5 years old today!!!!

Well, I can't believe this day is here and almost past now.

My miracle babies are now 5 years old!

I will never forget the day they entered this world, although I didn't get to see them actually come out in the OR, but I will never forget the events that lead up to that moment before I had to be put to sleep! We have been so blessed over the last 5 years and are very thankful to have such healthy and beautiful 5 year olds!!!! We love you Kayla Nicole and Cooper Dean so much and can't wait to see what the next 5 years has in store for us all!!! Happy Birthday to our babies!!!!

This picture was taken at the fire station on there birthday. We went to visit daddy for a little bit since he had to work. I had to do another one of them on the fire truck since I had one done when they were 1 year olds! I love seeing them in the same type of setting just years later! They have grown so much!!!

2011 Family Pictures

On April 10, 2011 we met a friend of mine from High School who I was in Choir with and she took some pictures of the kids and us! She started a photography business and I have really enjoyed seeing her pictures on facebook and then one day my mom said she was told about Mindy that I went to school with and that she does photography. Mom decided she wanted in some of the pictures and that she would pay for it all for us to have the pictures done. We mostly wanted the kids and just some of the shots of the family. I called Mindy at the last minute and we made the plans. We were originally going to be in Alvin on some property that has two barnes and some other things, but the people were not home to give us permission, so we decided to drive down the road to the Alvin train station/depot and see what we could get out there. Mindy wasn't sure if there would be enough to do out there until we saw the park, swings and a decked area and so we made it work! There is a first time for everything and this place was amazing for pictures!! I am so happy with the way they turned out and Mindy was so good with the kids and they loved her!!

Anyway, I thought I would just share these here, and some are on facebook as well! They really did turn out great!!!! Enjoy!

New year and not a new post for almost a year now!!

Well 2011 has come and I realized that it has been almost a year since my last post! I am not a good writer/blogger as it is and I just let this get behind!!

We are just trying to keep the kids well and not sick! This February we have had the Flu in our house (daddy got it this year) and so we are praying that both the kids don't get sick either!! Cooper has started running a low grade fever this weekend, but it is not the flu so that is good, but I still don't like him even running fever!!!

I will start on an update with Cooper first.....

We signed him up for Tball this year and he is having so much fun already!! He loves his daddy teaching him the sport and does everything just the way daddy says!! Daddy was big in baseball and I think Cooper will follow in his foot steps and be just like daddy!! They have already had 3 little practice games this month and opening day is this coming Saturday and we will be apart of the parade in La Porte!! This should be fun!!!! We have a full season ahead of us for just starting out in Tball, but it will be fun!!! I have included some pictures of Cooper during the first practice game that we had!! One of the kids grandfather is a professional photographer and he got some great shots of all the kids!! I just love these of Cooper!!!

Kayla....

She is taking dance at the preschool that they attend and she loves every minute of it!! We watch her at home and she just has a passion for dancing! We love to watch her because even on TV shows she is trying to do dance moves like they do, so she really loves it and is not ashamed of it either!! She had a dance recital for Christmas time and they were so fun to watch! She will have another recital coming up in May for Spring time and they are going to be doing some tap dancing which I am excited to see!! I have included some pictures from her dance recital this past December! I love her face in these pictures!!

So other than raising 2 four year olds we are doing great!!! I love this age and all the fun things they are learning and getting to do like Dance and Tball!!! I will try to do a better job with keeping up with the blog too!! I keep up with Facebook much better and I have tons of pictures there!!

Have a wonderful May everyone!!!!

Home Renovations......

Our home built in 1966 is now under construction as I call it. There are so many things that need to be done, so we got a loan to take care of it!! We have first started getting bids for labor only to do some of this work, but the only thing we decided to pay someone to do was the bathroom remodel for the kids bath and the master bath!! They started the work on Wednesday 5/26/10 and completed both bathrooms last night 5/27/2010 around 9pm. They installed a shower line in the kids bathroom and installed the bathtub and then put ceramic tile on the walls!! It looks so much better in there now as we have had a torn up bathroom for over 4 years now!! The kids had their first bath this morning in the new bathtub and they were so excited!!

Here are some before and after pictures of the kids bathroom. We lived with only a working toilet for over 4 years in just this one bathroom!


After the guys were done with the install. I took this picture before I put anything back in the bathroom, but there is a cute kids shower curtain that goes with it too!!

The master bathroom just needed some new ceramic tile on the bathtub walls and we decided to put the ceramic tile on the floor as well. The floor had some nasty vinyl tiles on it and it looks much better now with the ceramic tile. Now I just have to put the bathroom's back together and clean up my bedroom and we will have this one project done!!

Here is the before of our master bathroom. I am embarrassed to even show this picture, it was gross!!

The vinyl sticky tiles that were on the floor before.
Here is one view after the job was done. Notice the shelves in the corner. He did that with the tile!!

And the new floors!! Much better!!

And another view of the shower!! I love the way it looks!!!

The next project will hopefully be completed Sunday if everything goes well. This is the garage siding project. We recently found out from one of the contractor's that we had termite damage so we had that treated on 5/20/10 and now Larry is just trying to fix a few boards that got damage almost to the top of the roof. Luckily for us this is a detached garage made out of solid wood so that is why we had damage, but to our knowledge there was no sign of termites on the actual house itself. All I can say is "What a mess"!!! Termites are not my friend and they better stay away from now on!!!! My wonderful father-in-law will be over Sunday to help Larry take on this project and my father-in-law has volunteered my mother-in-law to help get a patching of our living room ceiling completed... I thought it was funny when my husband said they were volunteering each other to come work at our house with us!!! Of course the kids may not let the grandparents do much work since they want to spend time with them too and have there attention!! We shall see how this goes though!!!

Here is a before shot of what the garage looks like now. It is wood siding now and that is why the termites loved it so much!!

Here is what it looks like with no wood siding!

In the next few weeks we will also be putting a new roof on the house. My husband has decided that we are not going to pay the contractor's there ridiculous amount for labor and that he was just going to feed some of his fireman buddies for there help, but I am not sure if they know this yet!! One of his fireman buddies had a construction business on the side from his fire dept. job, so he said he would help Larry with the roof, but he will need more than just one person to help so that we can get it done within a day or two at max!! We will see how this project goes. We have purchased all of our roofing material from a guy that posted his business on Craigslist and have saved about half the cost of what a contractor would have charged us for the material!! We also have to re-do all the fascia work around the house that meets up to the roof so that is also something that Larry will be working on the next few weeks before he does the roof!!

We also learned this week from AT&T that only our kitchen had grounded outlets and the rest of the house when tested by Larry is not grounded so we have an electrician coming out Saturday to look at what he needs and then should be able to fix it on Tuesday next week. So this is another cost that we were not expecting, but in my eyes we need to do it #1 for our safety, but it needs to be done so if we sale the house there won't be any issue's at closing or for someone else that buys this house!! I don't plan on staying at this home forever so it needs to be fixed up for the future!! Maybe in a few years we will sell, but only God knows our future, so we will see what happens!!

We have a few more small things to get done inside the house still, but those shouldn't take very long to get done. We (I) have to paint Kayla's room and decorate for our little princess!! She can't continue on in a beige color room in my eyes, so we are going to give her a little girls room!! We have been taking different pictures of flowers, butteries, dragonflies and so on to frame for her room and we are so excited to start frame shopping for those pictures we have printed for her room!! It will look so good once it is finally done!!

We do also need new windows for the house, but I have to research for the best price since we will need so many windows. I am not sure what the plans are right now for that, but it will be in the near future!!

So things are finally coming together on our house and once we are done, I hope it will be a long time before we have to do anything else to this house. We have actually outgrown this house and we need more space for everyone, so I am praying and hoping that in the next few years we can sell this house and buy a bigger one. For now we will just be thankful for what we have and enjoy our family!!

I will post the after pictures of the garage when it is completed and then I will also be doing before and after pictures of the roof as well!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!!