State Fair 2009

It's the end of September, and that means it's time for the State Fair! We had such a wonderful time last year that we couldn't wait to go back.

We started off with face painting. Last year, we made the fatal mistake of going to the fair the day before school pictures, and Jacks had a full green and black snake painted all over his face. So despite much scrubbing, he looks like he's wearing black eyeliner in his first grade class picture. Well, not this year, mister! We have more than a week before picture day. No problemo!

Jacks went with a scary scorpion.


And Cody liked last year's dragon so much, he got another one. :)


You might think that Luke got his face painted with CUTE, but nope! No paint here, folks! He was born that way!


Then we headed over to the boys' (including Daddy) favorite part, the car show. And just like Cody hoped and dreamed and had been talking about for weeks....BUMBLEBEE was there.


This was the official "Bumblebee Edition" of the 2009 Camaro, and it came complete with an Autobot badge and awesome Autobot tires.


Cody could have driven this car all day long. He LOVED it.


Basking in the Bumblebee afterglow. :)


Then Jackson went on this cool swing ride. He tried out a couple of kiddie roller coasters, too. It's so funny how cautious Jacks is about most things, but how much fun he has on "scary" rides.


It was pretty difficult to find a ride that Cody wanted to go on. He doesn't like anything that goes up or down, anything that turns, anything that's bumpy...I could go on. But as we were coming back through the rides on our way out, he spotted this little animal train. It goes around pretty slowly on a little track. Perfect! And the best part was that Luke could ride it, too.

Then we found these boats. At first, just Jackson and Cody were going to ride, but Luke was not about to be left out. So he rode in the middle, and Jacks held on tight to him. What a good big brother! And it was so great to see how much fun Cody had. He rode in FRONT (which is very brave for him) and he SMILED! Those of you who remember how much "fun" he had while doing the bungee trampoline over the summer know the face he wears while he's scared spitless but trying to enjoy something anyway. Here, he actually looked happy.

The weather was beautiful and Anthony has to travel later in the week, so it was great way to spend a family afternoon. Unfortunately, we didn't try out the fried butter...but there's always next year. :)

Do Your Best

It's the Cub Scout motto! Doesn't Jacks look so handsome and official in his uniform? I've got to tell you, he was one proud little peacock putting it all on tonight. I think we might finally have found his "thing." :)

Go Orioles!

Jackson is playing baseball again this season. He enjoyed it so much in the spring that he jumped at the opportunity to join another team. And he gets to play with several of his good buddies from school, too, so that's another big draw for him.

We are still working SO hard on keeping our eye on the ball. Jacks loves to bat and has a great swing, but he tends to watch the pitcher instead of the ball. But we have made a bunch of visits to the batting cages and even had a private lesson with a high school player, and Jacks has really improved a lot. Yesterday things seemed to click more than ever before, and he hit a bunch in a row at the batting cages (which, in my opinion, is harder than hitting his coach's pitches because they're 35 mph). I think he finally found HIS stance; he bent his knees a little bit and went into more of a crouch. He looked Major League, baby!

And because baseball can be sweaty and dirty, I just have to share this story from last week. Jackson had a cub scout meeting that was going to run until almost bedtime, so I had him take a shower before he left. He showered, then came out of the bathroom in the same dirty clothes he had been wearing all day. I suggested he wear clean clothes on his clean body, and Jacks summed it all up for me thusly: "Mom, boys like dirty, girls like purty." Ha! How can you argue with that logic?

Balloon Festival

We headed out to the Plano Balloon Festival this afternoon. It's been a few years since we actually went in; usually, we just find a good spot to watch the balloons drift overhead. But we decided to get up close this year and really watch the whole process.

Of course, the process begins with FOOD. Luke really enjoyed his corndog. :)


The next part of the process involves bounce houses and slides. I have no idea what that has to do with balloons...they're all full of hot air? Haha. Anyway, I had a sneaking suspicion that these were the main reason the boys wanted to go IN to the festival rather than watching from a little further away.


That is, until the balloons actually started taking off. This was about as close as you could get without being part of a balloon team, and even with the chainlink in the way, we had a great view.


One of the balloons that the boys were most excited about was the penguin you can see here, still lying on the ground. It took a long time to get him full and ready to launch!


There's the penguin, about to liftoff!

This is such a great event, and we're already looking forward to next year's. :)

Meg's Birthday

The boys helped me celebrate in style on my big day. They prepared me a birthday breakfast feast of pancakes and bacon, took me shopping (we ended up getting baseball cleats for Jacks but it was the thought that counted LOL), and made me wear a sombrero while the patrons of Pappasito's sang to me. And, we all got to enjoy the beautiful cake below. It was a great birthday!

Where We Hope to be in June of 2010

We have relabeled our family coin jar to be a place to save for Disney. The boys are SO excited already about this trip, and we haven't even really begun planning it yet. But once we set up our "Destination Disney" jar, they scoured the house looking for loose change. Jacks even found a dollar under his bed and instead of adding it to his personal money jar on his desk (more to come on that later!), he came down and added it to our DD collection!

Mickey, here we come!

Luke's First Day

Ok, I'll be honest. That's not a picture of Luke before his first day of school.

I had wanted to be able to say that I'd dressed Luke in an adorable, handsome "first day of school" outfit. Unfortunately, he caught sight of his garish yellow Spongebob shirt and insisted on wearing that instead.

I had also wanted to share pictures of Luke on his way to school, dwarfed by his little tote bag. Unfortunately, my camera battery picked this morning to die.

I had ALSO wanted to say that Luke surprised me by going willingly into his classroom with little crying and ended up having a great day. Yeah. I'll give you one guess on the real outcome of that one.

He was happy enough when I handed him across the doorway to his teacher, until she put him down and he realized I wasn't coming across the doorway, too. Then the screaming began. A friend checked on him a few minutes later and said he seemed calm enough and was playing on the floor with one of the teachers.

But when I picked him up, he was sitting outside the classroom in the little buggy (think of a stroller/wagon combo that seats 6). Luke wasn't crying; he was happy enough watching all the people go by. Turns out that unless he was in the buggy, he cried. The buggy was the only thing that seemed to cheer him up all morning. Classroom? Cry. Outside on the playground? Cry. Seeing Cody, even? Cry cry cry.

So they pretty much kept him in the buggy for the rest of the morning. The new word he came home from school with? Yep, buggy.

He was happy to see me and gave me a big hug. The teachers reported that he kept saying, "Mommy, Daddy, peas (please)?" Maybe he was hoping if he used his good manners, those mean teachers would bring Mommy and Daddy back?

Anyway, I guess it was a rough morning for him, but I'm glad to know they found something that cheered him up and were able to keep it going so that he did have SOME fun on his first day. And he wasn't the unhappiest kiddo there...when I came to pick him up, there was a little boy next to Luke in the buggy who had screamed for so long that he'd fallen asleep (and apparently had done the same on Monday). Poor guy.

I'm sure that we'll have at least a few more bumpy days as he gets used to me leaving him. But I've got to say, not much beats seeing this little face waiting for me when I come back. :)