Sixth Birthday "Wish List"

I CAN. NOT. believe ONE WEEK from today, my lil boy will be SIX years old!! He is so excited for his birthday, each day he lets me know how many more days it is until his birthday. On his actual birthday day, my parents are coming into town to pick him up from school for our early release. Then they will all get to spend the afternoon having fun together. :)

Brayden has quite the lil birthday wish list this year! The major item on his list is an Xbox 360 with Kinect. I know it's a BIG gift, but after playing my nephew's Xbox, I think I want it just as much as Brayden does. :) I do have to say, thanks to all the Amazon giftcards I earned using Swagbucks, I was able to save $140 and an extra $10 Amazon giftcard using Checkpoints. Jason also earned $25 using Swagbucks to contribute to the cause. :) All that added together makes the price a lil more bearable.

Here are a few other things that he would like for his birthday, in no particular order-

He is very into this new remote control car called Stealth Rides. They are made by Hot Wheels. This was something that he originally saw on a commerical and had me looking at all of the stores for something called "Lock it Pocket"....well come to find out that was just a catchy phrase used on the commercial. The car actually flattens so you put it inside the remote control and then it fits into your pocket.

Right now, he is in LOVE/obsesed with this educational show on PBS called "Wild Kratts". It is full of information all about animals and it's great because he retains everything he learns from the episodes. One of his favorites animals now is a Honey Badger, something I had never heard of before, but he can tell you all about them from watching this show.

He has also been wanting this butterfly garden for quite some time, thanks to the fabulous infomercials on it. :)

He thinks he needs a couple of new games to go along with the XBox, so he chose:


And of course he thinks he needs these Xbox accessories to go along with his new Xbox:


We'll see how many of these items he actually gets for his birthday...I'm thinking a few of them will have to be switched over to a Christmas list. :)

60th Birthday Celebration

We recently celebrated 60 wonderful years of my mom's life. To make her birthday extra special, my dad, two sisters, and I had a few suprises up our sleeves for this milestone. :)

First, my dad surprised my mom by flying my middle sister in from Denver, CO. She had no idea until both of my sisters and grandma surprised her as she was volunteering at church. Then, the next surprise began, they "kidnapped" her to bring her to McKinney for a fun girls night out. She was NOT expecting it AT ALL!!

First on the agenda for the girls night out was a painting class at Sip n Doodle in downtown McKinney. We had a GREAT time!! It was something new and we all agreed that we can't wait to do it again. Here are a few pictures from our fun adventure:

Mom just starting her background.

My oldest sister and grandma, hard at work.

Mom a lil further along on her painting.

My middle sister and I were painting right next to each other and although we had two completely different paintings... you would have never been able to tell based on our background, they were almost identical:

All of our final products-

One of the things we really liked about painting at Sip n Doodle we were each able to choose our own painting to fit our own style. I was pretty impressed with each of our masterpieces. Looking forward to doing it again!!

After painting, we headed over to one of my favorite downtown Mexican restaraunts, Aparicios. Then they all headed back to my parents house because I had to "work" the next day (on Saturday). Little did my mom know, one of our other surprises, was I would actually be able to spend Saturday with the family too. So Saturday, we surprised her with 1)me and then 2) my dad and sister collaborated with my mom's Bunco Group to have them switch Bunco from Monday night to Saturday afternoon. It was a great "surprise Bunco party" with many of my mom's friends and my sisters, grandma and I were able to play as well. Guess who was the Bunco Queen....your's truely, of course. :)

After Bunco, we went back to my parents house for more family time. My sister brought her Xbox 360 Kinect, so we were able to have fun as a family challenging each other in Dance Central and in Kinect Adventures . SO much fun!!! Then my brother in law and nephew joined us for the festivities, so our family was complete. It has been waaaaaay too long, since we have all been together as a family.

After a pizza dinner, we had an amazing strawberry cake that my brother in law brought in from Oklahoma City along with homemade icecream, courtesy of my dad and Jason. It was all delicious!!She opened her presents and then we played the dice game, Farkle as a family. Farkle is a great family game that even Brayden could play along with us.

We had such an amazing day and weekend!! I think we definitely were able to pull off some great surprises for my mom. And hopefully next time we wont have to wait as long for us all to be together again. :)

Happy 60th Birthday Mom!!

Brayden's Birthday

Last month we had a pretty busy month. It started off with Brayden celebrating his 5th Birthday. It was pretty exciting for him!! His party was on the first of May which was a little confusing for him. In his mind, he turned 5 on his party day which actually was ten days before his actual birthday. In the long run, I think it worked out well because we ended up celebrating his birthday for a week and a half. :)
His party day started off with his soccer game:
From there we headed over to his party:


This game happened to be his favorite. It was called toliet tag. When you were tagged you had to sit down like a toliet and wait for someone to come sit on you and flush to free you.




After his party, we went straight to the hockey game. Although the Americans, didn't win this night we still had a great time with my parents. It was the final home game of the season so everyone in the crowd got free tshirts to wear. :)
After the game we stuck around to get a few autographs and then headed home to open presents from my parents. (It was so late we had to wait to open friend's gifts in the morning.)
Grandma and Papa got him some "new" hockey equipment. (Play it Again Sports is a GREAT store to get some used sports equipment if you have one in your area.)

We had an exhausting but FANTASTIC day! Thanks to everyone who helped celebrate with us!