Winner and Santa

Congratulations to Allison F. for winning the Minted Giveaway for $250.  Minted did not let me know the winner right away so that was the reason for the slight delay.  We contacted Allison and she was thrilled.  My cards from Minted arrived this week and they are so cute.  I cannot wait to share them here. If you still need to order, click on the ad on my sidebar, there are lots of discounts and specials.

So, as I write this post I realized I never posted about Halloween. Yikes. Going to try to squeeze that in this week.  I love looking back at the holiday events from year to year on the blog so I don't want to miss it.

Yesterday, we followed our annual tradition of going to see Santa.  I despise crowds and I am not a fan of malls either.  So, we have always tried to go the day before Thanksgiving right when they open.  It is usually not crowded at all.  Then we go to the food court and let the kids eat whatever they want. I always try to suggest a nicer restaurant but they like the opportunity to eat fast food;)

As we were half way to the Galleria, I realized that I left my fully charged, good camera sitting by the front door at home.  So, all I had was my iPhone (which I vowed never to do again after last year!).  I let it go pretty easily though realizing it is not about the photos but the experience and the tradition (that is HUGE progress for me BTW).

While I was fine about it yesterday, I am a little disappointed today.  I must be shaky cause these are all blurry.  Will has promised to go visit Santa with us until he goes to college.  And Harry promised to go until Will stops.  So I am pretty sad to say that next year is likely the last year for our whole family to do this.  I am sure I will take Kate for as long as she'd like to go though.

I always take a couple of photos waiting in line.  We got to see Santa arrive too since we were early.

Harry and Will kept wanting to mess with Kate's bun. 

When Santa greeted Kate, he complimented her "beautiful dimple."

He also asked Harry if I was his sister.  Wish I had that on video.  Santa's quite the charmer!
And he has a Southern accent.







Kate asked Santa for a beam.  She wants a gymnastics beam for our house.  Santa did not respond so she is concerned that he thought she said "beans."  Harry wants a go pro camera and Will said he doesn't need/want anything.








After Santa, we went to the Tesla store.  Harry and Will enjoyed playing around there.  I realized that in exactly a year, Harry could get his driving permit!!!!!  Can you believe that?!










I feel very blessed and full of gratitude this year.  I have everything that matters in life...God, a fabulous husband who decides to love me everyday (even though I am sure it is very hard some days), three kids who are faithful, smart, funny, and kind.  We are surrounded with good and caring friends and family. And we have our health.

I hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Seaside Memories

 Our family loves a beach vacation where we can all relax and just have fun together.  For years, we went to Hilton Head and loved it there but then we switched to the Seaside area about 5-6 years ago and we have made so many fun memories there.  My sister and her family always come with us and last year my friend Stacy (who was my first friend--we met around 4)  and her fun, sweet and beautiful daughters came and spent time with us.  I had not seen Stacy in many many years and our kids had not seen one another since they were babies.

Luckily, every year we have a good vacation but some have definitely been better than others.  There was the year we went to Hilton Head the week before we moved here.  That was not our best vacation. We had a lot on our minds that year but we still made the best of our vacation. Then there was the year that Will scratched himself with a bird feather as we were leaving our driveway and by the time we arrived in HH he had a raging staph infection.  He was told to stay out of the sun for the week (due to antibiotics).  It's hard to stay out of the sun at the beach!  Some years we've had more rain than we'd like but still we always have fun.   Last year, for me anyway, was really, really special.  The kids were all at an age where it was effortless.  No one fought.  No one was grumpy.  We laughed and had SO much fun. It was truly one of our best family vacations.

I invited my friend, Stacy and her family to come spend a day or two with us as she lives in Florida.  We had such a blast they ended up staying with us until check out!  It was fun having a house full of kids.  I cannot say exactly what it was but it was a stand out fun vacation for me last year.  I loved it so much.

Also, the last 2 years we have coincidentally been there the same time as this kind, fun family.  I had only known Paige through blogging but she and Dan and her girls are just as wonderful in real life as they are on the blog. Paige and Dan are really fabulous parents and people.  I adore each of their girls.  They are all unique but extraordinary too.  LOVE them.  And we love Trevor too.  My boys look up to him.  Emily actually rode her bike over and spent a day with us at the beach last year and I loved spending time with her.  She has a heart of gold.  Wish I saw them all more often.

This year as we prepare to go again, I am really sad.  My sister and her family cannot come this year.  Paige and her family won't be there.  And I am not sure if Stacy will be able to come visit either (although I am still hoping they will ALL come at the last minute (denial much?))  I know we will have fun as a family.  The boys have a fishing trip planned and we are going on a dolphin/shell island boat trip.  We have our little traditions and things we love to do there. But it will be different too.

I wanted to make a little video of our trip last year but never felt totally motivated to do it until Tuesday.  It was Kate's birthday and I was missing her and needed to occupy my mind.  These take a long time to make. I worked on this on for 4 hours straight. It was a great distraction. My good friend, Shana inspired me to do this as she made an incredible one last year.

Anyway, have a look.  My favorite part is when Kate is doing my brother in law's hair in the pool and my nephew and Kate are just laughing and laughing!

A complete brag post-katie ru part one!

I now it is not right to brag.  I know people often criticize bloggers for "humble bragging" (that's a real term now).  But honestly the whole point of my blog is to journal about my kids.  For me.  I am honored that others read it. Blogging is not my job.  I am not trying to change the world.  I see this blog as a love letter to my kids. When I am gone someday, I want them to look to this place to see how much I loved them.  And I want them to know just how awesome I think they are. Because they are each uniquely awesome.

BUT they are not perfect. We are not perfect. Dave and I fight sometimes.  We probably should spend more time together and less time reading/watching TV/on the computer.  We yell at our kids from time to time.  And they sass back too. We've had ups and downs, blue times and anxious times in our house.  I don't write about those times because those are not the things I want my kids to remember (and for their privacy too).  I don't want them to remember when I was too hard on them about grades or when I took my own exhaustion out on them or Dave or when I worried too much. I want them to know how proud I am of them as human beings.  So, that is mostly what I write about.  I am not "humble bragging" ---I am straight up bragging because I love my kids.

So, let me brag about Miss Katie Ru for a while....

I have so much to say.  First of all this has been a stellar year for her.  I am SO SO SO SO SO glad that we gave her an extra year of kindergarten. It has become so clear to me this year what a gift that was. She has grown so much in her confidence and her focus and her maturity.

This month Kate has had lots of opportunities to showcase her growth.  First, she had a violin recital.  I deliberately chose to just watch and listen instead of video it because I wanted to be really present and have her see my face and not the back of my phone.  This is Kate's 3rd year taking violin at school and she likes it and wants to continue.  She rarely practices (which is not good) but that is because she is so busy with other things. I am actually surprised that she has stuck with violin.  She works so hard training for gymnastics that I did not think she would want to continue violin but she does. She has a natural knack for music and I would not be surprised if she learns more instruments at some point.

This is a photo of Kate and her violin teacher just before the concert. 

 And I know these are terrible quality but Dave took these from far away with his phone.

Next up was Kate's ballet recital.  Oh my.  She takes my breath away when I see her dance.  I love watching.  This was a tough year for ballet.  Kate does ballet at gymnastics on Mondays and then her actual ballet class is on Tuesday (right after violin). Then she has gymnastics on Wednesday and Friday nights.  It was too much.  I know that.  It breaks my own parenting rules.  BUT she really loves all of them and she has a knack for them too. This year there were many weeks she did not want to go to ballet.  And eventually she told me she wanted to quit ballet after her recital.  I get it and I support her but I am sad too. She loves to dance but she simply wants more free time and gymnastics is her first love right now.

So, this was her 6th ballet recital and her last (for a while). And yes, there are tons of photos.

Had to do a silly face one!

Some of these are from dress rehearsal:)

Harry was kind enough to take video.  Kate comes on stage right after the young man.




A few I- phone snappies after the performance...

I was going to try to fit the father-daughter dance, a poetry reading at Rice University and end of year awards in this post too but I exhausted myself.  So they will be in part 2!!!

love love love

I am so blessed to have such love....

Wishing you all a day filled with LOVE!  It really is all that matters.



To read about our Valentine Dinner party, see the post below:)

Buried and Kate's Violin "recital"

I am fighting a sinus infection or cold that I cannot kick and mountains of paperwork.  See last year I had it easy.  I only had 2 schools amongst the 3 peanuts and only Kate had a new school.  Now, I am buried under applications.  Harry is in his last year at his school so we are applying to various middle schools.  And Will is about to start high school so we are applying to those schools too. We are VERY lucky to live in a city with some AMAZING public schools.  The beauty of it is that we have these great magnet schools and schools for gifted and talented kiddos that are all application only.  The bad news is that there is a unique and complicated application process for each school.  We are also applying to some all boy Catholic high schools. So, between 2 applicants and lots of options I am going crazy with forms, test dates, teacher recommendations, releases and transcripts.  I am copying papers, filling out applications, writing essays (yes parents have to write an essay on why we think the school is a good fit!).  Finally, I am hand delivering them to each school to be assured they are processed on time with all the documents.  After all this work, I would hate for an application to be missing something and considered void.  So, I might be missing around here for a few days.  Luckily,  I am seeing the light at the end of tunnel and hopefully the boys will have some good options to choose from.

{Note to self--- in 3 short years, Harry will be applying to high school and Will will be getting ready to apply to college...be more organized then!}

In September, Kate joined the strings program at her school.  It is not ideal as they have a very large group lesson for about 45 minutes two times per week.  I think they spend 20 minutes just getting the group in the right places and holding their equipment but nonetheless, it is good exposure. Also, the lessons take place during the school day so I don't have to drive her anywhere!!!  And honestly, we totally drop the ball on practicing.  I am so distracted by homework, daily swim team practice, judo, soccer and ballet that I never remember to tell Kate to practice.  So, in sum, we are kind of shocked that Kate learned any violin this past semester.  

In December, there was a little concert.  It was very cute.  There were two kind of hyper boys in front of Kate so it was nearly impossible to get a decent shot of her playing....

We videod Kate the day before her concert which was a good thing as we would never have been able to video at the recital...

VERY funny little story.  At the end of the group performance, the teacher asked Kate to stand up for her "solo." Dave and I looked at each other in complete panic.  We were not aware Kate would play alone.  We would have made her practice more (see above!).  Anyway, after a few scary moments (for us, not Kate), the teacher realized it was the other Chinese girl (who is NOT named Kate) that was supposed to have the solo.  I do think it was funny that she confused the two Chinese girls.  There is a lot more I can say about this but I won't.

And in case you were wondering where she gets all this musical talent (he he) from....

P.S. Dave has never played the violin but he plays the guitar and piano. He does help Kate though on the rare occasion she does practice. He might kill me for posting this.

Our little Sugar Plum Fairy

The peanuts have already been out of school for a whole week for Christmas break.  Kate's little ballet school was offering a Barbie Nutcracker Camp from 9-12 for four days last week and she begged me to sign her up.  Knowing that I could use a little of that time for Christmas errands, I agreed.  Kate just loves to dance and she loves the nutcracker music...she hums it all day long. The girls had a little performance on Thursday.

Kate is in the all pink dress.  Her hair was up in a beautiful bun when I dropped her off but all her dancing around makes for messy hair, I guess:)

We were in the back and there was a large male head in front of me...so I did not get any good shots....

One morning before camp, she was dancing around in front of the tree...

What a goofball!!!

I always feel nostalgic around the holidays but I would give anything to freeze these kids where they are right now. I don't want them to grow up:) I love all the childhood wonder and magic of Christmas.  I LOVE Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Be back afterwards to share our annual traditions:)


I hope that you all enjoy the miracle of Christmas with loved ones.  Thank you for all of your kindness throughout the year.  Even though I blog predominantly to preserve family memories, I love this community and all that each of you has to offer.

This girl

is so sweet!!!  Last night, we read a book called Owen about a little mouse who has a blankie.  His parents try to make him give up his blankie.  It is very cute and they come up with a brilliant compromise.

Kate has a blankie.  I had a blankie (which I did have to give away).  After the book, we started talking and Kate was very nervous that I would make her give up her blankie. SHe LOVES her blankie and lovey.  They bring her so much comfort.  She sniffs them, rubs them, cuddles with them and sleeps with them (they are only for bed time or sick time).  I assured her that she could keep her lovey and blankie forever!  Our conversation was so sweet.  I grabbed the flip and this is what happened next....

So, that song is completely extemporaneous!  Never heard that before:)  And Mom, I totally forgive you about my blankie.  It's all good.  I think it is hysterical that she thought you got her lovey at Home Depot!

Kate's Ballet Birthday Party

We celebrated Kate's 5th birthday a few weeks early with a precious ballerina party.  Kate LOVES ballet and so we had her ballet teacher come to the house for the party.  I know there are a lot of photos but I could post 100 photos because the girls were all so adorable.  Everything about the party was just so fun...I want to remember everything.  We did forget to give Kate her gift and give the girls the ice cream I bought but still it was priceless! 

Look at how HAPPY Kate looks:)














My boys were so helpful and so cute...they were in the adjoining room watching through the glass doors...







The girls had SO much fun dancing.  They danced for an hour.  In fact, we kind of ran out of time for other things:)




I bought these wands at hobby Lobby.  I painted them and mode podeged the girls' initials on them...



Then, they decorated them and put ribbons/streamers on them....















My Mom flew in for the weekend to help us celebrate:)





Me, Kate and my Mom



Happy Birthday to you!!!



Harry had to leave the party a few minutes early to rush off to his soccer game so he was gone for this shot.  In fact, we raced out to his game just moments later too.

And here are a few little videos....





Next up...Harry's surprise party!