Black Friday

Ok...me and the rest of the crazies have had our day. Our special day where we can go nuts and spend that special little envelope of money we have been sneaking money into all year! The day where it is totally appropriate to study store ads like you would study for college finals. The day when you make friends in line at the store, wear pajamas out of your house to shop and realize that at any moment you could be killed over a toaster. Its Black Friday people...and I flipping love it. This year we went to Old Navy ON actual Thanksgiving day...totally worth it. Our bellies were as full as our carts and the deals were hot. We went to bed at 9:30pm so that we could wake up at 2am to make sure we were in line at Kohls by no later than 3am. This is not a joke and when I say "we" I mean me and Justin. Yes...he loves me. The adrenaline was a pumpin' and we met so many fun people in line. Other crazies like us who consider this "normal"....its not really about the great deals (although obviously that is important lol)...its more than that...its just an experience, a rush, a tradition! So this year Kohls was our only place to go since I am pretty much done with everything else...so we were back in bed by 4:30am. And my precious and adorable husband was up and at work for the 8:30am meeting. Bryce and Brody were here with my dad and never even heard us leave or come home. My dad (who is my hero) took Bryce to the river house until Sunday morning so its just me and Brody for the next few days! Brody and I slept most of the morning and then headed back out to spend my last few dollars. It was pretty scary/crazy out there this afternoon. It confirmed my decision that middle of the night Black Friday shopping is TOTALLY worth it!

it's beginning to look a lot like...

A HOME!
A sign a made to remind my boys to....

A sign a made for the center of our family photo collage...

My little memo board area (clearly I recently discovered Mod Podge!!)

CHRISTMAS!!!
Our little temporary Christmas section...just until I can convince Justin its not too early to put up the tree!!

A BABY'S ROOM!

Braxton Lee finally has an appropriate place to come home to!

His precious pirate quilt hanging on the wall...

And so you all do not get the wrong idea of me...here is what the other half of his room looks like....NOT DONE. Not even close :)

fun times at walmart

spreading some Christmas cheer in the holiday section at walmart!!

november things

Brax is now the size of a cantaloupe. Gross, I don't like those at all and that just sounds too big to be in my body. I am not feeling awesome...although I am not fully miserable. It is just getting to the end here and my body is over it. His room is still in progress...tomorrow is supposed to be the day we finish it up...but we will see about that.


In other news...all the kids Christmas presents are purchased and wrapped! I wanted to go ahead and get this out of the way and I have to admit I am pretty proud of myself. I have a few things hiding at a neighbors house...but other than that we are all wrapped up! We will still do our annual Black Friday shopping...but we are mostly going to get each others gifts and other family members/friends. We will leave the house a little earlier than normal this time though...Old Navy is opening at 3am! I am praying that people will be nice to me this year since I am going to pretty much be carrying a watermelon under my shirt...but we will see. This is the first time we have done this where I am not going to have coffee, so it could possibly be a total bust lol.


We are anxious to see some family for Thanksgiving and I am mostly just excited that I am not cooking this year. I plan on sitting my pregnant self on the floor and watching the parade with the kids until the dinner bell rings!


Here are some pictures of some cuteness of the week!

Brody got a new hat!

And handsome Bryce got to ride a longhorn!

i love pineapples

YUMMY! Baby Braxton Lee (33 weeks) is now the size of a pineapple...which just so happens to be one of my most favorite things! Doctors appointment today went great (other than the fact that the nurse insisted on writing down my weight in front of me....there is NO reason that my eyeballs should ever see number that big associated with my body)!!!


Obviously there are no pics of Brax's room yet, and this is because I am lazy. Well not totally lazy...but after chores around here...running around after the two crazies + the other crazy (that is justin)...subbing at preschool...nursey...AWANAS...MOPS...trampoline time (dont worry I am not getting on there)...feeding all these crazies....and etc. of course, well I have just not found the time to walk in there with my camera. For some reason that seems exhausting. I do have to say its looking pretty darn cute though, AND its so amazingly fun to go through Brody's box of clothes he has grown out of. I am anxious to put another little baby butt in all the super cute fleece pants he had!

We celebrated Justin's 27th birthday this week. I made a butter cake with peanut butter frosting and a chocolate glaze for the top and even frosted a toyota symbol on top so we could take it to his work! The boys made a big posterboard with their hand prints all over it and we successfully embarrassed the patooty out of him at his office! Mission accomplished :) The day after we celebrated our wedding anniversary! I am a lucky little lady to have such a precious husband. He surprised me that morning with a Movado watch and then a home cooked meal when me and the boys got home from Awanas. I always thought that our wedding day was going to be our most special memory of our love...that exchanging our vows was the most precious moments...but I have come to realize that is living our vows that has been a million times more special. Living up to those promises that we made in front of our loved ones and sharing our lives together...man its been good.

the beginning of our family
the day we made the promise

i really love this guy

lazy blogger

I have been a slacker on the blog updates lately! I am getting pretty gigantic over here and this nice weather has given the boys extra super large doses of energy...so we have just been running around like crazies. Tuesday night sometime my car was broken into, Justins birthday presents...some Christmas presents for Brody...a bag of maternity clothes...and a southern living platter were taken out of the back. I am sending up a special prayer for the person who did this to our family. Our house keys were also stolen so we had to have all the locks changed today. Other than that, I have just been working on Baby Braxton's room and starting to prepare myself mentally for the new addition to our family. Somehow I have managed to go the past 8 months without really thinking about being pregnant haha and it is all beginning to become a little more "real"!! Pictures of his room will be posted soon...maybe even tonight :)

oops one more thing....or two

Forgot to mention that Baby Braxton is the size of 4 oranges now....
and I could not leave out this cutiest picture EVER!

PS: when you click on the pics you can make them bigger then just press the back button to get back to the blog...

october is over

My precious little puppy dog!
Photo thanks to Mustard Seed Photography

The Superhero Crew (aka Bryce and his Bffs)

He saves MY day!

My super cute shower hostesses

cutest pumpkin shower ever!!

We have been super busy lately with lots of fun things going on! Halloween was so fun this year. My cutie butt little puppy and my super strong and so courageous batman were too precious for words. Bryce was slightly over excited about the whole "neighbors are giving out free candy" thing...he absolutely wore us out! We had some really great friends over to share in the fun and romp down White Creek. I have to say we had the cutest/loudest crew on the block!

Thank you to all of you that prayed your hearts out for our doctors appointment. We had a little bit of a scare (ok so it was not little...we were practically peeing in our pants for 3 days) at the OB last week when the dr. noticed I was carrying extra fluid. Thankfully to our precious Lord and all the amazing prayers when the specialist went in to take a look...everything seemed very normal. We will continue to pray for Gods miracle on our baby Braxton and we will continue to be grateful for His perfect creation.

In other news...the boys Pop Pop (my dad) got them a trampoline for their birthday and its finally all set up! My mission today is to get pictures of them in action...but its a lot harder than I thought lol.

Last Sunday I sent my handsome husband off on his birthday trip to the Cowboys game in Dallas (i know i am a pretty awesome wife) and my beautiful friends here threw me the most adorable shower to celebrate Baby Braxton! It was a full house and I am just so thankful for the big time friendships we have made in this past year. Among all the friends, my aunts and Meme even drove in from Houston just for the shower and then drove back home after and Justins Nana made a special trip all the way from Lampasas! It was a pretty big bummer not having my mom sit next to me while opening presents. She loved parties and any reason to celebrate. These events are so precious...yet just not quite the same without her. I am already practicing my strength for the day he is born and she is not able to be in the room with me...I better practice really hard.

fantastic fall

Brody loves pumpkins!
They had to see EVERY single one before we picked the pumpkin!

My big boy Bryce

Fall Soccer

So Fall is off to an official start and we have been extra busy enjoying every day! I have been making yummy things like pumpkin cake, chicken and dumplings, vegetable stew and chili!!! Fall soccer has started up again with the YMCA, Brody just loves to cheer on his brother! After haircuts today, I took the boys to the pumpkin patch where we spent atleast an hour browsing through the 19 million pumpkins to chose the perfect ones for our porch. Bryce got a gigantic one, Brody got one about the same size as he is and they even picked one out for Braxton...it is about candy corn sized :)

Big News for Baby Brody...the 2010 Down Syndrome Association Calendar has been released and our little muffin is (drum roll please) MR. FEBRUARY!!! Ugh its too flippin adorable. God is so amazingly stinkin great.

With the fall decorations and cooler weather some heavy thoughts have been placed on my heart. Memories of my mom come flooding in and the pain of her missing out on this beautiful time of year with my boys is pretty yucky. For some reason I keep thinking of the few days after she packed up and moved to Heaven. I think of the shock I felt, the hurt, anger, confusion and fear. The day Justin and I went to pick out her casket and plot...the anxiety we felt as the man brought out the price list...the discouraging feeling that none of the caskets were pretty enough for her body to lie in. Walking through the grave site to see the available plots was so disgusting, none of those pieces of ground were where I wanted my mom to be. None. As we sat in the cold room making these decisions, deciding how him and I alone would come up with the money to pay for it all, I just prayed to God that he would make it go away. That she would call me that minute and say it was all a joke...or that she would even call and tell me what she wanted me do do...tell me that the dress that I had purchased for her was perfect. I wanted to know that she would forgive me if we had to have her cremated (which we did). At a certain moment while I was sitting alone in her back yard crying over all these heavy decisions that had been placed upon me...I felt this overwhelming wash of peace and comfort. I immediately made the decisions that needed to be made and never looked back. For some reason this pretty weather made me think of all this...and I am not really sure why. I am thankful to God for my strength and His constant reminders of His love for me. Now bring on some more of this fantastic fall...

28 weeks

So baby Braxton Lee has been cooking for 28 weeks. Only 100 million weeks to go...
Everything is looking great, he is now the size of a Chinese Cabbage. I do not like cabbage at all so I am anxious for him to grow into something cuter and less smelly. I will keep you posted on that. Some of my adorable friends here are giving me a baby shower for him and I am very excited. Although registering for your 3rd child is NOT nearly as fun as it was the first time around. It was a much more practical ordeal this time. I am so blessed to have such sweet friends that love to love on me :)
We are getting pretty settled in the new house. We have gone from about 90 thousand boxes in the garage to about 20. I still have things to put away like out China (which is soooo pretty but I cannot really think of a day we will ever get to use it). Maybe when we grow up! My beautiful mommy gave us her Christmas China before she moved to heaven and then my dad recently brought over their china that they accumulated while married. So now I have 3 sets of fancy pants china and nobody fancy to serve. One day. Until then....we are paper plate kind of folks :)
Everything else is great. Boys are busy, loving preschool, loving the new house and loving God.

Nashville Pics

our amazing hotel
convention with 4,000+ women

a few boerne girls

Last week I was able to attend the MOPS Convention in Nashville. I missed my boys SO much, but had a GREAT time preparing for our year, learning about God, praying, bonding with some amazing women, visiting the Grand Ole Opry and much much more...here are a few pics!

drum roll please.....

BRODY OPENS PRESENTS ON HIS VERY FIRST BIRTHDAY...

BRODY LIKES TO EAT CAKE!!!

Bryce was so worried Brody was going to get him dirty lol


i WILL get every single lick of this cake!!

MORE BIRTHDAY FUN...

Rainy Day Super Hero Party with the Simmons Boys!

More Brotherly Super Hero Action!

Bryce and Brody's Pajama Birthday PARTY!