Ella is here!

Ella Jane was born December 29th and Matt Seely was nice enough to keep the boys all day today so I could drive to Austin to meet her. She was beautiful and I enjoyed spending the day with her and Sarah!

After visiting with the Timmys, I met Tish and Jake for a wonderful lunch at Hoovers. It was great to catch up with them as well!!! I got home in time for a walk with the boys and look forward to hanging out with Lindsie and Meredith tonight!!

Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve!!!

If you like it then you shoulda put a Poopers on it . . .

There really is nothing, no matter how embarrassing, you will do to make your kids happy! We haven't really done that great of a job blogging lately so most of you do not know about our unfortunate incident on Saturday night. Every year around the holidays theft and vandalism spike in our neighborhood and this year we were one of the victims. Dont Worry! Everyone is OK, but my new Garmin and our precious DVD players were not. I guess that I must have forgotten to lock the car because when I tried to take the boys to the grocery store the next day everything was gone. THIS REALLY SUCKS, BUT I AM TIRED OF THINKING ABOUT IT! ALL IT DOES IS MAKE ME MAD. No fear though, Uncle Mikey Claus showed once again that he is great at spoiling my family by showing up with another Garmin to replace the stolen one. We truly are lucky to have such a generous person in our lives.

Ok, back to how you will do anything to make your kids happy. We were overly dependent on our DVD players there is not denying that, but it still would have been nice to ween the boys from them on our own terms and not the dirt-bags that stole them. So, the past couple of days have been multiple trial and error sessions centered around keeping the boys from SCREAMING as we drive down the road. The most successful thing we have found so far is Beyonce's new single "Put a Ring on It" combined with Mommy and Daddy dancing. We must really look like a couple of idiots, but they are quiet.

There are so many people that we need to thank for the bountiful 2nd Christmas, but words will never truly express our gratitude! Mema, Papa, Gran, Granddad, Mimi, Uncle Mike, Aunt Ann, Uncle Steve, Becca, A-Maw, K-Maw, the Root, Hollyn plus so many others made sure that this Christmas will always be one to remember.

Sorry there are no new pictures. You will remember that our camera was stolen by the valet @ The Magnolia Hotel. Mimi bought us a new one for Christmas, but we accidentally left it in Lufkin so no new pictures for a few days. Here are some really old ones for a quick trip down memory lane!

No Camera!! :(

We had Matt's Christmas party Friday night and forgot our Camera in the car. When the valet returned the car the next morning, the camera was not there. Not to worry, Santa is already on it! Saturday night I ventured to Sugarland for The Second Annual Millas Christmas party. It was a blast and the christmas decorations were amazing!!!! Robin is in charge of sending me the pictues, so if she is lurking, THIS IS YOUR REMINDER!!!! I did manage to steal a picture of me and A-maw from Facebook......

Reading Corner

I love this picture of the boys. They always seem to find their way to eachother whatever they are doing. If one leaves, the other will follow. If one sits, the other sits. SO CUTE!!! That santa hat sitting next to Caleb never goes far. He puts it on his head and likes to wear it all the time around the house. It is really cute!!! The book Cooper is reading is his favorite book and he likes to read it over and over and over again.

R.I.P. Go Phone

I don't usually blog twice in one day, but I wanted to share my latest cell phone issue. As most of you know, my beautiful pink razor was destroyed during Hurricane IKE. (I sprayed it with contact solution during out evacuation and it died due to water damage) Since we were only a couple of months into our new contract, we couldn't afford the full price of a new phone. So the kind lady at the kiosk suggested we pick up a Go Phone at walmart and just switch out my SIMS card. This worked just fine and I was lucky enough to snag one with features such as a flashlight and calender. Yesterday after venturing out to pick up our Christmas card photos, I notice Caleb has lost his second to last paci somewhere. So I have to push them down to Kroger to pick up more. In the check out process, I drop my phone and do not notice the button pad fell out. So I get home and try to answer my phone only to find out there are no buttons. I grab a pencil and stick it down the answer hole. The buttons got confusing so I wrote them in with a Sharpie and taped a pencil it. Now I am back in the world of talking and texting. If I don't answer, I probably lost my pencil and will call you back later. I have to load the boys up now and head to walmart. We will be the family with Santa hats on and a broken go phone.

Feels like Christmas!

Karen and Grayson came over yesterday afternoon to play! We had so much fun letting run around the yard in the freezing cold. The boys don't have any hats AT ALL to wear, so we had to put Cooper's helmet on him and Caleb's santa hat. I think I need to make a run to walmart today!! The boys have had a great week and even got a Christmas present early! The Kamps family came by to bring them their very own picnic table!! They can't wait sit down and eat a snack on their big boy table!!! Daddy wants to get rid of the high chairs and just put that down in the kitchen, but I don't think we are quite there yet.

Outtakes!

We have been taking pictures for weeks trying to find the perfect one for our Christmas Card and I think we finally got it today! The boys just take off right away and will not sit still!!! They have also been a little under the weather and you can really tell in some of the pics! I am not going to post the one we are going to send out today , but everyone should be getting one soon!!!

Sorry for the delay in posting . . .

It really is amazing how commonplace blogging has become these days. I truly thought when I set up the blog for the boys that I was a trendsetter. Boy was I wrong! As we have started to meet more people in the Woodlands and more of our friends have started to have kids, the number of blogs to follow has increased dramatically. Jennifer added a very neat blog list on our blog, but it appears it doesn't really update all that quickly. I have noticed on multiple occasions that our blog doesn't show the most recent post from some of our friends. In theory, it is supposed to list all the blogs in order of most recently updated, however that doesn't really work. So if you are using our blog to keep up with the O'Shaughnessys, Greenways, Shipleys, Brewers, Barrows, etc, go ahead and click on the links and you could be pleasantly surprised with the number of blogs to read.

As is expected the boys are getting bigger by the day. Up until very recently if you didn't want them to get into something, you could just stick it on top of the dining room table and it was safe. This annoyed Jennifer because I started to use the table as storage which drastically decreases its aesthetic appeal. Now only the very middle of the table is safe and it won't be long until they figure out how to climb into the chairs and reach everything on the table. This cannot be terribly far off which is really scary.

The boys are walking everywhere now, but we haven't quite made it to running. They will both take off in a very brisk walk, but that normally ends up with falling. You only hope that they don't fall into anything. It is about 50/50 on the falls resulting in some sort of bumper car effect on the couch, table, entertainment center, etc. Crying, fussing, screaming normally follow, but after a few mintues of hugs and kisses they are just fine.

Have I mentioned how much I love their new shoes? Gran came up a couple of weeks ago and decided their current feaux leather shoes were not acceptable and took them to get some NIKES! Gotta love Gran and how she spoils these boys! That is just what Grans do!

The last milestone from the past few weeks is that we have started to try and teach the boys how to eat by themselves. We only do it after they have eaten dinner because bathtime quickly follows their evening meal. They both get the concept, but haven't quite figured out how to use a spoon. Essentially they just jam the spoon into the applesauce or oatmeal and if any is lucky enough to have stuck to the spoon that is what they try to stick in their mouths. I would estimate a 10% success rate at this point, but if this is like every other milestone we have tried it will increase dramatically in a matter of days.