Happy Birthday to Me!

What better way to celebrate my 30-ish birthday (wink wink) than a Girl's Lunch with some of my favorite ladies, really good mexican food and an unbelievably yummy concoction called Prickly Pear Margaritas. Just the name of them makes your mouth water, doesn't it?!?!?
I met my mom, Oma, Poos and Jamie at Mi Chula's Mexican restaurant. Which is in Plano and beyond delicious! Aside from me, the guest of honor was a big pitcher of Prickly Pear Margaritas. Doesn't that look yummy!! Believe me, it was!! :) The food at Mi Chula's is awesome too. Their chips and hot sauce are to die for! The girls in my family always try to get together for everyone's birthday. At my aunt's bday lunch in November we decided to pass along the special birthday wine glass to whoever's birthday it is. So here is a pic of me with my margarita in the birthday glass. I felt so special! :)

We had a wonderful lunch. Just getting together with these ladies is a gift in itself, but they spoiled me even more with some lovely scented lotion and soap, gift certificates and lots of cold hard cash for shopping!! :) I love my family!

Our Little Baller

Kason started his third season of basketball this month. He loves basketball!! This is his first year in CRA basketball. The past 2 years he played in the Rebound league at the Baptist church here in Celina. In that league, we played every game at the church. In CRA, we travel to different cities in the area. He had his 3rd game of the season last Saturday and played a great game! He made 6 baskets and had several great passes. He plays point guard and seems to be all over the court!

We recently bought a new Flip camera and GD put together the below highlight video from Kason's game this past week.

We are trying to discourage Kason from showboating, but he loves the attention! We don't want to break his spirit but want to make sure he knows the importance of good sportsmanship. Its a fine line!

We love our little baller and are looking forward to the rest of the season!

Katie's First Movie

Gary Don and I were both off work the week after Christmas. To begin our week, we decided to take the kids to see "Princess and the Frog" at the Movies in McKinney. We weren't sure what to expect from Katie, as we had never taken her to the movies before. On our way in, I made GD and the kids pose for the picture below, so I could have pictures for my blog. :)


Both of the kids were excited and GD and I were a little nervous about how all this would go down. :) We made the mandatory stop at the concession counter for all kinds of junk food. The kids got candy, popcorn and a drink. I figured if nothing else, the food would keep them occupied for a good part of the movie. I snapped the pic below before the movie started. (I think people in the theater thought I was a little crazy!) :)

As it turned out, Katie did great!! We had one minor issue of a spilled drink, but aside from that everything went smoothly. Katie ate and watched the whole movie without a word! And Kason did great too, which we knew he would. It was a cute movie. And now that we know we can go to the movies as a family, we will be doing it more often!

Day after Christmas

OK, one more Christmas blog then I promise to stop! :)

The day after Christmas we went to Gary Don’s Aunt’s house in Farmersville for his dad’s side of the family’s Christmas celebration. (Did you get all that? :) Aunt Nina always hosts our get-togethers and like I have said before she is a wonderful host and we always have a wonderful time and eat wonderful food when we all gather together. This gathering was no exception. The house was filled with adults laughing and kids running and playing. There are so many kids now! It really is fun to get them all together to play as they don’t get to see each other all that often. Rodney was kind enough to make me a “Mommy drink”, so I could enjoy the chaos even more! :) When it came time for the kids to open their gifts the paper started flying. You couldn’t even see the living room floor with all of the kids, gifts and wrapping paper. Then the adults had our Chinese Christmas gift exchange which is always interesting. GD and I lucked out this year and got a gift certificate to Chili’s. We were very thankful we didn’t end up with the grannie pantys that someone ended up with! :) HA! Here are some pics from our celebration. Thank you, Aunt Nina for hosting such a fun evening!

Christmas Day

Wow, I am such a slacker!!! This blog is in need of updating!!

OK, so I promised a blog on Christmas Day. Here it is….better late than never, right?!?!! Like I told you in my previous blog, our electricity went off Christmas Eve night. So when Kason woke up around 7am Christmas morning, the house was dark and freezing!! He ran into the living room and back to our bed so excited that Santa had come! He quickly woke up Nona, Uncle Rob and Katie. We all got up and looked outside. It was a White Christmas!!!! Wow, that never happens in Texas!!! It was beautiful!!! But it was also COLD in the house with no heat!! So we all bundled up. There was not enough light to video the kids opening their gifts. I was a little bummed about that. But I did get a few pictures. Katie was so sleepy she could barely open her eyes! There were SO many gifts!! (Santa went a little crazy this year! :) Katie was so excited about the Dora Kitchen. And Kason loved his Playstation 3. The kids had so much fun opening their gifts and the adults had so much fun watching them! We were disappointed that Paula (aka Grammie) couldn’t join us. The roads were bad and she couldn’t make it over Christmas morning. We normally have all the grandparents over for breakfast on Christmas morning. I had pre-made a breakfast casserole the day before in anticipation of company. But due to the power outage, I had no way to heat it up that morning. So after we opened presents, I called my neighbor down the street who did have electricity to ask her if she could bake it for me. She was kind enough to do so. In addition to the casserole, Gary and Debbie did make it over despite the icy roads and were kind enough to bring donuts and breakfast sandwiches with them. So we were cold, but at least we weren’t hungry anymore! :) Here are some pics from that morning:

After the kids had played with their toys a bit, they wanted to go play in the snow. So we bundled them up and sent them to the backyard. This picture cracks me up!! Katie looks like a little Eskimo!

Before we knew it, it was time to leave to go to Oma’s house. I opted not to shower at our house because it was so cold. So we went a little early so that I could shower at Mom’s house. Mom and Rob left a little earlier than we did, and I received a call from Mom saying the heat in her house had been off all night so it was cold at her house too!!! But fortunately, she still had electricity so we turned on the heater in the bathroom and that provided enough heat for a warm showering experience. I had been assigned the task of making Mashed Potatoes for Christmas dinner at Oma’s house. I was running late, but thought I had enough time to microwave the potatoes and get everything done. Not so much… I microwaved those dang potatoes for 25 minutes and they were still hard as a rock!! We were already late to Oma’s, so I ended up dumping the potatoes (amid a slew of cursing, I am ashamed to say!) and just bringing the sweet potatoes that I had made for the night before. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to. But funny thing is, even when things don’t work out that way, things still DO end up working out. Thankfully, Christmas dinner was not ruined due to my inaptitude at preparing mashed potatoes. :) It was great to see everyone at Oma’s and all be together to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Cause when it comes right down to it, the mashed potatoes just weren’t that important! :)

The kids had a great time visiting at Oma and Art's and opening all their gifts.

After we left Blue Ridge, we went to Paula’s apartment in McKinney since we had not seen her that morning. Of course she had a slew of gifts for the kids. She spoils them rotten!!!

Although it was a busy and exhausting day, it was great to see all of our family on Christmas.