Halloween 2010

We went trick or treating in our neighborhood again this year. I have always liked doing it old school and taking the kids door to door rather than to busy, crowded festivals. There is just something about taking your kids trick or treating the way we did as kids, that I find to be a very neat experience.

All dressed and ready to go!
Getting excited... about getting lots of Halloween candy and the Texas Rangers World Series Game Four!

Our first stop... our neighbor's house.
My neighbor is a real fireman and he dressed up in his fireman gear to take his kids trick or treating so I just had to take Tyler's picture with him.
Back home from trick or treating now we are passing out candy to all the kids and of course having a little candy of our own.
Tyler and Whitney really enjoyed passing out candy to the others. I was so proud of them. Hannah, on the other hand, refused to pass out any candy. Ha!

This is one way to meet a new neighbor

Okay, so this blog has taken a major back seat in my life because I have been so busy with school and kiddos. Heck, I may not even have readers anymore... Anyway, school is coming to an end and it has been busier than ever this past week or two. Yesterday as I was leaving for school, very stressed, rushed and frazzled. I had an accident in my neighborhood, with nobody else than my neighbor across the street from me.

The streets are too narrow in this neighborhood so when cars park on the street, it is very hard to squeeze between the cars. I was heading out and a truck was coming in. There were two cars parked on both sides of the street, but not directly across from each other. They were just slightly diagonal from each other on the street. Well, me and the truck coming at me had the same thought that we'd both keep driving instead of stopping and letting the other car pass first. We thought we'd just maneuver around each other and the two parked cars.

Well, it didn't go so well. We clipped each other's mirrors. He was in a Ford F250 and his mirror wasn't damaged at all. Mine, however, was demolished. Thankfully that was the extent of the accident and thankfully we both handled ourselves well and didn't start pointing fingers as to whose fault it was because it could have become a very awkward situation if the conversation got heated especially considering we are neighbors. Because it wasn't until the end of the conversation and insurance swapping of information, that we figured out we live directly across from each other.

After realizing we are neighbors, I introduced myself and he did as well. Then, his exact words were, "It's a good thing we didn't get nasty with each other." I hope none of you ever have to meet your neighbors the way I did.

I will post some updates soon of halloween and updates on the kiddos.

The "ONE" reason I like picking up dog poop...

... It prepares me for things like this that I might find in the yard. I found a spider when scooping up dog poop in the yard before playing outside with the kiddos. That's right, a tarantula! I actually thought it was dog poop at first, but luckily before I scooped it up, I realized it was a spider. All the kids and dog were already outside with me while I picked up. I don't usually have much to pick up since I pick it up so frequently, so I can usually get it picked up pretty quick before they get into it. And, mind you, we were all barefoot outside!! After I saw this creature, I rushed everybody inside, dog and all. Then I went to get some poison spray and sprayed it and sprayed it and sprayed it. Of course, when I first started spraying, it tried to run and boy was it HUGE! Bigger than my hand for sure. Ugh!!! I was a spraying maniac and it had no chance. After all that was said and done, I got the kids and my shoes on and went back outside. It was over on the side of the house so I knew it wouldn't be right in our playing area, so we went back outside to play. Craig had the pleasure of picking it up and disposing of it when he got home from work.

First biking trip

Craig and I have been talking about buying these bike trailers to pull the kids in for a while now but we kept putting it off because of the hot summer heat and Craig's shoulder surgery. But now with it starting to cool off and his shoulder being healed, we decided to go ahead and get some. After a busy morning of doctor visits and errands to run, we headed home for a nice long nap and once the babies woke up, we headed out to ride around our neighborhood. We had a great time of riding, then we took a break and let the kiddos play at the park then we rode some more and then stopped to take a break to feed the ducks at the pond then we rode some more and met some more of our neighbors on the other street behind us. They had heard about us moving in. The word sure travels when you have triplets and move to a small town I guess. Also, at the pool, I met some other parents of triplets who live in our neighborhood so that was kinda cool. Anywho... we met some other neighbors on the street behind us and they took our picture. Gotta document that first bike ride ya know?

My pictures are out of order once again and it won't let me rearrange them.

Before the trip... all buckled up and ready to roll!

Whitney had to take piglet for a ride.

**Four new posts below this one, so be sure and scroll down. Also, stay tuned for some more posts soon - lots more weekend fun!

Settling in

We are all moved into our new house and are getting settled in more and more each day. We are loving the extra space, the new community and the small town feel. The neighbors are very friendly - several of them stopped by last week to introduce themselves and we got a chance to visit with them for a few minutes before getting back to our unpacking.

We closed on Monday and started moving in a small portion of our stuff ourselves. Craig was planning to do a treatment to the garage floor before we moved our stuff into the garage but many things unplanned things happened and we ran out of time. Tuesday, movers came and we moved all our stuff from inside the house. Tuesday night we went to get the babies from their grandparent's house. Wednesday, we spent the day the day unpacking and organizing. Craig also got sick and was very sick all day and the next. Thursday, he and my brother loaded up our garage at the old house to move it. Our garage floor was still not finished so all our stuff had to stay on the truck. Luckily nothing was stolen, which we weren't really worried about anyway, but it did rain that night so all our belongings were wet. Friday morning we painted the garage floor but it had to dry for 24 hours so our stuff had to stay outside a second night. It rained again...go figure! Luckily most everything was ok to get wet and nothing was ruined. It just made it more difficult to unload the stuff that was in boxes as the boxes were falling apart. Saturday, we got the truck unloaded and everything finally into our garage. Since then, we've been working so hard trying to finish unpacking and organizing our things.

Like I said, we are really enjoying the new house and we are adjusting well. The babies are doing really well and seem to be having no problems. Craig and I, however, are still adjusting to lugging the kiddos up and down the stairs. They can climb up but not down. We have a pretty severe fire ant problem which is not good especially considering Craig is allergic to fire ants. We have treated them and I can already see an improvement.

This entire summer has been such a whorl-wind with all the house selling/hunting/buying. I'm ready to finish getting settled in so we can do some fun summer things

Good news on the house hunt

We put an offer on a house yesterday and they accepted our offer! We are so excited to have new place to call home. The house is beautiful and we really love the neighborhood. The house is new construction and the ladies that work in the office are all wanting to introduce us to different families in the neighborhood. The ladies who work in the office said there are lots of young moms with young children who stay home, so that will be fun to meet them and get to know them. As we drive through, everybody waves at us. It just has that good ole small town feel, just like where I grew up in a small town of 2200. Our current neighborhood is rather unfriendly and keep to themselves and we couldn't be more excited to start a new chapter in this small town of Melissa. I was afraid I might feel isolated trying to adjust to being further out but I think we will be just fine. We are supposed to close on the sale of our house July 2nd and the purchase of this one July 13th so please keep us in your thoughts and prayers during the next few weeks that all of this will go smoothly and both homes will close successfully.

**An update on the kiddos... Tyler is on the mend with the hand, foot and mouth disease, Hannah, my poor baby, is struggling the most with an on and off again fever and blisters in her mouth and on her hand and feet. Plus, she has a new tooth coming through that I discovered today. And of course, Whitney is getting the same thing... she started with the bumps yesterday. Hopefully my babies will be well soon and will not get too bad of a run of this HFMD.

Midnight drama!

Last night I finally headed for bed around 11:45 and not but maybe 5 minutes after I got in bed, I heard this helicopter flying around. I could tell he was circling and I thought there had to be either a car accident of some sort or the police were searching for someone. We got up because we could see red and blue police lights shining in through our windows. We started looking out the windows and the police had stopped this big van directly in front of our house. They put the guy in handcuffs and into the back of the police car.

We kept watching and watching as more and more police showed up. The helicopter kept circling with his spotlight shining down on our neighborhood. We see police cars going up and down the next street over and we saw policemen on foot running up and down the streets. By this point, I was pretty nervous. We continued to watch as the police officers began walking up the street with the drug dog. More and more police continued showing up and they continued to go through the van and pulling out various things - drug paraphernalia no doubt.

Finally Craig went out there to see what was going on because it was evident that they were still searching for somebody. The police man told Craig they chased this van down because they were busted in the middle of a drug deal. When the van stopped, 4 guys took off running. At that point the police man said they had 3 of the guys in custody but one was still on foot. Craig came back in and we continued to watch out the window.

Finally the helicopter left and that was a huge relief because we knew they must have caught the guy. Then a few other police officers showed up again and they stood out there talking discussing the whole fiasco for a few minutes before leaving. The wrecker showed up and hauled off the van and it was finally quiet again around our house. I was still so nervous, I decided to sleep on the couch for a while next to Craig in his recliner (his new bed, post-surgery). It was probably 2 a.m. before I finally fell asleep. So, needless to say, I am exhausted today!

Our neighborhood has had a few incidents involving the police in the 5 years we've lived here but never anything close to this level. I'm just glad they caught the guys and hopefully nobody was hurt. So, for my friends who live close by me, if you saw any of this, now you know what happened if you didn't already.