Family Pic

Here is my favorite shot that Mr. Beatty got of our family on Friday night.

Dewberry Farms

We took Elise back to Dewberry Farms this year. We really enjoyed last year's visit, and we anticipated that it would be even better this year since Elise is older and can participate in more of the activities. Unfortunately, we got caught in a really nasty rain storm and did not even get to take the hayride out to the pumpkin patch. I was so sad! But on the positive side, before the rain started we did get to do quite a few fun activities. Our friends Scott and Trish came along this year and brought their son, Drew. I felt so bad that it rained on us - I kept apologizing to them! I will just have to make a trip to a pumpkin patch closer to home to get pumpkin pictures this year. Here are some shots of the things that we did.

Here is a shot of me, Elise, Trish, Drew, and Scott

And Jamie (who got stuck inside his corn cob)...

I thought this was hilarious:

Elise was interested in feeding the goats this year, which was great, because last year she was afraid of them.

This was a neat activity. Elise got a bag full of sand that had pretty rocks buried inside. She got to take them over to this area to wash away the sand and find the pretty stones.

And here she is participating in a duck race.

We also saw some neat farm animals, such as pigs, baby ducks, and a rooster! Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Another One Bites The Dust!

I don't have too much to say about tonight's game. I had Elise with me in the stands, so that always makes it a little harder to focus. Our opponent was simply outmatched tonight, and I will let the score speak for itself.

Friendswood Mustangs 56, Santa Fe Indians 6

Enough said! The Mustangs are now 5-0, with the potential to get through the regular season with only one loss. It will take hard work, but I really think we can do it!

I had my camera with me tonight, and I think I got some pretty good shots.

I love this next one. Jamie says that his favorite part of the game is at the end when Elise comes running towards him and jumps into his arms. Win or lose, it makes the whole night worthwhile.


Elise also really enjoys this. In fact, she enjoys it so much that she asks me about 100 times during the game if it's almost over so she can go play on the field. She was not ready to go home tonight and thought that the football players should all stay and continue playing. I am sure that the tired coaches and players would not have agreed!

Gimmie five!!!

We had Mr. Beatty take a few shots of us as a family tonight, so once he gets the new pics on the website, I will post another entry to show those off if they turn out well. We are hoping to have something that is Christmas card worthy!

Although games that get out of hand like this are not the most entertaining, I always enjoy the fact that a lot of kids get to play who normally don't have that opportunity. Tonight every single player on the Mustang roster contributed to the win. Not only that, but our kicker played quarterback in the 4th quarter! Now that is something that you just don't see everyday.

Next week will be a closer game. We are traveling to Dickinson, who I have just heard defeated Angleton tonight. We will be ready for a tougher match up next Friday.

Season Premier Week!

My DVR has been working overtime this week catching all the season premiers! So far I have not had time to watch any of my shows, but I made time tonight to be sure to watch Grey's Anatomy once I got Elise in bed.

OH...MY...GOSH!!! If anyone else watches, leave a comment and we will dish!!! It was a great one. Kind of depressing though.

I still need to catch up on Heroes, Rules of Engagement, Californication, and The Office. I don't think I have any shows tomorrow, so hopefully this weekend I can watch all the shows I've missed this week.

I don't know HOW I've managed to get sucked into this many shows - I normally keep it down to only 2 or 3. I've never watched Heroes before, but I've heard so much hype, I want to check it out and see what it's all about. Jamie just stumbled across Californication a few weeks ago, and we have kind of gotten into that one, although, I am fine if I miss it. I have only 3 that I can't stand to miss: Grey's, Desperate Housewives, and Biggest Loser. Jamie and I LOVE Biggest Loser. We think it is soooo inspiring. It's one of our "together" shows, along with Grey's and Californication. We used to love What About Brian too, but it was cancelled. I was really bummed about that.

And now that I've written an entire blog entry all about TV shows, I am going to go and try to find myself a life. Goodnight everyone!

It's Raining Leaves!

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

~Albert Camus

It seems like our yard was filled with leaves almost overnight on this first day of autumn, so Elise and I thought we'd go out and do some raking so Jamie could mow the grass. She was very helpful, of course.

I also did a little bit of decorating on the porch, and Elise seems to really enjoy it! And a big thank you to my mom, who took me shopping for our deocrations as an early birthday present yesterday. She's going to be at a conference in San Diego over my actual birthday, and she knows how I love fall, so we had a great time yesterday celebrating in advance. Thanks, mom!!!

The Top Ten Reasons Why I Love Fall

Since today is officially the first day of autumn - my favorite time of year - I thought I would commemorate the occasion, David Letterman style!

The Top Ten Reasons Why I Love Fall:

10. It's all about the candy corn! Trick-or-treat!

9. Only 38 days until Halloween, 60 days until Thanksgiving, 93 days until Christmas, and 99 days until New Year's Eve!

8. Jamie's homemade chocolate pie - he only makes it for Thanksgiving!

7. Season premieres of Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy!!!! I have been in suspense all summer and I am dying to see what's going to develop! Of particular interest to me: (Grey's) The love triangle between Callie-George-Izzy, Meredith's unknown sister showing up at Seattle Grace, Burke's departure, (Desperate Housewives) Gaby's predicament with her new husband & Carlos, Bri's attempt at pulling of a fake pregnancy to bail out Danielle, Lynette's illness...I could go on and on!

6. Less yard work! Finally the grass and weeds are not growing so quickly. We spent all last weekend getting all of our bushes cut back for fall, pulling weeds, and putting extra mulch in all the flower beds. As far as I am concerned, yard work is a necessary evil!

5. Rich, fall colors...I just love the colors of fall.

4. It's an excuse to go buy new fall clothes and shoes (but who really needs an excuse anyway, right??)

3. Football!!!!

2. Only a few months until I see my little cousin again. She is such an amazing person and I'm just totally impressed by all that she has accomplished. Love you, Amber!

AND the number one reason that I love fall.....(drum roll please)

1. COOLER WEATHER!!!!!!! Hot chocolate, fires in the fireplace, and some high quality snuggling time! Jamie and I were out getting the dogs ready for bed last night, and we really noticed how nice it was feeling outside. I think it's supposed to be pretty warm today, but at least it's cooling off nicely in the evenings. I'm anxiously awaiting our first real cold front! Happy fall, everyone!

What a start!

The Friendswood Mustangs will go into district play next week undefeated at 4-0! Last night the Mustangs were victorious over their rivals, the Clear Book Wolverines. Of course it was another exciting game full of ups and downs. Football teams are classified by divisions in Texas, and the divisions are dependent on the size of the school. Divisions range from the smallest being 1A to the largest being 5A. Last night was a big game for us, because Clear Brook is a Division 5A school and we are a Division 4A school. It is always great to beat a team in a larger division.

You can tell that the first day of autumn is tomorrow, because the weather was great last night. There were a few times that I forgot we were sitting outside, because it was so comfortable. We played at the CCISD stadium, which Clear Brook shares with several other schools in the district. The traffic was unbelievable, because everyone from both sides was heading into the stadium from the same direction (Friendswood), and it took us an hour to make a drive that would normally be only 20 minutes. We walked in just as the national anthem was being performed, and thankfully we didn't miss the kick off.

The Mustangs went down early by 14 points (7-21). Clear Brook has a very strong running game and loves to run the quarterback option. They were fast and agile, and we had to do some adjusting to stop them. We were able to catch up due to a few wonderful offensive plays and were trailing 26-28 at halftime.

You could tell that the coaches really got the kids fired up during the halftime break, because they came out in the second half playing with a lot of emotion. That is the hardest I think I've seen the defense play all year. They really dug deep and played some very tough football. I was so proud of them! We took the lead in the 4th quarter with about 6 minutes remaining in the game. At this point, there were some questionable penalties called as well as some really generous spottings of the football in favor of Clear Brook. I think this just made our team even more inspired to pull out a win, and that is exactly what they did. Final score: Friendswood 40, Clear Brook 35.

My favorite part about last night's game was not the fact that we won (believe it or not). Lately my mom has started coming to the games (along with my father-in-law, mother-in-law, and dad). It's really great to have our whole family there showing support. And the best part...I have gotten a real kick out of watching my mom really get into the games! I've never known her to be into sports of any kind, with the exception of watching me play volleyball back in high school and college. I don't think she has ever watched an entire football game in her life. Yet she is on the edge of her seat with the rest of us, cheering on the Mustangs. It has been so surprising and is really fun for me to watch. She even went out and got royal blue shirts for both her and my dad to wear to the games. I love how we all support Jamie, just like he would support any of us. After all, that is what family is all about.

In other news around our district, we were really surprised to hear on the High School Scoreboard that the LaMarque Cougars (defending Division 4A state champions) beat the Pearland Oilers last night! Pearland is an extremely tough Division 5A school, and we were not expecting LaMarque to win that game. They were victorious by a score of 6-3. It is just our luck that the defending state champs are in our district. We will see LaMarque on October 12th, but I am not thinking about that too much just yet, since we have several other district games before then.

Next week begins district play when Santa Fe travels to our stadium to play the Mustangs. We are favored to win, but will need to be sure that we don't take our opponents too lightly. Any given team can win or lose on any given night. With that said, I fully expect us to be 5-0 at this time next week, and I am looking forward to it!

After 3 games...

The Mustangs are still undefeated!!!

We had another fairly nice evening weather-wise out in Dayton last night. It is still pretty steamy in Southeast Texas, but once the sun sets it is not so bad. One thing that would be nice is to have a breeze, so I am putting in that request for next Friday night. The air has been so still for our last 2 games, but I guess that is actually better for the players. We saw lightening off in the distance for nearly the entire second half, so we were thankful that it stayed far away and did not affect the game.

It was a long drive to Dayton on roads that I am not entirely familiar with, and Tyanne and I took one small detour on the way home. Luckily we managed to find our way back to the Beltway, but not without some mild hazing from my dear husband who found it quite amusing that we somehow ended up in front of San Jacinto's North campus on Uvalde. I think he must have told Tyanne's husband that I had called him (of course only to ask a purely hypothetical question about "what if one were to find themselves on Uvalde in front of San Jac"), because he called Tyanne to be sure that we were okay. I will be the first to admit that my sense of direction is not the greatest. In my defense, everything looks different in the dark...BUT, I digress...back to the game!

This week's game is the first one this season that has stressed me out as a spectator, and I think I am still waiting for my heartrate to return to normal! We got down early last night due to 2 turnovers within 20 yards or less of the Bronco goal line. It was looking like a repeat of the turnovers from our last game for a few moments in the first half. As the result of a fumble we found ourselves defending Dayton within 15 yards of their end zone mid way through the second quarter. Our defense was able to prevent them from scoring, but after our second turnover, Dayton scored a touchdown. Going into the halftime break, we were trailing 14-21. You can tell from this shot of Jamie heading to the locker room that he was NOT happy.

I think Dayton must have greased up their quarterback with Crisco before the game last night, because he was slipping through our tackles during the entire game. He was extremely athletic, and stopping him proved to be quite a challenge. We really came out to play hard in the second half and began to look MUCH better, but things were beginning to look bad for us in the 4th quarter. We went down 24-28 with only a little over 3 minutes left in the game. In the end, our offense came through in a big way and we scored a touchdown on a long pass to our star wide receiver. The defense stayed tough for the remaining few minutes of the game and forced an interception to seal the victory. Here is a shot of the scoreboard showing the final score of Friendswood 31 - Dayton 28! It was such an exciting last few minutes - all of the coaches wives were jumping up and down and the fans were going nuts.

And a much happier coach...

As an aside, my loving husband has informed me that I have quite a bit to learn about football before I would be a good sports writer. I have no doubt that he is correct! But you get the idea.

I almost forgot to mention that our game was featured as the DQ Big Game Of The Week on High School Scoreboard Live (a program aired by Fox Sports Southwest)! It is tradition among most coaching families to watch the show on Friday night. It airs at midnight, so we are able to catch it either at home on away game nights or at the after-party on home game nights. We always catch the show to see how Jamie's friends who are coaching elsewhere in the state have done. We had to DVR it last night, because we were just too tired to stay awake. I haven't watched yet, but I am anxious to see what everyone had to say. The HS Scoreboard crew was out in Dayton during the entire game filming, and they interviewed our head coach as well as a few players after the game.

Next week we will be playing our in-town rivals, the Clear Brook Wolverines, at their stadium. This rivalry dates back to my own high school days! It will be another challenging, great game.

Airplanes, Zebras, and Trains! Oh my!

Yesterday was my day off, and now that Jamie is back in school I decided it would be fun to have a mother-daughter day with Elise. And what better way to spend a day than at the Kemah Boardwalk! Check it out here: http://www.kemahboardwalk.com/

Being the wonderful wife and daughter that we are, we decided to drop off lunch with Jamie at school before leaving for Kemah. I think he was really happy to get good food rather than cafeteria food! It is nice to be able to do little things like that sometimes. Once we had delivered lunch, we were off to Kemah for a day of fun!

I loved being able to go out there on a weekday, because normally we can only make it on weekends. The crowd was so much smaller, and we were able to ride several rides with no waiting. The train has always been Elise's main attraction, so we rode that first.

After our train ride, we walked around and I let Elise look at some other rides to see if she wanted to try them out. At first she did not want to ride the airplanes, even though we stood and watched some other kids ride and I told her I would ride with her. I decided not to push it, so we just moved on and rode the carousel. She was very adamant that she wanted to ride a zebra.

After our carousel ride ended, we still had some extra tickets. We happened to be walking back by the airplanes, and Elise told me that she wanted to ride! I was so excited! We hopped aboard and went for a ride!

Much to my surprise, when it was over, she wanted to ride again. There was only one ticket left, so I told her that she could ride again, but I would not be able to ride with her. I assumed that she would back out under those circumstances, but instead she said, "Okay, mommy, bye bye!" I was so proud that she was so brave! I got a great shot of her in the airplane all by herself.

After we used all the tickets, we met my dad at The Olive Garden for lunch. Elise was so pooped that she actually fell asleep in the car on the way home (which almost never happens)! It was a really fun day, and I enjoyed having Elise all to myself for a while.

In Remembrance

"Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger."

~George W. Bush

I am hugging my loved ones a little bit tighter today, and remaining mindful of all of those who lost their lives six years ago today. Jamie dressed Elise in red, white, and blue for school today, and I thought it was a nice memorial. I have also been thinking of that day and where I was when this tragedy occurred. I remember gathering in a conference room with all of my colleagues from Ernst & Young and watching the events unfold on television. We were all concerned for our fellow co-workers in the New York office. Shortly after the towers collapsed, we were all sent home, and I spent the rest of the day watching the news coverage at home in complete disbelief. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the fallen today.

The First Haircut

As much as it pained me to do so, I had been informed by several people that I really needed to get Elise's hair cut. I waited so long for her to get hair that I really didn't want to cut any of it off! But, the ends were pretty uneven, and I know it really needed to be done. So I finally broke down, and Jamie and I took her for her first haircut today. We went to this really neat place called Cool Cuts 4 Kids. They have cute cars that the kids sit in while they get their hair cut, and they get to pick a video to watch. Elise chose Diego. I was a little surprised that she picked Diego over Dora! Here she is right before they got started.

She was really good the whole time. I thought she would probably go along with things pretty well, but since this was a first, you never know! We were really proud of how she sat still for the hair stylist.

You can see in that picture with the blow dryer, she was trying to look around the hair stylist's arm to see the TV. She really could have cared less that this lady was messing with her hair, as long as she could watch Diego. When we left, Jamie decided that since she was so good, we would let her ride the car with Elmo as a treat. He also bought her a Diego video. She is so spoiled!

I think her hair turned out pretty well. Now most of it is the same length, so hopefully it will thicken out and we will be able to start doing pig tails and pony tails when it gets a little longer. I felt a little bit sad as we were leaving, because I realized that I am running out of milestones with Elise now. Time really does fly, and I've been enjoying every minute!