He's 3! How Can It Be?!

Dear Austin,
I'm not quite sure how it happened, and I certainly did not approve of this plan, but you grew another year older - again!  Although you claim, "I the baby" at times when it works in your favor, you are no longer a baby.  Somewhere along the way this year, you started talking in complete sentences expressing your every opinion whether we wanted to hear it or not.  Gone is the toddler who just followed after all of us without wanting to go in another direction.  You now have wants, needs and desires and you're not afraid to let us know what those are.  Sometimes you have to repeat yourself before we either listen or understand.  You LOVE to sing and dance which keeps us in stitches with your renditions of "Happy Birthday" and "Jingle Bells" or whatever else pops into your head.  You are truly a boy and will turn ANYTHING into a gun to shoot the bad guys.  You have a fondness for marine life and Finding Nemo is still one of your favorite movies.  

Recently, you discovered Scooby Doo and dubbed him "Scoo Boo".  Until your birthday gifts arrived, you had only ONE item with Scooby on it - a pair of jammies.  Yes, there have been multiple nights when the Scoo Boo jammies were worn AGAIN just to keep the peace.  Now you have 2 T-shirts, a 2nd pair of jammies, cartoon DVDs, action figures, a swamp buggy and a game for your vReader.  You couldn't be happier with life.

So, Happy Birthday, Austin.  When you came along, you changed our lives for the better.  Yes, I said for the better.  Don't listen to your sister when she says you ruined her life and that you are the "annoying one".  She's just the family drama queen.  We love you, buddy!

Brenna's Love Story

This weekend we went to the Pearland Winterfest.  It's a fun carnival for kids with rides and activities.  In addition to bouncing in the bounce houses and riding the rides, Brenna tried out the Karaoke booth.  Here's a snippet of her rendition of Taylor Swift's "Love Story".

I was so proud of her singing in front of everyone.  Tears of joy and pride were streaming down my face.  After she was done, her softball manager came up behind us saying "I want to sign that girl to a record deal!"  Wouldn't that be something?  Keep dreaming, Mommy.

If you look carefully you can see Brent and Austin in the background over by the fire truck.  They're the ones in burnt orange - what else, right?!  In the beginning of the video, Brent is talking to Austin about getting up in the fire truck.  By the end of the video, they're standing in line waiting to have a turn in the driver's seat.  This is pretty big doin's for Austin.  Up to this point he's wanted nothing to do with getting in a fire truck.  Check out this grin.

 

Ticked Off

 For some of you, this post will be such old news, and you'll be all yeah, yeah heard about it ad nauseum, but for some of you, it might be new, so here goes.  Back in September, we had our downstairs carpet and old school tile removed and replaced with tile in the kitchen and bathroom and hardwoods in the living and office areas.  We thought it best if Jennie, our dog, wasn't in the house while all the work was going on.  It would have been stressful for her - all those strangers coming in and out of the house, plus it would have driven us mad with her being so stressed out.  We were stressed out enough being confined to the upstairs portion of the house.  So, we sent her to doggy day care at the same facility we board her when we go out of town.  Little did we know how that one seemingly "no brainer" of a decision would do, for what Jennie brought home with her would impact our lives to this very day.  Yep, she brought us ticks.  Not just one or two ticks, but an army of ticks that we can't quite seem to conquer no matter how hard we try.

Now I'll admit that we lapsed in putting the tick preventive on her each month, so we might not have anyone to blame but ourselves.  The first one we noticed was not on Jennie, but on our couch.  It looked like a gray plumed up raisin, so I thought it was just something the kids left behind from a snack or something, but on closer inspection I realized it was a tick.  We immediately put the tick preventive on Jennie, but we were a day late and several dollars short on that front.  From that day on for quite some time we would find ticks on the couch.  Each morning there would be a tick parade on both couches, and we'd have to remove them and dispose of them.  We also had to move the couches and vacuum under them each morning.  At first, we just used Kleenex to pick them up and pop them, but then Brent had the brilliant idea to use masking tape.  It made it so much easier to pick them up and it was quite gratifying to watch them struggle on the tape trying to get away.

These were not typical dog ticks, they were soft ticks (see image below).  Of course, we called the exterminator and he came out and sprayed twice leaving time in between, so that we would catch all the life cycles.  It was not a pleasant experience.  I had to leave the house for 4 hours so the poison could dry and then I had to lightly mop the floors and couches, so the kids wouldn't come in contact with it.  Thank goodness for nice neighbors like Wendy and Mark who let me work from their dining room table while my house aired out.

 

After a while, the soft ticks finally went away and we thought, "Whew" that's over, but NOOOOO.  We started noticing another type of tick in the house.  This time we had Brown Dog Ticks (see picture below).  They weren't as civilized as the soft ticks who kept to the couches (and probably Jennie).  These seemed to be every where we turned around.  We later found out these new ticks were Brown Dog Ticks. Brenna has become an expert tick spotter.  She has a very keen eye, so we don't doubt her when she says, "Tick!"  So again, we had the exterminator come out and spray the house again.  This time he amped up the poison, but it didn't seem to phase the Brown Dog Ticks one bit.  

 

I called the vet and they recommended that we switch to a new tick preventive - Parastar Plus.  At this point, we'd try anything to get rid of these things.  We decided to shave Jennie down and get her dipped before we put the next round of preventive on her.  We felt like with her longer coat, we couldn't see what was going on under all that fur.  When she came home from the groomer, I pulled over 30 ticks off her.  Good times, right?  After the first application of the new tick preventive, I thought surely things would improve.  Not at all.  We made a practice of checking Jennie two times a day, and every time we'd find at least 3-4 ticks on the poor thing.  I had an hour long conversation with the makers of Parastar Plus, and she felt like our situation was overwhelming the product.  We had done everything correct in the application and in getting the house treated.  A few days later I got a call from our vet offering to refund us for the Parastar Plus and to go back to Frontline Plus.

The ticks were even attaching to us.  You can imagine my panic when one morning I dropped Austin off at daycare and noticed something on the back of his head.  I combed his hair away from the area and sure enough it was a tick securely attached to my baby.  I removed the tick (head and all) and swabbed the area with alcohol and put on some Neosporin.  I immediately called the doctor's office to ask if there was anything I needed to do about the situation.  The nurse I spoke with said I should definitely bring him in  - that she had been bitten by a tick and had to be on medication.  Well, that was a fun few hours to sit and stew while I waited for our appointment time to arrive.  Turns out that the ticks in our area are generally not disease carrying ticks, and we shouldn't worry unless he started showing symptoms.  Well, that would have been nice to know a few hours earlier.  My blood pressure could have stayed at a normal level, but I guess better safe than sorry.

Turns out Brown Dog Ticks are the most difficult to get rid of, for they can go through their entire life span on one host. Most other ticks need a new host of a different type of animal to move onto the next life cycle.  We're so lucky, aren't we?  About 3 weeks ago, I pulled an engorged tick off of Jennie and instead of popping it inside of masking tape like normal, I decided to put it in a sealed container to see a) how long it could survive and b) if it was full of eggs.  Until this past weekend, it was still alive and you should see all the eggs it laid in the container.  It must be the biology gene I got from my mother, but I'm going to see what happens to the eggs.  I'm curious to know if they can survive in that kind of environment and how long it takes for them to hatch.

It's now four and a half months later, and we still see ticks on the baseboards and walls every now and again, and we still pull them off Jennie.  She has been a trooper through all of this.  She patiently lays on the floor while we go over her every day.  I'm hopeful that there may come a day when we can safely say, "Hurray!  We're tick free!"

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Halloween 2011

With Halloween and small children, you're never quite sure what you're going to get.  It could be all smiles one minute and crocodile tears the next.  Some blame it on the sugar highs and lows and others just say it's kids being kids.  This Halloween was no exception.  We shopped early for costumes this year which is so unlike me.  I think we hit the Halloween store just days after it opened which means Brenna has been chomping at the bit to wear her costume for what has seemed like an eternity.  I'm starting to see a trend with her and Halloween.  To Brenna Halloween means find the fanciest dress possible and deem yourself a princess.  Last year she was a Southern Belle, and this year a Spanish Princess.  May I present to you to Princessa Brenna de Riviera Glen.

 

 Here she is striking a pose for the local paparazzi.

She likes to stay in touch with the people and keep it real.

Austin, on the other hand, decided that all you really need to get candy on Halloween is an orange pumpkin shaped bucket, and a "Wild Thing" T-shirt, blond hair, blue eyes and dimples.  Turns out he was right.  No one turned him away when he ran up to their door and said "twick or tweet" and "thank you".

At least SOMEONE got some use out of the adorable Mater costume.

Halloween just wouldn't be fun without a group of kids to scamper about with, and the River Glen Gang is about the best bunch of kids I know.  Allow me to introduce them to you.  Some of them you have seen before and others are making their debut on this blog.

Here they are raiding our candy bowl for a warm up "Trick or Treat".

Hey, you can't go off the Glen looking needy, plus you're going to need the energy to make it all the way around the corner to the next group of houses.

 This little cutie is "baby" Jordan.

This was her first foray into the wonderful world of Trick or Treating!

She had it the easiest of all the kids with her sweet ride.

The look on her face says, "Enough with the pictures already, give me some candy!  It's getting close to my bed time."

 This is Tinker Belle, I mean Silver Mist.  After her Mom bought her this lovely costume, Karleigh decided she wanted to be Silver Mist instead of Tinker Belle.  Instead of panicking and rushing out to the store to buy her a new costume, her Mom simply said, "Okay, you're Silver Mist" and that was that.

 "Mommy said I can't run in my Crocs, but she didn't say anything about flying.  How can I get these wings to work?  Oh Man, did I leave my Pixie Dust in my other pumpkin?"

Last year, Brady was Mario from Super Mario Bros, the best Wii games EVER!

This year, folks still called him Mario even though clearly he is Luigi.  I mean did they not see the "L" on his cap?  Anyone in their right gaming mind knows that Mario's base color is RED not GREEN.  Seriously people get with it.  Every time someone said, "Oh look, it's Mario" all of the River Glen kids said in unison "He's Luigi!"

 Maybe they just saw him from the back and assumed that because he was Mario going, that he was Mario coming.  If they knew anything about Super Mario Bros, they'd realize that Luigi is performing the daring feat of carrying Mario on his back which dodging fireballs, mushrooms and Venus flytraps all the while collecting gold coins without losing a life.  Good on ya Luigi!

 Even one of the River Glen dogs got in on the Halloween action.  This is Aggie one of the sweetest Golden Retrievers I've ever met.  She's got a headless horseman on her back.  This costume probably drove her crazy, because most of the time her stuffed animals are in her mouth!  If it's stuffed, it's fair game for Aggie.

It's great to have a good friend to talk strategy with on the way to the next house.  Who's going to ring the doorbell this time?  What is that we say after they give us candy?  Oh yeah, "Thank you!"  You'd think they'd remember that detail after only going 20 feet from the last house, but once again the sugar and adrenaline rush take over and their minds go blank.

I swear every where we go the paparazzi follow us around snapping pictures trying to catch the kids looking cute and doing adorable things.  This is Wendy -  the woman behind all of the wonderful photos on this blog as of late.  Thanks Wendy for sharing your talents with us!

BTHOM 2011

Last weekend, we attended a fund raiser for an event called Beat the Hell Outa Melanoma.  The event was founded by the family of a woman named Julie Koch Lyons who lost her life at a young age to melanoma.  Each year the fundraiser is held to raise funds to help another family that is battling this awful form of cancer.  We didn't know Julie personally, but have heard her story from our neighbor, Wendy, who grew up knowing Julie and her family.  There was wonderful barbeque to eat, a fantastic 2 person band who could play just about anything, free skin cancer screenings, a silent auction, and lots of activities for the kids.

Brenna and Jordan got right into the action by dancing their shoes off on the dance floor.  Well, okay their shoes were off because they had been in the bounce house and once you've been in the bounce house and all that adrenaline is pumping through your veins, who has time to remember to put on shoes.

Clowning around with a dancer.

She's poetry in motion

 Next up was a little barrel racing stick pony style.  

Look at them listening intently to the instructions given by the rodeo clown.

I guess Wendy and I should paint our faces and wear crazy big shoes all the time.  

Maybe Brenna and Jordan would listen to what we have to say for a change.

 Jordan went for speed and a perfect technical score...

 ...and Brenna took a bull riding approach!

Sometimes you ride the pony...

 

...and sometimes you carry it.

Either way you're darn cute.

 We met the largest long eared bunny I've ever seen.

Too bad for Austin, he wasn't a silent auction item.

He LOVED the bunny.

 

Brenna challenged me to a jump rope race.

She won, but in my defense, the rope was too short.

'Cause you know I'm so tall and all.

Wendy, Mark, Brent and I got into a bidding war in the silent auction over this framed cross made out of a baseball.  It is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.  The crosses are sold to raise funds to impact the lives of children in the Dominican Republic as well as the Houston area by a group called Sports Fusion.  If you have a baseball fan in your life you might want to check them out.  Might make a good Christmas present.  The bidding war came down to the last minute, and I'm proud to say that Brent's bid was the highest and final bid.

 

  

It was a wonderful afternoon, and I'm glad we got to do our part to help a family going through troubling times.  Thinking about what others are going through makes you appreciate what you've got.  Even if it's just a good place to rest your head.

Photos taken by Wendy Pierce who's gonna be famous one day.

Num-Num Interruptus

 Austin... Austin... Austin!

 Who disturbs my num-num?!

Oh, hey Daddy.  Didn't see you standing there,

pointing your camera at me and

trying to get my attention.