3 Children + Birthday + Easter = Crazy

It was another crazy weekend at the parents' house. Picture a 5 year-old, a 2 year-old, a 1 year-old, confetti eggs, Easter egg dye, and a crazy German Shepherd mutt. Now picture that scene shortly after a tornado blows through...and you have an inkling of the chaos that was this weekend.

The birthday party for Brynna was fun. They had it at a local park, so the kids got to play on the swings and monkey bars. Shelby had to wait it out in the car because she has no manners and acts like a bull in a china shop.

After the party, we went back to the house and cooked steaks and chicken. Ribeyes and New York Strips--right up my alley. Then it was time to dye Easter eggs. Logan is a mess waiting to happen and he did not disappoint. He dyed the table, then floor, his hands, his arm, his face, Brynna, and just about everything else...except of course for the eggs. Then the kids were off to bed to wait for the Easter Bunny. Since it was puring rain outside, the Easter Bunny hid the eggs inside. Nancy then found the ones with Cadbury eggs inside and attempted to hide them in more difficult places. The theory being that the kids wouldn't find them and she could go back later and "find" them herself. Logan, however, is getting really good at finding eggs, so her plan failed. Brynna held her own, and Makinley, who isn't quite to the walking stage yet, sits and points at the eggs she wants, and her mom and dad go and get them. She's not spoiled or anything.

Easter dinner was great, and then it was time to head back to Houston. Just one last stop on the way out of town so Logan could show me his bug collection. It is very impressive indeed. He's got bugs, spiders, worms, snails, a slug and other assorted tiny critters that he finds in the yard. Most of them are dead rotting carcasses, but it is a collection nonetheless. I'm just glad to see he is branching out from Star Wars.

Shelby had a great time too. She hits the jackpot with the kids around, because they drop all kinds of food on the floor. And even when they don't drop it, the food in their hands is right about mouth-high for Shelby, so it's easy pickin's. Shelby manged to get jelly beans, a corn cob, and a wad of Play-Doh in addition to her usual table droppings. We are gonna have to watch closely to make sure it all makes it out the other end okay.

Makinley likes Shelby, but only from a distance. She stares, points, smiles and laughs at Shelby from afar...but if Shelby gets within 3 feet of her, she starts crying.

It's going to be an exciting week at the clinic. No, no more hiring for right now. I am getting a digital x-ray system installed. I'm very excited to be finally entering the 21st century. Anyone need anything x-rayed? I gotta pay for this thing, ya know.

Here are some pics from the crazy weekend that was:

The three kiddos--Makinley, Brynna, and Logan

Brynna and Shelby

Reading to Logan and Brynna

Smiley Brynna and the remnants of the chaos behind her

Cutie Makinley

Two beautiful girls

Logan wrapped in tape. Don't ask.

Logan gettin' his bubble on.

Makinley at the park

Happy Easter from Shelby

Hit Me Baby One More Time

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. There just hasn't been a lot of excitement to write about. I'm sure all three of you who read this can barely sleep at night wondering about all the wild stuff that we have been doing.

Nancy started the week off with a bang by going to the Britney Spears concert at the Toyota Center downtown. Yes, that's right...Britney Spears. She paid to see a white trash hoochie lip-synch for two hours. I'm really sad that I had to miss it. Luckily Nancy has friends that support her in these sorts of things, and she doesn't make me go with her. If she did, I think that would be grounds for divorce. I once was forced to go to The Nutcracker ballet the same night the Aggies were playing in the Alamo Bowl. I promptly dumped that chick. Just sayin'. Nancy had fun, so that's all that matters. She did, however, note that it wasn't nearly as cool as The New Kids on The Block concert she went to in October. Twice.

This was the last weekend we would be spending at home for a while, so we didn't do much. I spent quite a bit of time enjoying my recliner. Nancy's mom went to DFW with a friend for an embroidery convention (who knew that such things even existed?), so we got to babysit Mr. Whiskers, her 5 pound Yorkie/ Chihuahua mix. His favorite hobby is waiting until I doze off in said recliner, and then getting a running start and cannonballing into my crotch. Good times.

Today, we went to the Shell Houston Open PGA golf tournament in Humble. Neither of us had ever been to a professional golf tournament before, so it was kinda cool. We followed Sergio Garcia and a few other guys for a while. We only stayed 3 or 4 hours, but it was really cool, except for the sunburn. You would think after 33 pasty-white years, I would have learned by now to wear sunscreen. I guess I assumed because it was 10 am and cloudy, that the sun's rays would not affect me. Now I have the ever-so-cool racoon eyes to disprove my theory.

Next weekend is Brynna's 2nd birthday party. It is only a formality, since she has already reached the terrible twos. We'll have to go shopping this week for her bribe...er, I mean gift.

The weekend after that is the annual Maroon and White game in College Station. It's really just an excuse to go hang out in College Station for the weekend, since the football is even worse than an actual Aggie game.

Finally, we will wrap up April with Brooke and Tyler's birthday party.

In closing, I would like to post a excerpt from my sister Carrie's blog that I thought was hilarious. Logan is our 5 year old nephew.

Awkward Conversation of the Day:

Logan: "Am I hot?"
Me: (feeling his head) "No, you don't feel hot to me."
Logan: "No, I mean am I hot? You know, like when a boy tells a girl that she's hot and then they date and kiss."
Me: "Oh. Ummm...."
Logan: "I think you're hot Mom. The hottest part about you is your big squishy belly. You got another baby in there?"

Happy Birthday Makinley!

Can you believe Makinley is already a year old?
She had her first birthday party on Saturday at Laura and Scott's house in Austin. She got a ridiculous amount of presents, of course. I think she got an entire closet worth of clothes. Clothes is what we were told Makinley needed. But of course, we didn't follow directions. We got a large, fun, noisy toy instead. That's how we roll.

Laura, of course, went overboard for the party. Placecards in front of each appetizer and dessert describing what it was, way too much of said food, and approximatley 114 people in attendance.

It was fun to see Makinley, since we don't get to see her very often. Even though she screams every time either one of us hold her. That's where the gifts come in. We are confident that, once she is old enough, she will respond favorably to our bribes...err, gifts, just like the other four have.

On that note, we had to bring Logan and Brynna a small gift as well. You will see him holding his little green RC car in some of the pics below. He loved it! And Brynna got a cell phone just like we got Brooke last weekend. Hey, I said we brought them gifts...I didn't say we were creative.

After we left the party, we headed north to The Melting Pot. We had 8 o'clock reservations. Two and a half hours later, we were miserably full. But it was great. We followed the advice of some of the party attendees, who apparently go to The Melting Pot at least weekly. Their menu picks turned out pretty good.

Here are some pics from last weekend that I forgot to post, and some from this weekend.

LAST WEEKEND:

Nancy and Brookie

Brookie

Brandl tossing Brooke in the air

Brooke and her Grandpa

Brandl tossing Tyler in the air

Tyler just chillin'

THIS WEEKEND:

Laura and Baby Mak

Nancy and Brynna

Me and Lo

Me, Nancy, and Logan

Me and Logan

Me and Brynna

Makinley and her tutu

Makinley can crawl now

Brynna and Makinley in Mak's new wagon

Brynna and her cell phone and Logan and his car

Makinley opening presents

Second Anniversary and a visit with the Groom Fam

We made the trek up to Magnolia to visit Nancy's brother and sister-in-law and the twins. Nancy's parents were there also, so we decided it would be a great weekend to go up there. You would think living in the same "city" we would get to see them more often than we do, but it takes over an hour to get there.

Whenever we visit nieces and nephews, we always like to bring presents. It is, of course, for purely selfish reasons: we don't get to see them very often, and we want them to like us. Tyler is easy to buy for. He likes anything that has wheels and goes fast. So we bought him a race car, Or as he described it...a Big, big, BIG, Big race car. He liked it. Brooke is more of a crap shoot when it comes to gifts. Most of the gifts we have bought her she has been wholly disinterested in after 1 minute. She then spends the rest of the time trying to steal whatever it is we bought Tyler. This time, we got her a talking pink flip cell phone. She actually played with this one, so score one for Aunt Yitzy and Uncle Randy!

I think our evil plan worked, too, because both Ty and Brooke played with us and let us hold them. Who says you can't buy love?

This weekend, we will be making the (similar distance) trek to Austin for Makinley's Birthday party. Can you believe she is already a year old? We will of course, come bearing gifts. But so will everyone else, so I don't think we get any extra points with the kid on this one. We will just make sure we get something very loud and obnoxious, without an off switch, just to annoy her mom. Maybe something maroon.

We are also going to make a weekend of it and stay in Austin on Saturday night for our anniversary. Dinner will be at The Melting Pot. For those of you who have never been there, it is a really fun place to eat for a special occasion.

Tomorrow will be two years since that sucker, er, I mean Nancy, said "I do". What was she thinking? Seriously.

It has really flown by. It seems like just yesterday I was watching Sportscenter in our honeymoon suite while my blushing bride hurled her guts out in the honeymoon toilet. Seems like only yesterday we had our memorable flight to Miami. And it seems like only yesterday I moved all my junk out of my third floor apartment and into Nancy's house. A LOT has happened in these two years: we've gained two nieces, a vet clinic, a house, and five fish. We've lost a house, a stable job at a vet clinic, a grandfather, and three fish. We've lived through a hurricane, Nancy's ankle surgery, and a mouse invasion. Oh, and after two years, I am still head-over-heels in love with my wife.

Drum Roll, Please....

I know you have all been on the edge of your seats waiting for the results of the DNA test we sent out on Shelby. Well, your wait is finally over. The results are in: Shelby is mostly German Shepherd. There are traces of a few other breeds, but German Shepherd is the dominant breed. So, based on these results, I can feel comfortable recommending The Wisdom Panel MX to my clients. That also means that the Canine Heritage Breed Test, that I sent out last year, was a waste of money. Beagle and Husky were not even present in trace amounts. Now that we know her true heritage, we will now be signing her up as either a Seeing Eye Dog or a K9 Drug Dog. We haven't decided yet.

It was a fun weekend. Nancy was driving to Arlington to visit her college roommate, so I decided to go to Corpus Christi and visit Scott. I even took Saturday off. Jeff drove down Friday night and we got to Corpus around midnight. We got up bright and early to hit the bay for some fishing in Scott's new boat. The only problem was the 45 degree temperature coupled with a North wind at 30 Knots. Miserable doesn't begin to describe it. We actually put the boat in the water, despite the weather, and lasted about an hour. Once we were all soaked, freezing, and unable to get the anchor to hold long enough for us to even cast our lines, we decided to head back. We cooked out, watched some basketball, and hit up the local watering hole instead.

Nancy had fun, too. Although for some reason she decided to do step aerobics while in Arlington, and now she can barely walk.

We had our best month yet at the clinic. I hired another technician today, who I think is going to work out well. She showed up on time for her interview, and has all her teeth, no unusual body parts pierced, and speaks English, so hiring her was a no-brainer.

That's all the excitement I can stand to write about for now.

I'm a glutton for punishment

The new hire has worked out great so far. She does a good job, shows up on time, and has a good attitude.

But we are so busy (good problem to have these days), that I now need to hire another technician. So I am placing an ad and starting the whole hiring process over again. Pray for me.

Finding two coherent, non-mentally-challenged, reliable, sane employees in a two month period may be asking too much.

Check out the updated web site: www.lakesidevets.com

Stimulus?

Riiiiiiiight.



This reminds me of Star Wars Episode 2. Senator Palpatine (soon to become The Emperor) is speaking before the Galactic Senate. He goes on and on about how bad the times are, and how urgent action is needed (sound familiar?), and how the Senate must grant him Emergency Powers in order to save the Republic. He will humbly accept responsibility for getting them through these tough times, and then, of course, give back these special powers to the Senate when things are better. The Senate votes overwhelmingly to give him these special powers, and everyone begins cheering and clapping.



Padme then says bluntly, "So this is how democracy dies. With thunderous applause."


Deep, I know :)