The Arredondo Family: September...Do You Remember?

"Do you remember the 21st night of September?

Love was changing the minds of pretenders

While chasing the clouds away

Our hearts were ringing

In the key that our souls were singing.

As we danced in the night,

Remember how the stars stole the night away..."

Who can name that tune and the artist?

(If you can, we are soul mates besides my husband who is my real soul mate, you can be my September soul mate, how do you like that?) ;)

Here's September's and part of October's wrap up (so far)....

1st Day of Preschool Co-op! We LOVE preschool! Good fun, good kids, good lessons and good moms! What does Abby have in her princess backpack you ask? Crayons? Pencils? Lip gloss? Nope! Her favorite purple blanky and her little kitty named Firework. She wasn't quite ready to leave those things home. Whatever helps her feel comfortable right?

This is just one of the many cute things she's done at preschool! It's our family (L-R Ethan, Mom, Abby, Dad and baby 'Ambuh', as Abby calls her)..

This cute little dancer started ballet and tap! She loves it! After the 3rd week she told me she didn't want to go anymore because she couldn't skip :(so we practiced all week skipping around the house, skipping down the aisles at stores, skipping everywhere. And I'm happy to report she is one awesome skipper now! And is learning lots and having fun! The other girls in the class are totally adorable and they all LOVE it. You've never seen such well behaved and attentive 4 yr olds.

Here's a few short videos for the grandmas. (My phone is low on storage so it kept stopping automatically).

Ethan had an open house at his school, this poster is "All About Ethan", love his totally funny drawings! And he also included Amber in our family. So sweet! Man, I love these kids of mine! We laughed that he said "the mall" was his favorite place, and his favorite thing to do is "woch" TV, he needs to get out more. He wants to be a football player and if he had one wish he would wish for a dog. Oh boy!

So here's a long story, I'll try to stick to the Reader's Digest version...Alex had a birthday and many months before his birthday I bought tickets through Living Social to see Paula Deen at the Houston Cooking and Entertaining Show. Fast forward (through Alex's horrible birthday, and Paula Deen's horrible choice of words, and not really sure if she was going to show) a few months and Paula did come to Houston. A week or two before the cooking show, the show emails me and says, Oh! Hey! We see you bought some tickets through living social to see Paula Deen, well...Just kidding those tickets won't get you squat (OK not true they did get us into the building and into the show) so if you pay X amount MORE $$$ we will happily let you see Paula Deen. Cool? Ummmmm, no! Not cool! Poor, poor hubby! I finally put some thought and even planned ahead on his gift and it just turned to one crap o la birthday present! He's a good sport though and we decided we'd be happy with our get us into the building tickets and eat our way through the show. So we did get to catch an almost up close and personal with Paula Deen...Almost...

We could've knocked a few ladies down to get up closer and more personal but something tells me these ladies could hold their own. So we got this almost shot and left to wander and eat..

Ah, there we go!

I found out that Houston has a Hydrocephalus Walk to raise money to help find a cure for hydrocephaly. So of course I immediately wanted to sign up in remembrance of our sweet baby who had hydrocephaly (and hydranencephaly and a few other little things). Since I found out about the walk only a week before it was supposed to happen, I didn't organize a team or get shirts made or raise a huge amount of money BUT my friends and family stepped up and donated and supported and walked with me. Alex had a huge Scout training thing so he couldn't go with us, but my good friends Mindy and Rose and their super adorable kiddos walked the 1.86 miles with me.

We weren't sure the walk was even going to happen because it had been raining a TON the entire day and night before the walk. But the rain cleared out and it was a slightly cooler than normal and while it was still a bit cloudy turned out to be a great day!

My cute friend Mindy with her oldest..

My cute friend Rose with her youngest (and a giraffe), isn't he the cutest? The baby...not the giraffe.

To be honest I was little worried what kind of feelings and emotions this walk might bring up, but I knew it was something I definitely wanted to do and felt like I was doing something positive and actually helping in some small way. It felt good. I was so so so grateful to my friends for their support and encouragement. We learned a lot on our walk about Hydrocephaly, and the courage of people who live with this condition and the dedicated moms and dads whose kids have hydrocephaly (did you know adults can have it and not even know it? yep!). The human body and brain are AMAZING!!! I hope I get to do the walk again next year.

We went to visit Alex's grandma Sarah, she is battling some bad stuff right now. But she is one tough cookie and has a fantastic sense of humor which hasn't seemed to escape her frail body. Alex is so thoughtful, he bought some pumpkins to take to her so she and the kids could draw faces on them... She calls us her "pieces of gold". She's a special little lady and we love her lots.

Grandma Sarah is currently staying with her niece who has some beautiful HUGE oak trees on her property. Ethan and Abby sure had a great time climbing on these majestic beauties.

Amber's headstone came in, back in June or July, unfortunately it wasn't the one we ordered. The wording and everything was right but it didn't have the trim we requested. AND it was crooked on the granite slab. Boo! So we had to re order and wait a few more months.

And here is the correct (non crooked) one, notice the cute little flower border?

So happy it's in and looks good. Someone placed those flowers at her grave, I didn't want to put any in until we got the correct one but a kind and thoughtful someone put those nice flowers in there for us. What a sweet surprise.