Triplets?

So obviously my kids are NOT triplets, but I am amazed at how much they look alike. Some people tell me that they think Chris looks like Aaron, then other people tell me that Chris looks like Brian. My mom says that Chris just looks like Chris...whatever that means. I think he looks like what all of my babies look like. Here are some pics of them looking all cute. You determine if you think they look alike.

First, here's Chris giving us some of his smiles. Note the "one" curl on the left side of his head! So adorable! Can you believe he's over 3 months old now?

While trying to get Chris to smile for these photos I smiled so big, and for so long, I pulled a muscle in my cheek!
My cheek hurt for 2 days after!

Now here's some of Aaron with Chris.



Now Brian and Chris.



And finally, here's all 3 of my boys together!

Valentines

Considering it is valentines day today, we opted for a red themed meal. And what else could we do... live lobster.

Aaron and Brian were super excited to cook lobster, but neither one really wanted to touch them. They thought it was pretty cool to see them move around and know they were alive though. Aaron wouldn't even eat it though, but he rarely likes trying new things, so it wasn't very surprising. Getting the meat out of the shell takes a while and the boys didn't have much patience, so they were done with dinner before we were anywhere near done, but that was ok, we then had semi-peace and quiet for a while.

We also had Angel Pie for dessert which is a meringue crust topped with shaved chocolate, topped with whipped cream, topped with an orange custard, topped with more whipped cream and more shaved chocolate. It is heavenly!

Trip to DC

Christian and I spent last weekend in Washington, DC where both my brother and sister live with their families. I had a great time playing with my 3 nephews and my siblings and their spouses. It snowed enough for them to cancel church and with the bad weather and toddler nap times we didn't do any sightseeing, but we hung out and played games and had a great time. It was Christian's first plane ride and he did GREAT!!! He slept most of the time on both flights and while I worried before each flight, I had no reason to. I have a great sling I bought from my friend Kim and wore him through the airport with ease!

I didn't get as many pictures as I should have, but here's just a few of our trip.

Christian and I wearing the sling

My sister Marcia and her son Brycen holding Christian

Christian with his younger cousin Lance

Brycen and Jackson

My brother Marc and his son Lance

Lance - sleeping like a baby!

Winter weather! (although nothing compared to what they are getting this weekend)

My adorable boys!

I KNOW I'm biased, but I really do have the cutest boys!

I love dressing them up identical for church!

Let's start with my littlest guy. Christian has his 2 month check-up last week and he is doing well and growing strong. He measured in at 23.5 inches tall and weighed in at 11 lb 12.5 oz which puts him in the 50% for weight and 75% for height. He slept through the night twice last week and we hope this trend continues. He gives amazing smiles and coos at us and is a lot of fun to be around. Last week he had a cold though, which was really sad, but he's feeling better now although he still has a cough.

He is so alert and awake!

Unless he's sleepy of course!

He gives fabulous smiles, and often sneers.

There's nothing better than a baby sleeping on your chest

Now on to my most mischievous boy. Brian has so much energy! He loves preschool twice a week and had a lot of fun last week when there was Father's night at his school. He and Paul came home singing and dancing really silly songs and I'm glad they had such a good time. Brian's favorite thing these days is playing the Wii. We got several new games for Christmas and after watching me workout every morning he wants to play himself and that usually lets me get my shower in so I let him.

Looking out the window of the playground at the park

Relaxing at the playground at the mall

Flying high at the trampoline at the mall. He had NO FEAR and flew amazingly high.

Kid A (Aaron) is doing great. He loves his kindergarten class and one of his good friends that is in his class at church and school moved just 4 houses away from us. Aaron and I are reading "Little House in the Big Woods" and are having a lot of fun taking turns reading a page each. Aaron also loves the Wii and is really good at most of the games. He likes to do his exercise on the Wii Fit Plus and we look forward to the weather getting warmer so he can ride his bike.

He also flew high at the mall, but was a lot more scared of the height and was happy being closer to the ground.

Going down the slide at the playground

Last year he couldn't reach this...when did he get so big?

Paul is amazing. His big project at work, where he was the Project Manager responsible for putting together an updated website for the ExxonMobil Chemical Company just went live this past week. The site is running great and we are really proud of his hard work. Check it out HERE. He is starting his second semester of his MBA program at Rice and is enjoying what he his learning and getting good grades. He works really hard at church, school and work and is still a great husband and dad. We miss him when he's not here, but we are so proud of him and love him a lot.

He's the best and he's all mine!

I am working on being more organized and am doing well, but still have a long way to go. I've been working out everyday with the Wii EA Sports Active and Wii Fit Plus. I've written a blog entry on my other site about working out though, so you can check that out if you'd like. I need to make more freezer meals, so for those that are here in the Katy area, I'd love to do a group freezer meal event. Let me know if you are interested.

As for other exciting events, Paul's sister Sara came in town this past weekend and we've had so much fun playing games and letting her hold the baby. We welcome any other friends or family members who want to come hang out.

Thanks for visiting. We love you!

Well, it's time to go make dinner now so I'd better run! Write comments!

Christmas, New Years and What not!

I started a post about Christmas, but didn't get the pics off the camera...then a week later I started a post about New Years, but again hadn't gotten the camera...now it's been another whole week without me working on the camera. I'll just post what I have and you'll have to deal with no pictures!

We've had a great 2009 and are so excited for 2010. This was our first Christmas with just our immediate family and we were happy having a relaxing day of opening presents and being together. We had a potluck dinner with some of our friends and it was totally a full house (8 adults and 11 kids) with so much food! We had a great time and feel very blessed to have such good friends.

I was so happy to have Paul home the week before and after Christmas, especially since Aaron and Brian didn't have school then either so our whole family was together. We spent time working on puzzles, playing our new Wii games, shopping, eating, reading and just spending time together.

Now a new year has started and we've sat down and made New Years Resolutions, both as a family and each member individually. We hope to do a lot of reading, exercising and spending lots of time together as a family. I hope to update this blog at least 2 times a month whether we do anything super interesting or not, just as a way of journaling our life. Plan on checking often just to see what we are up to.

Christmas Letter 2009

We decided not to send out as many Christmas cards this year, so I'm posting it here for those of you who don't get one. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family, Christmas 2009

This Christmas season finds the Thomas Family happy, healthy and very much blessed. Here’s our update since last year.

Last Christmas we spent our holidays in Houston with Jen’s family. We greatly missed having Jen’s father around but we still had a good time and were grateful to spend time with Jen’s Grandparents. A few days after Christmas, Grandma Fuller passed away so Jen and her mom and siblings hopped on a plane to fly to Sacramento, California for the funeral. Paul stayed home with the boys and had a good time with them. The week after that funeral, Paul’s Grandfather died so our whole family flew to Salt Lake City, Utah then drove up to Pocatello, Idaho for another funeral. While funerals are not the best way to start off a new year, being with family is and we greatly enjoyed the extra time we were able to spend with our loved ones.

We traveled two other times this year, both to visit Paul’s family. In June the whole family got together for a family vacation in Kawai’i, Hawaii and had a great time. We spent a whole week relaxing and playing together and loved it. In October we flew to Salt Lake City, Utah again to participate in the wedding of Michelle and Andrew (Paul’s brother). Again, we enjoyed being with our family and are glad we were able to stay so close to them despite living far away.

The biggest news for our family is that Christian John Thomas was born on November 9, 2009 at 11:52am and weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and was 19.5 inches long. He is a gorgeous little baby and is such a joy. Although he currently sleeps and eats most of the time we’ve seen several smiles and are so glad he’s a part of our family

Brian (3) has had a great year. He attends preschool on Mondays and Tuesdays for 3 hours and really enjoys it. He has gotten potty trained. He loves to read and play and while he is very strong-willed he is also very kind and sensitive and is a wonderful big brother to Christian

Aaron (5) still amazes us with all he can do. In the spring he played on his first t-ball team and had a lot of fun then this summer he and Brian took swimming lessons and Aaron made great progress putting his face under the water for the first time. In August he started kindergarten which here in Houston is a full day program. He rides the school bus, has lots of friends in our neighborhood, and is a happy healthy little boy.

Jen was pregnant most of the year and felt like that defined her, but she had an easy pregnancy and recovered after Chris’s birth very easily so she can’t complain. While she didn’t do much engineering or teaching sign language this year, she kept busy with her family and church callings and blogging and on facebook. As a part of our Young Women Presidency she attended the week long girls camp held this summer despite being 6 months pregnant at the time. She was sad to be released from her calling in YW this fall but has learned to love being a part of our ward Relief Society presidency. It’s quite a difference having responsibility for the women versus the youth, but she enjoys the women she works with and is learning a lot.

Paul is still working for ExxonMobil and has worked on several high profile projects and has gained great experience as a project manager. His big news is that he began an MBA program at Rice University this fall. Between his church calling of ward mission leader, his work at Exxon and his schooling he keeps very busy but is most happy when he gets to spend time with his wife and three sons.

As Christmas approaches again we are very grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ and we celebrate His birth by remembering all He has done for us. We express love and gratitude for how blessed we are to have such wonderful friends and family and so many blessings in our life. Merry Christmas to all and we hope to keep in touch with each of you all year long (check out and comment on our blog for more updates)

Love,

The Thomas Family

Paul, Jen, Aaron, Brian and Christian

It's a busy time of year

We've had a busy few weeks since Thanksgiving and thought we'd share the latest update on what we've been doing.

One week after Thanksgiving Grammy and Grandpa Thomas came to visit. We had a great visit with them although mostly we just sat at home and chatted with each other. We visited Rice University so they could see where Paul goes to school and Paul and I employed them as a babysitter so we could get some Christmas shopping done for the boys, but other than that we just hung out and let them hold the baby.

They must have brought their Utah weather with them because the day after they got here it snowed. Really snowed - in Houston! The boys were pretty excited to have us build them a little snowman and throw some snowballs. While it's nothing compared to what Grammy and Grandpa get in Utah, it was one of the biggest snowstorms we've had in Houston in many years.

The real reason for Paul's parents to visit was for Dave to participate in Christian's baby blessing. Sunday afternoon Paul, his father, our home teacher and our Bishop stood in a circle and gave Christian a name and a blessing. Chis cried throughout the blessing, but it was still a beautiful blessing and a beautiful event for our family. My mom and our friends Julie and Justin were there too and we all had a nice dinner at our house after. It it always fun to celebrate with family and friends!

This past Tuesday was Brian's preschool Christmas Program. He sang "Joy to the World", "Santa Clause is coming to town" and "We wish you a Merry Christmas." He did a great job and it was a lot of fun to see all the 3 yr old in his school singing and behaving as 3 yr olds often do!

Wednesday was Chris' 1 month birthday. I can't believe he's already a month old. He's getting bigger all the time and is doing great. He has more awake periods now and we've been able to see several genuine smiles which we love. He sleeps a lot better when he's upright (in his car seat or swing, or in the baby sling I wear) so we have started putting him to sleep in his car seat so that I can get more sleep at night. When I wake up every 2-3 hours to feed him, the sleep deprivation starts to add up and I turn into a grumpy mommy, but when he gives me 4 hours at night I become a better mommy and am much more patient. He's a joy to have in our family and both boys love him a lot!

Thursday night we woke the kids up shortly after we had put them in bed so that they could see Santa Clause riding through our neighborhood on the local Firetruck. He was checking to see if our boys were naughty or nice, and I guess they are nice cause he threw out candy to them and they were really excited about it!

Lastly, today was our Ward Christmas Party and our boys were one of the 12 talents for the 12 days of Christmas. The two of them stood at the front of the congregation and sang "Joy to the World" for everyone to hear. They did a great job and I was really proud of them.

We're almost ready for Christmas and I'm looking forward to having all 4 of my boys home the week before and after Christmas. I'm sure we'll update you then on everything we did.

Thanksgiving and more

Hi Everyone, Chris here, and I thought I'd write my first blog entry now that I've been in the family almost 3 weeks. This past Thursday was Thanksgiving and evidently it's a big deal.

We went over to Grandma Fuller's house for dinner and hung out there all day.

While they

were eating this

I was sleeping.

I woke up just in time for a quick photo session (I get lots of those these days)

and then after eating myself unconscious again we went for a walk.

We ended up at the gazebo where Mommy and Daddy got engaged and had a quick family picture taken.

Yesterday was Mommy and Daddy's 7th wedding anniversary
and I sure am glad that I was born into such a wonderful family with parents who love each other so much. Thanks Mom and Dad for starting our family 7 years ago!

Update from the past few months

I know I had a good excuse to not blog lately (preggers and new baby and all), but we've had a lot happen since school started, so I'll try to do a quick catch up of the highlights from September and October.

Shortly after Aaron started kindergarten, Brian started preschool. Brian attends Holy Covenant Methodist Church Child Development Center on Monday and Tuesday mornings from 9-noon and loves it. He's part of the frog class and tells us all the time that he's a frog. He really enjoys his teacher and his class and I appreciate having just a few hours without him at home, although I rarely get to relax as I am typically doing laundry or having a Relief Society Presidency meeting. As long as he's happy though, we are happy!

Speaking of Relief Society, in September I was released from working with the Young Women in my church and called into the Relief Society Presidency. I was very sad to leave the YW program, as I had really enjoyed the association with those awesome girls, but just a few weeks after being released I received this new calling. Having not attended RS in several years I was quite nervous at first, but I am learning to love this calling just as much as my previous callings and am gaining a testimony of the importance of the RS program too.

Paul has been super busy with work and school, but is enjoying it all. He typically has class on Monday and Wednesday nights, plus one Saturday a month and other random times. His work schedule has been pretty crazy and most of October he would go back to the office after class ended and stay until midnight. The boys and I didn't see him for a while and we missed him, but we managed pretty well and are glad his schedule is a little lighter now.

Labor day was the first day Paul and the kids had off since school started and we were very excited to spend the day together and play. Paul had planned out the entire day and my mom came and joined us for many of the activities. We went for a bike ride, played on the playground at Aaron's school, did some arts and crafts, played backyard games and on and on. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoy spending time together as a family.

One of my favorite things that happened in September was that Brian got potty trained. He was so much easier to potty train than Aaron, I really only had to work with him for 2-3 days and he got it. We still have the occasional accident, but he's done a great job and we are super proud of him!

Our big excursion in October was a quick trip to Utah for Paul's brother's wedding. Andrew and Michelle were married in the Salt Lake City temple and the ceremony was absolutely beautiful. We only got to stay in Utah for a day and a half and we wish we could have stayed longer to be with our family, but we are glad we got to spend as much time with them as we could. Congratulations again to Andrew and Michelle, we love you both.

Lastly, here is a picture from Halloween. I went as an engineer, and was surprised that I couldn't button up the sides of my coveralls at all, but being 9 month pregnant at the time I shouldn't have been surprised. Aaron was a fireman and Brian was a cowboy. Our church did a trunk or treat activity that started with dinner, lots of games inside the building, then going from trunk to trunk in the parking lot to get candy. The boys had a great time and got lots of great loot!

There were lots of other great events in September and October, from my sister visiting, fun date nights, parent teacher conferences, a weekend at the lake and much more. We've been super busy and have had a great time. I can't believe November is almost over and so much has gone on. We'll try to update more with pictures of Chris often, but until then, know that the Texas Thomas Family is doing well and is happy!

Letter: to Christian John Thomas from Daddy

Dear Christian:

Welcome to our family. You've been with us for a few days now and we are so excited that you get to be part of the Thomas family. You were born at 11:52am on Monday, November 9, 2009 and we will celebrate your birth every year on this day. Let me tell you about how it happened.

We showed up early at the hospital, as we had an appointment to bring you to us today. The nurses were very nice as they hooked mom up to the monitors and gave her an IV. Mom was already having some contractions but they gave her some medicine (oxytocin) to induce labor and bring you to us quicker. After about 2 hours the doctor broke the bag of waters you had been living in then another doctor gave mom an epidural so that she wouldn't have any pain. (It was a FABULOUS epidural too...mom is still raving about it!)

About 2 hours later mom started feeling the need to push you out and less than 30 minutes after that you entered this world. Your mom and grandma and I were so excited to watch you be born and we were amazed at how awake and alert you were. The nurses weighed and measured you and you weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and were 19.5 inches long. We think that you were perfect. We got to hold you and take lots of pictures of you and mommy gave you some of her milk for the first time then the nurses took you away to clean you up and run your first tests.

Other than having some fast breathing and being so sleepy you didn't want to eat much for a day or so, we didn't have any problems and both you and mom were healthy and happy. We took you home on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 and you got to meet your 2 brothers who were so excited to meet and hold you for the first time. Grandma has been around helping out and I have been able to stay home from work all week long and cuddle with you lots.

We are going to have so much fun together and our whole family is excited that you are here with us. Your mom and I promise to take very good care of you and teach you everything you need to learn to be happy. We love you and we are glad you are ours. Welcome to the Thomas Family.

Love,

Daddy.