Houston, TX

We made the 4 hour trek to the Houston - Bay area over Labor Day weekend. The main purpose behind this was so we could get a weekend with Derek. It was a long drive for him (10ish hours) but saved him 4 hours by us meeting him there. It was also great timing because we were able to celebrate Blake & I's birthdays. We've been wanting to explore Houston and this was the perfect opportunity to do so.

The drive there wasn't much fun. I was tired and it rained.....hard.......for about half of the drive, plus we got stuck in crazy Texas traffic.. We timed it all pretty perfectly though with us getting to the hotel just 20 minutes or so before Derek got there.

We didn't really care what we did for the weekend we just wanted to celebrate birthdays and spend some fun, quality time with the family......and be as cheap as possible. ;) Being cheap made it easy to decide what we would do. 1) the Houston Zoo because military gets in free, 2) the Children's Museum because we get in free with our Witte Museum pass here in SA. Since we don't like crowds we figured the Museum would be less crowded on Sunday and since it's smaller that would probably be the best option for that day.

Of course things didn't work out as we had planned. The day we went to the zoo it started raining on us. Luckily we had been there for about 2 hours and were fine with calling it a day. And then the day we went to the museum ended up being free for EVERYONE. It was a Target sponsored event and so the place was packed and wasn't very enjoyable. It did seem like it was a nice museum though and we'd love to go back. It is ranked the #1 Children's Museum in the country by Parent Magazine. I have to say the zoo was really nice too, one of the cleanest we've been to.

The day we went to the museum we got delayed a bit. When we went to get in our car it had been invaded by ants!!!! I had just cleaned the car out so there wasn't any food or anything in it either. There were literally thousands of these buggers.........everywhere. We went and got ant traps but that wasn't working fast enough so we got some spray and sprayed the car like crazy before we went into the museum. It did kill a lot of them but definitely not all of them. The drive back home was miserable because I was paranoid of them crawling on me the entire time. No exaggerating, I killed about 50 of them on the drive home. Since we've been home I've only found 3 that have been moving and they are crawling around really slow. I did some research on these ants and they are called crazy ants and travel in large groups. They were probably seeking shelter due to the rain we had gotten the day before........and they had just been discovered in the Houston/Katy, TX area in July!

Despite all of our troubles we still had a good time and we're going back in October -- this time we're planning on spending most of our time down by the coast in Galveston though. Can't wait!

HOUSTON ZOO

our very own little monkeys

this little guy was not happy for the first half hour or so. we couldn't figure out why. Turns out he didn't like his shoes! It was the first time we had really put any on him.

CHILDREN'S MUSEUM

they built their own rockets and then got to launch them

OTHER RANDOM PICTURES

this kid LOVES tomatoes!!

 

Blake's First Birthday

We celebrated Blake's birthday over the course of a few days. Since we aren't close to family we didn't throw a big birthday bash.......and Derek was out of town so on his actual birthday we just went to Coldstone for some ice cream. I also took him to the store to spend his birthday money from GG & Great Grandpa. He got so excited when he saw this John Deere Mega Blocks vehicle it was so cute. It was pretty easy to decide what to get.....so much easier than the girls! He loves filling up the back of the truck and pushing it around. He even likes to try and put the blocks together. Of course he got a huge package from Mony & Papa but he opened that early and he loves his little take along cars/garage!

The big celebration happened in Houston, Texas. We decided to go on a little getaway for our birthdays and Derek made the 9-10 hour drive from Alabama to be there for the occasion.

He started out slow and neat........

.........and then he really dug in!

Not happy that we took his cake away.

okay, you can have just a little bit more.

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY BLAKEY BOY!

First Day of School 2012

Monday, August 27th was the first day of school this year. Allie is in first grade at Kuentz Elementary and Avery is in PreK at Scobee Elementary. Both were a little nervous. Meet the Teacher night helped ease those jitters though. Allie, initially, really didn't want to go back to school. After meeting her teacher she said that "her head was getting excited!" Her teacher is Mrs. Ratliff and it's her first year at Kuentz. Avery's teacher is Ms. Bellah, which Allie had her for PreK as well.

Both girls were easy to get up for the first day. The bus comes at 7 am.....it's still dark out! Right from there we have to load up in the car to head to PreK, which starts at 7:40. It takes us a good 20-25 minutes to get there with the crazy morning traffic. When I dropped Avery off she was trying to be so brave. I could tell she was nervous because she was holding on to me and didn't want me to leave her side. Once Ms. Bellah said it was time to go in the classroom she started crying.......hysterically! The aide grabbed her and told me to go. I could hear her crying all the way down the hallway. :( Once I picked her up she seemed okay. They said it took her a long time to join in with everyone. Day 2 - she walked right into the classroom and didn't look back, joined in groups but didn't talk. Day 3 - pretty much the same except she is warming up to the teachers a little bit more.
Back to Day 1 ---- with Allie her bus is supposed to drop off around 3:10. I decided to head over there early because the bus driver decided to switch the route up last year and make our bus stop the first drop off instead of the last. Well, it was like 3:20 when the bus finally came. Blake was very cranky by this time and I was SO hot. Kids kept piling off the bus but Allie never got off! I felt like I was having a heart attack. We went back to the house as quickly as possible. I found my phone and saw I had a message from the school. It was a teacher wanting to know where I was. I called them back, loaded up the kids and then couldn't find my keys. The house keys are on the keychain with the car keys so I had to run and find our spare key hidden outside. By the time we finally got to the school I was drenched (from waiting so long at the bus stop, running to find the key, and just from being so worked up). After I got Allie I broke down. I felt so horrible for her waiting there and not knowing what was going on. And, it ended up being my fault. With all of the craziness going on at home and having all the kids with me when I was filling out the TON of paperwork they have us fill out I had wrote down that Allie was going to be parent pick up?!? I don't even remember writing that! My only thought was that parent pick up was fresh in my mind from filling out Avery's paper work or something. I don't know. I'm just glad that she was okay and that she was at the school and not on the wrong bus.

Day 2

Lousy

The past several days have been pretty intense and stressful. Avery was up all night one night throwing up, the next day she had shots (which she was such a trooper and extremely brave), then the next day the girls had dentist appointments and Avery was running a fever from her shots, the following day she still wasn't feeling all that well and Blake was starting to get a snotty nose.......and then that night it got terrible. I was livid, extra stressed, didn't know what to do and the list goes on with everything that was running through my head. We were wasting time at Toys R Us while waiting to get a call for our friends to meet them for dinner........the girls had coupons & money from their birthdays so we thought we'd shop for a bit. We were leaving customer service with their birthday balloons and crowns and when I went to put on Avery's crown there was a bug crawling on her head. The first thing I think of is lice because someone we know recently had it. The bug was big enough and visible enough that I was able to grab it and throw it on the ground. We immediately left, called our friends and told them we wouldn't be making it to dinner and made a few other calls since I had no idea what to do. The advice I got was to go to the drugstore and ask the pharmacist what to do. So, that's what I did. I bought several things (shampoo, furniture spray, this gel stuff and a nit pick).
Once home I immediately stripped down the beds and started washing bed clothes right away. Then sprayed the mattresses with the furniture spray........then sprayed the rest of our furniture. I pretty much emptied closets and rewashed EVERYTHING! I put the girls baby dolls in a garbage sack and stuck it in the garage in hopes that if any lice or eggs are on them that they will suffocate in the heat and die. Then we started the long, tedious process of the shampooing. I decided to do Allie and I's hair too, just in case. I never saw anything else in anyone's hair but I wanted to be safe. The only concern I had afterwards was that an area behind Avery's ear was a little red and when I used the pick in that area I saw some very tiny black spots (which could be lice poop) and some dandruff (possibly eggs??). Like I said, I have no idea what I'm doing or what I'm really looking for.
In the mean time, I am vacuuming our sheets every morning and rewashing our blankets and clothes are going straight to the washing machine. I vacuum bedrooms every morning and night and the rest of the house every night. I did find a little bug of some sort in their sock bins that were under their bed so I obviously washed all of that stuff and sprayed their bins and vacuumed those out. Then I got all of their baby doll clothes and washed those since they were in a bin under their bed too. I Sprayed the bin and vacuumed that........then washed all of their dress ups and bagged the things that couldn't be washed and put in the garage. I did find a big bug in the bottom of their dress up chest too. It could have been a water bug by the looks of it but who really knows! So I killed it, sprayed the chest and vacuumed it out. I'm also vacuuming the furniture every night.
I bought some baby oil this morning because Derek read that if the oil is saturated on the head for 8 hours it kills lice and the eggs. So I'm going to do that at night on all of us for the rest of the week (better safe than sorry) and then Friday we are supposed to use the lice shampoo again. We're actually going out of town Friday after noon for 3 days so I'm also going to buy 8 or so bug bombs and set them off before we go. They aren't supposed to be able to live longer than a day or two off a human host so hopefully we'll be in the complete clear by then.
I continue to check everyone's hair every chance I get and thankfully haven't seen anything yet!!!

UPDATE: After all of that work, I really don't think it was lice to begin with. The initial bug I saw was probably too big to be a louse, unless it was a full grown adult, but if that were the case we should have seen more and we never did. It was a TON of work and I hope and pray that I never have to do that again! I felt like such a dirtball (even if we didn't have it). And, the baby oil was not a good idea......no matter how many times we washed our hair it still looked greasy and disgusting. It took over a week for it to start looking normal again!!

The Hinson's Visit!

I was so excited when I received a message from one of my good friends from Ohio saying that her and her family were coming to San Antonio for a week! It was kind of ironic because Derek was just getting ready to head to Alabama (where they live now) and I had thought about going there with him so we could see them. It was just too close to school getting ready to start and I didn't want that extra stress (or the 14 hour drive all by myself). So, Derek has been in their neck of the woods now for almost three weeks but hasn't been able to see them b/c they've been here (or traveling).
We spent pretty much every day, all day together. It was wonderful to catch up and have our girls get reacquainted.....they were around 7 months or so when we moved from Ohio........and have our boys meet (they are 4 months apart). It was a fun, busy week that went by way too fast! And..I'm sad that I didn't take very many pictures.