Ice Days

Ok, I know it has been awhile since I have posted...about 8 months to be exact. Way to long!! I actually just noticed that I have a couple of post from over the summer that I started but did not finish so I will work on finishing those up as well and post those too. Brayden and I have had something very exciting happen to us in the last five months that I will share in a new post too. Now you might be wondering, how I have all this time to catch up on our blog....it's called Dallas' Ice Storm 2011. :)

In my school district we are lucky to get 1 snow day, 2 if we are really lucky, but having 3 in a row is just unheard of! Well tomorrow will actually be our 4th snow day in a row!! It's actually due to ice and not snow, but either way it is absolutely unheard of in this area!! Let's just say Brayden and I are LOVING EVERY SECOND OF IT!!

So what do you when you have 4 days off of school? Well I would love to say I have cleaned out and reorganized every room and closet in my house, but let's be honest, that's not really "fun". I like my friend, Lauren's philosophy.... Normally we would be at work and the cleaning and organizing wouldn't be getting done anyway so it's ok to take these snow days and just enjoy them since we are supposed to be at work. :) So what we have done is....

** Stayed in our pjs all day long- no point getting dressed when you can't go anywhere, right?!?. :)
** Watched SEVERAL movies thanks to Uverse OnDemand
** We caught up on all of our DVR recordings
** Read books- I am enjoying extra time with Apolo Ohno since I don't normally get time to read during the week. I highly recommend his book, Zero Regrets: Be Greater Than Yesterday. It is very motivational and a great read!! Right now Amazon is offering it for only $13.39 hardcover with free shipping.
** We have played Wii until we used up all the batteries then we switched over to playing his new Dsi. We can't get enough of Mario.
** I worked on my taxes.
**Baked some brownies and other yummy meals.
** We have worked hard on earning some more Swagbucks. Brayden is even addicted to it now. :) It's only the 3rd day of the month and we already have another $5 Amazon giftcard on the way. They have swagbuck tv and games that he likes to watch/play. I told him that we could use our amazon giftcards we earn to apply to a new Xbox360 Kinect that he is wanting. So he is all about trying to earn those Swagbucks. :)

Whew! Now that it is all listed like that it sounds like we have been pretty busy. (just kidding) :)

Personally I dont quite understand getting "cabin fever". Brayden and I are enjoying every second of this unexpected winter vacation break. :) Maybe, just maybe...tomorrow's agenda might include some cleaning/reorganizing but I'm not making any promises. :)

On a side note-
Tomorrow's forecast: high of 28 degrees and a good chance of snow
The weekend: 46/49.... just a lil warm up for the SuperBowl. :)
Monday: back down to a high of 35 degrees with a light wintery mix... another possible snow day?!? We shall see. :)

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!!

Our Summer Fun

Our summer summed up in pictures...

First off for summer break, Brayden continued his ice skating lessons. Then he didn't want to continue with the second session because he realized it interferred too much with his "social" schedule. He was missing out on playdates with the neighbors on Monday nights and he just couldn't bare to do that anymore. Life's tough when you're 5! On the bright side before he quit, he did pass the basic ice skating lessons and was able to advance to pre-hockey...his original goal. Hopefully soon he will want to get back into it. :)


Of course we got a LOT of swimming in over the summer...

Brayden with his neighbor girlfriend. :)

We did so much swimming that he even got a Swimmer's Ear Infection...which was no fun at all!! We had to make a special trip from grandmas and Vacation Bible School to go see the doctor.



We did make it over to watch an interview with a couple of the Allen American hockey players as they did a radio talk show. Brayden enjoyed getting their autograph and I think they enjoyed using his squiggly pen. :)

Then they had a buy 1 item, get 1 item free so we had to stock up on a couple of miniature goalie sticks.

This summer we also celebrated my 31st birthday and Father's Day with my parents. They happened to fall on the same day this year.

After a lot of anticipation, we had to go see Toy Story 3 in 3D. We both LOVED it!!

We also made it out to a McKinney Marshall baseball game. It is our area summer collegiate league.

Of course we spent a lot of time at the lake.

Boat naps are the best...


We survived the heat at a few of the FC Dallas games... Brayden enjoyed them SO much we got season tickets for this upcoming season.



Brayden went with me for the first time as I got a pedicure. He was definitely treated like a prince getting to sit in the massaging chair.

4th of July and Brayden looking up at the fireworks...

and finally a summer picture of just the two of us.....

We had a great relaxing summer....Can't wait to see what this upcoming summer has in store for us. :)

My Graduation

Another exciting event we had in May was my graduation from grad school. For the last eighteen months I have been working on my Master of Education in Teacher Leadership via online courses. I can't tell you enough how excited I am to be finally be done with assignments, midterms and final exams!!

This was a fun mini trip that we are able to spend with my parents. Believe it or not, this was Brayden's first time to actually stay in a hotel....5 years old and he had never stayed in a hotel before. He was beyond excited and loving every second of it, especially the elevator! He kept calling the hotel, the "show in tell" and by the end of the weekend was wanting us to move into one. On Sunday, we drove down a little further to Port Arthur, TX (close to Galveston) so Brayden could see the ocean for his first time. He LOVED the waves! I wish we could have stayed longer and actually enjoyed the ocean but unfortunately we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us.
It didn't take long before he wanted to switch into his swimsuit and try out his "surfing pose."

I can't wait to go back and spend more time enjoying the ocean and beach....hopefully we will make it down there again this summer. :)

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!