If it's Thanksgiving, we must be at Sea World

We made our annual visit to Sea World during our days off this week. We love this little ritual of ours. It was only marred by the fact that Sea World chose to drag out all of the Christmas decorations early, and even changed some of the shows to have a Christmas theme. I'm not sure why they decided to mess with something that was already perfect the way it was, but we didn't allow it to dampen our enjoyment.

We had perfect weather...in the 70's and slightly overcast. It did rain briefly, but were enjoying the dolphin/beluga whale show at the time and didn't even realize it had rained until we returned to our wagon and found it was wet.

Henry continues to favor the dolphin/beluga whale show (called Viva), and I am pretty sure this is because the pre-show has what he calls a "silly guy" that does a funny and silly routine. He also loves the performers that fall from the top of the stadium into the tank, and when they swing and fly into the water.

This year, he was tall enough to ride two new rides. We had ridden the Texas Splashdown last year, which is similar to a log ride. We got a little wet, but not too bad last year. The same held true this year. But this year, we also rode the Rio Loco, another water ride. This one drenched me as our round boat navigated the rapids and the water splashed over the side with me as it's target. We rode it three times in a row due to the fact that there was no one in line behind us.

From there, we went on to Journey to Atlantis (which Henry decided to call Journey to the Mist, and of course, we all followed suit). This ride involved a boat, but there was no water until the end. You board the boat...5 rows of seats, 4 seats across...and head up a hill. At the top of the hill, the boat spins until you are facing the next part of the ride backwards. You go down a dip and up a hill (backwards) and then spin again until you are facing forward for the final part of the ride. For the final part of the ride, it is a drop straight down into a lake of water. For this ride, the water targeted Leslie. After riding this ride three times in a row, she was totally drenched.

After changing into dry clothes, we went down to the River Walk in San Antonio to see what might be open on Thanksgiving night so that we could grab some dinner. Fortunately, many places were open and the River Walk was humming with activity. We decided to eat at The Republic of Texas (Tex-Mex, of course).

Friday, we returned to Sea World, where we finished off the things we hadn't done the day before, and revisited some of our favorite activities. It was nice having Nana and Papa along this year (even if we did totally wear them out!!). Below are some pictures of the highlights.

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Wordless Wednesday

No more eyeballs

Just as I was becoming acclimated to the regular use of the word "eyeball", it's been banished from our home. You see, as I was helping Henry get dressed for the meeting on Sunday, I accidentally poked him in the eyeball. He was understandably pretty upset. His poor little eye was all red and he had a hard time taking his hand away to let me look at it. He decided that we would no longer use the word eyeball, from that moment forward.

Finally, trying to calm him by whispering sweet nothings in his ear, I said the magical words that immediately stopped the tears. The hand was moved away, and my little boy looked questioningly into my face. I was able to assess the damage and determine there would be no long term affects from my accidental poke.

Now, I bet you're dying to know what I said to him. It was a question, really.

I asked him if he wanted to help vacuum that afternoon when we cleaned the house. He did want to, and he did help vacuum and did a great job.

Eyeballs, eyeballs, and more eyeballs

I had the joy of spending the majority of my day with my two favorite 5-year-old boys today. Seems both of them share their love for the word 'eyeball'. It so must be a boy thing. If I heard it once, I heard it ten thousand times. Even when I asked them what they wanted for lunch, I was met with a unanimous chorus of "eyeballs" from the back seat.

We started our day with a trip to the bowling alley. Many of you might remember that this was our goal destination for our "family day", but we never quite got to play for various reasons. We did have success today. Jack and Henry are super competitive when they get together. I mean everything is a competition. At the end of two games, somehow these boys managed to tie each other both times. Here are some pictures of the bowling part of our day:

From there, we were off to Chik-Fil-A for lunch. The boys were anxious to go to the play area, so both of them wolfed down their lunches and ran off. They had fun climbing and pretending they were chasing or being chased by the bad guys (that they kept calling the "super glues" for some reason).

After that, we headed across the street to The Mad Potter. This is a place that has pottery that you can go in and paint yourself. The boys each did two projects. One of their projects was that they each painted a dinosaur. Here they each are with their completed masterpiece.

We decided a snack of ice cream was now in order. Jack requested chocolate and Henry selected the strawberry. Here they are enjoying their mid-afternoon treat:

After that, they both agreed that they wanted to go to the playground. So I found one in a small neighborhood. There was no one there and they just ran and screamed and played. The most fun thing was watching them fight. Not physically. But they each took their turn getting their feelings hurt and claiming that they were no longer friends. The other would then follow them around begging to be their friend again. I decided not to intervene, but to let them work it out themselves. I didn't realize boys were this "emotional" over their friendships. To their defense, it was the end of the day and they were both wearing out, and to their credit, they did seem to work it out fairly quick. Here are a couple of shots on the playground:

I loved this action shot of Henry jumping off the little car thingy.



And here they are trying to jump into the swings. After insisting that they wanted to swing, I did put them both in the little bucket things, but they both realized quite quickly that they were too big and that the bucket wasn't very comfortable.



In the end, these two boys love each other so much. No two more different boys could you find, but when they are together, all is right with their world. All they want is to be exactly where the other one is. I'm glad they have each other and that they love each other so.

We had such a fun day, and I got to experience what it is like to be the mother of twins. They are both such good mannered little boys, BUT, they are still little boys. I absolutely loved having Jack for the day, and I absolutely loved taking him home to his mother. Courtney, thanks for sharing him with me, but it's your turn next.

Archives Updated...check it out

When I started this blog, I mentioned that it was my goal to back fill it to the beginning. Obviously, this has not progressed as quickly as I would have hoped...funny how life gets in the way of these types of projects.

Anyway, I had an opportunity to put some of the stuff from Oct - Dec of 2005 out there.

Before the blog, I had set up an email address for Henry (MstrHenry) that I used to send out updates and pictures. So those posts are written from the perspective of Henry sharing milestones and events with his family and friends.

It was fun walking down memory lane to that time. It's amazing to see how much he's grown but at the same time how much he's the same child. If you have time, click on the 2005 in the archive section to the right. There's not a lot of reading, but there are quite a few pictures documenting that time frame that you can scroll through. Hope you enjoy...

Wordless Wednesday

Caterpillars for Dessert

So, after work today, I was working on my ebay upstairs on the computer. By the time Henry finished practicing his piano, Leslie was home, so he was content to stay downstairs and draw.

After a while, I noticed that it seemed pretty quiet down there. I could hear Henry and Leslie whispering as they worked on some mystery project. Eventually, I got summoned downstairs and told that I had to hide my eyes. Henry led me through the kitchen to the island and "ta da" presented the project that they had been working on:

That's Incredible...am I seeing triple?

Yes, this weekend there was a Dash sighting..make that a sighting of three Dashes. We paired up with Henry's buddies Sara and Samuel to go and see Disney on Ice. I think that Henry enjoyed having some buddies to share the experience with him. He and Sara had tons of fun playing all kinds of games in the car.

The theme was "A Disneyland Adventure" and I thought it was clever how they worked many of the favorite rides into an ice skating show. Towards the end, they brought out Henry's all time favorite Disney-related thing: the castle. At first, it was dark and the castle was all lit up, it was almost breath-taking. Here is a picture with the castle in the background and all of the characters in the foreground:

I think all of the kids had a great time, and I think the adults had fun watching the kids have fun. And here is one parting shot of my little munchkin:

Put this in the blog, Mom!

How scary is it that Henry is now setting up scenarios and deciding what is blog-worthy?

So this morning, he is getting dressed for school. He already had gotten his clothes out and laid them out on the ground. I went back to my room for something and when I came back to check on him, he was giggling to himself.

He was in the process of putting on his underwear and jumped up. He had both his socks half on, and his underwear half on and thought he was hysterical looking: "Look Mama, put this in the blog! Aren't I funny?"

I have one more that I wish I had a picture to post. Henry recently used his allowance money (along with a gift card he received from Auntie Margot) to purchase a race track. It's really cool cuz the cars are remote controlled. They also have sensors in them so that they can avoid hitting obstacles that you put in their way...they automatically swerve around them. Anyway, he had gotten all of his matchbox cars and lined them up on the race track. They were about six cars wide and 10 cars deep once they were all in place. Henry brought me to them, pointed at them and said "All this traffic is giving me a headache!" Indeed!

Wordless Wednesday

Dewberry Farm, part deux

Ashley wanted to take David Leigh to Dewberry, and since we didn't get to do much on our field trip visit, we decided to take another trip out there. Here are the photos that show that a good time was had by all (but most especially by Henry):