Toys, toys, and more TOYS!

Every year we hear about the "hot" toys for Christmas. I swore up and down that I was not going to be one of those mothers or even aunts that fall into the trap of the hot items. I have fallen hard. Here are a few things that I have sold into this year.

Pillow pet for my sweet Avery (niece)

Sing A Ma Jigs for Carson and maybe all of his cousins too. These things are SO funny. I might just buy them for every baby I know. If you haven't played with one of these at the store you are missing out.

Carson's Grammy bought him a Dancing Mickey Mouse which he will go crazy over. Carson's favorite show, actually the only show he will watch on TV, is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. He responds to it and can say Mickey and also his favorite song and dance which is the Hot dog dance.

Now if any of these items start selling for more than the asking price like the tickle-me-Elmo's did back in the day, you better believe I am putting them on eBay and getting the highest bidder. When that whole Elmo craze happened my parents had bought two to give to my nephews for Christmas that year. They ended up selling them for WAY more than what they bought them for and a few months later bought the boys new ones. Carson hardly even knows whats going on. He LOVES looking at the houses decorated with lights. His new expression is "oh wow" with every house we pass, and it never gets old. He knows what Santa looks like and calls him "Ta" and follows that with a very weak "ho ho ha". I'm enjoying this Christmas with him so much already, next year will he even more fun. If I find or buy anymore hot toys I will let y'all know.

It's Officially Official

Most of you see the title and figure that we are closed on the new house and ready to move in. Well it's the exact opposite. The new house is back on the market and our current house is off the market.
Long story short our mortgage lender overlooked that our current house was under a FHA loan and we would need a FHA loan for the new house. He frantically called Garet about 2 weeks ago apologizing and scrambling to find any other way to have both houses at the same time. In the mean time we lowered the price on our current house in attempt to get a quick sale. Well neither idea worked...no one wanted to buy our house and there was no other possible way to change the loan on either house.
Yes we are bummed that we aren't getting the house, but we also have to remember how blessed we are to have jobs, a wonderful house, healthy family, great friends, and a beautiful healthy baby boy.
The game plan is: We are going to wait 6-8 months and then put our house back on the market and start looking for another dream home. If Garet or I can find jobs in Dallas in the next few months we might have to find that dream home there :)
We are firm believers that everything happens for a reason. For the next few months we will be looking for that reason and if anybody wants to help we would love it.

Moving on out!

Most of you, if anyone reads this, didn't know we were even looking for a new house. Well we really weren't. What we were looking for was a GREAT deal...and we found one! A few weeks ago I found a forclouser house on a realistate website here in Houston called HAR.com. I took a look at the pictures and immediatly told Garet if he was for real about us looking at houses we needed to look at this one ASAP. So he took me seriously for once and we went to look at the house the next day. We both were overwelmed with the house because it was everything we wanted and more...gameroom, 3 car garage, great kitchen, ready to move in without work and best of all in Garet's eyes - a media room. The price was almost right but a little wheeling and dealing with the bank - 2 weeks later they except an offer!! We close in less than a month and start moving in.

I know it sounds too good to be true. Well it half way is...during this entire process we are putting our current house on the market and really haven't gotten any interest yet. We are keeping our fingers crossed and our spirits high. Worse comes to worse we will rent it.

Hopefully once we get the house somewhat put together we will update and put more pictures up. I know, I'm not a very good blogger, but maybe with some down-time coming up I will get with the program.

Here is a sneak peak of one of my favorite pictures at Carson's 1 year photo shoot.

Annoyed

This post might offend some people, but at this point I really don't care. This is my third year teaching and it seems like every year it gets worse. Let me explain...

Today was the day during wonderful work week for the teachers that we received our class rosters. For the PE teachers it is a bit different...We are assigned 2-3 classes per grade. So for example I am in charge of 2 kinder classes, 2 1st grade classes, 3 2nd class...all the way to 5th grade. 3 times a week I get to see these sweet angels in each class. Only if they really were angels. Don't get me wrong I love my job, but some of these kids really test my patience and want to be a teacher. When I really start to think about it though, it's not the kid's fault, it is the parents that aren't doing their job.

Every year we go through the rosters and pull up the kinder class and say "OH NO, not another one" Before we even meet this little 5 year old we know that he or she is going to be the problem child of the class because the 3 siblings are also enrolled at our school are the worst kids in the school. Can I really blame the kids for their misbehavior? Not really because the home life is awful! Yes, they are all brothers and sisters but they all have different last names from different men. You know kids they will pretty much tell you everything...and these kids have. Their mom lives off the government, they have a new step dad every few months, their grandparents babysit them most of the time, and mom blows the money on new purses and clothes and that's the reason why they can't get new tennis shows, even though the ones they have a huge hole in them. On top of that there is a 2 year old at home and MOM IS PREGNANT AGAIN!

Where is the logic? I have a quick fix: If you are living off the government you should be required to get birth control shots every month or quarter or however they do the shots. If you miss one you are cut off. Less babies living in poor conditions and teachers gaining just a bit of sanity knowing that a repeat of bad parenting doesn't occur. It would be very easy to say bad kids, but lets face it, the kids learn their bad behavior somewhere. While I do parking lot duty and watch two parents curse each other out over a spot, I realize why their child is the way they are.

Now that I have that off my chest, I just have to suck it up and hope that somehow I can influence one of those family members to strive to be better and not repeat the mistakes that their parents made. Be the one that breaks the cycle of teen pregnancy or even children out of wedlock. Help them find something they are passionate about.

Again happy school year y'all.

Bye Bye Summer

Tomorrow is the dreaded day. I am no longer a stay at home mom. The 2010 - 2011 school year starts tomorrow...well at least for teachers. The students have one more week of freedom and then they will have the feeling that I have tonight. Fun in the sun is over.

This year is harder for me because I have to take my precious, adorable, charming little man to daycare EVERY day this week. Don't get me wrong, we love our nanny that we take Carson to, but it will be terribly hard to leave him every morning this week.

Everyday he is doing something new that makes me laugh so hard. For example, for his birthday his Grammy (Garet's mom) gave him this little bag of farm animals. Well Carson decides that he wants to mimic his mommy and starts carrying the bag around like a purse either on his shoulder or on his arm. When I say carrying I mean strutting around the house like he is the coolest kid ever because he figured out how to get this bag on his shoulder. While I am laughing Garet is yelling "Carson! No...No...Just carry it in your hand!" Seeing Daddy panic makes Carson start giggling, so not only is he strutting with a purse but giggling while doing it. I love love love this age because he can do that and get away with it because 5 seconds later he is slam dunking his basketball into anything that will make noise.

Little things like that almost make me want to tear up thinking i will be without him for the entire week. We will both get used to it and he will end up having more fun and learning more things being around his friends and kids his age.

I hope everyone has a great week and any teachers reading this happy new school year and we have Thanksgiving break to look forward to!

Happy Birthday Carson

Where did this little guy go? This picture was taken a few days after Carson was born. The pacifier is perched on his shoulder and we gave up on that after the first week so this is an almost brand new baby picture. Just looking at his new born pictures makes me want another one. Garet probably just choked on his food reading that. Don't get anxious people we are still waiting awhile for the next one.

I'll give everyone a quick run down of "the life of Carson Anthony Black: Year ONE"

The first 4 weeks of his life he was not a happy baby. If he was awake and not eating he was NOT happy. He lived on mylicon for the first 8 weeks of his life. Talk about a gassy baby. 10 weeks he started sleeping through the night until he learned to roll at about 3 -4 months. Carson was a stomach sleeper so he would roll not be able to roll back and scream. 4 months first tooth. 6 months we had a crawler. 7-8 months said dada and meant it and started pulling himself up with ease. We were convinced he would be walking in no time. 9-10 he started to repeat words like dog, door, up, thank you, momma (best one of all) and a few other ones. 11 months he still was not walking or really even trying for that matter so I started enticing him with things. He took a few steps here and there, but nothing too exciting. 4 days before his birthday it clicked. Today the day after his birthday he is walking all over the place! It's kind of crazy how it all goes so fast.

Here is a picture of Carson enjoying his first EVER taste of sugar. Some people think I'm a little over the top with his schedule and what we feed him but watching him eat this cup cake was priceless. He knew he hit the jack pot with that first taste of icing. He then proceeded to devour almost the whole cupcake an hour before bed time. I was a bit nervous about the possible sugar rush but luckily he missed his afternoon nap because of a thunder storm. Thank you lord for bringing the rain yesterday :)

Overall it's been a fast wonderful year with a lot of crying but smiles and giggles to make up for all of it. We love our little man and can't wait to see what this next year will bring.

A few steps here...a few steps there

For the last 2 weeks we have been working on walking. At first we had to get something that Carson really wanted. A remote control, a playstation 3 controller, or a cell phone. He went crazy for the cell phone. We would prop him up holding onto the coffee table or the couch; he has been standing for almost 4 months now. Then we would stick the controller just out of fingertip reach and intice him to come get it. At first he would do a super man thing and jump for it, then he would take a step and fall, but after two weeks he is starting to take about 4-5 steps. Now don't get too excited...I wouldn't call it walking yet, but definatly getting there.

We had a great 4th of July weekend. Carson did great all day considering he had a boat nap and two car seat naps. He even stayed up for fireworks which was WAY past his bed time.

Here are some pics...enjoy!

Well here goes my first real post...

A year ago in June I had a baby shower in Dallas with all of my family and friends. A few weeks before that I found out that two of my dear friends were both expecting also. I was very excited to know that my little one would be able to grow up with 2 of my childhood friend's babies. About a month later my little guy arrived, we found out that not only were the babies going to be so close in age but they were ALL going to be boys!

This June we had a baby shower for my sister who is expecting a sweet baby girl any day now. At her shower the boys had there first official play date! They looked at eachother and touched eachother, had a little hair pulling (Dylan ;) Shared toys with eachother, and really got along well. It really made me excited to know that this is just the beginning of a life long friendship between Carson, Dylan, and Ryder.

Here we go!

Garet has been encouraging me to start a blog since I am a stay at home mom for the summer and Carson is changing on a daily basis. So here we go I am going to attempt to blog. I'm not making any promises because this could end up being really good or really bad.

I am just getting started so bare with me.