House Tour

This is for some of my family - the ones who are not in Texas - who have been requesting a video of the new house.

 Here you go. You know who you are. :)

 

November already?

Do you remember a while back when I said that I was going to try to post once every other day? That didn’t happen obviously. A LOT has happened since then. Dave got an amazing job offer in The Woodlands, so we are living in Houston now. It all happened really quick, so I’m going to blame that for the lack of blogging around here. And I’ve resorted to taking all my pictures with my Iphone  and I haven’t really mastered the whole transferring them to the computer and then to the blog.

We LOVE our new neighborhood and the only thing that would make it better would be if I had any friends here! Our first day of church is tomorrow so I’m hoping to change that. Another perk of living in Houston is that Dave’s office is about 6 or 7 miles from our house. It’s so nice compared to his 25 mile commute he had in Dallas. It’s a little bittersweet – in Dallas we loved our ward, our neighbors, Bentley’s school, our house…etc. But I’m sure that, given time, we will love all that here as well.

Look at this cute boy – he’s turning 1 next month! Where did THAT come from? I feel like I am really enjoying his baby stage right now – more than I did with my first two. Maybe it takes more than two kids to come to that point.

No good pictures of our new house yet, but here is the corner of it! I’ll work on that.

I put this picture on facebook, but I thought it should go on the blog too. These girls LOVE changing clothes and dressing up. This is the outfit Blake picked out that day. A tad on the risky side, but her age makes up for it. This wouldn’t fly with me in about 10 years or so.

This was the last time I put all 3 in the bathtub together. Never going to happen again. It wasn’t very pleasant for me.

This girl and more dressing up. Did I mention she is in an angelic stage right now? Does anything I ask and (hardly) complains. She’s my little sidekick and loves accessorizing and even wants her hair like mine every day. Bentley, on the other hand…I’ll just say 5 is a tough age for me and him. Luckily, his old teacher in Dallas and his new teacher here LOVE him in class. I’ll take it for now.

Cousins.

This little guy is EVERYWHERE. He can get into spots like these, but getting out is a problem.

Halloween 2012. It was an interesting evening for me because Dave was working in Houston this whole week. A baby who goes to sleep between 6 and 7 + 2 kids who wanted to go trick-or-treating until 8:30 + one of them having strep = a little bit of a stressed out mom. But we all lived. Barely.

A cute Harry Potter, throwing a fit and pouting. Typical these days unfortunately.

My boys are twins. Just born five years apart.

 (Bentley is in the white shirt, Bristol is in the striped.)



As I was thinking of how I needed to update my blog more frequently, I ran across my sister-in-laws blog and noticed she was she was going to do a photo-a-day challenge for the month of August. My first thought was, "Awesome! I can do that." That was about 4 days ago. So I made more attainable goal for myself - a blog every 2 or 3 days for the month of August.

So excited to go the pool with mom only, no boys allowed. It was so much fun and eye-opening for me. I was able to focus all of my attention on her and made me realize that she gets kind of looked over by me. I'm just always busy with the baby and making sure the older two are in my vision and not underwater somewhere. Plus, she is full on swimming now. I'm talking swimming underwater to me from about 4-5 feet away. And coming up for air once or twice.

These two love taking baths together. Bristol has moved from just kicking his legs to kicking/lifting his bum into the air at the same time for a maximum splash. If he's going get mom wet, he's going to get her REALLY wet, I guess. It works.

It's sad to say, but I avoid a lot of things that my kids think would be really fun because I don't want to deal with the mess it makes. I know, I'm working on it. This picture is not the norm around here, but they had a blast. They saw me measuring the flour and leveling it off with a knife for a pizza crust I was making and they wanted in on it. B nicknamed it "flour bombs." This scene only lasted for 10 minutes. After I vacuumed it up with my AWESOME new dyson that does carpet/tile/hardwood, I realized it wasn't that much of a big deal. I wouldn't be saying that before I had my dyson. 



And now we're off to the pool, because it is 103 degrees outside, and it's been like that for about two weeks now. Swimming from 3-5 is perfect because it tires them out, we come home and make/eat dinner, take baths, (and showers for a certain 5 year old) watch a little TV then go to bed. Ah, summer days. For two more weeks at least.

I've been seriously neglecting this blog. I am blaming my new Iphone for it. It is so easy to take a picture and post it to facebook really fast, and it is a little more of a process to do a new post on the blog. I need to get better at blogging because it is pretty much a journal of our family that began when Bentley was born. I figured out how to put pics from my Iphone to our computer, so here are few pics I found that I didn't put on facebook. (Sorry for those of you out there who don't look at my facebook page AND this blog. I just don't feel like putting the pictures on both sites. Sorry.)

Love baby kisses/chewing on faces because of teething/might have been hungry.

8 of the 23 Jackson grandchildren.

Best looking pie I've made to date. They always taste good - it doesn't take much to make them taste good. It takes A LOT to make them look good, I'm learning. I figure if I make 3 or 4 pies before Thanksgiving comes, I'll be able to make an awesome one when it actually counts. Hopefully.

Helping  me wash the car.

I don't know how I overlooked this pic - first time on a plane! He did awesome, too. 

At our second home, our neighborhood pool. He was jumping in the water in this pic, but it kind of looks like he is just standing on the water noodle. 

Playing on the Iphone, one my kids favorite things to do right now. Especially when it is 108 degrees outside. We are at that time of the year in Texas when you don't go outside except to swim. We are holing ourselves up inside most of the time, like people who live in cold parts of the country hole themselves inside during the winter.

A fantastic pic of our OR trip that Dave captured on his phone. The Deschutes River in the background.

I love this pic - he got into this position all by himself. This boy is so funny to me.

Oh, my boys. They are best friends already. And replicas of each other as well.

 We are really lucky to have such great neighbors. We had them over for dinner the other night and the kids (okay, and the adults too) finished off the night with S'mores.

 Me and the babe. (More of Blake's budding photography skills.)

All ready for swimming. (Funny story about these glasses: We bought these sunglasses for Blake and about a week later they were broken. I know - surprise, surprise. A few weeks later Dave took the kids to a park and what did they find but another pair of the exact same pair of glasses, lying on the ground. It was like they never broke in the first place!)

 He's pretty much incapable of making normal faces for the camera. I've stopped trying to get a decent smile out of him.

This one is at the age where he can do no wrong. He's just so lovable! 

His brother and sister cannot get enough of them. Most of the time, he loves all the attention. Except for the times when Blake pulls him around on our tile floor by his arms or legs. He's not really a fan of that. Can you blame him?



Blake has been learning how to take a picture on our camera. ("Learning how" is the nice way of saying "insisting upon" .) 

She's getting the hang of centering the subject. Like how I was attempting to get my face in the picture?

Nothing like getting your picture taken 10 minutes after you wake up. No shower, no make-up. Lovely.