Early Thanksgiving Celebrations

November 2013

I was spending Thanksgiving with Tommy's family here in Fort Worth, and Katy was going to Kansas with my family.  At Christmas, my family was going to Jackson to spend the holiday with Grandma Rose, while the Katy's family would be in Charlotte with the Davises.  We do our best to divide our holidays between all of the grandparents who love to see our families.  Unfortunately, sometimes that means my family and Katy's family miss each other completely.

So I was so thankful when the Davis family decided to fly into Dallas, spend a few days with us, and drive up to Kansas for Thanksgiving.  They arrived on Saturday afternoon.  Saturday and Sunday were pretty relaxing - it was nice for the cousins to get to spend some time together without constantly running around.  We did a little shopping, but mostly hung out around the house.  Jack loved showing his toys to the cousins, who especially loved his marble towers and car tracks.  Livi the book lover brought her books to whoever would read to her, and plopped down in their lap for story time.

Of course, the boys also loved their electronic gadgets - leap pads, I-pads, they know how to work them all. I love how focused they are in this picture:

Sunday morning was chilly, but it didn't stop the boys from wanting to play outside:

Our garden was overflowing with poblano peppers and the temperatures were getting close freezing, so they had a great time chunking poblanos:

My parents arrived from Boerne on Sunday afternoon and the whole family headed out to Chuy's for some Mexican food on Sunday night.  Yum!

I took Monday off of work, so on Monday morning, we headed to downtown Dallas to the Perot museum. Someone was very excited!

We arrived and took the glass-enclosed escalator up to the museum, pausing when we got there to take in the beautiful views of downtown Dallas:

 We spent a lot of time in the dinosaur hall and playing with the activities around it:

Livi was much too little to do anything last time we went to the museum, so it was really fun watching her enjoy playing:

 Of course, the boys had fun, too:

 

They have a pretty amazing mineral hall.  I think I walked Jack around to every single display case and read him what each mineral was:

Livi enjoyed them, too:

At the end of our trip, we headed down to the bottom floor of the museum to the children's museum section. Everyone had fun playing with plastic food, water toys, cars, slides and the construction area.  

When it was time to leave, I was with Livi and assumed that Jack was with his cousins.  He wasn't.  It probably only took me a minute or two to find him in another corner of the kids area, but I'm not sure I've ever felt such a sense of panic as I did when I realized I didn't know where he was.  Being a Mommy is hard sometimes.

After spending the morning and early afternoon at the museum, we had just enough time to come home and make a delicious early Thanksgiving dinner (ok, so they are eating PB&J in this picture, but I'm sure they looked pretty much the same eating Thanksgiving dinner):

On Tuesday morning, it was time for everyone except the Mhires to head to Kansas, but no morning with Grandpa would be complete without smoothies.  All of the boys got to assist with the smoothie making:

We got one last family picture before everyone headed out.

Happy Early Thanksgiving!

Sidekicks, Too!

Winter 2013

Jack had such a good time playing soccer in the fall, that when Coach Lynsey said she would also be coaching Carver's indoor team, we decided to sign up.  We played at Blue Sky Sports Center in The Colony.  Indoor soccer is a much faster moving game, and when the kiddos get bunched up (as they tend to do) there isn't anywhere to go other than into the wall.  At first, my little non-aggressive guy wasn't a fan of that, but he quickly learned that the walls also meant that there was no out-of-bounds and  to use that to his advantage.  This season, he also learned that he could stop the other team from scoring by standing in front of the goal.  I may have a little defender on my hands!  Here are a few shorts from a couple of his practice sessions:

Warming up before the first game:

 

And some game time action shots:

Like I said, using the wall to his advantage as he goes for the goal:

At the end of the season, everyone got a medal.  Jack was really excited because it was his first medal!

Here's the team - Jaida (the one and only girl), Liam, Jack, Carver, Dhilin and Alex:

I told you someone was proud of his medal!

Charlie is Officially a McCarthy

November 2013

The McCarthy family reached another milestone in November.  Six months after Charlie arrived in their home, they legally finalized his adoption at the Courthouse in downtown Fort Worth.  They invited their family and a few friends who were close to the adoption process to share in their special day - and of course we were thrilled get to be there! We were in Connecticut when Lincoln's adoption was finalized, so we were especially glad we could make it this time. The ceremony was short, but filled with emotion.  Brandi, Ryan and Lincoln promised to open their home to Charlie and love him forever. It was a privilege to be there.

Here are all four McCarthy's with the judge after the adoption was finalized:

 And the whole group:

And here's our family with our newest "official" cousin/nephew:

From the courthouse, we all went back to their house to celebrate.  Brandi had a wonderful breakfast set up for us:

Tommy and I had both taken the day off work, so we were able to stay for a couple of hours. As usual, the kids had a great time together:

We are so thankful were had the chance to be there for the McCarthy's special day and to welcome our nephew into the family officially and forever.  We love you, Charlie!

Bounce House Party - Turtle Style!

November 16, 2013

Today, my big boy turned 4!  His actual birthday fell on a Saturday, so we got to do all of the celebrating in one day.  As I mentioned, the cool party if you are a 4-year-old boy seems to be a bounce house party.  We celebrated Jack's birthday at Pump It Up with 15 friends from school and soccer and family.  Pump It Up is my favorite of the bounce house party locations because your party has a room to itself, so there isn't the risk of my four-year-old being trampled by an excited almost pre-teen.

You spend the first 40 minutes in one room, them move on to another room with different bounce houses and slides, and end up in the party room for cake and presents. This is the view of the first room:

Here are Jack and his soccer buddy Carver playing basketball in one of the bounce houses:

Uncle Ryan had fun with the boys, too:

Here's the birthday boy sliding down the big slide: 

We moved to the next room, where the favorite seemed to be this inflatable contraption.  The party host attached flags to velcro squares on this "wall" and the boys ran up the wall and tried to grab a flag and slide back down.

Jack really enjoyed this one!

 

Livi was too little to play on most of the slides and bounce houses, but she found a basketball game that she enjoyed:

This one was also a favorite.  All the kids stand in the glass enclosed area, a button is pressed and it gets really windy inside the area.

 Here is most of the group (the ones we could get to sit still (Jordan, Jayna, Brayden B., Carter, Michael, cousin Lincoln, Jack, Carver, Dylan and Branden D. - not pictured are Tiger, Zachariah, and Truman)

 And the goofy picture:

We moved onto the party room.  Since it was the middle of the afternoon, we elected not to spring for the pizza, but just did cake, drinks and snacks.  Here's the party table - Jack was a very lucky boy!)

 The cake, of course, was Ninja Turtles:

 The birthday boy got to blow out his candles and open presents in the cool inflatable chair:

The whole party crew!

We opened presents at Pump It Up, but that was such a chaotic scene that I don't have any good pictures.  We got them all out when we got home to open them and play.  Almost everything was Ninja Turtles, which was perfect for Jack.  Strangely enough, there were no duplicates and nothing that he already had!

Poppy and Gigi couldn't make it to the party, but they got him a cool big boy training bike with training wheels.  He loved it!

Moving on past his actual birthday, at 4 years old, Jack is a sweet, tenderhearted guy. He is really empathetic towards others, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, as his Mom well knows!  While Ninja Turtles are definitely the preferred playthings and TV show, He also likes Monsters, Inc., Wreck It Ralph, legos, and art projects.  He still gets stories from Mom or Dad every night, followed by songs and cuddles from the other parent.  I will be so sad when the cuddle days are over!

Lots of times, he plays much like his Mommy played.  He lines his cars up in rows and has them follow each other in races.  He also starting to create stories and scenarios as he plays.  The Ninja Turtles battle the bad guys, float in Jake's boat, and sometimes even battle the cars.  Its really fun to see his imagination develop!

He's a smart boy, learning his letters, numbers and basic addition and subtraction.  He can write his own first name.  Each week at school, they have a letter of the week to practice writing.  He can write many of the letters freehand, and can write anything as long as he has a guide to follow.  Every once in a while, I would print out some worksheets for him to practice at home:

Right around his 4th birthday, he also drew the first picture I'd seen him draw that looked like more than just scribbles.  I'm not sure what all was going on, all he would tell me was that it included a lion:

Happy fourth birthday to my sweet, smart, Ninja Turtle loving boy. Mommy loves you more than you will ever know!