Holy Frijole

At lat night's weekly Mexican extravaganza, the girls really got into their food.

What is Mexican food without BEANS...

and CHEESE! (Caroline surprised us all by showing us that she knew how to say Cheese AND pose when someone tries to take her picture!)

Yes, that's what you think it is

Emmy says "HEY! YOU! It's A BOW!!!!" We got one to stay in for at least an hour! It's in a slightly strange place and it's clinging to one hair, but we got it in, so it counts!Also the proportion of her head and the bow is all wrong, but we don't have enough hair to support the bow we need. I'm happy that something worked. I'll take it! I also had to post this picture. Every Friday, us and the Castilles have a Mexican food and margaritas tradition. Then we usually head to one of our houses to put the kids down and either a)have more drinks and watch movies/play games/ head out or b) fall asleep on the couch in 20 minutes. One or the other. Caroline now has what we call "twinks" becasue she has so much hair. But when Bets takes the twink out, Caroline turns into a "COCKATOO!" So cute!

Where are you Ryan Seacrest?

Last Thursday the Sansom family went Hollywood and attended our first movie premiere at the Angelika for the movie Uncross the Stars. Mom and Dad's next door neighboor "inherited" this movie from his Uncle when he passed away. Yes, I didn't know that you could inherit a movie either, but I think I'd like to try if anyone would like to just give me one.

We got all dressed up, hit happy hour and a little early dinner at Mia Bella, and then fixed our lipstick and got ready for Ryan Seacrest.

Well, he wasn't there. And neither was Guiliana Rancic, but you know who was there.... Irma P. Hall, and we took an excellent Iphone picture with her. She plays Lulu in the movie so we did take a picture with a movie star after all.

This is actually what she looks like. For another EXCELLENT Iphone picture, here's the fam with a giant glowing ball of light. (AKA the movie poster)

Here's the office IMDB plot summary: Troy, a young man grieving from the loss of his young wife, is asked by his Aunt Hilda to build her a porch. He goes to her house in a desert community, interacts with the colorful locals, and tries to reconcile with himself. It was a good movie.. made you laugh and cry and Blake was excited that Hellboy (Ron Perlman) was in it. Laura said it was very PS I Love You, which I've never seen because I don't think I could believe Hillary Swank in a romantic comedy role. I digress.

Here's the official premiere summary: Even though there was no Ryan, there was Lulu, some yummy bellinis, superb iphone photography, and fun family times!

Family Photo Shoot!

Since we haven't taken a family photo since I was in oh, 5th grade, I made my family all get together to take a group shot. We all put on our blue and did our best to take a pic before it got too steamy. As you can see, the hair was growing the later it got. Blake and Emmy look cute in them, and she coaxed a real smile out of my mom, so we'll call it a success! Thanks to Renea at 6 Carr Photography for a nice session!

Playdate

Today we took advantage of our day off to go play with Seth. He's such a cutie and he and Emmy had a good time crawling around on the floor and chewing each other's toys. we're so glad that the Watson's are back in Texas and available for play dates =)

This is the closest we got to a picture of the two of them together both looking at the camera.

Seth showing off some of his 8 teeth! Emmy just cut her 2nd one this weekend and all I have to say is I HATE teeth.

This is Emmy's new thing. She wants to "give" you everything... food, toys, her pacifier.....

Seth tried to flirt with Emmy, but she was more interested in the cell phone. She was SOOOO excited that she got to chew on a real one and no one grabbed it away from her.

Also in hair news... we have A CURL!!!! I've highlighted it for you just in case you have a hard time identifying it. The problem is, all the hair is growing in the back... in mullet terms...the party's getting started, but business is slow (must be the recession)....at this rate we'll just make a little ponytail in the back and tape a bow to her forehead =)

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 =)