Love these guys!

 As I head into the next week and officially say good-bye to Thanksgiving weekend, I really had to blog about all that I am thankful for. 

These kids!  I don't have a large family of my own but my Aunt Cathy and Uncle David(my dad's brother) live about an hour away and they had Katharina a few weeks before I had Wesley.  So it is so nice to get the kids together.  They absolutely LOVE playing with each other!  Here they are making fruit bowls *yummy*

 I am so THANKFUL that my kids get to know my grandma and share so much time with her. She is quite the lively lady!  In this picture I'm sure she is giving some good advice or telling an interesting story  :)

I am thankful that my uncle has tons of toys!  And one of them happens to be this John Deere tractor that he let Wesley ride around in!  How cool is that for the 3 yr old John Deere LOVER!

Words can't express how thankful I am for this picture below.....my uncle taking Wesley on a ride around his place on the tractor.  My kids will never get to know my dad personally but he and my uncle favor each other a lot and have a lot of similar traits.  I don't think Uncle David will ever know how happy he made Wesley by taking him for a ride on his 'big green tractor!'

The impromptu see-saw!  Katharina saw some boards laying around and wanted my uncle to make a see-saw.  Of course he did and the kids had a great time flying up and down.

These guys:

Whiskers crawled up on Wesley tonight and made himself quite comfy.  I snapped this picture because Wesley will be so happy to see this picture in the morning when he wakes up! 

Look who found the Christmas Tree?  He (as you can suspect) was quite intrigued with the lights and ornaments and all things dangly....Whiskers was not with us at this time last year and I am so thankful that God put him in our lives.  He is such a sweet cat and has really found his place in our family.  Jake probably isn't as appreciative of him (smile smile) but maybe one day he will get used to him. 

Maroon Out - 2010!

Go Aggies!  Beat the Hell out of Nebraska(tomorrow night!)

Go Cobras!  Beat Taft! (tonight - second round of HS football playoffs!)

Its really really nice when your schools have the same colors!  We definitely bleed maroon!

FYI..pardon the grainy picture.  Dad was handling camera duty this morning and turned the flash off.  By the time I figured out that he was doing something wrong, no one wanted to take anymore pictures! :)

In a few hours we will be off to Wesley's Thanksgiving lunch at his school.  Yummy...MORE turkey.

He has been practicing his turkey song, so we are excited to hear the kids and enjoy some good food and fellowship with some cute kids and great faculty.

Video Camera FOUND

On December 9th, Kate's school is having its annual Christmas program.  The kindergarten class is dressing up as Gingerbread men (I know this because I have to make the costume) and they are singing a very cute song (I know this because she rehearses daily....sometimes hourly...I know the song by heart myself!)
Thinking about how special this program will be for her and our entire family, it got me thinking about my Kindergarten Christmas program.  I was an elf.  Almost all of us were elves unless you were really great and got to be Mr. and Mrs. Claus.  If you weren't even good enough to be an elf (or your parents did not agree to make your costume) you got put in the chorus.  I still have the VHS that the school sold and when I still owned a VHS player, I'd pop it in every now and then when one of my elf friends (Erin or Tara) were around to show them just how silly we looked.  One time I showed it to Justin to prove to him that I have ALWAYS been the smallest person in my age group...the line of elves takes a very sharp dip when it gets to me  :)
Nonetheless, this video made me think about how life with two kids started getting really busy and I put the video camera away and started taking still shots with my camera.  It was like I had to make the choice between one of the two and the camera won out.  So.....I mozied on up to the storage room and went through boxes and boxes of unpacked 'stuff'.  I finally found the video camera and all the used video tapes.
The camera had a video in it and I was almost scared to play it back.  Why?  Well I was nervous that I had never got any video of Wesley.  I honestly don't ever remember taking any video of him!
However, to my pleasant surprise was an 18 month old Wesley toddling around his 4 year old sister.  He had these amazing curls and huge dimples and Kate's hair was half as long as it is now.  Jake was in some of the footage and he looked as good as he does now (he had a bit more hair on his tail than he does now).
So basically I realized that when we made the decision to move to Victoria, I put away my video camera and never opened it (until yesterday).  What did I miss:
1.  Selling the house in Conroe (which by the way, it was very very monumental to see our old yard and house in the footage)
2.  Moving into the rent house (which by the way, I absolutely HATED the rent house so I am not as concerned that there is no footage of that place!)
3.  Wesley turning 2
4.  Kate turning 5
5.  Thanksgiving and Christmas 2009 and New years 2010
6.  The building process of our new house
7.  Wesley turning 3
8.  Kate turning 6
9.  Any and all beach vacations and Sea World vacations from 2009-2010
Note that items 3-9 have TONS of still shot footage so the kids aren't completely missing 2 years of their lives  :)

So the good news is that I've found the camera in time for Kate's Christmas program.  I've started recording the kids at ages 3 and 6 and the new house....well its finished and still new and still standing and hopefully in 30 years when the kids sit down to watch this video we'll be sitting in the same house (maybe not so new) and they will get as much joy out of watching the videos as I did!

Cute conversations with the Peters Kids

Kate has officially been in 'real' school (aka NOT preschool!) for 3 months now.  She is doing FANTABULOUS and looks forward to going each and every day.  She is one of the only ones in her class that has perfect attendance because everyone has caught some sort of 'bug'.  But the first few weeks were still an adjustment.  All of her preschool classes have always been half day so even though she may have stayed until 3pm, Kindergarten was her first full day of structure (and rule following).  So the first few weeks she'd ask us if she HAD to go to school today.  My response was 'Kate, this is not preschool...this is real school and you learn so much each and every day that you MUST go or you will get behind.' 
Today she came home from school and dad picked her up.  She told him the story of Gwendolyn in her class. 
Kate:  'Daddy, do you know that today Gwendolyn finally came back to school and Mrs. Keith asked her if she had been sick.'
Daddy:  'Was she sick?'
Kate:   'She told Mrs. Keith that she wasn't sick, but they took vacation!'
Daddy:  'Oh really?'
Kate:  'Yes...and then Mrs. Keith told Gwendolyn that she was going to talk to her mommy because she can't miss school because of a vacation.'
Daddy:  'Right'
Kate:  'I leaned over to Gwendolyn and told her 'Gwendolyn this is not preschool..this is real school and you have to come every day unless you are sick.'
Daddy:  'What did Gwendolyn say when you told her that?'
Kate:  'She just stared at me and didn't say anything so I guess she never went to preschool and doesn't know what that is!'

Love her! 
P.S.  I guess she does listen after all  :)