Monday, February 6, 2017

Second Week of May 2016 - Dave Matthews Band!

Well, it finally happened.  I got a ticket in Texas.  We've lived here for almost 7 years so I consider that a good streak.  I was taking Maxwell to school one morning and was in the school zone just outside of our neighborhood.  It's an EXTREMELY long school zone because it goes past the high school, then the middle school, and the street that the elementary school is on.  Anyway, I never speed in the school zone. I'm super good about it and even though other drivers start speeding up, I don't.  Except, this one time, there was a car upside down on the high school grass (part of a don't drink/drive demonstration for the school, I guess).  I totally turned to look and my foot, just instinctively, pushed on the gas to speed up and when I looked back and realized I was speeding it was too late.  It was literally one second later but there were two motorcycle cops in the next driveway catching speeders.  UGH!!!!!  I was so bummed because really, I am super careful and never speed!

So the motorcycle cop pulls me over and because Maxwell's in the car it's not like I can cry to get it out of it or anything else.  I just kept thinking to myself that this was Maxwell's first real experience with a police man and I didn't want him to be scared or worried or anything else that could make it a negative experience.  So, I just kept a positive attitude and dealt with it.  At the end I asked if I and my son could get out of the car so that he could see the cop's motorcycle.  He said that would be fine and was nice to Maxwell while we looked at his bike.  (I was secretly hoping that after he saw how cute my son was and how great of a mom I was that he would cut me a break and tear up the ticket, but no such luck.)

At least in Texas, I can do a defensive driving course and it won't go on my record.  So bummed!

I took my lunch and ate with Maxwell at school.  He was excited to have me there.  (I didn't end up getting to eat it because I brought a salad from Chick-Fil-A and their chicken is fried in peanut oil and since it's a peanut free school they wouldn't let me open up the salad and eat it.  I just had to roll my eyes.  I'm an adult.  I can keep the other kids from touching my food.)

My little gentlemen bringing me a chair.

Maxwell got to read a book to his class - it was really fun to watch.

Playing at the park

Woo hoo - it's a little yellow flower on my zucchini plant!!  I am so excited for something to grow in my garden!

Playing at another park on another day.  We are certainly in the goofy smile phase.

Maxwell had his last Kiddy Keys group piano class with Ms. Leah.  He has enjoyed his lessons and learned a little.  I feel like it's been extremely slow paced and that nothing he's learned has really been internalized so I don't think we will do group lessons again but I'm glad we tried it.

This group of 4 cousins are so fun together.  It makes me so happy!

I had a rare relaxing evening.  Essential oil scented relaxing lotion, great music on Pandora, and reading the book for a new thing we are doing with the neighborhood girls - a book club!  I haven't read a book in years (it's embarrassing to say that because I read so much before I had kids!).

The Emoji Elf left another little emoji for Maxwell in the mailbox.  He was really excited.

Video - Emmalyn is such a sweetheart but then she turns naught so quickly.  Watch her be so sweet and then immediately transition into "butthead".

Emmalyn and her Kindermusik class with Ms. Carolyn

Max had to make an animal mask for Kindermusik.  He chose a turtle.  Unfortunately, I could only find pictures of a ninja turtle.  Of course, that was fine with him.  :)

Maxwell and some of the kids in his class.

The new tree is doing great!

Maxwell was running errands with dad and fell asleep in the car.  Rarely happens nowadays.

It's that time again!  Dave Matthews Band Concert time!  We went this year with our neighbors again.

We left with plenty of time to enjoy dinner this time.  It's always fun spending time with Chris and Mary Ann.

Better seats than last time but still doesn't really matter to me because all I see are heads.


The weather was great!  Not super hot and a nice breeze.  It was perfect.



Love the Dave Matthews Band!  And it was a great concert with some fantastic songs.

Here's the set list:
 


So tiny she can hide under the ottoman.

Since Maxwell loved singing the songs from The Sound of Music at school, I figured he might like the movie.  It was a little over his head but he liked some parts of it (until we turned it off at the point they escape the country).

Love those cuddles

Vdeo -Remember how I talked about how she can turn nasty?  Well, isn't 2 years old too early to be saying that she hates me??

And then she can be absolutely adorable.  The curl on the front of her head had grown longer but it's still curly!


Emmalyn is finally to the point that she doesn't ask for binky every time she is going to sleep.  Her naps are shorter than normal without it though.

I love hearing her talk!  She's getting sentences and understands so much and responds when I don't expect her to.  Although, "I don't want to" is now a part of her language and sometimes she will say no to her nap.

Maxwell still says "Cucancumber" instead of cucumber and "Deemember" instead of remember and I love it.  I will be sad when the days comes that he says those words correctly.  
We've been working with him a little on multi-digit addition (doing the carryover) a little with him but he's now working on it at school. 

He asked if Oma died from eating too much candy. (We talk about how eating too much candy isn't healthy.)  It's always unexpected when he brings up her death because he doesn't do it often.  I was stunned for a moment and then told him that she didn't die from that.  I didn't take the conversation beyond that. There are moments that it still seems unreal that I have kids that will never know my mom.  She would have loved them so much and been the amazing grandparent that they totally deserve. 

 ,Max likes to help me cook and every night asks what's for dessert - most of the time it's fruit or nothing.

Max loves trivia things.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

13th Anniversary Surprise

Peter had responsibility for planning our anniversary this year.  He came home from work early so we could go to dinner.  I was sort of in a grumpy mood but he wouldn't tell me where we are going and I always enjoy a surprise...so...

We drove downtown and he surprised me when we pulled up to Reunion Tower.  In the 7 years we've lived here we've never been up to the top.  I was pretty excited that he chose this for dinner because it's exactly the type of thing I like.  I love trying new things and Peter does not so it's very atypical for him to choose to eat somewhere new.


He made reservations at the revolving restaurant at the top of the tower - "Five Sixty" a Wolfgang Puck restaurant.

It was a super nice restaurant with an amazing view at the perfect time - sunset.  Way to go, Peter!  Best anniversary ever!

The menu is Asian Fusion and some of it was a little too fancy for me, but a lot sounded delicious.  We didn't hold back.  :)  We had delicious cocktails (mine was called "Show Me Lov" - fitting, right?), Organic Chicken Dumplings, Crispy Pork Belly Bao Buns, some other appetizer that was exotic and not a hit, and Peter got Sushi.  We were basically full at this point but still had our main courses to enjoy - Peter got fish, I got steak, and some delicious fried rice.




After dinner, I ordered dessert plus they surprised me with an additional dessert to celebrate our anniversary - another surprise from Peter.


Surprise dessert!  I don't remember what it was, but it was delicious!

This is the Bittersweet Chocolate Souffle that I ordered.  We were so full but this dessert sounded so amazing that I couldn't NOT get it.  Well, it takes like 15 minutes to prepare which I was fine with but Peter seemed to be in a hurry.  He kept talking about how we needed to hurry because we had to go pick Joe up from work - his car was in the shop?  It seemed odd since I hadn't heard that before but okay, whatever.  So I wasn't in a big hurry but at this point Peter was really pushing things along.

Reunion Tower

So, we get the car from the Valet and Peter is driving.  As we are leaving downtown, it seems like we are going the wrong way and I mention that to Peter.   But, he was following the GPS directions on his phone so I just chalk it up to the fact that I get so turned around downtown and never am really confident on which way to go on those streets and freeways down there.

Well, so Peter is driving and all of a sudden I realize he's getting off the exit by the fairpark, which I know for sure is the wrong way.  So I start to say something and then I look up on the building in front of me and there's a big sign advertising the musical "Wicked" and it hits me that Peter is taking me to see Wicked!!!!

He totally had me fooled.  I thought we were just going to dinner and then going home, which was totally enough.  He had been so thoughtful in the place he picked for dinner and the money he'd spent on dinner.  I had no idea there was anything else!

So once it hits me we are going to Wicked it then hits me that there are no people around.  Just cars.  Peter then tells me that's why he was trying to hurry things along.  He didn't want to tell me not to get the souffle because then I'd know that something was up but he also was trying to hurry us out of the restaurant.  We were about 15 minutes late at this point.  The good news was that the parking attendants were all gone so at least we didn't have to pay for parking.

I wasn't stressed about missing the first 15 minutes because we've seen the musical before and that wasn't my favorite part anyway.

So, Peter showed the usher our tickets and he led us to our seats... except he kept walking forward, and walking forward...  When he finally stopped we were at some amazing seats!!!  It was so awesome!  

When Peter bought us tickets to go to Wicked before for my birthday.  What I didn't mention previously was where we sat.  We were in the balcony in the very last row to the very far right.  There were about 6 more seats to our right and we would have been in the very far corner of the theater.  Not good seats and I have ribbed Peter about that many times.  (To be fair, they were still expensive!)

So this time he said he wanted to make up for our previous seats and boy, did he do it!  I can only imagine how much money he spent.  I was so very touched that it brought tears to my eyes.  Things have been tense between Peter and I lately and tonight he really did a great job of showing me that he loved me.  The whole evening was carefully orchestrated to be my perfect evening.  Each choice he made with my likes in mind - totally selfless.

Look "badlands"!


I didn't have time to "get ready" for the date because I didn't rush home like I was supposed to because I thought it was going to be no big deal.  I totally felt under dressed for 560.

 
See how many rows are behind us?  If you look up and in the far left corner you can imagine where we sat last time.

It was amazing.  I almost didn't want to leave!  And we both really enjoy the musical now (Peter knows many of the songs).  Maxwell has been begging us to take him and I felt bad for a moment that he wasn't there with us.  But as I watched it, I was glad because there some parts of it that I think it would be better if he were older.

Thanks babe for an amazing anniversary!!!

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Mother's Day 2016

My family did a great job with Mother's Day. 
I got two games that Maxwell picked out for me (they are games that he can play with me) and I got some sweet cards.


"Mom I love you so much
Thank you for being my mom just because you keep loving me so much"

Maxwell's "bouquet" he made me at school

Peter made a delicious breakfast for us all!  (I should note that I got to sleep in!!!)


Then Emmalyn took a nap and Maxwell and I played the new games he got me.  After Emmalyn woke up, I did her hair in two little french braids.  I've never done that before - go me!  It's crazy that she's got enough hair for me to braid like this!

View from the top
 (I distracted her with the ipad while I was doing it)

View from the back.  It's not perfect but I feel good about it.

Another view of the hair in better light at Costco.  Okay, I was a little obsessed with it and kept looking at my work of art.  :)  I was proud of it!  It was also fun spending the time with her while I was braiding. Hopefully we do it many more times as she is growing up.


Emmalyn got to hold the receipt.  It's always a big deal to the kids to get to hold the receipt at Costco because then you get to hand it to the person at the door who checks it and draws smiley faces on the back.

It's still staying in!

A closeup of how I finished the braid and pulled her hair up into pig tails.  A closeup is so silly but oh well - again, I'm proud of it!

After Costco we took the kids to the library where we looked at books and played on the computers a little bit.



Peter rested his eyes.

It was a nice day outside so after the library, we took a blanket outside in the backyard and played one of my new games again.  I wasn't ready to be done outside so then we went to the park, too!

Video - Emmalyn "playing" with Raider, the German Shepard across the street.  It was really cute how he followed her with his ball.  They did this for awhile.

Maxwell made a Happy Mother's Day card for Mary Ann next store and we delivered it to her and then we did takeout from Palio's Pizza for dinner.  Max said he had a gazillion hearts that he was going to blow at me because he loved me so much.  :) He was incredible sweet the whole day.

It was a great day!

The next day they did a breakfast for the mom's at Maxwell's preschool- "Muffins with Mom".  He was really excited for me to be able to go to it with him.


It was fun to sit and spend some time with Maxwell, just the two of us.


silly face!

Think the sugar from the muffins and juice has hit yet??

My big kid all loaded up with his backpack, water, and lunch...  Headed to his classroom.

Maxwell's Preschool Music program

Maxwell and his class have been practicing for months for their music program and he's been singing the songs around the house.  He loves his music teacher, Mr. Keith and loves when he gets to have music class.  It's been fun seeing him get into it!

A quick dinner of Chick-Fil-A in the car is about all we can do when we are rushing from work to pick up the kids and get over to the school.

Little miss all dolled up and ready to watch

So much personality!


The class performed two songs from The Sound of Music - "Do Re Mi" and "My Favorite Things".








Video - Here's the end of "My Favorite Things" and his cute bow. :)

Preston, Jacek, and Maxwell

During the songs, at one point Maxwell was looking behind him for awhile.  I asked him what he was looking at and he said that he was looking at Preston's suspenders because they were really cool.  :)