Happy Valentine's Day

I hope everyone is having a fantastic Valentine's Day. We have had a nice day so far. Grammy is here to help us out with our crazy week, so that has made the day even nicer. Even better, Hubs and I are going to go to dinner with some friends (ummmm...it might have been several years since we have done that without kids :) tonight, so that will be nice. Speaking of Hubs, I wanted to give a special shout out to him for being the best Valentine ever. Baby, I know you never read this blog, but just in case, I want you to know that I love you so much. Your heart amazes me all of the time. I am so thankful that God chose for us to be together because you are certainly my BETTER half. I love you.

We have been really busy this week (surprise surprise). I have really been working hard to keep the house perfect with all of these rascals running around. That is job all by itself. J had surgery this week, and it went well. He is recovering and hanging out at the house with me for the past couple of days. K Bel has a gastroenterology appointment tomorrow in the morning to see if we can figure out what is going on with our littlest peanut. She went for her 8 month well check up last week and she was only 13 lb. 6 oz. We have past the comfort zone for her as far as weight. She is well below the zero percentile, so we are moving on to the next step. We have already altered her diet with lots of extra fat and calories, so we are not sure what is going on. Maybe she is just a tiny girl!! An update on all of the kids:

C is really learning to do some neat big boy things. He brought home some "reading" homework from school. We have been listening to him read to us in Spanish and it is amazing. The really cool thing is that he can't always tell you exactly what it means (but he gets close)...that is what happens when you are bilingual at a young age. Haha...this is funny picture.

K is doing great. I really enjoy her personality so much. She is able to make me smile so often with her little spunky sparky character. I love to watch her pretend...her imagination is full of life, too. F is actually doing really well. We still have our moments (well, ok, lots of moments). But, she is growing up and started to talk a lot. She says lots of things and copies all of us all of the time. She loves to play in the little kitchen and draw on the magna doodle.

K Bel is doing great. She is just a little doll....so so sweet all the time. She is definitely a mommy's baby, but that is just fine with me. :) Her new tricks are sitting up, clapping her hands and saying 'yea', and patting us on the back when she hugs us. She also started saying 'happy' and 'uh-oh'. We are all definitely in love with her....she might be a little spoiled!

I hope everyone is doing great and having a great week. Today, the card that Hubs MADE (yes, guys, he made it) has the verse from 1 Corinthians in it....Love is patient, love is kind, etc. I am thankful that the Lord loves us with that love. It is a love that I don't deserve, but His grace and mercy is more than sufficient for me. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Traditions

Something that is really important to me....family traditions. Among other things, every year we make a gingerbread house right before Christmas. The kids always enjoy it... and I love to watch them have fun. Here are some cute photos of this year's gingerbread house making experience... Hubs thought the icing was finger lickin' good. :)

What a great masterpiece it was!!

So much...

to blog about. I guess I took a little blogging hiatus, but now I am back. We have so much going on right now. We are getting ready to move to a new town. With that comes, getting the house ready to sell, packing up extra clutter, and preparing the kids for the upcoming adventure. We have also been battling some sickies lately. C has had the stomach bug twice and all of the rest of us have had it once....except K Bel. Hopefully she is good to go. K Bel and F have had various therapists out to evaluate them for their various needs. K Bel is extra little with slightly low muscle tone, so she receives occupational therapy and nutritionist consultation. F is receiving services from the behavioral psychologist and the occupation therapist as well. J has an injury that is going to require surgery in the next week or two. And I have had swollen glands and lymph nodes for two weeks. I have been on antibiotics which have improved the situation, but have not remedied it, so now it is time to go to a different doctor. I am scared (to say the least) because the original doctor that I went to told me that it was only a very slim chance that I have cancer!!!! WHAT?? Oh well...God is good all the time, and I know that everything will work out according to His will. We just need to get some answers as to what is going on here. So, things have been crazy. I need to put some pictures up but I wanted to let all two of you that read our blog know that we are still alive and kickin'! Hopefully I will get better about updating. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAL!!!

A few Thanksgiving pictures...

Well, you will never believe but I did not take my camera for Thanksgiving lunch. So, I just have a few pictures of the kids and Mal to share and then a couple of pictures that some of the other family (thanks Glenda and Jay) took while we were there.

We were supposed to go to my birth town to spend some time with my mom's side of the family, but it snowed like 7 inches on Thanksgiving Day in Hubs' hometown. So, Thanksgiving night in birth town did not happen. I was very sad about that (and again, missed out on some picture opps). We did get to see my mom's side of the family on Friday for a little while and that was great. I am a family lover....it is so important to me for us to be with family, and I feel like we do not get to see everyone often enough. Hopefully everyone knows how much we love them!!!

We have had a very busy week...I will post about that later. Hopefully I can start keeping up with all of this a little better.

Playing Catch up...

Well, we are back home from a little mini vacation to West Texas. We had a wonderful time and enjoyed seeing lots of friends and family. It was very relaxing for us and the kids so that was nice. I never posted before we left, so I will devote this post to pre-Thanksgiving fun and excitement.

We had our last week of football and our first week of basketball. Here is a cute picture of the kids with the best coach ever after the last football game.

Then, our sweet friend Ja had her 3rd birthday (Happy Birthday Ja). Lori (her mom) decided we should just pack up and go to the Ft. Worth zoo. It was so much fun. While we were there, the lion decided to roar a couple of times. It was absolutely amazing...his roar echoed throughout the entire zoo. I think the kids had a great time...they are like brothers and sisters since we are neighbors so they were just dragging each other around the whole time. It was great.

Then, C and I had a very special field trip with my precious student Natalie. I arranged for Natalie to have a tour around the fire station and our Safety Town the week before Thanksgiving. I decided that it would be okay to sneak C along with me because, we all know that baby is obsessed.with.fire.stations. There was something that I did not realize....the firemen planned on taking Natalie on a ride in their biggest fire engine. SOOOO...C was invited along. And oh boy, he was the most excited little man in history.

Then, we toured Safety Town, and the fireman asked C if he wanted to drive a little jeep through the town. Oh my word....now that is exciting. So, needless to say, C had a VERY special day. I loved seeing every minute of it...I hope he remembers that forever.

The kids both had Thanksgiving feasts at their school before the break. I took pictures of K's class....they were adorable. They were all pilgrims or indians...C was a pilgrim and K was an indian. Here is K ready to say prayers before lunch.

My niece, Amber turned 13 this week (Happy Birthday Amber). The kids and I headed out to my sister's house to celebrate last weekend. It was a ton of fun. The kids got to play with the horses and look at alpacas. I enjoyed taking pictures of them outside. Thanks Kim for having us over! So, I think that brings us to the Thanksgiving holiday. I will post about that in the next day or two. Hopefully you all had a blessed day with friends and family...

This is my friend Bubby, Mommy.

I don't have a picture, but I needed to journal that those words came out of the princess' mouth today. K loves her brother and he loves her for that matter, but they are not ALWAYS friends. Tonight, when they were playing together outside...she said, "this is my friend Bubby, Mommy." And at that moment, my heart was happy. Another cute moment happened this morning in the car on the way to school. C sneezed and K said, "Bless you Bubby." C said, "Thank you Sugar Bear." Ha. They really do make my day lots of fun...the little things really do matter, don't they?

Lots of questions...

Doesn't he just look like he is pondering the most important things. And...no, we don't make him mop the garage....that was his own doings. My C man is really growing up. He has been asking me a lot of questions. Just today he said, "Mommy, why do we have so many foster kids....and why are we are foster family?" Hmmm...that is a complicated answer. So, I just stuck with saying Mommy and Daddy really feel like that is a gift that God is giving us...to love other children. The other day he was listening to his Bob and Larry worship CD in the car and he said, "Mommy, what is worship?" Oh my word, son...that is a big one. I thought to myself, "God help me with this one...I need to prepare my son's heart for You." So, I answered to the best of my ability. Those are the questions that my sweet 'almost five year old' is pondering in his world. Wow....amazing. K on the other hand says "worshippy doo doo" when the CD starts playing. I think we need to start praying for that little princess people.

K has been busy too. Today, when we went to Target, she said, "Where are my Dora panties?" Hmmm...well....you don't have any. "Yes, I do," she said. Ha...So, I bought the princess some Dora panties. As soon as we got home, she wanted to wear them. Please let me tell you that she has NEVER gone tee tee on the potty. But, I will go with the flow and if she is interested, we will give it a try. She is taking a nap right now with a diaper and two pair of Dora panties on. I guess she might need an extra pair for something. That girl...she is one of a kind. The girls all wore their precious new shirts to the football game last week. My friend Laura and I got our girls black shirts and had 'go (mascot)' written in blingy (if that is a word) letters. They all looked precious. K wore a special shirt though that said. "I (heart) Rocky." Because you know she is IN.LOVE.WITH.ROCKY (the monster). I don't know if you can see the words, but here is a picture of her fancy shirt.

F started saying, "scuse-ooo (excuse you)" when someone burps, coughs, sneezes, etc. It is really funny. She is almost 18 months old and still has about 7 or 8 words, so we are going to give ECI a call. She did not qualify when she was younger, but I think it is time for some intervention. Hopefully, she will get some help soon...

K Bel is doing fine. She is lying down on the bed next to me sleeping...rotten baby. She is just so sweet. Her little smile is so contagious...all of the kids just love to be with her. And...quite frankly, I do too!! J is playing in his last footbal game tonight and will start wrestling this weekend. He is not getting much of a break, but neither is Hubs. Basketball starts tomorrow. We are excited about going to basketball games...that is always fun. I did something exciting this week...drum roll...I made home made icing for my friend Lori's birthday. I think it was pretty yummy...not perfect, but a good start. Of course, it wouldn't be true without a picture!!

Say a little prayer for us...we are having our family picture taken on Sunday. I know most of you are probably just laughing...7 people in one picture...four of which are four years old and younger. It should be interesting. This year might be a blooper photo, but that is okay with me. Just having a picture with all of us together will mean the world to me!