Swim Lessons

Al practiced one Saturday with Alex in our community pool and he started swimming.  He wanted to do it over and over again, but yay so glad!   I had him and Cole enrolled in a week long swim lesson with Mrs Erin and they loved her.  She also has 3 boys so she sympathized with me, haha.   She told me Cole is really good, but he's also really dangerous and has no fear.  It is now the end of September and Cole can pretty much swim, but we make him use floaties when we aren't in the pool.

I can't remember why they are both sitting on the time out bench, but these smiles are their mischievous lets gain up on mom looks.  

How is Alex's hair so blonde is the question I probably get asked the most and I wish I had it too!!

My 20 week ultrasound with Alex, Cole, and Dad!!  I wanted to record their reaction but the Sonogram lady freaked out and said we couldn't do anything.   She printed some extra pictures for them and we never did get a good one of his face.  She said something like he's saying leave me alone, I'm sleeping so they still talk about the baby saying that:)

Who will he look like is the question?

They think it's fun to talk to the baby and Cole loves to touch my belly button especially now that it's all the way out.

Moving Day!!  Thank goodness that is all over with, so stressful and even worse that we had to leave everything in the garage so the painters could paint our entire house.  We paid these guys from the singles ward to help us and they managed to get everything done in 4 hours, phew.  

Blue Or Pink

I put Alex in 2 more sets of swim lessons because I was determined for him to learn how to swim this summer.  This was his first round with his soccer buddies Bo and Brayden

We spent a lot of fund days here with Emily and William before they moved away to California :(

Looking at colors of wood floors and drinking sodas

Slab shopping for marble, so stressful and so many different kinds of slabs.

Cole sleeping in his mini bed with his blankie, so cute.  He loves to sleep and cuddle.  He kind of reminds me of a teenager because he likes to go to bed late and sleep in and take his time getting up.  Alex is opposite where he will go to bed early or late and he's up at the same time every morning asking me what we are going to do today.  Cole still takes a nap everyday, but we are nearing the end because it takes him so long to go to bed at night.  My days of both napping are over, but it was an amazing 2 hour daily break while it lasted.

With this pregnancy I was able to get my blood drawn at 13 weeks to determine the sex of the baby.  I've always wanted to have a gender reveal party, but decided it would be too much pressure because everyone would be watching me to see what my reaction was especially if it was another boy.  I decided I was going to have a cake made for Al, me and the boys and we would cut it together to see what I was having.   It was hard to pick up that envelope from the Dr and not open it.  

That afternoon we met Emily at the splash pad and she kept asking me if she could open it :)

Here is our gender neutral cake a lady in our ward made......so so nervous and excited to cut it.

We all thought it was going to be a girl so we had pink 7 up to drink and cheers with.  I couldn't stop laughing at Cole's face in this picture.  Someone left a comment on my instagram photo that said fast forward 30 years to Cole in the boardroom cheering on a big deal closing, haha.  

I think we were all in shock when I cut it, especially me.  Another boy, oh my goodness what will I ever do with 3 little boys.  Alex keeps talking about having 2 more kids after this one "pops out."  4 is my max so hopefully that's not a sign I'll have twins next.   We are excited for this little baby to join our family in November and even more excited to see who he will look like.

That night we had a boys dinner at Tillmans and I had a yummy steak.  We celebrated with roasting smores at our table after dinner, yum

Homeowners

We were under a lot of pressure to find a house to buy.  We asked our landlord many times to buy the one we were renting, but he wanted to be greedy so we looked at spec homes in new neighborhoods.  We decided we really wanted a pool so ended up looking at older homes with a pool, office, and front garage (alley garages are really big here). Our lease was supposed to end in April, but we got it extended until the middle of June.  We looked at a lot of homes and even debated moving to Austin since lets be honest is a lot prettier than Dallas and is just more hip and fun.  I already have a hard time with Al being gone so much and it would be worse if we lived there so we decided to stay in Frisco.    We heard the house we bought was going to be put on the market so we were there first thing Saturday morning and it had everything we wanted minus the front garage so we decided to put an offer in.  We knew it would have multiple offers so Al wrote a letter and attached a picture of us, the next day the accepted the offer, yay!!   Now it was crunch time, we had to get inspections, line up contractors for all the work we wanted done, and pack all our stuff.   Heather watched our boys the morning we closed.  They love her baby Crew.

Closing day with our realtor Robin and husband Mark who did our loan.  She was so much fun to look at houses with I told her I felt like we were breaking up.

Our very first home.  I'm not going to lie I felt a little overwhelmed about all these new responsibilites, but it was time even if we are only going to be here for 5 years (that's our Texas time frame).  We can't ever stay in one place or at least that's how I feel for some reason.

We love our Sodapalooza slurpees, cheers to our new house with a pool!!

Proof that Cole still needs naps.  Went to Chick fil a to eat dinner at the pool and he wouldn't wake up

The same day we closed on our house we  had contractors ripping up the tile and wrought iron staircase.  The next night Al's friends from Austin drove up to help him knock down the rock wall on our fireplace.   They pulled an all nighter, almost lost some fingers, but got all the rock off.

Al played Dr at 4am and used his glue pen to mend Braydens finger.

They had to rent a truck and disposed of half the rocks in some random field in the middle of the night and the next day they took the other half to the dump.

On Saturday night Al left for South America for a week.  I was a little stressed because this was a big week for our new house.....a new staircase, wood floors, stain, and counter.  There was a lot of leaving the kids in the car while I went into the house to make sure everything was happening.  I also had to teach relief society that weekend, but I must say lessons have been a lot easier.  It's still stressful, but I don't get as nervous now.  How cute are Cole and Alex in their matching outfits.  I wish they could stay little forever, it's amazing how fast they grow.  Cute Cute boys.

Start of Summer

Preschool ended quickly and we had lots of time on our hands together.   Cole and Alex love to take showers and they also love to dump out all of my shampoo and conditioner.  Usually Alex will tell me if Cole is doing it or I smell it, but you never know what those 2 are going to do together.

I made a DVD for Alex's 3rd birthday when we lived in California and for some reason we watched it one day.  He's been obsessed ever since and always talks about the box house Dad made for him at our house in California so I told him after we moved Al would make him another one :).

Taking a look in our new house with our new staircase and wood floors.  Paint came next!!

We took the boys to Hawaiian Falls one weekend and the water was soooo cold which didn't mix well with the wind that day.  We didn't last long, but they had fun and enjoyed their lunches and as Alex says it peanut butter sandwichey.  

That night we went to dinner to say goodbye to Emily and Marty.  I think I'm used to friends moving away after living in California, but she was a hard one especially since she was one of my first friends in Texas.

Al and Dad at church.

Lots and lots of stops to look at stuff for our new house, but luckily we just pay to get our lawn mowed so this isn't on our list yet.

Movie date with my two buddies, love them!!

Weezer

Some friends told us that Weezer was coming in concert to the casino in Oklahoma which is only about an hour from us. Weezer was one of my very first CDs in 6th grade so I knew we had to go!!   Free Red Bulls from the Red Bull girls, too bad I couldn't drink one.

After the concert we won $60 on Wheel Of Fortune, yes!!

The concert was amazing.  It started at 8pm and Weezer was on at 8:05pm and done at 9 or 930, no opening band.  It was seriously the best and they played all their hits.

Swim, Swim, and more swimming is what we do in Texas.  We have a really great community pool that isn't ever to busy and fun for our kids to swim in.

We had a goodbye dinner for Emily which makes me so sad because she is one of my closest friends here and she also has a little boy Alex's age.  

Hanging out at Emily's driving the John Deere.  We might need to get one for Christmas.

Alex taking selfies on my phone, love him.

These two love to watch movies and lounge around together.

Coby and Mallory moved to Atlanta and they stopped at our house to say hi so we took them to Top Golf and had lunch.

One of my favorite things about Texas is the clouds.  Since it's so flat you can see really far and the clouds always look amazing.  Cole and Alex love to play in the backyard, they play games in the trees, play with sidewalk chalk, tip their house over, and always have fun.  Those 19 months paid off!