Happy 7th Birthday, Matthew

On October 21st, we celebrated Matthew's 7th Birthday...


To begin his day, he had his favorite breakfast....donuts! Of course, there was a candle, it is his birthday!
Then opening presents. He still of course loves receiving hockey guys!


And Sam was super excited to see Matthew open what he had gotten him...an Indiana Jones DS game.

On to Hockey....what day would not be complete without hockey in it...especially on his birthday.

To complete his 7th birthday, we dined at Plucker's and were treated to just about the best dessert on the face of the earth......Fried Twinkies with Ice Cream.

I can't believe my little boy is now 7 years old. Everyday he amazes me with his talent, in reading, math, getting along with others, his hockey skills, and being the thoughtful, sweet, sweet boy that he can be.

Love ya Sweetie Bucks.....Happy, happy, happy birthday!!!

Busy, Busy, Busy....

That is the one word that can explain the last two weeks......here comes a ton of posts of what has been going on......

Saturday Hockey Night at The Wagner's

For all of you who know us dearly, you know that we spend at least 1/2 of our lives at the hockey rink. Every Saturday is completely full of hockey. We start at 8:30am with Sam's practice, then Matthew has a game, then on some Saturdays Kurt has either a game or coaching at a Bantam (9th graders) practice.

Today, I remember my camera. There were a ton of people at Matthew's game and there are no bleachers, so it is difficult to get good shots. But here are a few that I thought were really cool.....I didn't get the best shot of the night, his first official goal....the winning goal for the game!!!




Then at Kurt's (#22) game, I got some really good action shots. The lighting is much better, the boards are cleaner, & there are only a handful of people there.....



For every minute we are running around from rink to rink, we love it & wouldn't want our Saturdays to be any different!!!

Kitchen Helper

I am usually in the kitchen by myself whipping up breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But Sam has started to want to help, so of course I can put him to work. After we made chocolate chip cookies, I started working on the green beans for dinner. Sam watched for a few minutes, then wanted to join in. He did a great job, such the little helper. And with the green beans, there wasn't any flour to spill all over the cabinet & floor. Now, if I could only get him to eat more than the one bean I force his to choke down!!!!

Are you ready for some football?!?!?

Matthew has found a sport that he loves almost as much as hockey.....football. Not only does he play at home with us. He has a group of kids at school that play during recess. I've got to see them play at school a few times and it's as if they are playing for the Super Bowl. It's so cool to see boys find something they love to do.

Matthew is also turning into Kurt's dream child. He will sit and watch games with him & ask about the rules, the plays, and the penalties. It's super cool.

Once in a while I throw in a cheer here and there and I get the evil eye from the room! I don't care, I just keep on yelling. Like yesterday while we were watching the UT/OU game, I was yelling "Hold 'em, defense, Hold 'em defense, hey, hey, hey" Kurt and Matthew were yelling at me "Be quite!!!!" Don't care......UT wins....Hook 'em....OU sucks!!!!

Oh yea, Sam is loving football too, but this day he wanted to race motorcycles....

Latest from the boys....

It's been so long since I've posted anything, I thought it would be nice if all of you could see and hear Matthew & Sam in motion. I have no excuse for not keeping you guys up to day, but we have had a l o t going on in our family over the past month.

I have started working again at Peace Lutheran Preschool as the Creative Movement teacher. I absolutely love it. But it is taking up so much of my time because I have so much good information to share with the kids, I don't know where to start. I know, I should be nervous in front of a bunch of 2, 3, 4, & 5 year olds, but I want to make them happy and want them to love coming to my class.

Well, here are the two reasons why you check out my blog.....

First we have Matthew. Some of the coverage of hurricane Ike rubbed off on him. We watched the tracking of Ike, since it was forcasted to directly hit my families homes, Freeport, TX. Many of you might have seen some coverage of Surfside Beach. That is about 9 miles as a birds flies from my parents house. They all fared ok. Lots of limbs down, some trees down, a few roof problems, but for the most part they were able to return to their homes. My parents and one of my sisters is still without electricity after a week, but they both have generators that have been helping them. Luckily, my sister with kids has electricity, so the others are able to go to her house for a good meal and clean clothes.

Next we have Sam. He is reading a book he created in preschool to Daddy!

First Day of the Last Year of Preschool

Today was Sam's first day of school. It was a long wait, but he was super excited! He was such a big boy. Walked right in, put his backpack up, washed his hands, then went to play at a table. Just like he was at school last week. That is something I can always expect from Sam. Once you teach him a routine, he will following it to a "t".

Taking the lllooonnnggg walk up to school. If you look closely that is actually rain on the ground. I'm sure the teacher's were super excited that the kids might have not be able to go to the playground on the first day of school. Since it hasn't rained in something like....forever!! Luckily, I checked with Sam after school & they did get to visit the playground.

The Super Sammie Smile!

Gotcha Day #3

We can't believe it's been 3 years since you joined our family forever!

We spent the day together....forever!!!!

You also practiced walking & rolling in your new Heelys!!!

First Day of First Grade

Another school year has begun and Matthew was ready to go and tackle First Grade at Steiner Ranch Elementary. His new teacher is Mrs. Burk and I have a feeling this is going to be a great year.

Matthew woke up on time without any trouble and when he got home he told me about all the homework he will have this year, Guided Readers and Math Keys. He said that he knows and understands that he might have homework every night! Yea, hopefully he will keep the great attitude.

It was pretty quite around the house without Matthew, we all missed him very much, but the day flew by and we are ready for the next one to begin!

Entering First Grade for the first time!!!

Water Wars

It always amazes me that the simplest things are the things the boys love the most! Their biggest thing lately on these triple digit days is to play with the water hose. Their idea of play with the hose is having Kurt spray them. All this started fairly simple - Kurt was watering some dry spots in the yard and it turned into an all out war. The boys even had to grab the cover of the trash can to protect themselves!

How to drive your Momma crazy in 1500 pieces!

One of the places we HAD to visit when we were at The Mall of America was the Lego store. The boys weer told they could pick out two sets of Lego's. Well, of course, there is nothing there that the boys want in their age category so I was on deck to put them together with their help (or so I thought)!

First we started with Matthew's Star Wars ship. This is what it looked like when we started.

This is what it looked like 6 hours later. Now I'm pretty good at putting things together. But with all the help that I was getting from a 6 and 4 year old. It took much, much, much longer than expected & it was finally done by the time Matthew had to go to bed.

Now the next day, I got a little smarter. I waited until the boys were in bed to start Sam's Indiana Jones set. I started at about 9pm. At 10:30pm, Kurt was kind enough to ask me if I wanted his help, I politely declined stating the fact that when it comes apart, I'm going to be the one here that will have to put it together when it comes apart. This was the final product...

And this is the time I finished....

Remember that is 12:19 PM!!!!!! And if you wonder how long they looked like that.....about 2 days! Now they are all in a box, all apart, waiting for me to get a pot of coffee brewing and a Valium!!!!!!!!!!!

Summer Summary

Since I have been so lazy with updating everyone with our summer fun, I'm doing it all at one time! School starts Monday, so I gotta get caught up, so here is the longest post every.....Summer 2008!


After we went down to Nannie and Paw Noska's, the boys went to Vacation Bible School at Triumphant Love Lutheran Church. Unfortunately, I took off to New Orleans the last day when they had their "show", so Kurt had to go to the "show" and didn't take any pictures! So the boys had fun learning great things at church all around the premise of a farm.


As I mentioned above, I headed to New Orleans with some girlfriends. We had a ton of fun, but there were some things in New Orleans, more specifically, on Bourbon Street that frightened me! Ok, now those of you who know me best, can wipe the tears of laughter off your cheeks. There were some things I saw there that even I was offended by - which takes a lot!!!!! I don't have many pictures because I wasn't in charge of the camera that weekend, but here is a great shot of Becky and Lissa enjoying participating the the song "It's Raining Men"!


Next we headed up to our Cabin for two weeks. Just before we got there Grandma and Papa Wagner surprised us with buying a new pontoon boat. We had so much fun on it. It was nice to have something big enough for all of us to ride on and the boys had a blast tubing behind it!
Matthew got to go into the Twin Cities one day with his cousin Alex and they visited the Museum of Science which was having a Star Wars display. It was right up their alley, they saw all of their favorite characters!
Then we all went to the Mall of America and hit Lego Land & the boys goofed around with their favorite sponge.......
And oh the rides, they boys rode for many, many hours with an unlimited pass!
Once they were tired of amusement rides we went over to our hotel, The Water Park of America. In this Radisson hotel, they finally created the perfect atmosphere for kids - bunk beds!!! We did initially have a brief argument over who would sleep on top, but that was soon resolved and peace was restored!

In Stillwater, Minnesota we had lunch at Lily's Grill & Malt Shop, the best Malt Shop ever. It was a race for me and Kurt to get any from Matt and Sam!

To round out a complete tour of summer, our cousins Darian, Jordan and Aunt Vicki came to visit for a week. We took them ice skating for the first time. They liked it so much we had to go again.
We also enjoyed the Children's Museum on a rare rainy day this summer. Matthew and Sam were trying to feed me the strangest meals in this picture. It was too funny, I think Sam said he was mixing everything with poop!


Other that going to the pool about every other day, this was super summer of '08!