Ducks and Dirt

We tried to take advantage of the nice weather in Houston this week and take a trip to meet the cousins at the park. I've learned that you have to be either REALLY good friends or family to hang out with two kids because most of the time you end up chasing the kids and when you have a second to start a conversation you end up just sitting there in silence because you're too tired to start thinking and talking at the same time. This is even more true when there's three!!! We also learned NOT to go to the mall with three kids, but that's a different story!

Terry Hershey park has a big lake with ducks (and a few vultures.. blah) These ducks are pretty uncooperative though. They wouldn't even come over to eat the bread! Have you ever seen a duck that didn't eat bread? Even though they had attitude, Abby had a great time trying to get them to come over.

As you can see from Emmy's Superpeepawface, she was really pretty uninterested in the ducks. What she was interested in was the dirt. LOVED IT! She even managed to grab a HUGE handful of it and get it in her mouth before I could make it over to her. At that point I figured there was nothing much I can do so I just gave her some water to wash it down. Yes, another line for my "Mother of the Year" application =)

After dealing with the diva ducks, we headed over to the playground for a little swinging and sliding. As you can see, Emmy was about as impressed with the sliding as the ducks, but swinging was ok!Abby is such a big girl now, and she's speaking in real sentences. All day long she kept saying "That's MY cousin!" She couldn't quite understand why Emmy wouldn't just run around with her. They're going to have so much fun running around together in a few more months.

It's official!

We finally got it on camera!!! She's started forgetting that she needs to hold on and will just walk off into the middle of the room before she falls down. Then of course she look around for everyone to clap for her. We're so proud!! It's the most amazing thing to see my little bitty baby girl standing int he middle of the room. In another week she'll be running!

Rolling Right Along... Emmy Bear is 9 mo old!

It's getting harder and harder to keep the cupcakes away from her. These has super potent hot pink icing so it was a quick photoshoot!

El dia de labor

That's my spanish for Labor day in case you didn't know.

We spent the day gorging at Mom and Dad's house. And if you don't know the lengths a Sansom gorge can go to let me tell you, for 8 people and 2 babies there were 12 steaks, 2 whole chickens, two types of bread, two different types of grilled vegetables, sweet and baked potatoes, corn, fruit salad, baked apples, apple dumplings, brownies, ice cream, cookies, and several different types of dips and chips. No, that's not our planned Thanksgiving meal, that was Labor Day. I'm not complaining becasue I'm STILL eating of of the leftovers =) Thanks Mom and Dad!

So after we ate all that, it's totally logical that we would put on swimsuits, right? Here's some cute pics of the pool festivities. We got in trouble because Collin dared to do a flip on the diving board, the boys tried to jump too closely together in the pool, and we started a ball fight in the kiddie pool over the gator. Evidently the pool has been turned into a no-fun-zone! We're SOOOOO crazy! We went against the high-school lifeguards- REBEL!

Emmy finally has enough hair to make it "WILD" with suncreen

The rebel flip

The victory picture after slipping a flip by the lifeguards

The girls

Sitting in frogs is SOOOOOO fun

Bordering on child abuse But hilarious to do to your husband =)

No More Llama Drama

We decided to take advantage of the cooler weather (hahah) today and take a family trip to the zoo. It's been a while since I took Emmy and she LOVES to watch the dogs run around, so I thought she might be old enough to enjoy it now.

She was SO cute when she saw the animals. She called everything a dog. Da.... da... dadadadadadadadadaadada... at various decibles. She would just smile and wave her hands and watch them as they ran around. The biggest hit of the day was the deer. (Probably becasue it was first and she wasn't hot or tired yet.)She also liked the giraffes and the sea lions. They got a lot of dadadadadadadas....

The hat was just a liiiiittle too small =)

We tried to take a picture with the flamingos for Gigi, but this is how far away you have to get from them before your nose hairs aren't singed... Flamingos are stanky!

Since she lives for danger, Emmy got to get up close and personal with the piranahas.

From our last zoo outing, we couldn't wait to go see the llamas. Since she's a big girl now, Emmy said "'I'm willing to put aside our differences to make peace for the llama/baby communities." Those llamas are ok now.

We spent a lot of time today looking at the animals and telling Emmy what they "said." When we got to the llama (and made peace) we told Emmy that llama's like to spit. I guess she got it!

Milestones! Milestones!

Milestone 1: It's official! For the past three days Emmy has taken four or five steps at a time without holding on to anything! Of course we don't have it on video. You think she would actually walk when the camera was out?

Milestone 2: We FINALLY have a tooth! You can't see that on camera yet either, but you can feel it with your finger! I was beginning to worry if we'd be in the early denture club for kids who never get teeth.

Milestone 3: We had our first "two visits to the doctor in one week" week. She has a cough that won't go away but no fever and no signs that she doesn't feel well. When you add a new tooth and cough syrup with codeine on top of that, it all adds up to one not so fun week.

Milestone 4: Emmy finally found the toilet paper. She LOVES the toilet. Yes, I just typed that. For some reason she always wants to climb it and try and play. GROSS! Yes, this is a secret habit that Emmy and I hide from Blake. You think the cleanest man in the world would stand for this =)

Yes, I took the toilet paper out of her mouth after I stopped filming. She was NOT happy. (I watched an Untold Stories of the ER one time where a girl was admitted becasue she ate 4 rolls of toilet paper a day. We're going to try and prevent that from being us.

Finally- In Birthday news, Happy 2nd Birthday to Kyla Bruns! We went to her fun playland Minnie Mouse birthday party today! Emmy was a little young to play on all the fun stuff, but we'll have to visit again next year. All the kids were going crazy!

New Tricks

The "Indian"...
Preparing for her first PNG football game...

The "Stevie"
I just called... to say... I love you.....

Pitching a Fit

Yes, it's already started.. this is what happened when I dared to eat a graham cracker in front of her and not give it directly to her. My favorite is the little "dada" when she gets what she wants.

You guessed it...

A birthday! We celebrated Andrew and Matt Martin's birthdays with the traditional Fox and Hound and Bennihana's night. We then got TOTALLY crazy and played board games until 3 in the morning. in our defense, we DID drink mojitos while we played. That makes it ok, right =)

I would like to say that not only did I play board games once this weekend, I played them TWICE. This is a big deal for me. I usually " Go all monopoly on it" ....last about ten minutes, give all my cards/pieces/money away and go do something else. I consider this a personal accomplishment, and I welcome your praises on my achievement.

Emmy spent the night with Lannie, Boppa, and GanGan. Where she was just cute as usual.

This morning Blake and I slept till 11, which was GLORIOUS!!!!!!!! Blake went to see Inglorious Basterds with some friends, and I got a pedicure... ahhhh, what a good Sunday!

The Inevitable..

Well, we knew it had to happen sooner or later, but after 8 months, Emmy finally has her first ear infection =( Actually, she decided to do it right her first time and has a double ear infection. She's been battling the green nose goop for a while now, but the doctor kepy telling me there was nothing they could do. I finally just brought her in and sure enough, there it is. She's happy as a clam, not showing any signs of anything. She did develop a new what we're calling"head snuggle." We thought it was a cute way to get your food, but maybe she was trying to tell us that her ear hurt. I am happy to report that Amoxocillian smells just as good as it did when you were 8 and Emmy loves it. In fact, she's so mad in this picture because she couldn't get the bottle open!

Meet Howie!

We'd like to welcome the newest member of the fam... Howard Townsend!

Poor Howie has a pretty sad backstory. He was abused and then abandoned by his previous owner and somewhere along the way he also got heartworms. Poor thing... Laura and Sean have adopted him and soon he'll be fat, happy basset #4!

Splish splash!

Today we spent the day at the pool with the Graessers. Benjamin and Emmy had fun playing with the water spout while Hannah and Ellie ran through the sprinklers and swam in the big pool. Just a few pics that were so cute I had to post them!

Just the girls... and Emmy's white belly =) Unfortunately we will never be as tan as the Graessers

Poor Benjamin is outnumbered

This was interesting for a LOOOONg time (thank goodness)

"Big girl" time

Another Busy Weekend

More birthdays! To celebrate Aunt Betsy's birthday (and her last free day before school starts...boooo)we decided to meet up with Kimberly and Ashley for lunch. Yes, that means that we had six kids at lunch (two 2 and a half year old, one 1 year old, two 8 month olds, and a four month old). Can you say BRAVE! We decided that the Cracker Barrel was an appropriate kid-friendly place to take 6 kids for lunch and the staff at Cracker Barrel throught that, of course, right next to the smoking section was the absolute best place to seat all the infants. I didn't even know you could smoke in Houston anymore, but evidently the smokers all found out about Cracker Barrel. I never really understood the concept of a smoking "section", if they're smoking, we're all smoking..... but that's a different blog. But the crew did pretty good! We even managed to talk just a little bit. We did leave about a 75% tip becasue you did NOT want to see the floor. You can see from the picture below JUST how excited all the kids were about lunch....Seth (in the carrier) was esepcially just busting a gasket with happiness =) Here's Aiden, Emmy, Everett, Caroline, Seth, and Adelaide (hidden in the carrier.)


That night Blake and I had a "Fancy Date" as Laura calls it and went to dinner and a concert. If you don't know about Houston Restauraunt week check it out here: www.houstonrestaurantweek.com . You can try some of the best restauraunts in Houston for a great price. Since Blake and I love to try out new places, this is one of our favorite weeks. We went to Voice in the Hotel Icon downtown. Then we went to see Daughtry at Warehouse Live. Here's the required picture where you can't see anything from my I-phone. That's him right there in the middle.

What we learned is that ladies LOVE duagtry and Daugtry loves to do short concerts and get the hell out. He didn't talk a whole lot, came in, did his thing, and left. I guess that's one way to get it done. The audience was a little wierd. Full of what I might call "couglets" having a good time. Women not quite old enough to be cougars, but aaaalllmost. Blake and I had a long discussion about when cougardom starts, I said not until like 45... blake said 30.. that would make me a potential cougar. I'd like some votes on this.

Saturday we went to Brayden Boyer's first birthday party. They had a fun ball pit there that all the kiddos loved. Emmy spent most of the time picking up each individual ball, giving it a nice licking, putting it down to get another one, and then repeating. This is becoming sort of a tradition. She licked all of Caroline's blocks at her party. We're hoping this isn't going to keep going or we're not going to get invited anymore. The party was too cute with all the barnyard decorations and Emmy had a great time playing with the kids. My favorite part of a first birthday party is always the cake, so here's a pic of Brayden chowing down. He's such a cute little guy!

We spent today shopping. We finally retired the old college vacum cleaner that is 10 years old and really just pushes dust around. We're currently doing an experiment where we put it out on the curb and see if anyone takes it before the morning. We have bets. We also put up our first gate in the house and the pack-n-play is coming down. It's the beginning of the kid stage! We're thinking we'll be walking in a few weeks!

Just to close off on a cute note, Emmy is finally growing some hair! We're a LONG way from a bow, but at least you can clump it together and see it when it's wet! Since I can't make a mohawk yet, we had to settle for horns =)

Rolling Right Along...Emmy Bear is 8 Months Old!

"Hurry and take the picture so I can have a cupcake."

"I can stick the entire cupcake and my hand in my mouth Dad, see..."

"Don't even think about taking this away from me."

"If I look and act cute maybe I will get another one."

8 Month Photo Shoot

It's been two weeks since we've posted and I'm offering a few excuses for the lag...

1) I had a big meeting at work that pretty much consumed my life for a couple of weeks

2) Blake brought books into the house. For those of you that know me, you know that I am pretty much worthless when I start reading. Blake bought me 8 books for my birthday two weeks ago and I only have three left to read =)

3) because of the combination of the two, we've been pretty boring =)

Probably because of all the factors above, this month went even faster than the last. Her pictures this month are pretty cute! We just HAD to have the battub picture, and she was in a GREAT mood!

She just wouldn't smile and hold the E the right way!



The last two are my favorite =)

This is the Way we Roll the Tongue...Roll the Tongue...Roll the Tongue...

On Thursday Emmy realized that she had a tongue. She spent about three days doing this...

and then she realized that she could make fun noises with it. Now she does this...

Go Shorty.....

As usual, it was another busy busy weekend! We kicked off my official Birthday Week (yes, you get a whole week in my family) on Wednesday when I became thiiiiiiis close to 30! My wonderful hubby sent me roses and a cookie bouquet at work. Emmy somehow managed to also buy me a humongous cake. I'm wondering who's credit card she's using. Needless to say, I've gained about ten pounds since Wednesday eating all the cakes, cookies, and various other sweets hanging out around the house. Back to P90X tomorrow!

We started out on Wednesday with the traditional Sansom birthday party at Maggiano's! Spinach and Chicken manicotti... mmmmm. Then we made headed over Desert Gallery for cake (this was BEFORE I knew about the Emmy cake.)

Friday Blake and I had a nice dinner at Backstreet Cafe and went to see the new Harry Potter movie. Not as good as the other ones in my opinion. There was a guy dressed up in a "sexy Hermione" outfit with a giagantic wig, fish nets, and lucite super high heels. That's a lot of effort to go see a movie that ended at 1 in the morning. Maybe has was going out afterward? I don't know. I REALLY wanted to take a picture with him, but figured I probably shouldn't =) Just imagine it now.......

Saturday it was time for Caroline's BIG first birthday party! She was supposed to be born on my birthday, but held out a few more days. She was too cute in her ladybug tutu and really dug into her birthday cake! It's amazing how much she's grown in the past few months. She's a little kid now, not a baby anymore! I'm so glad that we've gotten to be so close to watch her grow up over these past few months. She's such a special girl to Blake, Emmy, and I. I can't believe it was a year ago that we went to meet her in the hospital!We also got to finally meet two other babies I've been dying to meet, Kate and Seth. Their mommies are old high school friends of mine, and they are both just too cute! Seth is so smiley (Emmy was very jealous of his four teeth). They were supposed to be born on the same day, but due to a scheduling mixup at the hopsital, Seth is three days younger. And Kate is too cute with her rolls, chubby cheeks, and her momma's beautiful big brown eyes!

We finished up the weekend with Baseball with the Boyers in the Crawford Boxes at Minute Maid. We sat on the same row as "that guy who gets up even ten seconds to go get another beer or go to the bathroom because he just drank his twentieth beer of the game". Unfortunately we had two of That Guy on our row. We seriously had to stand up fifteen times in the first four innings. With two kids who juuuussst went to sleep we were considering paying the beer guy to cut them off.

Shannon taught me about the photo booth where they take your picture against the green screen to make you souvenir shot. We amassed quite a line of people watching the two cute babies take a picture together. Everything was fine until I tried to get Emmy standing up by herself in the picture. Usually she falls on her but when she falls. Yeah, not this time. In front of the huge line of people, Emmy went face first into the concrete floor. I ran with Emmy before anyone could give me the Mother of the Year Award or call CPS. She ended up with a purple momento of the game on her forehead. One of "those guys" asked me as he was walking by for the 27th time ..."oh, did she get hit" Yes, That Guy, my infant daughter got hit by a screaming home run, and I am just calmly sitting here putting ice in a burp cloth on her head while she plays patty cake. Folks, 27 beers in one Astros game is no bueno......

It was a fun weekend, great birthday, and I still have three days of Official Birthday week to go! Maybe I can sneak in a few more days =)