Best Friends and Birthdays

Today, September 27, 2007 is Tallie Elizabeth's birthday. What is Tallie to me personally and my family...Well I will tell you.

She is a Matron of Honor


She is a Hostess


She is Dare Devil, that is afraid to fly in a plane, but not out of one!


She is a God Mother






She loves animals.


I am a lucky girl because I can say I have some great friends. Real friends that have been with me through thick and thin. Ah, but Tallie has been there the longest. 29 years to be exact.

Love ya Tal!

BBF until I don't cry thinking about how special you are to me.

Love,
Good Ol' Ter!

Friends

This weekend was all about time with friends. First was spent time with Raphael in the park.


Here are more pictures of Raphael.





Then we went to Diego's 2nd birthday party.


Here are more pictures from Diego's party.


Then on Sunday was spent time at Auntie Tallie's house visiting her and her horsies.

Here are more pictures of the horsies.

Kitchen Makeover

We have had a mini kitchen makeover this year.

• 1st we put in a new sink


• 2nd we replaced our microwave


• 3rd we replaced our stove.

Our newest addition is our new stove. Uncle JJ comes thru in a big way again! He told us about a place where we could get a great deal on a new stove and boy did we ever. Then Uncle JJ picked up our new stove, brought it over to our house and even installed it for us. Talk about service!!!! We are so grateful for our Uncle JJ. What would we do without him!

Big Fan of Bigfoot!

Christian has become a big fan of a new show. It is all about little bitty Monster Trucks. It is called Bigfoot Presents: Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks.

It is a cute little show about friendship, being kind, following the rules and lots of other nice lessons. Since Christian's newest favorite toys are trucks of any kind. This is a perfect match for him!

Translation: Here is what Christian is saying in the video

1) BIG TRUCKS!

2) Vrrooommm, Vrrrooom

3) Go, Go, Go

THE BUDGET

If you know Chris well you know about THE BUDGET, you have heard about THE BUDGET, you have been told you need THE BUDGET...in some way you have probably been preached to about THE BUDGET. THE BUDGET rules over our family with an iron fist. If THE BUDGET says no, well then there is nothing that can be done about that.

Well since July I have been wanting to take a family trip to the beach. I thought Christian would enjoy it since he had so much fun playing in the water in Colorado. Well THE BUDGET put a quick stop to that. Actually the Wenck Family 365 Day Cash Flow Budget 2007 said we were have a negative cash flow situation. THE BUDGET even started to demand more money because we were in the negative. The recommendation was made the I cut back my personal allowance. Well there would be none of that... I have to hold onto every penny THE BUDGET gives me. So we went of a money diet. We wrote down everything we spent money on for a week. The idea was to see where we were over spending.

Last night in the midst of Chris updating THE BUDGET these words were spoken..."Uh hey babe, I think I found something". Turns out there was a HUGE error in the Wenck Family 365 Cash Flow Budget 2007 and we are back in the black...by a lot.

The official company line is something like this.

The Wenck Office of Management and Budget restated its accountability targets after finding a huge error related to a Spreadsheet formula error.

So now I am being asked, do you want to go to the beach? Do you want to get that new monitor? Do you want to go to Sea World? What do you want to?

So we are going to Vegas (Baby)!!! The perfect place when you find some money...go to a place you are sure to spend it all !!!! Actually there is a confernce in Vegas that I wanted to attend but at the time THE BUDGET said Chris couldn't go because we just couldn't afford it.

Adventures in BBQ,Old Friends and the Zoo

This weekend we had originally planned to visit the San Antonio Zoo. But even the best laid plans often go awry. So we went to the Austin Zoo instead. Not quite on the same level but much closer to home. You see Christian was sick on Friday and we even had to give him breathing treatments throughout the day. This meant the middle of the night too, so no one in the family got a good nights sleep. The Austin Zoo was a good compromise and since Chris hadn't been there before, Christian and I had plenty to show him. We even rode the train this time.

I promise Christian liked the train ride, even though this picture would say the opposite. He loved the train whistle and the whole ride.

After our visit to the Zoo, Christian and I were dropped off at the house, hoping Christian would take a nice long nap while Chris went to HEB to get a few things. No such luck on the long nap. Actually he didn't really nap at all Saturday and by 6pm you could really tell.

As luck would have it our old friends Diego and Christina were in town too. Diego didn't feel like napping either, so they stopped by for a visit.

Our final adventure for the day was smoking some ribs on R2-D2. Who is R2-D2 you ask? Well R2-D2 is our newly acquired smoker for our friend Colin. Colin is the market for a much bigger and badder smoker since he just moved into a new house, so we were given R2-D2. While Chris was at HEB a guy in the meat department was telling him about these ribs that were one sale. So Chris took this as a sign that R2-D2 needed to be put to work.
Here is R2-D2.

This adventure required investing in a chimney fire starter as shown above. And it also required soaking wood chips in water for proper smoking.

I was put in charge of making a dry rub to go on the ribs. I used an online recipe as a guide, but ended up throwing several other things from my spice cabinet in as well. The ribs turned out really well. We will be having them a few more time because there were so many, we have 3 more servings in the freezer. Chris had his ribs dry, but I added a little Salt Lick BBQ sauce to mine. So R2-D2 is a productive member of the Wenck Family now. Thanks to Colin for letting us adopt him.

Linus Part II

Here are some pictures of our little Linus with his favorite blankets...Both of them.

Have you met our son....

Linus.

Yes we have a little Linus on our hands now. He has gotten quite attached to his blanket. His blanket at home and his blanket at school. He has a green one at home and one just like it but in white for school. When I picked him up from daycare yesterday he was carrying around his blanket and had his paci in his mouth. I asked him to give the paci to Miss Jenny so he could have it for school tomorrow, which his quickly did. Then I asked him to put his blanket up so he could have it for tomorrow too. Here is the cute part of my little story.

His class naps on little cots. The cots are stacked on top of each other the rest of the day. They aren't stacked in any particular order, so it isn't like his cot is always on the bottom or 3rd from the bottom. When I made my request for him to put his blanket up, he quickly went to the stack of cots and start pushing his blanket between cots. He did it so fast that I assumed he was just shoving it between any two cots because he wanted to leave. But no! He put his blanket on HIS cot. Not the cot above his, not the cot below his...on his cot.

I thought this was pretty smart for a 19 month old. I know he didn't do it because he was reading his name on the cot. He can barely say his name. It comes out more like "Istchin", but he is getting close. So I was a very proud Mom when I realized he was putting his blanket on his cot. His teachers just reinforced my pride when they said..."Yes, he is a smart one, because those cots aren't stacked in the same order everyday. He just remembers where his cot is."

So my hopes for a straight A student are alive and well.

Big Helper

We have a big helper on our hands. Mr. Christian has become quite the assistant. This weekend he help Daddy clean up the grass after Daddy mowed the yard.

However, some chores are just too big a job for our little helper (and his Mommie). Like installing 2 new faucets in our master bathroom.



















While Daddy was doing that, we (Mommie and Christian) went swimming at Aunt Sassy Apartment pool. We had lots of fun. Sorry there are no pictures. That is not an option when you are the only grown up around to watch the little swimmer. Christian was very brave in the pool. He even went under the water several times.

When we returned home Chris was finished with his chore of putting in the faucets. They look very nice too. The best news is that they work great, with no leaks!!!!!!

Memories

I have found myself thinking about when I was a 5 year old. Starting school, cheerleading camp, then cheering with the real cheerleaders as the high school football game and Wonder Woman. All things I enjoyed, and was excited, about when I was a 5 year old in 1977 (I'm trying not to pay too much attention to the fact that it was 3-0! years ago)



Now I get to re-live those memories through Abigail and I am enjoying every minute of it because I know how much fun she is having and how many great memories she is making for herself right now.




This weekend we heard that Abby had gone to a birthday party where all the kids were asked to come dressed as their favorite super hero. Abby picked Wonder Woman. What a great choice!!!!



This is the comic book Wonder woman and then this is me Halloween 1977 as Wonder Woman.

I know my costume is a pale comparison to the official attire, but hey you can only do so much with red felt and white paint. (edit: Mom let me know that that is my Dad's handwriting on my cape)

Then we heard that Abby attended a cheerleading camp this summer and would be performing at a high school football game later this month. Here is me doing just that same thing. Again...circa 1977.






I can't wait to see Abby and hear all about her adventures as Wonder Woman. About her flying around in her invisible jet and using the lasso of truth on George, Reese and Emmy. She has a great imagination so I know she has done much with her Wonder Woman powers and has made the world a much better place.

I also can't wait to see her cheer that she performed at the football game. She is such a wonderful dancer. I am sure she made an incredible cheerleader.

O U C H ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Christian took a little spill today at daycare. He landed flat on his face and you can see that he took a pretty good hit.

I was in his daycare room waiting to get him while he and his class were coming in from the playground. He had seen me and started running towards me. He didn't pay attention to the wagon pull that was laying down between he and I and then POW! That is when it happened.

His teeth hit his bottom lip resulting in a little blood, but I also noticed a little red mark on his nose. If you have ever seen Christian after 30 minutes of playing outside, you know how hard it is to notice anything on his face except that it is RED because it is soooo flushed from the heat and his hard playing.

So now we are just waiting to see if he has some little black eyes tomorrow to see how far the bruising spread. We will probably have a visit with the Dr. tomorrow too.

18 months

What a ham our little man is turning into. This is his school picture taken this summer. He was 18 months old. 23.6 lbs and approx. 32 inches tall.

Tour of Texas 2007

This Labor Day weekend our tour of Texas took us through some lovely Texas towns.

Just about every Labor Day we travel to Wichita Falls to visit Gammy. The first leg of our journey takes us to Marble Falls. We went there on friday afternoon to visit with Gran and Paw-Paw. We played in the water and had a good ol' time. We spent the night and started out early on Saturday for Wichita Falls. Our trip takes us up HWY 281. This take us thru some nice little towns like Hamilton, Texas.

Some how we always forget the big parade in Hamilton. We get stuck in traffic just outside the town square and then it hits us. NOW I REMEMBER. It is the Dove Fest parade. This year we took our normal "follow everyone else because they seem to know where they are going" detour, but they didn't know any more than we did. We ended up turning around in the front yard of someone's house near the deadend we all traveled too. Ulimately our detour did find us a nice spot to just stop and enjoy the parade. Well Christian and I got out and enjoyed the parade. Chris just felt like watching it from the car. We noticed there are several Queens in this parade, but we aren't sure what they all are Queen of. Here are the parade pictures.




Christian especially enjoyed the Dum-dum lollipops that parade floats were throwing out.


Our next stop on our tour of Texas was Old Doc's Soda Shop in Dublin Texas. Dublin Texas is home to the older Dr. Pepper bottling plant in the state, where they make their Dr. Pepper with pure cane sugar, not that yucky old high fructose corn syrup.

Here we enjoyed a nice sandwich with our Dublin Dr. Peppers. We also bought some Dublin Dr. Pepper Syrup . We hear it is some great stuff. We can't wait to try it out. Christian also has a nice new shirt telling the world he is a "Little Pepper". We bought a few things for our cousins the Thames', who are the biggest 10/2/4 Dr. Pepper fans we know. Their visit to Austin motivated us to make this stop in Dublin..thanks guys!



Then we were on to our final and most important stop of our trip...Wichita Falls. Home of Gammy and Uncle Mark !!!!!!!!!!



Here we enjoyed singing, swimmng, eating cake and ice cream, playing ball with Gammy, sharing toys with Gammy and all around hanging out with Gammy,Uncle Mark, Memaw and Dodaddy.



We had a really nice visit as usual. We can't wait to see Gammy again over Thanksgiving.