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!

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!

Our Weekend in Pictures

This weekend we had quite the busy lil weekend! Saturday, Brayden had his second soccer game. This game was super fun for him because it was his first time to wear his "official" jersey...he is lucky #7. He also had a great support team that survived what felt like a 50mph wind storm to help cheer him on. Thanks Jaime, DJ, and the Sims Family for helping Brayden feel like a lil celebrity. :)

He was one of the team captains for the game:

Running by his cheer squad:

In his "ready" position...

I think he likes this pose. :)
Having a great time!!

The other coach was sweet enough to give Brayden some pointers as he kicked it in from the sideline.

Going for the ball...

I think he looks cute even sitting on the bench waiting to play again. :)


Then Saturday night we went to a hockey game for the Allen Americans with our friends Jaime and DJ. The Allen Americans are our local Central Hockey League (the league that that NHL recruits from.) This is their first year to have a team and Brayden absolutely LOVES going to their games. He constantly wants to watch hockey on tv now just to try and mimic them. It's so nice because the arena is only about 5 minutes from our house, so it has made for some great entertainment.

His mean hockey face with his new jersey.
We went an hour early just to be one of the first 1,500 fans to get a free foam finger.
Brayden High Fiving the opponents. This is a task that he takes quite seriously! He knows when the buzzer goes off for the end of the period to hurry down to get in line to high 5 (although no other kids really come for the opponents). During the 3rd period, when the buzzer went off he jumped up out of his seat to go down there, but I told him that I wasn't going to go because I didn't wan't to walk in front of the couple sitting on the end. Well, that was the wrong thing to say! He started BAWLING his eyes out with alligator tears...the couple got up to go to the bathroom, so I decided he would not let it go so we went down there and waited for the players to come back out. As we waited, he picked up a couple of random girlfriends (the two girls in the picture). He even invited them to come up and sit by him for the last period...and by the end of the game he was holding hands with one of them. I don't even want to imagine what he is going to be like 10 years from now!

Sunday we went to the circus with Jaime and DJ. The boys had a lot of fun!


The best part....Brayden and DJ RODE aREAL LIFE ELEPHANT!



Although he thought it was very scary, he had a lot of fun! It was a great way to end such a fun weekend!!

Are you a Farmer??

Brayden has a new LOVE...He absolutely LOVES Facebook's Farmtown and Farmville. (If you haven't tried either of them yet, I don't really recommend it...they can both be VERY addicting!!)

How it Began:
For the last 6 months or so he would occasionally play with my mom whenever he would visit them. He enjoyed checking the crops and sending gifts to her neighbors. Well everytime he saw me get on Facebook he would ALWAYS ask if he could play the farm game on my comptuer. My answer was always "NO, that's something special to do with grandma." Then I would have to hear him beg and plead and beg and plead more, for me to only break his heart by saying NO again. Well for some reason, 2 weeks ago, I decided to finally go ahead and give in to what I call "Farm World." I call it "Farm World" because little did I know when I started this whole tihng there are 2 Farm applications for Facebook: Farmtwon and Farmville. They do have a few differences from each other, but the one similarity they both have is they are both VERY addicting! First thing Brayden wants to do when we get home is check "his" farms.

Now the good thing about his new farming love, they both do have some educational value to them. For example he has learned:
* You need to plow a field before you can harvest the crops.
* It's a great thing to help your neighbors out by fertilizing their crops, raking their leaves, scare away animals, water their fields and flowers, etc..
* You gotta work hard and fast so the employeers will want to rehire you.
* You need to harvest your crops before they wither away.
* He has learned about all kinds of different crops and trees..which ones take longer to harvest and earn us more money...his favorite tree is the apple tree and favorite crop is the pumpkins. He enjoys seeing the different stages of the crops.
* It's great to be generous to neighbors by giving them gifts.
* He has to milk cows, collect chicken eggs, collect sheep wool, collect truffles from pigs and collect horsehair.
* Go to the marketplace to get a job (he's learned how to type that too).
* Go to the marketplace to sell his crops .
* Save your money instead of spending it so we can buy a house.
* coordination skills on the laptop mouse
* and most importantly to click on the "skip" button when asked if you want to publish your success on your profile. (This way it won't publish to mommy's FB profile and all of her friends think it's her playing all these farm games.)

All in all, they are both great semi real life educational games to play with your child, as long as you have a FB account.

Do you see that intensity on his face?!? He takes his farming very serious. :)

Going to the market place to sell his harvested crops.

Then last night while I was reading all the great recipes from FMM, he was supposed to just be tending to his farms but the next thing I knew he started up another FB game "Fishville". He loves this game too. I kind of like it also because I think its better than us having a real fish. (We already tried that and I HATED having to clean the bowl.) With Fishville, he has taught himself how to play based on what he has learned from farming....but from what I gather from him he has to clean the fishtank, feed the fish, decorate his tank, and help out his neighbors. It's 100% his thing. He is VERY disappointed right now because he doesn't have any neighbors on Fishville other than my grandma and sister. He keeps telling me "get me some neighbors mommy, I need some fishville neighbors!!!" So let me know if you happen to play fishville or any of the FB farm games and maybe we can be neighbors....I know one 4yr old boy who would be VERY ecstatic (and generous with gift giving) if he had a new neighbor or two. :)
Here he is logging into Fishville:

Trying to feed his fish:

Wanna know what else we have been up to lately?...Playing a little Wii bowling. I am so IMPRESSED with his bowling skills nowdays. He sccored a 170 COMPLETELY on his OWN. I had to capture the score of one of our latest games where he beat me. For the first 6 frames, he had either a spare or a strike, then frame 7, 8 and 9....he scored a 9 on each of them and then of course finished up with a spare on Frame 10...maybe I'll have to take him to a "real" bowling alley one of these days. :)

Finally a quick Swagbucks update...I'm up to 69 swagbucks...Yea! If you haven't signed up yet, be sure and sign up so you can start earning swagbucks for completely free gifts like Amazon, Starbucks, Target, iTunes giftcards just to name a few.

Pinkalicious and Tutus..

Being a mom of a 4 year old BOY, I am probably one of the last ones you would think of to have a post called "Pinkalicious and Tutus". Well thanks to Brayden's lil girlfriend Katey's birthday party I was able to have a few "first" this last weekend. This was the first time in my whole life that all the items in my shopping basket were PINK.

Sunday was Katey's birthday party and since I never get to buy "girlie" things, I kind of got excited about putting together her present. I first decided on getting her the BEST girly book EVER! (According to all the girls in my class, over the last few years.)

If you have a girl, it is definitely A MUST HAVE along with PURPILIOUS and the newest edition to the series, GOLDILICIOUS. The basic plot is the lil girl LOVES cupcakes and wants to eat the pink cupcakes that her and her mom made. Well, 1 cupcake wasn't enough for her...she wanted more, more, and MORE. Of course, her mom would only let her eat 1, but Pinkalicious was so persistant she insisted on getting another cupcake. I'm sure you can forsee how the story goes...she turns PINK from eating so many cupcakes. Brayden loves the story too and his favorite part is the "twist" at the end. If you want to pick up your own copy of Pinkalicious, check it out at this link...it could make a really GREAT Christmas present.

As you can see from the cover, PINKALICIOUS dresses as a pink fairy. My mind instantly thought of making Katey a PINK tutu so she could look just like Pinkalicious. So, this last weekend I made my very first TUTU! I was originally inspired by my friend Julia's "how to" post on tutus. It ended up being super easy and fun to make. All you need is elastic, tulle (I used one spool that I already had and 2 yds from the fabric dept). I also bought a spool of coordinating ribbon to add an extra embellishment. Then the first thing you need to do is sew your elastic together (thankfully my mom was in town to do this for me). Then you will want to cut your strips of tulle to the desired length (make sure it is long enough to fold over). Finally you will tie it in knots over the elastic...it's that easy. :)
Here was my final tutu: I did 3 dark pink (from my spool, 6 inch wide), 3 lighter pink (cut into 3 inch wide strips)..then 1 shorter yellow strip for an extra accent (I already had this one at home.)

I tried to get Brayden to "try it on" for me so I could see how it would look. Well he was not thrilled with that idea AT ALL because "tutus are for girls not boys". This was the closest I could get to have him as my model:

For the rest of her present I did a tiara, wand, fairy wings,PINK cupcake mix and PINK icing...so now she can be just like Pinkalicious.

Wrapping a tutu wasn't the easiest thing so I opted for a white trashbag. Here was her gift all wrapped up:

He had a SUPER FUN time at the birthday party. It was a bounce party, pizza/cupcakes, and some arcade time. Here are a few pics of the fun:





Also, I just wanted to pass along this amazing deal...Amazon has my FAVORITE family magazine, Disney Family Fun (1-year) for only $4.95!! That's a 1 year subscription right now for only $4.95 until Nov 30th. I get a lot of fun ideas like this one from it. Just go to this link to order your 1 year subscription or gift it to a friend. :) Just so you know, the price looks like it is $9.95, but when you go to the checkout there is an automatic $5 off, to get it at the low price of $4.95.