Today! I'm almost caught up!

Today was a special day for a special little boy. Elias is a boy at our church who just finished his last treatment for brain cancer! You would not believe all that he has endured in his short life. You can read his story here. His family reamined faithful to God and today gave thanks for his healing. When I found out about the party, I offered to make a cake. I had no idea that there would be at least 125 people there. Elias loves super heroes and has even created Super Elias. He asked me to make the cake in these colors. I would have loved to post a picture of Elias with the cake but he was just too busy to catch. You can drop his mom a line on her blog. Julia and I were sporting our Moby Wraps. Look at Abby checking out her new little boyfriend, Milo! He is beautiful.

Kids just love to get their face painted.

Lauren guessed how many gumballs there were and she won! Lucky for us the prize was not the gumballs, it was a big tub of sidewalk chalk.

And now I am ALMOST caught up with blogging. I had a little time just now because Stephen is gone to a wedding. Now I'd better get back to my Mommy duties.

Abby's first taste of baby food

Abby turned 6 months old on the 20th! I can't believe she has been with us for half a year already. She continues to bring so much joy to our lives. She smiles more than Lauren or Caleb did and just seems happy all the time. Here she is getting her first taste of baby food.

She is smiling because you know what comes with babies eating baby food? More SMELLY and colorful poopie diapers!

June 22 Another trip to Fort Worth

We went up to Fort Worth to bury my mom's ashes. Many have asked why we waited so long but considering that she passed away April 10, we have been so busy with the move, Stephen's business, and such, that this was the first time we could get away.

Mom's lifetime friend, Malia, finally gets to hold Abby.

Uncle Paul always brings out the best in Caleb.

Ryan is always a great helper. After he helped Lauren make a plate, he sat down with her and gave her his complete attention.

Aunt Joanie and me

Caleb helped himself to a big, HUGE...piece of bread! That's my boy.

Now that my mom is gone, it is even more important to me to get pictures of the kids with their grandparents. Here is my dad with 4 of his grandkids, we couldn't find Colton.

June 11- My grandmother's funeral

My cousin Sandy and Abby.

Reuniting with the 2nd cousin (I'm the first). Sandy lives in the Big Apple so I NEVER get to see her. Whenever we do get to see each other, it's like we never parted. It was just amazing how much we are alike.

Caitlyn and Lauren having a big cousin hug.

Angie (our cousin Nick's wife...sorta), Megan, and Christy.

We decided to stay in a hotel that night. We were very nervous about all the kids sleeping in the same room, especially since Abby still wakes up once for a feeding but they all did great.

Call Off the Search Party!

I'm okay, really, I've just been buried in boxes that need to be unpacked. I want to know where all these boxes came from, they couldn't all be ours! We have been unpacking for a month now and we still have a garage full of boxes. Well, okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit, most of the boxes in the garage are full of holiday decorations that we would normally have in the attic, except for one minor detail, there is no attic in this house! So we are going to build a shed in the back...after we get approval from the homeowners' association.

Besides unpacking, we've had to leave town twice in the last 10 days. Neither trip was a vacation either. The first trip was for my grandmother's funeral, and this passed weekend we went back up to Fort Worth to bury my mom's ashes. We got to spend time with our wonderful friends, Mandy and Shane, and our kids had a fabulous time too.

So I think I have the solution to getting any house in order in a hurry-ask friends to come over for dinner. It's our turn to host our supper club and it's happening tomorrow night. Since we were out of town all weekend, that left today and tomorrow to get this house in presentable condition. Oh how I wish I took some "before" pictures. So far today Stephen and I have cleaned the kitchen..that includes putting away all those little odds and ends that end up on the counter and all those crayons that have rolled off the table and into those little hiding places, you know what I'm talking about. There was a storage tub with lots of junk on top that we finally cleared out. Stephen is going to finish putting the hardware on the drawers and cabinets. We've cleared off the dining room table which was the hotspot for all the things we didn't know what to do with. We (Stephen) put out the fancy tablecloth, placemats, napkins, etc...which reminds me, I need to go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get some napkin rings. Stephen hung all the new pictures we bought at Garden Ridge on Saturday. There are lots and lots of pictures.

Oh yes, I am so mad at myself. I left our Waterford wedding toasting glasses up on the counter and had a box next to them. Lauren walked by and pushed the box and one of the glasses took a dive onto the floor and shattered. It was heartbreaking. They were a wedding gift from my great aunt and uncle and they are very special to me.

We still have so much left to do. We have to clear out the living room and when I can find the new carpet under all the 'stuff', I'll vacuum. That will be it for downstairs. Now upstairs we still have to hang pictures, clear off dressers, reorganize closets, unpack and set up the Master bathroom, oh what a mess. The playroom isn't staying neat like I thought it would. Those little ABC and 123 rubber mats that snap together and protect the carpet from those sippie cup drops, yeah, they scoot. Does that annoy anyone else?

Makes ya want to move, doesn't it? And that's just inside. We have to order and lay 5 pallets of sod and then get my garden started.

Maybe, just maybe it will all be finished by tomorrow night and I can have the rest of the summer to relax and enjoy it. I will definitely take pictures of the finished product and post them by the end of the week.

Oh yes, if any of you have sent me an email in the last 10 days, I haven't read it yet. Besides being too busy to get on the internet, Stephen has been working on his weddings, talent shows, graduations, etc... and I haven't had the heart to ask him to let me check my email. I need my own computer.

Have you heard of Dry Drowning?

Every parent needs to watch this video about the dangers of children taking in too much water while swimming or bathing. It is very scary!

Back to blogging!

Leave it to my family to find fun and humor in anything, including the death of my grandmother. As you probably know, my grandmother passed away a week ago today. My Uncle Chris was with her and he called my aunts and other uncle to come as quickly as they could. Hospice was there too and after she passed, they were in the den doing what hospice does, waiting for the funeral home to arrive and pick her up. The family gathered in the living room and my Uncle John apparently passed out and rolled out of his chair onto the floor. He told Uncle Chris that he was just going to rest. After a few failed attempts to get him back up, someone called 9-1-1. So when the paramedics arrived, it went something like this:

Uncle Chris: "Now, there's a dead body in the den, you are not here for her! There's another body in the living room, that's the one you want."

As you can imagine, the paramedics were a little bit confused. The ambulance and fire truck stirred up a little excitement for the neighbors and right after they loaded my Uncle John and pulled away from the house, the funeral home arrived to pick up my grandmother. I'm sure my family thought it would be fun to let the neighbors talk a little but they decided to let everyone know that it was not a double homicide or anything like that.

My uncle John will be fine as long as he monitors his blood sugar.

My Grandmother--UPDATED

My grandmother passed away yesterday morning, it was also her wedding anniversary. She had 5 children, 10 biological grandchildren, many step-grandchildren, 6 great-grandchildren, many step great-grandchildren, and spent most of her life as a teacher in Silsbee and Plano. We are saddened by our loss but we all know that she is with The Lord and is suffering no more. Please pray for my extended family as many of us will have to travel to Plano for her funeral.

Patricia Joy Schnaithman

May 20, 1927-June 7, 2008

UPDATED: As my aunts and uncles were going through my grandmother's things, they found her wedding invitation. She was married at 9:00 am on Saturday, June 7, 1947. She took her last breath at 9:00 am on Saturday, June 7, 2008.

What would you do?

We've been in our new house for 2 weeks and are really having a hard time finding a place for everything we have. One reason is that there is next to no attic space. Think about all that you have in your attic. We had tubs of girl and boy clothes, tubs of holiday decorations, a toddler bed, and more in the attic at the last house. Now, all of that is filling up our garage. We plan on building a shed but have to wait on the Homeowners' Association's approval. Anyway, I have an old bassinet. It was my bassinet when I was a baby. It was my brother's and then his children's. Lauren, Caleb, and Abby have all slept in it and we aren't sure if we are going to have more or not. My question is do I hold on to it for it's sentimental value? Or do I accept reality that it is just taking up space and let it go?

What would you do?

A little bit of excitement in the new neighborhood

We were so excited to find out that our neighborhood has strict guidelines about no rentals. I don't mean to offend anyone who rents their home, there is nothing wrong with families who rent but in this town, there are a lot of problems when students are allowed to rent nice houses. Allowing students to rent usually means lots of cars parked up and down the street, lots of people coming and going all the time. It means lots of parties where party goers use the bathroom outside and leave trash strewn in our yard. In our old neighborhood, it didn't matter who rented the house across the street, the authorities were always called out. Once it was the Task Force and their drug bust. Another time is was the police shooting an agressive pit bull that had gotten loose and was terrorizing the neighborhood.

Apparently no neighborhood is immune to chaos.

Saturday night Stephen and I were relaxing on the couch. I was just getting Abby to sleep which was later than normal but we had a busy day. All of a sudden we heard a man screaming. It was so loud we could hear it with the TV on. We heard a few banging sounds but not like gunshots. I told Stephen to check it out and he went out on the front porch. He came back and said we needed to call 9-1-1 because a man was punching the truck across the street. He had body slammed it a few times too. There were women and children out there. I called 9-1-1 and explained to them what was going on. They didn't even have our street in the system so I had to give them directions...isn't that crazy? Meanwhile, the man hit a woman and Stephen thought he grabbed one of the children. This was just like watching an episode of Cops. Then the dispatcher had to patch me through to the Sheriff's office because we're out of city limits. I got up and started watching through the bathroom window and the man went to the house and tried to punch a window. I guess that wasn't enough pain for him because he went to the truck and punched out the side mirror. I kept wondering when the Sheriff's department would arrive.

A car pulled up and the man tried to get in but as the women ran after him, the car pulled away quickly. The man ran in the opposite direction, I think he was going to try to cut the car off as it went up the next street. A woman ran after him...why do women do that? Finally a sheriff's deputy pulled up. I saw that some other neighbors were out so Stephen and I went out too. We talked to the neighbors. We knew that the woman works at our pediatrician's office but what we didn't know was that her husband works at the Sheriff's office and he was on the phone with them when all of this was going on.

The deputies circled the neighborhood a few times and left. We all went inside and Stephen saw a car pull up to the house. About 3 women ran out with lots of small children. They all piled into a small car and went 2 houses up the street. You'll never believe what happened next.

The man came out of hiding and got into the car with them and they drove away!
I just hope that means that none of them live there and it won't happen again!