Ice Skating Lessons

Earlier tonight Brayden had his first ever ice skating lessons. His class was perfect for him! It is a class of 4 boys, and two of the other boys have the same goal in mind as Brayden...HOCKEY! It was so cute to watch them, I can't wait to see what they will be skating like at the end of the five weeks.
Side Note: Brayden INSISTED on wearing his "hockey outfit" to his lessons. I gave in and let him wear it. I decided it just wasn't quite worth the fight. He'd have to learn the hard way how cold it was in there and that shorts just aren't appropriate. :) I asked him when he was done if he wished he had pants on instead..."of course not, I have to wear my hockey outfit". Here are a couple of short videos I took of him:

The laughing in the background is a couple sets of grandparents that were really enjoying watching Brayden's class. :)

* PreWarning for this video...tilt your head sideways to view. :) Not quite sure what I was thinking when I recorded it.

Overall, he had so much fun he did not want to leave!! Afterwards we had to go the other rink and watch a couple of boys in their private hockey lesson. He of course enjoyed every second of watching them. At one point, one of the boys came outside of the rink to take a break, Brayden when and sat right next to him. He just looked at him in amazement. It was so cute, I could almost see him envisioning himself in the hockey uniform.
**************************
Usually on the weekends we stay pretty busy, but this week we have added a few things to our schedule that he is really looking forward to.
On the agenda for this week:
* Tuesday- Order his birthday cake and purchase other last minute party supplies
* Wednesday- Allen American's Hockey Playoff game. I'm really excited about our tickets to this game. Thanks to some buy 1 get 1 free tickets that they were giving away at the FC Dallas game, I splurged and got us tickets right behind the players. I think we are 2 rows behind them. I can't wait to see his reaction to being that close to the players the whole game.
(I'm not looking forward to Thursday morning when I have to go wake him up for school. Last week when we went to the FC Dallas game on Thursday night we had a 5 minute argument Friday morning that it WAS a school day and not a home day.)
* Thursday- Soccer Practice
* Friday- Another Allen American's Hockey Playoff game. This game should be exciting too because I got us tickets in our usual section (behind the goal) on the third row. We have never got to sit quite that close (well other than Wednesday's night game).
* Saturday- Neighborhood Pool Party to open the pool for the season, Brayden's soccer game at 2:15, Brayden's Birthday Party at 5:00-6:30 and then at 7:30 we are taking my parents to the last hockey game of the season in Allen. It should be a lot of fun, game 6 of the series and we have row 2 seats behind the goal. Thanks again to the buy 1 get 1 free tickets. :)
* Sunday- Rest and recooperate for the last 24 days of school (only 15 for Brayden.)

Looking ahead:
3 weeks til we travel to Beaumont, TX for my graduation weekend and 5 weeks until I travel to Knoxville, TN for a week long school trip.....Whew, is it summer yet?!?

Our Nightly Ritual

When the Olympics were on Brayden had an OBSESSION with Apolo Ohno....so much so, that he even created an outfit to look just like him. He wanted to BE Apolo Ohno. We had to watch Apolo daily/nightly at least 6 times a day...thanks goodness for DVR!! To this day we still have the Olympcis recorded so we can watch him, at least now its just every now and then. :)

Brayden's impression of Apolo by day...

**It really bothered him that he didn't have a "helmet" to match Apolo or a tshirt with an American flag...where are those $5 Old Navy 4th of July tshirts when you really need them?!? He even used face paint on himself to make a gotee.
And his impression of Apolo by night...

Now that he has been to a few of the Allen Americans hockey games, his obsession/passion has switched over to hockey. He still loves Apolo and mentions him every now and then but now the main focuss has moved on to hockey.

Every night for the last three weeks or so he has a ritual that he does...he plays hockey in the living room. Although its just about to drive me crazy, he has a TON of fun playing by himself and I must say he has quite the lil imagination with it. He is constantly adding new ideas to mimic the real games we go watch.

Let's start with his wardrobe:

*For skates/socks---he has to wear his soccer socks. These serve two purposes: they are his skates (easier to slide) and they are also his socks because hockey players wear high socks. He HAS to wear long gym/sport shorts and he has to wear some sort of a jersey for a top. In theory, he would LOVE a helmet to add to his ensemble, but I don't think he would last more than a few minutes with one on. All of these items have to stay on the staircase at the end of the night, so they will be ready for him the next day when he gets home from school.

On to to the game..
* He has set up two chairs on each end to serve as the nets.

*After he "scores" I have to wave around the rally towel that we got at a game and chant 3 times..Go Allen, Go Allen, Go Allen Americans. (Trust me, he counts to make sure that I do it 3 times!)

*He will purposely bang himself into the wall and pretend that someone pushed him...and he even occasionally falls as he "skates." He also puts himself in timeout for "pushing the other guy".

*After he plays awhile he goes off the "rink" over to the side, which I then have to act as the zamboni.....my job is to use the tops of the flowers to "sweep the ice". Then when he is ready to come back on the ice, I have to give him high fives just like we do for the real players.

* When he is done playing, he always puts his pucks back in either the refrigerator or freezer. (We saw a short clip on our espn video on demand. It had a segment on unusual sports jobs, and we found out that someone's job is to make sure the pucks are frozen before the game.)

Now, one positive with this whole ritual he insists that we keep the living room floor SPOTLESS He does not dare allow even a piece of paper to get on his "ice rink". If I take my shoes off, he gets mad at me for leaving them on "the rink" and tells me to go put them up. I'm trying to find away for him to care about keeping his bedroom floor just as clean, but so far nothing is working.

Since he is enjoying hockey so much, I thought it was time to see if he is really interested in it. We are lucky enough to have a Dallas Stars Center right around the corner from us, so last week I went to see if they have any summer hockey programs for him. We found out that he first needs to know how to ice skate before he can play hockey (imagine that), so I signed him up for his first ever ice skating lessons. It's a 5 week mini program, so we'll see how he does tomorrow is his first lesson. I'll keep you posted.

Before we left, we had to go into the equipment/gift shop. He of course had to try on some hockey equipment for fun.
I was AMAZED at how much hockey equipment cost!! I'm hoping we can go back to wanting to be Apolo Ohno....speed skating equipment doesn't seem like it will cost so much!

Easter ~ 2010

Unfortunately, already I am a little behind on my blog posts. We have been so busy lately on top of me having a BAD case of allergies/cold that just won't seem to go away, blogging has been put aside. I'm so excited about this post because it is my 100th post! I have had my 100th post envisioned in my head for quite some time and I assumed it would be some big post/giveaway to increase my followers to 50 or more, but instead it is just going to be something simple...a recap of our Easter weekend. We went to our city Easter egg hunt and Brayden was able to visit the Easter bunny...

Then we went and sat and waited for his age group of egg hunting to begin....we waited and waited...

Then the hunt began...

His age group was 4-7, which I didn't quite agree with...preschool children with first graders. The picture above shows what an egg hunt for age 4-7 kids should look like, kids hunting for eggs...three seconds after I captured this picture ALL the parents rushed out with their child. And before I knew it, Brayden was no where to be found...my heart sunk and I started to panic. I wasn't quite sure what to do...I knew I didn't want to move to far from my spot because he knew thats where I was going to be and would come back there, but all I could see was parents. Parents...why on earth do they need to go with 4-7 year olds to "hunt" eggs that are everywhere you look?!? Now I understand parents going with 1 year olds who can barely walk, but 4-7 year olds I do not understand. As I tried my best to hold back my tears from panicking, he suddenly appeared with a pail full of eggs. Whew, what a relief!!! Next year, I think they should have an Easter Egg Hunt just for the parents and let the kids actually hunt their eggs.
After the egg hunt and his soccer game, we headed to my parents house. The Easter Bunny visited a very tired Brayden the next morning. Then he got all dressed up for church...

After church, he opened a gift from grandma and papa....a new soccer goal!

After a day of playing soccer and hunting eggs outside, we were to worn out to actually dye any eggs. Next year, I'm going to try to remember to dye them a few days ahead of time instead of waiting until Easter day. There just isn't enough time in one day!
Counting all of his eggs to make sure he found them all....

He enjoyed hunting for eggs so much, he left all of his plastic eggs at grandma and papa's so he can do it again the next time he visits them. :)

Hockey and Soccer

Brayden has discovered two new sports that he has become VERY passionate about: hockey and soccer. This weekend he was one lucky lil guy! Thanks to one of my good friends Lauren, on Friday night we went to a Dallas Stars game!! This was a first for both of us. Not only were our seats awesome, the game was awesome too!! Brayden LOVED every second of it!

Brayden wearing his new Stars tshirt.

We loved the big jumbotron! Even though our seats were really close, it was still nice to watch the jumbotron especially when there were fights! (Brayden's favorite part.)

Mike Madano had his 800th career assist during this game.

Watchin out for the blimps to drop goodies...I was actually one of the lucky winners. :)

The final score...Dallas 6, Edmonton 3. It was really nice because all 9 of the goals were scored on our end.

On our way home, we had a chance to "explore" a lil bit of downtown Dallas as I was trying to find the right highway. As we stopped at a redlight, I took a picture of this cool building. Before the game, Lauren mentioned to me during game nights for either the Mavericks or Stars they light up the building to match the team. We watched as it changed from green/gold and then to the Stars symbol. Brayden thought this was just so awesome!

Shortly after we got on the right highway and he knew we were safely headed in the right direction, he konked out in the back seat. :)

But then of course he got his second wind as I carried up to his room. He enjoyed getting to relive the night, looking through the program from the game.

Thanks so much Lauren for inviting us! We had a blast!

On Saturday, Brayden had another soccer game. Grandma and Papa came to watch this game so he was super excited to have another audience rooting him on. He did such a great job! Here are a few highlights from his game:

I think it is so adorable when he looks over and gives me a thumbs up. :)

After the game, Brayden's coach commented to me how well he follows directions. :) That's because after the last game, I was trying to tell him that he needed to "defend" his goal when the other team had the ball. He of course took me very literally, and everytime the other team got anywhere close to his goal he went right over there as fast as he could to "defend" it. I guess you could call him, a self proclaimed goalie. At one point as he was running close to the sideline he came over to me and asked if I liked the way he was defending the goal. I think he kind of picked it up from watching so much hockey. :)

Although they don't technically don't keep score, my dad kept a mental score and Brayden's team won 5-2.

Heading home after a good win! Next weeks game should be interesting. The league has what they call Silent Saturday in which parents and coaches are not allowed to say anything to the kids unless it is positive reinforcement....no directions, just "good job". We'll see how that goes with 4 and 5 year olds. :)