HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES!!!

YAYAYAYAYAYA!!! my husband is now 21 years old!! wooohoo!! he is now offically legal to drink!!! :) ok, so maybe he is not 21 years old, he is just a bit older but TODAY IS HIS BIRTHDAY!!! what a BLESSING we have in him! we are so thankful that he is in our life!!!!!!

unfortunatly, he is out of town for a couple of days but we will DEFINETLY be celebrating when he comes home!!

sooo, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DADDY! we love you and can't wait to have you home with us again!!!

it's been 5 years...

since my mom has passed away. hard to believe that she is gone. my dh and i ALWAYS think about her and remember all the things that we did with her. i can STILL smell her around me sometimes. i know...but REALLY, at our home, sometimes, all of the sudden i will smell cigarette smoke in our home (where we don't smoke) or maybe one of her signature mexican meals. YUMMY! and as soon as i smell that, i will IMMEDIATELY think of her and REMEMBER...for me, i am sad that she didn't get to meet her other 2 grandchildren. she LOVED LOVED LOVED her grandson ALEX (she passed away when alex was 15-months old) and she KNEW i was pg with matthew....i believe that she met matthew when he was so very ill his first 5 days of life....i remember talking to her, when he was 5 days old and they had taken him off ECMO and they told us he was going to die, i talked to her and told her "mom, you can't have him yet!! i want to have him with me for a while FIRST!" ....i know she would have LOVED being with her 3 grandchildren if she was alive.....

anyway, it is 5 years ago today that she passed away and we miss her VERY MUCH! we think about her all the time and we HOPE we are keeping her memory alive for our children....

MAN, what a weekend....

we had such WONDERFUL plans for this weekend....we were getting ready to go to AUSTIN to go with james for his military confrence....we LOVE going with daddy on these trips and me homeschooling allows us to be able to just GO when we want!! well, we were READY by thursday night to get going and we decided we were going to spend a wholde DAY friday just in austin!! we took 2 cars so that i could come home early on sunday (leave by 6am with the boys) so that alex would not miss a sunday school day...well, we get there about 12:30 pm, drop off the older 2004 vehicle RIGHT IN FRONT of the hotel....we left across the highway to the movies and we had some lunch and then drove back across the highway and as we turn to park next to our truck, i said, "james becareful with all that...." if you filled in the word with GLASS you are correct....in the less than 4 HOURS we were gone, they BROKE INTO OUR VEHICLE!!! they stole james TOOLS, some of them that we JUST replaced/bought, my beautiful SON'S RUGSACK that daddy had bought for him while he was over in iraq and about 15 of my sons treasured TRANSFORMERS were in there.....i am soooo ANGRY that someone evil person did this!!! they broke our window, took out the keyhole in the driver's side door, they dented our frame.....GGGGRRRRR.....now we have to pay $1000 deductiblev total for the repairs AND the property loss....but on the "bright" side, we still have our health AND we still have our CAR!!! and a funny thing, BOTH our computers laptops were in the car and they MISSED THEM!!! man, i am SOOOO NOT a happy camper. we ended up coming straight back home and my dh missed his confrence. and i am just PARANOID now...we went to garden ridge and i was terrified that someone was going to steal and break into our vehilcle!!! i have NEVER had that happened to me.....i feel so violated!!! :( so now, we have to file our claims, which i HATE to do but there was A LOT of equipment lost in our vehicle!! and our car had more than a $1000 worth of damange on it!!

anyway...

my smart boy....

wow, i am so proud of my son matthew!! today, i had a heart to heart with his homebound teacher. i had to let him know that i didn't think he was challenging my son enough and that it was more PLAY than anything...well after i reminded him that he DOES know his ABC's, numbers, shapes and colors, he was FLOORED!! i guess he didn't get or understand our original talk when he started and i was just really lax about just reminding him again...he is soooo smart that he was PLAYING him!! he was just making himself to be just not there when he was just messing with the teacher!! i would always let the teacher know not to let him get away with anything...anyway, the teacher was AMAZED!!!!! he told me that he was doing some flash cards we have with him of his abc & 123 and he got MOST if not ALL of them right!! he would go thru a whole bunch of cards and then put down 2 or 3 of them and then ask him to give him a certain card AND HE WOULD!! such a smarty! we had to use the reward system because he LOVES his music so i told the teacher to make him do something and if he didn't want to , let him know he could get his music if he did his work first! worked like a CHARM! and, i reminded him that when he READS to him, to ask him about the pictures in the book...that is something we do! i will read him a book and then ask him "where is the shoe?" or where is the color blue" or whatever and he gets it right! anyway, i am really excited about it! teacher said he was AMAZED because even most average 4 year olds DON'T RECOGNIZED THEIR ABC &123!! my smart boy! he probably knows how to READ and we don't know it!! :)