I love my kids

Just a little note to remind myself of how tonight I went to kiss each one of my kids and told them how much I love them. To my amazement they were actually asleep tonight and then I had a conversation with sleeping Tristan who told me he gets up in the middle of the night to see me sitting on the couch every night... funny thing is that I always hear footsteps but when I turn around I don't see anybody.
We had a tough day with Aaron sick for half of the day throwing up and looking like death himself. He puked all over the hallway downstairs and lucky for me I have my carpet cleaner that made that yucky mess go away in 5 minutes. After a very needed nap for him and me he woke up much happier and with color in his face but I ended up with a very bad headache that once again lasted the rest of the day. The end is here now, I can go to bed and knowing that tomorrow will be another day hopefully a better one.
I truly love my kids, I love them so much and it fills my heart with joy when I see them all asleep, happy, dreaming in their own little worlds. They have endured so much in the last few weeks and I am grateful for their patience and love towards me, they actually have taken care of me more than I have taken care of them, they are great.

P.S. I will be posting pictures as soon as I feel like loading them up and stories to go with them.

Has is it been two years?

Really??? It doesn't seem that way but I guess it is. I don't have pictures to go with my post (again), I was reading my blog and looking at the old pictures and I can see all the changes that my kids have gone since we moved here. It was very exciting to start all over again with the house and everything. We haven't done much to the house, hopefully one day I can finally start painting it and making it look more like home. We did add a few pieces of furniture that were needed and are very happy living here. It was hard to leave our friend in Utah and I am sure they don't even miss us now (just kidding) but we still think of them and the good times we had together, thank goodness for Facebook or I would have no idea what is going on in their lives.
We look forward to making many more happy memories here and are glad that Houston turned out to be a good place for our little family, we can actually see our selves living here for a long long time and the kids are very used to their surroundings, even if they have to run away from fire ants every once in a while.

The best things about Houston:

-Having the pool and the school within walking distance
-Having the airport 10 minutes away
-There are so many places close by to go and explore with the kids without spending any money
-The dollar stores are awesome around here
-Fallas (clothing store), has the best deal on clothes for me and the kids, where else can you find a brand new dress that sales regularly fro $50.00 and I get it for 5.00????
-My news friends

I am sure there are more I just can't think of them now :)

My kids are funny

On Sunday after Tristan got dressed for church he came to my bed and he smelled so good, I told him he was going to grow up to brake hearts then I told him that I was falling in love with him and he said "Does that mean that when I grow up you are gonna marry me or something?" He made me laugh so hard.

Phone calls I hate.

I absolutely hate receiving dreadful news over the phone, number one on my list is when they call you tell you somebody you know is dead. The second one is when they call you to let you know there is a mysterious transaction in your bank account and then to find out that somebody has used your debit card number to purchase something, not only once but 11 times.

Garden disaster

I have failed as a gardener, my plants are finally dying due to lack of care. I was very excited when I saw them growing so fast and saw the tomatoes come out but then the bugs started to eat them all gone and then the tomatoes disappear, I don't know who took them but they are gone and I know my kids did not eat them. Oh well!!!
I have decided that I am giving up on the idea of having a nice vegetable garden in Houston or that maybe I need to ask around and see what other people do. I had such a nice success in Utah with my tomato plants so much that I used to give them away because I could not keep up with all the tomatoes.
I am just going to rip them out and plant flowers instead and see how that goes.

The weather right now is kind of crazy but I like it, the rain feels so nice for these hot humid days and since we don't go out much I am not dying of heat out there.

Last Friday I got some goggles for the kids so they can see under water and were very excited and patiently waiting for today to go to the pool. To our surprise the pool was closed and after going back two more times we finally saw a sign that says the pool is contaminated and it will remain closed. The kids were heartbroken, specially Tristan who was been trying to learn how to swim and was really looking forward to some pool time.

Victor keeps going to his Karate lessons and enjoying them very much. I even gave him the option of quiting but he decided to keep going. That is a good sign. I saw him yesterday from far away during his class and he did a pretty good kick, he almost knocked the guy down.

I like to see my kids learning and having fun at the same time.

Just my luck.

I have never had a flat in my life, at least not while I was driving. On Wednesday it happened to me. I can usually tell when something is wrong with my car but I swear I did not notice anything out of the ordinary until we were about to park in the driveway and I heard this weird noise, then I knew what it was and I started to freak out because it was completely flat. The kids go all worried thinking that it was not going to get fixed. Tristan more than anybody :) My darling husband came home after work and fixed it for me.
Oh yeah I also threw up in the car while driving home, that is the second time that happens... lovely!!!

What is really going on right now.

I feel like I have been lying to the world and I hate it. I have been wanting to tell everybody our great news but for obvious reasons we decided to wait a little longer, well now I feel we can make official and let the cat out of the bag:

WE ARE PREGNANT!!!!!

I am so happy and excited and feel so blessed to once again carry a little one inside me. Let me just tell you that the last couple of months have been so hard on me and my poor family. I always get sick like this but I guess having older kids that demand more attention has made it harder and also that they are at home full time.
We have been praying for this little one from the beginning. We waited so long and are so glad that everything seems to be going well so far. I got to see my little one a couple of weeks ago on an ultrasound and saw the little heart beating so fast. It made me cry and the doctors who knew about our struggle from last year were so supportive and happy for me.
My day basically starts with me laying in bed for a little longer than usual, Shayna takes care of breakfast for me so when I get downstairs they are all done eating and playing. Some times I manage to get out of the house and we do one thing, go to the pool. We love having the pool so close and we stay there for a couple of hours or until I start to feel sick again. Lunch is also provided by Shayna and then is on to my afternoon nap. I have to take nap because my medication knocks me out instantly. Yes my kids have been watching lots of TV but there is nothing I can do about it. After my afternoon nap I manage to get something done for dinner or if it's too hard for me then Dan comes to the rescue with pizza, or something like that. It would have been great to have my mom with me right now, my house would not be in the state that it is right now, my kids would not be on their own for so long and I could actually eat normal food. But that's OK I can do it. I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and maybe in a couple of weeks I can finally start to feel better. I am sick 24/7, have not been able to attend church regularly and I am glad that today I made it for a couple of hours but as soon as I got home, I got sick again was out of commission for a couple of hours. Dan is a great help specially now that his finger is better and the stitches are gone.
The kids are the best, they do drive me nuts when I am up but they have been awesome, cleaning my kitchen and the house as much as they can. Shayna and Victor take turns doing dishes every day and Tristan and Aaron come to visit me in my room when I am lying down. When ever I have the chance to be with them we play and read books or do something together. I know it is hard on them, but I tell them everyday how much they are helping me and how much their little baby brother or sister appreciates it. They all are very excited about the baby and kiss my belly already, Tristan makes sure I drink a little bit of milk every day and healthy stuff, he is such a cute guy. I show them pictures on the computer so they can see how the baby is growing and what changes are going on, they love it.
I am so happy and can't wait to feel better and start enjoying this pregnancy a little bit more. This is part of the process and at the end of the day I am just grateful that I get to have morning sickness again, it is a good sign that this one is sticking :)

To eat or not to eat.

Aaron is a great eater but every once in a while he decides the food doesn't taste right, the color is not right, too much, today he doesn't like carrots, yesterday he didn't like corn, etc. etc.
I have been through this with all of my kids and the best thing to do some times is just let them go hungry if that is what they want. It does brake my heart to see my 4 year old go to bed with tears in his eyes but his choice was to sit on the floor instead of eating his dinner, so off to bed with no food in his tummy. I am sure tomorrow he will eat better.

Things and 4th of July...

My poor kids are not getting to do all the fun things we had planned for this summer. Last week I decided to take them to a park I found while attending the Twilight camp that Victor participated in (I will post about the camp later). The park is just like any other park around here, lots of trees and trails to go and explore. They charge a fee for adults, only $3.00 but the one neat thing that they have is this little creek with a sandy beach. The kids loved it and we would have stayed longer but they had some construction going on there, they are building this huge deck that will have picnic tables and benches so it looks promising for our future outings. The kids threw rocks and played in the water for a while and then we went on to have our little picnic. My kids are funny because they think picnics are the best and Tristan and Aaron said to me that I am the greatest mom for doing that with them. I seriously can't count how many times we have gone on picnics this year, what can I say... I love the outdoors.

This park also had a nature center which had lots of information on the animals and bugs you can find in the park. They have a snake zoo which is what Aaron called it and they got to see the snakes being fed. They had some live turtles and lots of other things. It was a good learning experience for them and it kept them occupied for a couple of hours.

Dan and I had been talking about taking off during the weekend and go somewhere with the kids and enjoy some family time since he did not have school work, a little summer break. We had planned going maybe to San Antonio or Corpus Cristy again but then Saturday morning came around and we did not go anywhere. We thought about going bowling or mini golf playing but in the end nothing worked out. So we ended up driving to Katy Mills mall and walked around for a while, got a good deal at Old Navy on shirt for Shayna and me, Shayna got to jump on a trampoline for a while and then we got in the car just to discovered that it would not start. We ended up using the road side assistance and they came to give our battery a jump start. I am happy to say we made it home but the car did not want to start after we got home.

Sunday we did not go to church due to me feeling a little bit under the weather and just waited all day until it was time to go over to Steven's house for the 4th of July celebration. I really wanted to go downtown again and see the display there because it was really fun when we did that 2 years ago but I made Dan promise we would do that next year :)
Steven had lots of fireworks since he entered a drawing and got $250.00 worth of fireworks. The kids had so much fun with the display and there were also two other houses having their own display so it was very fun. We are so grateful they shared their fireworks with our kids, this year I did not bother to go and buy any.



On a side note I realized that day that I am not capable of being a social butterfly, Steven and Amber had some friends over that night and I could not find a way to talk to them or try to be a normal person around them. That made me feel awkward the entire time and I am really hoping that it didn't show that much :) Oh well, that's me.

What goes on in the Brown household???

Many many things... some of them are fun some are not so much.

I made this cake for Father's day but not for Dan, some lady wanted a special cake for her husband. I did make a cake for Dan but we never got around to decorate. Sad.

For lunch one day we made a delicious fruit salad, the kids ate the whole thing.

A while ago we got a new bird to replace the other two that got eaten by a stupid cat.
His name is Pocoyo and he is very friendly. All the kids actually like him and he likes them all.

While watching TV one day Aaron started to cry but it sounded kind of far away. Little did we know that he was sitting on the stairs inside this box, I know he was scared but we needed to take a picture of his little adventure. Now he knows not to do that again.
My dear husband on Fathers' day was going to grill some hamburgers for us and in the process he cut his finger, this picture does not show how bad it really was bu the other pictures are kind of too graphic. He got 4 stitches and 5 hours late we were able to be home again. I am taking care of his wound everyday before he goes to work and at night by cleaning it and putting a new dressing on it. Poor Dan but he is doing well and the stitches should come off next week.
It was only his finger but the whole experience was kind of stressful since Dan does not do well with blood. After cleaning it and actually seeing what had happened to him he almost past out in the living room and I was afraid we were going to end up dragging him out of the house or something. He had cold sweet coming out of every pore of his body and looked whiter than usual. At the hospital he did much better. Our nice friends who live 10 or 15 houses from us watched our kids while we went to the Hospital, that was really nice of them and know that is not an easy task. But all is well and we are still trying to enjoy summer.

Our PS3 died a couple of weeks ago and it has been tough around here. We recently mailed to my brother so he could take a look at it and see if it could be fixed. Being the smart guys that he is, he was able to fix it right away and now we are waiting for the happy return of the PS3 to our home. We are eternally grateful to him. Go Nefi!!!

We also went to see the new Toy Story Movie, the kids and also the parents enjoyed it a lot. So far a little bit of everything but still a good summer.