The Wall

I'm in need of some advice, Interweb friends. Our front entry needs a little TLC. We used to have some frames hanging but the hallway wall has been empty since we painted...and that was exactly a year ago. Oops. I want to hang B&W family photos but I'm not sure how and in what configuration to hang them. Here's what I'm thinking:

1. A photo ledge with framed family photos of varying sizes. 

2. Larger canvas prints.

3. Smaller canvas prints, probably 8x8 or 10x10.

I'm also thinking about repainting the table. Any idea?? I thought it would be cool to paint it high-gloss white with the legs painted gold, something along the lines of this:

Color combination ideas? What do you think??

Musings on Thomas the Train

P is in love with Thomas the Train, as I am sure that many 3-year-old boys tend to be. Chuffing and fizzling and shunting and buffering and heaving are all involved in his imaginative play at some point during the day.

Me: 'What are you up to?'
P: 'I'm chuffing down to the docks to pick up my load of freight for the kitchen'.
Me: (In an attempt to add a little pizzazz) 'Alright but be careful not to go too fast and de-rail!'
P: 'No. No Mom. We aren't playing that right now. Please leave me be.'

I have sat through my fair share of Thomas and Friends episodes - the new ones. The old sets with the model trains where only their eyes can move?? We don't watch those because P has dubbed them 'cweepy'. So we watch the new episodes with Mr. Perkins and they are my saving grace. That hour before dinner when I'm scrambling to put something together is Thomas hour at our house and I'm not ashamed to say that. THOMAS. HOUR. PEOPLE.

But the more I watch Thomas the more annoyed I get with all of the gaps in the story. I get it. They're meant for kids who won't notice and I'm the weird person with no life who is over-analyzing a show about talking trains. But really. I'm angry. Some things just don't add up:

1. WHERE ARE THE DRIVERS IN ALL OF THIS? Really. The trains always to do the opposite of what they are told but seriously. They all have drivers! Where is the accountability? Instead of chewing out the train for disobeying, they should be chewing out the driver for allowing the train to do whatever they want. Which leads me to suggest that they should punish the trains, or at least train them to obey. OKAY THOMAS, so you want to go and race around the island instead of picking up the Dowager for tea? Ok. Here are some fireworks in your furnace. Lesson learned.

2. How can the trains be Really Useful when they are always disobedient??? They basically have to do the same job twice because they mess it up the first time. I guess they are really useful because they get the job done but they aren't really efficient. I think Sir Topham Hat just throws the word "useful" around so much that it really doesn't mean anything anymore. Or maybe on Sodor "useful" means "doing-the-same-task-twice-because-I-was-too-prideful-to-listen-the-first-time". We may never know.

3. Has anyone else noticed that Dowager Hat and Sir Topham Hat look exactly the same? Coincidence? Or does STH have multiple personalities and a cross-dressing addiction?

4. STH is basically the Czar of Sodor. I get that 'railroad tycoons' are usually insanely wealthy, but the man basically owns the entire island. Will no one stand up to him??? Aaaaaand he's created a monopoly because they seem to have an under-developed road system so you HAVE to use the railroad to go anywhere. I mean, they only have one bus for the entire island and Bertie isn't that big. Really, talk about putting all of your eggs in one freight car...they really need to have a variety of transportation options to choose from, if for nothing else than their emergency preparedness.

5. Poor Mr. Perkins. The guy is terrified of Sir Topham Hat, and rightly so. He's basically his slave. I have no idea about the state of his compensation but I know he doesn't get paid enough to dress up like a pirate, or Santa Claus, or any of the other odd requests that he fearfully accepts. Yet another example to back up my claim that STH is a bit of a fetishist. Really, HE MADE THE MAN'S BIRTHDAY CAKE. I think that Sir Topham Hat needs to separate his home and work life a little better.

And there you have it. A 27 year old woman writing a post about my love-hate relationship with a fictional talking train, living on his fictional island. This. is. my. life.

The Graduate

Tip of the day - you should always have good photographers in your family and as friends. As you will see in this post, it really pays off. A HUGE thank you to my awesome brother Russell, and my dear dear friend Becca for bringing their gear and capturing everything that I could not did not. 

Terry's graduation took place in the Alamadome downtown. He was supposed to be there at 2:00. The procession began at 3:30 and we pulled into the parking lot at 3:22. Terry ended up flat-out sprinting to make it to his place in line, which was 4th for all of the MBA students. But he made it! And we made it too! We walked in, sat down, and the band started playing about a minute later. I have never sweated so much in my life. 

Russ just barely caught this one of Terry. Really, we are SO lucky that he just happened to walk over to the side of the risers and Terry was walking out at that exact moment. I LOVE this photo. 

This was definitely not a BYU graduation. The President of the University spouted off some statistics about the school, which included the 800,000 cups of coffee/tea that were consumed on-campus that year as well as the presence of 3 Starbucks on campus. That made me laugh really hard. Also, the engineering students all wore orange hard hats with their tassels in place of their graduation caps and that was awesome. And one girl had flashing lights on her cap so her family could easily find her. I thought that was cool too. Becca captured this shot of Terry and it totally reminds of 'Where's Waldo'. 

The ceremony was surprisingly quick. The President gave a 10 minutes address and then they went straight into awarding the diplomas. We only had to wait 10 minutes for the Doctoral graduates to walk and then it was Terry's turn. Watching him walk across that stage and hearing his name read made me tear up. I am so proud of his hard work. For the past 3 years he has managed 40+ hours of work, 2 babies, me, and a church calling on top of his homework, group projects, and class. I will not sugar coat it - our lives were SO stressful and I did dinner and the bed time routine alone most nights but it was absolutely 100% worth it. And that's why I sobbed like a baby. Oh - did I say tear up? Yeah, that was an understatement. 

At the very end they shot off streamers and a mariachi band played while the graduates exited the building. I will always talk smack about the terrible summers here but there are very fun parts to living in South Texas. I may have, but most definitely did start crying when they shot off the confetti. I think spectacle just gets to me. I'm warning you - the Olympics are coming and I will be a mess during the opening ceremonies. 

Reunited again. I love this photo.

Russell and Chelsea are spending Christmas in Dallas but we were able to do some fancy ticketing magic (ok so not so fancy) and have them fly into San Antonio for the graduation. They even brought their dog Georgie and P and A LOVED it. 

We are so lucky that the Birds moved down here. Terry and Camden have been friends since High School and they are family. They even came to Graduation - willing to sit for an hour with their kids. They are the best and we are SO lucky they live so close. 

Just when we thought all of the celebrations were over, we came home to a decorated house! Our next door neighbors snuck in after we left and blew up about 100 balloons and hung streamers everywhere! It was AWESOME and a complete surprise! I had been informed of the plan a week ago but in the rush of the day had forgotten about it until we were pulling in. 

We put the boys to bed, got a babysitter, and had a nice, long dinner at Il Sogno - our favorite pasta place downtown. Yum!

A huge THANK YOU to Terry's employer for financing his degree, we really do work for a great company. Thank you USAA!

First and Last Day

First Day of his MBA classes - January 2011 

P is 3 months old. 

Graduation Day - December 2013

P is 3 and A is 16 months old.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Boys in their Christmas outfits and our tree up and waiting to be decorated! 

I LOVE this time of year. 

Happy Halloween

P informed me back in August that he wanted to be a "fearsome dragon" for Halloween and I thought to myself "surely he will change his mind before October." I was hoping he'd decide on something else since the only dragon costume we have is 12-24 months and looks so hilarious on him. Yes, he wears it. All the time. See this post. Well when he didn't change his mind I started looking on Ebay for a similar one in the right size aaaaannnd jackpot. So for Halloween this year we had two dragons. 

They wore their costumes everyday during the week of Halloween and they were quite the sight at Costco. At one point we created a bottleneck in front of the milk while an entire gaggle of geriatrics pulled out their smartphones to take pictures. It was kind of weird and a little uncomfortable but when one guy said "I can't wait to show this to the guys at my lodge"I figured, what's the harm? 

As many of you probably already know our Halloween got off to a rough start with P in the ER for a bad case of croup. P got around 5 hours of sleep that night and A (for some weird reason) only got 2 so Terry and I really had no sleep at all. Luckily, my incredible Dad decided to drive down and join in the festivities with us and was so gracious to watch the boys while we caught up on some sleep. So after a low-key day we filled up on a 'Halloween Feast' (aka my most ghetto dinner of the year) and went trick or treating. 

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 Not wanting to spread croup to the entire neighborhood we did a quick lap around our street and then headed home. A caught on quickly and even said "tick a tee" at every house.

We have been so lucky to have my parents living closer and we have been seeing them about every 2-3 weeks. It is heavenly and my boys love it so much. The second they saw Papa they both ran to him and gave him big hugs. No hesitation and no 'warming-up' period. The entire weekend they just wanted to do things with him.  Thank you Dad for driving down to be with us, we loved it SO much!

 Children make holidays more fun. I'm convinced of that. It's so fun to share in the excitement and anticipation with them. Happy Halloween!

a third birthday

We were so lucky to have family come to town for P's birthday this year! My parents are currently living in Dallas so they drove down to spend the weekend and they brought P's favorite cousin with them, Mads! They were born 9 days apart so they have been best friends and partners in crime from the beginning. We tried to put them in the same room on the first night and realized almost instantly that it wouldn't work (we walked in to find them throwing all of their pillows and blankets into poor little A's crib). 

We spent the day at the Zoo, which is where we have gone for P's last two birthdays. Here his is on his first birthday:

And here we are today. We've obviously both improved at actually looking at the camera:

Look at him! Look at how big his has grown!!

Here is part of our crew. Nana was kind enough to snap the picture and A wasn't having any of it since it was nap time. Poor guy.

P asked for a construction vehicle party, so after scouring Pinterest for hours I settled on this cake: Easiest thing ever and perfect for someone (like me) who cannot make a cake look pretty for the life of me. It tasted increeeeedible, believe that, but I just cannot do pretty food. It's a curse. Aaannnd I'm making this post about me - BACK TO THE BIRTHDAY BOY...he loved it!

He talked about his cake all day long. Chocolate cake. Chocolate frosting. He's a choco-holic.

Look at that proud face!

This was the first year that he started to 'get' what was going on. He has been to so many birthday parties this past year and has watched all of his friends blow their candles and unwrap their presents that he knew exactly what to do.

And now to the cliché segment of this post: Wow. Just Wow. 3 years? Really? Where has the time gone? He is so big and talking so much and reasoning and asking lots and lots and lots and lots of questions. P! We love you. Everything about you and we are SO happy that you came to our family. I'm so excited to see how you grow this next year even though I'm secretly hoping (and maybe even praying) that you will stay my little guy forever.