Okay...Allow me just one

...post about Twilight!

The movie opens tomorrow and we are going to see it tonight at 12:15 am. Granted the theater will probably be crowded with a bunch of teenage girls (who had to promise to do chores for a month in order to stay out late on a a school night) but I am SO excited! Whenever I am sitting at the computer with a few minutes and I've caught up on reading blogs, checking facebook, etc, I find myself watching and re-watching Twilight trailer and movie clips on the Twilight website. Is that pathetic? I don't really care. It's probably more pathetic that I have a crush on a fictional 17-year old charcter! Some people don't believe that the movie will be as good as the book, but I'm not worried. Just the title of this review "Swooningly True to the Book" puts me at ease. Alright, so that's all. Thanks for allowing me one post to be a total nerd!

Halloween...Finally

We had a fun Halloween this year. Every year the kids get more and more excited about holidays! I love it. I'm a big fan of holidays in general and can't wait for Christmas this year! The weekend before Halloween we took the kids to Caleb's school for Fall Fest, which was a blast! They had tons of carnival games. Caleb loved them and called them "challenges". Ellie was kind of take-it or leave-it about playing games until she realized that you got a piece of candy every time you played one (a girl after my own heart)!
On Halloween night we decided to head out while it was still light (about 6:00) which was just perfect. We met up with the neighbor kids and they ran from one house to the next. Ellie would run and show me her new treat after each house, with such excitement- what a doll! After Trick-or-Treating we went back home to check out the loot and pass out candy! Here are some pics from the night.

With the neighbors, Lauren, Nick and Pauli


What a sweet Snow White- I don't even know where she got the idea to be Snow White, we've never even seen the movie. As luck would have it though, my friend Selene had made a Snow white Costume when her little girl was Ellie's age, so she let me borrow it and it was SO much cuter than the ones at the store!

Tough little prize-fighter! Caleb was easy this year, he wanted to use his costume from last year- Yeah!

Every time we'd take a picture he'd put on his fighter stance, so funny!

Crowe's Nest Farm

I let Ellie skip preschool today so we could go with our friends to the farm to see the animals. I knew she would love it, as she is pretty obsessed with animals.

Do you know what type cow this is? You know you're in Texas when kids don't say "look Mama, a cow" they say "Look Mama, it's a longhorn!"



No fear. Although maybe she should have been a little more cautious, becasue as she was feeding a llama, a nasty emu came and bit her hand.

The one time today I got her to pose for me.

Here piggy, piggy

My little Dr. Doolittle

Sorry, I just couldn't help it...

My Garden

So, I've done a ton of gardening this summer/fall and my sister has been asking me to put up pictures for a while now, so here it is. I'm hoping all the perennials will get rooted well enough to survive the winter and come back teice as big next year! I'll cross my fingers!

Front Yard

oops, forgot to move the hose before taking a picture.

Thanks to Chris for moving that monsterous rock!

Underneath that far left window you can't really see, but I have 2 big Esperanzas (see below) and a new plumbago.

Esperanza blooms

The front porch and flower bed

My red and white impatiens did great! I was a little worried about them for a while because they look all dried up, but they were just getting so hot that I need to water them nearly every day.

Thanks to Chris for laying my lovely new brick patio. It's nice to have a place to sit when the kids are playing outside!

Too bad all my mums are on their way out, or this picture would have been really cool. The ones by the door were a golden orange, the you can still see a few of the bright yellow ones and the dark wine-colored ones in the pots with my new nandina (they are suppossed to turn red for the winter, we'll see how that goes!)

My new corner bed on the right side of the driveway

This one I did about 2 months ago and it is actually aleready starting to fill in.

There's a lot you can't see in this picture too. The Purple Heart is doing well (on the left side of the picture) then the small tree next to that is a lavender and white Crepe Myrtle. I've also got a few purple/blue Salvia plants on both side of the electrical box.

In the front is the Mexican Heather (see below), then my Mexican Petunia's and then some white and yellow Lantana (a classic in Texas!)

And that's trailing rosemary in the pots (a love the little blue flowers it gets and it smells SO good!)

Mexican Heather

My new bed in the front left corner of the yard.

The lighter green plants on both sides of that nameless bush are a Texas hardy hibiscus. We've had a few blooms already (I just planted them a few weeks ago). They are huge and deep red, unfortunately, they only last a day.

The tree that looks like sticks next to the bench is a red Crepe Myrtle (very popular here in Texas) they have beautiful bunches of tiny red flowers all season.

And the ones hiding in this picture:

Two dwarf salmon oleanders behind the bench (see below)

A row of dwarf Mondo grass along the sidewalk

and a corepsis tucked on the other side of that nameless bush (see below)

Dwarf Salmon Oleander blooms

Coreopsis blooms

Dear Santa

We were just talking to the kids about how we would be at Grandma's for Christmas. So they wanted to pretend to call Santa on the phone and tell him where to take the presents. Check out a portion of Ellie's "conversation" with Santa.

"This is Ellie Love Corbett. Please bring our present to Grandma and Grandpa's farm. And bring us lots of toys. And please bless Jesus that he will answer our prayers. And bring my brother, Caleb some toys too....."

So funny!

Impromptu swimming at the lake

And She's Off!!!

Baby girl started preschool last week. She goes 3 days a week from 9am-2pm. Which means I have NO kids at home. It's a very strange feeling (not that I'm complaining!) She was super-excited for her first day, but of course got really shy as soon as we walked through the door.


My little Kiwi all ready for school (the dress she's wearing inspired that nickname. She said it looks like a kiwi, and she's kind of right!)

Ready to go to her Rainbow class

What a big girl, and what a big backpack!

And he's off!!!!!

My baby boy is off to school! All day kindergarten, starting at 7:45am! Whew, what a change. School started last week and he's still doing really well. We got him an alarm clock that goes off at 6:30am. Then Itold him he's not allowed to come out of his room till he is dressed (shoes and all!) then he comes and wakes me up. I love it! I've set an alarm everyday but haven't had to use it once! He really seems to enjoy school for the most part. He gets a annoyed with the little things (I didn't pack him the right drink in his lunch, they sang a song that he already knew from preschool, he had to read a book about bears during centers and he doesn't like bears... blah blah..), but he'll have to get over that one of these days. He's already talking about new friends. He likes Hailey, because she wears sparkly shirts and she's pretty :)

Ready to go! I let Caleb choose his favorite outfit the night before school and this is what he came up with. I'm not really thrilled about the camo on camo look, but I've let this outfit slide enough times that he really thinks they go together, so who am I to say he can't wear it now (I mean they do "match" !)

On the way to school. We are lucky enough to have the school right in our neighborhood and close enough to walk. I may not be a morning person, but I have actually been enjoying our walk to school (ask me in January if I'm still walking!)

In front of Caleb's classroom with Ellie. Yes, they are siblings and yes, they have the same parents! Can you believe that is my baby girl with the tan, no... brown skin and sun-bleached hair!

All set and ready to go. They had blank sheets of paper to draw on before school really started. Well, Caleb's came home last week and instead of a picture he wrote a collection of numbers:

1-10, then 10-100 (by tens) then 100-1000 (by hundreds) and finally 1000-9000 (by thousands), maybe I'm biased, but I think he's brilliant!

Happy 4th Ellie!

So Ellie turned 4 on the 10th (Although her party was on the 9th, so we just went ahead and let her think that was her birthday). This year we let her have a big gymnastics party at the YMCA. It was great they had one girl that was there just for us and helped wrangle the kids and clean-up and everything and there was also a gymnastics teacher there to help the kids on the equipment. They all seemed to have a great time and enjoyed the pizza and cake and Ellie loved being the center of attention and getting all the presents (what 4-year-old doesn't?!) Here are a few pics from the fun day!

Spencer and Brenda's Wedding

Cute boys

Mama and her girl

Kids and Aunt Kim

Awww! Gettin' hitched!

The Corbett fam with the new bride!

What a good-looking bunch of siblings!

Lovely

Ellie thought it was so fun ot be at the wedding. She and Caleb were the only kids, so they felt really special and everyone wanted to talk to them. And she thought Brenda was royalty with her dressa nd everything, she was in awe!

The turned on some music and my kids went crazy those two are quite the dancers, especially Caleb! He's got some serious moves, it was so funny. I have a video below, but I took it sideways with my still camera, so it's flipped on the side, but still cute.

I WANNA TALK ABOUT ME!

This tag is a little different and a little fun (mostly becasue YOU are the one doing the work, not me!) Here's the deal...

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you (and if this isn't on there...I'll assume you're a procrastinator like me and will check back later!)

(thanks Robyn for the fun tag!)

Let's Play Catch.....

....Up

I know I've been MIA, and I really have no good excuse! So I'll take this chance to play catch up and blog about as much as I can remember from the last month (we'll see how far I get!)

Okay jump back to the end of May, please. Caleb finished up preschool and had graduation, so cute! He's gotten so smart this year and learned so much. He reads all the time (okay, we have to force him to read books, but he's always reading signs out the car window, car parts and models from his video game and other random stuff that always surprises me). Anyway here are a few pictures of smarty pants at his preschool graduation!

Kaiya, Ms. Laura, Noah and Caleb

Mama and "God's Little Warrior" - they all got these little t-shirts
and Caleb wore his for 4 days straight!

Caleb and his proud little sister

Onto the lazy month of June:

summer afternoon painting nails in the hammock

The kids did swim lessons for the first 2 weeks of June. they both really improved. I was pleasantly surprised.

Ellie is fearless, so she'll just take off in the water. They try and teach the freestyle stroke. When she swims underwater she can make it about 7 feet on her own. But if you tell her to do freestyle, move her arms and take breaths then she just flails around. Oh well, she'll get it.

Caleb used to be so terrified of even putting his face in the water. Now he is totally swimming on his own! I'm so proud of him. He's wearing a life jacket here, because they did water and boat safety on the last day.

On Monday they started another session of lessons. This time it last 4 weeks and they go 2 days a week. I'm excited to see how much they learn this time!

this past weekend (4th of July) we went up to Dallas for Spencer's wedding (Chris's brother) but I'll put those pictures in another post, cause there are quite a few!