eat hot dogs, nachos and Dr. Pepper...

almost perfect.

Hubs teased me a little for spending most of the night reading on my kindle,

but lets face it, when do I ever get a chance lately to read a book outside on a beautiful evening...oh, about never.

It was a great night spent with new friends and some pretty awesome kids!

Garden

Well, I'm glad you asked about our garden!

I've wanted to talk about it for a while.

Better yet, why don't I take you on a tour!

We'll start on the front garden/flower bed.

Bug got a bee in her bonnet this year that she wanted to plan and plant her own flower garden.

I thought it a bit random, but decided one Saturday while Hubs was gone that I'd humor her.

She got a $20 budget at our local nursery

 and had to agree to plant anything she picked out herself...

 She did a great job!

 Here's Ace when we started...

 she worked hard for a long time

she had to plant around a couple of random squash plants that came up after Hubs made baby food one night and threw the extra stuff out for compost!

I like a little random!

(and the mystery of not knowing what kind of squash is growing)

 Libby doing her part...

 Ace after we'd been at it a while...

 There's also 2 honey dew melon plants going in the front bed too.

After all of the pics I took, I'm not sure how I managed to miss them :)

The back porch has a few things pots...

This is what the kids got me for Mother's day!

 They pick out great stuff ;)

In the back we have 3 raised beds. 

We didn't have much success with raised beds the first time we tried them, but decided to give it another go...

turned out to be a good idea.

This was also a project that the kids and I could tackle one day while Hubs was at work.

(he's not been to keen on me and the tiller being alone with each other)

the first two are squash and zucchini.

It's kind of embarrassing, but before we moved out of town and planted a garden, I had no clue what food looked like outside of the produce section in the grocery store...

Just in case your the same way, here's the squash!

 and zucchini...

 The other raised bed has cucumbers,

 and tomatoes...

In the way back of the yard we have 3 more beds.

The first is the rest of the veggies,

These are radishes

 (with a couple of rogue cantaloupes that came back from last year...again, I love a little random)

 Here there is okra(left)

peppers, eggplant, and more squash(middle)

cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower(right)...

 jalapeños

 cabbage

(I call it swiss cabbage b/c something keeps eating holes in it!)

 broccoli

 onions, black eyed peas, green beans and peas...

 the second bed is potatoes,

 (Hubs made me quit weeding a few weeks ago so I didn't mess with the potatoes...just didn't want you to think I'd gone lazy!)

the third bed is new this year...

cantaloupe (left), pumpkins(middle) and watermelons(right)!

There's also a grape vine back there.

This is the first year we've gotten grapes on it!

So there you have it!

So far, it's the best garden we've had yet!

It's so much work, fun and learning for the whole family.

Here's a little of our harvest so far...

Needless to say, we've eaten and shared a lot of squash, zucchini and cucumbers in the last couple of weeks!