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 =)

ROOOAAAD TRRRIIIPPP!!!

We took Emmy's first road trip to the land of the t-sips this weekend for the official end of our wedding careers (Well at least we think it an end...However, we will still be extremely excited to be in your wedding if you're a friend and not married and we've forgotten about you =) ) Blake was honored to be a groomsman in his good friend Brian's wedding. Brian and Blake have been friends for a VERY long time. They grew up together in Sugar Land before Brian moved to Dallas, but later roomed together at A&M. We decided to make it a college roomie weekend and also got to have a catch-up brunch with my former roomie Carissa.

We got a good start on Friday night with the rehearsal and dinner. After the rehersal we dropped Emmy off with Boppa and Lanny (who were AWESOME and helped watch Emmy all weekend) while we attended the rehearsal dinner. Now, Emmy usually goes to bed no later than 8, so when we got home at 10 we assumed we were good-to-go. Wrong! Child was bouncing up and down on the bed, laughing and talking. We finally got her down in the pack and play right after this...

...(If you can't read the clock it says 11:14)...only to have her wake up about two hours later screaming. The only thing that would make her stop crying is to sleep basically on my head while she wacked me in the face with her pacifier periodically. Poor baby is so stopped up she snores like a grown man. Let's just say I was not going to do a lot of sleeping.

After our nice restful sleep we got up early for a little sight-seeing light. Since it was 850 degrees outside, so we did as much as we could inside. This means we ate A LOT. We started with the Sweetish Hill Bakery for breakfast, and of course sugar cookies.

The we headed over to the Capitol. Betsy had taken a picture during her bridal session I wanted to recreate with the Bemmers. Success!!!!


We had this great idea to put Emmy on the middle of the seal in the rotunda of the Capitol while Blake ran upstairs and took the shot from above. That's Emmy the ant on the star. Brilliant idea Kristen.

The wierd thing is that once we put her down there, literally 10 people started taking pictures of her, including the state trooper guarding the place. One lady asked me if she could hold her. REALLY!!! NO...you may not hold my baby strange sweaty lady I don't know. Seriously???

After lunch at Hula Hut we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the big day. The wedding was gorgeous, and we headed over to the reception for dinner and dancing!

Emmy hit the floor to Tina Turner (She's a big Rollin on the River fan) and slow danced with her Daddy. Yes, Emmy was a BIG super bow-head for the wedding and she's probably going to hate me for these pictures later, but when you have a really poufy dress, you need a big bow. That, and I ran out of time to go buy a smaller one, and this one matched.

We captured a SUPER peepaw face in this one...

She was a trooper and made it until about 10 (because we all know she's not going to sleep before then!) when Boppa and Lannie took her home.

All I have to say about the rest of the night is this...

Fun roadtrip weekend, gorgeous wedding, fun time with fam, BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL bed in my own house...

Seven Month Photo Shoot

Last month flew by SO fast, I couldn't believe it was time to be taking pictures again. She wasn't her usual perky self for some reason, but we still got a few. We even managed to capture one of her standing up by herself. In most of the pictures, she was doing some form of patty cake. She's all about that right now!