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. :)