It's not that I don't want to update you on our lives and it's not that there aren't things to share, but I just don't have the time that it takes to update this blog.  I promise, after my finals after Christmas, that I will make an attempt.  Until then...

Josh's birthday

Josh had his 7th birthday last week. He was VERY excited for the whole day. It started with him getting to take cupcakes to his class at school. He got a great surprise there when I was able to get out of class early and surprise him at his class with a balloon.

Later that day we had a family birthday party for the special guy. Everyone came over for some pizza, cake, ice cream, and PRESENTS!

The second everyone had walked through our front Josh wanted to open his presents. But we manager to hold him off until after dinner. He received some pretty great gifts.

A Steelers sweatshirt, his favorite team.

A really cool transformer.

And an ipod shuffle.

Josh is such a special guy. We are so luck to have him in our family. He has such a fun a sweet personality. He is a great helper to Mom and Dad, and a great brother. He is a great blessing in our lives.

Behind the times

Is it cool to post your Halloween pictures on Thanksgiving? Well, too bad, 'cause I did it!

We had our friends with their children come over to go trick-or-treating together. We have a very large and very safe neighborhood to go it. We hardly made a dent in it all!

Here are all the kids that we took out. So you think that my neighbors were intimidated by the size of this group? There were 13 children in total; 8 girls and 5 boys.

Here are my cute trick-or-treaters! Eric was Dracula (but I had fun calling him Edward all night), Josh was a cub scout. Easiest costume I ever made! Katie was a kitty. She totally got into that role. She had a blast this year; all of the kids did!

Pumpkins

The day finally came, the day that we carved pumpkins. The kids were so excited! Eric was so funny because he would not stick his hand into his pumpkin to clean it out. Josh was really into it and cleaned his almost completely by himself. Katie ate the pumpkin seeds. It was a really fun afternoon and I think that we have three great looking pumpkins! And the ones we carved look pretty good too!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

A new milestone

...for Eric. I would have thought that at 10 years old we would not have any milestone to look forward to until he was 12 or maybe 16. But I was wrong. Tonight we had one... HIS FIRST PHONE CALL FROM A GIRL.

He has talked about these two girls before. They are best friends, Megan and Maggie. Both girls are in his class at school and one is in his primary class. He gets a little embarrassed by the attention that they give him, but of course, deep down, he likes it!

So tonight the phone rang and it was for him. I was a little surprised that it was for him, but I let him have it without asking who is was because I thought it was his friend Sterling. (Give me a break, boys and girls sounds alike at this age) It was funny to listen to on my end. I think that they were really giggly and kept screaming at him. You know, 4th grade girl stuff. He kept asking them why they had called him, you know, practical 4th grade boy stuff. Funny stuff, hehehehe

But, on a serious note, girls calling my little baby? Aren't they to young for this? I know that he is the cutest boy in the entire 4th grade, but do they have to chase him, stalk him, and call him? I don't know if I am ready for what this new stage could bring, but at the same time it is kinda fun to tease him about girls. Gently and lovingly, of course!

Balloon Fiesta

We have lived in Albuquerque longer than we care to admit, and in all those years we have NEVER gone into Balloon Fiesta park to enjoy the balloons. BUT, we do get up a little earlier than usual, get bundled up, and jump into the car and "chase" the balloons. This year we found this great spot on 2nd street to park and watch them fly over our heads.

Here are the kiddos. Katie did not remember the balloons from last year and so she was VERY excited and each and every balloon that she saw.

And there were so many to see!

Some of them came so close! It is always an awesome site to see all of the balloons in the air. Something that you never grow tired of.

This one went directly over the van and was so low that they could here the kids yelling at them. They were very nice and talked back to them.



Each one is so beautiful!

After most of the balloons had launched we started the car back up and followed them through Corrales. The sun and the clouds made for these great pictures.

We know how lucky we are to live in Albuquerque where they have this beautiful event each year. We are, as always, looking forward to next years Fiesta and even talking about going to a Glo-deo. That would be a first, so we will see if we want to start a new tradition.

Eric's Birthday part 2

On Friday we had the second part of Eric's birthday. This time we were able to get all but two kids here. So much better!! The theme was "the Olympic Games." They ran relays, water balloon shot put, and a couple of other games. There are not any pictures of the games because Katie was still asleep and Brandon was by himself. This is Brandon handing out the gold medals.

Eric had a great group of kids over. They were a lot of fun! One of them for his gift gave him a card that talk about how on Old McDonald's Farm there was a chicken that said "a buck buck here and a buck buck there." And of course the gift was one dollar bills. So cute!

And the lucky kiddo had another cake with candles to blow out!

As fun as everything was, I am thankful that it is over. I am knee deep in midterms and it has been very busy. I need to mention (again) how awesome my hubby is for really picking up the slack with the birthday party and the house while I study nonstop. He has done it all without complaining and on his vacation too! Don't I have the best man ever!?!!