What a weekend...

So I'm not sure if we could have squeezed anything more into this weekend. I said that to Emma this morning and she said that we didn't play with neighbors. We were even able to squeeze that in this evening.

The Ware's came down from Austin to visit. Which is always fun. We started the night at Chick-fil-a. Which is great. You can trade your toy in the kids meal in for an ice cream, they have hand sanitizer for after the play place and good food.

Then we headed down town for a Spurs game at the AT&T center. It was great. We got the tickets for $10 each through the girl scouts. They were nose bleed, but the center is set up so you don't feel that far away.

My one requirement when we moved to San Antonio was that Jake had to let the kids be Spurs fans. None of this being Kings fans in hostile territory. So when we got there we told Emma we were cheering for the white team. I forgot to tell her their name. She was shouting DEFENSE at the top of her lungs with everyone else, but then when they changes possessions she was shouting GO DEFENSE! She thought our team was called defense. Oops!

We were able to eat a whole container of popcorn without raining it down on the entire crowd below us. I'm surprised Jeremy went to another game with us after our experience in the Marriott center when we showered everyone in popcorn....
It was so fun having Chan come play. They play really well together. He is Emma's oldest friend that she still gets to see. Emma is about 18 months older, I think, and would call him baby Chan, then one summer he came back and wasn't a baby anymore.After the Spurs game we all headed to our house for a slumber party. In the morning we had breakfast. The Ware's brought bagels and the best pumpkin shmear. (Emma and I are in love with it.) I know, shocking that Emma loves pumpkin shmear..I don't think she's met anything pumpkin she doesn't love. Then the girls ran down to the cannery to grab wheat while the guys and kids stayed home and played wii. Then we all headed to Chuck E Cheese.
Emma just finished her first grading period. She got a smiley face every single day. We'd told her that if she did that then she could pick out any toy at the store she wanted. Instead she asked if she could take Chan to Chuck E Cheese. So off we went. This game was a little tough, but if you use your foot it works better, or at least Chan thinks so.

We have a coupon where you can get 100 tokens for $10. If anyone wants it I'll email it to you. Its good until the end of the year. With that many tokens you can get some quality play time in. After Chuck E Cheese we headed home for a BBQ of hot dogs and hamburgers. Then all to soon it was time for the Ware's to head home. After sending them off we headed over to the community Fall Festival.

It was alot of fun. There were bounce houses, free food, a petting zoo, costume contest for the kids, a craft fair, and some craft activities. It is just a little hot here in Texas for Halloween costumes during the day. I thought I got ones that weren't to hot, but the kids were roasting after a few minutes in them. Emma and Jake stayed and played while Nate and I went home for a nap.

The costume contest was one in which everyone won, but we think we had the cutest ones there!

Just in case we hadn't crammed enough into the weekend, we decided to head to Sea World for their HalloScream. We were a little worried about it being to scary, but they had marked which activities were family friendly.

We had a ton of fun watching a magic show. Then there were the belting buccaneers, nothing like pirate karaoke to HSM songs. From there we headed to Jack's dance party. Emma was a little slow to warm up to dancing, but quickly she got her groove on.

From there we went to Shamu's creepy beach party. I was worried it would be to scary, but there was only one scary guy and Emma seemed to understand he was in a mask. It was 8:00 when the show started and it was packed, but the splash zones still had room. We were able to score front row seats right in front of the stage that the whales come up on. There were several of us there with kids, so the trainer was nice enough to not splash our area to much.

These pictures don't so it justice. They make the whale seem smaller and farther away than it was. We could have easily touched the silver railing and that's like maybe 6 feet from the whale.

Pretty much I think that is it. Sunday morning we just hung out at the house. Enjoyed some fresh tomatoes and peas from the garden. Then went to church. In the evening we visited outside with the neighbors. All the parents pull up their camp chairs and the kids all play together. I wish I'd gotten a pic of all the kids riding their trikes up and down the street with the sun setting behind them. We've got the best neighbors.

Pumpkin Patch

So I must apologize that there are a ton of pics in this post. We had a blast at the pumpkin farm and there were just to many photo ops. It was about an hour from the house. We drove through some neat little towns and found some restaurants we really want to try out some time. The farm was OK, we always hold Bishop's as the standard and we've never found one that can compare. We were definitely in Texas. A lot of cowboy influence, but that is great. They had a guy dressed as a scarecrow and Emma thought he was a scarecrow. He moved and Emma about took off running. Emma on a pile of pumpkins
We got to watch them squeeze cider. It was really good! They sold cute apple shaped bottles of it. Nate loved it! He kept begging for it.
Here is Emma going for a PR in the pumpkin maze.
The whole family
More picture of my kids....I know there are a lot!
I love that he was eating an orange cracker so the crumbs so up in the picture.

Look how strong Emma is!
Nate in a pumpkin pile.
Painting our pumpkins
Nate in another pile of pumpkins.

We thought this pumpkin was a keeper.
Emma loved these picture boards. You think I have a lot of pictures in this post, but there are tons more of Emma in every cut out there was.
It was a really cute little farm,
Nate loved the animals, he just doesn't quite know how to pet yet. Poor goat still has 2 ears though.

Here is the scarecrow Emma designed. She is fabulous! (You can't see it, but she is wearing a skirt.) On the hay ride into the farm
Emma and Jake in the pumpkin maze.
The two cuties ready to start a day of fun at the pumpkin patch.

Nate Dancing

Today Nate started this new dance. He found a CD and brought it to me, so I put it on and he started rocking out.

I love this clip, because I had just turned the music on for the first time in a couple of hours. I wanted to show Jake what he was doing. You can totally see him start to feel the music and then start rocking out. Apparantly he loves Brian Rhodes.

Emma is officially a girl scout

This is our great girl scout troop. They are super girls and we are having lots of fun. Saturday we had our investiture ceremony. The girls all got their uniforms and they were very cute in their presentation. Emma ran around the house in her uniform forever. Then we hung it up, but I kept finding it around the house. She is super excited to earn her petals. She wanted to do them all in one night.

In case you haven't heard, I decided to be a girl scout troop leader. Now that all the training is done (a hassle) it is lots of fun.

Jake's New Drivers License

So I wanted to take a picture of Jake's license and put it on here, but for security reasons I chose not to. Jake actually took the picture and I was suppose to blur the important information, but probably not going to happen any time soon. So, I thought I'd just tell you about it.

We went to go get our driver licenses. Jake's was about to expire, other wise I'm sure we would have procrastinated longer. We get to the department of public safety and the line is out the door. I'm not exaggerating! With Nate in tow we decided to wait it out. It was like a 30 minute drive from our house, so I was hoping we'd be done in time to pick Emma up from school in 3 hours.

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To give them credit, the line moved amazingly fast. I think we were there just over an hour. In Texas they make you turn in your old license when you apply for a new one - so no picture ID for 2-3 weeks. (That could be a whole other blog entry about my experiences trying to get by with out an ID. Getting into Emma's school w/o an ID - not so bad, since they knew me, they just let me use an expired California one from forever ago. The bank was another story, the lady could not wrap her mind around the fact that I was me. I had an expired ID, the paper from the DMV saying I had to turn in my license, my temporary license with no picture and she was still hassling me, checking with management, taking F o r e v e r. For crying out loud, the license is expired, but I'm still me. Its not like I'm going to try to drive the bank. All I wanted was 20 ones. Jake pointed out that I should have gone to the ATM and then taken the 20 into the bank and traded it for ones, but I didn't realize what a big deal it would be and at that point it was to late because they had my ATM card along with 20 forms of other ID)

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Moving on - So finally the cards arrive. Mine is great, even a good pic. Jake's is great - except for one small, minor, HUGE mistake. Under sex - F. So now he's got to try to get it fixed. He thought the best solution would be to just go down and drop his pants at the DMV office, but hopefully we can find another solution.

Big Boys Don't Cry

So on Monday night Nate got in a fight with the bathtub and it won. He goes crazy in the tub. He absolutely loves it! If he can hear the water running he bee lines it for the bathroom. The ultimate injustice in life is if Emma is taking a bath and he isn't. (I'm serious, its one of the few things Nate will through an all out fit about.)

So Monday night we had both the kids in the tub and Nate was crawling around. He slipped and hit the side with his face. Right above his right eye took the brunt of the hit. Right along his eyebrow bone the skin just popped open all the way across. I grabbed him out to go get ice and he wouldn't let me put it on it. He was throughing a huge fit, because he wanted back in the tub. After deciding that he would be fine I sat him back in the bath tub and he instantly stopped crying. I'm sure it hurt, but not as bad as being out of the tub. So there he sat, happy as a clam, splashing in the tub with blood running down the side of his eye. It was pretty puffy that night and the next morning, but it looks like we excaped without a black eye.

This one was taken right after the incident, when he has his eye open you can't see it all, but the ones I took after he fell asllep weren't very flattering. He fell asleep with his eyes half open and I think its kinda creepy looking when he does that.

This was the next morning, the cut seems to be healing quickly, but its quite bruised around it now. Poor little guy. He doesn't seem to be aware of it, so maybe it doesn't hurt to bad. then again it is Nate and he doesn't seem to complain much about anything.

Please guys, no more picture!

More Seaworld fun

Shamu! Emma loves him. We were driving through a neighborhood over by Sea World the other day and Emma said, "This is where Shamu goes on walks." I tried to break the news that Shamo lives in a tank at Sea World and doesn't walk around. To which she clarified, not the real Shamu, the guy in the Shamu costume. He walks around in his costume in this neighborhood. I tried to tell her that he probably takes off his costume to get exercise, but I don't think she was convinced.

Emma looks cold. It was only like 90 out. She is definitely living in the right state. To walk to school in the morning she makes me put her in a giant sweater or coat. Its like 65 out. All the other kids have shorts on and Emma is whining about freezing with a giant fleece on.

Emma and Jake on the log ride

Here is Nate totally rocking out at the Viva dolphin show. He loves to dance right now. He also loves clapping, so he'll start clapping his hands over his head like the people in the show do. We think its pretty cute.

Here is Nate crawling around in the water area. He loves to explore, so this is right up his alley.

Playing out front

Here is a clip of Nate crawling.  Does he remind you of anyone?  He only crawls like this outside, I think the sidewalks hurt his knees.

What's going on down there?  Nate loves playing in our neighbors car.