Fantasy Football

Steve and Ginny were both very involved in fantasy football this year. It's one of their favorite hobbies, they love spending time together working on it, and unfortunately it only lasts for 4 months each year. Steve played in 3 leagues this year, and Ginny played in 2.

Trivia question for the day:
Person A didn't make the playoffs in any of the leagues they were in. Person B beat Person A in both head-to-head matchups they had. Person B also won 1st place in all of the leagues they played in.

Which one was Person A and which was Person B? It's probably not who you think...

Merry Christmas!

This year we spent Christmas with the Moriarty side of the family. Unfortunately, Nick and Amber couldn't make it down this year, but it's good in the long run because they're about to move back to Houston!!! YAY!! But I digress. Nam and Howie are visiting from Georgia so we got to spend Christmas with them too - so nice to see them!



We all spent the night at Jammy and Papa's on Christmas Eve. We told Santa that Tyson and Hailey would be there so he'd know to bring their presents to their house. Jammy read 3 books to Tyson and Hailey - The Polar Express, The Night Before Christmas and a new one (I forgot the name...)

Ms. Santa made an appearance on Christmas Day!

Tyson checked to make sure Santa came. Sure enough he had eaten some cookies, drank his milk, and the reindeer had eaten most of their carrots!

Super papa (Tyson's in a jealous phase again :)

Jammy was happy that Hailey was being a happy girl (takes her awhile to realize it's ok if people besides Mommy are holding her)

Tyson opening his cowboy gear from Uncle Nick and Aunt Amber! Loved it. It goes with his nice boots that Jammy and Papa got him for his birthday!

I put Hailey down on the couch and she grabbed this wrapping paper that was next to her and had fun destroying it for the next few minutes! Ha!

Santa did bring Tyson a car that he could ride in, just like he asked! He got right in and drove it out of the garage like he had done it a million times before...

After he drove it around the culdosac once, he started stopping, opening the door, saying nonsense words with an angry face, shutting the door and driving again. He'd do it every 5 feet or so. He started saying some understandable things later on like "I don't need that" or "I'm not going to [do something??]". Hilarious.

The true Texan driving around in his Caddy in his cowboy gear! Ha ha!

We had a great Christmas. It's funny how having kids makes you not care at all what you get for Christmas anymore. It's so fun getting them ready for Santa, seeing the joy on their faces when they open their gifts, and [trying my best to] carry on the traditions that were done for me while I was growing up.

potty training update

We started sending Tyson to school in big boy underwear the week after he turned 3. He did great the first day, but the second day he had 3 accidents. We put him back in pull ups and told him he had to stay dry all day before he could wear underwear again. He was able to get back into his underwear the next Monday and has done perfectly at school ever since. The only problem was, he was having accidents at home. He kept saying he didn't need to go and then would wet his pants 2 minutes later. So we decided to make him try every once in awhile. Funny how he can always manage to get something out when he tries! He's done great at home too since we started doing this. The only problem is #2 - he hasn't done that in the toilet yet. We're working on that now but we are really proud of his progress so far!

Point, Click, Shoot

Here's some holiday related pictures we've done recently...

Santa came to Hailey's school! She told him she wanted a Corvette but he told her she's not old enough yet.

Jammy and Papa took Tyson to see Santa too! He told Santa he wanted a race car that he could ride in. Apparently Santa liked Tyson too and gave him a big hug.

Little Miss Santa took some pictures at her school all dolled up...

The rest are our family pictures that we took for Christmas/ Tyson's 3 year old pictures

Tyson's birthday party

Okay so I'm a couple of weeks behind on posts. Trying to catch up. Tyson's birthday party was rescheduled to the 12th because of the snow we got on his real birthday weekend. It started bright and early at 9 AM. We had lots of family, neighbors, and some of his school buddies came too. He had a blast. In the past he's been apprehensive about jumpy things but he dove right in this time.

Head first about 90% of the time

Grandma went down the biggest slide! We loved it!

This is our neighbor Brandon and 2 of his kids, Tristan and Molly

Caleb (from school) and his mom, Michelle

The fam (yes Lala you are part of the fam!)

blowing out the candles on his CARS themed cake (second one... this one was much better than the first)

gifts - some of his friends had a hard time realizing they were all Tyson's - cute

This was Chris (on the left). He was assigned to our party. Chris is a rock star. He was either with Tyson or watching him the whole time to make sure he was safe and having fun. He got right in there and played with the kids and helped them when they got stuck. I highly recommend places that have something like this. It freed us up to take pics and video, visit with family, and of course play with Tyson too!

Thanks to all who came, it was a little hectic rescheduling it but worth it! He had a great time! Happy 3rd birthday Tyson!

5 months

Hailey, you turned 5 months yesterday! Time is already flying by too quickly. You are still talking, laughing and cooing at us all the time. You started eating baby cereal this month, soon you will try some baby food too. You still love your thumb and you adore your big brother. He can make you laugh more easily than anyone else.

You rock your exersaucer - you can spin around and grab everything on it! I see a jumperoo in your near future. You grab onto everything and put whatever you can into your mouth. You want to sit up so badly but you're not quite strong enough.

You aren't sleeping through the night yet - you wake up once or twice each night, eat, then go back to sleep.

You roll over now. In this picture below you had just been on the changing pad a few seconds before... you got upset when you ended up on your tummy.

You are more content now and are a happy baby most of the time. You are our precious baby doll and we love every minute of you!

Bizzarro

RIP Bizzarro
8/27/2000 – 12/4/2009

Our favorite cat died unexpectedly last Friday. We aren’t sure what happened but it looked like he died in his sleep. I’ve been trying to put this together since then. Steve has been looking through old pictures for me (pre-digital camera) but I’m not sure when we will get them on the site. Unfortunately the really cute kitten ones are only on hard copy.

Bizzarro was a surprise gift from Steve to me right after we got engaged. I remember he called me and said he had someone sleeping on his chest and I heard a little meow. It was so easy to fall in love with that little puffy furball. He really was an unusual cat. His demeanor was more like a dog in that he always greeted us at the door, wanted tons of attention, would “talk” to us all the time, and he loved to sleep between our pillows at night (when we used to let him – years ago). He would do other funny things like sit at the back of the shower while I was in it (getting “misted” but not soaking wet) and knock off the other cats when they’d walk along the edge of the tub. He also took ownership of the Christmas tree every year. He’d lay under it for probably 23 hours each day, growl at the other cats when they tried to go under it and bat at our legs if we got “too close” to his tree. (In a funny way, not an “attack cat” way.)

Bizzarro had many places of residence throughout his life. He started out in a four-plex with me and my roommate, Kate. After a couple of months we both graduated and moved out. I went back to Houston and then Bizzarro went to live with Steve and his roommates. There were already two small dogs living there and Bizzarro loved playing with them. You’d think that would be a good thing, but when they all went to bed at night, Bizzarro would sit at Steve’s door and meow to get out. Over and over. So Steve would let him out and he’d go to his roommates doors and meow, over and over, because he wanted the dogs to come out and play. After a few weeks of this, they couldn’t take it anymore so Bizzarro went to live with me at my parents’ house in Spring for awhile until my parents decided they didn’t want a cat in the house. So he made the long drive to Corpus Christi to live with Steve’s parents until we got married. He would sleep on Grandpa’s chest and had a great time there. When we got married Bizzarro made the trip back to Spring to live with us in our (nasty) rent house and has been with us ever since.

Here's just a couple fond memories of Bizzarro. We had to get him shaved last summer because he had some knots we just couldn't get out. When he came back his sisters didn't recognize him and really gave him a hard time. We got a kick out of seeing him with all of his fur gone.

Classic pic. I still don't know how everyone in this pic cooperated long enough to document it. It's my favorite kitty pic that we have.

I wish I had the time to scan in all of the older pics, but it's already taken me this long to post this. We will miss his friendliness, his huge fluffy coat of fur that was so beautiful, and his great personality. Bizzarro, thanks for giving us years of entertainment and love. We miss you buddy!

let it snow

Last Friday we actually had snow in Houston! It was the perfect kind of snow that you can easily pack into snowballs and snowmen (small snowmen). We got off work early and the schools closed early, so I stopped on the way home to get some snow gear for Tyson so he could play in it.

This was taken after it had started melting - there was actually a little more than this at the best point.

All ready to go... except he doesn't have snow appropriate shoes so he was sporting the plastic bag look

Our snowman that ended up looking like some kind of weird giraffe - Tyson only wanted to put snow on the top.

Mommy and Daddy used ziploc bags for gloves... of course we found our gloves after the first round of playing in the snow.

Tyson loved the snow. Too bad he won't get to see it very often. I think he'll remember this day for awhile though. He threw snowballs and laughed when we threw them at him too. Hailey got to watch us take turns playing with Tyson from inside the house. Glad we got to enjoy it while it lasted (almost 24 hours)! Oh and yesterday... it was 75 degrees outside...

happy birthday Tyson

Three years ago, at 7:05 AM, Tyson Noble Torno was born. He had a rough start but bounced back right away. Since then, our lives have never been the same... for good of course. Tyson has brought so much joy, fun, meaning, excitement, and love into our lives. I could spend hours writing about all of the loving, silly, and hilarious things he does. He makes us laugh every day.

Today we had a party planned for him at Jump N Jungle, a place close to our house with inflatable jumpy toys. Since the weather went crazy on us, we had to reschedule it to next weekend. So, we scrambled to think of another fun idea for him.

We took Tyson Tyson to his first movie in a theater. We saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox, thinking it would be a kids movie based on the promos we had seen. Well it's not. Luckily he stayed interested in it even though it's NOT a kids movie. He talked out loud quite a bit ("What's that?" "There's a big bad wolf!" "There's ANOTHER fox!" ) but luckily there were only about 8 other people in there. He loved eating his popcorn and sitting in the theater. Now we'll just be excited to take him to a real kids movie! (Hailey also saw her first movie in a theater today... well she only "saw" about 10 minutes of it)

He has a huge cake all to himself... couldn't cancel that one in time. Cake anyone??

Love the static hair! He had a fun day and was very good when we told him his party was moved to next week. Daddy had been getting him excited for it all week so we were hoping he wouldn't get too upset.

We love you Tyson, you make our lives so much better in so many ways. Happy Birthday!!