Wedding Convalidation Ceremony

As most of you already know we had our Marriage blessed in the Roman Catholic Church this past weekend and it was a beautiful event. We had some of our close friends we have made here at St. Martha's join us for the occasion, our friends Denise and Jeff were our witnesses and Jeff did our chosen readings that all turned out so wonderfully. I was afraid of how the boys would behave since I was not going to be able to pay full attention to them during the ceremony, but with the help of my friends in Familia, Kristi and Candice took care of them with out too much of a hitch. All in all it was a wonderful day, I was so excited for Bob to be able to receive Communion today I can't wait till we can receive Eucharist together as a couple at Easter Vigil. We had our friends over after the Ceremony to enjoy some food and drinks and the kids were off and playing in the playroom and outside throwing things on the roof only to see it come down.

Happy Birthday & Turkey Day...Gobble,Gobble

Today Luke turned 5, and it has been an emotional week for me, I don't know where the time has gone. Bob and I watched his birth video last night and all I could think about was how it seems like just yesterday I was going to the hospital to have him.

We didn't go home to Arizona for Thanksgiving we stayed in Texas and this was our first year alone with no rushing around to visit family. I've never made a Turkey before and I was afraid of doing the whole meal, but it went off with out a hitch and I received rave reviews from Bob, the boys on the other hand only ate the green beans.

We have been sick for almost a week now, so we were not feeling too hot for Thanksgiving or today for Luke's birthday, so we nixed our plans to visit NASA and took the boys to see Madagascar 2, they had a blast and then we bought Luke some books and he was ready to go home and sit in his new "thinking chair" (bean-bag) and do some reading. We did our little family birthday party of cake and ice-cream and gave Luke his new Transformers robots and he's in heaven. I only hope the next 5 years go much slower...

Happy Halloween

It's been a while since I've posted so I have some catching up to do. We've had an eventful month...where do we begin. All is settled after Ike, and it took awhile to get back in to our routine but we have learned to appreciate so many things we have always taken for granted.
We took Luke out of school a little over 2 weeks ago, he had been having a lot of behavior issues come up that we had never experienced before at school, church, soccer, and home. So after a lot of discussion and thoughtful prayer Bob and I decided to remove him from school and I started to Home school him. We have successfully completed our second week and it is going really well! We have already seen a significant change in his behavior and his security/attachment issues are slowly improving.
We were not going to celebrate Halloween until Luke's friend Seth started talking about Trick-or-Treating while they were playing at the park the day before and it was all over after that. So luckily he has a Bumblebee Transformers costume to play dress up in and Noah wore my brother Michael's Dragon costume. This dragon costume is probably 27 years old and it still looks great. Noah was walking around growling at everyone, he was a cutie.
After they were all dressed and we waited for Daddy to get home, we started at our next door neighbors house and they had a bowl of candy with a mechanical monster arm that grabs you and Noah freaked out screaming and Luke took off down the walk way to the driveway. Neither one of them wanted any part of the scary stuff. Needless to say Bob had to carry Noah the whole way in his arms and Luke would not walk up to any house with any scary motif. It was fine with me because they received enough candy, and it will be seeing the trash can very soon.

Hurricane Ike

Well we survived Hurricane Ike without injury, Thank The Lord. So I thought we would share some of our pictures of what we did and how we kept ourselves sane living with out electricity for 7 days and water here and there not being safe. We spent most of our time outside visiting with our neighbors and letting the kids play since they were going stir crazy after a couple days. Bob and my neighbors husband said that Hurricane Ike has been just one big party for us. Well I must say Elizabeth and I made the best of a not so good situation. We put the kids to work cleaning up all the tree branches in our yards and surrounding yards, sweeping up the huge piles of pine needles but that only lasted a few hours. The kids played all day they woke up early and went to bed early since we could only function by daylight. As for me I felt very disconnected from reality since we only had local radio and our cell phones worked sporadically except for text messaging. Bob was saying that we were living in the days of our grandparents which I have to say I'm not envious of.

After hearing our electricity was not expected to be restored till the beginging of October, Bob and I decided to take the kids and I to Arizona for awhile after living this was for only 4 days (that was enough for me). So we left late in the evening for our normally 15-16 hour drive. Only it took us 18 hours and Noah was awake and unhappy for 16 of them!!! He was furious to be in his carseat.

We received word from our neighbors that electriciy was restored only 2 days after we arrived in Tucson so we were able to visit my family, Bob's brother Carlos and sister in law Debbie and his Mother. We also tried to see as many friends as we could since we were going to cut our trip short. Thankfully so many of you came to see us during our visit, we really appreciate it.

School's Back!!!

Yes it's that time again, and Luke started school yesterday. We met with his new teacher last week Ms. Helen and she is just as excited as Luke is to return. The first day went well when Bob and I dropped him off, but today he didn't want to go and Noah and I joined him for breakfast with his class. I'm sure it's just first week jitters and getting used to his new teacher (he really misses his last teacher). It's hard to believe how fast he has grown, the time is just flying by. Here are some pictures of his 1st day back.

Roller Skates

The other day Bob decided to take up roller blading again after them being in a box for over 8 years that I know of. When Luke saw him rolling around his eyes about came out of his head and when Bob finished Luke would not take them off all day. So I decided to buy Luke a pair of kid skates and to say the least that was not good enough for him, but Noah loved them. Thank goodness for adjustable skates. So here are some pictures of them attempting to skate in the foyer. And please don't mind Noah in his diaper, we have a hard time keeping clothes on our little man, enjoy...

Happy 4th of July!!!

Our July started off fun, the boys and I have been keeping busy this summer with play dates and we were able to spend some much needed time here at home with Bob who was off for 9 whole days. Luke is still asking me every morning "Mom, where's my Dad?" and Noah looks all over the house with a puzzled look saying "dad's" that's what he calls Bob. So here are some pictures of the last few weeks of us swimming at our friends house and of Luke watching us set off fireworks. It was wonderful to share this with Luke (Noah fell asleep) I grew up in CA where we set off fireworks every year and in AZ that was something I missed very much. So I was thrilled to find out we were able to here in TX. Luke on the other hand was not too happy. After I lit the first one, he ran into the house saying he was tired and wanted to go to bed. So I forced him (like any horrible mommy) to sit in my arms and watch Bob light them. He was excited with all the fireworks people were firing off in the streets beside us and behind us, but when we fired them off in the cul-de-sac he was not happy. Maybe next year he'll know what to expect, and Noah will take a nap so he doesn't miss them.