It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I love all the Christmas traditions...

Decorating the tree

Riding the carousel

Making a Christmas animal

Pictures with Santa

Reading our nightly Christmas book.

Pictures can be so deceiving...

The weekend before Thanksgiving my mom wanted to go to the Poinsettia festival in Brenham. I thought it sounded like a good photo op. You know me... always ready for a good picture. So I color coordinated the family in hopes of getting a good picture - maybe Christmas card worthy. Here is what we got.

The girls weren't overly cooperative. We couldn't get them to both look pleasant at the same time. However, right before we left, this is what we found in my bathroom.

Reagan found my mascara. It's amazing how you can stick a sweater on and almost all evidence is hidden. So just remember as you look at everyone's Christmas card this year - including mine - especially mine - not all is as picture perfect as it seems. :) Merry Christmas! Here's hoping we all - especially me - slow down to enjoy the excitment and joy of the season.

I'm so thankful for...

an amazing husband... a wonderful extended family... many friends... a beautiful home... a loving church family... and the cutest 2 little Indians you ever did see.

Ears are for hearing!

It's been another interesting week here at the Frey house. Avery's ears are significantly worse. Monday we went to the ENT to talk about putting tubes in her ears. He checked them and he wanted to do a standard hearing test before we scheduled the surgery. I took her Wednesday morning for the hearing test and it only lasted about 90 seconds. I thought that was a little odd so I asked the doctor about it. He said that she was hearing at a 65. That told me nothing so I asked what normal was. He said about 10... kids with fluid are at a 40, sometimes 50. 65 was the worst he had ever seen. No wonder it feels like we're yelling all the time. We have surgery scheduled for Dec. 8. They will put in tubes and take out her adenoids. As bad as it sounds, we are excited and counting down. I'm ready to have my little girl back. 10.....

More than I deserve

As many of you know, I had a birthday on Saturday. We celebrated by going to see High School Musical 3. Those of you know know me well know that this was my idea and I was most excited about it. The movie was great... music, dancing and clean. It doesn't take much to please the 3 Frey girls so we and Omi danced and sang along smiling and enjoying ourselves. All it takes for Josh to be happy is for the three girls to be happy so life was good. We went and ate at Wings 'N' More, made a stop by Lifeway and came home with a cookie cake. It was a perfect day. We had fun and we were able to spend the entire day together.





Today at school was a little rough and yet tonight I will go to sleep a bit teary and feeling oh so fortunate. You see I have an amazing husband, beautiful girls, a stinky dog (but he's ours!) and a beautiful house. At the moment everyone is healthy. We have plenty of food, clothes to wear, and more extras than we should. So often we take it for granted. I learned of three things today at school that broke my heart.


One of our teachers, who is also my next door neighbor, was in a wreck on the way to school this morning. Her car was totaled and last I heard she was waiting to get her wrist x-rayed because she was afraid she had broken it. Thankfully her son was not in the car with her, but I'm sure she is shaken up and sore.


Friday one of my students told me that she would find out Saturday if her mom had cancer. This is not one of those kids that will say anything for attention so after talking with her a bit I learned that her mom is pregnant, due in December, and they have found a "spot". When I asked her about it this morning (she was absent yesterday) she said that her mom hadn't told her anything yet. That doesn't sound good to me and I'm worried for her.


Then there is my Buddy. He is a student in my class, but he is also my mentor student. I check with him each week to make sure he's keeping up with his stuff and behaving. He has so much going against him, but he has my heart. Everyone in class knows he's my buddy and no one else has that title. He is special. He's the cutest kid with a tough exterior, but who can draw better than anyone I've ever seen. His heart is in his pictures, and it's a sweet heart. He was absent Friday and Monday so I was getting concerned because that is not like him. This morning he told me that Thursday when he got home he learned that his house burned down. They lost everything. Even the dog and cat who were trapped in the fire. Devastation. Everything gone. What do you say? What do you tell a 12 year old boy when everything he has is suddenly gone?


My family went to Walmart tonight and bought some shirts, and jeans, and a soccer ball for a sweet, funny, talented little boy. All I could think of the entire time we walked through the store was "Thank you Lord, that we have the money for this right now." God is so much better than I deserve.

I love being Fancy!

Avery's favorite books right now are the Fancy Nancy books. Yes, they are very girly but that works at our house. Fortunately for us, Fancy Nancy has a little sister, two parents, and a teacher Miss Glass so we all fell into character very easily. Reagan was the little sister, Josh and I the parents, and Naomi was Miss Glass. Avery even called her Miss Glass all night. It was pretty funny. Now you might think that Reagan looks more like a puppy than a little sister. That's ok. In one of the books, Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, Fancy Nancy wants a dog, so the sister is elected. Reagan played the part to perfection!

Pumpkin Carving???

Who needs a knife when you have a drill!

As you can see, Reagan wasn't very happy. The reason? She would rather chew on her pumpkin parts than have them be part of the pumpkin. Toddlers... you gotta love 'em.

We're still here

Yes, yes. I've been a bad blogger. However, the Frey family has had a few issues since the first day of school. We started with Hurricane Ike. It's amazing what motivation a hurricane will bring. We manged to get both cars into the garage. It hasn't happened since, but still! We were very fortunate during the hurricane. We had no damage at all to our house. However we did lose power for 6 days. Thank goodness my parents let us come to their house to stay for the week.

Soon after that my mom had an emergency appendectomy. She is doing much better but it was a little stressful at the time. This is a picture of her last weekend.

The next week Avery had surgery on her eyes. I once heard someone say that minor surgery isn't minor when it's your own surgery. That is also a true statement when it's your child. Although it was rather routine it was still scary for us. She is doing well, but this will not be the end of Avery's eye troubles. We now have to patch her "good" eye for 2 hours a day, and we go back in January to check her progress. With the way things look now, we will schedule another surgery.

The next week Josh was able to go to Lifeway's National Children's Ministers Conference in Orlando, Florida. Although he had a great time, it left us girls at home without him. Again, we were so fortunate because Grandma came to the rescue. She came the Monday before Avery's surgery and stayed until the Friday after Josh came home. It was wonderful having her here. On Columbus Day all three girls were out of school so we went to the mall so Avery could have some play time indoors. We've had to really watch the dust and sun during her recovery so she wasn't able to play outside at all.

Last weekend we went to the Aggie game. We had a great time even though we lost. However while Josh, Omi and I were at the game, Grammy kept the girls at her house. Avery was playing in the back yard, slipped and fell against the deck. The result? One of the worst black eyes I've ever seen... just in time for school pictures. Maybe they will do retakes!

This week was the first uneventful week in a while and it was nice. Our church is running "Judgement House" so Josh will be gone several evenings this week and next, but at least we are all safe and healthy. We thought we would enjoy the fall weather this morning and go pick a few pumpkins. The girls had a blast looking through all the different sizes and shapes.

Hopefully things will be slowing down a bit for us. I will try to do a better job of keeping you up to date. Happy Fall!

The First Day of School

The girls both started school yesterday and they had a blast!!! Neither of them cried when Josh dropped them off - they just went right in and got busy. Avery's teacher said she had a good day, but it was Reagan's teacher's comments that cracked us up. "She was energetic and chatty. She knows so many words and she loves to sing Patty Cake." The impression we get is that she talks more than anyone in her class. I'm so thankful that we have found a school so perfect for our family. By the way, Avery was given the choice to dress like her sister or not, and she said yes. I know this won't last forever, but it's fun for now.

Just a few

pictures of my adorable girls!

So smart!

We love spaghetti!!!

Some of our "older" friends straightened Avery's hair. She looked like a movie star.

Finally!

I know, I know!!! I've been a bad blogger. Things have been a little crazy around our house the past couple of weeks. We were able to close on our new home Tuesday, August 12... and I started my new job on Wednesday, August 13. So things are not quite where I would like them to be at home or at school, but we're getting there. So please forgive the pictures where there are still boxes or messes, or no paint. I would love to lie and say they were taken a while back, but really I took them a few minutes ago. It just takes a while when you have two helpers and everything else on top of it. So, here are a few long ago promised pictures of our new house. We absolutely love it. Hopefully this weekend we can get a few more things done.