Pawpaw time

 We celebrated Pawpaw's birthday today (really it's Tuesday) with a yummy homemade chocolate pie (I actually made the whole thing from scratch by myself, even the meringue). Here are all of us September birthday folks together.

The children love Pawpaw's cel phone. Here is Stephen enamored by the ringtones.

Sharing sweets

 Gloria is really enjoying her big sister roll, taking Stephen under her wing. Here, she shares with him her very special treat even though I gave him his own "pop pop" to try and appease him. What a sweet sis!

Kid quote of the day

After watching the end of the Aggie football game...
Allia: "Mommy, you shouldn't let me watch a football game. It is addictive. Now I just can't wait to watch another one."
(That's my girl! She may look like Austin but there is some of me...and Pawpaw...in there after all!)

First Soccer Games

 What a Saturday morning! We had a 9am and 10am game today and discovered that Allia left her soccer bag (with uniform in it) at Thursday's practice. Craziness! Thankfully her coach found it and brought it to the game!

 Allia's team is called the White Diamonds and played a team with a lot of experience. They played really well (blocked a ton of goals!) but lost 4-0.

Mariana's team is called the Fire Dragons. She and another redhead are the only girls on the team and are best buddies already. They did great...I lost track of the score but I think it ended up something like 8-1 with them winning. They have several feisty little boys who played last year and know their stuff!

Random photos

I finally developed the photos from our waterproof camera that we took to Sea World!

Here we are eating cotton candy waiting for the first show to begin

Most of the pictures were not keepers (go figure!). I let the children use up the remaining exposures with friends at the pool, and these were the two keepers from that batch....Gloria under water

and Stephen and Gloria playing on the steps

And here is a photo of my handsome guys reading a book together before mass Sunday. :)

Birthday fun!

I failed in the photo department this weekend, not taking many pictures. But we had lots of fun celebrating Saturday and Sunday since it is hard to squeeze two birthdays into one day. ;) We started Saturday with an early trip to the park for soccer practice and play, then went to ChuckECheese, where Mariana and I got special birthday treatment, to play some games. After heading home for lunch and naps we went out to eat and practically had the restaurant to ourselves compliments of the Aggie game. Austin even enjoyed a 99cent Aggie-rita! (I had one sip of that and a ton of salsa!). Yesterday after mass and RE we had a yummy lunch, plenty of cake, and Mariana opened her gifts from us. I even opened some cute homemade paper dolls from the girls. We closed out the evening with another yummy dinner and trip to the park. All in all great fun!

Here is everyone sharing a big bowl of ice cream after dinner.

Happy Birthday!

To my Mariana and myself. :)

Then (3 years old)

 

 Now...SIX years old! My birthday buddy and I received a special delivery of flowers and chocolates from Lito and Lita. How sweet! (and Mariana shared very generously, I might add)

Noodle Wars

Yesterday evening the children on our street were all out playing. I had just purchased some end of season clearance swim noodles for next year (50 cents at HEB, you local deal seekers!!!) since some of our old ones may not make it to next year. Suddenly, the swim noodles turned into swords and noodle wars broke out. They must have played this for at least 30 minutes straight. It was so funny. They would fall on the ground until a teammate came to heal them. Then, back to fighting. Everyone was so good natured, no whining or hitting too hard. It was almost amazing....well, until I discovered one of the children (not my own!) had bitten about 10 holes in one of the brand new noodles! Last time I bought some that happened to us at the pool. What luck! At least they were cheap!

My very eager helper and I have started the baking for our birthday weekend. I made this carrot cake from Southern Living once before but last week I made it into cupcakes to celebrate Mary's birthday on Thursday. It was such a hit, we are making them again. It really is the "Best Carrot Cake Ever" in my opinion. And I cheat a bit on the extras. I make the cake recipe but without the nuts and coconut (I am not a fan of nuts in dessert, and none of us are really big on coconut). Then if I don't have all day to spend baking I just mix about 4oz of softened cream cheese into a container of store bought frosting, and it makes a great cream cheese frosting in half the time! Yummy!

**If you are really astute you noticed that in the 2nd photo, Mariana is missing a tooth. She tried to pull it, couldn't, and asked me to do it so we can go out for ice cream tomorrow. :)

Cleaning

The girls, along with a neighbor, built this "house" out of pool floats and then decided to clean, with rags and water, everything in sight.This included my car, ahem, which had just been through the car wash for the first time in months and now has water spots all over it. But, hey, who am I to squelch a cleaning initiative. I just wish it could somehow carry through to the inside of the house. :)

Little Firefighter

Political Science?

I was surprised that the girls were so interested in the debates the other night. They sat through the whole first half until bedtime!

It's a....(Take 2)

Sweet

Bouncing

Baby

GIRL!!!

So Stephen remains the lone boy...at least for a while. ;) The girls are really excited! She was much more wiggly this morning...probably helped that I had my glucose test and had to drink a bunch of yucky sugar water before my appt. :)


This is a shot of her face (gotta love that "alien" look - profiles are much sweeter on ultrasound) and legs moving all around!

More fun birthday moments

The day began with Mass and RE, but when we returned, Allia picked French toast for lunch so we made some bacon and eggs and cut up some fruit for a yummy brunch! She opened her family gifts after lunch, and then we headed to the pool after naps.



The pool was much cooler than our last visit a few weeks ago but still tolerable and fun!




These two got a little two chilly and resorted to sunbathing!

Allia's Birthday Buddy

After the birthday dinner, our friends the R family went home and went into labor just in time to have their sweet baby boy on Allia's birthday. So we made a little trip to the hospital this evening to meet baby Max.






We both agreed when we left that he is totally sweet and really makes us want our new baby to come soon! :)

Birthday Dinner

We had a few families over last night for a September birthday dinner celebration. It was lots of fun for all ages. ;)

While the girls were outside playing, trying to pass the time until our friends arrived, a birthday balloon bouquet was delivered to Allia from Lito and Lita. She was very pleasantly surprised. :)


"Happy Birthday to you"




A little extra help blowing out the candles never hurts!


Stephen with his surrogate big sister (like he needs any more!?) Meha-Mine (Emmeline)






Andrew demoted the butterfly to a caterpillar






Look out everybody (especially the guy holding the rope which happened to be Daddy)!




In the end, the butterfly was decapitated, so Austin had to help shake the candy out of the body. :)









Didn't you know Austin's middle name is Bozo? He was in high demand making balloon animals, swords and hats, but the little ones kept taking theirs out into the grass and popping them!