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!!

Road Trip to OKC and Stillwater

Finally back to blogging world! Last weekend we went to visit my oldest sister and her family in Oklahoma City. Well, we had SUCH a great time that it completely wore me out!! In fact, tonight is the first time I have even brought my laptop out of its bag! For a computer/internet-addicted gal like myself, that says alot. =) So finally here is a recap of our weekend (a weekend late) and hopefully I didn't set a world record for the world's LONGEST post. =)

Friday: First, I had parent teacher conferences non stop all day until about 3:15. Then I quickly went to get Brayden and after a quick stop at our house we were off on our 3.5 hour road trip to Oklahoma City. Let me give you a quick bit of background information....I have not drove a car by myself for more than 60miles in over 2.5 years...so it was a drive I was sort of dreading and to make matters worse, Brayden started asking "Are we there yet?...This is taking FOREVER!....How much longer?!?" about 10 minutes into our trip AND on a 15 minute rotation. Unfortunately, no exaggeration! Let's just say I thought I was going to go a lil cRaZy before we got there...especially since I was running on about 3 hours of sleep from parent/teacher preparation. Luckily, we had PLENTY of "cowboy" music to keep us entertained. I was amazed how practically every other station after we crossed the Oklahoma border was country music rather than our regular spanish music. I sort of amazed myself how well I could remember a lot of the ol country tunes from back in my country music listening days. We also got to see LOTS of casinos, something we aren't used to seeing. Brayden was amazed with all the sparkles and glitter that he wanted us to pullover and check them out. We also drove through the "Arbuckle Mountains" in which Brayden started bawling his eyes out thinking they were so scary. (I think he thought the rocks were going to fall on us.) After a LONG drive we thankfully and safely arrived just in time to head over to my nephew's highschool football game which he plays in the pep band. It was so fun to watch....people watch that is, along with a lil football watching and Brayden had fun watching the "band" Just to clarify: it was not a marching band-but a "band" with amps and guitars and drum sets, etc...
Photo courtesy of Brayden... Saturday:
I started the day off with my sister taking me to get my haircut. I hadn't had my haircut since March, so it was definitely LONG overdo. Haircuts/manicures/pedicures are those simple pleasures in life that I just rarely treat myself to. I would much rather save the money for something both Brayden and I could enjoy than pampering myself. Next on our agenda was to head to Stillwater, Oklahoma for a few of Oklahoma State's Homecoming festivities. First stop was the parade...we got there just in the nick of time. We had about 5 minutes to spare before the Grand Marshalls (Garth Broooks, Barry Sanders and Robin Ventura) started the parade off...I snapped a few good pic's of Garth and Barry but of course I found out afterwards that I had "no camera card". Hopefully, I will be able to figure out how to get them from my camera to computer one of these days. Here is a slideshow of the parade:

After the parade, we parked on campus and just started walking AND walking. My sister and I were both amazed at how many people were already tailgating and how involved it is these days..we saw several flat screens and satellite dishes.

We stopped in the Student Union to check out the stores and grab some lunch. Brayden LOVED this hat but I was afraid we would end up carrying it all day long so I just took his picture so he could "remember" it.

Then my sister made the BEST purchase of the day...an OSU football for Brayden. It was a GREAT bribery tool to use all day. =) We also stopped a few times so he could catch and throw his new football.

(Not quite sure that I have a future football star on my hands...gotta first get over the fear of it first.)
Aunt Angie encouraged him to do this fun trick:

I then took them a lil down memory lane:
The OSU library (with an orange fountain for Homecoming)
Theta pond (You can't tell from the picture, but they had orange Christmas lights all around the pond. So pretty!!)

Side View of the Chi Omega house

He LOVED the trophy room in the Chi O house and thought it was fun to see mommy's picture:

Front of Willard Hall, the College of Education building. I spent a LOT of time in here....

Back view of the College of Education...

Then we went to see the "House Dec's". One of OSU's major Homecoming "sights to see" is the Greek House Dec's. Each sorority is paired up with a fraternity and together they create a design and then implement it by doing COUNTLESS hours of "pomping". If you are wondering what pomping is....it is basically sticking a TON of tissue paper into chicken wire to create an amazing design that usually covers the front of the fraternity house. Here is a link to a video I found on youtube that helps explain it a lil better.

Here is a slideshow of all the AMAZING work that was put in by the different Greek organizations this year. As you watch, please remember this is all made by college students (no outside help or consultation), chicken wire and TISSUE paper....it truly is absolutely AMAZING!!

We were amazed by this HUGE tree and swing in front of one of the fraternity houses:

Here is a closeup of the winning house dec:




After we finished with all the house dec's, we went back to the library lawn to watch the band. They had a lil pep concert before the game (the game didn't start until 8:15pm). Since Brayden has a new love of drums/bands we of course had to sit and listen for a lil while.


Brayden gave himself a front row seat... Then the two batton twirlers came and sat by him. He was SO excited! (He's already a lil girl crazy.)

Once they got up, he watched them toss their baton and then they let him try to toss it...

Here is the band playing "Oklahoma" with the twirlers in the background doing their thing...(it was getting dark outside so the video might be more for the wonderful music instead.)


We finished our Stillwater trip off with my favorite local, authentic mexican restaraunt, El Vaquero...LOVE the queso blanco.
All in all, we had a FUN day. I was very proud of Brayden, he did such an amazing job walking everywhere we went all on his own. Thanks to both my sister and him for being such troopers letting me go down my college memory lane. (In case you are wondering, YES I do miss Stillwater/OSU.)


Sunday: Our trip home was a little more peaceful, should I say? =) Here is what Mr. Brayden did for most of the trip:


Since he was sleeping, I also took a picture of the "sCaRy Arbuckle Mountains"
As soon as we got home, we had just enough time to eat lunch before we had to rush out the door to a friend's birthday party. It was a tae kwon do party and Brayden LOVED it! Here he is taking a kick at the pinata. (I think he looks so cute in his lil gym clothes.) He's able to kick that lil leg pretty high!

We had such a FABULOUS (yet exhausting) weekend!!

Happy GrandParent's Day!!

So I had this great idea of dressing Brayden up like a grandpa to wish my parents and grandparents a Happy GrandParents Day....little did I know my little "actor" would be less than enthused to participate. As I excitedly told him that I would be putting white stuff in his hair to make him look much older--he HATED the idea!! He of course just wanted his hair to be brown. He told me "that is sooo embarrassing!" (What?!? Are 4 yr olds even supposed to know the feeling of embarrassment?!?) Well, after threatening convincing him that the rest of the days "fun" activities depended on his participation, I finally got him to oblige. =)

*I do want to apologize in advance for his "hard to understand" communication--he really does talk much clearer but I think he was trying to prove a point that he was just NOT wanting to do it!
Here is Take #3:

Just in case you need interpretation the rehearsed script was "Happy GrandParents Day Grandma and Papa! I love you and I wish I could spend the day with you today." Then his impromptu that he added at the end was "crazy....tootaloo...I like to move it, move it."

Now this was actually Take #2, where he fully was NOT cooperating. He was trying to sing "I like to move it, move it"---Short story behind the song of choice: Yesterday when we were in Lowes he was standing in the big basket area of the shopping cart pretend surfing/booty dancing along with singing that song. (I have NO idea how it even got in his head.) He got lots of laughs and attention from the other customers, so of course this his new favorite song to sing right now. =)


Here is actually our Original Take, but unfortunately the genius behind the camera (me) forgot that you can't rotate a video. So if you don't mind turning your head just a little bit you can watch Take #1.

Happy Grandparents Day!!

We LOVE you guys!!

Boys With Their Toy Guns

What better activity is there to do RIGHT before bedtime? Well, a WilD and cRaZy nerf gun fight with your Papa of course. =)

But first, showing off your new "booty dance" to grandma is a must:

Now on to the "gun showdown":

Of course, my dad showed no mercy to Brayden. =)

Having grandma caulk his gun for him.

Taking cover under the table
Trying to taunt my dad =)
And now running from him.

Even as spectators, my mom and I had SUCH a great time watching and laughing with them. If your household doens't have any nerf guns, I highly suggest getting a couple. They are fun for all ages/genders. =)

After Brayden got worn down, he passed his gun off to me. Then my dad and I discovered it's a pretty good lil work out running around the house chasing each other. =)