Santa's Wonderland

We have always noticed Santa's Wonderland when driving to Grandma & Papa's house, but we have never had the chance to go... until this year! We met the Wittschen's there and piled in the back of Gabe's truck and got to enjoy ALL of the lights and neat scenery. After the tour, you can get out and go to the petting zoo, eat, and play games, but we decided to skip that this year- the kids still seem a little too young for that. We will definitely go back next year though! It was soo pretty with all of the lights- definitely puts you in the Christmas spirit!!
Sophie trying to look inside the cab of the truck to see Daddy.

Dane chillin' with his crackers! :)

Playing "Where's Sophie?"

Being silly!!

Papa & Sophie

I thought this was too cute... Sophie follows Papa wherever he goes. She had already eaten lunch, but when she saw Papa sitting down to eat, she had to be right there eating too! She had her first taste of summer sausage with cheese and crackers (one of my childhood favorites). :)

Anyone Want Some More Smores??

Mom's Birthday Party

Surprise!!!!! My sisters and I (with the help of Dad, of course) surprised my Mom with a 70th Birthday Party. Her actual birthday isn't until Christmas Eve, but we really wanted to throw her off!! Haha! She thought we were just taking her out to a nice restaurant, so she was a little surprised to see her brother & sisters, family and friends all waiting for her at Becky's house. We had Pappasito's fajitas and a beautiful cake from Estelle. Gabe and I made a slideshow of my Mom's life. It turned out pretty good for a couple of amateurs. :)
I think Mom really enjoyed herself. It was a great party!!
The Birthday Girl!!!!

The table of Sisters.

Danni & Tyler getting the slideshow ready.

Mom & Dad watching the slideshow (not a great pic of them, but check out the funny son-in-laws in the background)! Lol.

Sophie loves her Papa!

Sophie getting Cole's sugars! :)

Mom had plenty of help opening her gifts.

The yummy cake.

Someone just likes the icing, not the cake. He didn't get that from me!!

The Queen speaks! Haha, just kidding Mom.

Is someone hot?

More icing.

Good to the last drop! Don't worry, it was already empty. :)

Cole & Zach with Grandma.

Christmas at Cypress Top

The county hosted a Christmas party at the dance hall in Cypress Top Park (otherwise known as Downtown Cypress). They had music, snacks, tours of the property (so I got to see my old room/house decorated for Christmas), and ornament making. It was really neat and they had a good turn out.
Here are some pictures of the kiddos making some ornaments for the tree.

Zach putting his ornament on the tree.

The star at the top of the tree. If you look real close, you can see a picture of my parents in the middle of the star!! :)

22 Months!

Little Miss Diva turned 22 months already!! Hard to believe!!! She is such a little person now. She repeats everything you say (so watch out)! And she likes to sing, dance, chase brother around the house, wrestle, scream, read books... the list goes on and on.

My favorite thing that she says now is: "luv u!" Melts my heart everytime! :)

Happy 22 Months Baby Girl!!

I Love Lamp!

Okay, so to understand the title of this post, you have to have seen one of our favorite movies, "Anchor Man." It's one of those silly movies that Gabe loves and I learn to love because he laughs at it so hard. It is contagious. :)

We are just relaxing in the living room when the two crazies walk in....

Guess it's time for a new lamp shade!! I knew the shade on my bedroom lamp was loose, but I guess it was on its last leg. Or it definitely had some help in being on its last leg!! Lol.

Who is that under there??

There she is!! It's Sophie!!

She thought that was so funny. So of course, we had to do it a couple more times. :)

The Weather Outside Was Frightful

December 4, 2009... another day that it snowed in Houston, Texas!!!!! Unfortunately, Tomball didn't get too much of it though. And what little we did get, it didn't "stick" around! Haha... :)

Once Daddy got home from work, we just HAD to go out and take a walk. Gabe loves it when it snows. He is practically a little kid, it makes me laugh. I guess we'll have to go see 'real' snow someday.
It was pretty cold and wet, I might add. The kids don't have heavy jackets, so I layered them to death!! Undershirt, sweater, hoodie... they didn't seem to mind once we were outside. :)

Aww, so precious together!

My little snow angel. :)

Oh What A Day!!!

The time came... Zach's four year check-up. I have been putting it off and putting it off, but I had to take him in. He's been having nose bleeds (occasionly) and two "24 hour bugs" in the past few weeks, so I needed to get him checked out. And Sophie needed a few shots to get caught up too. So I made the appointment and the nice lady tells me that I might need to have a few drinks before I bring them in, that the 4 year check-up is a killer. Especially if I have two children with appointments by myself!! Hearing that, I immediately call Gabe to make sure he can go with me. I definitely would need help. Sophie cries while the nurse is only weighing her! Sheesh!! :)
Zach's appointment: Went really well considering ALL that he went through.

Weight: 40 lbs (90 percentile)
Height: 40 3/4 in (75 percentile)

They then took him in to a special room to check his hearing. He had to raise his hand once he heard the beep. Only thing, he wouldn't raise his hand, he would just look at me when he heard the beep. I don't think this was considered "passing" but she didn't mark that he "failed" either. Then it was time for his vision screening. He did very well and passed with flying colors!
He had his blood pressure taken, he had to do a few tricks for Dr. Patel (like touch his toes, stand on one foot, etc.), and got all his vitals taken. Then it was time for him to give a urine sample. This was easy. Luckily he already had to go to the bathroom.

Sophie's appointment: Also went really well. She just gets upset so easily with strangers touching her. She doesn't appreciate it too much.

Weight: 28 lbs 9.5 oz (75-90 percentile)
Height: 34 1/2 in (90-97 percentile) Yes, she is a TALL GIRL!! :)

Sophie went first with the shots. She got four total! Poor baby. I feel so bad for her, I know she is so scared. :(

Then Zach's turn. I was holding Sophie trying to calm her down and Gabe helped the nurse hold Zach down (doesn't that sound awful). First shot...nothing. Second shot...nothing. I had to look to make sure she had actually started the process. Third shot... "Ow!" Fourth shot...all hell breaks loose! He screamed and cried bloody murder. He didn't even want the nurse touching him to put the band-aids on! And then Sophie started crying again because he was.

Next, it was time to go to the lab to get blood taken. I took Sophie first while Gabe stayed behind in the room to calm Zach. I don't think I need to tell you how this went. She basically cried and screamed the whole time. I think I needed MY hearing checked afterwards.

Now Zach's turn. His went pretty much the same way, but without the high pitch screaming. :)

For his nosebleeds, Dr. Patel said it is very common. Usually caused by scratching/rubbing the nose too hard or allergies. Knock on wood though, we haven't had a nosebleed in quite a while.
For his tummy aches, it was most likely just a "bug." He said that if Zach keeps complaining about his tummy hurting after he eats, then we could try Prevacid for a few weeks to help. Again, luckily he hasn't complained the last couple of days. So I think he is all better!

Every well visit the nurse will hand you a packet of papers. The first one will always have your childs' stats (like the height, weight, etc). And it will also include the shot information if they recieved any on that visit. It will also include some information that might be helpful like car seats, potty training, behavior control, etc. Well, look what I found in Zach's packet this time....

I couldn't believe it!! Oh my gosh, do I have to worry about this already?? I thought for sure I had at least 8-10 years before I had to worry about this!! :)

After the tramautic-filled afternoon, we treated the kids to some McDonald's. We thought they definitely deserved it for being so brave and strong!!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Zach thought his legs were broken afterwards. He was acting like an old, crippled man walking into McDonald's. He wanted to be carried because of his "poor, old" legs. Ha!

And...their test results came back good! I am so thankful for my two healthy babies (oh wait, Zach told me that I couldn't call him a baby anymore)!!!! :)

Thanksgiving 2009

Okay, I'm a little behind (again), but at least I am good about catching up!! Lol! For Thanksgiving this year, we went to Corpus to spend it with our family there. It had been 3 years since we had been there for Thanksgiving!! So we were definitely overdue!!! We decided to leave early Thanksgiving morning so that the kids could get a decent night's rest the night before. We were on the road by 7:30am. Not too bad if I do say so myself! :) The drive was pretty good, traffic wasn't bad at all.
We arrived at Papo's & Grandma Bebe's at 11am- just in time to eat!!! :) We spent the whole day eating, visiting with family, watching football, and playing with the kids.

On Friday, we visited with Cousin Lauren at her house, went to have some awesome enchilada's at Kiko's, and then went to the playground for a little while. Here are some pictures of Papo & Zach in the tree. Sidenote: Zach usually never gets to take naps when we are in Corpus, which means he gets pretty grumpy at times, which then leads to him not wanting me to take pictures of him. :)

On Friday night we went back to Cousin Lauren's house to enjoy some fried shrimp and fried fish for dinner. Thanks Uncle Jesse!! The kids loved it... they got to play outside and have fun!!

On Saturday, we headed out to the ranch to visit Great Grandpa & Grandma Gonzalez. Gabe was craving some of her famous Menudo. Well, all morning (after breakfast) Zach was complaining about his tummy hurting. And he is usually pretty good about telling you when he doesn't feel well. And if it is really hurting/upset, he won't let it go. He will whine and moan. This is when I know he is really not feeling well. He didn't have a fever, nothing else hurt, just an upset tummy. The drive out to the ranch is a good 45 minute drive and he complained almost the whole way there. We even pulled over once to see if he was all right. I told him to lay his head down and see if he could get some rest to make it better. He woke up as soon as we pulled into the driveway and he wanted me to carry him in. Well, as soon as we walked onto the side porch, he vomited everywhere!! Poor baby. It was all over him, me, the floor and even on Sophie. Good thing was, we had our suitcase in the car, so we had a change of clothes. Wow- not fun. But he seemed to feel better afterwards. He slowly drank some Sprite and went and joined the rest of the kids outside.

Oh, and we got to meet Baby Emily- the fifth great grandchild in the family!!

On our way out of town, we stopped by and visited with Grandma Sally for a little while. She is opening a new Antique store and we stopped in to check it out.
We finally hit the road for home around 5pm. Zach was still complaining about his tummy a little, but nothing too severe. We did stop to get some dinner on the way home and he ate some of that, so I think he felt better.

Needless to say, we all hit the hay once we got home and unpacked. We were all tired from all of the festivities.

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving, as we did!!

Too Cute For Words

So I broke down and bought Sophie these cute, little boots from Target the other day. I usually don't 'splurge' on things like this- knowing that she will grow out of them before I know it, but I just couldn't resist! :) Here she is with her boots, tights, and dress.