My American Girls!

We had such a good time this past weekend in Dallas for Labor Day weekend. Dennis drove over to Austin with his crew to put new siding on Gail and John's house and we headed over to Dallas to visit Gary and Rebecca and also attend a few of Alicia's volleyball tounament games. On our way there we stopped off at Buc-ee's. Everyone and his/her brother was there. Just like everyone else we bought t-shirts, bread, munchies and dinner. It is amazing how many people stop at this place. Their banana nut bread and jalepeno bread are the best. After stuffing ourselves we finally made it to Gary and Rebecca's house for some much needed sleep. Dennis had made it to Alicia's 7:00pm game which they won. He spent a night with her at her house which she shares with two other UTA volleyball players. The next morning Dennis joined us and Rebecca in Ferris and we all went to watch Alicia play her first game of the day. She played very well and they won that match against UTPA. We stopped by to check out Alicia's house. Typical college house near campus for girls, a great place for parties as Alicia puts it. Sometimes girls can be just as messy as boys! We went back to Rebecca and Gary's for something to eat. Gary knows how to grill a good burger. We went back to watch Alicia's next game against Mississippi State. They were really good and UTA unfortunately lost. The next day Dennis left for Austin to go help his guys and us girls met Alicia in Dallas for some shopping. We started off at the American Girl store. What fun we had there amongst all those dolls, their outfits and accessories. We ate lunch at the American Girl Bistro with Brianna's doll, Lanie that she got in New York City.This place was similar to the one in NYC but not as big and the bistro was casual instead of the classy restaurant in NYC. But the experience is the same, all the doll displays and the doll hair salon were there. Brianna bought some new things for Lanie and then we headed out to North Park Mall and Nordstrom Rack for real shopping! We shopped 'til we dropped and had a good time doing it. Thanks to Rebecca for showing us the good places to shop and to Gary and Rebecca for some good food and a place to stay. The kids had a blast in the woods and playing foozball. All in all it was a great Labor Day.

I'm Back!!!!!

Summer is over and the kids are back in school. I think it's time to get back into writing my blog whenever I can. We had a wonderful summer full of fun and adventure in New Braunfels and Canyon Lake for a week, than we took off by train from New Orleans to Washington, DC for a week. The trip didn't stop there, we took a train from there to NYC for another week in the Big Apple and returned to New Orleans by train from there. We really enjoyed both places and plan to return for more adventures some other year. The kids returned last weekend from spending a week with their grandparents in Baton Rouge. What a great time they had, they couldn't stop talking about it. Next year they can go for two weeks! This past weekend we lost one of our dear pets, Cupid the hamster. The kids made a coffin for him and buried him under the fig tree in the back. Now they want to get frogs and a turtle to replace him. Until then we still have Joey the beetle bug and Maxie the beagle. Yesterday was the kids first day of school and they are glad to be back. They are riding bike to and from school and will not be staying for the after school program which means cha-ching for me, no more extra cost for child care. It's like getting a raise!

What A Busy Weekend!

We had such a very busy weekend and finally I can now sit and rest in my comfortable recliner. It all started Friday evening with family coming into town and Brianna's First Communion rehearsal. The rain started at 6:00 pm and it was raining cats and dogs. I had to walk in the parking lot lake before going into the church and I got my pants and sandals soaked. Brianna did well at rehearsal and she did the same thing as all the other kids and made a disgusting face when they tasted the wine. Some faces were very funny looking. After getting all her instructions for the next day we got wet again in the pouring rain and went home. Uncle Boogie and Aunt Michelle were staying with us for the weekend while Flash and Grandpa Harv were staying in a hotel close by. I stayed up late preparing for the big party on Saturday with hopes of no rain.
On Satuday morning it was still drizzling and we were able to get into the church without getting too wet. Brianna looked so beautiful in her white dress and veil. It feels like just yesterday we were baptizing her! All the Shaffers, Baugnons and Castros made it into town for this special occasion despite the weather. Besides praying for Brianna, I said an extra prayer to stop the rain for our Crawfish Boil tonight. Father Jack said a great mass and all the boys and girls, about 60 plus, did a great job with their first communion. I was even able to reunite with an old friend that I went to school with, Corliss Badeaux and to see all her family. Her youngest sister, Jeannie had a son that was making his first communion also. It was a nice surprise to see her, her parents and her siblings. Afterwards we picked up some KFC and her special cake which came out great with her picture on top. We celebrated Brianna's First Communion while it was still raining. She opened all her gifts and we stuffed ourselves with cake. At about 3:00 it looked like the sun was going to peek out. So we got all the chairs, tables and canopies ready for the party. At 4:00 Felix, the cook at French Quarter Market Grill showed up with 350 pounds of crawfish to boil. The sun came out and the people started coming. My aunt and uncle from San Antonio showed up with my cousins Albert and Marco along with his wife Becky. It was great to see them as usual. Then came my brother, Orlando and his wife Libby and my niece April, her husband Jack and the kids. My sister Gina came a little later to join the rest of us. All in all we had 93 people show up to eat crawfish in our backyard and we all had a bon temps! Not only was there crawfish, the food was endless. We had salads, dips, cookies, cakes, fruit, jambalaya, steak, taquitos, and much more. It was a lot of fun to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I was able to eat crawfish this time, so I must be finally getting good at hosting this party to where I don't work as much! I think everyone had a good time and my prayer was answered, we had no rain all night. The last people to leave were the poker players at 1:00 am. Thanks for coming everyone and thanks for all the help in setting up and cleaning up.
On Sunday after finishing off all the cleaning from the party we had one more event to make as a family.
This was the Spring Piano Recital for Denise and Brianna. Brianna played "Star Spangled Banner" and Denise played "Amazing Grace". They both played flawlessly and beautifully. It was a real pleasure to see them on stage so into their music and so composed.
All of Mr. Richard's kids did great, he should be proud of all his students. The recital was enjoyable and over in an hour and a half. I looked forward to going home, picking up Maxie and relaxing the rest of the evening. It was a long weekend and I had a great one!

School Year Coming To An End

Everything is starting to come to an end for the school year. The kid's activities are starting to come to an end. Last week Brianna received all her Girl Scout patches on her vest in a grand ceremony. One of the patches was for cooking, so the kids served sloppy joes with chips , fruit salad and fruit punch for their families for dinner before they received their vests with their new patches. The girls have done quite a lot this year and have enjoyed their biweekly meetings after school. Last Saturday Denise went to a birthday party for one of her friends. They got all dressed up, makeup and all, went out to eat and to see a movie. They looked so grown up, some girls even had heels higher than I would wear. On Sunday we went to get Brianna's 1st Communion pictures made at Picture People. They did such a great job within an hour! It was a lot of fun and easy to do. Here are just two pics from her portfolio. I had made enough pictures for everyone. This weekend Dennis took Denise to Austin to watch Celeste play polo in the UT Polo Spring Invitational. This is an big fundraising event where they played against a minor league Dallas polo club. They seemed to have done well and raised quite a bit of money. Denise and dad had a great time.

Brianna and I stayed in Houston for her Girl Scout Dancercise class at the Lone Star College. She had a lot of fun dancing with the college dance team and learning a routine to Justin Bieber's, "Baby". She gets another patch for this. I might have to start using her patches to cover up the holes her dad makes in his blue jean shorts while working! Anyhow, things are starting to wind down and we have Brianna's 1st Communion, the Spring Piano recital, the Crawfish Boil and the Spring Dance recital to look foward to.

Grand Finale!

Denise played her last soccer game at the YMCA with coach Joe McDonald. He has been her coash since she was 4 years old playing first on a coed team and than all girls team. She has learned a lot from him and has enjoyed all these years playing with the same girls even though she was probably the youngest. She has played up with the other girls being two years older than her but managed to do well. On Saturday's game she was the only one that scored and they won their game 1-0. What a way to finish! The party was that night at Husky's where a very emotional coach handed out their trophies and medals. He knew it was the last time he was going to see all his girls and was not going to be coaching them next year. They Y has decided to make the 11 and older girls teams travel to other Ys for games so he will not be able to coach because he also coaches 3 younger teams and he would not be able to travel. Joe did a great job with the DVD he made of the girl's season. They were the Icebergs this time so he started the photo show with music from the Titanic movie! He also added a bonus of all the individual pictures through the years that he has coached them. We saw each girl progress from a toothless kid to a beautiful young girl. We will now have to find another rec team for Denise to play with next fall. On Sunday, Brianna had her 1st Communion interview and she passed with just missing one question. She is now ready to make her 1st Communion on May 15th at 10:00 am. We have also decided to celebrate that night with a crawfish boil, so yes we are starting the Annual Shaffer Crawfish Boil again! Come and join us!

We Had A Great Spring Break!

Our spring break has come and gone, but we had a wonderful time. It all started last Monday when I had to prepare for my first colonoscopy. The procedure itself, on Tuesday was a piece of cake which I remember nothing about. I got dressed and Dennis drove me home, than I slept for about 3 hours. I got up refreshed and we made rainbow cupcakes for St. Patrick's Day, they were pretty cool to make with layers of different colors. The next day the girls and I went to the Houston Rodeo.
This is one event my kids never get tired of. They love the carnival rides and the games. I think all of Houston must have had the same idea as us because the place was packed. This year we didn't win any big stuffed animals, thank God! Denise did win a basketball that had pictures of paper money on it, she was one goal short of winning a Scooby Doo stuffed animal three times her size. We rode the rides until we ran out of tickets than did a little rodeo shopping. I bought a new leather purse that was for a good price considering I saw some cowboy boots that were worth $2450. Who would buy that? The next day, Thursday, we drove to Baton Rouge to spend some time with Dennis' parents. We had a fish fry that night and that was some really good fish and tater tots. The next day, Friday was my mother-in-law and my birthday. We headed over to New Orleans with Greg and Michelle to spend the day. We went to the Amtrak station to pick up our tickets for our trip this summer to Washington, DC and NYC.
Afterwards we headed over to the Aquarium on the river. I haven't been here in years and it was just as enjoyable as ever. The IMAX 3D show about Dinosaurs was interesting and the fish tanks were cool to look at. My favorite was the otters and the kids favorite was everything. From here we walked over to Jackson Square to find somewhere to eat. There was people everywhere probably because of the NCAA basketball tournament here in NOLA. We stopped at Cafe Pontalba and I had a really good shrimp poboy. It was a pretty day and was nice and breezy.
After eating we walked some more around Jackson Square, looked at all the performers and headed over to the Insectarium on Canal Street. I have never seen so many bugs, beetles and butterflies in my life. There was even a kitchen where they were cooking samples of food cooked or baked with bugs. I ate a chocolate chip cookie and salsa with bugs. There was cinnamon flavored crickets and chocolate covered crickets. I could only taste the bugs once, but for the most part you couldn't tell.

This was the end of our day so we headed back to BR for cake and ice cream.
Saturday came and on our way back home we stopped in Port Arthur to visit with my parents. Before leaving BR we stopped downtown to see Greg and his team in a Bar-B-Q cookoff. It proved very successful. They won first place in the chicken and first place in the rib categories. That was really good considering they beat the teams that had fancy and much bigger grills. All in all we had a great spring break.

Marian Baker 1908 - 2010

I have some very sad news to write about today. Our beloved "Nanny", Dennis' grandmother passed away yesterday in the morning and now she has reached Heaven. If anyone in this world deserves a halo and a pair of snow white wings, it would be Nanny. She was a strong woman with great faith who lived over 100 years of life to the fullest in a way that I hope I can someday achieve. She was a great-great-grandmother, great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, sister and friend to a lot of us. We have many years of memories with Nanny that will always make us smile when we remember them. We will always love and miss her.

Look Mom, No Teeth!

Brianna had a tooth that was coming out right behind one of her front teeth. Her tooth was not even loose and the new one was causing a lot of pain so I made an appointment with Dr. Zummo. It turned out that her two front teeth were coming in so he had to extract both. This would make it 5 teeth that the dentist has had to pull. Her baby teeth roots are not dissolving and the teeth are not becoming loose. From the x-rays it looks like her top incisors are going to do the same thing and we'll have to make a trip back to the dentist to extract those. Anyhow, she was so excited, she wanted me to take her back to school so she could show all her friends and teacher her missing teeth. She says she likes this vampire look and she especially liked the $20 she scored from the tooth fairy!!

Throw Me Some Beads!

Happy Mardi Gras!!! We celebrated Mardi Gras this past weekend in good ole Port Arthur. Saturday, after watching Denise play a double header soccer game and watching her make two goals in freezing weather, we loaded up the car and headed for the parades. My mom wouldn't miss the parade even if it was cold.


We all bundled up and got there in time to see the motorcycles beginning the nighttime parade. The kids enjoy screaming and dancing for beads and we caught bags of beads again. The big items this year were the frisbee that lights up, the bead with the Corona light bottle that lights up, several cups, footballs, frisbees, stuffed flowers and other things. I tried to find someplace here in Houston to recycle all these beads and the other bags from past years that I have stuffed somewhere in the guestroom closet. We only want to keep the very best of the best because there is just way too much!

Who Dat?

First of all I'd like to congratulate the New Orleans Saints for winning their first NFC title game and their first trip to play in the Superbowl XLIV(44) in Miami on February 7. That is going to be an exciting game and one that the Shaffer clan will not miss. While watching the game I was able to update the blog finally. It has been so long since I have posted anything. My demanding job just takes up too much of my time so I post when I can.
Last week we spent some time on Lake Conroe.

It was a little cold and raining but we made the best of it along with Maxie and Cupid. We enjoyed the indoor pool, the archery, the mini golf and feeding the ducks on the lake. We also went out to our favorite restaurant, the Olive Garden and pigged out on Italian food, especially the bread sticks. The kids ordered their favorite drink, virgin strawberry daiquiris at the bar. Got to start them young!

This week, Gail and John, my sister-in-law and her husband from Austin came to town for a short visit to watch their daughter play for her high school lacrosse team in a tournament here at Bear Creek. It was interesting to say the least, I have never watched it played but on TV and never paid much attention to it.
I have to admit that watching these girls play has me interested. Maybe I can get Denise or Brianna to play when they get older, although Denise has already said she does not want to wear a skort!