Miss Wazowski and Leo

October 2013

As has become the norm with so many holidays (for better or worse), the actual celebration of Halloween began well before the actual day.  A couple of weeks before, we had our neighborhood Fall Festival. Tommy was at an autocross race that day, so the kids and I headed over to the neighborhood park in the wagon.  Here are Leonardo the Ninja Turtle and Miss Mike Wazowski on their way to the fun: 

They had all kinds of fun activities - an inflatable slide, bounce house, petting zoo, pumpkin decorating, a balloon artist and a costume parade.  I didn't manage to get to many pictures while chasing the kids around, but I was able to snap a couple:

Here's Miss Mike Wazowski with her balloon animal right before it dropped on the ground and popped:

And here's Leonardo.  He was having nothing to do with the mask, but I can't say that I blame him. Actually, I don't think he kept the costume on much after I took this picture - much easier to play that way - so he walked costume-less in the costume parade.  Needless to say, he didn't win best costume :)

The following weekend was the Kids R Kids Halloween party.  This was the first time they got to carry their pumpkins, so they were very excited (don't as my why Livi has a toy ketchup bottle in her hand):

Each room in the school had a different game or activity.  There were crafts, bounce houses (of course - apparently all parties need a bounce house), a bubble room, cupcake walk and others I know I'm forgetting. Jack's favorite was pumpkin bowling - we spent lots of time in this room:

We saw quite a few of Jack's friends.  He spent lots of time running around with his good friend Emilina (aka Tinkerbell):

Stay tuned for pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating!

Boys Love to Bounce!

Fall 2013

I'm sure I will have my fill of kids birthday parties, but this year is the first year that Jack's friends at school have started to invite their classmates to their birthday parties and I've kind of enjoyed them.  As a working mom, I don't have the opportunity to take the kids on many playdates, so I really don't get to meet the parents of Jack's friends or get to know the kiddos he plays with as much as I would like, and these parties have been a nice way for me to get to do that.

If you're a boy, and you're turning 4 in Frisco Texas, the cool thing to do seems to be bounce houses - and if you want to bounce, you can either go to Pump It Up, or Jump Zone.  In the fall before Jack's birthday, we had four different birthday parties at one of those locations for Jack's friends Harrison, Brayden, Jordan and Dylan.  I took pictures at all of them.  Unfortunately, only the last 2 survived the phone wipe out, but the pictures from any of those parties look basically the same, anyway :).  The last 2 parties were for Jordan and Dylan, both at Jump Zone.  I preferred Pump It Up because each party has a bounce house room to itself, rather than mixing 10-year-olds and 4-year-olds on the same bounce houses.  Jack and his friends loved all the video games and air hockey at Jump Zone, though. Here are Jack, Jordan and Rohan trying their hands at air hockey:

And a few video games:

And here are a couple of views of the bounce houses:

After bouncing, the kids head into a party room for cake, snacks and presents.  Here's Jack at Jordan's birthday party, complete with Sponge Bob birthday hat:

With the birthday boy and his other buddy Truman.  Jordan was nice enough to share the birthday boy chair of honor:

And in the same chair at Dylan's party.  Somehow, Jack always made his way into the birthday chair with the birthday boy.  He certainly isn't a shy one:

No pictures of Pump It Up in these pictures, but stay tuned for Jack's birthday in November!!

A Curious George Birthday

October 2013

You might think that the title of this blog refers to a children's birthday party.  You would be wrong.  This year, Tommy got to spend his 36th birthday just has he's always wanted - with Curious George.  Let me explain - Tommy's birthday was on a Saturday this year, and we decided to spend the day with his family at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.  We were fortunate that the Curious George exhibit had just opened that day.  We managed to get a picture of all 4 kids together outside of the exhibit.

Livi was so excited that she could get out of her stroller and explore!

It was a really cool exhibit for the kids - so many things they could do themselves.  By far, I think Lincoln and Jack's favorite part was the "rock" conveyor belt.  They could put lightweight styrofoam-like "rocks" on a conveyor belt, turn a wheel and make them move and along a conveyor until they fell out the other side and you could start it all over again.  I think they could've spent the whole day there!

 

Here they are playing in an office area:

"Hello, Lincoln?  It's Jack."

As I said, there were so many things they could do:

They also spent lots of time at the grocery area - mostly at the checkout counting the money.  Jack takes after his Mommy, I guess.  Ha!

Livi's favorite part was Curious George himself:

Here she is with Nana doing her best monkey impression:

She had fun playing with cousin Charlie, too:

My sweet girl!

And here's the whole group:

All of our pictures were taken in the Curious George exhibit, but we explored the rest of the museum too and had a great dinner at Torchy's Tacos.  Yum!  Happy birthday Tommy!!

What Happens in Vegas...

September 2013

You know the saying - "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."  That is practically true for our trip to Las Vegas.  I took lots of great pictures with my phone, which were sadly all erased the day after we returned from our trip when Jack wiped out my phone.  None of the pictures were incriminating, I promise, but I guess karma caught up with me for trying to take pictures of my friends in Vegas!

My parents drove up to Dallas for the weekend to stay with Jack and Olivia and we left on Saturday morning to fly to Vegas.  Our reason, or maybe our excuse for taking a trip to Vegas was to support our friends.  Tom, Greg and Esther were cycling 150 miles with Team in Training to raise money for leukemia research.  We landed in Vegas and took a taxi straight to the finish line to cheer them on.  Extreme winds hampered everyone's rides, so no one achieved the times they were hoping for, but I'm so proud of all of them for training so hard, giving it their all on race day, and raising money for a wonderful cause!  Here they are after the race - you'd never guess that they'd just biked 150 miles, would you?

Everyone was starving after the race ended, even us non-racers who hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we headed to a restaurant near the finish line to grab some food before heading to our hotel to check in.  We stayed at the Palazzo, a super-nice hotel on the strip.  Every room in the hotel is a suite.  Of course, I took photos, but now have to resort to using the hotel's website photos.  Oh well, I'm sure they are better than mine anyway :)

Our room looked exactly like this, but reversed:

Bathrooms were huge!

 

We relaxed in the room for a little while then headed out to dinner.  Given that our friends had just biked 150 miles, they were pretty tired, so we headed over to their hotel, the Tropicana and had dinner on the patio there.  I can definitely say that wouldn't be one of my top choices of where to eat in Vegas, but when you're with good friends, it really doesn't matter.  Tonight was the night for us to support our friends, not have a wild party or a gourmet dinner.

After a great night's sleep, we woke up when we wanted and headed downstairs to the pool.  Our group had reserved a couple of cabanas for the day.  I can't think of a much better way to spend a day.  We started with mimosas and croissants and ordered more food and drinks from the waitress who would stop by our cabana every once in a while to check on us.  We sunbathed on the deck chairs, or sat in the air conditioned cabana when we got too hot or cold outside.  We lounged in the spa, and even dipped our feet in the pool (the water was a little chilly).  I definitely can't afford spend a day like that very often, but it was a wonderful splurge.  We got there when it opened and didn't leave until they were closing the pool area for the night!

After showers and a quick nap, we headed to Tao for dinner.  The restaurant was everything you'd expect a Vegas restaurant to be - large, slick, and loud.  I had their special Miso Glazed Sea Bass.  Usually, when I get fish at a restaurant, I'm disappointed, but this fish was amazing - probably they best fish I've ever eaten, no lie!

I took a photo very similar to this one, as well. We sat right next to the giant Buddha.

Yay!  I texted this group photo to Amy right after I took it, so it survived the I-Phone crash!

While it was still early by Las Vegas standards, it was close to 11 PM by the time we finished dinner and Tommy and I elected to head to bed.  We woke up after another wonderfully restful night for our last morning in Vegas. We first headed to the french bakery downstairs in our hotel for a chocolate croissant and some macarons to bring home to our wonderful babysitters.  We took a walk down scenic Las Vegas Boulevard - quite the place for people watching!  With all of the gourmet food surrounding us, Tommy stopped for a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit at McDonalds.  After my croissant, I headed to the Paris hotel for some crepes (I really did know I wasn't in France!).  I ordered both a ham and cheese crepe and a butter-sugar one - way more food than I could eat, but what's a trip to Vegas without a little excess, right?  From there, we headed back to the hotel for our luggage and home to the kiddos.

Not a traditional trip to Las Vegas, I know.  We didn't gamble, see a single show, or do something we'd regret in the morning. :)  Even so, the weekend was just what I needed - a nice relaxing time lounging at the pool, eating delicious food, and hanging out with great friends!

Soccer Season #2 - Go Sidekicks!

Fall 2013

Jack started his second soccer season in the late summer.  This season, we switched from the YMCA to the Frisco Soccer Association.  I was really excited that a few other boys his age from the neighborhood were forming a team and one of their moms was even coaching!  I love watching him get to know boys who may be in his kindergarten class in a few years and begin to form what may be long-lasting friendships.

Coach Lynsey is really great with the boys - she makes practice fun for them, but they are still learning how to play. In their favorite game, Coach tucks a jersey (aka "fox tail") into her shorts and the boys have to try to steal it from her, but they can only steal the fox tail if have their ball at their feet - it has really helped Jack learn how to dribble!

Here are a couple of practice pics:

And here's a video of Jack doing a shooting drill.  Getting Jack to shoot the ball with a single kick is a difficult task - he much prefers dribbling right now, so we're lucky they don't have goalies at this point!

Here's my little soccer star before his first game.  It was HOT outside!

And here's the team - Cole, Jack, Antonio, Aiden and Carver - don't they look ferocious!?  They were very much the Bad News Bears for the first couple of games, and it looked like it might be a long season but by the end of the season, they were dribbling and shooting and actually starting to look like little soccer players!

Coach Lynsey providing some pointers before kick-off:

Here are a couple of action shots.  Jack and I had three rules for the season: 1) have fun 2) try your best and 3) listen to Coach Lynsey.  Most of the time he accomplished one, fairly often two, and he's getting better at #3 all the time :).  Jack loves to dribble the ball down an open field, but he's much more hesitant when it comes to fighting other kids for the ball.  He does not like to fall down and he gets mad when someone steals the ball - I see a lot of myself in him - which is definitely both good and bad.

Gooooo Sidekicks!!

  

A few games into the season, Jack scored his first goal.  He was so excited!!  He got close a few times, only to have a boy on the other team take the ball away.  He was starting to get frustrated, when he finally got one in the goal - Mommy was so proud!  The day after that, the team even recorded their first win - they had come a long way in just a few weeks. Go boys go!!