Budah, Nina, & The Teletubbies 

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When Budah was Nina’s age he was obsessed with the Teletubbies. He would burst into tears the second the credits would start rolling. I can remember us recording several tapes stopping them just before the credits so he had an endless flow of his favorite show without breaking his little heart. His 2nd birthday was even Teletubbies themed and he loved the yellow one “lala” the most. This morning I found the teletubbies on YouTube for Nina and she seems to like it too. Unfortunately for me, it was just as ridiculous as I remembered it being almost two decades ago, ha ha. 

After some breakfast, watching the teletubbies, playtime, and a little shopping we went to have lunch with her Paw-Paw at work today. We love Nina & Maw-Maw Tuesdays!

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My four lil monsters…

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Budah (20), Aub (11), Mad (7), & Bitty (4), all very different stages in life, all equally loved, unconditionally, forever. My children are easily my biggest blessings & greatest accomplishments. The love I have for these four beautiful souls will never waiver no matter where their paths lead them, EVER. Always remember how much I love each of you. 

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Mosh Pit & Lemonade

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I knew it wouldn’t be a good thing getting a call from our eighteen year old son at 7am on a Saturday morning.  After a fun night at a show and forgetting to take his glasses off before going into a pit he got a quick life lesson. Mosh pits and eyeglasses never mix. The poor fella is half blind without them, so thankfully we were able to find a place to get an appointment and a new pair in a matter of hours.

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Aside from the craziness with Budah’s glasses we decided to participate in our neighborhood yard sale day to get rid of some clutter. What better time for our three little lovelies to sell some lemonade? They sold out and were beyond excited that their big brother was their first customer too. I can still remember his first lemonade stand when he was all of five years old.

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A month worth of blogs in one…

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Somehow life has been so busy that I just realized I have almost a month worth of blogs I’m behind on! So I’ll attempt to get caught up now…
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-3rd Annual pillows-

On Good Friday Daddy took off of work to go with our lil monsters and I to deliver 100+ homemade pillows, 40+ cards from Aub’s 4th grade class & Mad’s Kindergarten class, & bracelets from knot geek to our local Methodist Children’s hospital for our 3rd consecutive year. Once again our family and friends pulled together to help our children achieve their goal. The generosity and kindness of others never ceases to amaze me and I will forever be thankful to the folks that help teach our children such a priceless lesson in giving to others year after year.

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-Easter 2015!-

This was our first year with Budah grown and moved out. One of the things that mama’s don’t enjoy about their babies growing up.

We got a surprise visit from Gi-Gi! These little lovelies have come to truly love this kind soul. We were all happy that she was here in time to dye Easter eggs with us & even got to watch the girls wake up to see what Peter Cottontail brought for them and their Easter egg hunt before she had to say goodbye. Next time Paw-Paw needs to tag along:) All three girls helped with cooking dinner. Aub made the green bean casserole, Mad made deviled eggs, & Bitty made and decorated a cake. I simply love their help in the kitchen and enjoy teaching them family traditions and the secrets to family recipes.

Oh and how cute are these little peeps that Maw-Maw Shu Shu made for her grandbabies?

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-Mad’s first field trip!-

Traditionally each year daddy & I have tried to split it up so that both of us get to experience the joy of our lil monsters’ school days. Usually he does field trips & I do class parties. This year however has been a little tricky and things have been exciting and busy for daddy at work. So I get to do field trips this year! Thankfully he’s been able to do a few class parties with me this year too! So Bitty & I were able to tag along for her kindergarten zoo field trip! It was lots of fun. Though I’m still not sure how this little munchkin is old enough for field trips? I can hardly wait to see what the future holds for our five year old lil monster and so thankful I’m able to be a housewife and watch so much of it first hand.

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-Viva Fiesta!-

A first and a last, sigh. This year was Aub’s last school Fiesta float parade and Mad’s very first. It’s a school tradition I’ve come to love in Texas, mostly because it reminds me of my childhood too. We did Mardi Gras float parades and always looked forward to making one out of a shoe box. Each year we do a different theme. This year Aub’s was all about the color PURPLE! Her absolute favorite color. Mad’s was zoo themed since she had recently gone to the zoo. She has already decided next year should be a star wars float. Maw-Maw, Bitty, & I enjoyed watching all of the kiddos march through their school with so much pride over the floats they had made. And of course I got video for Daddy to watch two of his favorite little munchkins after work. Aub loved that we worked purple mardi Gras beads into her theme and Mad got so excited we started gluing every toy animal she could find including a dog and pig to her zoo themed float.

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-My hubster-

This has been quite the exciting month for my love. He was one of a few selected for a six month program at work that brings huge opportunities his way! I really couldn’t be prouder of my better half. He works so hard for our family all the while still managing to keep up with our small veteran owned business and never allowing any of it to get in the way of our family time. My little self proclaimed black sheep is one helluva husband and father!

And just when we think things couldn’t get more exciting for him we get the word that a song he submitted was selected to be a bonus track on the Rancid tribute album….RANCID!!! Are you kidding me? This is a huge deal and such an incredible honor for him. I swear this man of mine stayed on cloud nine for days and rightfully so! It’s one thing for me to have such a blessing to be able to have watched him share his musical talent with our four lil monsters over the years. Memories of him playing guitars with our son and singing with our girls are cherished beyond words. Or the time he had a friend help him professionally record the Rascal Flatt song “Broken Road” for me for our anniversary. But this, this is a dream come true for him and I am beyond proud of him!

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-Letter to GG-

Aub’s class has daily journal topics. Her teacher gave them a topic to write a letter to someone they miss. Aub wrote to my Maw-Maw that passed away seven years before I had her. We’ve always talked about her to our lil monsters a lot because she was such a huge part of my life. Really anyone that knew her would understand why. Aub shared her journal with me and said I could share it here. It absolutely melted this mama’s heart. She’s got such a genuine little soul and I have no doubt my Maw-Maw is watching over our children. We have a tradition of releasing balloons to “send them to heaven” to GG after any party since we live so far from her resting place. It’s something that has been a very special tradition to our lil monsters.

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-Called to the office-

After having our lil Mad home sick for a week it of course made me nervous when I got a call from the school. Even more so when I realized it wasn’t about Mad at all, in fact it was a call from the assistant principal about Aub. Aub?

It turns out my instinct was right. There was no way I was getting a call from a principal because our daughter had done something wrong, quite the opposite! Aub’s teacher was given the task to select ONE student for a leadership award…and she picked our little girl! I of course would love to share the picture of her here happily holding her certificate and ribbon, with her big brown eyes full of pride and the sweetest smile ever. But we opt to never post things that include their schools name for safety reasons and I opt to not share pictures of our children on my blog for personal reasons. I will however say it was a very precious moment. And hearing the principal gushing over her actually made me cry. You see this little gal was so stressed last week over the STARR test, and this was exactly what she needed to boost her back up!

These are the things that were checked off on her certificate:
•Be proactive
•Begin with the end in mind
•First things first
•Think win-win
•Caring
•Trustworthy
•Respect
•Responsibility

And this is what her teacher wrote about her:
“Aub is always on task, prepared and an active listener. She truly takes school seriously and feels it is important. I am so lucky to have her in my class!”

We are so proud of her. She truly has such a huge heart and can easily be her worst critic. This was a special reminder of her daily hard work and well deserved. To surprise her after school Maw-Maw took the girls for ice cream. And after getting her dance pictures taken Daddy & I took her out for a special dinner just the three of us. Keep up the good work sugar plum, there is absolutely nothing you can’t do!

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So I think I’m mostly caught up with this month. Hopefully I won’t fall behind so much on saving up these “special to us” memories!

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Alzafar & Pride

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Yesterday we all went up to Camp Alzafar to spend the day with my cousins, both local & visiting from out of town. It’s such a unique place and the 4th of July celebration is always so much fun. They do watermelon throws in the pool for the kiddos to swim for & decorate golf carts for a contest. Budah got the girls fishing poles for their birthdays so they were thrilled to head straight to the water shortly after we got there. Even I caught a fish with them, though admittedly it was itty bitty, but I caught one none the less! More important was the bonding time I got I to share with our three oldest monsters during that part of the visit while Daddy, Bitty, & Maw-Maw were up at the camp. I especially love the pictures I was able to capture of the three of them working together and will forever cherish that moment with them when really nothing else mattered. I always loved going fishing with my Paw-Paw and seeing the girls learn how to from their big brother meant the world to me and was a vivid reminder of some of my fave childhood memories spent with my Paw-Paw. Afterwards they were all ready for a dip in the pool and lunch. It was such a nice afternoon catching up with our family and we look forward to doing it again soon.

After we got home we had just enough time to get cleaned up and then we headed over to my love’s work with our two oldest girls for a shuttle ride down to walk in the Pride SA parade in support of his works LGBT community and our lil monsters’ Guncles. It’s was incredibly fun and the emotions of being a part of something so amazing with our children was nothing short of over whelming. The girls absolutely loved being in the parade and getting to hand out beads (we had to keep reminding them that it was different from Mardi Gras and they couldn’t throw these beads). I love that our monsters don’t view people based on their race, sexual preferences, or way of living. Mad’s excitement alone to give one of our fave local drag queens some beads was pretty priceless. To quote her “I want to give that guy in the pretty dress some beads!”. It didn’t seem odd in the slightest that what she knew to be a man was rocking a dress, makeup, & wig. One of the endless things that we love about our five year old. Both girls were thrilled to share the experience with their Guncle Alex as well. Even putting on a little performance for him while we waited for the parade to start singing one of their fave Grease songs, Aub was Sandy and Mad was Danny. And I’m certain Aub was super appreciative of the piggy back ride her Guncle gave her on the walk back to the shuttle afterwards. We are so thankful to be able to teach our children how much our world needs equality and to never judge a book by its cover! We can’t wait until Pride SA 2015!

Such a fab day spent with fam & friends!20140707-201039-72639833.jpg

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“I smell coffee”

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It’s official. All four of our lil monsters have managed to cram some random foreign object up their nose by the time they were four years old.

Budah pushed an ink pen spring up his nose that thankfully with the handy work of his maw-maw & I were able to get it out.

Aub saw her big brother smell a coffee bean so she decided to do it too. Only she pushed one so far up in her nose we had to bring her to the emergency room to get it out. The nurse was so nice he didn’t even sign us in and removed it for us for free. The best part was the entire ride to the hospital she kept telling us “I smell coffee!”.

Mad shoved a piece of paper towel up her little nose that I was thankfully able to easily get out before an ER visit.

And then full circle with lil miss Bitty tonight. She pushes a piece of baby wipe as far up her tiny nose as she could. Matt sent her my way saying I could help her with her nose problem since she had her finger all the way up it. Something told me to look up there (likely because of the track record of our other three monsters feeling the need to insert object in their nose) and sure enough there it was. Luckily I was able to quickly remove this one too while her daddy held her still for me.

Okay you lil monsters! No more shoving random things up your nose please! I can assure you this is not my favorite mama task.20140701-003347-2027617.jpg

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