1.27.2010

Pictures of the babies


Well well well...what do ya know....a cookie.

See food.



Story time :)

Gummy Worms...Jared calls them Gunny Worms

He was proud of his treat from the fabric store.

Looky here, Wylee wants some too...who woulda thought?

She would bite a part off and then i would find it stuck somewhere....nice.

At the park, eating again :)

The treat he picked out at the store for his park day.

They LOVED this thing.

She liked sitting up there more than she did actually going down it.

He's a pro.

It's hard to take a good picture while they are coming at your face.



Jared snuck out of the house during bath time on Monday and brought us some Family Home Evening treats since I didn't make anything.

And you know SHE was begging for some. If Jared didn't get a spoonfull fast enough she was slide on over to me and beg.

Sweet friends :)

Jared's office had a biometric screening last Friday for our health insurance company...if you go do it (actually I think you have to do it) you get points toward incentives. So we lucked out that one of the locations was Jared's office, so we went up there and planned on having lunch with him after we were finished doing whatever it was they wanted us to do. Joe's wife Bethany (who is also pregnant, due at the end of may) came up there as well with their sweet little girl Savannah. Anyways, we all walked to a mexican food place a couple of blocks over and Jared and Savanah held hands a lot of the way, until Jared started running and they fell down. I think it was over at that point, but it was still sweet :)







Our family likes ribs...a lot

For dinner the other night Jared threw some ribs on the grill....and we weren't the only ones that enjoyed them....





Dumpster Diver

Let me start off with a small story...Jared has this plan for Wylee. In order to ensure that she will not ever be found attractive by the opposite sex, he has decided to get her hooked on cakes and sweets and chocolatey treats asap. As in now. He has also tossed around the idea that when she is older, he will rub bacon grease on her face every night while she is asleep so that she has lots of pimples and the boys will think she's gross. So a small recap in case you didn't catch on: big and fat from lots of sweets and treats and nasty pimple face :) That's my husband for ya. Either way, it seems his plan is already starting to work. As I cleaned the kitchen earlier I tossed the left over Peanut Butter Crunch Cake and got to work scrubbing parts of the kitchen sink that I didn't know could even be scrubed, but they can, so I  did. Wylee was way to quiet so I turned around and this is what I saw:

In case you can't tell, that is a BIG hunk of Peanut Butter Crunch Cake...and she was eating it, which means she dug it out of the trash.

Even though I knew she would hate my guts, I threw the cake away, again. And she was really upset about it....so she did this:


Immediatly tried to dig it back out AGAIN....


And then got really upset that her fat little hand didn't fit this time. What a little dumpster diver. Way to go Jared.

1.16.2010

Some new blankies :)

I've been letting myself sew again for the last couple of days and here is what I have finished up...










Christmas Time Rewind...

I just realized that I never put any pictures or anything up from Christmas! This years Christmas was a little different...we are usually in Houston for the Holidays, but several things kept us in Dallas this year. One being the fact that I left for London on the 26th. Anyways, Christmas Eve was so beautiful!! It snowed and snowed, and no I have no pictures of it, but I imagine that the images in my head will last for quite a while. Especially considering it was 75 degrees the day before. Seriously. I'm gonna tell you about the special Noche Buena that I was in charge of making this year....mainly so that years from now I can look back at this post and remember what a disaster it was, and why I'm glad Jared's mom has this responsability and not me:) First off, I forgot about the dinner all together. So the day before the 24th I ventured into Walmart (Kid free thanks to Ashley Howry) and got what I thought it was that we needed. NORMALLY the meal is a yummy pork roast, white rice, black beans, some yucca, and platinos, with a giggly flan to top it all off. WELL. I bought a pork TENDERLOIN, one can of black beans because we never finish them, no yucca (completely forgot about it), no platinos (they didnt have any), and I already had the stuff for flan and rice. I was pretty sure of myself. Until it came time to make dinner. The tenderloin needed to cook for about 45 minutes in the oven, and about 35 minutes into its cooking I open the oven and the thing still looks raw, so I thought...."huh, I guess it just cooks right up in the last 10 minutes...". Or maybe my oven spazed out and somehow changed the temperature to 80 degrees. I know what your thinking, "oh, she probably changed it on accident or something"...that's not the case, that would be impossible for me to do unless I were to stand there and hit the button 50 times to make it that low. It's just a Christmas Eve mystery. So I reset the oven and got it going...for another 45 minutes. I went ahead and made the rice, and Jared got one of his guys at work (yes he was working Christmas Eve) to pick some platinos up for him from a market out there. So Jared called him mom to find out what goes in the black beans. A little bell pepper and onion, easy. Only I put way too much bell pepper and onion, so much that they outnumbered the beans. And I only bought one can of beans if you recall. Oh well. As I was looking at the rice, I decided to make a little more because it just didn't look like enough.....and we never even finished the first batch. I forgot to mention that the plantains were GREEN....which meant they weren't going to be sweet the way we like them but at this point everything else had gone wrong so who cares. I made the flan that morning, which I thought turned out perfect, except that I accidently let the carmel at the bottom of the pan harden. Which made it REALLY hard to get out of the dish. Anyways, dinner turned out to be pretty good despite all the things that went wrong. So I'm going to leave it alone.  We spent a couple of hours at the McDonald's house that night and we sang carols and drank some yummy homemade egg nog. Then we went home to get the kids to bed and wait for Santa! I got to go to my Mimi's for Christmas morning breakfast, which I haven't had the chance to do for a couple of years now, so that was a really nice treat for me, and then we headed back to our house for some naps before it was time to go to my parents for Christmas dinner and my mom's side of the family. Let me just say, the kids were SPOILED...totally spoiled. You'll see in the photos. It was exactly the way I remember Christmas being while Dallas and I were growing up. They had a great time. And now I am going to document my mom's disaster of a Christmas Dinner....lol, because it made me feel a little better about my noche buena. We have mom's homemade potato soup every year...and she makes a HUGE pot of it, you could call it a vat I think. And I was so excited about having some. And we have a big ham to go with it and we make sandwhiches and stuff. But this year while we were getting the soup nice and warm we taste tested it...uh oh. Something was WAY off and we couldn't put our finger on it. It tasted like the sour cream or the milk was bad. she bought brand new of both for the soup so we ruled that out. Dad tasted it because he thought it was because we had just had onion dip....but even he made a face, and if you know my dad you know he will eat ALMOST anything. And he said to dump it. DUMP IT! AHH! Well at least we have the ham....the 20 pound ham that says to cook it I think 20 minutes for every pound. No one read that before hand. But its a ham...so it's precooked right? It cooked for about 2 hours I think and we all took our chances. As far as I know we all made it out okay. Anyways, that was our Christmas! Now on to some pictures :)

See what I mean by spoiled?

Dallas in McQueen and Wylee & Gunner in the Police car.
*edit*That would actually be JARED in McQueen...not Dallas. I mix them up quite often to be honest. Especially when I am yelling :)

Reading her new book.


Such a cute little guy :)


Sweet Wylee Bear

1.04.2010

My fabulous trip to LONDON!

2009 was a good year for me when it comes to vacations. I am so lucky!! First we had the amazing cruise, and then I was invited to explore London for 4 days and 4 nights with my Aunt Donna, Uncle Klaus, and my cousin Francie! We left December 26th from DFW ( scheduled to take off at 7:45 p.m., but actually took off sometime after 10:00 p.m.) and arrived at Heathrow Airport around 12:30 p.m. on the 27th. Lets stop right there....this is only my second time on a plane. The first time was to San Diego, so it was a 3 hour flight. This was around a 9ish hour long flight....keep in mind I am pregnant. Also keep in mind that when I am pregnant I throw up all day long, for every reason, and for no reason. Car rides are terrible. Apparently plane rides are terrible too. I filled up two bags during the landing alone. Talk about embarrassing, haha! ANYWAYS, we finally landed and headed to Customs.....ahhh Customs. We were told that Francie didn't need a note or anything allowing her to travel with me (she's 15)....but apparently we were told wrong. Customs was pretty sure that she was a run away and that I was helping her. We said we were cousins but we look nothing alike (not uncommon) and we don't have the same last name....oh yeah and I look like a 12 year old wearing a wedding rind. Awesome. So the man asked us about 30 questions, with his "hard to understand African (I'm guessing) accent". Francie is a shy person...so I was doing all the talking which looked even better I'm sure. Anyways, we convinced him that we were really only there for a short vacation and she fully planned on returning home to her parents in 5 days. So we went and found Donna and Klaus and hopped on a Subway headed to London! Oh yeah, Subways make me feel sick too...I luckily didn't throw up though, because there was NO WHERE to do it. 45 minutes later we emerge from underground to find LONDON!!!! And it was beautiful! So we grabbed a taxi and headed to our first stop...the Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel right off of Thames River...it was amazing.

The Lobby


This was on the front desk and I loved it....


Also the Lobby...leading into the bar.

Okay, after we got unpacked and settled in a little bit we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner....the ORIGINAL Hard Rock Cafe! I took pictures of some of the memorbilia they had, but I don't think I'm going to put any up...I may change my mind later.
Francie and I in the Taxi on our way to HRC.
After that we went back to the hotel and Donna, Francie and I went for a little walk along the Thames River and took a few shots of the Parliment and Big Ben at night. The pictures don't do the beauty of it justice...but it's all I have :)


Big Ben is over on the right side.

Oh yeah, and we had to take silly photos of ourselves pretending to talk in a phone booth...duh!!
The next day (our first full day in London) we had some breakfast and then bought some passes for the Big Bus Tour...you could hop on and hop off as much as you wanted for 48 hours. And it included a river cruise too, which we didn't get to go on because we ran out of time the first day, and then it rained the second and third day. I took so many pictures while we were on that bus, and I don't really remember what any of them are of. The buildings there are just amazing to me, so I guess I don't really care what they are of, I liked them anyways.

Isn't this amazing!!?? Minus the head that is in the way.
We just HAD to go on the London Eye, so we waited in line for like an hour and a half so we could see a 360 degree view of London. And it was so worth the wait!

Not a full view of the city in this photo, but I love this one.

That night we went to "We Will Rock You". It was fantastic! It was a show about Queen's music, and time after "Rock and Roll died". I loved it! And that was the end of that day.


Let's see if I can remember exactly what we did on day 3 (second full day). Okay, we went to see the changing of the gaurds at Buckingham Palace...which kind of sucked because you really couldn't see much unless you shoved your way to the front, and we all know I didn't bother to do that. I didn't want to get stabbed in the eye by someone's umbrella. Ugh. Buckingham Palace was beautiful though!!


Buckingham Palace.


The only part of the guard changing that I got to see.

This was inside the Buckingham Palace Store.
After that we decided to get OUT of the weather and go hang out at Harrod's (the world's largest department store in my opinion...) We had some lunch at the Harrod's Cafe and then tried to shop a little, but there were so many people there I couldn't even enjoy it! I was afraid of getting lost :) After Harrod's we went back to the hotel to relax a little bit and then had dinner at the Texas Embassy!

Day 4 (3rd full day) we started out at the Westminster Abbey, of course! We got there early enough for there to not be much of a line, thank goodness. You couldn't take pictures inside, but I got a couple outside.


Westminster Abbey.


This was right above the doors to the Abbey.
After we were done at the Abbey we went and had some lunch and then got on the bus for our Rock and Roll Tour, which was so cool! We saw so many things that I can't even write about them, I will have to put a video up so that you can see. I think if you go to youtube and google Rock and Roll Tour London, someone has actually put a video of the tour up. It was really interesting, I recommend taking a look if you are ever in need of something to kill some time. After the tour we went to the Hard Rock Cafe Vault for a few minutes and then went back to the hotel to rest before we went downstairs for fish and chips on our final night. The next morning we left the hotel at 6:00 a.m. (midnight in Dallas) and headed to the airport for our flight home. I didn't throw up this time, even though I really wanted to. We finally got home right before 3:00 p.m. and then had a lovely 2 hour car ride home, so yes, I was asleep by 9:30 on New Year's Eve. I woke up a little bit before 11:00 and my sweet husband and I shared a New York New Year's Eve kiss and I passed out again. It was an amazing trip and I loved every second of it...even the parts that made me sick. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity and I will never forget it! Here are a few more random pictures from the trip, I will eventually get all 430 of them up on facebook :)


Pounds....worth tons of dollars. Dollars...worth not so much pounds lol.


Inside Hard Rock Cafe.


I am going to go ahead and say I did a great job taking this picture :) thanks me.


Elton John.


Francie and I in front of the Thames River.


Some sidewalk boat decor...


I took this while I was on the Eye.


Of course we weren't looking...Parliment and Big Ben during the day.


Another cute little decoration in our hotel's lobby. Look, I'm actually wearing make up, lol.


And last but not least! The flowers that the boys had for me when I got off the plane!!!


Jared checking out his souvineer pjs from Buckingham Palace...aren't they cute?!


A little big....but cute!


He was pulling the pants up, lol! But I think he is channeling Michael Jackson in this one!!