A new furry family member!

Well, we came home from San Antonio with a new furry family member. The dog, Zeus, was Vinny's cousins and they had had him since he was a puppy because the dog's dad is Vinny's other cousin dog. I was a little worried at first because Zeus is a much bigger dog than I am used to and we Ty is still really small. Tucker and Trey were thrilled about the idea of having a 'big' dog in the house. After playing with him in the backyard and walking him around on a leash..we decided he seemed like a pretty good dog, so we loaded him up in the suburban and brought him home.

Well, as it turns out, he is not just a good dog, but a great dog! Ty absolutely LOVES Zeus and Zeus does such a great job with Ty. Ty can climb all over him, poke him, try to ride him, and Ty has even taken food right out of Zeus's mouth and Zeus just lays there. If he does get tired of Ty, he gets up, walks away, and goes lays down in his bed. Tucker loves having Zeus around and they play out in the backyard together..running around together. Trey is more indifferent about having Zeus around. Vinny LOVES having a big dog.

Zeus is a pretty big dog, but he is deathly afraid of our cat Mocha and Mocha is not one bit afraid of Zeus. He is a little bit on the lazy side, but he doesn't jump up on us or on the furniture and he doesn't bark all that much either. He licks a LOT..but I will take licking over jumping and barking any day! He is a great addition to our family!

You might wonder why I haven't mentioned anything about how Zeus is doing with our other dog Terry...Well, we didn't have any problems with the two of them and they were getting along great, but sadly the Saturday after Thanksgiving Terry got out of our backyard and was hit by a car right on our main street in the community and she didn't make it. We are all really sad about this (especially me because she was definitely MY dog...), but at least we still have Zeus...if we didn't this would have been a lot harder for the boys to handle.

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY TY!!!!

One year old already. Gosh he sure did grow fast! Considering everything that happened right before his birthday, I didn't have much time to plan. Luckily I have great friends, who after calling at the last minute were able to come over for a little thrown together party! Ty, Trey, and I did some running around to get some of the stuff for the party. Then we went and got Ty's haircut! Later on after Tucker got home, we celebrated Ty's birthday. It was such a fun party! Ty suprised us all because he really wasn't that interested in his cake. He ate a few bites, played for it a little, but then he pushed the cake off his tray. After that, he smeared the frosting around everywhere...the was a little tired, so he put his head down for a bit. He was covered in blue! We rinsed him off in the sink and once he was all clean, his little cheeks were a bit irritated from the frosting (his skin is sensitive to some things we are finding out...like sun screen and, I guess cake frosting).


Ty eating his birthday breakfast...with his long hair...it grew out a lot since his last hair cut.


The picture on the top right is when he pushed the cake off his tray.

I forgot to put his hat on for cake...he would have just got it dirty anyways! He really was a party animal!

Passed out after a long birthday!!!

R-I-P

I have been avoiding this post because I know I will be crying by the time I'm done writing, but it is something I need to do.

Vinny's dad, Tony, was fighting his battle with ALL (the leukemia he was diagnosed with). He came home to our house from the hospital was feeling pretty good, but after about a week, he took a turn for the worse and ended up having to go back to the hospital earlier than planned. He was in full remission when he left the hospital, but by the time he got back, less than 3 weeks later, it was back and was even worse than before. His body was no longer responding to the treatment. After doing all there was to do, the doctor told us they were out of options. His conditioned rapidly declined and he was moved to hospice. After a brief stay in the hospice, he passed in peace last Saturday night. We learned in the end that the last time he was admitted to the hospital, he no longer had ALL, he actually had Burkitts Lymphoma(a non-hodgkin's lymphomas) or Burkitts Leukemia, one of the most aggressive types of cancers.

We are all sad and grieving his passing, but we take comfort in knowing that Tony is now in a better place.

Tony, we will always love you and we will miss you, but you will always be held in a special place in our hearts.

2 things

#1 Happy Veteran's Day to all past, present, and future service members. What you do for our country is beyond amazing and I hold you in the highest respects. Especially all of those in my family...I'm so proud of all of you.

#2 Happy Birthday Ty!!! 1 YEAR OLD!!!!! Gosh time sure did fly by! (A more detailed post coming soon!)

Happy Halloween

We had a blast on Halloween. I was excited that even though I didn't get to make something fun for the boys to be for Halloween this year, they did decide to all go with the same theme! They were the coolest Batman, Joker, and Robin out there!!
We gave Ty his bag to go up to his first house and he threw it down, so Vinny had to put the bag up on Ty's shoulder. It was so cute watching little Robin walk up to get some candy!
To entertain Ty while the big boys hit up some more houses we gave him his first sucker. He really liked it. Vinny's face cracks me up...he was getting drooled on! Then Ty kept trying to go through his brothers candy buckets looking for more suckers!

Carmel Apples!

Every Hallloween we make caramel apples! They were really tasty!! Ty was watching from the high chair and kept screaming for something, so I peeled an apple and let him go to town on it..he was very happy about that. He sure knows how to use those 2 little teeth :D

It's carving time!

On Halloween Eve, we carved our pumpkins. The pumpkins the boys picked out at our trip to the ranch were pretty small, so while at the grocery store we let Tucker and Trey each pick out a big pumpkin. Trey picked out the really big one and the other one of course is Tucker's. The boys dove right in getting all the 'guts' out and did a great job with it too, I only had to scrape all the stringies off the inside walls.
We even let Ty in on some fun. He was sitting and watching from his high chair, but we wanted to see how he would react to the pumpkin guts. He was a little hesitant at first to stick his hand in there, but he did and felt around in there for a bit. After that he took his hand out and looked at his hand then put his face in the opening as to get a closer look. He did that 3 times, it was so funny and we were all cracking up. Then he went to try and take a bite out of the pumpkin..he tries to take a bite out of EVERYTHING! After he was done with feeling the guts and tasting the pumpkin, he gave it a hug and then gave the camera a huge smile, I think he really liked the pumpkin!!
Vinny is way more creative than I am and he decided to go online to look for some patterns. He found a good website with a bunch of different designs and let the boys pick which ever they wanted. Tucker picked the blue guy from Avitar and Trey picked Batman. It took Vinny quite a while to carve these because they were so detailed, so I carved the baby pumpkin, with a little help from the boys. Our jack-o-lanterns turned out great!

Pumpkin Time

Just recently I started taking Ty to baby story time at our library. I'm not really sure who has more fun, me or him. I just love it and Ty seems to also! Well, the Monday before Halloween was "Halloween" day where the kids could wear their costume, but I didn't want Ty wearing his costume yet, so I put him in his Halloween shirt. Because he looked so cute in it and in honor of his first Halloween, we had a little photo shoot in our front yard with the big pumpkin Trey picked out.

11 months old

Only 1 more month until my baby is a year old...man does that make me sad. But anyways, this month Ty has really become such a big boy. He is walking like a pro now, he never crawls anymore, unless he is trying to get something underneath the table. His personality is cracking us up..he can be so goofy, but he really knows what he does and doesn't want and is not shy about making that known. When it comes to eating, he is still eating some of the jar baby foods, but he prefeers to feed himself finger foods, so we have been feeding him a lot of our table food, if he is able to eat it and if not, those 'baby tv dinners' (well, that is what I call them, the little meals by Gerber or Beachnut, that come premade all you have to do is microwave for a few seconds). He still loves peas and his newest favorite is those fruit cups (I found some that come in fruit juice instead of syrup..and he LOVES those). Since he has walking down cold, he has now moved on to trying to climb on things..and is pretty successful. So we have to be extra careful now. We moved his crib down to the lowest level now. I'm in total denial about him almost being a year....my how they grow.

A 'hairy' situation!

Right after we got his pictures taken we took him right over to the kid haircutting place to trim up his hair. It was getting so long, when it was wet it went all the way past his nose. In the back, he has a really long layer on top and underneath where it had all fallen out when he was younger, was growing back, but was shorter then the top. He looked so grown up sitting in that fire car! The cut turned out really cute, not too short, but trimmed up all around.

This little pout was as close as he got to crying..it's such a sad little face!

The before and after...you can really see how long and crazy it was it was. Sad his little curls were cut off though.
Me and my baby...he is growing up so fast and looks so handsome with his haircut!!