Changes...changes...changes....

Well, I have determined that blogging on even a weekly basis is not one of my strengths. I seem to do pretty well with Facebook, so that's where most stuff ends up. But, for those of you don't don't read my Facebook snippets - here are the Days of our Lives :)

Dom started his SOPHMORE year on Monday! I can't believe it, but it's happened. He's taking a sports therapy class and weight training as his heavy hitters this year. Ha! I don't recall sports therapy class when I was in school. But, as Dom is so ready to tell me - I'm very old you know. He says he has learned his lesson from his stint in summer school, so we're hoping to see some A's on his report card for his History and Geometry classes.

He is playing football again this year so we'll see how that goes. They only have about 15-20 kids on the entire JV team so.....well, let's just say that it's probably a good thing that his school rating dropped from a 4A school to a 3A school (our enrollment dropped when the new HS opened). At least they don't have to play the top ranked schools with only 20 players! He's only had what I would consider one #3 injury (on a scale of 1-5 you know...you have to rank them. 1=bandaid and 5= emergency room!). His favorite thing so far? He's really enjoying "lighting people up"......I'm not sure what to say about that!

Let's see...we got a new dog. Diego has joined our family. He was owned by a friend at work who had been looking for a new home. We gave him a test drive and we love him. He's a giant, slobbering love bug. :)

That's all I've got for now...love you all!

Happy Birthday Wyatt Patrick Houston!!

Congratulations to Porter Montgomery Houston! He is a big brother!

Wyatt Patrick was born on Wednesday, June 17th at 5:29 p.m. Wyatt weighed in almost 2 lbs. less than his big brother (thank God for that!!) at 7 lbs., 15 oz.

Shannon had a very easy labor (5 hours!) and is home recovering nicely with her family. Welcome Wyatt! I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I did when I received them!!

Shannon, Porter and Wyatt

Wyatt Patrick, 6.17.09

It's hard being born!

Chillin' in his new home!

No more teachers, no more books....

So long to being a freshman! Dom's on his way to his sophmore year....I can't believe how fast his first year of high school has gone by!

Birthday Boy gets a BIKE

Noah received his first BIG BOY BIKE for his birthday. His first reaction was "Oh my gosh Mommy!!!" He hopped right on the bike, tried to pedal backwards and couldn't (first bike with back brakes)....he promptly cried, got off the bike and told me to take the bike back to the store and requested that I buy him a motorcycle! Really???? This is so not how I imagined his birthday morning. He kept telling Jason and I that it was just too hard and that he needed a motorcycle. It took about an hour of prompting and practice, but he finally got on the bike and pedaled around the neighborhood. Zane, of course needed his turn on the bike so on he went. Now I can't keep the kids off the bike - all they want to do is ride and ride and ride and ride!

Noah and his Tony Hawk bike

First Ride....

Zane givin' it a try

Zane ridin' a big boy bike

What happens after the birthday party.....

Need I say more? This was about 3 minutes in to the drive home.....

Water Play at Noah's Birthday Party

Rio Vista has a great water area for the kids to cool down at. Noah absolutely loves the water and his friends were equally up to the task! The funniest one to watch? Dominic. The only teenager running around like a goof ball - the held the kids over the spray, layed on the ground, played leap frog...you name it, he pretty much did it. I'm not sure what I think about that :)

Dominic and Noah

Noah lovin' 4 yrs. old!

Chris

Monkey Boy Zane - loves the pool and the bathtub but HATES the squirty things!!!

Colton

Cayden

Happy Birthday Noah!

Noah had a great 4th birthday party this year! This year we ventured out from our backyard all the way down the road to Rio Vista Park. Rio Vista is a great park for little kids with a giant play structure, a water play area, big ramadas for all of us to sit at and a fabulous BBQ area. We had a great day of sun, water and hot dogs!

Thank you to all of Noah's friends that came to celebrate with us - Joey, Shane, Lucas, Austin, Kylie, Xander, Jackson, Lydia, Harrison, Ellie, Landon, Colten, Cayden, Chris and Ty. Noah had such a great time and it wouldn't have been the same without you all!

Noah and Joey

Two little monkeys....

Zane playing in the rocket ship

It's all about Super Heroes!

Amber (who looks amazing by the way with it being 95 degrees and all!) and my beautiful friend Vicki - pregnant with her 4th baby - Katherine Elizabeth. She was due in 2 weeks in this picture and looks so great - she always looks so good pregnant!!!

Amber's Husband Bryan

Cayden the monkey - he's managed to fold his body almost in half here....

Chris, Lucas and Chrissy!

Colton

Birthday Spankin's!

Dominic turned 15 this year....I can't believe he'll be driving in another 6 months. It absolutely frightens me for our neighborhood!

We celebrated with our family in Phoenix on Dom's birthday...thanks to the Pape's, Kulinski's and Budoff's who came to eat brownies (Dom's fave) and have dinner with us. We had a great time celebrating Dom's birthday. We ambushed Dom to give him his birthday spanks....it took about 4 of them to hold him down, but we did it.

We threw Dom a surprise party a couple weekends later with his friends. It was the first time I had thrown a surprise party for him and let me tell you...cell phones are great - if you know who to invite out of the over 150 people listed in his address book! Mass text messaging is fantastic but I felt like an imposter. In any case, the boys played ping pong, Rock Band, foos ball...the works!

Happy Birthday Baby! We love you!

Towel Animals?

Coming back to our cabin every night always held a small surprise...what animal would be on our bed? Our crafty room steward created a new animal every night - with towels! We had a bunny, and elephant, turtle, monkey.....there is even a class at the end to teach you how to make them!

Turtle

Elephant

Monkey

The dinner table....

Jason had meticulously planned every detail of our trip and after talking with some friends that are cruise enthusiasts, they recommended being seated at a big table at the early seating. Because you eat with the same people every night a big table gives you the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Well, as Deaton luck would have it, we got a small table at the late seating. After really looking around the room and realizing the median age was about 60, we were becoming discouraged.

Then, walked in Julie and Chris. Newlyweds from Virginia. Our age, our interests, our kind of people! They had just been married two days before and were absolutely adorable. They had a really great love story, one that every girl just loves to hear. You know, the one where they look across the room and BAM! Kind of like that. In any case, Jason and I were excited to see that there were some people our age. We chatted until late into the night - easy to do when dinner is at 8:30!

Cruises are all about one thing - food. And a lot of it. For those of us - like myself - who love to eat and have a hard time turning away food it is a miserable place to be :) There is always a buffet open somewhere and you always have access to just about anything you want. I was worried about this. As I mentioned, I really like food. But, amazingly enough it was not nearly tempting as I thought it would be. But, dinner was a new experience. It is nothing less than gluttony. All you do is eat. And eat. And eat. Want 2 lobsters? No problem! How about 4? Sure thing, coming right up. And, that's how every dinner we had went once we met Chris and Julie Matthews. I've never seen such skinny people devour that much! Chris and Jason routinely had 4 servings of shrimp cocktails every night...so much so that the wait staff had them waiting for us when we got to the table. There were usually at least two entrees eaten at every meal and no less than 6 desserts at any one time. After the first night's dinner we decided to make a pact that we would take the stairs everywhere we went or we were going to gain 100 pounds before we got home!

There is usually some kind of singing act from the wait staff...boy, do they love to sing! One of the servers behind us made a bunny rabbit out of a towel and used that as his prop. Here's just a taste of what we saw every night.

We ended up spending most of the trip with Chris and Julie. We had so much fun hanging out with them and getting to know them! The picture below is from the Captain's dinner. Lobster, Filet Mignon, great wine....yum!

Eastern Carribean Cruise 2009

I know, I'm sorry! We've been back for almost two months and I'm just getting around to posting these pictures....what a slacker!

In any case, Jason and I had a great time. It was the first vacation we've taken without kids since.....well it's been a long time. Jason did such a great job and planned this entire vacation entirely on his own. I had absolutely no idea where we were headed. All I knew is that I was to pack clothes for summer weather. This absolutely killed me! You all know how crazy I am with the control "thing" and it drove me nuts not knowing what we were doing or where we were going.

After a couple of hiccups with childcare arrangements (thanks to Jeff and Gina for staying with our kids!) we finally got on our way early on a Saturday morning. While we were on our way to the airport (thanks to Mike for getting up at 5 a.m. to take us!) Jason was telling Mike the story of our Hawaii trip and how he lost his ID in the car right before we were to check in at the airport to leave. Mike and I must have asked Jason at least 3 or 4 times whether or not he had his ID with him this time and Jason said, Yep, my wallet's in my pocket. We all got a good laugh remembering the story of how Jason totally freaked out at the airport and how the lady behind the counter felt so bad she let him through without it....needless to say we were in for another Jason forgetful moment when we tried to check our bags in curbside. Jason pulls out his wallet and....NO DRIVER'S LICENSE! My heart sunk because we only had a little over an hour until our flight was supposed to leave. And we live 45 minutes from the airport. Jason almost passed out when he realized he left his ID on the copy machine in our office the night before. Mike didn't say a word...he just said I'll be back and off he went to retrieve Jason's ID. Luckily, Jason thought to call our friend Keith at 6 a.m. and Keith offered to get the ID off the copier and drive like the wind to get to the airport in time (thanks Keith!!!). Keith was able to drop off Jason's ID about 20 minutes before our flight left.....it was absolutely nuts! I don't think Jason or I took a deep breath until we were on the plane. Here is the first pic from our trip:

By the time we settled in I had figured out that we were on our way to Ft. Lauderdale. By then Jason had told me we were going on a cruise, but I still didn't know where the cruise was headed to. We had a nice flight from Phoenix to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale. We got in around 7 p.m. that night and headed down the the arts and shopping district a mile or so from our hotel. We walked around for a couple of hours and poked through the art galleries and other shops. We were both so excited for the cruise the next day that neither one of us slept very well that night. We took a shuttle to the cruise liner in Miami the following day. Jason finally told me that morning that we were heading to the eastern Carribean with stops in San Juan, St. Thomas and St. Maarten!

Pulling into the port is so amazing.....there were at least 5 cruise liners parked within about 20 feet of each other and these ships are just so massive it's hard to describe. We made our way through customs - after of course checking to make sure Jason had his ID with him - in about a half hour and from that moment on I did not have to worry about a thing! There is nothing like getting on this giant ship and having to do nothing but decide what swim suit I'm going to wear and what day I'll get a massage :) It was so amazing! We walked around the ship for an hour or so just to get acquainted with where everything was located before our luggage showed up at our room. Once our luggage arrived we started to watch the Cardinals in the playoff game while we got settled. Then it was off to the boat drill and then off we went! The pics below were taken from the balcony in our suite as we left the port of Miami.

After we left port Jason and I settled in some deck chairs to finish watching the Arizona Cardinals playoff game on the giant 50 ft. big screen! The entire city of Phoenix was going nuts for the game before we left and it was really interesting to see the dynamics of everyone on the ship. There were people everywhere with Steelers and Eagles gear on but only a few of us with Cardinals gear. We sat with a couple of Eagles fans and had a great time harassing each other about the game. Never in a million years did any of us predict our Cards would win the game and go on to play in the Super Bowl! I must admit, it was pretty nice hangin' out on the deck with drinks with little umbrellas watching the game....

Well, this only completes days 1 and 2. I'll post more later.

I know, I'm a slacker....

Hi all...I know, we're all tired of seeing Christmas pictures on my blog :)

Since Christmas Jason and I went to the Carribean, Dom started track, we went to Jack's birthday party, Jason and I went to the PCH BeachBall fundraising event and I helped give away a million bucks.....all in two months. I'll start posting the best pics from the cruise this afternoon. Stay tuned!

Christmas morning, 2008

There were so many great moments from Christmas morning that I couldn't choose. The boys were overwhelmed with their new train table and weren't quite sure where to start. Dominic has Christmas down, and had NO problem discovering his stocking. We got a "holy crap, are you serious??" out of him with a renewed subscription to XBox Live. For those of you with teenagers, you know just how big that was :) Noah and Zane received lots of cars and trucks from Santa this year. Zane is still in his Disney Cars obsession phase and Noah just wants to play anything with wheels. The unwrapping of gifts took almost two hours. Although Dom understands the "rip and go" technique, the little ones would much rather play with every toy first. This takes a lot of time. Alot.... After the toys were assembled and we had our first fight over whose truck was whose, we dressed and went to the Pape's house for a yummy Christmas breakfast. Thanks to the Pape's again for inviting us and treating us as family. We all enjoyed some naptime later, and then over to the Budoff's for the First Annual Christmas Breakfast for Dinner. Keith made some fantastic crepes with all the great trimmings. He added waffles, pancakes, sausage...the whole deal. We had such a great time and our kids were passed out cold by 8:30. Thanks to the Budoffs for making us part of their family. We're looking forward to next year!

I know there's a lot of pictures here, but we hope you enjoy them. More to come soon! Love you all, and we hope you had a very Merry Christmas!

Deaton's Christmas Eve

I know, Christmas was a week ago but we've been quite busy. Sheryl (Jason's mom) came to town on the 17th and stayed with us until the 30th. We felt really blessed to have some family around us at Christmas this year! We had a crazy, busy time, so I'll try to keep it short...yeah right!

Christmas Eve was spent with the Pape family (thanks Mike, Julie and the boys for inviting us in on your tradition!) at Uncle Sam's pizza. We had 20 people there to celebrate with one another. We adjourned to the Pape's house to open white elephant gifts and sing Christmas carols. Julie plays piano and sings - this is the first time she's sung for us and it was so pretty! The missionaries (one was from Tonga...I can't remember where the other guy was from) sang us a traditional Tongan song about following the ways of Christ. I didn't understand a word, but it was beautiful. We adjourned to our house after the carols and opened our own Christmas Eve gifts.

Dominic was hiding Jason's gift under his shirt...he didn't want to wrap it so he had me wrap him.....so ingenius :)

Unwrap me Daddy!

Woo-hoo! Slippers that Dominic hasn't worn and stretched out with his giant boat feet!

My Boys....