Chance to Breathe

Life has been extra hectic lately, so it's been a while since I last blogged. My apologies, but I finally have few minutes to blog and brag!

T1 has been doing amazing lately! His soccer team had a fantastic season this year. It's been so exciting to watch. He's been with the same group of kids for about three years and, let's be honest, they've never been good. They stuck it out, though, and every single player showed tremendous improvement this season. I know I'm biased, but T1 was particularly awesome, making the games so much fun to watch! The result of the team's hard work and perseverance is that they have advanced to the regional championship tournament and they are super excited! The tournament is in a few weeks and if they do well then they'll advance to the state championship. Stay tuned...

We got T1's report card the other day and his lowest grade was a 96. He hasn't had a B since 5th grade -- I'm so proud of him! He says he wants to be valedictorian of his class when he graduates. I love that he has goals and aspirations for himself!

T1 also ran a 5-mile race the other day in just over 37 minutes. Amazing! At first the results said he was first place in his division, but another kid had an issue with his chip and they adjusted his time to beat T1 by a couple seconds. T1 was a little disappointed, but we showered him with tons of praise for his awesome time and he was fine. Now he says he wants to do a half-marathon next year and I bet he can do it. We'll see!

The little ones are doing great, growing bigger and getting more enjoyable each day. T2 is getting sweeter as he gets older and T3 is getting funnier as he gets older. They both love their new baby cousin, Bailey. They stayed the night at Aunt Lisa's the other day and T3 kept saying "I hove shoo" (I love you) to Bailey and telling Lisa "I make her happy?". So cute!

Every night when we put the little ones to bed, we let them each pick a few toys to sleep with. T2 usually crashes pretty quickly, but T3 stays awake secretly playing with his toys. We go in their room multiple times and tell T3 to be still, be quiet, close his eyes, etc. The other night he was asking if he could wear T2's full body Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume to bed. We said no, continued to scold him for playing with toys, and checked on him regularly until 11:00 p.m., at which time we were led to believe he was asleep. Well, the next morning we found him asleep in his bed dressed in that TMNT costume--it was even zipped up all the way in the back. We never heard a thing. The other night when they stayed the night at Lisa's, Lisa checked on him and he had all his toys lined up on the headboard and was jumping on the bed (T2 was asleep next to him). As soon as he saw Lisa, he threw himself down and pretended to be asleep. Such a sneaky non-sleeping stinker!

One last thing, Santa came to New Braunfels last night to light the Christmas tree that is set up in the circle downtown. Matt took the boys and the little ones had so much fun. Apparently, T2 is Mr. Social - Matt said T2 saw so many kids he knew. When Santa was coming down the street, T2 and a couple of his friends who were close by were chanting at the top of their lungs "Santa! Santa! Santa!". When Santa passed, they were super excited and yelling and waving crazily to get his attention. When they did a countdown to light the tree, T2 screamed the numbers. Sounds like it was a ton of fun! I hate that I missed it. Yesterday was the most important day of the year at my work (score release for almost 25,000 teachers), so it was a mandatory 10-hour work day. :(