Couple of Pictures from my Phone

This is one of Maggie's favorite spots

Nate was thrilled with a card that he received with money in it. He loved his dollars and fell asleep with them. I hope that this is not a sign that he will be obsessed with money :)

Braces!

Chase just got braces. He only has to have them on the top for about a year. At least this round.

The fun mold!

The finished product! These pictures were taken on my phone so they are not the highest quality.

Maggie Comes Home

We brought Maggie home on February 19th. We all went to Oklahoma to pick her up. She fits right into our family. We all love her, and she is truly the sweetest puppy ever!

Isn't she cute!

The Nater Tot

Nate is a hoot, and I wish that I had written down all of the funny things that he has said. I must do a better job of writing it down. These next 2 pictures were in a row on my camera. I love how he was making eyes in both of these pictures.

He got a scratch between his eyebrows. It gave him a unibrow look :)

I forget what he was doing here, but I am sure that it was funny.

Valentine Parties

I am still enormously behind with work, but I am going to do my best to update my blog. I don't want to forget all the little things. Cade and Dylan had Valentine parties at school. Of course, they were at the same time! I spent most of my time at Cade's because they needed more help.

Here is one of Cade's best buds

Enjoying some sugar with a friend

Opening valentines

The one picture that I managed to get of Dylan.

My Cute Bully

Here is Nate with his BFF, Ethan. They were having a great time playing with each other at the McDonald's playland. It was not crowded, so we were there for several hours. Nate and Ethan were playing on the little tree. A mom "strongly informed" me that Nate and his buddy were" bullying" 2 other children and blocking the other children from access to the tree. (The horror!) The mom then asks, "Did you not hear me yelling at them?" Nice! I am all about correcting my child (and I am sure that he was doing the behavior), but just come and tell me nicely - don't yell at him and call him a bully - he is 3! Nate and his buddy apologized, and we headed home. Aren't they a couple of cute bullies :)

Chase's Project

Chase had a project on the Westward Expansion. He had to write a paper and present a project along with it. Chase developed a board game for his project. You would roll a dice and the square would give you directions. Some squares would have you draw a card. The card might say, "You were bit by a snake, go back 2 spaces", or "You found a cow, go ahead a space". The blue was a river. If you landed on it, then you took the river as a shortcut. You won the game by getting to the gold at the end. He named the game, "Gold Rush". He did a great job. His teacher loved it. He made a 100% on the project :)

Some Random Pics

Isn't he sweet?

Cade has an excellent sense of style, don't you think?

A moment of brotherly love! Out of all of our boys, these are the 2 that are most likely to be fighting. They love each other, and the pester each other to pieces.

Nate will rarely take a nap anymore. Sometimes, he just can't fight it. I was working, and Mark had put Nate in his bed with no luck in the nap department. A little bit later, Mark found Nate here :) He slept this way for a couple of hours!

"Snow" Day

The boys were thrilled when we had a "snow" day. They had a great time sliding down our iced over driveway on the lid off of our sandbox. The sandbox lid did not survive unscathed :)

Work Trip

The weekend of the 7th, I had to travel to Austin/San Antonio for work. I had a lot of appointments there, so I had to spend the night. My wonderful, spontaneous friend, Amy, was able to join me. After my first round of appointments, we stopped for a steak. The service was lacking, and the steak....well, it was nasty. There was so much fat, it was hard to find the meat. The meat that I found was not even tasty. Amy's steak was the same. It was so bad, that the manager came over, agreed with us, and gave us our meal for free. We headed to San Antonio and were able to make a late night movie. We saw, "He's Just Not That Into You." I really enjoyed it. Even though it was a working weekend, it was still fun. Thanks for coming with me, Amy!

Boys and Tractors

So I had to stop by Sears to get a pair of nice pants for Dylan to wear to his UIL competition (he was on the oral reading team). Of course, when you have 2 boys with you and you go by the tractors, you know what happens :) Dylan did not place, but he had fun and looked so very handsome! Here are the boys on their tractors. I had a hard time getting Nate off of the tractor.

Maggie

I have never been a big fan of dogs. They were fine, I just never envisioned that I would want one. I always preferred cats who were so much more low-maintenance. We have had one such low-maintenance cat for almost 14 years. She is a sweet one. Then, we obtained our very high-maintenance cat, Biscuit. After 4 years of peeing on the floor, biting my children, making all sorts of messes in the kitchen - well, let's just say that I am much less of a cat person. But if you had told me a year ago that I would be spending good money on a puppy that I WANTED, then I would have called you crazy. Fast-forward to this year:

My sister-in-law has a very sweet dog. If I were ever to want to own a dog, then I would want a dog like hers. A small, mellow, soft, cuddly, non-yipping dog. She decided to breed her dog one time. The boys desperately wanted one of these puppies, and I was not opposed because I know how sweet the mom dog is. Mark was reluctant, but he was going to agree. We were number 5 of 6 of people on the list for a puppy. We found out that she was having 6 puppies! Perfect, right? Well, only 5 of the puppies made it, which still left us with a puppy. The only problem was that it was going to be a boy puppy. I am sorry, I LOVE my boys, but I am so done having boys. I had zero desire for a male dog. Much to the wails of my boys, I passed on the puppy. I was not popular (except for with #6 on the list, I was very popular with her). I told the boys that we could look at getting a puppy later in the year. Well, one night in January, I was looking on the internet at different breeders for the same type of dog (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel). I was bookmarking various breeders because I was thinking that the end of summer would be a good time to add a puppy. Then, I ran across this picture
That was it!! I was done for! I knew immediately that this puppy was for our family. I went and did some serious begging. After Mark got over his initial shock that his non-dog-loving wife was begging for a puppy, he gave me the all-clear. Well, it sounded like the all-clear to me. He insists that he had not agreed yet. In his defense, he is a dog person. He had nothing against getting a dog except for the work that comes with a puppy. But really, how can you resist such a cute, cute puppy! Plans were made to get her in February! The boys were beyond excited. Initially, I was going to pick her up the morning of February 19th. The boys begged to skip school to go with me, so we changed the pick-up date to the 18th in the evening. We decided to go as a family. She is truly the cutest, sweetest puppy that I have ever seen. Mark is in total agreement. We all love her. She was immediately drawn to Mark. She had been around men, so I think that she was used to men. She is cute, cute, cute! New pictures to come soon, but here are the pictures that we received while we were waiting for her.

The next batch that we received

The final batch