September 19, 2011 We put an offer on a new home...

We have always rented homes and now it was time for us to buy our first home. I worked on our finacial part for a year. We made a decision years ago to live with no credit cards or debit. Well when you're wanting to buy a home you need some credit. After speaking with a banker we got it all figured out.

So on September 19, 2011 I met with our realtor to look at 5 homes. The first 4 homes were not for us. The last home had been on my radar for a few weeks and I was really excited about looking at this house. I was on my lunch break so I thought if I really like a house I could bring Russell by later that evening. When I walked into this house I knew I wanted to live in it. It had everything we wanted.

My favorite things about the house: open living, kitchen, dining and breakfast area. Huge master bedroom, Split floor plan and large walkin closets in all three bedrooms. Oh also the baby's room was already painted for a baby. We only had to paint Ethan's room.

So I called Russell and said he needed to come see this house I had just seen. Good thing the homeowners were out of town and we were able to come back to the house later that evening. Russell looked and it and said he liked it. We decided to put an offer on it that night and they accepted it two days later. We closed on the house October 19 and moved in on October 22.

I have to give a shout out to all my wonderful friends. I was 7 months pregnant and not able to lift or even stand for long periods of time. They stepped up and helped me pack and move. I used up all my favors while I was pregnant. My friends even helped unpack the house! Thank you Shelly, Lisa, Laura, Camille, Ashley and Sherry for all the time that you spent helping with our move. We couldn't have done it without everyones help.

I'll post pictures soon. They are on my other computer.

It has been a long while...

Well I'm finally taking a moment to update my blog. I would have never guessed it would be this long since my last update. Our lives have completely changed in the last year and a half. So here goes a small marathon of postings. Hope you enjoy.

How Ethan took the Big News

I didn't know when to tell Ethan I was pregnant. So after traveling to Bama I decided to tell him the day we returned home. So here is how it played out.

Russell said I could have the pleasure telling him. I was like how nice of you honey. So I sat Ethan down on the bed and said "I have something very important to tell you. What I'm about to tell you will change your life forever". I told him to think about that and come back in a little while and I'll tell him more. So he comes back and I said "Well what do you think?" He said "We are moving?" I said "no". He said "I'm gonna have a baby brother or sister?" I said "well yes".

So he proceeded to cry. He said "I don't want to have to take care of a baby. And I don't want to share my room and I don't want to run out of food." I assured him that It was Mommy and Daddy's responsibility to take care of the baby. I also said that the baby would have it's own bedroom and not to worry that he will have plenty of food to eat.

I was trying to to laugh at this but he is only 8 yrs old and the things kids worry about it so interesting to me. I ended up telling him to sleep on it and we will talk about it in the morning.

The next morning I went to wake him up and asked him right away "How do you feel about being a big brother now?". He smiled and said he liked it. I got him a shirt that says "Hey Everyone I've got BIG news... I'm going to be a BIG Brother!" He loved it . He got to wear it and tell everyone that he was going to be a big brother.

Since then he has gotten to hear the heart beat and watch my belly grow. He has asked questions and has really accepted it very well.

He did tell me not to tell any of his teachers because he wants them to think he is still the only child. Apparently if you are the only child you get special treatment at school. There were only 3 kids in 2nd grade that were the only child. I told him he was no longer going to be in the category.

Big News....

It has been a really long time since I've actually blogged. The main reason is I'm pregnant. Yep you've heard it right. The first 15 weeks have been very rough. Not doing anything other than laying down and eating every couple hours.

Ethan has had the most boring summer yet. We haven't even made it to the beach this summer...and we live 30 mins away. He has been a very big help during my sickness. I would just say Ethan and he would be right by my side. I believe he was so helpful because he must have been watching something on TV in the living room that he wasn't suppose to be watching (like Spongebob). Or he was eating on the couch and didn't want to get caught. All of that was the least of my worries. All I wanted to do was lay in bed and try to sleep and not be sick.

Now I am 16 1/2 weeks along and feeling much better. I'm still very tired but I hear that is suppose to go away.

We are not going to find out what we are having. It will be a big surprise. Russell wants a girl, Ethan wants a boy and it doesn't matter to me. We have a couple name picked out but are going to hold off on telling anyone just yet. I'm trying to involve Ethan in as much as possible so that he can feel involved.

Got a lot of posting to do so I'm ending this one for now...

Accepted into the GT program

Ethan has been accepted into the GT (Gifted & Talented) program at school. He is really excited about it because they do lots of Science stuff. So I'm going to share two funny stories about Ethan & GT.

He came home one day and was telling me about a conversation he had at school with a boy in his class. The boys asks "What's GT" Ethan replies "Gifted & Talented" after thinking a minute the boy says "I'm talented" Ethan came back with "you have to be gifted too" the boy says "oh". When he told me this I immediately asked "What is gifted?" he said "I don't know".

This past week he came home and I asked him "How was GT? What did you do in class?" He said "I'm working on a PowerPoint presentation about Owls" I tried not to laugh since he is only 8 yrs old talking about PowerPoint. So I said "what do you mean PowerPoint?" He said "I get to create a PowerPoint all about Owls and put sounds and pictures in it." I just said "oh that sounds like fun" He said "yeah but I really wished I had my own flash drive"

Let me just say I couldn't stop laughing at either one of these conversations. I really do feel old when my 8 yr old is talking all about computer stuff and needs a flash drive. I was almost 30 when I worked with PowerPoint and about 27 when I got my own flash drive.

He just keeps me laughing and I love that so much. :)

Time for a haircut ....

A couple weeks ago I told Ethan it was about time to get his hair trimmed. So we were lucky enough to have our hair lady working Saturday morning. We had to wait about an hour and while we were waiting Ethan decided he wanted to cut it all off. He no longer wanted the long hair. I've been letting him make his own decisions on most things. I told him he could do whatever he wanted to. It didn't matter to me. So I took a before pic and an after picture. Enjoy!




He is cute no matter what. :)

Russell

Russell was diagnosed with hypothyroidism last year in March. I kept telling him he looked swollen. Well see the picture below. These are his drivers license pictures from 2010. The one on the left was taken December 2010 and the one on the right was taken March 2010. He had two pictures taken because he passed his CDL (commercial drivers license). The hypothyroidism caused him to gain weight. He is back to looking normal now. That is if he continues taking his meds.

December

December went by quickly. It seemed like we just finished celebrating Ethan's birthday then it was time to celebrate Christmas and my birthday. Ethan and I made a Gingerbread house. Ethan loved it. I had gotten a really good deal on it the year before so we couldn't eat it but it was sure fun putting it together. Ethan actually dropped the gingerbread cookie part and it broke into a few pieces. Thanks to hot glue I was able to fix it right up. Then we decorated it.

Ethan had a Christmas play with his second grade class. He was a tree. Hopefully this will be the first and last time I have to buy him tights. LOL. Ella and Mady Claire are enjoying the tights now. The Christmas play last about 20 minutes and was great! Short and sweet just like I like it.


Before we knew it Christmas was here and our house was a complete disaster! Ethan was a little spoiled this year. I find that the older he gets the more expensive his gifts get. :) We enjoyed a nice and quite Christmas day and then celebrated my birthday in the evening with a few friends.

Ethan turns 8

Ethan had his birthday in Alabama with a few family around and a cake. When we got home we had a big party for him at the house. We rented a moon walk and had Ethan's friends come over. The party worked out great. The weather was a little cold but the sun was shining bright all day long.

Thanksgiving

We spent Turkey Day in Bama. As always we enjoy our trip. Melissa and I did our annual day after Thanksgiving shopping trip. This year it started at midnight on Thanksgiving day at Toys-R-Us. It started well until we reached the parking lot of Toys R Us and saw the thousand plus people waiting in line to shop. After 3 hours and watching a cold front with rain come in I finally reached the front door. While I waited in this line Melissa braved Walmart. She ended up picking me up as I finished shopping at Toys R Us. The car was packed but we still had Target, Sears and Kmart to go to.

We stopped at McDonalds for a coffee and a soda and headed to Target that opened at 4 am.We were about 200 people from the front of the line but we got right in and grabbed what we needed. I told Melissa I would meet her in the electronic dept to go ahead while I get a basket. Well when I just was about to the electronics dept my feet started to cramp and I couldn't walk. Melissa ended up getting everything we needed and I managed to make it back to the front. We only waited a few minutes in line to check out.

After Sears we had to go home and drop my car off because it was packed and pick up Melissa's minivan. Then we headed to Kmart and back to Walmart for there 5 am specials. We finally make it back home around 7 ish. Just in time for the kids to wake up and Todd to go to work. We took shifts on sleeping. It was crazy!!!

We are looking forward to Turkey Day 2011!

Ethan started 2nd grade

It is hard to believe Ethan is in the 2nd grade. He is doing very well. He continues to have all A's and works really hard at getting an A in conduct. He loves Science. He still wants to be a pilot when he grows up.

It's been a long time

I know it has been a long time since I've posted. I think even Melissa my sister has posted something more recent so here goes a marathon of posting.

The summer has come to an end

We have just 5 days until school starts. But who's counting. LOL.

Its been a very long summer at the Hughes house. We have spent many days at the beach, schlitterbahn (a water park) and hanging out with my friend Ashley who is a school teacher and has summers off.

We are all looking forward to getting back into a regular routine. I keep telling Ethan that he has to get up at 7 AM when school starts not 9 AM like he has been. I think he is going to understand that in 5 days. It should be interesting.

They posted the teacher names today at his school. He has Ms. Cato and we also found out that his best friend is in his class again this year. He is happy about that but I'm not so happy. Ethan tends to get into more trouble when he has his little buddy with him. We get to meet Ms. Cato tonight and drop off all his school supplies. It should be a lot of fun to see how much the other kids have changed over the summer.

I'm looking forward to school starting. Its hard to believe Ethan will be in the 2nd grade. Boy has time gone by quickly. :)

My new do...

I decided it was time to donate my hair again. I donated 12 inched to Locks of Love last week. There is a place here if you donate your hair you get a free haircut. So I donated it and didn't have to pay anything for it.

It's really nice now that my hair is not sitting on the back of my neck. I found myself putting my hair up in a ponytail a lot, so it was time for me to share my hair.

He says the funniest things....

Ethan has been coming to work with me lately since school is out. One thing I do is scanning. Our company is going paperless so there are things to scan in on a regular basis. He loves to help me scan. He controls the mouse and I use the keyboard.

One of the girls in our office walked by and her hair was down. Her hair is very long...past her bottom. He says "Heather has really long hair" I agreed. Then he said "I wonder what is the world record for long hair?". I said "I don't know". He said "look it up on the computer. you can type without looking at the keyboard and you can read a lot faster than me so you should look it up on Guinness World Record.com and I can't spell that and then read it to me". By the time he finished telling me all this I was on the floor laughing.

He went into this long run on sentence that made me laugh. I don't even know if he took a breath during this sentence. He cracks me up.

I ended up telling him I couldn't look it up at that moment but that is something we can do at home on our personal time.

The Dentist

Ethan had his dentist appt last week. He was so excited to go and get his teeth cleaned. He doesn't like the x-ray part because it makes him gag and it hurts. Bless his heart he got the gag part from me. I can't stand the x-rays.

His teeth were great. They put sealants on his molars because the calcium did not form correctly. His two front teeth should be fully grown in within the next 6 months.

He was excited he got a new toothbrush and some floss. He loves to floss his teeth.

Summer is here....

The summer has begun. We decided to buy Season Passes to Schlitterbahn which is a water park in Galveston. We spent the whole day there on Sunday.

My favorite part of the water park is the Lazy River that is Huge. Well now it is Ethan's favorite part too. He even asked me this morning if we were going to Schlitterbahn on Friday so he could play in the lazy river.

Ethan went on his first real water slide and came out of the tube crying. Then he proceeded to tell me I "forced" him to ride it. After he calmed down he played in the lazy river for a few minutes and then asked me if he could ride the water slide again....the one I "forced" him to ride. He rode it again and loved it. He makes me laugh.

We have also gone to the beach in Galveston. I figured we better get the beach out of the way before the oil reaches it. The beach was covered in seaweed. It bothered me but not Ethan. Ethan and his friend Zak were playing with the seaweed all day.

School is out

First grade has come to an end. Ethan will be going into 2nd grade in August. He managed to pull of the Honor Roll with his conduct. His grades were 96 and above.

His last day of school was June 3rd. The night before we had a horrible storm blow through. When I dropped him off at school which is 5 houses down and across the street, the school had no power from the storm. They decided to keep the children until 9:30 am if the power did not come back on so they can be counted present and then call the parents to come pick up the kids.

I received my call at 9:45 stating the power was still off and we could pick up our children if we wanted to. I headed to the school since they didn't have A/C and brought Ethan to work with me.

Ethan is enjoying his summer. He either comes to work with me or stays at a friends. I've got a room set up at my office just for him. We have a TV with the Wii hooked up and then he has his Legos with other toys to play with. He also watches youtube on my phone.

Baseball

I thought I would do a video of Ethan's turn up to bat. He did a great job. He is one of the best hitters on the team. The following is a video of him hitting the ball. He is #15. Enjoy!

Now....its all I want for Christmas....

He is now toothless. Saturday afternoon we were on the way to a birthday party and I said to Ethan that it is time for his front tooth to come out. Of course he did not want to pull it. I said to him let daddy see how loose it is. Daddy had just enough time to pull once and it was out.

Ethan has it down. He gets his tooth and puts it in a little "Tooth Fairy Pillow" then places it under his pillow in the center and goes to sleep. He already knows he gets $2 from the tooth fairy. He loves to buy his lunch at school with his money. I don't agree with that because the school food is horrible!!!!!! But it is his money and he can do what he wants.