water park from 8-2009

Back in late August we took a family stay-cation. On the last weekend, we went and checked out a new water park in Hurst. City owned and managed. It had a great toddler water area, 1 ft 6 in, which was just enough water for Joshua. With water slides made for toddlers. And the lifeguards in that area kept kids that were older out so the toddlers didn't get hurt. Parents were allowed with their toddlers. Overall, it was a good experience and we look forward to going again next summer.

Toddler area right. There is a spiral slide on the other side on this area. You can control most all of the water spray areas with kid friendly levers.

Toddler area left & big kid/adult slides in background. This was Joshua's favorite slide!

Playing in the water.

On the stairs with Mommy. That is a fun having face!

Down the slide. I thought we had gotten better pictures, but no such luck.

Mega Block chair

A few weeks ago, while we were on vacation, Jeff & Joshua built a Mega Block chair. Joshua was so proud of this 'breakable' chair. He would fuss at Jeff & I if we tried to sit in "his"Mega Block chair.

A day or two later, we put in a dinosaur movie, Land Before Time...which, by the way, is not a dinosaur movie he is super interested in. (Cars and Happy Feet work much better!) Anyway, we put in the movie so we could work on other things around the house. Joshua got really quiet, the kinda quiet you get when you are up to no good! When I went to check on him, he was sitting in his Mega Block chair watching the movie. The picture is grainy because there was not good light in the living.

Stay tuned for more vacation pictures..........

ducks in a row

Joshua loves the water. I think the only reason he asks for a bath each day is so he can play in the water. Today was a swim day at school. He class wound up not swimming because it actually wasn't a swim day...if that makes no sense then you are following along.

On the way home we were talking about that he didn't get to swim today. He asked where Nefi was. I told him Nefi (my sister, Stephanie) is at home. To which he stated, very matter of fact, "I go see Nefi, I go swim". He still hasn't forgotten this and asked about it again at bedtime amongst our good nights. We will have to work in some swimming this weekend.

Joshua in the bath the other night.

One of his favorite bath time activities is lining his ducks up in a row on the edge of the bathtub. He always makes sure that all of the ducks are facing the same direction.

He also in the last month or so discovered that all of his ducks had eyes. He had them all facing inside the bathtub, so they were looking at him and suddenly he exclaimed, "Has eyes! All has eyes, mama". The light bulb above his head shone so bright that I was blinded by his silly-ness!!

After he lines the ducks up, he does this....

Speaking of getting ducks in a row, Jeff and I have been waiting on a deal from HUD and it finally came through. It has been nearly a year since the process was started. It is a relief and a huge headache we hope to never again expierence. This next week we are on vacation. Not do much of anything. Just a few things around town and around the house. We are hoping to get the shed in the backyard down and the sunroom emptied so that it can be torn down.

I also start permamnet on Monday at my work. I had been helping out with refunds since February and they finally decided that they needed another full-time refund person. That is me!! A promotion of sorts, more money and awesome benefits.

Step-By-Step

I finally have all the vacation pictures edited and some posted on Flickr.

The New Kids on the Block concert was cool. I had fun. They did old songs and new songs. They did the songs off their new album that I liked. Between the fan and music noise, my ears were ringing when we left. They did all the old dance moves along with some newer moves. It was funny at times. And the people......30 dressed like they were 15...15 years ago. I should go out like that more often as it was really fun. I will post some pictures on flickr soon from the concert.

Work is going. Just going. Not too fast, not too slow for me lately.

Joshua has been sickly this week. Not eating and such. I hope he gets to feeling better tomorrow or back to the doctor he will go. Jeff picked him up a leather biker jacket. We looked at them several times on our vacation but never seen one in Joshua's size. On Jeff's trip home from Alabama last week, he found one. Joshua looks super cute in it. We showed it to my mother & David tonight. They thought is was super cute too!

That is it for now...I need to get to bed.

Cailifornia trip

We had a nice visit with Jeff's family.

When we were getting ready to leave Las Vegas, Jeff's sister sent a text message saying that "dad has a lunch date". What?!?!? After 34 years he decided that he needed to have a date! After a year of planning our arrival without his knowledge he picked his birthday to have a lunch date! Major kink in the plans!!! We headed on in to California. It took a little longer than we had planned but was a fun quick trip. When we got to Jeff's parents we got to let the boys run free in the house...the not quite baby proofed house. They enjoyed playing especially with the coffee table....there will be pictures on flikr in a few more days. When Jeff's dad came in, he was said "who's this one?" Not realizing that it was Joshua....why would he....he wasn't thinking that it could be Joshua. When he seen Jeff, he realized that it was Joshua. He was shocked to see us! We visited for a while and had In and Out burgers for lunch. They were tasty! Visited more and then headed down to our hotel to check in. We stayed at a Best Western in Rowland Heights, CA, it was awesome!! Awesome!!!! It was nicer than the Stratosphere room we had. The service at the front desk was great. Parking was good. Cleaning/maid service was great. Towels were great. Comfy bed....I just can't say enough nice things about it. I highly recommend this hotel!

Tuesday night we went to the Pirates Dinner Adventure. It was very cool. A small theater. A big pirate ship. We were on the team for the purple pirate. It was great the villain is the only one who died. Lots of theatrics. Gunshots, cannonballs. They even picked Daniel as a pirate helper. The food was ehh...but then you don't go for the food, you go for the show.

The next day we took our Hollywood Tour. It was cool. We actually never got off the "hop off/hop on" tour. A two hour tour...in the heat on top of the open top double decker. It was cool, we seen a lot of places that we otherwise would not have. I would not recommend this tour though, it wasn't fully what I expected. It was hard to hear the tour guide throughout the tour.
At the Kodak Theatre there are little shops....we browsed around and ate lunch at Johnny Rockets and took the boys to Build A Bear. Joshua got a pirate monkey & Adam got a football dog. Joshua loves his monkey. He calls him mon-nee....Jeff says that is because Joshua knows he cost money. We had dinner with Jeff's parents and met our new brother in law. He wasn't hat I expected, but I just hope he and Steph work everything out.

Thursday morning we headed down to San Diego. After arriving at the hotel early and getting checked in, we headed down to Seaport Village. It was a nice area. It came recommended to us by a couple of my account managers from my last job. It is like a tourist area on the beach. Lot of shops and eateries. We also took a Land & Sea tour. We learned about parts of San Diego & out into the bay to see sea lions. There were tons of sea lions.

Today we went to the World Famous San Diego Zoo. It was a very cool zoo. Much cooler than the zoo's in DFW. They truly research and work towards maintaining a great zoo experience. At the SDZoo, the animals were up close, not far away. The giraffes were right there....the elephants right there...the hippos...right there. And their exhibits were amazing.

Tomorrow we head for home....rather to Las Cruses, NM where we are spending tomorrow night. Then Sunday we will head home from there.

Chop Chop....Kung Fu Fighting

Well, the Just Between Friends consignment sale in Fort Worth has come and gone. We sold quite a few things. We have been planning a garage sale for this past weekend for over a month, but hurricane Ike rained out those plans. So we are trying again this weekend. We will have quite a variety of things to sell at our garage sale....furniture, baby things and general junk. (We may even have a car to sell!...we'll see.) We should get a check from our consignment sale in the next week or so.

Joshua is still doing well. He has really really really started climbing anything. It was just the standard couch, fireplace hearth & coffee tables. Now he has added the rocking chair, the kitchen chairs & trashcans to his list. He is also getting better on the step off the front porch. He still waits for someone to be next to him but he will try to do it himself rather than get a hand. He is learning to do pat-a-cake. And he is really getting good at repeating things back to us, or at least trying. The tubes in his ears have really helped.

Sunday turned out to be a great day here. The weather could not have been more perfect. When my mom came to visit, we took Joshua outside to play in the yard with a ball. It turned into two balls & every stick he could find. He had a grand old time. We even brought Chanci out and he chased her around the yard as best he could calling her name. She, I think, forgot he was there. She was so happy to be outside after having limited times outside on Saturday because of the rain. And Joshua kept his cap on outside the whole time. I was so proud. Ten minutes a day of working with the hat on has paid off!

We also took him on Monday night, Sept 15 to get his first haircut. We took him to Cool Cuts for Kids. He got to sit in a fire truck while the lady cut his hair. It was more of a trim up than anything. And I didn't cry. He did really good for his first hair cut...no tears from him either.

My new job is going well. It is a whole lot of unknown before to me stuff to learn. I did miss two days last week as Joshua was sickly. One day I kept him home and the next day the daycare refused to take him. With no insurance right now because my last insurance company has been slow to send me necessary paperwork, we had to pay out of pocket to take him to the doctor & for his prescriptions. So, $200+ later, he is feeling better but does still have a cough.

We leave for vacation in 1 1/2 weeks. I can't wait. It seems like we have been planning forever.
Ahhh yes....my mother did get married. There are pictures on my flickr (you will have to go beyond Joshua's haircut pictures). Overall it went great. My mother is now Silly Nilly Willy...meaning that her three names make a funny rhyme.

Oh yea.....I locked my husband out of the house again by accident. This time, he busted the front door in. Lovely. Now I feel that our front door has a weak spot. Oh well, we will look into replacing in the future.

Now...that is about it for now.

One month from today

Tuesday at school, Joshua was bitten by a classmate. Today, Wednesday, at school, he bit a classmate. It seems to happen in the afternoon between 3 & 3:30. I am going to see if they might can have him do something new the next couple of days maybe starting at 10 minutes 'til 3. Perhaps this will help. My brother in law said tonight that all the kids must have alarms set to go off at 3 that are to start biting each other. I think it is just one kid in his class, I will ask about that in the morning as well. I wonder if this would be happening at his old school if he were still there? And if it was still happening, would we even know? One of the many things we like about his new school is the amount of feedback that we get each day about his goings on.

My husband successfully got out of spaghetti three nights this week. I think that I will force it next week. We really don't have the money to keep eating out all the time anyway. It is not that he doesn't like my spaghetti, it is that he just doesn't like spaghetti. His father always fixed it when he was a kid. I hope to not burn my kids out on certain foods so that they detest them when they are older. And for the record...it is only one kid now....no others are on the way.........yet. :)

I have decided to consign some things at the Just Between Friends Sale in Fort Worth. I am gathering, hanging & tagging the items so they can be dropped off on Tuesday. I sold a couple of things on eBay. And we are having a garage sale in three more weekends.

In five more weekends we take off on vacation....one month from today actually! I can hardly wait. I know the longest part of our trip is getting from Fort Worth to Flagstaff, AZ. After that I don't think it will be too hard. I think the hardest planning has been our Las Vegas stop, aside from where we wanted to stay, it is difficult coming up with things to do with two 16 month old boys. We (the adults) are not looking to gamble but I think we may have come up with enough options for our time there.

Our third stop is Jeff's parents. We are popping in for Jeff's Dad's 65th birthday. He doesn't know that we are coming, just like he didn't know when we surprised him for his 60th birthday. Jeff's dad wants to go this Pirates Dinner Adventure place for his birthday. It is supposed to be like a Medieval Times but with pirates. Sounds like swashbuckling fun! The next day we are going to do a Hollywood Tour of sorts. See the sites in that area.

Then we are heading off to San Diego. We are going to the world famous San Diego Zoo. I think this will be exciting. I am trying to make this Joshua's first trip to the zoo...granted we are traveling all the way to San Diego for this. I hope he enjoys it. My husband is probably least looking forward to the zoo....it just isn't his cup of tea...err...soda. We are going to spend the other day in San Diego seeing sites and taking a land and sea tour.

Our trip will be rounded out with a stop for the night in Las Cruses, NM & then on home to Fort Worth. I must be patient for the next month to pass.....but I am so freakin' excited about it all!!!

I am going to stick with the new blog, I do think I like it better, and the options that it provides.

checking up on bites

Joshua had his 15 month check up today, one week after the surgeries. He is a normally little boy. Near the middle of the growth charts and growing at the same and normal pace as he has been. He is 31 inches tall & 23.8 pounds. A chunky monkey but just under the 50th percentile for his weight & just over on his height. Speaking of being a monkey, he climbs on just about anything if he can. He barely cried today at the doctor's office, but he didn't like the shot lady at all, but was still nice enough to her to wave and say bye-bye....always a flirt. Off to school he went where he actually ate all the food's that they offered. He had gone on a eating strike, barely eating anything in the last 10 days. It was becoming annoying given that he has always been such a good eater. At the house, the newly installed cabinet locks in the kitchen are working out great. He now plays with his FridgeDJ more often in the kitchen. Tonight he scored some awesome new shoes...they feature Lightening McQueen with lights....our first pair of shoes with lights.


Joshua has been doing well at his new school. He did bite one of his classmates last week. He had another kid's shoes and the kid came to get their shoe, Joshua bit the kid. Not good. Then this past weekend. He had something at my sister's house that he wasn't supposed to have, when my niece reached in to get it from him, he bit her. Not good. I was talking to him about no biting and he plain-as-day said bite and bit his arm. So he knows what bite means, now to convince him that he doesn't need to bite. He is working on getting more teeth again and this may have something to do with it, but I think it is more just a phase. We are going to try some new punishments for the biting. (Everyone has an opinion. :)

Our trip is just 5 weeks away. I can't wait. I feel like we are ready to go just waiting for the clock to tick by. I want to pack, but I know it is to early. In the meantime, there are many other things to do. Labor Day weekend is planning a whole lot nothing. Maybe some crafty stuff with my sister & a trip to the outlet mall. The next weekend is my mother's wedding. The next weekend is the garage sale. The next weekend is packing weekend. And the next weekend we leave!!!

I have really enjoyed planning this trip. I haven't been on a vacation like this since high school....it at least 14 years. It is going to be a lot of fun.

We tried out a new restaurant tonight...The Wooden Nickel...it was pretty tasty. My baked chicken was good, as were the mashed potatoes, green beans & cream corn. I hadn't had cream-style corn in a long time.