snow!!!!

It snowed today in Texas...here's a video I took with my cell phone on the way home from work. I wish it turned out better...the snowflakes were HUGE!!!! The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever!!!

Random Photos

Tristan in time-out wearing his transformers costume

Henna...done by my friend Tas
right hand
left palm
left hand
We put up the Christmas tree...I think this is the earliest we have ever gotten it put up :-)

Pumpkin Cake Balls

Today I decided to bake...not something I usually take the time to do--unless I'm getting paid :-)

So I decided to make some cake balls but make them pumpkin flavored. I don't like pumpkin so didn't try them...but Jason liked them and even the kids (who don't like pumpkin usually) thought they were pretty good.

I used this recipe from Mom's Cookbook (the one dad and mom put together awhile back)

Pumpkin Cake
2 cups pumpkin
4 eggs
1 cup oil (recipe said butter flavored...I used regular)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
I also added about 1/2 tsp ginger and 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Cream pumpkin, eggs, sugars, and oil...Add dry ingredients...Bake in ungreased pan at 350 for 40 minutes

Then once the cake cooled I crumbled it all up and added 1 tub of cream cheese frosting.
I formed that mixture into balls and then chilled them in the freezer.
While the cake balls were chilling I melted white chocolate bark coating.
Once the coating was melted I dipped each cake ball into the chocolate and allowed it to harden on wax paper...I also sprinkled the top of each cake ball with some cinnamon sugar.

Here's some pics:

I also made Jason's favorite dessert today...Pumpkin pie...now to see if he can eat them both before they go bad :-)

Halloween!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Take a Bumblebee, Dark Rose Maiden, and Goddess Fairy and add in Hannah Montana and Anakin Skywalker....Now that 's Halloween!!!!

Tristan and School

Well, here's an update. About 3 weeks ago we had a teacher conference for Tristan. His teacher mentioned that she was having problems with Tristan being "off-task" a lot and "roaming" the classroom instead of sitting in his seat. Overall, it didn't seem like a big issue and she kept saying that she knew that Tristan is very smart and that even though he gets distracted easily he is still learning...even when it doesn't look like he is in class. We asked her to keep us updated on what was happening in the classroom so we could reinforce the correct behaviors at home. We gave her our contact numbers and email and told her that email was usually the best way to contact us unless it was urgent. So a week later, we get 2 "disciplinary reports" home for Tristan (no email/no calls). One was for "eating dirt" on the playground...one was for "pulling his pants down in the bathroom". Ummm, he's 6 and a boy. Anyway, in response to those reports we sent in a letter reiterating that we wanted to be notified of any of his behaviors so that we could work with him at home. We also said that we hadn't received any communication prior to these reports coming home that these were still issues. Well, the teacher got the letter and called us up (talked to Jason) and was quite offended by the letter. Long story short, we asked for an ARD meeting (kinda like a conference--with Speech, OT, PT, teacher, parents, principal, etc) and the first thing out of the teacher's mouth was "well, if you want another teacher, that's fine". That has really frustrated us!!! So today, we got an email about how Tristan was so distracted this morning that he had to be sent to the office to do his work. Jason and I then went up to the school...talked to Tristan, and scheduled a sit-down meeting with the principal.

Our meeting with the principal was only for 20 minutes but we feel it went well. We were able to voice our concerns and get her take on the situation also. We have a tentative ARD meeting on Thursday of next week. We will be doing further testing on Tristan just to see if we can get any more answers about his needs and what can help him (psychological, etc). Hopefully, these evaluations can give us more info about Tristan and his delays. We also had a parent/teacher conference for Rehanyn today (she has Tristan's AWESOME Kindergarten teacher). Rehanyn is doing well and her teacher is very happy with her progress. Mrs. C was also willing to let us talk to her about Tristan and said that she would talk to Tristan's 1st Grade teacher and see if she could give her some pointers about how to best make Tristan pay attention. We LOVE Mrs. C!!!!!

So that is where we are just now. Just pray that we can get this figured out so that Tristan's teacher isn't frustrated ('cause that's what we think is happening) and so that Tristan has a GREAT year in 1st grade!

Tanya

Cakes...some of the latest :-)

Here are some of the latest cakes I've done

a 3rd Birthday cake

A baby shower cake

another baby shower cake


I know it's hard to see but this is a 3rd birthday Tinkerbell cake


Cheerleader cake

a birthday cheerleader cake

Ashleigh's birthday cake (at our house) (littlest pet shop)

Rehanyn's birthday cake (strawberry shortcake)

Adreyn's birthday cake (littlest pet shop)


Dora cake

Rehanyn's Haircut

Rehanyn cut her hair by herself again...so I took her in and got her hair cut...here's some pics :-)


Cute, huh!!! Her hair used to be down to the center of her back...

Twins...Or Not :-)

It would seem that Tristan and my niece Catie (Tamra's oldest) have something in common....

Here's Tristan

Here's Catie

They are only 5 months apart in age (Catie is older) so I guess it's just right for them to be losing teeth together :-)

Fun, Fun, Tooth Fairy Fun!

So, I was at work on Friday...working short staffed (we needed 2 more nurses), we had the most sick babies we have ever had in the NICU, (we had 8 ventilators in use---crazy!!!!). I was running around like crazy (well, okay, more crazy than usual)...................................and for some reason my text message alert on my cell phone kept going off, over and over :-) Well, after my husband called me on the regular phone I got to check my text messages and this is what I found...at 7:29 he sent this one




Then at 7:49 I got this one LOL


My crazy, silly boy had pulled both of his top front teeth about 20 minutes apart. While those teeth were loose, they really weren't loose enough to pull...but I guess Tristan decided that it was time those babies came out...either that or he decided that he wanted some tooth fairy money!!!
Here are some more pics of our toothless wonder! LOL!!!!!