Christmas Morning

Is there anything better than Christmas morning? The look on the kids faces after the gifts they have received is incredible. What we enjoy the most is the kids are truly thankful for anything they receive. They don't take it for granted. This is our favorite time of year. We have a lot going on today...over to Nana & Papa's for Christmas and dinner. Hope everyone has a safe and merry Christmas.

Christmas Eve

It's finally Christmas Eve and we are excited about tomorrow! We have had a great couple of days leading up to Christmas. We have gotten to spend a lot of time with family hanging out. We had a makeover party a couple of days ago. The girls had so much fun and looked considerably older with makeup. We went to Nana & Papa's house yesterday for enchiladas (they were incredible). Today, everyone came over to our house to decorate cookies for Santa. Everyone had a great time. Some very creative people designing cookies I tell ya. Erin ate one of my favorites...still not sure how she got icing behind her head. Guess will have to chalk that up to one of the great mysteries of life. We are settling to go to bed so the big guy can come visit. Hope everyone has a GREAT Christmas eve and a better Christmas day.

Christmas Break

It's been so long since I've updated the blog, I may have forgotten how. Things have been incredibly busy at the Chavez house. Thank God we made it to Christmas break. Here's a rundown on what's up with each...
Erin - Erin is doing great! She loves school and her teacher, Mrs. Gauna. Erin and Dad have read all of the Junie B. Jones books through 1st grade. We have to look and see if they have any Junie B. Jones 2nd grader books. Erin is still loving her dance classes (hip-hop, ballet, and tap). Erin is doing really well with gymnastics - she is looking good with her handstand snap-down. Erin keeps talking about taking karate. We may try and do that as a family if we can find the time to wedge it in.
Emily - Em has been a little lost with soccer season being over. She's used to going to practice twice a week and rushing around those days to get everything done. Can't tell you how nice it's been not to squeeze practice in during the weeks. Em's team played in a couple of tournaments and did pretty well. Em competed in the ready writing UIL competition and she finished 5th overall. We were really proud of her (she still believes she should win everything). Em is busy with Christmas parties with her new friends and buddies from the soccer team. The girl has a crazy social calendar to make up for soccer.
Elizabeth - E is doing great. Looks like she will finish the semester on the National Junior Honor Society again for all A's. Her spanish class was a struggle. The teacher speaks broken English, so it's hard to understand him. He's a nice guy, and he loves E. E's basketball team played in a couple of tournaments (won 1 and placed 2nd in the other). E is having fun playing. Burdened with the Chavez height, it's not looking like she will be able to dunk the ball anytime soon. E is still 1st chair in band. She had a solo during the Christmas concert - sounded terrific.
Melinda - nobody is more ready for the Christmas break than Melinda. She is still involved in too much. She is looking forward to relaxing at home for a while.
Eric - Eric has been on Christmas break for a week, but hasn't stopped working. His new territory in Fort Worth looks like it will take most of his time. Eric is looking forward to spending time with the family and not dealing with work.

For those interested, we did make a decision about schools for the girls. All of the girls will be attending Academy in January. Emily has really enjoyed being there and we were advised to make the move soon. Starting the girls in January will give Elizabeth a chance to tryout for high school cheerleader. We took a tour of the middle school with E. She's nervous about the change from her friends, but it's the best. Erin got to tour the elementary school and found someone she knew from Emily's soccer team (another younger sister, Reagan). Erin had her class Christmas party today, & her teacher was upset Erin is leaving. We are looking forward to making new friends in Academy, and not losing touch with our close friends now. Wish us luck in the new year!

We have been so caught up in the daily routine, someone forgot to update the blog. So here are some of the latest tidbits:
Erin - Erin was very excited about Halloween. She kept going back and forth on which costume to go with. She finally settled on Sharpay. For those of you not in the know (like me), Sharpay is a character from High School Musical. We saw High School Musical 3 at the movies, and it sealed the deal for Erin. She can sing just about every song from the soundtrack to you if she's "feelin' it". Erin is in the middle of her dance classes. That's right, classes. Erin is taking tap & ballet. She is also taking hip-hop. She is a busy girl on Thursdays. She was so excited and showed Dad some of the moves they were going over in her tap class in the entry way to our house. If the dance studio sounds that cool, it must be a lot of fun. Erin is doing great at school. She set the goal of 250 AR points for the year. If she gets to 250 points, she gets to be principal for the day. Erin likes to be in charge.
Emily - Emily had a couple of options for Halloween. She was invited to go to a couple of parties, but opted to hang with the family. She went as Athena. She had the toga and gold leaves. Looked cool. Tried to get her to channel Belushi with "Toga, Toga", but she got a couple of looks like she was losing it. She stopped not long after that. Em is having fun with her soccer team. She is playing well and gets along great with the other girls. Em got a new pair of soccer shoes with her #15 on them. She got an assist with her new shoes in her team's 1-1 tie. Em is doing really well in school. She has decided to tackle the UIL competitions, again. This year she is going to compete in Ready Writing and Number Sense. In Ready Writing, they are given a prompt and have to write about it. She is very creative and does well with this. She is really good in math, so she thinks Number Sense will be fun. She's careful not to say easy because she doesn't know what to expect. Think they have the competition in a couple of months.
Elizabeth - E was too old (cool) to go out for Halloween. She went and watched Temple whip Belton, again. E had fun finishing up the volleyball season and cheerleading. She enjoyed both, but think she was ready to move to the next thing. The next thing is basketball. E made the basketball team again. She's on the B-team this year. She will get more playing time on the B-team, and her buddies are on it with her. E had a fall band concert last week. Lita was able to join us. E had a solo to start one of the songs. We were very proud of her.
Melinda - Mel is finally finished with cheer. More of a pain than anyone would have imagined. The kids were good. The parents and administration were a different story. She has a couple of things left with cheer - one pep rally for basketball and tryouts for next year and she's completely done. Eric will say NO for her next time. She is still very busy with the Math Specialist role, mentoring, and working on curriculum. Hopefully, we can get a couple more things off her plate.
Eric - Eric is still staying busy with work. Eric's company had some lay-offs, so his territory has changed. He will be covering Fort Worth, Arlington, Irving, Waco, Temple, and Tyler soon. He will have some more travel, but change is good. He is looking forward to the new territory.

Evidently, the Chavez family has forgotten they own a camera. We have not taken pictures in forever. We will get some taken and posted in the next couple of weeks.

Good things!

Things are in full swing around the Chavez household. To give you an idea about the activities we are involved in: Mondays - Em soccer practice, E volleyball practice, Tuesday - E cheer at football games, Wednesday - Cheer practice (E & Melinda), Thursday - Em soccer practice, E volleyball game, Friday - night off???
Erin is doing great. She is really enjoying her class. When you asked Erin about the best parts of her day, her response is almost always lunch and recess (those were the 2 Dad excelled at too).
Em is doing great and enjoying her new school. Em's school had student council elections for each of the grade levels (1 boy and 1 girl). Em decided she wanted to run. We have no idea how, but she won the election. She's only been at the school for 3 weeks when the election happened and beat out 5 girls that had been there for a long time. Just Em being Em I guess. She had a project to do on a state, and drew South Dakota. She can tell you all you want to know about the state and then some.
E is very busy but having fun. She is doing really well with volleyball. She is loving cheer. There are some dance steps you have to know and she loves that part. She may tryout for the dance squad in high school. She is tied for 1st chair in band.
Melinda is busy with everything. She thinks she may have overdone it a bit with all of the things she has taken on. She is still working on her word for the year...NO!
Eric got back from a business trip to Las Vegas and was happy to be home. May have to burn the clothes from all the smoke smell.

Remembering 9-11

I found myself spending more time today remembering where I was when the Twin Towers were hit. I was preparing to drive to San Antonio to see some physicians and have dinner. I didn't go. I spent a good part of the morning in disbelief and then in anger. I still hold that anger today. We were fortunate enough not to have lost any family during the attack. I have had the good fortune to meet a lot of people through my job and travel quite a bit. I had the opportunity to go to ground zero 4 months after the attack. The mess was unbelievable. The area had been fenced off to begin clearing and sorting. There was a viewing platform set up with well-wishes from all over the country that had been posted to the sides of the platform. One of the guys I work with is from upstate New York. His best friend was a FDNY firefighter. He died that day helping others. He left behind a wife and 2 young daughters. I remember talking to him on the platform by the little church. In one of the trees by the church, there were window blinds. I remember looking at the blinds and hearing about this guys family and tears came to my eyes. They still do.
I guess the one thing I got most out of all of this is to appreciate your friends and family even more than I do. Never want to think I didn't appreciate what I had when I had it. God Bless to all and don't forget....

September 2008

We are back in the swing of school. The routine is finally coming back to us. Here is the latest...Erin has read 6 Junie B. Jones books and is leading her class in AR points. We are signing her up for dance this week. I believe she decided on hip-hop again. Em is enjoying Academy so far. We all went to an Academy football game this past Friday. Far cry from the Temple games we've attended. The stadium was about the size of our middle school. Academy won, but it was a different world. Em is in the middle of a social studies project on South Dakota. Em's team won their first soccer game. E is cheering at her first game this week. We are very excited to get this thing going. E is doing well in Spanish and enjoying it. We do have some exciting news....E made the volleyball team this year! Yea! She is on the B team & should get to play quite a bit.
Mel is keeping up with the crazy involvement she into this year. Everyone is a little tired from the week but we're hanging in there.