Go Green!

Green and white are our Alma Mater's school colors. The Michigan State University Spartans beat Louisville to get to the final four in the NCAA basketball tournament. I have to admit that my sports fanatic days died down a few years ago (almost 5 to the day) but it was hard not to be excited for our Spartans. We were chanting Go Green and Go White while we watched the games. Donovan thinks he is being funny when he interjects a Go Purple every once in a while! It will have to do because Nickolas used to know the fight song, but now noone in the house knows more than the last line...."Victory for MSU"!! We will be rooting for them to bring home the championship this weekend!

Now an alternative meaning of the title is the reference to an event that happened over the weekend. We weren't able to attend, but the Texas A&M soccer team wore green and white socks for their game. They and many many other people wore green to show their love for Erin (green is her favorite color). Vickie posted a lot of great pictures of the event on their blog. Seems that Erin is eating again and regaining some of her strength. Yeah!!

We love you all, Tamiko

Busy Busy Saturday!

Hello,

Today was a busy day! D and I got up early to go help out at a garage sale. It was hosted by Athena, one of the neuroblastoma parents involved with the Houston CNCF. The sale raised a good amount of money for pediatric cancer research ($1300). I got to meet a few other moms and dads as well. Donovan got to play with Alex, Hans and Roman. He was quite fond of Roman's baby sister, Presley (not sure about spelling). He told me that he wanted to buy that baby! He was quite upset with me when I told him we couldn't. :)

I imagine D will sleep good tonight because after the garage sale we went to Bridgeland's Bring in the Spring event. D participated in the bike parade on his Spongebob decorated scooter. Our day wrapped up with a trip to the movie theater to see Monsters vs. Aliens. D loved it...I missed too much while I was sleeping to give a review! Sorry!

Lots of pictures posted below. We love you all, Tamiko

Christopher decided to do our first annual Crawfish Boil yesterday. D ate one, I ate two, and CP ate more than I can count! The most entertaining part was watching Donovan watch the crawfish (before cooking of course)!

Roman (age 3), Hans (6), D and Alex (4) at today's garage sale. Their shirts say Fight Cancer!

The baby that D wished he had enough money to purchase. I am not sure if he was trying to pick her up (he didn't) or hug her here.

D on his scooter at today's bike parade. He had his dad's Spongebob shirt on on top of his jacket since it was a little cold today (low 60's...Brrr!).

While mommy is away, the boys will play!!

Hello,

I write this post from the beautiful Salt Lake City. I am here to attend a conference. It is cold, but the snow-capped mountains are so pretty! The boys are going to have some guy days while I am gone. They go to bed late, walk around in their underwear and watch movies on a school night. D told me on the phone that his dad let him watch Shrek 2 tonight! :)

Nickolas comes in a week from Saturday. Both my husband and D are very excited. I signed Christopher up as a coach for D's soccer team (will be all 5 year olds and starts up in early April), so he already has plans to have Nickolas be his assistant coach for the first practice. His job is going to be to lead the calisthenics. I think D's plans for Nickolas are more of the usual....you know, torture him by moving Nick's stuff into his room, asking Nick to play with him every 5 minutes, and when Nick says no...try to sit on him!! Yes, I have a week of saying "Donovan, leave your brother alone" ahead of me!

Please help!! I signed D up for a parade at Bridgeland this weekend! We just have to decorate a wheeled object (bike, wagon, etc.) I was thinking that we would do a Spongebob theme, but I am not exactly sure how to carry this out. Any ideas? If so, please hit comment below. (the easiest way is to enter your message in the box and hit anonymous at the bottom of the page before submitting). Hopefully your ideas will be easily obtainable in an afternoon of work. Thanks!

Hope all is doing well! Everyone needs to think MORE and HARDER positive thoughts and prayers for our friend Erin. Please!!

Love, Tamiko

Let's Go State!!

The guys as they prepare to watch MSU in the NCAA tournament. GO STATE!

The Garage

Hello,

I wish I could come up with a cleverer title, but I name things like Nickolas. When he was little and got toys or stuffed friends that needed a name he was always very literal....a horse was "Horse", a red bear was "Red Bear".

Anyway, Christopher has been working on the garage all week. I helped a little but due to no fault of mine....I missed a couple of days of the work because I just had to do grades, or go get Donovan or etc. :) Today, however, he started earlier so I didn't get out of it. We made alot of progress and you can actually see the floor! Whoopee. We think by tomorrow that we are going to be able to actually park a car in there! Exciting, huh?

We threw out alot of stuff. Although if you come look at our yard now, you will just see a few boxes as most of our trash was taken as someone else saw it as treasure! I'm not sure what people will do with a dented, scratched up kitchen trashcan without a lid or a used sofasleeper mattress, but its theirs! :) We saved the things in better shape for the garage sale that the Houston CNCF chapter is hosting next weekend. This is a group of Neuroblastoma parents who have gotten together to raise funds for research and increase awareness of the disease. I haven't been too active with this group yet, but I have recently resolved to be invovled. From time to time, I might mention some neuroblastoma news just to keep you all in the loop.

In my last post I mentioned that Grandma Cathy and Erin weren't feeling super. I talked to Grandma Cathy last night and her bronchitis seems to be clearing up. I have actually never met Erin, but she's the 11 year-old daughter of one of Christopher's colleagues. I have become a regular reader of her mother's blogs (link is to the right). Erin hasn't been feeling too hot due to effects of chemo and a nasty bug. Last post from her mother is that she is slowly on the upswing! Yeah! You all know I am bossy, so its okay for me to tell everyone to think positive thoughts for Erin, right? :)

Love you all, Tamiko

Keep smiling!

More recent smiley pics of D. Somehow he has figured out that this week is Spring break for Christopher and me because he has been sleeping to almost 8am this week. Remember, he is the child we had to teach to read the digital clock so he wouldn't get up before 6am!!

The latest Nickolas news is that he recently passed his taekwondo belt test! Go PURPLE! I don't think its possible to get pics from CA of his belt but I will be sure to take some of his purple-belt quality moves when he comes in a few weeks.

We have heard from many of our family and friends lately and mostly everyone seems to be doing well. And for those who aren't feeling so hot (Grandma Cathy and Erin) we are thinking about you and hoping you feel better soon!

Tamiko

Amarillo

We really get a kick out of both boys and when they share what they have learned in their respective schools. Nickolas is always teaching Christopher and I something new. His recent contribution to our knowledge base is that black holes are created by stars that die! Lately, he's been learning about the human body in school (who knew they talked about the reproductive system in the 5th grade?) so we are sure that he will have some tidbits to share with us next month.

Today, we were watching Ironman as a special treat for Donovan since he did so well at his orthotic appt. (we usually just do dvds on weekends or a few minutes in the car from school to home). There's a part where the characters on the screen are saying something in a different language. Donovan looks over at Christopher and asks if that's Spanish. Christopher says no, but then Donovan announces that he knows Spanish. This was news to us! We asked him to tell us what he knew in Spanish and he said "Amarillo" very clearly. Now some of you may not be that impressed by this, but for a kid who has struggled with his speech for going on 3 years now, we were pretty excited. We spent the next few minutes asking him what else he knew in Spanish. In addition to yellow, he knows that green is "verde" and red is "rojo". He also can do some counting. Now that we know that our child is bilingual :) we'll be sure to have him order for us next time we get Mexican food! Ha Ha!

Okay, one more story for you. I know the grandparents will enjoy this. While we were watching the movie, Donovan kept asking who Ironman's girlfriend was. So I asked him why he was so concerned about girlfriends. I then asked him if he had a girlfriend. His answer (a direct quote) was "Parker and Haley. But Haley gone so I just have Parker now." Both girls were in his pre-K class, but Haley recently left the school so he's down from 2 to 1. Poor kid! :) 3/20/09 Update: D is back up to two girlfriends I think, because he's been picking flowers for Kendall lately.

Love, Tamiko

PS Just to let you know, you all can press the comment link below each post if you have anything you want to share!

Dancing Superstar

Donovan was in a real good mood tonight so he was showing me his Happy Dance! I think he might make you want to get up and do one too after you watch this video.

D's sad face

This picture was a few days ago. He was trying to show me his sad face.

Everyone is good!

Hello!

Both boys seem to be doing well these days. Nickolas is up to his usual....school, video games, occasional taekwondo classes and playing trumpet. Christopher reports that he's been sounding pretty good when he talks to him. He gets to Texas on April 4 for his spring break. I hope he's ready for D, because his little brother is ready for him!

Donovan is doing well. Seems like the bronchitis is clearing up okay. He is getting more and more talkative and friendly everyday. Its pretty fun to watch him have real conversations with people we run into. He invited his friend Mrs. Lisa (from the therapy center) and her twins to his birthday party. He's really come a long way with his speech because she understood a 100% of what he told her (his birthday, where his party was going to be and his invite for her to come over to his house). We are still struggling with "s" though.

Christopher is probably the happiest of everyone. He's been able to spend some time lately doing the things he enjoys. He's deep into his home theater magazines and Stephen King books! And we both have this upcoming week off for spring break! Unfortunately for me (since we all know housework isn't my favorite thing), spring break has been designated "clean the garage week"!

My classes are going okay but I am ready for summer! I keep thinking about May. It can't get here fast enough!

Love, T

2006 Flashback

I have been on the hunt for my 2004 pictures (Christopher has them, but I can't find them on any of my computers). Anyway, I ran across this picture of Nickolas and it made me chuckle. I bet at 11, there is no way I could get him to pose like this again! But its pretty cute. I included a recent picture for those of you who haven't seen him in awhile so you could see that he has all of his teeth now!! :)

Kids!!

Nickolas is doing well. He's doing taekwondo and playing trumpet this year. He seems to really like both. We are hoping for a demonstration/mini-concert when he comes next month for Spring break!

Donovan is sick, again!! Bronchitis this time! Breathing treatments three times a day hopefully will help.

Pictures are from last weekend when we went to Corpus Christi (I had a meeting). D and Christopher went to the aquarium. When we got back, Donovan insisted on building a fort...so what you see in the pictures is my husband's idea of one! -T

2004 flashback

Donovan when he was 6 months old. We were going through old pics because we had to email a picture for his pre-K graduation in May!! We think he still looks the same but a little less slobbery! :)

Rocky and Boxy

Donovan is one happy camper today!! We went into Learning Express and ended up walking out with two small aquatic frogs in a small aquarium. Supposedly the water doesn't have to be changed for a whole year!! Christopher (wrongly, of course) doesn't seem to think that they'll make a year, but Donovan and I have faith that they will!