Happy Birthday Anna!

My sweet little Anna turned 5 on Tuesday.  She played a little dress up before school.

 She wanted Tony to take her to school.  She was so excited!

This is her classroom.

 Emma was excited for Tony to drop her off at her class too.  Too bad this one is fuzzy.

 She said "cheese" for the next one.

 The birthday girl with some presents.

 She's been asking for a pink guitar, so Gram sent her one.  She LOVES it!!

 Her little cake!

Praise God for making for my sweet Anna!!!!

Happy Birthday Gram and Anton!

Anton turned 18 on Friday, and my mother turned 50-something. ;) ;)  Tony decided to make a sign to put by the road at the school.  Anton thought it was pretty cool to see it as he drove in to the parking lot. 

Here's Anna singing Happy Birthday to my mom, aka Gram.  We're so glad God mad her!

Anton partied with his mom on his birthday.  Here's Anton's little cake that our family shared a few days ago with 18 candles on it!!!

This is what he kept asking for his birthday.  It's called a morphsuit.  He's a nut!  There will probably be a few more birthday type pictures to blog about after this weekend. :)

On Saturday we went to yet another football game.  Abby came again with her dad, which is so fun for all of us, especially Anna.  Here they are while the national anthem is playing.

 I love to see girls with their daddies!

 There's the birthday boy man coming back into the stands, while several little kids are yelling "Happy Birthday Anton!"

 This is Flat Austin.  My 7 year old nephew, Austin, did a little project based on the Flat Stanley book.  He sent us this "Flat Austin" for some adventures in Texas.  The girls had lots of fun with him.

 Sweet girlfriends!

 Our friends Jack, Michael and Paul joined us too.   We had a tailgaiting party before the game with some church friends.  These are the ones who made it into the game, along with Kendra and her girls and another family I didn't get pictures of who have a son on the team.

We ventured up to the coaches' wives' seats to hang out with our friends Emma and Kaitlyn and their mom Kendra for a while.

 Sweet Emma!  She's in Emma's class at school.

Anna and Abby kept wanting to take pictures with my camera.  This is Abby taking pictures while Anna poses with funny faces.  I deleted a lot of pictures when I downloaded. :) 

 One of them took this one of me.  It proves I was there. Tony was working concessions for most of the game so he didn't take pictures this time.  The "other" Emma (we call her Emma Harlan) wanted to take pictures too, but I told her you had to be 4 to use my camera. She could probably have handled it, but then my Emma and Emma H's little sister would have wanted to take pictures too, so I figured 4 was a good rule.

 Emma H. was terrified of the panther when he came up to say hi.  Emma V. went to comfort her, even though she steers clear of the panther too.  I'm pretty sure Anna took this one.

 We happened to catch Emma H. giving her daddy a hug during halftime.

We visited Tony a few times at the concession stand.

 We got to say goodbye to Anton while they were loading up the buses.  He's the best big brother ever!

We are so blessed to have Anton and Gram in our lives and celebrate the day that God brought them into this world!

Preschool!!!

Anna and Emma started preschool last Tuesday!!  These 2 pictures were from "meet & greet" the teachers the week before.  This is Anna's classroom.  She was excited to see some of her friends from last year.  This is Kaydee, who we usually see at the football games too.

 I forgot to take a picture in Emma's class, but here she is in Anna's class.  She loves this crown.  It is on a shelf by the door, and Emma has put it on every time we are near Anna's class.

Here's a video of Anna and Abby dancing at the 2nd football game.  Somebody was asking me if they are sisters, just in case you are wondering about what I'm saying.  I've got some more pictures/videos from the 3rd football game that I will put on the blog soon.

Anna wanted to build a fort the other weekend.  Since we already have a playground fort and a shed, she had to settle for a sign.

 She was trying to write "welcome friends" with a pencil, so I got out the red paint and did it for her.  Tony also made them some telescopes with PVC pipe and a chunk of wood. 

 Anton was making something too... maybe a bike ramp?

 They also went for a bike ride that day.

 This is getting in the van on the first day of school.  Anna was super excited.  Emma was excited too, but also nervous.  She wouldn't look at me and smile.

 Here's Emma's class.  She was a little worried, but I promise she had a great day and was very happy when I picked her up.

 Anna was super excited!

 This is at the end of the day.  I didn't get a good picture of Emma, but you can see her in the background. And yes, her skirt is gone.  We are still working on making it to the bathroom in time.  I'm hoping school will help with that!

 This was after the second day of school.  It was a nice day, so we played on the playground for a bit.

 This was the best I could do with them together.  I don't think I'll ever go into professional photography!!

I'm soooooo glad that they are in school!!!!  I'm so behind on some things at home that I'm looking forward to tackling soon!!  Yay for a sweet Christian school at our very own church that they love going to!

Leg Injuries

So Junior tore his ACL in his knee a few weeks ago.  He was hopping around on 3 legs.  Our vet told us he needed surgery.  YIKES!!  After spending lots of time searching the web and calling a few different vets, we found someone who could try an alternative therapy.  He sedated him, manipulated his knee, took x-rays, and told us what he does wouldn't help him much and recommended surgery.  Bummer.  So Junior had a surgery called TPLO Thursday a week ago that re-configured his knee so that it can be stabile again.  We picked him up that Friday afternoon.  He still isn't walking on it much, which makes me nervous, but the vet has said it can take a while.  I'll be glad to go back for his check up this week.  He will also get the staples out, and we'll be able to take off this silly blue collar.

We have to keep him penned up for a while so he doesn't slip on the laminate floor.  It's kind of inconvenient, but we are getting used to it.

 We discovered that he can get to his incision with the collar flipped back like that, so he has to wear it like this.  He loves it!  HA!!!

Oh the trauma for a dog.  If one of my kids got seriously hurt or sick, I would be a total basket case!  Anton tried to test me on this a little last weekend by wrecking on his bike and puncturing his leg with the chain ring.  Check out the shirt.  He was actually wearing that when he wrecked.  It says "I do all my own stunts".

Anna was fascinated.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if she becomes a doctor someday.  She's so curious about anything related to the body and doesn't get freaked out. 

My two hurt boys...

 Anton will have himself a nice grease chain ring tatoo when it heals up since we couldn't get the black grease out of the wound.  I was teasing him saying that he would have a free but slightly more painful tatoo.  Turns out it's not free though.  It was starting to look a little infected so we had to take him to the doctor and get some antibiotics... probably still cheaper than a real tatoo! :)

Senior Year

Anton started his senior year at High School a few weeks ago!!!!  He also turned 18 today!  Wow time flies!!  It seems like just yesterday that I met him for the first time at the Houston Intercontinental airport when I was living in Florida and coming in town for a visit.  He was 10 and very excited to meet me.  Lucky me!!!  The first thing he said to me was that his ears didn't match.  One looked like his mom's ears and the other one looks like his dad's ears.  He's been making me laugh ever since!!!

Anyway, the weekend before school started, he was using power tools to make something.

It's an octagonal piece of glass.  I'm not sure what it's for, but it probably has something to do with magnet motors.  He's taking Calculus and Physics II this year, and I think I heard him telling Tony something about the formulas for magnetism the other night.  It's so exciting to have a nerdy teenager around who's getting ready to go to college next year.  Speaking of college, his applications are almost done and will be sent in probably this week.  He's applying to Texas A&M, UT, Texas Tech, University of Houston, and Baylor. 
Tony took a nap in the recliner one day, and Emma covered him up and gave him a lovey to make him warm and cozy. :)

This is Anton getting ready for his first day of Senior year.  He leaves at 7am.  He usually rolls out of bed about 6:45, so he wouldn't take the time to stop and pose for a picture for me.  I guess he's to old for that.  He's one of those "if your on time your late, and if your 5 minutes early, your on time" kind of people.  I envy that in him. 

There he goes!

Anna was very excited about school starting. She was bummed she had to wait a couple of weeks to start her school, but she started writing in her notebook right after Anton left.

Later on that day, we went downtown for a doctor's appointment and to have lunch with Tony.  I decided to go early and go to the natural science museum. The girls were fascinated by the African animals. A bloody, chewed off zebra leg was laying on the ground in front of the lion. Lovely. We talked about that for a while.

Anna wanted to take pictures too.

We went to see an IMAX film about rescuing baby elephants and orangutangs.  It was really cool.  Emma reached out trying to touch things a few times.  It was a great 1st IMAX experience - very interesting with the animals and nothing scary at all.

They had lots of fun writing on the marker board thing at Tony's office.

Here's the 1st football game of the season.  They are so much fun!!

Anna has a good friend from school who's dad is the KPHS basketball coach, so they go to all the football games too.  Anna had lots of fun playing with her friend Kaydee!

 

We went to play at a little indoor playground one day that week when it was around 107. 

I think this was the day we picked Junior up after his surgery.  I'll have more on that and the girls' first day of school in the next blog!