Tyler's Birthday Party - Part I

We had a party in celebration of Tyler's first birthday as well as a surprise 30th for Tom on Saturday night.  Everyone dressed in football attire in honor of Tom's love for the game and it was a great time!

Jake was exhausted by the end!


Tyler LOVED his cupcake!

He played his first game of "Pin the nose on the lion"

Part II of his first birthday celebration will take place on the actual day, Oct. 29th with his family and grandparents!

Jake arrives!

We are SO excited!  Our new puppy Jake arrived on a flight from MO yesterday afternoon!  He is SO beautiful and such a sweetie!  He just LOVES to cuddle and play with Zac - they have the same energy level! 

Pumpkin Patch

We took our 3rd annual trip to the Big Orange Pumpkin Patch before my sister in law and the girls headed out of town.  The kids got to feed some animals, go on a hay ride, have a picnic lunch and of course get some pumpkins!

Farewell Caswells!

For two months my sister in law Andrea and her two girls Isabel and Alivia have been living with us.  It has been so much fun for the kids to spend so much time together and for us to watch them interact/play/fight etc... as well as for me to have another mom around to commiserate with!  

Tomorrow night my brother will help them drive on to their new home in Columbus, Mississippi.  We will surely miss having them here!  Hopefully each family will be able to make the 9 hour trip much  more often than we could to England!

Still summer in Texas!

While it is cooling off all over the country, we're still creeping close to the 90's here 

in Texas!  I love and miss the fall but I love the fact that we can still get out and do things that 

the kids love.  We went to the Dallas zoo last weekend and it was still a little warm for us Yankees!

Yesterday, Andrea and I took the four kids to Aviator Park here in McKinney and they had a

 blast!  We packed a picnic lunch to eat under the canopy.  The playground is nice and Tyler is already climbing all the way to the top by himself!  They also have a splash pad there so the kids stripped down and had played in the water too!

Future "Jared"

Yesterday I went to the gym and took the boys to the Kidz Klub there while I worked out.  Afterward it was lunch time and I decided to stop by Subway.  Zac all of a sudden loves to get a kids pack from there, I love their subs and it means two less lunches for me to make!  Boy do meals get tiring with little kids!!!  So I'm in line ordering our sandwiches and Zac is sitting in one of the booths.  He all of a sudden bursts into song with "Subway, eat fresh"!  I just laughed and everybody around was smiling.  He apparently pays scary close attention to commercials!  I thought somebody might offer him a commercial gig!

And Tyler's favorite thing to say right now is "Uh oh".  He LOVES to drop everything and sometimes even says "uh oh" before he drops an object!  It's very cute but very tiring just the same!

Enjoying Hurrican Ike

We were predicted to be right in the path of Hurricane Ike last week but all we got here in McKinney was some much needed rain!  We were lucky unlike many along the coast and throughout the country.  The kids definitely made the best of it and stripped down after dinner to go out and play in the rain!  I'm sure they'll love these photos at their High School Graduation parties!

Kids and Computers

Zac and Isabel both love to play games on the computer.  They have gotten pretty good and can navigate all over Noggin.com and playhousedisney.com and such without any help. Yesterday the two of them were taking turns playing and they had left Safari (which is the operating system on the Mac) open on the desk top when they were done.  I came over and closed out Safari and noticed another screen open even after that.  I thought David and Andrea were playing a prank on us when I read it!  It said "Click to install Porn4Mac"!  Come to find out, David and Andrea had nothing to do with this.  The scary question is, what were Zac and Isabel up to???

Tyler is walking!

Tyler has taken a few one step at a time and then flop back down to a crawl for the better part of a week now.  Yesterday however he finally decided to start walking and I was actually able to get some of it on video!  He is 10 and a half months old and he weighs 24 pounds so this is quite an accomplishment!

Flu in September?

The back to school sickness must be going around already!  Love this time of year - NOT!  Tyler was sick starting last week.  He had an ear infection and the antibiotic that they gave him didn't work so we had to take him back and get another one.  He also had breathing difficulties - possibly croup.  It was scary at first because you could clearly see that he was struggling to breath so I took him to the Doctor.  They said he was very close to being hospitalized because his oxygen levels were low.  The Dr. gave him a steroid and a nebulizer treatment at the office.  We ended up coming home with a steroid to give to him for a few days and we are now the owners of our own personal nebulizer!  He fought so hard having that mask on and we would have to literally hold him down for almost 10 minutes each time.  It was torture for all of us!  He has finished the treatments now and seems to be back to normal - although now he's teething!

We're not done just yet though!  Andrea was diagnosed last week with a sinus infection and the FLU!  It's only September and the flu already?!  Then on Monday, Zac woke up with a low grade fever and this morning he has the lovely sound of croup or the barking seal as they say!  

Hopefully this will all pass through us quickly and not return for a very long time!  I knew that we'd have more illnesses passing around now with two kiddos but that doesn't mean that I was ready to deal with it!

Oh yeah, and Tom is going to be out of town for work until Saturday night - doesn't it just always happen like that!