Festival of Christmas Lights

We drove through glitzy River Oaks tonight to see the lights. Beautiful decorations with Santa and reindeer and snowflakes and toy soldiers and colors were all over. In the middle of it all a blue shark on a gate, huh? All in all, several houses could easily make the "Extreme Holiday Lights" list!

It was a fun Sunday evening stroll/drive.

On the big screen

This was Kaila's first baseball game. She actually made it to the big screen on the stadium. Cheering and dancing on her seat!


More finds in my desk clean up.

Picnic in the Park

The kids enjoyed a picnic in the park today. The second day of Fall brought us the first cool evening to Houston since early Spring.

Kaila insisted on sitting on a blanket on the grass - "because when we have a picnic, we sit on the ground not on tables."

Daniel was delighted to have all his favorite foods and family together - "Mommy, we have every thing we need!" He said this very same thing on 3 or 4 occasions during our outting. It was pretty sweet. It's nice to hear from a 2-year old that life is just perfect at that very moment.

Umbrella Day

I'm getting ready to go for a run in the morning and I hear this tingling noise on the window...rain...I wait for a while and the weather clears a bit - humidity is at 100%, but it's not too hot. I get home and I poll the kids for a trip to the zoo. Yes! We get ready to go and it starts sprinkling again...hey, get the umbrellas. Let's go. And off we went, umbrellas in hand. The kids actually had fun in the rain - thankfully it never got too hard while we were walking around.

After the zoo, we waited out some showers and went on a train ride around Herman Park.

A fun day. Zoo promise kept.

Did anyone say Jack-O-Lantern?

ConocoPhillips continued their 54-year tradition of turning a 3-million gallon storage tank at its Los Angeles refinery into the world’s largest Jack-O-Lantern.

Preparing Smilin’ Jack for his annual appearance requires more than 100 gallons of orange, black and white paint. According to refinery engineers, if the giant jack-o-lantern were filled with pumpkin meat, there would be enough to make 26,800,000 pumpkin pies!

http://www.neatorama.com/2006/10/16/worlds-largest-jack-o-lantern/

Happy Halloween!

The kids had a blast at the Community College Halloween Party near our house. They played games, jumped in a moonwalk, had hot-dogs and took a ride in a choo-choo train. As it got dark it was off to the streets to trick-or-treat.

D sat in the stroller for the first couple of houses, then he got brave and joined K. He was so excited to be able to run up any driveway he wanted and get a treat for it, too.

One house he did pass, though. It was too scary!!!!

Getting to bed might be a challenge tonight. I wonder how long the sugar rush is going to last...

I love this google doodle by Wes Craven. We got a pumpkin at school today and I have a feeling we'll be working on a jack-o-lantern tomorrow.

Football

It's Sunday - football. Got tickets for the game this afternoon: Texans vs. Bengals.

I'm feeling brave - taking K & D, on my own...

Happy to report that the kids loved the game & the Texans won!

Firehouse birthday

Our next door neighbor had his birthday party yesterday. The kids had a great time playing around in the yard and riding the firetruck. A real firetruck - sirens, horn, lights and all!

Pumpkin Patch

After an hour of classical music and sitting quietly, K and M were glad to go to the park for the Bellaire Pumpkin Patch Festival. They played carnival games, jumped in a moonwalk and went through an inflatable obstacle course.

On the games, the kids spent a few seconds playing and a few minutes selecting their prizes! Serious business!

After pizza and juice for lunch, colorful snow cones!

Green Eggs and Ham

The entire theatre recited together

"...I do not like it here or there, I do not like it anywhere."

The Houston Symphony presented a wonderful family matinee with Sam-I-Am.

K put on the white dress she wore as a flower girl in her cousins wedding back in April. She looked adorable! Clifford, the big red dog, went with us to the performance. K sat on my lap and Clifford had a seat all for himself.

We met with one of her school friends and it made the whole outing a lot more memorable.

Five years in the closet

The weather was beautiful today. It was sunny and cool in the morning (by Houston standards 70F's is cool).

I went for my first bike ride in five years! It was special company outing in Chappell Hill with proceeds benefiting the United Way. The 35-mile route was quite challenging with gently and not-so gently rolling hills through the country side. A perfect way to spend the day. Now that the bike is free of cobwebs, I hope to get it out on the road more often!

Along the way:
Scarecrow festival in the city - halloween pumpkin in haystack, cowgirl riding a haystack turkey, and other creative treats.
A pony farm - it seeemd like hundreds of them out in the pasture.
Turtles sunning on a rock in the middle of a creek
Crickets and butterflies

Classically Modern

September 27, 2008

Houston Ballet - Where are the ballerinas? I want to see the big jump, just like the picture [in the program].

"This is how they dance, Daddy", she says giggling twirling on her tippy toes!

Under the Stars

Theater Under the Stars performed their Summer show today to a large crowd. We all enjoyed the music and dance around a cool breeze on top of the hill at Miller Outdoor Theater.

Airplane and helicopter lights overhead were also a great source of entertainement for D through out the evening.

Ice cream

Not a chance K would forget an ice cream promise! Even if the promise had been made 24h before hand...so after pizza, we went for Italian gelato.

K chose strawberry and watermelon; one medium pink, the other light pink. Who ever thought of watermelon ice cream? Quite blend I must say.

D went for more contrast red and white; wild berries and coconut. Both very good!

The Circus is in Town

Clowns and animals, the magic is still there.

The clown noses K & D brought back home have also provided a world of entertainment for all of us.

Guys in skirts & imported cockroaches - what a weekend!

A couple of days ago D tried on one of K's pink flowery dresses. He loved it apparently, since getting him out of it was quite a challenge. So what better program than to attend the Scottish Festival this Saturday? We enjoyed the bands, the bag pipers, sheep herding dogs (I mean sheep-herding dogs herding sheep!) and all the guys sporting their skirts, ahh, ahh, I mean, kilts... Mr. D thought they all looked just fine!

Sunday was Zoo day. We found out that plasmacars are not allowed in zoo premises. D was quite cooperative in handing it over for safe storage at guest services. We enjoyed monkeys, story time and live animal show the best today. We all roared with baby tiger as he scared the animals in the jungle. Later on, K volunteered to be a stage helper - great progress! The live animal show featured a four picture-card riddle "Mad - A - Gas - Car". K was "Mad". The solution led us to the star of the show: a hissing Madagascar cockroach! (Don't we have enough cockroaches in TX?!) The next animal was an even bigger hit with the kids, a two-foot long alligator and everyone got to touch it. A very forgiving alligator, I must say.

If up in time from the afternoon naps, we'll be off to "inventions and innovations" at BB MFAH. If not, just swinging in the park will cap the day.

Cake or playground...

Have cake or go to the playground? Tough choice, but playground in the park wins...I'll try to negotiate cake after that. Ooops, cake didn't work today. No amount of whining did it!