Girls will be girls

I hate to say it, but the end of summer is almost here. Since we will be spending the next few days doing our final moving preps and next week moving I figured today was our last real day of summer. To celebrate the great times the girls and I have had together this past few months I decided to take them to Libby Lu. The girls were so excited when they finally figured out their surprise they could hardly stand it! They ran through the house screaming and yelling and kept telling me that I was the greatest Mom in the world (duh...like I didn't know that already, but I do enjoy hearing it:) Okay, I'm just kidding, I hear just the opposite quite regularly these days). I figured I had made the right decision of how to celebrate and that made me very happy! I took a few pictures of the two big girls getting all glammed up. Trinity chose to have a "Royal" hairdo and a tiara, Emory chose a "Sassy" hairdo and a sparkly headband (go figure...if it sparkles, she HAS to have it!).

Trinity getting her make-up

Emory getting her hair fixed

Little Miss Sass all done!

After the hair, make-up, nail polish and sparkles they got to "build a pooch" as the last part of their "makeovers". Emory chose the cutest puppy and named him Henry Tyler Hinckley and Trinity chose a purple pegasus and named her Glow. So cute!

Getting all glammed up (or watching people do it, in Addison's case) works up quite an appetite for us, so we stopped by the food court for a quick snack.

I'm not sure what Addison's deal was, but she kept making this face (I think her Nini had something to do with it), so I had to snap a picture. Sorry for the "see-food" shot!

Addison loved the ginormous cup we got, I swear it was almost as big as her!

Here's Trinity, pretending to be a walrus

All three of my beauties! This picture really warms my heart. They are all so happy and you can see it, not only in their smiles but also in their eyes!

Thanks girls for making this such an awesome summer! I hope you've enjoyed it too! I love you with all my heart!

It's officially ours!

We closed on our new house yesterday! We are so excited about it and the memories we will be building there! We move next Tuesday, that part I'm not so excited about- lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots....of work to do!

Random pictures

I've been kind of busy lately, between getting ready to move, keeping this house clean, visiting my mother-in-law in the hospital, and keeping up with all three girls 24/7 so I'm a little behind on posting pictures and thought I'd do a mini-catchup real quick.

We had some of Greg's family over for dinner a few weeks ago to celebrate three birthdays. Addison LOVES being around her cousin! She's not used to people her size:) They were so sweet, they even kissed good-night.

The girls have been great help preparing to move. They even formed a "moving train". Pretty cute, aren't they?

Check out those muscles!!!

Watch out, Addison might just kick your hiney if you're not careful!

USA! USA! USA! USA!

The olympics start tonight!!!! WOO-HOO! I know Greg and I plan to have a front seat in front of the TV to enjoy the festivities of the opening cerimonies...hope you do too! We absolutely love cheering on Team USA in any and all events we can catch on TV! The girls are pretty excited for quite a few of the competitions, so they will be glued to it right along side us!

GO TEAM USA!

Teeth, teeth, teeth part 2

So the teeth saga is continuing in our world. Things amongst our girls haven't changed, Trinity is still hanging on by a thread to her second tooth, Addison is still popping her i-theeth through the gums as is Emory with her molars, the continuance...or maybe I should say the extreme drama is with Greg's Mom.

I'll share a brief history of her with you so you can appreciate her situation a bit better. She has extremely severe rheumatoid arthritis and has for 30+ years (she was in her 20's when she was diagnosed). With her arthritis she gets "flare ups" in her joints regularly. These usually go away with a brief treatment of strong medication and really like to come on as she is recovering from some kind of sickness when her immune system is at is most vulnerable; rheumatoid also causes your recovery from illness to take quite a bit longer than the average person.

On the 1st of July she came down with a stomach bug, causing her to not only miss all the 4th of July festivities, but also her grandson's birthday amongst other things. Well, as the stomach bug was going away she developed a knot on her jaw joint. Assuming it was a flare up her doc gave her some medication and sent her on the way. When the meds were gone the knot was smaller, but still present and still painful. They tried an additional medication and it did nothing! The two doctors she had been seeing for help with this over the three week time period decided it might be a tooth causing some or all of this condition, so she went to the dentist. Sure enough there was a root canal gone from several years ago which had gone bad, so she went to an oral surgeon and they squeezed her in the schedule, got that tooth out and sent her on her way, hoping (but not promising) her issue had been resolved. Well, a few days later the swelling was immensely larger, we're talking a second head coming out the side of her head larger! I mean seriously huge swelling!!!!! With that kind of swelling and problem comes insane pain and discomfort! She talked to the oral surgeon and her physician and they agreed something else must be going on for there to be such incredible swelling, so she went to the ER.

After sitting in the ER for 12+ hours on Monday/Tuesday she finally got to see a doctor. The doc gave her a prescription for a really strong antibiotic and sent her on her way. By the grace of God she ended up being walked to an oral surgeons office who is on staff at this hospital and he took a look at her case (thank God he wasn't too busy that day!). Sure enough her molar had abscessed (I think that's the right word) and was causing SERIOUS infection and ALL this swelling was...(I'm grossed out to even think it)...puss! They scheduled surgery for the following day, got her in made several incisions, drained this stuff, attached temporary drains to the incision locations and stitched her back up. Her surgery was on Wednesday morning, today is Friday afternoon, and she is STILL in the hospital! This was some serious infection!

So this is truly a story about how teeth can wreak havoc on your life! Thanks for reading!

Teeth, teeth, teeth!

Who would have ever thought teeth would rule a house? I sure know I never did, but it is most definitelly ruling mine right now and I'm ready for its reign to come to an end! Trinity is just about to loose her second tooth, so her ability to eat has changed drastically and she is sure to let everyone know about it...such an exciting time in a kids life! I can remember when I had a loose tooth, especially my first few times.
Emory is working on some molars that seem to be making her grumpy and giving her headaches. She is quite proud of them coming in because that means she is growing more and more, but I'm really ready for them to be done already! I feel so bad for her when they make her uncomfortable.
Addison is being given a run for her money by those i-teeth. They are all four trying to poke through and she is constantly grabbing the sides of her face and saying, "ow, ow, ow!" I know doctors say teething has no effect on a baby/child's dirty diapers, but I am here to tell you that is SOOOO wrong! She has had several bouts of issues over the past month for several days at a time and every time has been in conjunction with red, swollen gums. Each episode makes her less cooperative at diaper changes and more grumpy in general. Let's hope they finish their job in the extremely near future...for everyones sake!

That's all folks

So yesterday was my mom's first day back to school for the '08-'09 school year. Can you believe it's already August?!?! Of course her kids don't start until August 25th, but because she is the closest thing to Queen Bee without being in Administration, she has to be there to get the school in order before the rest of the Worker Bees show up for the year. Seriously, she is the Lead Content Teacher for the English/Language Arts Department and has all kinds of other responsibilities and titles that I can't keep up with. I think this is her 34th year to be teaching and all but a couple of those have been at the High School level. She is pretty much the most amazing teacher on the planet and most of her kids will attest to that! You can always ask a few of hers that have made it big, like Mike Britt from the country band Lonestar or Betty Nguyen who is an anchor on CNN. Yeah, both of those kids use the skills Mom taught them in school to get where they are today! Oh, I think I forgot to mention the book Mom co-authored a couple of years ago that almost every single high school kid in Texas has used: How to Prepare for the TAKS: English Language Arts Exit Exam (Barron's) by Peggy Kennedy and Linda Powley. You can go ahead and say it, My mom Rocks! I am very proud of her!

We are all so grateful to have summers (even though they are brief) to spend with her! The girls love their TEA parties, slumber parties and pool parties, not to mention their picnics and their time cooking, playing games and reading books with her!

We had a great summer Gommy, hope you did too!

Quick update

I have been terrible recently about keeping this thing updated with stories from our life...it's been kinda crazy! So here's a quick glimpse at where we stand with the whole house thing.



We found the perfect house for us on Saturday, July 5th.

We made an offer on the house on Tuesday the 7th

Offer was countered and accepted on Wednesday the 8th...YEA!!!!

On Friday the 10th we had an inspection done on the house and it was amazing! The inspector said he could not believe the condition of the house considering the age. It was most definitely well taken care of and well loved during the past 43 years the current owners have been there.

We are set to close on Monday, August 11th

We get possession on Tuesday, August 19th

School starts for Trinity on Monday the 25th (talk about cutting it close, huh?)



We definitely feel like this house is where we are supposed to be going and we have this feeling for a number of reasons...let me share a few of them with you. The same week we listed our house this one went on the market and Greg and I immediately found it online. It has many of the details we have always wanted in the curb appeal, but the owners weren't going to be moving until mid-August so we scrapped the idea. A few days later my mom's best friend called and said there was a perfect house that was on the market (the same house) and we should look at it. A few days later I asked a friend of mine if she had any suggestions of places to look and she mentioned this same house because her sister lives across the street. She said the house was well taken care of and the neighborhood was wonderful. She sold Greg on it by telling him about all the hubbys in the neighborhood watching football together on Sundays:)

Okay, so that's three things pulling us to the house, but we still chose to ignore them because we hadn't received an offer on our house. Greg had been driving by it about once a week while he was on appointments in that area and really, really liked it from the street.

My mom started telling us all the ways we are connected to the current owners of the house and how wonderful they are. Apparently he was very good friends with the minister who raised us (married my parents, baptized me, and was the minister of our church until I was in middle school), he and his wife are now active members in our church (I hadn't met them because we've found a church close to our home here in Big D)...the connections go on...

We finally decided if we were going to get moved before school started we were going to have to get going, even if we hadn't sold ours yet, so we went to look at houses with our real estate agent and this was one of them. We could immediately feel the love and care this house has felt over the past years and could see our little girls running around it and can picture them on Christmas morning...all the warm and cuddly stuff! So we left the house search and still felt like we needed an offer on ours in order to proceed...then we started talking. In a couple of brief conversations on the way home we quickly devised a plan that would allow us to get a new house while we still wait on this one to sell and we got all the details worked out in no time at all. Details that would not have fallen into place if we had been in the position even a few weeks earlier. We consider ourselves to be so blessed all this is happening the way it's supposed to! For us this was just another example of how God takes care of you and everything always turns out the way it's supposed to, even if it's not how you wanted it to! (If we had sold this house a few years ago like we had originally planned to there is no way we would have moved to my home town- happened just like it was supposed to!)

So we're still waiting to sell this house, but at least we're not in a rush to get out of here while we are also getting moved in, settled and starting school.

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of our new house, but we will get some posted as soon as we get moved in!

Mean Green Buddies

Well it's officially beginning...football season that is. In case you can't tell, those of us around the Hinckley house are HUGE fans of the Mean Green and that includes even the youngest in the house. Addison is really cute, she'll try to throw up an Eagle claw when you say Mean Green and she'll do her best to say it with you too, however if you don't know any better you would never get anything having to do with North Texas out of it.

...and back to the point of this post. Trinity and Emory are both members of the Junior Mean Green Club, something they take quite a good deal of pride in. Being members of this prestigious organization comes with quite a few perks, including playing in the Fun Zone prior to kick off at home football games (and during basketball season too), getting to go on the field at the end of half time of football games to cheer the team onto the field (the girls are true believers in their high-fives being a great source of luck for the players), and having their very own buddies on the football team and both the mens and womens basketball teams. Today was the big day...the girls got their letters in the mail from Scrappy telling them who their Mean Green Football Buddies are! And the results are:

Emory: Matthew Menard #71

Offensive Lineman - OL
Height: 6-5
Weight: 275
Sophomore
Previous Affiliations Westfield HS Spring, TX

Trinity: Matt Tomlinson #72

Offensive Lineman- OL

Height: 6-5

Weight: 270

Freshman (this will be his 2nd season, but was redshirted last year)

Previous Affiliations: Klein HS Klein, TX

So while you're cheering on the Mean Green this football season make sure you give an extra loud shout-out for our buddies!!!!!

GO MEAN GREEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eavesdropping

My sister (aka Nini, Orange Monkey, Pumpkin Patch, Nicci...) absolutely adores our little girls (monkeys, bugs, etc) and adores spoiling them too. Anytime she's in Target she mysteriously finds herself in the little girls clothes, shoes and toys with things jumping off the racks and into her basket...bizarre! Anyway, this morning she sent some pictures to the girls of clothes and shoes that made their way home with her yesterday and just happen to be the right size for them. So after viewing their loot they called Nini to thank her for them so I decided to eavesdrop just a little bit on the conversations. My, oh so grateful, and loving Emory (she really is grateful, but she's also 3) who happens to be a serious shoe fanatic got on the phone to thank her for a dress and this in how Emory's side of the conversation went down, "Thank you so much for my new dress Nini, I really love it, but I just don't have any shoes to match it...yes, I have a lot of shoes, but they are all flip-flops, boots, and two pair of tennis shoes- one of them is sparkly...I lost my Crocs and I don't have any black shoes either...well yes, my white Easter shoes might go with it...I just don't have any to wear with that dress, maybe you'll have to buy me some..."

Granted her foot is gigantic and is growing by leaps and bounds, but she still has at least 10 pair of shoes that still fit her! What a shoe-aholic! We are in SOOOOO much trouble with this one!