What's been going on in Texas?

I thought I would post what's been going on with us, since my last post was in March.

I know many of our family and friends are wondering if we still own our house in California. Well, the answer is yes. It got delayed again, and now it's supposed to close in September. Hopefully it will close on time and turn out to be a Happy Birthday for me. If it doesn't close, at least we won't have to worry about who we are staying with at Christmas time -- Ok that's not funny! By the way, if anyone drives by our house, we do have someone living there from our old ward, so don't freak out.

We LOVE visitors, and over the past few months we have had several (yeah). We had Kent and his family and Kim and her family (Kim & Julian for a night, Derek for a week). The kids loved having their cousins around, especially Nicholas, he loved having Derek around and not being the only boy. It was great to see family and we can't wait until Christmas to visit family and friends.

Keith has been hard at work on the Italy video (which he had major problems with) and I am glad to say that it is almost finished. He also bought a really nice mountain bike and plans on using it soon -- but he will have to wipe off the dust first. Keith is still a work-a-holic, but getting better, sometimes. When he is home, there is plenty to do around here. The garage is still a disaster, the playset still isn't finished, we have paint for 3 rooms not started, etc...

Nicholas is getting ready to start third grade and is very excited about school, although it is going to take away from his Wii and gamecube time. He is getting really good! He is also looking forward to playing baseball, and Keith will be his coach this year!

Megan is getting ready to start first grade and Brownies -- look out everyone, let the cookie battle begin! Megan is doing VERY well with her Arthritis, though her medication is stupidly expensive, about $150 per month that we can't afford.

Amber is doing great, although she changes her clothes several times a day (and I just love laundry). She still makes the biggest mess of all, she's our lil' Texas tornado, especially in the playroom. She has been doing well with keeping toys upstairs, but often we find snack wrappers under her bed, or pillow, and food is not allowed upstairs. She's a sneaky little one - I'll be nailing her window shut in a few years.

I (Angela) am doing good too, but am having a hard time keeping our house clean. I'm starting to think we should have moved into a smaller house :o). I have been trying to get prepared for my preschool which starts in September. The good news is that the kids and I have been enjoying going to the pool, but Keith's a slacker and only went with us once since he's a work-a-holic. Oh yeah, and he's also been busy on my endless 'honey-do-list' (like building the kids big ginormous play structure - I think it would have been quicker if we bought a kit, but Keith is stubborn and had to design his own).

That is all for now... I will post some new pictures soon. We hope everyone is doing well.

Our Family

Howdy Y'all

There are a few people on my list to auto-send my blog each update I make... but I'm new to the whole Blog thing so I may or may not have set it up right. If I did, and you just got a link in your email, you are on my list!! Woo Hoo! If not, well... bummer.

Feel free to share this link with anyone that wants to check in on us, we hope to use this as a place to keep in touch. There are some posts already, so feel free to browse and enjoy :)

-Keith & Angela

Nicholas gets a shiner... and Megan loses a tooth

Of course this is after Megan "fell down the stairs" and a week later Angela "fell down the stairs" causing crazy bruises - Seriously, I'm gunna end up in jail!

Before calling CPS...

Okay, so right after Nicholas' first pre-season baseball tournament (only one game for us, it was a single elimination tourny and we couldn't seem to hit the stupid ball enough - though Nicholas got a hit and scored - woo hoo) we decided to play catch in the beautiful weather of a perfect day. About 5 minutes in, I gave him a pop-fly from far away, and you guessed it, the ball missed the mit and whammo... right in the cheek bone. It really looks like I 'right hooked' him. He handled it pretty well, burying his face into his mit so others wouldn't see him cry (there were dozens of baseball kids everywhere), but didn't want to play catch anymore that day. Luckily, he doesn't seem traumatized by the incident, and he was not afraid of the ball at the next practice.

In other news... Megan lost her first tooth! She was so brave at letting me wiggle it, but when it came out she kind of freaked out for a minute, then was happy to collect some cash from the tooth fairy. We are calling her our little Jack-O-Lantern, and Nicholas our Lil' Slugger!

Stay tuned for a new post soon...

<3
Keith

Our move to Texas

As a lot of you know, we have moved to the Biggest state, Texas (we decided to move because I wanted to meet Keith's other family - it's an inside joke). We moved shortly after we got back from Italy, which was an awesome trip. We left California on January 14th and our drive to Texas was very long. It took us three days to get here because we had to drive at a slower pace since Keith was driving a huge Penske truck that we rented. Luckily Keith did not fall asleep :). I am also very grateful that we had no throwing up incidents with the kids like previous road trips. Nicholas was sad though, because he did not get to play the Game Cube on the way - the AC adapter decided to fry and we had a major smoking issue. No AC adapter, no Game Cube. By the way, the kids were so involved in the movie that was playing they didn't even notice the smoke coming out of the adapter, and it was bad, like roll down the windows to breathe kind of bad, and visions of our beautiful Burban on fire on the side of the road kind of smoke.

Anyways, I decided to start a blog because we are so far away from our family and friends. We would like to keep everyone informed with what is going on with our family so when we come to visit you, you aren't thinking, "who are these people?" By the way Megan has already starting saying y'all. It was so funny when Keith and I heard her say it the first time.

That's all for now... visit back soon, we have pictures to upload!
Oh yeah, and as for those "MySpacers" out there, we prefer this blog spot since their motto is 'we hate spam' instead of MySpaces motto of 'Spam net', 'Virus Central' and 'Pedifiles, log in here'

Snow in March

Last night we got SNOW at our house!!! It really snowed! It was huge fluffy flakes and all - and we got about 5 inches of it! Keith was up late and made a big snow ball and put it in our freezer, just in case the snow melted before we woke up, but it stayed. The kids were so excited when they woke up and wanted to stay home from school to play in the snow.

My favorite part was that I got to sleep in because school started two hours later (due to weather). Keith was happy too because he got to go in late to work. You see, in Texas, snow is not something they are prepared for, since it rarely happens. So there are no plows, or even salt. But don't worry, the Texans try to rebel against the ice and drive just as fast on the freeways, and then wonder why there were 15 accidents within 3o minutes on Keith's route to work (which is why he gets to go in late when the roads get icy).