Merry Christmas Eve :)

I know that tomorrow is going to be one long, crazy, fabulous day so I thought that I'd go ahead and post our Christmas greeting early :).

This one card pretty much sums us up right now. And I couldn't ask for anything better.

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time. ~Laura Ingalls Wilder

Thankfulness and Blessings

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We have so many blessings to be thankful for this year!

I am thankful for our safe, warm home.

I am thankful for the food that fills our pantry and refrigerator.

I am thankful for the love and laughter that fills our home.

I am thankful for the 3 precious boys that the Lord has lent me.

I am thankful for an amazingly loving husband.

I am thankful for the warm hearts of our extended family.

I am thankful for the silly things like hot cocoa, hunting season, and fun shows to watch on tv. :)

I am thankful for my children's teachers and their many sufferings. HA!

I am thankful for our continued good health.

What are you thankful for?

Dogs Have Birthdays Too!

My youngest "son" turns ONE today!

Yes, I am that crazy lady who is blogging about her dog's birthday... If I had even a smidge more time I'd be throwing a party for him complete with doggie friends. :)

Gunnar was born 11/12/13. And THANK GOD for that or else I'd never remember it.

He is the sweetest dog you'll ever meet. He lets the boys dog-pile him, use him as a pillow to watch tv, and even cry into his soft side when someone hurts their feelings.

He has his very own dog bed (complete with a ridiculously over priced memory foam mattress) but chooses to sleep with Bobby and I. Thank goodness we have a king size bed because Gunnar can.not seem to figure out how to sleep parallel to Bobby and I to save his life.

Gunnar still likes it when his humans troop outside with him to go potty. (this is how we potty trained him as a puppy) MANY times a day he will scratch at the door to go outside but once he realizes that he'll be going out there on his own he will  back it right back up into the house and wait us out. Can you say frustrating?! :)

No toys are ever safe with him! As you can tell, his longer hair is just starting to grow in. It's started with his tail and is moving gradually down his body. I can't wait until it's all grown in. He is as soft as cashmere! 

This is Gunnar's Happy Birthday basket. All those yummies and his favorite thing was the blue dog. :)

This is Gunnar and some of his litter mates at only 11 days old! How precious are these babies!? It was sooo hard to pick him out! I think that Gunnar is the little fattie and the bottom and towards the right. 

And last but not least thing about Gunnar is his addiction to sticks (and rocks). He is a stick HOARDER. I put not one of these sticks here for this picture. He did! He collects them all right by the boys sandbox and chews on them. How funny is that?! He also like to carry rocks around in his mouth but I make him drop those when I catch him. I have ZERO plans to take him to the doggie dentist any time soon if he happens to break a tooth. :)

Happy 1st Birthday Gunnar! We love you like our 4th son! :)

Doing What Boys Do

We've had a couple of days of cold and rain. If you've ever visited (or lived in) South Texas you know that this doesn't happen very often. So it was usual when I had to keep Griffin inside to play for those two days. He proceeded to go crazy and then take me with him... :)

This morning, with the sun shining and my blessing he trooped back outside just as quick as his little legs could carry him. I managed to get boots on over his long jammies and a fleece pullover but that was it.

He had a blast! Our ground was soo soggy and wet but he couldn't be deterred and I couldn't deter him! Oh bless me how I wanted to though...

I bit my lip every time I wanted to say "Get out of that water!" and "Don't smear mud of yourself!".

Griffin had to do what boys do.

I just LOVE this sweet, dirty, boogy, face!

It wasn't long before Griffin ditched his boots. His poor PJ's will never be the same ... :)

Even  Gunnar had the wiggles and need to get out and play! 

Happy Friday! I hope that everyone has a great weekend!

Happy Fall Ya'll!

My gracious, how I love these sweet, crazy boys! I hope that everyone has a fun, safe, and Happy Halloween!

We Are Already Getting Our Halloween On

Griffin had his preschool costume parade today. Ohmygoodness. The cuteness overload almost did me in. Everyone of those precious, tiny darlings just about made me tear up!

I mean, THIS FACE! How is this my baby!!

Griffin's sweet teacher totally took one for the team and came dressed as Dora. Bless her sweet heart.

This is another one of his sweet teachers. How do they think of these great costumes?? I can never think of anything. (She was Mary Poppins.)

My sweet nephew Carter was there too. ADORABLE.

See? I warned you. Cuteness overload for sure!

My Grady was all sorts of ready for crazy hair day at school. He was soo happy that I found our leftover hair color from 4th of July. :)

It's still only the day before Halloween. I can only begin the imagine how much more exciting tomorrow will be!

Back From the Dead

Kind of a fitting title after being gone so long and with Halloween coming up, no? :)

I'm still reading other's blogs just as often as I can. I have found recently that I've been wondering about so many people since they seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth in the blogging world. I pretty quickly realized that I am one of those people.

I wish that I was coming back with one of those fun announcements that others always seem to be making like "Guess what! I'm having a baby!" or "Hubby got a new job and it's in Hawaii!" But, that is NOT me.

We are just still here living our little lives! We are all up to our necks in football games for Grady, soccer for Graham and Griffin being drug hither and yon.

Grady got to try his hand at being the quarterback on this play. He has LOVED playing flag football this year!

Grady's league even had a night where they were able to run out onto the field with the high school football players that coach them! 

Graham is still playing Falcon's soccer and loving it. I can't even tell you how many years now he's played both Fall and Spring. We wouldn't change this craziness for the world though. He loves it and is getting so good!

Thank goodness we have Mimi around to help chase Griffin. Like I said earlier, he gets drug around to almost every game and practice. Bless his little heart. Just one more year though and he can play soccer too! (Lord help me...)

I hope that everyone is having a great week so far. I can't wait to update on our Halloween. It's going to be soo much fun!!

Because That's How We Roll

Sometimes I think my family and myself thrive on having way too many irons in the fire. Things are all sorts of crazy up in here. That's the excuse I tell myself for why I've not been blogging :). This whole raising 3 boys (4 if you count the dog - and I do) has turned into crazy = normal.

Here are some recent recaps of the Crazy Mueller Family. :)

• Our new puppy Gunnar is a one way trip to Crazy Town. I say that in the sweetest way though. We love him soo much! The boys adore being met at the door by him when they get home from school and I can tell that he misses them too. But, this whole potty training a dog when its cold outside is just nuts!! He is finally getting better but I really can't wait until he 100%.

The last picture cracks me up. He was sleeping on some dirty clothes (don't judge...) that were laying on our bathroom floor. I went to get them to start the wash (so of course he had to move) and he got mad and went and curled up BEHIND THE TOILET to go back to sleep. 

• While doing laundry I discovered the most disgusting pair of jeans that I've ever seen in my life. I started the cleaning process and then just gave up all together. They are going in the trash! Hopefully the trash guys don't report us to the police for suspicious behavior...

(now no one get all hepped up...my husband was field dressing among other things a deer he had shot. If the police do show up I'll just show them the hot mess of an outside freezer that just fills me with pride...

Frozen deer scalp/skull a la Charles Manson anyone?? :)

• I pulled a Coprolite out of my washing machine this morning. How many of you can say you've ever washed fossilized dinosaur poop before?? Anyone or is just me??  The crap that comes out of my kids pocket never ceases to amaze me.
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•  I still have ONE last Christmas card to mail. My friend who's getting it is a total sweetheart though and will understand.

• We had Graham and Griffin switch bedrooms recently. We came to the realization that our oldest really needed his own bathroom. Griffin's bedroom had one that we really never used. It just made sense. We also did a lot of work in our upstairs hallway and had our walls around our stairs finally!! painted. 

Graham's new room!

Girffin's new room!

Parts and pieces of the boys upstairs hallway (and a tiny portion of the painted stairs). We tried to put mostly fun and inspirations sayings on the wall. 

• OMG. Did I also tell you that I've been redoing the boys jack and jill bathroom upstairs?? I forgot to take before picture (because, duh, I've been busy... :). It was a super hot mess of 1980's wallpaper and just overall yuck. Here it is now! (well mostly, I'm not quite done with all of it yet...) 

Its a narrow jack/jill bathroom so I could never quit get in there for you to see the whole thing. I tried to take pictures of each little aspect though. I like to call it "mature pirate". HA! It turned out really great and I'm super proud of it!

• Lest everyone rush out to purchase Mother Of The Year awards, here is a picture of what I saved in my computer as "Reality.png"... :)

Griffin is crying because he is two and longer wants to hold my hand OR wear pants. He and a little girl I watch tore up Grady's room while Grady was at school today. This is a fairly usual occurrence. :)  

Like I said before, we seem to live in swirling day to day choas. That's how we roll and I wouldn't have it any other way! :)