Oreo

In the spring of 2011 Kylee's friend, Sara Hart, who lives up the street, found a little black and white tuxedo cat on the street near our house and brought it over to our house to see if it was ours.  He was really just a big kitten.  She and Kylee tried to feed him milk and sliced ham and he started hanging around the house.  Kylee named him Oreo.  He was a friendly but feisty with no fear of people and he was able to tolerate all the love Kylee wanted to give him.  Despite our insistence that we were not going to keep a cat, we final gave in.  Later in the year we took him in to get shots and get fixed.  Oreo was quickly a member of the family.

Kylee enjoyed playing dress up with Oreo, which most of the time he tolerated surprising well.  

100th day celebration and tooth lost

In celebration of the 100th day of school on February 1st  Julia had an assignment of creating a poster with 100 items.  In true Julia style she made the poster with jewels.  

As an extra celebration for the 100th day of school Julia lost her 1st tooth at school.

Julia lost her 2nd tooth on February 7, 2012.  When she left for school that morning her tooth was barely hanging on, but she wasn't ready to take it out yet.  She ended up losing it sometime during the school day and didn't even notice until she was leaving to go home and her tooth was not in her mouth.  All the students started looking in the classroom for her tooth.  Luckily her teacher Mrs. Lehr found it underneath the art easel.  She was able to bring it home and get money from the tooth fairy.

MamaRebecca's funeral

On January 25, 2012 MamaRebecca passed away after a slow four month downhill course that started with a stroke, a fall, and a broken leg that never healed.  Matt was on call and not able to go with me to the funeral.  I looked into flying by myself, but the tickets were really expensive.  I found out that all of my siblings would be there with their kids and mine would be the only grandkids absent.  So with the help of Carlos, we drove with the kids to Arizona.  We left San Antonio on Friday, the 27th of January and stayed the night at Grandma Mindy's house. The next morning we caravanned with everyone else up to Arizona.  When we got in to Arizona, the girls (Cynthia, Katrina, Camille, and I) went to help out at Ruth's house arrange some pictures and flowers.  My kids went with their uncles to the hotel to hang out.  Later that night the kids went swimming in the hotel pool and we ate pizza.
On Sunday, January 29th we went to MamaRebecca's church building to attend an English Ward.  It turned out to be our cousin Lisa's (Uncle Ed's daughter) ward.  During the day we went to MamaRebecca's house, but we didn't have both keys to the locks so we took pictures as a family outside of her house.

That evening we had dinner catered by the Azteca Bakery with the whole extended family. Later on that night they meet as siblings to discuss things and read the will. After that Katrina and my mom went to MamaRebecca's house to pick up things that my mom had given her.  She got some bowls and linens and the elephants that they had given her. She also got sheets and dish clothes to make aprons. It was sad that we didn't get to go in the house one last time.

The funeral was on Monday, January 30th (Madeline's birthday).  Many people attended the beautiful services held that morning in her church building.  Mariachi's bid her farewell at the graveside and the great grand kids showed their love by putting flowers on her casket.  We left from the graveside to drive back to El Paso. Then drove on Tuesday to San Antonio.

 

Hawaii 2

In January I had an ophthalmology conference on Maui.  It seemed like the perfect chance for Kristel and I to get away for a trip we have been wanting to take for several years.  On Friday, January 14, Grandma Mindy flew in to San Antonio to spend a week taking care of the kids, and early Sunday morning Kristel and I boarded our flight to Maui.   

On the small island Maui lodging is limited, and with my late registration there was no housing near the conference for the first part of the stay.  However, with a commute of about an hour we were able to stay at Kapalua Bay where we had spent our honeymoon 12 years earlier.  Unfortunately the actual hotel from our honeymoon was torn down to make room for multi-million dollar Ritz-Carlton condominiums (where we did not stay), but the Kapalua Villas was very nice.  This is the view from where we stayed.

The Kapalua Villas were condos and ours had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with a kitchen and living room.  It had been recently updated and was beautiful. It was on a different part of the island from my conference so it took an hour to drive each way.   

We explored the local restaurants and ate some great food.

I went to the meeting in the morning so Kristel ended up with a lot of relaxing time to catch up with reading.   She read books 2 and 3 of the tiger series and got into them enough that she brought her book along on a walk despite my teasing.  

We only stayed at Kapalua for 2 nights and then moved closer to the conference at Wailea where we stayed the other 2 nights.  We stayed at the Hotel Wailea which included a traditional Japanese bathhouse which I don't think we completely figured out.  The actual room was a little older and different from a typical American style hotel, but the gardens were beautiful.

We enjoyed Maui Tacos multiple times. 

Wailea Beach

The view of Molokini from Wailea beach.

The kids had a great time with Grandma Mindy and probably would have been content if we had stayed another week.  We were very happy to see them.  There is no doubt they are extra cute after having been away.

This is the schedule we printed out and left with Grandma Mindy.

Bunnless Burger Birthday

It has been fun having Uncle Carlos live here in San Antonio.  Trying to be better about not eating too many carbs, Matt made him a bunless burger cake to celebrate his 26th birthday.  I don't think anyone spared very many carbs that night though.

Randy x2

Matt had a "honey do" list to work on around the house while I was in Hawaii with my sisters and parents and he stayed home with the kids.  On his list was redoing the shelving in the closet of our guest room/office.  After I got back I was organizing the closet and sorting through things when I noticed the green backpack. I thought it was empty, but when I looked inside I found the original Randy that had gone missing 10 months before.  We had given up hope and thought he would never return from his vacation so we had already replaced him.

I called Julia and had her come look in the backpack.

Julia was so excited.  She immediately understood that it was her long lost Randy and that the one she had recently been loving was "New Randy", but she wasn't upset at all about being deceived.  She was happy to the point of giddiness to have TWO Randys and she spent the rest of the day having them talk to each other, play, and just get to know each other.  Fortunately, Julia has enough love for both of them.

Ringing in the new year

We had been working on reading the Book of Mormon as a family for three years.  We started out with just a few verses a day when the kids were little.  At the beginning of this year we figured out that if we read one page a day we could finish by October.  We fell behind and reevaluated several times.  In December we realized that we would have to read two pages each day to finish by the end of the year.  Near the end of the month we left town for the holidays and didn't read for the whole week.  We came home on the 30th of December and Matt was determined to accomplish our goal, so new years eve was spent reading the Book of Mormon for a couple of hours straight.  The kids were good sports and helped draw pictures about what was being read to help keep their attention.  The next time through we are trying to make it in a year.

Brayden's drawings

Kylee's drawings

Julia's drawings