He's finally FREE!!!!

Well, we are pleased and overjoyed to announce that Tyler is no longer working for the Boothe Laser Eye Center. After 70 hour weeks and hardly ever seeing his family, he's made a break and is moving on!!! :) Today was his first day at home and I took advantage by going shopping without the girls - what fun! He's staying busy preparing for his next job opportunity though so the free time is limited. We're actually taking a real vacation - heading to Utah/Idaho for a Gibbons' family reunion and then Tyler will start his new job at the Sam's Club in McKinney as their Optometrist. It will be like his own practice while leasing the space and equipment from Sam's, so we're very excited about that change of pace. He sets his own hours and is back to doing regular eye exams/checkups, so if anyone's in the Dallas area of Texas, look him up and schedule your appointment! :) He starts doing exams September 9th and we'll add more detailed contact information in the near future, so don't you worry. Let Tyler take care of all your eye care needs! :) The girls and I are excited to have our husband and daddy back especially when he's having a four-day work week to begin with!

Yeah for Dr. Gibbons!!

Congratulations and good luck!!!

Tessa and Abby's new Cousin

My brother and sister-in-law, Scott and Nevla, just had their first baby yesterday! Her name is Chloe Faith DeeAnn. She's adorable. Born 12:52 am and weighing in at 5 lbs 15 1/2 oz. She has lots of dark black hair. Mommy Nevla is doing well considering she pretty much did both deliveries. She got to a 7 in regular labor, but Chloe decided that was it, so they ended up having to do a C-section. Poor mommy, but Nevla and Chloe are both doing and looking great! Here are a few pictures we got when we got to go see her in the hospital.

Here's Chloe with her proud papa:

Here she is with her cousin Abby and her Uncle Tyler:

Congratulations to Scott and Nevla!!!

Abby, Abby and more Abby

Is my kid one-of-a-kind? She's always been very color-coordinated. When she was less than 2, she would gather all different kinds of toys based on their color. As she got older and started helping pick out her own clothes, they had to match and all accessories must also match, not specifically match; just as long as it was same color as the outfit. These days the color combinations now include food. When we go for a snow cone, she must get one that matches the color of her outfit. Same as when she picks a sucker at the doctor's office. Same with frozen popsicles. Here's our proof:

Blue tongue from the blue popsicle to match the blue dress and the blue hair clip.

Abby got a new dress-up dress. We promised her a new one if she let us cut her hair. So after a couple days to convince her, she finally let me cut her hair, and this is the barbie wedding dress-up she picked out. Because it was on clearance, she got new dress up shoes too!

Abby has always been our trouble sleeper. She never wants to go to bed. One night after her bath and jammies, we said it was almost time for bed. She said she was not tired and wanted to stay up with us downstairs. Within the next five minutes from that statement, this is what we found:It must have been too bright for her with the lights on, so she crawled under her princess chair and found a "comfortable" place to sleep.

Finally, we have decided to start Abby in dance classes. She starts this week, so we spent the last couple days finding all the dance paraphernalia that we need. Her class will include ballet, tap, and tumbling. Here she is in her ballet outfit. What a cutie! She's very excited about it.

Maybe all three-year-old girls are into these sames things, but sometimes I wonder if my Abby is just one-in-a-million. I think so! She's more fun than we know what to do with at times, but what a boring life we'd have without her. We love our Abby!

Some exciting news!!!

There are two things that I'm very excited to talk about today.

First, as you might be able to tell from our title, I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming arrival of Stephenie Meyer's fourth book from the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn. It is available this Saturday, August 2nd, at midnight. I'm going with some of my other "crazy about Edward" friends for a late night Friday to get the book right at midnight, and I can't wait!!! I've been rereading the first three to mentally prepare myself, so I've been in Edward-land for the past week. I don't know if I can make it these next 6 days! :)

Second, I finally went to the doctor this week and we are pleased to announce that we are expecting our third baby! Unlike Item #1, the entire family is very excited about this news. Abby must have known before us because she decided to tell a few of her friends' moms that her mommy "had a baby in her tummy." After embarrassingly having to correct that mistake, we found out a couple weeks later that we actually were pregnant. Maybe these kids know more than we give them credit for! :) It was a bit of a surprise for us, and a little nervous for me because my Tessa still seems so little. But luckily about a week after we found out, Tessa really started walking, so it made her seem a little older to me anyway. So after finally scheduling a doctor's appointment, I find out I'm officially 10 and 1/2 weeks with a due date of February 17th, 2009. We would love to find out we're having a boy at this point (especially Tyler so he won't be so outnumbered), but of course, we'll be thrilled no matter what gender of baby we're blessed with. We'll definitely keep you posted.

So, you may be wondering how these two pieces of exciting news can actually be together in the same post. Well, read Twilight, and you'll understand... Right Kasia?!? :)

Summer Vacation...Family and Friends

It has been non-stop action for us the last couple weeks. My brother, John, came into town from Las Vegas so our family has been on the go and enjoying every minute of it. Here's John with Abby. Sadly, we didn't take a lot of pictures with John in them. :( But at least we got this one the last day he was here.

After spending the 4th of July weekend here in Anna (sorry no pics), the girls and I went with my parents and John back to WF. We met up with my brother, Paul's family and our close family friends, the Wrights, who were in town for a family reunion. So we had our own little reunion at Chuck E. Cheese.CEC is the best place when you have 16 grandkids and lots of adults who want to actually visit. All the kids had a great time.
Bente and I have been best friends since we were little. Here we are entertaining the kids while our poor husbands had to stay home to work.
We got to feed ducks with Joseph and Melody. But the usual problem occurred - not enough bread and......too many ducks! Luckily they didn't chase us this time like they did last time.And we had another problem this time. We tried getting Tessa to toss the bread to feed the ducks too, but does she do it? No, of course not; why throw it to the ducks when it's perfectly good to eat yourself? At least she still liked seeing the ducks.

One other fun thing we did was go to a bounce house place with Joseph. They loved it. Especially when Uncle John and Cousin Matt came to play too.

They really liked the tall slide. They went down it so fast. It was hard to get a decent picture.

By the end, I even got Abby to raise her hands in the air. "Just like a roller coaster" as she liked to say.

Other fun things we did included seeing fireworks on the fourth, having BBQs, going swimming, playing games, going to see Wall.E, eating out, shopping, and all the other fun family things people like to do. We had lots of fun with Uncle John and with all the family. Thanks for making our summer a bit more exciting!!! And thank you for letting us share our fun stuff with you. We hope your summer has been just as adventuresome.

More Utah Trip Pictures

Besides the wedding in Utah, we did some other fun things with the family. We went to a park where we were able to trek to a small stream. The kids liked to get their feet wet and throw rocks. Here's Abby doing her usual "turn around and pose for the camera" pose.

Tessa really liked the water. She would have gone all the way in if we would have let her.
Grandma Gibbons bought a small pool for her backyard for all the grandkids. They loved it even though the water was freezing. And what's better than swimming and popsicles in the summer?
Of course, when all the grandkids are together, you have to do the family pictures. Here are all the cousins; and with this many young ones, it's a challenge trying to get everyone settled and smiling for the camera. Here's one of our many attempts. At least Tessa's happy... I think we came out with some really cute pictures though. Here's the pose we ended up liking the best. Here's Tessa with two of her cousins, Sara and Julia. I just thought it was a really cute pic.
We had so much fun with all the family in Utah and can't wait to see them again.

Tessa is Walking!!!

So Tessa has been taking random steps usually on her way to falling, but yesterday, she was taking multiple, non-wobbly steps from the middle of the room to the couch. And she did this many times. This was the best video we could get of it even though it's still not the best, but at least you see some steps. She's so big!

Another exciting thing from this weekend was my girl's night out adventure on Friday night. I went with 10 other moms to see Stomp at Fair Park in Dallas. It was so fun, and Stomp was amazing. I finally got to see them in person after all my brothers and parents have already seen them multiple times, I finally don't feel so left out! We girls had a good time and after the concert we went out for appetizers and dessert. Yummy Pizookies from BJ's. Here's our group. Can't wait to do it again sometime.