Enough!

Okay, enough excuses why I haven't updated in awhile I'm just lazy or tired or both! My husband told me tonight for the umteenth(really a word?) time that I need to update the blog. Apparently what I need to do is show him in all his infinite wisdom and extra time how to update the blog:) Well I'll start with the annual camping trip that my sister's family and Luke and I take each fall with my dad and Judy. We missed last year because they were in the process of purchasing a new camper. So we went to Huntsville State Park and had a great time! It was really cold at night that weekend so that made it even better. Luke and I stayed with my dad in his trailer(which is like a little miny hotel). My sister and her family have the camper that we used growing up. They have refirbished it and adapted it to their needs and it never looked better.

Here is a not so great pic of it as well as Uncle Don and his brother and some child I can't quite identify.

The boys played in the dirt, rode bikes, played in the dirt, ate, slept, played in the fire and then played in the dirt again!

The boys made a huge dirt pile and then plowed through it with their monster trucks of course!

The kids played at the park that we played at as kids. It so surreal to see my child and nephews do the things that I loved doing during my childhood.

Here are Luke and Cam at the park that my sister and brother and I spent many an hour playing at.

My dad took all the kids out on my Uncle Bill's john boat. As Sally and I pushed Grampa, Luke and Cam out into the lake we both realized that this was the first time our boys have ever been on a boat! I guess a boat safety talk should have happened first. It turned out well, my dad said they kept hanging out trying to touch the lily pads, but no one fell out!

Here they go, they look so excited to be out on the water!

Well I'll wrap this trip up with some pics of the big kids(Trav and Maddie) and some pics from the park and then move right into Halloween, oh yes I said Halloween.

Look a boat full of happy campers(had to use that)!

The boys at the pavillion.

Sissy and Cam.

Trav, getting so big!

Cam was almost to fast for me!

The boys riding off into the sunset! It was a great weekend!

I'll do Halloween tomorrow, if I'm not too tired, lazy, busy or choice D (all of the above)!

A lot! State Fair, Birthday and Aunt Becca's House!

MOOOO! That's what we all felt like after the State Fair! We had a great time on Saturday at the State Fair! Maddie was here for her 11th birthday, I can't believe it! I was just telling Matt that she was 3! when I started dating him, now our girl is 11! The kids had a great time. We arrived in the afternoon and enjoyed a corny dog for dinner of course!

Maddie is showing off her great job on eating the ENTIRE corny dog! Luke was still car sick(we know who he gets that from:) thanks to the traffic on I30 and wasn't up to a corny dog, poor kid! He made up for it later in funnel cake!

We walked around and looked at all the wonderful things that the fair has to offer, mostly a bunch of crap but some cool stuff too!

Big Tex (not crap) the one thing that Luke kept talking about non stop. They made him at school and he couldn't wait to see his boots! He got a big kick out of him talking.

Obviously I was not car sick and was able to polish off my Fletcher's jalapeno cheese corny dog with no side affects, but I was mad Matt caught me in the act:)

We rode the sky rail across the fair which was a neat way to see everything quickly. We rode it again at night and that was really cool!

I told you that Luke redeemed himself later with a funnel cake and here is the proof. We all shared this deep fried, covered in sugar and hot fudge treat, but as Luke would say we all "wolfed" it down pretty quick! In fact it was painful to pull myself away long enough to snap this pic, I was loosing ground against the kids!

We went to see the Backyard Circus and Luke was able to participate as a lion! He was so thrilled to get picked, it was so cute to see him so excited!

He kept looking at us with this goofy grin and giving the thumbs up sign. I have a little video of his Oscar winning performance. Now after the dancing and this I'm sure Hollywood will be knocking on our door!

He was being "tamed" and rolling over, we were afraid he was going to roll right off the stage!

This was the death defying "Ring of Fire", sit back and be amazed! (no children were hurt during the making of this video!)
We ended the night at the Billy Ray Cyrus concert, oh yeah you read me right, Billy Ray! It was the closest thing we could get Maddie to Hannah Montana! He was actually pretty good! I felt kinda of bad for him when the girls(and there were many) were all chanting, "HANNAH, HANNAH, HANNAH", but he handled it well and I think Luke picked up a few moves for his next performance:)

The kids had a great night and so did Matt and I after we got home and took some Advil:)

Luke and I spent last weekend at Aunt Becca's house! Luke had fun making waffles with his Aunt Becca for breakfast on Sunday. She made me promise to cut her face off while snapping pics, but she didn't say anything about a belly shot ban:)

Here he is showing off his hard work, we had fun eating the "hearts" of waffle, well I had a good time:) He is such a naturalist that he fed the left overs to the squirrels in the backyard. We kept looking for them to come back but I'm afraid all the noise he made throwing it out there scared them off.

Luke is not one to be put off by a squirrel, so he decided to swing in protest. Yes, he is in his underwear, if you have ever been to our house you know that is him at his happiest, undressed:) He is just a man in training, I pray for his future wife each night, she has her work cut out for her.

We ended our weekend with RyLeigh Rose's(or RyLeigh Nosy as Luke calls her) birthday party! It was great fun. The kids came in costume and played candy corn relay, wrap your Mum like a mummy and race around the yard like a banshee(okay that was just what Luke and Hunter did)! Lisa did a great job with activities and dinner, yeah Lisa!

Even little Addie got in on the candy corn action,most of it went to her mouth! That's my kind of girl:)

The birthday girl did a great job blowing out her BOO cupcake cake and opening all her presents. Luke came home took a bath and fell fast asleep, which I'm about to do as well. Sorry this was a long one but I had too much to get in! I can't blog during the week it is too stressful. I love reading your comments so keep them coming! Have a great week!

Hunter and Luke, there are two very lucky girls growing up that have THIS to look forward too:)

The big 40, H lunch and a new fence!

I have a lot to catch everyone up on tonight! It's been two weeks since my last blog(sounds like a confession) but that clip of Luke dancing is too cute to bump! Well my wonderful husband hit the big 40 a couple of weeks ago and has lived to tell about it! It kind of freaks me out to know that in ten years my husband will be 50! I know I'm getting ahead of myself but GEEZ! where does the time go!? Matt really wanted to spend the day with his kids so he took Maddie and Luke out of school(I'm a bad parent/teacher:) and took them to see the drag races in Ennis! They had a great time. Maddie got John Force's autograph before his wreck and Luke had a great time just watching all the cars! They were all exhausted that night, but not too tired for cake!


Of course it was an ice cream cake from Bruesters and it was delicious! We didn't put candles on it because we didn't want it to melt under so many flames!



Last Wednesday Luke's kindergarten class had "H" lunch which is a lunch with only H foods! I was able to sneak out for a few minutes and go up and surprise him at school. That is the one downfall of being a teacher, you don't get to do all the fun days with your child, so I try my best to go when I can. Here are a few pics from his class. The first one was while they were still doing class work and he hadn't seen me yet, if only my kids would sit and work like these little guys!








They were finishing up practicing the number 3. They had to draw three trees and it was quite the contest to see who's trees didn't look funny:)

They enjoyed tasty foods such as hashbrowns, hushpuppies, hamburgers, hard boiled eggs(not a favorite), ham sandwiches, Hi C punch, heart shaped cookies and Hersheys candy bars(BIG FAVORITE)! They were pretty good about at least trying everything except maybe the eggs!









Mommy was so glad to get to visit during this special lunch! One of us was very sad to say good bye, but I was a big girl and went back to work anyway!

This weekend we(and I mean Matt here) put up a fence! My dad must have gotten wind of our plans early because he was sure to be out of the state this time! We had some great laborers show up though and pick up his slack! The fence was torn down on Friday, Matt worked by himself Saturday putting in the posts and today we had Cody, Robbie and Jason come over to finish the job!








This is what it looked like Sunday morning!

Here go the boards! Luke was counting them and then reporting to Tracie and me on their progress!


Matt has Luke building his own play set, we are big into making our child accountable for his own happiness!




Yeah the finished product! We no longer have to hold our breath when the wind blows and hope it won't fall down! A HUGE thanks to all our friends who gave up their Sunday to help out! We are so lucky to have such great friends in our lives. I wasn't feeling my whole self this weekend but by the end of the night I was just happy to have spent time with my friends. It is so easy to get caught up in life's little hiccups, and you forget how lucky you are that God has blessed you with so many wonderful people in your life! Here are two pretty cute blessings!

Allie Grace who thinks Luke hung the moon and he is happy to oblige her every desire!





Andrew Shea who is a Cody mini me!
Thanks to my wonderful husband who with putting up with me, and putting up a fence managed to smoke some awesome ribs for the workers too! I love ya Babe!

The Wedding

My cousin Clint and his wife Amanda got married this weekend in Kerrville. Aren't that such a cute couple(well you can't see her but she's a cutie!) We had a great trip to Kerrville Sat. morning, it is such a beautiful drive to the hill country. I've decided that when I win the lottery I'll be getting Matt and I a ranch home in Marble Falls or Fredricksburg:) The church was beautiful and the reception was at the Shriner's College in Kerrville which I didn't even know existed, but it was so nice!

This isn't the best picture but the whole sanctuary was made out of that white rock that is so prevalent in the area. It was the Methodist church in Kerrville. It is always so much fun to see family that you don't get to see except at holidays.

Here is my Aunt Jan, Aunt Nancy(Clint's mom) and my mom. They all look so beautiful!

This is my cousin Misty (Camden's mom) and my mom!

This is my cousin Bethany(Clint's sister) and Luke. Bethany just started at A&M, she has a full scholarship.....Go for as long as the money will Beth!

Here are mommy and Luke, my little guy is getting so big! He would shake people's hands and say hello, before I know it he'll be walking me down and seating me for his wedding........ I'll scream and tell him she's not good enough for him........an ugly seen will then follow, but we'll always have these great memories right?!!

Here is Luke with his Nonno and Nonna, they spoil him rotten and he loves it! We spent some time shopping in Fredricksburg today on the way back and I have to say that Franco was so good following us women around while we stopped at every store! Luke moaned and groaned about his feet and needing a break until he saw the toy store, then he was FINE.

The biggest hit of the night was the dancing, well for Luke anyway. He was HILARIOUS dancing with his cousin Camden. I have a little video for everyone to check out. Now don't flood the phone lines to Dancing with the Stars just yet, he needs a little more practice.

All in all it was a great weekend, we enjoyed the whole thing. I'm so not ready for this week but someone has a BIG birthday on Friday. I keep telling Luke his daddy is A LOT older than mommy and that 40 is really getting up there. Matt is taking Luke and Maddie to the races on Friday (don't tell their teachers) and then we are going to have a nice weekend at home! Hope everyone enjoys their week too!

Birthday Weekend!

Well Matt says A LOT of people were busy in Januaries past, because we have A LOT of birthdays in September:) So far we have celebrated Nonna, Granma, Aunt Becca, Danielle and Parker (tomorrow) and we still have Matt's big 40 to celebrate on the 21st! We had Becca's party last night in Ft. Worth at Freebirds.

Here is Becca's cake it was DELICIOUS!

Today Luke had Danielle's party here in Arlington. This is Luke and Jordan, Jordan goes to a different school this year so Luke was SO EXCITED to see him at the party!

Tomorrow evening he has Parker's party at Alley Cats(bowling) so we will be partied out by Monday!

Luke had enough Polly Pockets, makeup and Barbies! ARGHHHHHHHH!

Have a great weekend!