Christmas in Katy

What a great Christmas present right!  A brand new house!  Yes it was great other than we moved in two days before.  We had more "presents" than any other year and probably all years combined it was one huge Christmas.   Luckily Uncle Alan decided to come and visit and boy did that help us have a lot of fun.
We played Lego's

 

 

 

We of course had the traditional Jepsen(Auger) family chocolate roll! 

 

We built shelves in the garage

Moving Out

Ah moving day!  We have had two moving days this year.  I highly recommend never moving and especially never moving twice in just a couple of months.  The first move I had a lot of tears.  We loved our Raindance house.  We have so many memories,  it was our "first" home, we brought both of our boys home here,  just a few days before we moved, we also learned that we had been chosen to be the parents of a little girl.  So many happy memories were made here!  We made lots of really good friends here in The Woodlands and we are so grateful for all of them.  Luckily the first move wasn't too bad, we just moved around the corner.  Eric had about 3 weeks in between quitting Exxon and starting his new job with Murphy and boy did we get a lot done during that time.  We got our house ready to sell, sold it in one day and filled up a storage unit with a lot of our stuff.  We also had a chance to find a new house in Katy and to also get used to the idea of moving.  Sometimes doing things we know we should still is hard. 

Our last little pic in front of our house!

Don't worry when we moved to Katy it took almost 2 large moving vans to get us there. 

I kind of wish all of our stuff fit in just this truck

I sent Eric to Walmart to get free boxes! 

Happy 5th Birthday Matthew

 

 

 

I can't believe Matthew is five!  It still seems like yesterday that we had a whirlwind 24 hours and he was placed in our arms to love and take care of.  What a beautiful gift he has been to our family! 

At age 5

Matthew has gone through quite a growth spurt. It is crazy to see how tall he is getting. He is really starting to become such a big boy and a good big brother. He loves motorcycles, Legos and fast cars. He likes to dance and wiggle around. He recently found the music on our ipad and turns it on all the time just to dance and jump. I encourage it because it uses up good energy which he has plenty. J



 

Yes he still sleeps on the floor:)  Buying a bed for this kid was such a waste....

The boys loved the balloons, we even had to move them to the rental house with us three weeks later:)

I had such great plans for a cool birthday cake but Matthew wanted to decorate his own.

So we made a number five and he colored it in.  He was so proud and he had a great time! 

 

Of course there was the traditional birthday golf. 

 

 

Five years feels like quite a milestone for some reason. Our lives have changed so much because of this not so little boy. What a miracle he is in our lives. I attempted a little collage of his last five years, I really need to figure out photoshop, but it is pics of him so hopefully you can see past the craziness of it. 

 

WE LOVE YOU LITTLE MAN!

 

 

Utah Trip - Yellowstone

So Eric ended up being in Vietnam about the time I was supposed to come home from Utah so I extended my stay.  I didn't want to go home to an empty house especially if I there was the annual Auger Family Yellowstone trip planned:)

We had 9 of us going and so my dad rented the "big van" so we could all go together.  It was such a great idea dn we wanted to plan a trip where all of the rest of the family could go in one big van. 

The beginning...

The famous Jackson Hole park Antler entrance. 

The Tetons behind us - Cannon didn't want to get out of the car:)

 T

We went to the Jackson Hole playhouse play.  The boys liked the dancing and the little bit of singing during the play. 

The park wildlife:)

The three musketeers.

My dad and brother Jared put together the jr ranger program for the kids.  It was so fun, they each got binoculars to find animals, a compass and then they could earn beads and even got a bear claw when we saw the real grizzly bear!  That was so cool! 

My cute parents!  Thanks for an awesome trip!  Contrary to what Matthew said, they both loved the trip and are still talking about it. 

Me and my boys on one of the hikes to the falls. 

The gang!

the Jr Rangers - This day they each got little foam pellet guns and got to practice shooting at targets.  My boys loved it. 

Climbing Sheep rock.  This was such a cool formation and the boys loved getting out of the car and climbing to get some of that energy out.   We were in the car for a long time and they did really well. 

 

Gotta end the trip with a visit to Old Faithful!   We packed so much into 5 days!  Thanks everyone for such a great trip!  See you again next year:)

Utah trip -2 (Eric's Family)

We got to spend some time with Eric's sister Kristy and her family.  We don't get to see them as much as we would like and the kids hadn't seen each other for almost  2 years.  We met up with them in Park Cityand did all the fun Park City things, riding the Heber Creeper, riding the Alpine Slide where Jean and Kirk joined us and  of course we ate yummy Cafe Rio. 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day I took all the kids to Dave and Claudia's house, so Kristy and Jary could celebrate their 10 year wedding anniversary.  We had a great time cooking hot dogs and roasting smores in their back yard.

 

 

 

Thanks everyone for such a great time!

Utah Trip - 1

We had such a great time in Utah this summer.  We packed so much into three weeks! 
We started off with the Spanish Fork Rodeo - my kids loved it! 

 

The next day we went to the Spanish Fork parade.  The boys loved dancing in the streets.  We played with the cousins had a cookout and enjoyed being together with family.

 

 

 

We also got the opportunity to go to the Jepsen Family reunion and spend the rest of the week at Grandma Greats!  I have so so many memories at her house growing up with aunts uncles, and cousins.  I was excited to let my kids get to know all of their cousins and extended family.  I had a great time reuniting with my cousins and the rest of my family as well.    We played hard, had a treasure hunt, had relays games, a bridal shoer and spent a day at the lake.  The one mishap was that Matthew walked into a moving wooden swing and had to get 6 stitches in his little forehead.  Thank goodness for Dr Kerry my cousin who was able to stitch him up and still get us up to Bear Lake.  In all the craziness, I even forgot to take a picture.   Here is the happy boy with a bandaid:)  Our ears were ringing just a little when the stitches were all finished.  He was such a trooper during the whole thing. 

 

 

We also got to the Auger Family Reunion and had some yummy food - love me some good dutch oven.  The kids got rides from Great Grandpa Auger on his four wheeler.  We had such a great time catching up and visiting with family I don't see as much as I should.

 

 

 

 

 

Whoa July what a month:)

So Eric came home one day and said, hey i talked to a recruiter..... and as I write this post, the rest is history.  Eric wasn't totally loving his assignment, but I didn't realize he wanted to look until he realized it when the recruiter called.  He ended up interviewing with a few companies, having second interviews, squeezing in a trip to Vietnam and then accepting a new position in Mid August.  Oh and did I mention that I was in Utah for most of that time.  With this job change we will need to move to katy to be closer to his job.  So the house went up on the market at the end of August and sold within two days.  It was a lot to take in so quickly.  We decided that we better find somewhere to go so the next week we spent looking for a house in Katy and luckily found one fairly quickly.  We move into the new house in December.  So wow a lot of changes.  I am sure there will be lots of blog entries about all the changes. 

I woke up to this one morning:)

 

Literally all over their bodies, legs, feet, fingernails..... yet another reason to remember that silence is not golden.

Family Vacation

In May our good friends Dave, Carly and their two kids came down to visit us.  We had such a great time but unfortunately forgot to take pictures.  We went to Galveston Beach, did all the aquarium stuff down there went on a date night, played some pinochle and just hung out.  We love hanging out with them and only wish we could live closer to each other. 

Random May

Random days in May:

Cannon finally climbed out of his crib...yep he is 3 and just figured it out.  I loved it, it made bedtime so easy.  Anyway with the official climbing out, we needed to give him a big boy bed and he helped put it together.  This is his thumbs up:)

 

Cannon had a cough and it moved to his lungs and we had a little wheezing unfortunately he had to go on the nebulizer which we lovingly called "the superhero mask".  That was the only way we could get him to use it 3 times a day.   The steam bugged his eyes to he wore sunglasses most of the time too.  So cute!

 

 

Matthew finished Soccer and got his first trophy - Thanks Coach!

 

 

Matthew and Cameron - his cute little crush.

 

 

 

 

 

Matthew starts Soccer

In April, Matthew started soccer and he was so much fun!  Truly watching 4 year olds play soccer is one of the funniest things I have watched.  I am sure it is mostly because they run all different ways and if they are lucky they get the ball and maybe even in the goal.  He got pretty good and even had his first little crush on a girl on his team - Cameron.  She was super cute and really was the only one who could "play" soccer.  

 

Cannon got involved in practices and this is him "teaching" the rest of the team:)

Cannon's 3rd Birthday

Cannon turned 3!  I can't believe how much he has grown and changed.  Cannon has really turned into such a big boy and is starting to lose the squishy babyness.   He is such a tease when it comes to Matthew and loves to get a rise out of anyone and then just laughs.  His personality has come out and he loves to laugh about silly things.  He has what can only be explained as a “baahaa” laugh that he uses all the time when he thinks something is funny or says something funny.   He still loves to play trains, cars, Buzz Lightyear.  His new love is to do puzzles – he has a few favorites, cars, toy story and some construction puzzles we got.  His favorite shows he loves to watch are “The Incredibles” and “Dora”.  This year he wants a Thomas the Train cake for his birthday, so we are working on which one to make.  He saw me looking for one to copy on the computer and he chose every one he saw.  He has continued to speak really well and I love that he can just tell me what he wants and or needs.  He loves popsicles and Pez treats and hopefully I can use those things to somehow get him out of diapers but right now he really is not interested.  J   One of his new phrases is “shall we” we aren’t sure where he learned it but it sure sounds funny coming out of a little mouth.   He is such a sweet calm little boy and we are sure glad he is a part of our family.