Caldwell Kolache Festival

There were train rides





Tractor exploration



Hot Dog Eating



Face Painting




Confession: I painted the girls faces before we left :), its next to impossible to paint a 1 year olds face, but she 'thought' she wanted to

Fruit Sharing



Cone Sitting



Oh yeah, and a Kolache Eating Contest


He's thinking, do I really want to do this?








An interview with the local paper


Kolache Eating champion, 2 years in a row..remember last year?

Just call me Janitor

I think I have earned my PhD in Janitorialism in the last 48 hours. It started with a misjudgement on my part when Jericho was running around with my water bottle, playing keep away with Blythe and probably drinking more than she needed. About 30 seconds later she spit up/threw up, but it was all clear water and didn't have that ever so distinguished smell of throw up. I didn't think too much about it and we went on with our morning. Jericho went down for her morning nap while Blythe and I packed our lunches for a much anticipated park and picnic date with friends. We woke Jericho up at 11, threw (do you see a theme here?) her in the car and we were off. Just before arriving to the park I heard that undeniable sound of someone losing their breakfast. I asked Blythe, "Did Jericho just throw up?," Blythe responded, "yes, but her is o.k." I told Blythe that we needed to go home because Jericho was sick and she really turned on the charm with her desperate NEED to hang out with her friends so I conceded and said that we could play as long as Jericho didn't throw up again. I warned the friends that I would hold Jericho and to keep their kids away. I think we were there for all of 10 minutes when Jericho sealed the fate of the day and I was left covered in throw-up, with a baby on my hip also covered in throw-up, a toddler who refused to leave and instead of kicking and screaming stripped down to her underwear [where do kids come up with these things], not to mention the car seat that was a far cry from clean after a few disinfectant wipes and a cool breeze.

Up until today neither of my kiddos had ever thrown-up and thus I had not been thrown-up on, but now we have that first taken care of....I am thinking this is a first that doesn't need to make it into the baby book. By noon all was well, I had washed and hung the car seat cover and straps out (against my better judgement knowing that I would probably have more laundry to add to it, but I couldn't stand the thought of that just sitting in the washing machine and festering) and Jericho seemed to be feeling MUCH better....I will save you the play by play on the rest of the day, but lets just say that there was plenty more throw-up and diarrhea to be cleaned, so the only thing that needs to throw up in this house now is a large container of bleach to sanitize the house, but the reality is that your newly graduated Janitor will be scrubbing the place down as if it is the center of time square and we are about to have our Thanksgiving feast sans plates.

As of this morning everyone is back to their cheerful lovely selves so it was time for a park and picnic make-up that I had promised Blythe. The cooler weather delivered, the ducks ate the bread and quacked, and my girls were happy which means Mommy was happy. Jericho, unprompted, pointed to a duck and said "duck." - beaming mom followed.




Apparently Blythe was not shelling out the bread fast enough so the duck helped himself...Blythe was not amused.


Her solution was to sit in the tree and hide from the ducks..not really, this picture was taken a while later, but it made a better story.










Jericho had a good time feeding the ducks too...when she decided to feed them instead of herself








As mom's we know "say cheese, smile" never gets us that genuine smile that we are looking for, yet we do it every time and the result is something like this












Watch out for the slides, they are FAST


This is a picture of Mike and Blythe sorting out who is who, it went some thing like this
Mike: I'm the Papa and your the Mama
Blythe: No BAB's the baby
Mike: [Lilly is already in the stroller] o.k. we have two babies like twins
Blythe: No, BAB's a big girl and Lilly's the baby
Mike: k' we have a toddler and a baby

The wind storm we had the other day got the best of one of our trees...

A New 3 and a New House

The start of our jam packed weekend started with a very special little girl turning three. We celebrated Blythe’s TowMater birthday party with good friends good food, and a good swim, thanks to everyone who celebrated with us.




[this was my FIRST attempt at pinata making..cut me some slack]










[I never would have guessed it would make it through three rounds of toddler hitting, honestly I thought it would break as soon as we hung it up]

























First thing the next morning we packed up and headed to San Antonio for a house hunting trip. Jason will start his job [gasp] October 3rd so we needed to find THE house ASAP so we could all move to San Antonio together. We had a realtor lined up (of course I negotiated a discounted percentage since we were going to make this happen fast and you know most things in life are negotiable you just have to be willing to negotiate ), our loan pre-approved, and a list of 18 houses that according to the online pictures, which can be deceiving, we thought we would be interested in. After the first days visit of 10 houses Jason and I were a little discouraged, we saw what we thought were our top 10 houses and none of them came close to given us warm fuzzies. We did find one that was in an area that we really liked and had some acerage, but the house wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, so we had the original 8 more for the next day plus an additional 3 in the Fair Oaks Ranch area that we were smitten with from the first day. I asked Angel, the realtor, to start us in Fair Oaks in the morning with high hopes that we could find THE one. The first one we went into on the second day was already a vast improvement from the day before. We had a ranking system going and the first day we never go over a 3 out of 5. We left the first house of the second day both in the 4+ range so already a great start. Then we made it to the second house where we might have lingered for and hour and a half, putting us late and in need or rescheduling the other houses. We hit up the rest of the houses on day two, but nothing spoke to us like house #2 on day 2, so to the offer table we went. I was a little nervous because this house was at the top of the price range, not been on the market too terribly long, price hadn’t dropped at all, and I though it was worth at least 20k below what they were asking. It is a GREAT house, but needs some updates. We put in our official offer around 4pm on Monday and waited. We were hopeful that we would hear something back on Monday, but no such luck. We were sweating it and killing ourselves with speculation, ‘are they not even going to counter?’ ‘are they taking time to sleep on it?’ The next morning we got word of a very reasonable counter offer, but we weren’t willing to call it a done deal just yet, we countered once more, fully expecting them to come back once more in the middle and then be done. Jason stayed at the hotel while Jericho took her morning nap and Claudia, Blythe, and I went for a walk. Somehow I MISSED a call and when I listened to the voicemail I was jumping with job the Good news was that they accepted our counter and the GREAT news was that Angel was able to schedule the inspection for 2pm THAT day which would save us a 6 hour round trip drive within the next 7 days to get the inspection done! I raced back to the hotel to give Jason the fantastic news and we packed up and headed to Boerne (the closest town to our new house, 8 miles) to have lunch and walk around. We found lots of locally owned restaurants with very high ratings and a beer garden… they even have our bank in that small town; clearly we picked the right area.

Here is a sneak peek of our new house and 1.4 acres as of October 5th!


[there were deer everywhere!]




[outdoor shower and bar!]