Photos of the kids in their PJ's!

Hey Everyone, We hope all of our friends and family are enjoying our new blog website. I was informed that a couple of you are having a hard time seeing the photos?? If so, shoot us an email and let us know. Maybe I can email them to you instead? Otherwise, this is still the best way to keep everyone updated and show off our growing children....

Throughout our 10 years of marriage and many moves, we have many friends across about a dozen states! :) Thanks to all of you for keeping in touch with us! The following pics were taken a couple weeks ago – it is so difficult to pose 3 kids and get them to all look at the camera at the same time! I have a new respect for photographers!!! How do you like Little Brother's night cap? I am 98% sure this was a sleeper of Anthony’s that Tracie in GA sent to us. The gown Little Sister is wearing was given to Knucklehead when she was a baby from my friend Lisa B. from Monsanto!

We will be visiting Savannah, GA for a week at the end of October and spending 10 days in KY for Thanksgiving Holiday so hopefully we can see a lot of you during our visits!

Love from Texas!

Thanks to the technology of digital cameras I can take lots of photos and not have to worry about wasting film. However, I took nearly 50 photos in 10 minutes and this is the ONLY one of Knucklehead Big Sister not making a silly face. Too bad it isn't a smile, but I will take what I can get.

OK, perhaps we will never know what exactly was so funny that little sister is snickering about… perhaps she was planning to let off one of her famous “clear the room” stink bombs! LOL .... and it appears she gave a warning to brother b/c he is plugging his nose!
In the next photo it appears that her stink bomb was a success….. "Yeah, I did it!!" says sister and little brother thinks it is funny too! ....he thinks to himself.... "thanks for the warning, but poor mom never saw it coming."

So often strangers say they look identical – when in fact they have each looked so differently since day one, but in the next two photo I guess they do sort of look alike – it is rare that I see them looking so much like each other. Perhaps it was the same expression on their faces with their eyes opened so wide???

When Big Sister was behind the camera they couldn't’t take their eyes off her – in above photo they look scared that she may fall on them… whoa!
Hope you all enjoyed the photos!

~Love from Texas!

Sunday - My favorite day of the week!

Here we are last Sunday... September 16th... not at our home church but at the neighboring town's church - St. Anthony's Cathedral. I'm holding "Stretch" and my husband is holding "Milk Jug" and Knucklehead is in front of us holding "her" bulletin.

After mass was over many friendly people came up to greet us and one lady offered to take our photo. She actually asked if I mind if she take our photo with her camera that she carries with her and that "one day" when she saw us next, she would give us a copy. We explained to her that it was rare for us to attend mass there, b/c we live in the neighboring town and chances were that the twins may be much older the next time she saw us... however, she still insisted and wanted to take our photo with her camera and agreed to take another using our camera. And I am so glad she did! It is rare of us to get a family photo and where better to take one than here at the Cathederal! :)

Why were we not at our church you wonder???? We missed it! Actually, it was only 20 minuites shy of the time we usually leave the house and not everyone was out of bed yet! I won't name any names... but it wasn't like I was near being ready to go either... It would be a miracle to make it to our church's service at 10:30am so we headed over to the church next door for their 12:00..... Yes NOON!

I'll admit we have been late to mass more times in the past 3 months than we have in the past 3 years combined... and I'm talking LATE - like during the first reading late!!! Most people will turn and look the other way and pretend not to notice us trying hard to be polite b/c of our recent family growth... but I really don't like being late!

Lucky for us, we do have a backup plan as my husband calls it - the Noon Mass at the Cathedral. Although it is a nice place to worship and I love the friendlyness of the people, it really just isn't the same. If we miss mass at our home church, it makes it 2 weeks between seeing our friends... and not to mention getting a later start only sets us back for the whole day! We went out to eat afterwards, and didn't get home until nearly 4pm!!! We had very slow service at Red Lobster aka "the crab house" as Knucklehead calls it..... lucky for us the twins slept majority of the meal and no one required breast feeding so I was free to enjoy my snow crab legs - which are a hands on - kind-of-meal!

Oh, and since this post is on the topic of "Photos taken at church" I will end with a few others taken of us... the first one was taken of the kids during Father Michael's welcome reception following mass I think during June - about the time of the babies being just 3 weeks old!!! It's hard to believe they were once this small!!!!!

Sunday, June 23, 2007

Here we are - our FIRST ever family photo with the twins - and our FIRST time to take them to church - Sunday June 9th - they are only 6 days old in the photo below.

Easter 2006

Christmas 2006

Are you ready to LAUGH!!!???!

OK, I have never posted a video before and I am not sure if it will upload or not but I am going to try and cross my fingers that it works!

One day last week, we were playing with our digital camera making a few short videos. Or rather, "radio" as Knucklehead calls it... I am sure it makes perfect sence in her mind.

You have to see and HEAR Knucklehead singing and saying her Hail Mary Prayer - make sure you have your speakers turned up. I'm sure many of you will be saying to yourself Aughlllllllll how cute..." but wait for the VERY END!!!! I didn't know she was gonna have an encore and I hit the off button about 5 seconds too soon but I caught a little of it.

You will be ROTFLYAO - in case you don't know what that stands for I will get you started....Rolling On The Floor Laughing Your _____ Off!!!

(MAN! I wish I hadn't stopped it as soon as I did - we could have entered it on America's Funniest Videos!!! well, at least I will still have it to show her when she is all grown up! I don't think she will kill me - that is, unless she finds out that I put it up on the INTERNET!!! *gasp!*)





ok, admit it - you are Laughing!!! I have seen it over a dozen times tonight alone and I about wet myself each time. She was so serious and then...! LOL :P

Hurricane Humberto

Hurricane Humberto

Sorry I haven’t posted lately but it’s been a busy week around here. An unexpected hurricane really put a twist on our schedule (pun intended) and now we are playing catch up after being without electricity.

A week ago tonight when we went to bed, I had no idea that a tropical storm was headed our way much less a soon to be hurricane! Fastest developing hurricane in history I have been told…

I don’t watch TV much anymore – so I was unaware that a tropical storm was headed towards the gulf. My husband knew about it b/c of his job but thought that we were not in harms way, that it was thought to be headed towards Galveston Island… like Hurricane Rita was… but in both events the path of the storm changed and ripped right thru out town on the TX/LA boarder. This time the damage wasn’t as bad in my opinion, but according to local newspapers will cost more than Rita for cleanup.

A week ago tonight around 3am we lost electricity. I had just gotten back into bed from nursing one of the twins when I heard the fan we use for a noise maker go off… then after that I could not go back to sleep – I could hear everything. The wind was really getting up and since the babies crib in our room is in the window area, it made me scared that perhaps something would come flying thru and break the glass to fall all over them… so I got up and carried them one at a time over and put them both in bed with us just to be on the safe side.

Again, I had no idea that this was a hurricane I was hearing outside… I just thought it was a bad storm. Well the next day when we woke up we got a phone call from Knucklehead's teacher saying no school b/c no electric at the home of school… but somehow I misinterpreted Heidi when she said “We’re all ok here” to mean that they had electric (when in fact they didn’t – some 100,000 + homes were out)… So I thought to myself, that if Heidi has electric and she lives off HWY 62, then we’ll jump in the van and drive to McDonalds on 62 and go get breakfast since our power is out. WRONG! No where to get hot food…

Before I even pulled out of the drive I could see the damage left from the hurricane which at this point didn’t even know it’s name b/c we didn’t have TV to watch. I actually ended up calling my Dad in KY and he told me all about what had happened here in our town.

I happened to have my digital camera with me and here are some photos I took around my neighborhood and town.

a large tree uprooted in our neighborhood.

more large branches down in one of the nieghbor's yard.

a tree split in half in our neighborhood.

Just one of many poles that were blown to the side.

all thru town a lot of signs were blown completely over like this one

a storage building was blown over on it's side!

I think lightening struck this tree on the left - no bark from the top to the middle. Although maybe this was done during Rita and I just never noticed until today??

Lucky for us, our yard didn’t have anything to clean up except our patio furniture in the backyard… it was blown all over the place and our umbrella was too damaged to keep – but that set is over 8 years old and we were thinking of buying new next spring anyway so no big loss.

Our neighbor across the street was a little jealous this week of us I think. This is a photo of his yard.

He made the comment that we didn’t have anything to pick up like he did… well of course not – b/c all of our large trees blew down to the ground (missing the house thankfully) during Hurricane Rita. We had them cut up and taken away following that hurricane and have since had the stumps ground up… so our yard looked fine this time. What was there to blow over?

And here I leave you with a photo of Knucklehead in one of her "mommy-look-a-like" stares as we drove aroudn town looking at the hurricane damage.......only my mouth woudl have been slightly opened. LOL :P

It was an intresting adventure that night after the sun went down..... trying to explain to a 3 year old for the first time about electricity and how come she needs to STOP MAKING A WISH AND BLOWING OUT OUR CANDLES!!!! Thankfully we only had to go one night without power!

I was so excited to trun onto our street Friday and see these trucks parked along our home! You can barely see our house on the Left side - white brick with green metal roof.... that Knucklehead declares is really blue -but that is a whole 'nother story! :P

The Babies were Baptized Sunday!

September 2, 2007

Our week started off with a great Celebration this week!!! Sunday, we had the twins baptized following Mass. Deacon Harvey did his best to move mountains so that we could have it done during the Mass but for circumstances out of his control we were not able to which was a disappointment to us... but never the less, the sacrament means the same and a handful of our closest friends came to witness this blessed event!

My Dad and Step-mom, Clara, were the Godparents for the twins. They drove down from KY and brought David's mom, Kathy, with them and arrived early Thursday morning. We had a great visit with them while they were here.

Here are a few photos that capture the special moments from the Baptism Day.

Oliva Maelee
and
Paul Thomas
Baptized Sunday September 2, 2007
St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church

I wish I had more to share but after we got home I was not able to find my camera that a friend had placed in my diaper bag. Although I searched and dug all throughout the diaper bag –THREE times even!!! then I gave up and thought maybe my friend had taken the camera home with them by mistake… so we took photos around the house of all of us holding the babies with Dad & Clara’s camera and David’s moms….

Afterwards, everyone went upstairs to undress while I looked one more time, this time I dumped the whole bag upside down on the table…(it needed a good cleaning out anyway). Well there it was! I did have it so quickly I called upstairs “get dressed AGAIN, I found my camera!!!”

David’s mom was still holding the twins, so I snapped a shot of her sitting at the fireplace but after the first photo - the battery went totally DEAD!!!

So David yelled back upstairs to Dad – “never mind the battery is dead…” which caused a great commotion b/c he had already put his shirt back on buttoned it up and even retied his tie… then to make it more funny David waited 60 seconds then yelled we got a new battery get dressed again… followed by “APRIL FOOLS!!”

You gotta know my dad to understand the April Fools thing! LOL That’s another story for another day! LOL

It just wasn’t meant for me to be the picture taker using my own camera on this day! :( Maybe with a little luck we will receive some good photos taken of us at home by Clara in the mail soon.

I really regret that there is not a photo of ME holding both of the twins... that always seems to happen :/

What precious angels they both are! We are so blessed!

Knucklehead’s “Meet the Teacher Day” at Preschool

September 7, 2007
Today was the day we have been anxiously waiting all summer to come – the day to go and meet the teacher at Preschool!

All of our potty training has led up to this very day… if you can’t use the potty, then you can’t go to school… the teacher is going to ask you if you know how to use the potty like all the other big kids…

All last week while Mawmaw & Pawpaw and MiMi were here, Knucklehead tinkled in the Potty EVERY time, EVERY day!!! … the first day after everyone was gone, she had two accidents that day, but after that she has been right on track and using the potty every time and today was no exception. At preschool she used the potty just like all the other big kids! And she felt very proud to be like all the other kids at school!

Knucklehead is attending a private Preschool. My best friend, Heidi, is a certified teacher and she and another great friend of mine, Cathi, have gone in together to create and open up a “Home School Preschool” in Cathi’s home.

There are a total of six students: 3 girls and 3 boys all who Knucklehead already knows and is friends with so that works out really well. Today they made their own Alphabet Clown to bring home and hang up in their bedrooms. Throughout the year, they will be adding letter balloons to bring home and hang up with their clown and by the end of the year they will have all twenty-six balloons!
It is going to be a great year for Knucklehead. She went right in with no hesitation and never looked back at me. I am so happy to see her start this new beginning! my only regret is that I didn't remember to take a photo of her with her Teachers today on "Meet the Teacher Day!"

And to wrap this up on a CUTE Note:
After “Meet the Teacher” was over, the moms and teachers visited for 10-15 minutes out in the living room area. After hearing another mom say we have to go in 5 minutes I waited a little while then prompted Knucklehead to help clean up toys b/c we would have to be leaving too in about 3 minutes (3 is her magic number these days!) To show her disappointment of having to get ready to leave – She quickly put her arms folded in front of her chest and said, “I have dreams you know!” …which is a line from the book “Don’t let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.”

We left, called Daddy at work and then went to pick him up and take him out to lunch to celebrate her first day of Preschool… Where did we go? To Knucklehead’s favorite place of course!

First time since..........NEVER!

Oh my goodness, I just don’t know what to do with myself. All 3 kids are asleep at the same time while it is daylight outside!!! This is the first time since NEVER that they have all napped at the same time! ..............and it is very rare that "Knucklehead" even takes a nap at all!!!

I just finished nursing “Milk Jug” and he had fallen asleep… as soon as I laid him down he immediately found his thumb (this is his newest trick as of last week.)

“Stretch” and “Knucklehead” are both in the den with the TV and you would think they were dreaming of football – touchdown! :)

What a moment to remember!

Well, I am gonna make this shrot and sweet so I can go lay down now too! (better turn the phone ringer off - don't want to spoil my lucky day!)

We’re going to go see Chuck-E soon!!!! Maybe tonight even?!

August 15, 2007

After our spontaneous 4th of July trip to KY, we had a belated Birthday party for Knucklehead at Chuck-E-Cheese with 2 of her best friends. One of the neat gifts she received was the hot pink Potty Sticker Chart from “little boy J.” He wanted Knucklehead to have one like his.

The rules are:

If you go #1 on the potty = 1 sticker and choice of one small treat (example: an OREO, bit-O-Honey, sucker, Peanut Butter Cup…)

If you go #2 on the potty = 2 stickers and choice of small treat

When you fill up a row = a big treat!!

(ice cream, a package of M&M's, pop cycle, get to water paint and your choice of treat!)

Edited to add, in the photo to the left, here she is celebrating her "end of the row" accomplishment with a cup of M&M's. She was too busy stuffing her face to smile for a photo! :c)

We have been using it and although the first few weeks were VERY hard and I nearly gave up, we stuck with it and suddenly this week, Knucklehead, amazingly got the hang of all this potty business and has nearly mastered it! Yes, you will notice the white chart is for me, what can I say, I’ll try anything and I’m glad I did b/c a few times she was really upset when Mommy got M&M’s b/c I was at the end of my row and she didn’t (I’m such a mean mommy aren’t I?) but hey, it seemed to work!

Yesterday, she didn’t have any accidents in the floor and kept her pants dry all day! See all the heart shaped princess stickers all in a row? She was so excited to have them all together on her sticker chart and earned 10 stickers yesterday!!! Now if I can just get her to keep her clothes on, and convince her that it is good to wear the "same dry" pull-up or panties all day! …..she thinks she needs a “new” one/pair every time…?

At the time of taking the photo today she only had 6 more squares to go – now as I post this she only has 1 blank space, so I just called Daddy at work to tell him it looks like we will be going to Chuck-E’s for pizza tonight so he better come home early! :c)

Another cute photo to share with you from today…. taken this morning of Knucklehead playing with Daddy’s shoes and singing, “I Never fail to deliver the mail…I Never fail to deliver the mail....” an episode from her favorite TV show The Backyardagains.

First Post

August 14,2007

Well, I finally did it - I created a blog for our family to use. Here I can post "minor" happenings of what the kids are up to. I still plan to keep our other website we have been using updated too - but this blog will allow me to post more often (hopefully daily) sharing stories with photos to go along with them of what takes place in our little corner of the world. :c) So please enjoy and feel free to leave a comment at the end of each post you read.

.For security reasons, I think it is best to use nicknames for the kids..... The ones I have come up for the twins may change as their personalities do....

For now we will use these nicknames when talking about the kids:

1st born = "Knucklehead"

twin A = (girl) = "Stretch"

twin B = (boy) = "MJ"

him = "Daddy" -nothing comes to mind right now...

me = "Momma" -nothing comes to mind right now...

Here in this photo, meet our 1st born, aka, Knucklehead. As most of you may have already heard the story, her nickname was easy... she has been called this since her moment of birth b/c when Daddy peeked to see her coming out she had her knuckles in a fist wrapped around her head! Plus too, she is really into acting so silly these days that knucklehead still suits her just fine! ;c)

Below I will include a few more photos of the twins - I'm not sure what their "official" nicknames will end up being as I am waiting to see their personalities form... if I had to pick one right now for baby boy, it would be "MJ = for Milk Jug" b/c he eats allllll the time! Here he is trying to nurse Baby Girl's arm!!! As you can tell this isn't the first attempt and she is quite upset with him! LOL

Baby Girl was the first of the twins born June 4th this year. At birth she weighed only 4 lb 14 oz but as of our Doctor's visit yesterday she is up to 7 lb 9 oz and is 21" long! She is perfectly healthy and quite the entertainer as you can see from these photos. Baby Girl has been giving us bright smiles for about a month now and has been sleeping all thru the night (from 9pm - 5:30am) for several weeks!

Her favorite time of day is when Daddy gives her her bath and often she gets to go upstairs after her bath to enjoy story time and prayers with big sister Knucklehead and Momma.

She looks good in about anything you put on her... including "blue" :) Yes, blue meaning boy clothes... she often gets to wear her brother's blue gowns to bed b/c she doesn't like the confinement of footed sleepers. She needs lots of room to "Stretch."

Here meet, "MJ" twin B. On his birthday he weighted 5 lb 4 oz and was surprisingly the largest twin. All along, every ultrasound had shown him as being the smallest... guess they were not able to fully measure him b/c he was crammed into my rib cage! Yesterday at the checkup he weighed 9 lb 10.5 oz and was 21.25" long.

As I said earlier "MJ" loves to eat! I seriously think he would eat until his belly exploded if he wasn't forced to share with his sister! Any time you pick him up you can hear the milk in his belly sloshing around....and then hold him for less than 5 minutes and you will declare he is starving b/c he is about to chew his fist off.

...oh, and Daddy is the one who came up with "MJ" for baby boy. MJ, meaning "milk jug" because he sloshes so! LOL

June 4th 2007

This is David. We had the twins today. It went very well. We slowly progressed to labor, but when it happened it was fast. From the time, Bonnie's water broke and the babies were borns was less than 40 minutes. When they told Bonnie to push she pushed once and Olivia was born. Paul was breach but did not require a C-section. She had to work a little to get him here, but all in all he came relatively quickly, also. From the time, the doctor told Bonnie to push until they were born was 15 minutes.

The babies were born at 2:55 and 2:58 local time. Olivia Maelee weighs 4 lbs. 14 oz. and Paul Thomas weighs 5 lbs. 4 oz. I am also posting some pictures on the website.

Bonnie is doing great. We were talking about it today and many of our family and friends are responsible for getting our babies here safely thru numerous prayers. Thank you. We appreciate all of your prayers and love all of you.

David