"I Won't Grow Up" is my new theme song.

Once upon a time, I had a fabulous college roommate who would always send me emails with titles of songs. So this post is from "Peter Pan" because I really don't want my cute, adorable, innocent, sweet kids to grow up. And I really don't want to grow up either. I want to capture these moments in a jar, put them on a shelf and preserve it so I can enjoy it sometime in the future when my new theme song is from Bye Bye Birdie: "Kids! What's the Matter with kids these days?"

But, for now, I have my little proverbial mason jar open and ready to fill. 

Thanks to a fabulous conversation with my darling sister Sarah, I've decided to finally update my blog. Why? Well, because I know at least one person will read it and appreciate it!

I'm a visual person, however, so I much prefer sharing my life through pictures rather than words. Although a good combination of the two seems to work best.

So, first, Christmas 2012 was fun. Mark and Lily are best buddies:

But that was 9 months ago.

About 5 months ago, we had a fun trip to the Texas Ranger Museum and the kids played dress up, got a friend to make some AMAZING cupcakes and birthday cake for Mark's 7th birthday and Lily's 3rd birthday, and had some fun wading in the water while hiking out by Lampasas:

And here we are together and Aunt Tennie's 90th birthday this past July:

Lily is such a ham, she just cracks me up all the time. She says cute things all the time, and is counting to 60 almost all by herself, she can identify the number 100 and 1000, and is starting to read some very basic words. She LOVES to read. 

Mark is a quiet, shy fun and crazy kid. He's smart when it comes to building with legos and figuring out solutions to problems. He seems to enjoy 2nd grade so far, and is an awesome big brother to Lily. But he definitely has a crazy side to him, as you can see in his school picture below. I asked him if he did that face on purpose, and he said yes. And I asked, "Why? Why can't you just smile normal for the picture? What's the problem?" He replied, "I'm just crazy Mommy. That's the problem."

So, Sarah (and whoever else may actually stumble across this blog), I sure hope this blog was worth the wait. :-)

Halloween!

Lily and Mark are amazing. Craig took Mark to the football game by himself a week ago and an older lady sitting behind them commented on how amazed she was with Mark. She couldn't believe a little four year like him could sit still and act so well during the entire game. She was so impressed that she got up to go buy snacks and bought some M&Ms for Mark! Just another reminder of how blessed I feel for my wonderful family.

Taking the kids trick or treating last night was a blast. Lily quickly learned how to say "Trick or Treat" and threw a horrible crying fit if I tried to carry her little pumpkin candy basket. She was determined to carry it herself even if it dragged on the ground. I ended up carrying her most of the time, but it was still fun! Enjoy the pictures!

Holy Heat Wave! It's Summer!

As Mark watches the old "Batman" movie I find myself actually taking time to do something I rarely do: update my blog. I don't know what I can say that would be tremendously interesting or exciting besides saying I LOVE SUMMER! :-) It's my favorite season for many reasons:

A) Vacation time!

B) I'd rather be sweating than shivering

C) I LOVE spending time with the sweetest kids in the entire world.

I've already made a "to do" list with lots of things to do around the house and it's enormously nice to actually have time to keep my house clean. :-)

But, as they say, a picture's worth a thousand words. So I'll save my words and post my pictures.

You'll see me with Mark and Lily in the beautiful Texas bluebonnets. We also have pictures from our neighborhood pool and Lily's first time to swim in it. And there's a little picture of a bird nest on our back porch. There's 5 little babies in there!

Enjoy the pictures til next time!

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Everyone at the Santa stop during the BLORA Christmas lights

Lily Marie is just as cute as ever!

Daddy entertaining Lily

The crazy cousins! Kinsie, Lily, Kylie and Mark!

I'm about to embark on a treacherous journey through MUSICAL AUDITIONS! Yep, tomorrow I'm holding auditions for "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" that I'll direct. We perform at the end of March but it's going to be crazy busy until then. And I just hope I don't have a ton of parents angry that their kid didn't make it into the musical. :-(

But last Friday night we went to BLORA where they have an amazing series of lights you can drive through. It may not seem super fantastic until you actually drive through it. We went with Craig's Mom and Stepdad (Bill) and Kylie and Kinsie (my nieces). We had a blast stopping at their little shopping craft center. They have Santa there and you can get your picture with him, but the line was so long, we just opted to eat hot cocoa and play with the toys we bought instead.

I just finished making our family calendar that so many people enjoyed last year. I hope they enjoy it this year too!

Lily Marie

After a long recovery from a C-section, I'm finally well enough to post pictures about Lily Marie Hobbs. She's an amazingly good baby who doesn't fuss much. She likes to be in the middle of the action and cries when left alone in the room. But other than that, she's a very happy baby, much like Mark. He always seemed happy to just be alive. And Lily's biggest buddy is her big brother Mark and Lily seemed to love each other from the first time they met at the hospital (seen to the left).

And they're still buddies, as you can see in the photo I used that for the baby announcements where they're looking at each other. I'm just grateful for two fabulous kids.

A New Blog

Happy birthday Craig and happy birthday Mark! We celebrated both birthdays on Saturday, August the 8th, and I decided it was the best way to start my new Hobbs Family Blog.

You can see the cake I made for Mark's birthday from scratch, which is my favorite cake ever! It's from my Aunt Heidi, and it's a chocolate cake with cool whip and strawberries for the filling and a delicious chocolate ganache for icing. It was absolutely fabulous, if you like chocolate. It was gone before the end of the day.


And I'm still pregnant. It looks like we've scheduled the C-section for Tuesday, September 1st. We'll see if that ends up being the actual birthday. I'd like for it to be in August so the little girl doesn't have to wait a whole year to start school. But we've decided her name will be either Lillie Marie Hobbs or Lily Marie Hobbs. The jury is still out on the spelling.

While waiting for our new baby girl, I had fun planning Mark and Craig's combined birthday party Saturday. Lots of food, fun and presents, of course. My brother Paul helped take pictures while I played hostess, but here are a few pictures that I like the best.

First, here's the video from Mark's day care at Ms. Barbara's house (I hope it works):

And here's some pictures from our birthday party Saturday, August 8th:

Mark, Craig and cousin Kayla on Mark's new bike (Kayla loved it)

Our mess of toys: Mark's new Thomas the train set with Cranky (his favorite) and Kayla falling off Mark's new bike.

Mark playing with Cranky while I light up the candles on Craig's birthday cake.

And finally my dad looking at his birthday card since it was his actual birthday on Saturday!

And here's the video of Craig blowing out his candles (again, I hope it works). I'm the fat one on the left. :-)