What am I going to get these kids for Christmas

 What to get these kids for Christmas?

Rocklond told me about January of this year that he wanted a Fire Bus for Christmas.

Then he elaborated “it has flames on it and shoots fire”

“Ok” I said and hoped that he would forget about it by Christmas time.

No luck he still wants a fire bus. About August he added a Snake Button to his Christmas wish list.

When I asked if he could describe the snake button he said “you push a button and a snake comes out, also and egg, sometimes a boat.”   

So I have been trying to find these Imaginary gifts somewhere. The bus will be yellow school bus painted black with flame decals on the side (no flame shooting abilities)  

The Snake button is going to be tricky. I am thinking a toy capsule vending machine?  I could put miniature plastic snakes in little Capsules (eggs) and make sure there is a big picture of a snake on the front.  I just hope he plays along and he doesn’t say “that isn’t a snake button” because he has said that to some of my other guesses as to what a snake button actually is.

Today I thought it would be fun for him to help pick out a small gift for Knoxx. I asked him what he thought Knoxx would like. He answered “a fishinbot!”  

“Oh I don’t know what that is can you explain that?” I said already dreading the answer

“you know a robot that goes fishing”

Good thing he said that Idea for Knoxx because Knoxx won’t be disappointed when there isn’t an angling robot under our tree.

Oh ya and that dog in the pic is Gretta. Our new German wire haired Pointer.  Thanks to her john’s gift is taken care of.  (obedience training)

bugs,boots,bubbles

We made little insect hats for preschool there were bumble bees and butterfly's. 

it is finally cold enough to wear boots again! Which is my favorite way to hide my ugly leg. 

I think this shirt is winning "best shirt of the year" again this year. although I just bought a yellow dream that might be a contender.

here is my favorite little 7-month-old. (can you see the bubble)   By the way, he weighted in at 20.5 lbs at his 6-month appointment. 

Here is Knoxx showing off his escaping skills.  he has been able to scoot around for about a month and a half now but just in the last two weeks he has gotten faster. He doesn't do a true crawl yet.  I wish he would  I think it would help him from always flopping around on his stomach and spiting up everywhere.  

Rocklond is watering the plants in the front yard. well actually he is watering the Ants in this video but I think originally he was watering plants. He loves for me to turn on the hose and let him water the flowers and bushes in our front yard.  

blogging is hard/halloween 2012

Ok so I will be honest. I don't really like blogging. it sort of stresses me out to get out the camera and download the pictures and then i am expected to say something cute and inspiring about what we are doing in the pictures.  this maybe comes from my recent tour of all of the amazing blogs out there. you know the ones where people write more than a few phrases and their pictures are always in focus and perfect , Momastery,  hownottodresslikeamom.  nieniedialogs (just finished reading Heaven is Here). and my dear sister Valerie  illguthlife where even her husband can write out a mean dialog about his life.
   so I just want to put out a disclaimer that the MAIN reason for this blog is for my family that lives so far away and relies on these pictures as a way of knowing what my children look like in the months between our visits.  I am not a writer. I can't spell without the help of Google who is the only person who can decode my first attempts at spelling a word. and punctuation and such is something that I have to FOCUS so hard to do.  So I am sorry about the primitive shape that my posts might be in but I am trying to keep this easy and fun for me.

So on to the kiddos

starting them off young I guess.  I now log off of Netflix on my tablet so  I don't catch Rocky watching Sponge Bob 24-7

this face is so hilarious.  he Does it all the time and it makes the cuties popping sound. 

here we are carving the Halloween pumpkin that we painted a few weeks ago. 

pretty scary stuff. 

and here are my little trunk-or-treaters  

this was the the costume before it got completely covered in candy and paint. 

I made this stuff for my preschool and then took it down stairs to decorate. 

we put up these bats about three weeks ago. thanks Hillary and Emily for the Idea. 

our pumpkin pizza. the crust is green. 

I ran out to buy a pumpkin to carve for preschool and Walmart was sold out of regular pumpkins so I bought this instead. the kids all watched patiently as I attempted to carve it. but alas I don't think it was hollow. so I just carved  the back of the pumpkin that rocklond and I had done a few days before

we were learning the letter H for Happy Halloween 

and sponge bob and plankton again. 

in this picture you can see johns shorts. he was Patrick. I was a jelly fish because I am always trying to out do the year that I dressed up as a piece of cheese. 

We had a blast trick-or-treating  everyone really liked the whole family theme and It was Extra Special becasue John had work off.   he hasn't come trick-or-treating with us since Rocky was Knoxx's age.  

Wake Boarding

John and I have some of the best friends ever here in Houston. and what is so cool is when your good friends decide to take a boat and are so supper nice to let you come along and play out on the lake with them.   We went about three weeks ago and I could only just barley stand up .  John couldn't get up at all the boat was pulling so hard that the rope would sling shot back at us when if finally was ripped form johns hands.  
Rocklond had an eventful day as he got thrown off of this tube. He was just fine and kept retelling the story of how he went fling off and had to wait in the water for his dad to save him.

Well we went again this last week and we had an even better time. I was able to stay up on the wake board and. we even got John up for a second,  it was also really fun to watch our friends show off their mad Wake Boarding skills.  of course my favorite part about going to the lake is just swimming around. this time John kept throwing me back into the water every time i tried to climb back in.

I think Rocklond ended up being a little traumatized from last times trip because this 2nd time he wouldnt get in the water. I had to bribe him with a cookie so he would go on the tube again. he loved riding it though and was glad that I had made him ride it.

I love how the smallest of waves takes me down. 

Phone pics

john and Rock 4wheeling in Cedar City

Rocky and I at the Cancun resort in Las Vegas

Knoxx in a laundry basket

supper cute sleeping Knoxx

Knoxx and I sneaking onto a pirate ship during one of Rocklonds Friends birthday parties. 

Painting a Pumkin

It is to early to carve our Pumkin unless we want a puddle of Pumkin slime on our door step by Halloween so we painted our Pumkin.

Knoxx says something like Help me in this video.

and this little gem is showing off Rocky's new hairstyle. he actually had this rat tail growing naturally because his hair grows so fast I can't keep up with it. so we thought it would be funny to cut his hair so it would stand out a little bit. and boy it does. now john is a little attached and doesn't want me to cut it off.

cedar city/back home

We went to visit John's Grandparents on our way to Cedar. 

they live in Gunnison where John was Born.  This is such a great picture of Grandpa Pickett when I took the picture john knew it would be a good one. so he handed me his phone so he could have one too. only thing was I am sort of a loony and I pushed the end button instead of the take button. It was so bright outside that I couldn't see the screen anyways and never noticed that I didn't get it.  We proceeded inside and went on with our visit. about an hour in John gives me a death stair from across the room.  "Where is the picture you took?"  john says trying to stay calm "I can't find it on my phone"    I try to sound calm as I explain that I probably never took it. I then tell him not to worry because I took a few shots with my camera.   to this john was lets just say disappointed. I guess he believed that I had been using my 10 pixel phone camera  which is why he had handed me his iphone in the first place. thankfully I was able to produce a good quality photo from my sony camera  and  not loose this proof of a great moment in family history. 

knoxx was able to meet his Great Grandma pickett for the first time. unfortunately this picture wasn't as lucky as the one with grandpa. so excuse the blurry Knoxx

We then proceeded to Cedar where we stayed for a few days. 

we got to see Maria cheer at a Football game. 

we loved seeing our families and all too soon it was time to head home. 

we  came home to our Beautiful Houston. Rocklond isn't playing soccer but we had a family friend give us a bag of old clothes full of soccer gear and after rocklond got all dressed up I just about signed him up to play he looked so cute

I was also lucky enough to host this months book club. I made cheese cake and it turned out beautiful and yummy. 

I want to do a date night with some friends and do a cheesecake factory theme where I make all of the cheese cake and we save ourselves the drive and $$$ 

I also made these cute little lemon tarts. the pictrue doesn't do them justice they were adorable. thank you Kari for letting me borrow the little pans and the Idea in the first place. 

and here is the fancy table for my royal guests.

we read the Goose girl by Shannon hale 

it is great to be home and I am looking forward to a relaxing week.  

Pirate/Playdate

Knoxx  had his first real play date with some other cute babies. they had a good time  trying to  scratch at each others eyes. 

Rocklond had friends come come over too. 

 john was out fishing and caught some sharks. we cooked them up and ... they tasted horrible! I have tried and tried to cook shark and this was by far THE WORST attempt. John and I took one bit and then didn't have any appetite to eat ANYthing else. so maybe I will give up.. or try again next time? 

Knoxx is super cute in this Pirate shirt someone gave him.