STATS

Brennan Joseph Ackerman


Likes:
- Cars
- "Cars" the movie
- Being outside
- Playing with other kiddos and being social (I swear, he should be on the welcoming committee at church)
- Fruit



Dislikes:
- Time-outs
- Getting his nails cut
- Coming in from outside
- Meat



Weighs: 30 lbs


Parents: Jon and Chaeli. We're falling in love with him more and more everyday. The 2's are awesome!

C'mon Man!

Jon writes, shoots, and edits videos for a living for The Met church and I realized last night that I hardly ever post the videos he's created on here. Our church just finished up a series called "C'Mon Man", a look at biblical manhood and here's a video that he and his co-worker, Andrew, created. I hope you enjoy it!

Birth

Early Friday morning I got to witness a miracle!! (how's that for an opener??). My sweet friend Lynne, and her husband, James, invited me to attend the birth of their baby girl, Rose. Looooong story short, I have a individual insurance plan with Aetna and in the state of Texas, unless you are under a group insurance plan, you cannot get maternity coverage. In fact, you can't even buy a maternity rider. If Jon and I wanted to have a 2nd while living in Texas, we'd either have to pay around $12K out of pocket to have a baby in a hospital or we could have the baby with a midwife in a birthing center for around $5500.00. We were telling James and Lynne all of this and they thought it would be really good for me to observe a birth with a midwife attending. And let me tell you, it was a privilege and an honor to be there. Watching James coach Lynne in the privacy of their own home was ahhhmazing. Painful and peaceful all at once. I wont go into detail because I want to honor their privacy, but James and Lynne, THANK YOU for inviting me, you two amaze me. And yes, I balled my eyes out. (and almost passed out or puked all at once during one moment but I really think it was because I had been up since 3 am and I hadn't ate anything.)

It reminded me of my birth with Brennan. I always wondered what it would have felt like not to have been loaded to my eyeballs with pitocin.

Sneak Peak

It's under contract, people!! Inspection went pretty well but the gas and water were not turned on for the inspection, so our inspector has to go back out and check those two things out. We're still crossing our fingers! I'll post more photos of the inside once all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. But here's the basic details for ya:
4 bedrooms
2 bathrooms
1 office
1 formal dining
1 kitchen
1 living room
1 back yard (woo hoo, though not as big as we were hoping)
1 flagstone patio (hello, gorgeous)

Some boos:
Not on a cul de sac (we really wanted to be on one)
Not a big back yard (but hello, it's suburban Houston, we had to realize that to get that here, we'd need to really up our price, and the hubby works full time at a church, don't ya know.)
If I had my choice, I'd take out the office and make the living room bigger, since that's where we spend the most of our time. We have a huge living room in our rental house and I looove it.
Looks tiny from the front (i.e. not a lot of curb appeal)

Big pros:
Below our target price!
LOVE the neighborhood (it's in our current neighborhood, .9 miles from where we live now!)
LOVE the school district
4 bedrooms!
Gas stove (I like to cook, this was one of my wants)
1 story
Fire place!
It's in a gated neighborhood (but that's also kind of annoying that we have to have a home phone)

It was a rental for a few years before the owner decided to sell it, so it's pretty plain jane on the inside. I think that's part of the reason my heart doesn't really skip a beat when I think of the house. But I'm trying very hard to envision it with paint and all our belongings. Pro: it's a blank canvas, right!?

We'll keep you up to speed on how everything proceeds, thanks for your prayers!

Livestock Show

(Update: Hey guys!! We did end up making an offer on a house- the sellers counter offered, we counter offered, and they accepted! I don't want to post photos or information until it's a done deal, but we're excited!!)

Besides the Houston Rodeo, there is also the Livestock show going on at the same time. There's all sorts of things to do, a petting zoo, shopping, a birthing center, pig races, more mutten bustin', etc. We took our family while they were in town visiting.

Riding on the tram from the parking lot to Reliant Stadium

Children's section- learning how food goes from crops to the grocery store.


Petting zoo!



I looked down and Brennan was fast asleep.

Birthday party!

For Brennan's birthday party this year, I decided to have a jungle theme. He would have preferred a CARS themed birthday but too bad. :) Here's some photos of the party:

I put Jon and Ron in charge of turning the columns into palm trees. You would have thought I tasked them with solving the problems in the middle east with the amount of complaining I heard from them. :)

A shot of the trees/columns


We had a coloring station on the back patio with monkey photos and stickers.


The cake and birthday banner


Judy, Erin and I made this cake together and I was soo happy with the way it turned out!!


Happy Birthday, Brennan!!

Present opening!

Zoo Time!

Living a thousand miles away from any family makes us sooo thankful when family comes and visits! Jon's parents flew down to visit with us for a week and help us celebrate Brennan's 2nd birthday. His sister, Erin, and her two kiddos also came to visit. Our first day together, we decided to go to the Houston Zoo while Jon worked.


There is a pretty cool children's section at the zoo and the boys loved playing with the otters!



We also got the check out the new African section of the zoo. Check out the rhino!



Here are the boys next to the Gorilla cages:

Besides me not being able to find parking (errr), it was a fun day! And I think we effectively wore the boys out. :)

Rodeo, yeehaw!!

My dear friend, April, came and visited us for a few days during the Houston Rodeo. We were sooo glad to have her here! She lived on my floor my freshman year at Cornerstone University and we've been friends ever since. She's part of my college girlfriends group- the group of us that were in a bible study all throughout college and still get together even though we live across the country.
She was here for my first time watching my little nanny client- it was so nice to have her support and advice since she was a nanny after college.


After nannying for a bit, we went out to lunch at Coco's Crepes and then headed out to the Rodeo. We had awesome seats, a few rows up from where they keep the animals:



We found ourselves laughing hilariously the entire time. There was muttin bustin' (where kids ages 5-6 ride a sheep across the stadium for as long as they can hold on), cart races, calves haulin', I mean, it's funny stuff.

After the rodeo, was the Kieth Urban show. They bring in a huge rotating stage onto the floor of the stadium. I'm a horrible photographer, here's the best shot I got:


April- I know you don't read blogs, but if you ever happen to read this, THANK YOU for visiting us during your vacation. We're already looking forward to next year's rodeo!

HEB Lovin'

There's a store in Texas (maybe it's a southern store, or a regional store, I really don't know), that's called HEB and it is THE best grocery store in my opinion. It has serious service, every time. It has super fresh food, the best selection of foods, great selection of natural foods, and Jon's personal favorite, a huge cheese counter. :) Anyways, I am apart of a survey group and I got picked (hooray) to be a comparison shopper for HEB!

Basically, they give you $150.00 to buy whatever you want in their store. An HEB employee than buys everything you just bought at a competitors grocery store to compare prices. $150.00 of free groceries? Yes, please. We were so thankful for the provision! I stocked up on toilet paper, lots of dishwashing soap and laundry soap, a huge thing of olive oil, diapers, wipes, etc. It was so fun!

Thank you HEB! You have the BEST produce and meat selection and I LOVE your store!! Now please start doubling and tripling coupons so I can buy other items there, too!

Jibber Jabber

I just love my son so much. Every day, I love him more. However, we're getting to a point in his communication skills where it's becoming frustrating for us both. For example, earlier this afternoon he wanted to go out on our back patio to play, but he wanted two cars to play with. He kept repeating the same words over and over again and I kept saying, "I don't understand, what cars do you want??" and the process repeated itself for 10 minutes. He was frustrated I couldn't understand him and I was frustrated I couldn't help him out. He was apparently looking for two particular cars, I just didn't know which ones they were.
We're at the stage where he just REPEATS and repeats. He actually speaks very clearly most of the time but if you can't figure out what he's saying, he doesn't know what else to do but keep repeating the same words. It's cute, MOST of the time, ha!

What we've been up to.. .

Brennan's Jungle themed 2nd birthday party:

Jon and I went to the Houston Rodeo with our friend, April and had awesome seats!:

Jon's parents, sister Erin, and her two sweet kiddos came down to visit with us:

(Mom and Baby Lincoln at the zoo)

Hope to update again soon!

Hello!!

I'm a little sleep deprived mixed with excitement and other emotions so if this blog entry is a little whacko, so sorry.

Our ahhh-mazing Life Group at the Met, Growing Covenant, had a ladies retreat this past weekend from Friday to Saturday late afternoon (which did not cause the sleep deprivation, but definitely added to it). It was sooo fantastic! And I was a ding-dong and took 0 photos, so sorry. We laughed, ate, studied scripture, played wii dance dance revolution, etc. Then I came home and we immediately left to meet our realtor to look at some potential houses (all were a big fat FAIL).

Today I had the couple I'm nannying for (did I tell you all that?) come over for a while just to check out the house and meet Brennan. I am nannying for a 7 week old just once a week and am SO very thankful for the job! I randomly posted my application on a nanny website and a couple from Cypress contacted me needing a nanny one day a week, which is all I wanted to do. A little extra income for plane tickets and such. Hooray!

But I'm super excited because in about an hour, I'm going to pick my good friend, April up! She's visiting with us for a few days and going with us to the Keith Urban show at the Houston Rodeo tomorrow night. Can.not.wait. It's my first rodeo experience. I plan on totally getting into it. :)

We drop her off at the airport on Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon, the Ackermans and 3/4 of the Zubert clan flies in to visit for a week. Can I hear an Amen? We haven't seen them since Christmas, very excited for the visit!!

I may not be posting much for the next week or so but I'll try to put up some photos. Here are a few to tide you over for a while:

On Brennan's birthday, he's in a diaper due to the eating of cupcakes.

This photo is for John and Kym. . . B watching the Thomas video you got him. He's a bit addicted. It's actually becoming a problem, thanks a lot! :)

Brennan decided to color on our couches. Thank goodness we bought these with the stain treatment so virtually everything comes out of them with the wipe of a wet towel. Best decision ever!