M I A

Just a little post to let anyone who is still following us know that we are still around:) It has been one BUSY summer with a couple of trips and 3 busy kids. I lovingly refer to myself (as most of you moms can understand) as the "Activity Director" of the summer. During the year, we have a great routine, my kids (and I!) know what to expect, but the summer....everyday is different and my delectable 5 year old, who loves a routine asks me daily what we are doing "in 3 days". That is because I have already answered the question to "What are we doing today?" "What are we doing this afternoon?" "What are we doing tomorrow?" "...the day after that?" I will be glad to when the answer is "school, school, school, school, school, free day, church day."

Speaking of, Trey starts Kindergarten in a little over a week!!! I can't believe it! So, I know this isn't much, but I wanted to give you something and tell you that (hopefully) I will be back on the blog bandwagon in a few weeks. I will upload a bunch of pictures of all the fun things we got to do this summer. And of course some updated pics of William, or as I refer to him, "fatboy". Man, is he delicious!!!

William

Here are some recent pictures of our little man. (Just for the record, the reason he is always against a striped background is so that if he spits up or pees, it doesn't get on my bed.) That is his main hangout...my bed...it's so nice when they are still immobile.

Finally caught some smiles on camera. This was this morning (5-13 10) I love that morning love!
Another smiley pic!

This was "posed" on our couch...no towel bed background:) This was before church this past Sunday, 5-9-10. I love this outfit. My nephews wore it as well as Trey and still in great shape.

Full body shot

This is the best shot of the three of them. Man, getting the three of them to look halfway normal is a challenge and I don't have much patience with the camera.

I don't mean to shock anyone with this picture, but I wanted to share. About 3 weeks ago, William started getting a rash (it didn't look NEAR this bad at first). It continued to get worse and was all over his body...face, head, arms. Anyway, at it's worst, which was the following morning that this pic was taken, the spots were nickle sized and basically all touching. By the way, these are hives. When we went to the doctor, we found out that William is allergic to milk. We know that so decisively b/c he is exclusively on formula. So we switched to a soy formula (which is the same price, thank goodness:), and he cleared up in a couple of days. The doctor said that lots of kids that have milk allergies, outgrow them. So we will see. I just to post this, b/c I had never seen anything like this before it happened to William. I mean I had heard of hives, but never actually seen them.

"Jesus Loves Me"

This video was taken about 2 months ago. The reason it is of the back of Macy's head is because I was trying to be sneaky so she wouldn't stop singing.

Mother's Day Tea with Trey

Trey's Mother's Day Out hosted a Mother's Day Tea last Thursday. This is Trey singing "skinnery dinky dinky dink..." So So precious:)

Trey and I. For those of you who noticed and were wondering, my necklace is a "Trey Moran original" and no, you can't find them anywhere:)

Macy's Birthday

So this is VERY old, but Macy turned 3 on April 6. I had read in a Parents magazine ways to make your child's birthday special. And I loved the ideas and so we incorporated some of them into the kids birthdays this year. ( I only have pics of Macy's b/c Trey's bday was the day after I got home from the hospital having William, and Trey's bday pics are on my MIL's camera) Anyway, one thing we did was blow up a bunch of balloons so that when the kids woke up, their floor was covered. We also decorated the kitchen table and specifically their chair. Also, we made every meal that day special by putting candles in pancakes in the morning and singing and then lunch and singing and then of course dinner.

Dan carrying balloons upstairs to put on Macy's floor. One of about 4 trips upstairs!
Macy waking up on her bday...there really were more balloons than this pic shows

Macy showing us how old she is

Macy at breakfast

In car with their prizes after Chuck E Cheese's. Because we had just had a baby, we didn't really do bday parties for the kids, so this was the special event of Macy's day. She had a great time. We still had presents and cake of course, which is really all that matters!

Photo Shoot

My best friend, Pam, came in for a quick visit this past weekend to meet William. Amongst other things (like setting up my treadmill) she did a photo shoot with William. I am not great at taking pictures or even at remembering to take pictures, so it is nice to have people around that do! Anyway, here are some shots of our big boy! (He weighed 10 lbs, 8 oz at his Dr. appt. last Friday...He was 2 weeks 3 days:)



This little boy definitely belongs to our family, but I don't know who he looks like. Everyone else has an opinion, but they are all different :)

Easter Review...

I know this post is so late, but blogging is very low on my list right now...but I really want to keep up. So here are some pictures that other people took (namely my sister and mother-in-law!)

Macy was born on Good Friday 3 years ago and her birth announcement picture was of her in Dan's Easter basket (It says "Daddy") My sister re-created this with William. He never woke up
My biggest challenge is going to be getting 3 kids looking at the camera and smiling at the same time...this was the best out of about 15 shots...turned out cute!All the cousins after the Easter egg hunt! From L to R :

Sam, Andrew, Trey, Macy, and Luke

For those of you that aren't from Texas...we have something AWESOME around Easter. Cascerones, otherwise known as confetti eggs. My mother-in-law has memories from her childhood of saving egg shells for weeks before Easter and then filling them with confetti. We luckily can just buy them from the store! Basically what you do is sneak up on someone and crack the confetti filled egg on the person's head. It can get pretty violent...and the adults have more fun than the kids! Macy in mid-throw.

Dan getting my sister, Tamara

Dan handing out ammo

Dan running after getting my mom. This was taken with my sister's awesome camera! By the way, we went through 12 dozen eggs...and were left still wanting more! I am still finding confetti in my house two weeks later :)

Introducing William Patrick Henry Moran...

William Patrick Henry Moran

Born: March 23, 2010

Weight: 9lbs., 12oz

Length: 20 3/4 inches

All along this baby's name was going to be William Patrick Moran, William because we liked it and Patrick after his daddy. Well, after he was born, Dan was looking at what significant things happened on that day in history. As it turns out, Patrick Henry gave his "give me liberty or give me death speech" on March 23. Our children are the direct descendants of at least 7 men who fought in the American Revolution and because of these two facts, we added "Henry". I love the addition but still can't believe I agreed to it at the last minute.

As far as the birth goes, I started having contractions Monday afternoon around 3, they were regular, but not painful. After a couple of hours, I went to the hospital, but I was only 1 cm. It took me until Tuesday morning to get to three and then another couple of hours to get to 4. I was pretty worried that I would stall and end up needing a c-section, but all of a sudden, I was 9 and then 10 and after a few minutes, William was born. It was my longest labor for sure, but besides getting no sleep, the easiest!

William has been a perfect little baby, sleeping well (the last couple of nights, he has gone for 5 hour stretches, eaten, and then another 3-4!!!) and having a great little disposition. Here are some pictures from the hospital.

Daddy and William

Mommy and William

Poppy (Dan's Dad) and William

Abi (Dan's mom) and William

Mia (my mom) and William

Aunt Callie and William

Trey and Macy meeting their baby brother

Grandad (my dad) will William

I tried and couldn't turn this picture, but I love it

My brother, Tim, sister in law, Anne and nephews, Andrew, Sam and Luke

Dan dressed William up in his medals.

Dan took this picture of William flexing his muscles!

Some Pictures... (that might be an understatement)

Well, I thought I would post some pictures that I have taken recently. There are quite a few and there is no rhyme or reason to them. Sorry :)

Trey and Macy feeding the fish

My mom has been staying at our house this week b/c it is her spring break. (She is a school nurse.) I'm pretty sure we are all nesting, b/c she decided the kitchen chairs needed to be recovered. Here is Trey helping Mia. It doesn't look like he is doing much, but he really was. Macy was holding the screws...don't tell Daddy she had sharp objects...he's a little protective:)

Another activity this spring break week was a trip to the Fire station with some friends. The kids had a great time!

Macy in the Fire Truck!

Trey in the driver's seat!

Trey and his friend, Braxton.

The other night, I made a cobb salad for dinner. I had read in a magazine somewhere that in order to get kids to eat salad, let them put it together. (Just to give options, I put out all kinds of stuff. Including leftover asparagus and brussel sprouts, which I new my kids loved. I was trying to have some sort of success.) Above is Trey's plate. In his defense, the plate also had crasins, but those had already been eaten. He went back for more chicken and craisens about 5 times.

This was Macy's plate. A little bit of everything. I have to say that the most embarrassing thing for me is that we are eating dinner off paper plates. I promise we usually eat off real plates, but dinner was late and I was TIRED!

Macy at a birthday party a couple weeks ago.

She loved riding the horse!

About 5 or 6 weeks ago it snowed for about 5 minutes. We bundled up the kids...(as you can see, not very well) and went outside to enjoy it. It was right after nap and Dan and I were pulling jackets out of the closet and trying to layer the kids as fast as we could. Oh well, Trey's line from being outside was..."It's raining snow!"

After a couple of minutes, the snow turned to rain, so we ran back inside. That was our Houston winter thrill!