Everything Is Better in Texas

Tim servered an LDS mission in Texas, and since before we were married he has wanted to go back to visit.  We figured now would be the best time to go for a few reasons; 1.  Arlo is turning two and as long as he is still one he can fly for free, 2.  Tim's second mission president is serving as the San Antonio Temple President and will soon be released.  So, on Wednesday, April 27th we hopped on an airplane and flew to San Antonio.  We were picked up at the airport by Tim's old mission companion Elder Barnwell (Jake) who lives there with his wife (Amy) and two beautiful daughters.   The Barnwell family was so sweet to let us stay with them for our trip.  We took tons of pictures so everyone can enjoy our trip as much as we did.

Day 1: We started the day off with an Easter Egg Hunt, followed by lunch at Chris Madrids and then took an afternoon boat ride to downtown San Antonio where we were tourists and visited the Alamo.  Our First day was not complete until we had dinner at Rudy's BBQ.

Tim's burger was bigger than my head!

There are so many of these beautiful mosaics all over downtown San Antonio... BEAUTIFUL!

Day 2:  Easter; Easter morning we woke up to Easter Baskets and another Easter Egg hunt.  Then Amy made us all crepes which were AMAZING! Then we went to church in our Easter best (Sorry no pictures of the boys in their Easter suits... we were running late.) and came back early to take a nap.  Arlo was so beat from no nap the day before that he slept for over 3 hours.  Then our wonderful Hostess made us a delicious steak dinner, and the grownups stayed up way to late watching movies and talking.

The end of the 3+ hour nap

Day 3:  The Mercado or market square in down town San Antonio.  We went shopping and did a little too much of it, but we had a few great finds.  I am proud to say we did not come home with a Texas star, but if Tim gets his way we will get one eventually.  After the market we got home put the kids down for a nap and got dressed up for a night on the river.  Jake is a tour guide on the river and his company does dinner tours, so we took one and it was so relaxing and wonderful and beautiful.  Downtown San Antonio is probably the prettiest down town I have ever seen, and it has so much history and charm I would recommend San Antonio for vacation to anyone.  After the tour, we went back to the Alamo to experience it at night when it was not so crowded.  It was a great photo opp... so we took lots and lots of pictures there.

What you can find at the mercado!

Day 4:  Austin (also Cohen's middle name, named after the city)  On Tuesday we loaded up our family along with our tour guide Jake and headed up to Austin to visit Tim's Mission areas.  We saw a few apartments he lived in and met up with John, a man that Tim and Jake had taught on the mission.  We also stopped at the Salt Lick which is by far the BEST BBQ in the world and then for dessert a Round Rock Doughnut (we just needed one for all of us).  Later that evening we met up with John and his wife Chris at Shady Grove and had one more delicious meal.  If you have not noticed we ate a lot in Texas, I could never live there because of all the delicious food.  Then after dinner instead of driving back to San Antonio right away we stayed to watch the bats.  Yes, you read that correctly BATS.  In Austin, under a bridge there lives one of the largest colonys of mexican free-tailed bats, 1.5 million to be exact.  And every night they all leave at the same time and you see this enormous swarm of bats flying over the river.  It is supposed to be an amazing sight.  So we called the bat hotline and it said the bats will come out at around 7:30.  It was about 6:30 when we first arrived but Arlo and Cohen had bee in the car most the day so we got out and played at the park while we waited.  7:30 came and past, we called the bat hotline again, the time had changed to 8:30, so we played some more and waited.  8:30 had come and past and we called the hotline again 9:15.  By this time Arlo was getting pretty cranky and so we left.  We did see a few flying under the bridge but no swarm, just dirty, nasty bats.  But, we did get a lot of pictures!

 The BBQ at the Salt Lick

THE Doughnut

 This is where the bats live

Down Town Austin

This last picture is the bats if you look closely.

Day 5:  We got another babysitter for the kids and Jake, Amy, Tim and I all went to the San Antonio Temple.  We met up with President and Sister Woods and were able to talk with them and see some of the Temple as well as hear some great stories about parts of the temple.  After the temple we went out to eat with President and Sister Woods at The Alamo Cafe where we ate puffy tacos and the BEST tortillas in the world!  We got home just in time to pack and get to the airport, to find out that our plane was an hour late.

I will be honest...  I went into this trip thinking, this is Tim's trip, I will have a good time for him and enjoy learning about his time here.  But as we were going home, I couldn't help but think of how much fun I actually did have.  I made a great new friend and I wish we lived closer because if we did, she would totally be one of my BFF's!  But, I had so many fun and enjoyable moments... it was a blast!  A big thank you to the Barnwell family for sharing their home, their food, their vehicle and most importantly, their time with us.  They are a great family and I would be so happy if Arlo marries Kate one day (HeeHee).

Look What I Did...

Back in SEPTEMBER I started making a quiet book for Arlo.  I looked online for ideas and started putting the pages together.  I originally was going to give it to him for Christmas, but after Cohen was born, my project was put on a major hiatus.  I finally finished it for his birthday.  Here is the final result.

Cover

I will put notebook rings in, instead of curling ribbon.  (This is the last thing I forgot to do.)

Page 1:

Velcro Letters and a zipper pouch.

Pages 2-3

Velcro letters, The velcro on the page goes all the way across so we can make words, patterns, etc.  There is a bag to put the leftover letters into.

Pages 4-5

A zippered Noah's Ark with finger puppets and a magnetic fishing page.

(I bought the puppets form Ikea!) 

Pages 6-7

Velcro numbers and bead abacus.

You can rearrange the numbers and each line has ten beads so you can match the beads to the number.

Pages 8-9

Piggy bank with play money and snap apples with a bucket.

Pages 10-11

Working mailbox and pocket page.

The mailbox has an opening to put the letters into with a velcro flag.  And the pockets I use for paper, stickers and markers.  (We use color wonder markers so they don't ruin everything!)

 Pages 12-13

Snap shapes and colored ribbons.

 Pages 14-15

 

Velcro Road Light and a road.  

In the green garage I keep a little car for Arlo to drive around the town. 

Pages 16-17

Button bouquet and Tie a shoe page.

I found a cute song to teach kids to tie their shoes and I wrote that on the page.

 Page 18

Mirror Page.

Needless to say I am very proud of my creation, and I am even more excited that Arlo loves it!

Birthday Boy

On April 30th Arlo turned 2.  That's right the big T-W-O.  We had a quiet family birthday, but it still had all the things a party needs to have.

The PRESENTS...

A woody doll, a play cleaning set (so he does not have to steal grammy's broom anymore), a quiet book (a whole post is coming dedicated to that), a balance bike, and more play food for his kitchen.

(Yes my son was naked for his entire party!  What can I say, he likes his birthday suit!)

These are not at the party because I asked Grampy to give him his bike early, because I knew it was going to start to get hot, and I wanted him to learn to ride it while it was cool incase there was a lot of falling.

 I Love this picture because you can see Tow in the shadows... so funny!

 Here is a picture of one of the hundreds of falls, he flipped over his handle bars.  He was pretty upset, but I made him stay on the ground so I could take a picture. (Do I win the great mom award or what?)

FOOD and FAMILY

For dinner we had Arlo's favorite... spaghetti.

CAKE

Arlo is really into Peter Pan and alligators right now.  But he would not touch his cake... he kept saying "bite you!"

BIRTHDAY SONG

This is about the 50th time we sang it.

CLEAN UP

Was easy because we had helpers!

It was a perfect day outside (it's been hot ever since) Arlo usually loves having family around.  But no matter what we did at his birthday party, he was grumpy most of the time.  He threw tantrums, he cried, he would not eat his spaghetti or cake, he was mean and by the end, I was ready to throw him in bed.  But I continued to be patient with him because it was his birthday.  After his tubby, I was drying him off and he was shivering.  He never shivers... UH OH!  I took his temperature... 101.7!  The next day it actually got up to 103.9.  I felt so bad, here I was loosing my cool, ready to kill my kid because of how he was acting and the whole time he was sick... POOR BABY!

Growing Up

Cohen:
Now has two teeth... well he has had them for a few weeks, but they are way cute!

Has started eating solids.  We started with banana oatmeal and have now moved up in the world with carrots, bananas and mixtures of them all.

Rolls over both ways (also starting a few weeks ago) and he thinks he is so special because he can... it affects everything.  I lay him on his mat for tummy time and after 5 minutes he is 5 feet away from all his toys.  I lay him on his back or tummy for nap time and he turns on his side.  His diaper changes now take much more time and effort because he is always rolling this way and that.

Is quite the talker.  In just the past few days he has found out all the noises he can make and makes them all the time.

Is still all smiles!

Arlo:
Has decided that speaking with just a few words is no longer acceptable.  Now, he adds in a WHOLE bunch of mumbling in with those few words to tell you what he wants.  It makes it even harder to understand him, but he wants to talk like the grown ups and it is so funny!

Got shape and color cards at the grocery store the other day and has to do them every day and because he loves them he now knows all his shapes and colors. He loves saying triangle  as ri-a-gl-gl-gl and rectangle as ec-a-gl-gl-gl-gl  and circle as cir-gl-gl-gl-gl.

Saw a little girl do a somersault the other day at Jumpstreet and ever since he has been working on it and I am proud to say... he still cannot do it, but he is working so hard and when he does finally get it, I'll get it on video and share it.

Got his first bunch of big boy underwear.  He is still not fully potty trained.  He will go when you ask him to go, but if you forget to ask him, he does not yet tell you, or when he does tell you it is a little to late.  But he has also learned that if he wears diapers he can get away with going to the bathroom in his pants, so he likes to choose when he will wear his big boy underwear.

Is working on sharing, listening and not saying no to mommy.

Has an earlier bed time to cut down on nighttime tantrums and now wakes up way to early.

Is a SPONGE and soaks up everything, it is so fun to watch his little mind always working!

And to end... a few pictures of my boys.  It is funny how much Cohen already LOVES Arlo and vise versa.