Boise State vs. Idaho State

Believe it or not, ESPN Gameplan is showing this game!! And next week's game too. (Not sure about after that.) Pretty sweeeeeeet! Anyway, I just had to make a comment about it because of our new banner on top. We love Boise State football!! But for me...all other college football games? No thanks. It's not terrible, I'd just look to see if something else was on if it was any other team. Our cabinets in the kitchen are halfway through being painted, and I realized this morning that we really should have gotten that done before this weekend. College football has started and that is what our Saturdays are going to revolve around from now until the new year. But still, it's game time!!! YEEHAW! :)

We are a Happy Family!

Jason had to go to Mission, TX (right on the border, he's over the store there) early Tuesday morning and didn't get back until about 7 pm Thursday night. The kids were ECSTATIC to see him. It was so sweet. They were literally running and jumping with joy to see their daddy. They really missed him when he was gone.
We were sitting in the front room maybe half an hour after he got home, and half an hour of hard play between him and kids, and Colby came and sat by us and said, "We are a happy family." It was probably the sweetest thing I have ever heard! And I hear lots of sweet things from these kids every day. Wow, it was just....it's pretty incredible the things kids pick up on. We asked him, "Did you learn about happy families in nursery?" But he never really gave us a straight answer.
Anyway, I just wanted to share that and say how incredibly grateful I am for my "happy family." :)

Isn't it ironic?

Last night I told Jason I was going garage sale-ing in the morning. I've been meaning to go pretty much since we moved here, but never have. I got on craigslist and found a few around me and 8:00 on the dot took off to check them out. You have to be persistent if you go garage sale-ing because people use garage sales to try to sell stuff that they should just take to the dump. I went to (or drove right on by) about 13 of those dumpy garage sales before I hit the jackpot! Wooooo! I got a beautiful green couch for $110 to go with my sweet coffe table. I had to hagle with the guy for him to hold it long enough for me to run and get enough cash. And his Danish wife put out a bunch of baby clothes, perfect for Lilia for the next year. I mention the Danish because she had tons of high quality European clothes. And can you guess how much each piece was? $1! Ohhhh yeah. That $1/piece included a couple pairs of baby Gap jeans and dress, a pair of brand new chocolate colored Chuck Taylor hi top Converse, a pair Pedi-ped (not cheap, adorable shoes), tons of Gymbo pieces, the list goes on and on! I spent $45...can you blame me? I told Jason I'd sell a few things on ebay and make back the money quick. :)

After I left that garage sale to go home, so Jason could go pick up the couch, I decided to stop by one more. I found Leslie and Alex's bed for the time being. (We're ready for you guys to come back ASAP!)

Jason, the photographer

The kids really love playing and laying on the carpet in the front room (totally empty of furniture except my favorite craiglist find EVER! I'm eventually planning on furnishing the living room around this coffee table. Some day....I just couldn't pass it up.)

They were rolling around in there tonight with Jason and he decided to document. I was in here catching up on blogs and could hear Lilia in there giggling a ton.

And one more picture of Colby and Lil, I took this one the other day. Colby loves his crinkly eyes.

Sunny Saturday Swimming

The gym I joined has about 8 locations around San Antonio, and two of them have outdoor kiddie pools that are open between Memorial Day and Labor Day. So today we took the kids to the pool! They had so much fun.

The pool has a beachy type walk-in area and an awesome water slide. Colby LOVED the slide. He probably went down it 10 times, and it's not some wimpy slide, it twists and turns and has water running down it. Hydro-tube? Is that what we used to call them? Anyway, Eva flipped over onto her belly the first time down and didn't want to do it again. Lilia loved the water, she's up for anything.

It was fun putting the kids in their swimsuits. I stocked up for the big move to hot Texas, and we've needed them only a couple of times.

Lilia can wear pigtails!! I just figured this out today, yeehaw!!Aunt Melissa got this lion towel for Colby for Christmas last year. It was always a battle over who got to wear the lion towel. One day I found some of the same towels on clearance at Kmart! So we got Eva the elephant. At the outlet malls 2 weeks ago I found a baby bunny towel at Pottery Barn, also on clearance!, for Lilia.Eva found my sunglasses tonight and she was so adorable wearing them that Jason had to snap a shot of her. It's a bummer it's blurry, but how cute is she?!

Replace disgusting carpet--CHECK!

The carpet in this house was just gross. Smooshed down, hard, cruchy?, and it smelled. Pet stains...dark spots in the heavy traffic areas, you get the idea. So we get to this house and make the carpet way worse! First off, a few days after we got here and were still unpacking Colby and Eva found a bottle of RED nail polish and got it on the carpet in our bedroom, then I spilled all that paint on our bedroom carpet, then the kids got ahold of a bottle of RED craft paint and painted all over the living room floor, tiny foot prints and everything. A day or two before the new carpet came Eva dumped two jars of baby food on the living room carpet. I'm thinking, "Thank goodness this was all before we got our new carpet." And I'm hoping that is where it ends. Probably not...but I can hope. We've had some talks about "We need to keep our new carpet nice. We love our new carpet."
Eva will sometimes say to me, like I'm the one that did something wrong, "Noooo paint on the carpet." Just like she says "Noooo turn on the wa-ter!" At least I know she's listening.
So we are now rid of the gross carpet. The people we bought our house from had a cat and small dog...not such a great combination for carpet, and it was the worst in the girls' bedroom. Now it doesn't stink in there anymore...poor girls.
Old Carpet:

I totally forgot to take a picture of the kids art work on the floor! We moved this rug in to cover it up. Eva loved laying on it so much she fell asleep one day at 10:30 in the morning here. Totally uncommon for her to fall asleep like this.New carpet!
It's hard to get the idea with a picture, but it sure is easy to tell with bare feet.Here are a couple other random pictures. I never post any of Lilia smiling, but she is such a happy baby. And Colby must stay clear of the camera, I hardly get any pictures of him.My mom and Leslie, Becky, and Abby got to come visit for a couple of days. We went to a movie, got pedicures (not so great, but still fun,) OUTLET MALLS!, and went to the Riverwalk. It was so much fun to have them here. We're keeping our fingers crossed that Leslie and Alex move here. :) Alex and Leslie were here for part of last weekend. It's so great having them around. Colby especially loved Alex's magic tricks with coins. The sign says, "EVERYTHING'S BIGGER IN TEXAS" about Shamu at Sea World. (Yet to go...)

I joined the gym!! It's so nice actually doing something with myself. A friend I've made in our ward gave me a week guest pass. It was so nice and relaxing (having a break from the kids) that I joined. The day care is so much fun and Colby and Eva are excited to go to the gym every morning. Colby asks for it. The down side to that is I've been going less than a week and we already had to stay home two days because Eva got sick. :(

This post keeps going on and on!!! Here is my new band with my wedding and engagement ringsAnd last but not least!!!!! Colby, Eva, and Lilia have a new baby cousin! Cole Croshaw was born yesterday morning, 1 day before his daddy's birthday. We wish we could see him in person, but pictures will have to do for now.

Weekly Poll Question about Questions

It looks like we all have too many things we don't like to do. Dana thought of another really good one, having a root canal. Ouch.

This weeks question is regards to a written exam I had to take to get a certification for my job. It made me think back to my college days of racking my brain about a subject I knew I read about, but couldn't remember the right answer. Trying to visualize the sentence in my book defining my question. But it made me think of what kind of exam questions I do like the least.
My all time worst was the dreaded essay question. If you know the topic you are golden. If you don't, you can ramble on for a couple pages and convince yourself that you have fooled the instructor into believing you studied the topic. But from all the attempts I tried at doing that, they usually didn't work. Crystal, you would probably have some feedback on that one after grading exams.
My list would go as follows:
1. True/False - Alright 50% chance of being right, I'll take those odds in Vegas any day.
2. Multiple Choice - 25%, not bad, unless the teacher is tricky and gives you 5 answers per question.
3. Matching - hey at least I have a list of answers to choose from.
4. Story problems, oh man, I hope I don't have to F.O.I.L. then figuring out what time that train will arrive in Philadelphia will get a whole lot harder. (See Abby for F.O.I.L instructions)
5. Fill in the blank. Some say fish in the barrel, I say dead in the water. If only a smiley face would cut it for a correct answer. :) "It's Herbie Hancock".
6. Essay questions. As explained above, usually a train wreck is more pleasant to look at than one of my essay question answers.
Jason