Ballerina Emily

On Wednesday our daughter transformed into a ballerina. Whitney took her to a studio not too far from our house and Emily was all decked out in her new pink leotard, ballet shoes, and little pink skirt to match. Without hesitation she jumped right in with all the other girls and danced and did choreography to songs like 'say a little pray for me' and of course they did a Hannah Montana song as well. The highlight for Whitney was at the end of the practice. The teacher stood up and told all the girls that they did so well that each of them was going to get a piece of candy. But not just any old piece of candy. They were going to get Smarties (which if all of you go back to your childhood can remember how amazingly exciting this type of candy is because it is called a piece of candy when in reality there are like 10 little candies inside!). Anyway as soon as the teacher holds up the candy bag she blurts out 'Can I please have one for my little brother too!' And then the teacher ended up giving each girl two Smarties. But I must say that as parents that made us pretty proud to see Big Sister thinking about little brother like that. But Emily absolutely loved the whole experience and can't wait to go back. I think she would love to go everyday if she could.

The 80's Live

Well, we had quite the time on Saturday night as we left all our pride on the shelf and reached back into a lovely decade known as the 80's. Whitney definitely went all out and even stayed up one night making a 'friendship pin.' We had about 10 couples or so show up for our little shindig. We had a Madonna, Miami Vice, Denim Jackets with the fray action, hairspray, leg warmers, painter hats, etc. We even had a Casey Casum impersonation during our 'Name that 80's tune' contest. There were some nice karaoke performances and Vanilla Ice (I know early 90's but close enough) was enjoyed a couple of times.

The kids had a big time too as we recruited some world class babysitters known as Uncle Jay Jay and special friend Haley Miller. They built some forts, performed some puppet shows (I heard uncle Jay had him rolling with one of the pig puppets), Emily got her finger nails and toenails painted (not by Jay Jay), and of course read some books together (I heard Joshua didn't quite make it through all the books as he sacked out in their arms). I also heard that Jay and Haley played a little Mario Cart after the kids went to bed and that Jay got wooped at least once.

On Friday we did a family adventure to Tomball, TX. Tomball is a small town that is about 10 minutes from us but for somehow I think I overbuilt it up with the kids and they kept saying 'Tomball!' over and over till I finally started feeling kind of bad because there was no way that this tiny Texas town was going to live up to the hype that we had created for it. But, nonetheless it was a nice trip just to get out of the house and enjoy the best time of year here in Houston, the winter. We walked around some little shops, grabbed a snack and some drinks at the Main Street Coffee house (which is a really cool place that actually hosts about three different church services during the week), and then we topped off the outing with a trip to Burroughs park pictured above to the left. They had a huge time playing on these large concrete animal structures.

Little Clowns

Wow, well the kids woke up in clown mode this morning. Humor to a 4 and 2 year old is truly a perplexing subject. Somehow they both decide that something that they do is hilarious and then one of them proceeds to implement the formula and the other one just is captivated in unstoppable laughter. Today the formula had something to do with the two of them reading a book on the couch and then every so often Emily would yell something about a 'dog' or something and Josh would just start hysterically laughing. She got a good several minutes of mileage out this formula this morning. Another interesting moment this morning (which I was unsuccessfuly able to capture on film thanks to my anti-camera daughter) was my daughter wearing an 80's New Kids on the Block black painter cap this morning to pre-school. It was 'silly hat day' today but I secretly feared that we might have slightly traumatized her nontheless. I guess I always have feared being the guy who finally really went all out for the 'costume' party or the 'spirit' day and then I show up to my horror to discover that I'm the only one dressed like that. Yeah that's one of my secret nightmares I guess. But the reason we found it in the first place was that my wife and I were tearing through our attick last night around 10 or so looking for old 80's clothing to get ready for our young couples 80's party that will be happening this Saturday. Yeah, so if you have any parachute pants or jams or swatches will you please overnight them to us. Thanks.

Gigi and Granddad visit

My parents were able to break away from Wimberley to come and hang out with us over the weekend. We made a return trip to the George Mitchell Nature Preserve trail which is great for any person's soul to get in the outdoors in God's creation. We did about a 2 mile hike around a big loop and observed a whole lot of fallen trees from Ike's aftermath and a lot of 'bear caves' as Josh and G-Dad pointed out. Emily got in the spirit of collecting pine cones and kindling in case we wanted to stop along the way and build a fire. Emily hit her threshold about 10 minutes from the end of our hike and officially declared the outing 'not fun anymore.' We topped off the hike with a little visit to Quizno's where Emily (our eater) polished off her ham and cheese sandwich in no time while Josh stared at his demanding that we get him chicken (he has a serious obsession with the beloved winged edible creature) and we refused as I'm sure there's some kind of weird disease you can get if you consume chicken every meal of your life. Anyway, we had a nice visit and God hooked us up with some very nice weather to enjoy.

The kids also entered into an important rite of passage during our visit to the park. They discovered the joy of going down a slide head first. So one after another Emily and the Josh experimented with this new sliding technique. I think they're new playground friend introduced it to them.

Bed Head Lives

Amazingly, despite the fact that Josh received another real haircut, he still has been gifted with an uncanny ability to produce an awe-inspiring bed head in the morning. This particular display was produced a couple of mornings ago. We finally arrived at a weekend with some breathing room and downtime. We had a wing night with our neighbors on Thursday night and last night we hosted Gigi and G-Dad (we have retired 'Grand-dad' and are introducing a much hipper name 'G-Dad' in its place....we have had discussions with both of the the kids about the name change and despite a few slip ups have been adapting pretty good). We also had youngest brother Jay and Haley over and Emily and Josh put on a fine concert on the Hannah Montana stage with their world class arrangments of 'Happy Birthday Jesus' and 'Hokey Pokey' (Veggie Tales version) and 'God is so good' (also, Veggie tales version).

Never underestimate a 4 year old

I had the privilege of being able to spend some time with Emily yesterday taking her to pre-school. As we drove I was amazed at the course of our conversation. We talked about heaven, what we'll be doing in heaven, she reflected on when she was sick one time with salmonila and why we chose to give her Peter Pan peanutbutter that would make her sick which then led to a discussion on microscopic organisms and microscopes and how microscopes are different than telescopes. There was a host of other topics we also covered in our 10 minute drive together. It was just a good reminder to never get into much of a hurry and always be ready to listen as our children have a lot to share. Also, I'm reminded of a quote from Steve Bradley, "Quality time only comes from quantity time." These are moments that I can't plan and just make happen. They happen over time....they happen in the flow of life....they happen in the context of a relationship that feels safe.

Sunday's are quite crazy for us and full of activity. We have a little downtime in between church and 'Cubbies' (Sunday night program for kids at our church). So this afternoon I got to sit on the couch and do Emily's Bear Hug assignment where we read about some of the Cubbie characters and then reviewed some Bible stories. At the end of the session it asked the parents to have the kids draw out their favorite Bible stories and make a little book. So our kids being totally into the craft thing set out to make their little book of favorite Bible stories. Emily apparently is quite into tracing the life of Jesus from birth to Jesus as a kid to Jesus sitting at the right hand of God in heaven. So here's a little clip of her explaining her little Bible story book she created.

On Saturday we attended Ashlyn Schraders birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. In case you've never experienced Chuck E Cheese it is a place filled with animatronic mice, games, ski ball, pizza, cake, lights, sounds, rides, etc. Part of the time I was Emily's chaperone and coin distributor as she played games and then for the latter part of the time I was with Joshua. To my amazement out of all the amazing and fun stimulus overloading opportunities that surrounded my little 2 year old son the thing that amazed and delighted him the most was the little machine that counts your tickets. I mean he was plain giddy as I would hand him a strand of tickets and he would take his little pudgy fingers and finagle and fix the tickets just right and he knew at any moment the machine would gobble up all the tickets when he least expected and he would just give out a huge laugh each time he did it. It kind of reminded me of how parents go to all the trouble to pick out all these elaborate and crazy gifts for out little kids and they end up getting much more enjoyment out of the bows and wrapping paper. Go figure.

You gotta love Houston

Wow, yes, today was January 9th and it was shorts weather here in Houston. I think it got up as high as around 78 degrees. We got up and rolling around 8:30 to head out to a doctor's appointment for Whitney and my job was to hang with the kids and feed them. So I headed out to find their favorite breakfast foods, Emily - Sausage Kolache, Josh - Scone (yes and he's two, wow). Kolaches are easy to find. I went to the Kolache factory and was hoping maybe they might sell some scones but no luck. Yet I knew there was a Starbucks a little ways down the road so I knew I could maybe get a scone there. Well all they had were some pumpkin scones and I wasn't going to chance that. Next I went to Shipley's and they didn't have scones so I took a gamble and got Josh a kolache and chocolate covered doughnuts for both of them. Chocolate covered doughnuts in the car, hmmmm, brilliant. We started to head back to go pick up
Whitney as I'm constantly telling the kids not to 'lick' the chocolate off the doughnut. Well as you can guess like all kids Emily and Josh have an uncanny ability to remove the chocolate off of an object and transplant it all over their face and clothes. But after a good baby wipe session I was able to get most of the chocolate off. Another amusing element of the day was Josh and his 'boy.' Josh aparently made a 'boy' at church earlier this week. His 'boy' consists of a small paper plate with a boys face on it and yarn for hair attached to a popsicle stick. He became very attached to his 'boy' and wanted to take it with him throughout the day. We eventually ventured over to the trails near Walmart and Branch Crossing in the Woodlands and parked our car and walked over to a park. Of course we got to the park and Josh had peed through his diaper so Dad got to go run all the way back to the car to retrieve the diaper bag. They had a good time playing together and we all definitely enjoyed our spring day in January.

Poppaw and Grammy's Visit

We've had a great time visiting with Whitney's parents, 'Poppaw and Grammy'. We experienced the Woodlands Mall (which is amazingly more crowded after Christmas than before Christmas and Poppaw and I hit up the Hickory Farms 75% off sale and have been stuffing ourselves with sausage and cheese balls all week), Rockfish (great restaurant - jalapeno corn fritters are yummy), the new 290 outlet mall (we managed to survive without going broke), Santa's wonderland (near college station with 2.5 million lights, petting zoo, bonfire, pony rides, hot chocolate, shopping, and even a mechanical bull), Old Town Spring (pictured above), Wuenche brothers and their famous beer bread, spaghetti dinner with Ted and Shelly, projects (Bunny (Whitney's mom) pulled about 156 weeds out of our front yard, Ronnie and I fixed our fence, Ronnie also worked his magic and fixed our back door and front door lock (he introduced me to this amazing stuff called 'silicone spray' which is like WD40 on steroids), they helped us take down Christmas decorations, we ate some fajitas, guacamole, salsa, and cheese dip, watched half of the Georgia Tech game until I became nauseus, watched old family videos, and played some Wii. Overall it's been a great visit and we've all had a really nice time together. Last night Emily performed one last time for everybody. I've posted her rendition of 'Blue Suede Shoes' by Elvis. Enjoy.