Rusty's birthday

Just after Christmas, Rusty turned 35! For his day, he said that he wanted to go to College Station for Wings -n- More (he is very particular about his Wings -n- More locations and will only eat at the ones in CS and in the Woodlands because their recipes are different after an ownership split) and then to an Aggie Basketball game.

So that's exactly what we did.

Here is Ben meeting Dr. Loftin and holding his Gig 'em thumb. This is what he does since he can't quite make his hand do it yet. He just grabs yours!

Ben went to check out the seats in front of us. Apparently we weren't quite close enough:

And then helped himself up into the lap of the lady in those seats. Thank you, kind stranger!

 He was OBSESSED with watching the yell leader:

The only way to attend an Aggie sporting event is to have fresh kettle corn while you are there. He is a child after my own heart.

We even made it on Fox Sports Southeast a few times! Here is a screen shot:

Ben got some time with the Aggie dance team:

 And some high fives from the players:

I am sure that Rusty and his boys have many more Aggie sporting events in their future. But this first one as a family of four was a fun day and some special memories!

New Year!

We spent New Years Eve at home as a family. It was a pretty low key night in our pjs and with a pizza. The biggest highlight being a few fireworks that Rusty picked up. Ben was NOT a fan though and was a little traumatized for a few days, saying "Daddy, BANG!" about 762 times a day until he eventually forgot about it! 

There is no other way that I would want to ring in the New Year than with my new family of four!

Joe's first Christmas

Still playing catch up here...

Who would have ever expected that we would have a newborn this Christmas? Certainly not me! But it was so wonderful! And we loved having Joe home in time to celebrate with us!

We had his first pediatrician visit in The Woodlands when he was four days old, so we decided to stop by the mall while we were out there and get our picture with Santa. Santa said that Joe was his youngest visitor all season and even put him on The Woodlands Mall facebook page!

My handsome boys all dressed up for our Christmas Eve service at church:

Christmas Eve night in our matching PJs from Meme:

 Santa's little helper stayed up very late with us to help get all the toys put together

And Christmas morning there was a new stocking up this year!

Ben LOVED Christmas morning this year... especially his new trampoline!

Joe's first week at home

 Joe's first week at home was a busy one as we prepared for Christmas, but we had a great week together and enjoyed Daddy being home from work to share that time with us as a family. During the first week of Ben's life, I probably took 2000 pictures, mostly of him sleeping. That was a little challenging to try and keep up with this time since I now had a toddler hanging on my leg during shoots! Poor second child...but I still tried to capture some shots before he changed too much!

Sweet big brother helping out the swing:

I have NO CLUE what Ben was doing here, but clearly Joe did not like it!

I LOVE this one!

 My boys snuggling....

At five days old, he tagged along with me to Ben's school for his Christmas program. As room mom, I had a party to throw so Joe came right along with me! He wasn't much of a partier though!

 I at least got a lot of pictures with my phone, which is better than nothing!