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! :)

God, Let Me Be a Blessing

Recently our family heard of another family in need. Like all the stories you might hear of out there at this time of year they are struggling.

I don't want to get into all the details of how and why as I think that things like that should be kept hush. They have enough on their plates without worrying about others speaking of their personal business.

Suffice to say they have more to worry about than just presents under their tree. At the top of their list was "space heaters with long extension cords". Break.my.heart.

I have been sitting here worrying about what new Xbox game to get Graham (hello $59.95 that I'll never see again) and another family can't get warm this Christmas. I feel both shame and thankfulness for the giant slap in the face that God has just given me. My own worries are nothing compared to what others are facing. My stress is just a drop in the bucket compared to that other family's.

I look at our wrapped presents under our tree in our warm home and realize that none of those things matter at.all. How I wish I could just go and pluck items up that I've already purchased and pass them on to this family (Sadly, the children of this family are a 6 year old girl and a 14 year old boy. Nothing that I've gotten for my kids would really match up at all with what their other kiddos might want or need.)

This is the season for our family to give back. We've been blessed in the past and we need to start paying that forward. We have started getting some things together for the family. Some of our really good friends and family (Love you Melanie!) are helping out as well.

I'm still worried though. I'm done Christmas shopping (and so is my budget :) and there is just a little bit money that my family can contribute. My prayers are that it is enough and that Gods blessing is placed on the items that we can give them!

When thinking and praying over this situation this morning my mind stayed to on of my favorite stories from the bible.

Matthew 14:13-21

New International Version (NIV)

Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

13 When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
18 “Bring them here to me,” he said. 19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

I hope and pray that when I head out to the store later that my money mysteriously multiplies :) and that there are some insane sales!

God, please bless this family. Gentle their financial worries and let these items be just what they need. Let the children that are opening these gifts on Christmas morning ooh and ahh over what they receive. May the blessing of my family be passed onto this family as well. Amen. 

Shhh.... Don't Tell The Boys :)

The boys are getting something a little extra special under the tree this year...

Meet our newest "baby", Gunnar. 

Yes, his name starts with a G just like our other boys. :) 

He is a Golden Retriever and will be ready to pick up on Christmas Eve. I hope there is not too much crying for his Momma (that would totally wake my boys)  because I'd LOVE to be able to have my boys walk in to our living room on Christmas morning and see him in his doggie bed!

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What Graham's Reading

I love how much Graham is into reading these day! Now, don't let me totally fool you... there are still plenty of times where there is some grumbling and pre-teen eye rolling going on when it's "required reading". But for the most part he's really getting into what he's got open in front of him!

As a book worm myself I just LOVE this about him! When I was his age I could devour a book in less than a day. This used to drive my dad banana's always asking to be taken to the book store. :)

I know I have mentioned in the past that Graham has learning disabilities. Specifically dyslexia (or so we pretty sure. It's a long, boring, and pissy story in regards to his testing and the school district that I just won't get into now...).Graham puts in 110% to stay at grade level reading. I usually hang pretty close when he's reading to re-read a paragraph to double check for comprehension but almost always he's on target.

Recently our school had a book fair and Graham chose 3 different book!

I know that Graham picked well because I can easily see all of his interests represented right here! The one of top is about the Revolutionary war, the one in the middle is a spooky mystery, and the one of bottom is about service animals in WWII.

He is really ready to get started reading all of these but I'm making him finish his school library book first :).

He's reading Smells Like Dog. The parts I've read with him (yes, he still asks to be "read a story" at night :) ) are super cute!

My heart sings when I see his bedside table and it looks like this...

I just love my sweet reader! 

The Last Saturday of Soccer

Both my older two boys played their last soccer games of the year. They are both sad and happy all in one. Two practices a week and games on Saturday was getting a little tiring for them (and me). They will miss their soccer friends until next season.

They both played amazingly well today!

Grady played first at 12:00.

Grady did a wonderful job and played his best game yet!

Graham played next at 2:00. We stayed up at the fields in between games for Graham to get some extra goalie practice in with his coach before the game (more on that later).

Graham was chosen to play 1st half goalie for the last game! We were so proud of him! He really began to enjoy playing this position last year and has really bloomed at it this year. He did an amazing job and out of all the shots made on him he only let one ball through (the final score was 5-1 with our team winning!). The rest of the game he played both offensive and defensive positions.

This is what Griffin did for the 19 hours we out today...

Bless this sweet baby's heart. He slept, ate, and picked his nose right here the entire time. :)

Both my boys had amazing coaches who just did wonderful with the kiddos. There was nothing but positive encouragement and awesome training.

I have to brag on both Graham and his coach though. I got a couple of emails from him that just made my heart smile. I tried to explain to Graham when I read them aloud that this was not a coach that just throws around praise. I can't wait to see what next season brings!

"1 will be great. I don't want to tire him out too much before the game. I appreciate his determination to feel prepared and be as good as possible."

and...

"We'll play our final game of the Fall Season tomorrow at 2 PM on Field 8A. Unfortunately JT has another commitment so Sela's mom and I will be running the sideline. For anybody who wants an extended warmup, we'll be somewhere around one of the goals any time after 1 since Graham is dedicated to doing his absolute best in the goal, and he wants some extra practice."

The Rest Of Halloween

Basically this sums up our Halloween night...

This was not even one of those "stock Google images" photos. This was from our dining room table. I had everything spread out looking for needle holes and razor blades. Not one Butterfinger appeared to be safe. It all had to be safely stored in a Ziploc bag in my bedside table.

My kids were one gigantic blur last night. I got about 4 dark/blurry pictures of them while they appeared to be running for their lives (or the house next door to the one they just trick or treated at because "they might run out").

They all had an awesome time and I'll add some updated pictures of just them if I can steal some from my SIL. :)

Griffin had a blast on the Hay Ride that we did. By the end of the night he really had the candy collection process down pat. For the last two or three houses he even managed to say "Trick or Treat" in his Ijustturnedtwoandsoundadorable voice.

We had the best time hanging out with the cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncle (and numerous school friends).

I thought I'd include just a couple of pictures of some household Halloween things before it all comes down later today...

I free-handed that M yo...

I painted the pumpkins and made the wreath myself! (do you think it's Etsy shop material?)

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Halloween night too!

Boo To You!

(ya'll cut me some slack as I try to get back to this blogging gig... :)



It's that awesome time of year again! We love Fall around our house. The weather is cooler, we've gotten settled back into our new school routine, and all the fun Holiday's are just around the corner!

Tonight we'll be celebrating Halloween with some of our favorite people. Our family! We have some pizza to eat, a lot of houses to collect candy from, and a hay ride to enjoy. My boys could not be any happier! Both Graham and Grady would be wearing their costumes night and day if I let them :). Sweet Griffin is almost old enough to enjoy it all. We will probably take him up to a house or two to "trick or treat" but mostly he'll just be hanging out with me on the hay ride.

I can't wait to update later with some pictures of my cuties in their costumes!

Everyone have a fun and safe night!

The Old House

Yesterday the boys and I went out to Bobby's Great Grandmother's house to help his mother get an old armoire out. It's really starting to show it's age but it's still soo beautiful!

Five children were born and raised here and countless memories were made.

I confess, I became slightly obsessed with the decorative trim that surrounds the front porch of the house. :)

In the front yard stands this lone windmill. My husband still tells us stories about the water he would drink from the well and still says that "windmill punch" is the best.

How beautiful is the front door?! I just nearly swoon every time I see it!

There is tons of stuff still left in the house. Each and everything is so wonderful and old.

Can you read what's on the plate above? It says "Food should be cooked with lots of love and lots of butter." LOVE it! :)

The boys just went crazy trying to get a look at everything!

I loved all the old dressers and mirrors. It boggles my mind thinking about all the ladies in the family standing in front of those mirrors getting ready over the years.

Grady and his cousin Carter were poking into everything! Who could blame them though? Everything was so interesting!

Only in Texas would you find a cactus growing right up next to a Crepe Myrtle tree.

We stopped multiple times to eat some snacks (and get out of the stickers!).

It was a wonderful day of family adventure!