Park ground breaking.

So after YEARS the city FINALLY decided to stop ignoring our part of the city and broke ground on the community center at Gus Garcia Park. We went to the ground breaking this morning. There was some neat folklorico dancing and conjunto music as well as some great short speeches (is the rich mayor anywhere???? hmm . . . nope, didn't see him but some of the other good councilmembers were there). The highlight for us was that Gus Garcia himself singled out David, our neighborhood association neighborhood improvement coordinator, to be the first one & in the center ground breaking. David has worked tirelessly to get this park under way. In fact, right after we moved in, one of the first meetings we attended was part of the park project. Here's a few photos.

This is Doug & Blue (nickname). Doug is working with PARD and AIA to get architechture students to landscape design the rest of the park. Blue is our current neighborhood association president.Aren't they beautiful? This is such impressive dancing.
Gus Garcia singing with the conjunto band.
Madalyn is in the brown sweater to the left of Gus Garcia. She doesn't live in the neighborhood any more but had worked so hard for this when she did live in the neighborhood that Gus wanted her to help ground break too. David is in the grey Texas shirt and Texas cap. To the extreme right is Steven, he also worked hard to get this going. BTW, Steven also got the city to lower the softball team registration costs this year. It was a beautiful day out and I'm looking forward to a nice park for walks.

At the Fall Festival

opps--sorry about the sideways but this is from the back--cool mermaid costume, huh? THANKS, AUNT GRETCHEN!

Being a bit of a drama queen in this photo-


These are from Danielle's Fall Festival at school last night. Lots of fun costumes and silly games. The silent auction had some great stuff but we refrained for the most part this year. We bid and won the movie Curious George DVD.

I FORGOT to take a photo of the infamous Hayden but we did see him. Of course, you couldn't help but see him when a chorus of little enamored 4 year old girls squealed "Oh Hayden!" when he appeared. SERIOUSLY! I am not kidding. Hayden is quite the little charmer. Though his dad seemed quite surprised at the greeting, I am sure he was a little proud too. One good thing comes out of this--Hayden was/is dressing up as a cop so Danielle decided that cops are "good."

A Mermaid & Pok e Jo's

Danielle's Halloween costume came in the mail yesterday from her Aunt Gretchen. The tail is some of the most beautiful fabric I've ever seen. It is this shimmery green & gold snake-patterned fabric that is just gorgeous! Danielle is SOOOOOOOO excited and gets to wear it tomorrow for Fall Festival at school.

Today Trey's Aunt Donna came in for lunch and we all went to Pok e Jo's for BBQ. I picked up Danielle from preschool, Donna had picked up Danielle's cousin, Lauren, who is a day older than Danielle and brought her down, Spencer, Donna's son (and, thus, Trey's cousin) picked up his daughter (and, thus, Danielle's cousin) Allyson from day care and Trey met us there too. It was fun having a little break from work and getting together with the kids. Afterwards, Donna followed me back to Danielle's preschool for a tour. A former great school teacher (teacher of the year once!) Donna is always interested in the kids' school work.

I got the cousins' Halloween packages out today; the packages should get there just barely in time for the holiday.

Now Trey is out picking up butterstotch chips so that I can finish the pumpkin cookie recipe Danielle & I started earlier; I signed up to bring some cookies for the Fall Festival . . . why do I think I have time for all this??? Oh yeah, that's being a mom & dad :-)

Cloudy and sticky today. Happy Fall!

amazing story

http://www.dearallofyou.com/sacredheart/

$$$

So I've been feeling decently good about our finances until this evening when we went to complimentary financial planning meeting. No, we didn't sign up for services (and probably won't as they are quite expensive) but I must say I was impressed with the fact that the guy of the duo told us that the most worrisome/important thing for us was that we needed to build up savings. So . . . perhaps he was sincere . . . OR . . . he just wants a bigger chunk to try to invest for us! Either way he did point out that for what we make and what we pay in monthly bills, we should have more money saved. Trey agrees and I guess I do too. I'm not really sure where it all goes as we really don't have super nice things, drive modest cars, wear hand-me-downs, etc. But we also now have very little debt, which I'm finding is quite a feat now days, and we started our careers later in life than a lot. I have a feeling a lot of our money goes to wasted food. We are constantly throwing moldy stuff out of the fridge and we do have a tendency to eat out our lunches 2/3/4 times a week. So . . . I'm resolving to do cheaper, easier things for the next few months to see what we can do . . . and not pay the financial planner a whole paycheck to tell me how to do it. Anyway. . . $$$ . . . but, thankfully, we don't fight about it much . . .

Trip to Dewberry Farms

This weekend we joined the family in Houston for a trip to Dewberry farms and their Jeff Bagwell corn maze--http://www.dewberryfarm.com/maze.htm It was a blast but exhausting and MUDDY. We met up with MaryAnn (Graham was at Boy Scout camp), Kelly, Brad, Erin, Collin, Janice, Harmony and in laws Doug & Nancy. In the corn maze:
It was SOOOOOOOOOOOO muddy: the corn shooter:
me pushing Danielle --the coming photos--the going photos are SCARY and will be deleted from all memory cards, computers etc . . . except for one that will be posted on the fridge door as a diet aid . . .

jumping on the BIG pillow with Danielle & Harmony. The little girl beside us just really liked us and followed us up and down that pillow.
Harmony, Danielle, Collin & Erin
The naturally happy zinnia . . .
what a fun, "corn"y family--Trey, Angela & Danielle

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Before the trip to the farms Nancy, Danielle & I went shopping and Nancy bought a new entertainment center and then we went to Target and loaded up on Halloween stuff. Doug & Trey watched the end of that wretched game where my wonderful Cornhuskers lost. While out I noticed that I was not the only Nebraska fan who was tricked into marrying Longhorns who have brain washed the kids into being Longhorn fans too . . . but I guess the cheerleading outfit was deserved for the urging of Danielle to shout Go Big Red as a greeting to Trey yesterday evening. After the farms we came back to D&N for pizza dinner then went over to see Janice's house and new paint job. Back to Austin tomorrow. Danielle's Kids Klub at church begins practice for the Christmas program. Christmas! Can you believe it?

Almost ready for Halloween . . .

Got the Halloween decorations up today:

what I'm reading now . . .

the book "De-cluttering" that I bought 6 months ago and just found in a plastic bag in the kitchen while trying to clean up this weekend.

Where's George?

I was very excited this evening when I finally got around to moving my money from cash back on a deposit in the bank on Friday and discovered a WheresGeorge.com stamp on the back of a $1 bill. I squealed and Trey thought I had found a bug in the kitchen!

The dollar was inital entried in Port Richey, FL and has travelled 912 Miles in 238 Days, 21 Hrs, 12 Mins at an average of 3.8 Miles per day.

Lucas & Morgan in Russia

Lucas used to work in our office but followed his dream to Russia; His friend, Morgan, who also works in our office went to visit Lucas this summer. Here's a link to his amazing blog http://hacefrio.blogspot.com/

goofy Halloween joke to get you ready . . .

Q. Why do demons and ghouls hang out together?
A. Because demons are a ghouls best friend!

fishhead, fishhead, rolley polley fishhead

Trey bought an aquarium off of Craig's list. I saw the photo and approved but when he got home I about passed out when I saw how big it is---55 gallons, 4 FEET LONG!!!! Trey spent a lot of last weekend sanding it to get ready for new paint.

Gotta go pay attention to my kiddo . . .