Good day today

So I had a great day today. Yesterday turned out to be a tough one. Started out with attending the funeral of a friend's mother. That in itself was sad, but it really was a beautiful service - Catholic mass that both mourned the loss but also gave blessing that the pain associated with the 5 year fight with cancer was finally over. I had a nice lunch with two other friends who also attended the funeral, but then the rest of the day dealt with rushing back, putting an hour in at work, taking both kids to the grocery store after school (what hell that is!), laundry, dinner, etc. Just one of those days that wiped me out by the end of it.

Today was quite different. Still busy - work was crazy this morning. Plus when we left school at noon, I had to go get into the safe deposit box which ended up being an ordeal because the bank has switched over to this futuristic hand-scanning system to eventually eliminate the need for 70-something year old Betty who used to have to let you in to open the box. They had to get our account up to speed with the new system, which took much longer than I expected it to with two kids once again in tow. So I treated the kids to Happy Meals, eaten on the picnic table on the deck in the beautiful 70 degree weather we had today. And other than Alex's freak out this morning, there were no major tantrums from either kid.

Maybe it was the weather that kept me calm today. With apologies to the Ohio Kennemers dealing with frigid temperatures, it was pretty much a perfect day today. Hopefully tomorrow will be the same. We have no school, so I've got three of Gracie's friends coming over to play and I'm planning on them spending most of their time in the backyard.

On one last (totally unrelated) note, Grace had to create more "No Alex" signs for her bedroom door to keep her brother out. They crack me up, so I figured I'd share them here.

This one shows frowning Alex next to Grace.

Here is Alex's frowning face in a sea of "No Alex" x's.

And this is the one I like the best. Frowning Alex (wearing bunny jammies), big "No Alex" x's, and a big block of "No No No's" to really get the point across.

Are you on the list?

Yay - Heroes starts back up on NBC tomorrow night. If you haven't been watching it yet this season, you need to start. It's one of the best damn shows on TV right now.

Neighborhood activism

Can't believe I didn't post that last week the expansion of our neighborhood conservation district passed the final stages. Vickery Place was made a conservation district a few months ago, but the area covered was just a portion of the neighborhood. We then fast-tracked additional blocks into the district, our block included. The conservation district designation puts a few limitations on what can be built with the hopes of maintaining some of the charm of our 90+ year old neighborhood. Jim and I are very happy about this. And I'm quite proud of my husband. He was our block representative and spent many hours pounding the pavement looking for support among our neighbors.

In some sad neighborhood news, we discovered that Whole Foods will be moving into the Minyards location in Lakewood. Good for the company in that the building here was unable to expand so they can now build an 80,000 sq ft store and still be in East Dallas, but bad news for those of us who have gotten used to a Whole Foods being four blocks away.

A few photos

Just pulled some photos off the camera and thought I'd share a few. A couple from the Kennemer Christmas celebration (held on December 16) and some from a gorgeous day we had last week.

My kids love spending time with their cousins. I'm sure something very important was being discussed at the top of the slide right here.


Emma was watching Alex pile leaves at the bottom of the slide, for reasons only his tiny mind knows.


Grace wanted to show off her new Disney Princess scooter Santa brought her for Christmas this year. I had to take lots of pictures because she wanted to be sure I caught her right leg sticking up in the air just so.


I looked out the back door and saw Alex decked out in his cowboy hat, riding around on the stick horse Santa brought him. I could barely keep from laughing while taking taking the picture.


For some reason Grace decided to pull out the boogie boards so she and Alex could surf on the lawn. Not moving of course - they were having a great time just standing on the boards.


Alex shows off his surfer moves.

Big milestone?

So proud of Alex tonight. After bath he tells me he wanted to pee on the potty. We had a back and forth discussion of whether he wanted to sit on the potty seat or not, and I finally understood that he wanted to "pee like Daddy". So my little man actually STOOD up and peed in the potty! I know that doesn't sound like it is too exciting, but it is in our house. He tried that before in months past, but always chickened out once he got on the stool and ended up just sitting down. Alex couldn't wait to get up the stairs to tell Jim all about it. I love that little guy.

What a wonderful Christmas

Once again we had an amazing Christmas season. Beginning with my family Christmas on the 16th (so we can all be back in our own homes for Christmas Day), which was a wonderful gathering. The Ohio Kennemers were very much missed. One of the best things is seeing my kids playing with their cousins, who they love.

Christmas Eve was spent over at Jim's parents' house. We are lucky that our family traditions work out nicely without overlap; plus everyone is local so we are never required to travel for the holidays. I had to work early in the day on Christmas Eve (curse of working at a church), but it wasn't bad. I got to go to mass that morning, and got to see all the little kids I love up there. And Jim got to make sure our two were bathed and dressed for the day. Grace and Alex had more cousins that night to play with - nice for us because since the girls are older we really can say "Watch Alex for us" and don't have to be peeking around corners or through windows to make sure he's not destroying everything in sight.

And Christmas Day was exciting. Other than the hitch with the scooter, the kids were overjoyed by the presents (and Grace was very accepting of the "Santa's elf forgot a part" explanation). I get to enjoy myself by cooking the big holiday meal for our family and Mom, Dad and Luella. Beef tenderloin again this year, with mashed potatoes, peas and glazed carrots. Plus I took a stab at making homemade rolls - maybe not beautiful, but they seemed to taste okay. My big accomplishment of the meal was dessert - Irish bread pudding with caramel-whiskey sauce. Yummy!

At the end of the day I just was able to revel in the beauty of the season. Grace declared twice (once at Grandma and Pawpaw's house and once Christmas morning) that "This is the best Christmas I've ever had in my whole life!" I was able to cook a wonderful meal and have other hands cleaning up in the kitchen, which is my most-hated part of it. New toys were strewn all over my house, but we were all still full from the food and wine of Christmas dinner so we didn't care. Just hanging out on the couch that evening as a family, kids crawling all over us, was the best place to be. Alex zonked out on top of me on the couch, and Grace quickly fell asleep after a couple of books.

And in case anyone was wondering, I got up this morning to hit Target at 7am and found a replacement Princess scooter at the second store I went to. Stuck the box under the tree with a big bow on it. Grace discovered it a couple hours later. So she has her scooter only one day late, and now I get to make a trip to Target again to return the first one and get names for writing my complaint letter.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Damn damn damn

11:45pm on Christmas Eve and we discover that the Princess scooter Jim is assembling is MISSING THE REAR AXLE.

Yep, the most-wanted Christmas gift of the season in our household is incomplete. So we've written the letter from Santa explaining that the elves made an error, and I'll probably go hit a Target at 7am on Tuesday morning to try to find a new one.

Stupid Target. Probably didn't check the package when it was returned the first time before taping it up and sticking it back on the shelf. I'm writing a letter...

All I want for Christmas is...

everything, which will change next week if you ask a 4-year old.

Last year was easy to sway Grace's Santa requests to match what had already been brought. But this year she sees a commercial targeted to little girls and something new pops up on the list. The latest is a scooter. Originally a Barbie scooter (don't ask me where that came from). But of course everyone is sold out of the three-wheeled Barbie scooter. But I discovered a Disney Princess scooter, which once I mentioned it has now shot up to the top of the list. So Fairy Princess Dora is in the back of the car waiting to be returned to Target.

Alex is a bit easier. For the longest time you'd ask him what he was going to ask Santa for, and his response would be "toys". Now he's changed it to be "monkeys, dinosaurs and toys". So I'm going to have to run out one last time on Thursday (when both kids are at a special drop-in day at school) to try to find some monkeys and dinosaurs for the boy.

Family vacations are fun!

Yes we did it. Rented the RV and hit the Texas state parks last week. Despite the fact that I was sick the first couple of days (including on Thanksgiving the day before we left - great), Grace was sick in the middle of the trip and Alex picked it up at the end, we had a great time. Had to patronize WalMart twice and discovered that the stores in small towns are much nicer than the ones in DFW. Stayed at Ft. Parker near Mexia the first night simply because just about every other park in the state was booked the Friday after Thanksgiving. Then two nights in Garner State Park and two nights at Pedernales Falls SP. We were going to spend a night at Dinosaur Valley SP, but decided to just make that a stop on the way home after having two sick kids for the past few days and realizing the cold front was coming in that night. Originally planned on reaching Big Bend, but changed our route after the first night when we realized we wanted more park time and less drive time.

Our sweet ride.

Alex adopted this weird stance for a while when throwing
rocks into the river at Garner SP.

Grace said "Throwing rocks in the river is more
fun than...ANYTHING! Even Coloring!"

Checking out the recently deceased butterfly next to one of the
biggest trees we'd ever seen (Garner SP).

The butterfly.


Helping Alex navigate the rocks at Pedernales Falls SP
(to get to a good spot to toss them into the river, of course).


Not only could we throw rocks, but we could stick our
feet in this river while we did it.


Helping Grace cross back across.


Grace shows off hers (and my) bedroom. Alex and Jim shared the
MUCH more comfortable bed in the back.


Alex and the smudges he helped decorate the entire RV with.


A sunset at Pedernales Falls.


Me watching the deer roaming through our campsite. Not much fear in those guys until you really make a lot of noise. We also saw feral pigs (from a distance - about 4 adults and a mess of babies), rabbits and numerous cool birds. That was the live animals. If you count the roadkill you can add a lot of raccoons to that number - there was a stretch of road from Garner to Pedernales Falls where we saw one probably every two miles.


Picture of the family taken the last night using the camera on the computer.

Fun in the Fall

The leaves are really starting to come down, especially in the front yard. I don't know if our ash tree out front just loses leaves before all the other trees on the street, but I know we always have a time every Fall when you look down our block and all the other yards are fairly clear but ours looks like a tree exploded on it. Grace and Jim raked a big pile today and had lots of fun with it.

Whew

Well, I just finished one of my busiest months ever. So here's a few updates (for anyone who cares).

1. The Lakewood Home Festival is OVER!!! If you are not aware, I have volunteered tons of hours to this for the past couple years. It is a great cause - raises lots of money for one of the local elementary schools. And honestly the main reason I worked on it was to try to get a little leg up in getting a transfer for my kids into that school. But after I'd committed to being the Underwriting co-chair for the second year, all the school boundaries were changed. And this particular school went from one allowing lots of transfers to a true "neighborhood" school, with no room for transfers AT ALL. Since I'd already committed, and this particular position is pretty important and pretty hard to fill, Jim and I decided that I should ride it out and go ahead and do it. Over 100 hours later, I'm almost finished with it all. Just some follow up, getting books straight, tax letters sent in January, then hand everything off to the next person. Yay!

2. My catered speaker dinner I hosted at church is OVER. Occurring last Friday, the same night as the beginning of the Home Festival, both events together almost caused my head to explode last week. But the dinner went off great, and the speaker was awesome. She's coming back to do a Lenten women's retreat that I am for sure going to attend, and will probably try to convince Mom to attend with me.

3. I missed Halloween with my kids due to a nasty 24-hour stomach bug. Luckily Jim was already coming home early that day, because I couldn't do much of anything other than lay on the couch. He took the kids over to a friend's house and the dads took the kids out to get candy. I'm sad I missed it, because apparently once Alex figured out how the whole trick or treat thing worked he was all over it. He was wide-eyed excited when they came home that night. And now I have a big bag of candy we didn't hand out at our own door because I couldn't get up to answer the phone, much less hand out candy.

4. Cousin Amy's baby shower was Saturday, and she looks so cute all pregnant! Wonderful time catching up with aunts and cousins. I got to make some of my yummy appetizers and Audra's punch recipes. And Grace loves the baby doll I won in one of the games. She's already christened it Ava and carries it around all the time.

5. I start work tomorrow! I'll be the new nursery coordinator up at church, mainly in charge of making sure any nursery needs for church meetings or events are adequately staffed. Not great pay, but half price tuition for my kids school which makes it worthwhile. And finally now when Jim complains to me "So are you getting paid for all that time you spend up at church?" I can say "Yes I am!".

6. Lastly, I made a tasty chicken noodle soup out of the last of my homemade chicken stock last night. Mmmmm! Not a cold day, but overcast and a little rainy, so the soup was a good fit.

Even with the job starting, I feel like I finally have a little breathing room in my life again. Aahh.

Birthday party pics

Here's a few pictures from the birthday party last weekend. Despite the rain, it turned out pretty good. It would have been nice to have everyone play outside, but since it was just family and a few close friends it was manageable inside the house. It was hard to find ANYTHING having to do with robots for the party theme, as you will be able to see by the homemade aspects below.

Alex waits patiently for his birthday brownie.


Blowing out the candles.


Brownie robot-man Grace and I created for everyone in lieu of a birthday cake. Didn't look real pretty but sure tasted good.


Opening presents.

The birthday robot made out of two Pampers boxes, aluminum foil and various things found at Elliot's Hardware.

Alex holding his robot's hand.

Alex with two of his favorite toys from the day.


My two kiddos, after the party with cute but dirty faces.

Visiting the baby

I took Grace out to visit Kim and baby Gabriel a couple weeks ago. Grace will be happy I finally posted these photos.

I think neither one of them was very comfortable when this photo was taken.

This is the picture I love.

This is the one Grace wanted posted ("Mommy, I really like the one with the baby crying in it").

Couple of things

Tomorrow we are throwing Alex's birthday party, though he doesn't turn two until Wednesday. Of course there is an 80 PERCENT chance of rain, so there goes my plan of having the kids run wild outside. Just friends and family coming over, but that extra space sure would have been nice. And Jim will probably end up outside standing over the grill with an umbrella over his head. Too bad we didn't do the party today - it was absolutely beautiful outside.

On another topic, I'm so proud of my sis and her exciting new political group she has helped create. Go here to check it out. Jim thinks she should run for political office, since she's so good at getting her point across and seems to really know what she is talking about. So once her youngest gets a little older, maybe we can get her moving on that. School board? Hell, if Rick Perry gets elected again maybe I can convince her to run for governor.

Howdy Folks! I'm Bi-i-ig Tex.

Fun day at the fair yesterday. Hot, but fun.

Jim thinks Alex looks like a farmer here, checking out his pygmy goats.


The petting zoo was back this year. They had all these little shovels tied to the fences to feed the animals with. I guess that is part of the changes to appease the insurance company.


We sucked it up this year and paid an arm and a leg for the family to ride the Ferris wheel. Grace, Alex and I had a wonderful time. I'm not sure Jim did...


Alex and me on the wheel.


Grace liked the Ferris wheel, but this is the ride she most enjoys. The dragon roller coaster in the kiddie area. Jim got to partake in the fun - Alex was being too clingy so I had to sit it out.


In addition to the roller coaster, this is Grace's other favorite thing at the fair.


After Alex ate an entire Fletcher's corny dog he proceeded to eat an additional half corny dog that his sister didn't finish. We fear for our grocery budget when he reaches puberty.


Grace looking cute at lunch.


Alex worshipped at the altar of Clifford the Big Red Dog yesterday. He was at the Women's Museum, and we got there for the last half hour or so of his appearance. The kids got on the stage to partake in the story time, but while Grace sat there nicely and listened, Alex couldn't keep his hands off the guy in the Clifford suit. I'd tell him to sit down, which he would do for about 5 seconds, then he'd be up again caressing the red suit.


You can see Alex's hand on Clifford as he ignores the poor woman reading a story.


They had photo ops after the story time was over. Alex went up there probably four times to say hi to him.

The last greeting Alex gave him was one of his "big" hugs, which if you've ever received one you know involves running up with arms outstretched, ending in a big bear hug. I love how Grace is laughing behind her hand at this one. I wish the photo had turned out a little better, but I'm glad we caught it even if it is a little fuzzy.

A very fun, but tiring, day.

Preschool Field Trip

Grace went on her very first field trip last week. We took the kids on a trolley ride and then ended up down in the West Village for ice cream before walking back to the church.

This is Grace's class. She's standing between two of her boyfriends. Two girls and seven boys in the class.

Grace and Dalton eating ice cream.

A few other classmates with their ice cream.