Here Comes Santa Claus

On Tuesday, we went to Memorial City Mall to see Santa Claus. Ike and Aggie had seen Santa at the Bass Pro Shop before, but Ike wouldn't talk to him so he had to go see Santa again. This time, Ike told Santa that he wants a big train set for Christmas. He told Santa that Aggie would like a pink backpack. Both were well-behaved and took a nice picture. Aggie even kept a bow in her hair. The scan isn't that great, but you can see they took a decent picture...better than many I've seen so far this year.

Seymour Public Library

The Seymour Library has a great children's section. Ike and Aggie were running around (yeah, in a library) playing with a Thomas the Tank Engine train set and a neat puppet stage with all kinds of puppets. Aggie played in the little infant/toddler area and was quite pleased. Ike also colored some Thanksgiving themed coloring sheets.

In the entry to the library, there is this huge tree cross section and each tree ring represents a year and some historical event in Seymour/Jackson County.
We did actually check out some books and videos while we were there. The kids had just made stone soup at daycare the week before so we checked out the book and read it many times over the span of the visit.

Visiting Friends

We were able to visit several friends while in Indiana.

Back Home Again, in Indiana

We traveled to Seymour, Indiana for Thanksgiving. What an adventure! High points included fishing and visiting the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

Weekend Pics

Ike and Mick drove up to College Station Sunday while Aggie and I attended a bridal shower. They visited the map room at the library at Texas A&M. Ike was able to see the fine theses by Konvicka and Elmore and pose with a giant globe.

On Saturday, we went outside and played some catch. Does anyone think Global Warming explains why Aggie is wearing a sun dress in mid-November!

Fall Festivities

Look Ike! The Apaches are coming!

The Eckelbergs had a Halloween party at their house on the weekend before Halloween. Ike dressed up as a cowboy, and Aggie, well she was an Aggie. Chad drove the tractor and took us for a hayride. They had a spooky fun house that was pretty scary for a little boy.

Mick volunteered at the kids' school for their Fall Festival. He dressed up as a safari explorer and manned the penny splash game.

Pumpkin Carving

Some friendly competition motivated us to carve a pumpkin last night. They are having a contest at daycare on Friday and another at our BCOA fall festival on Saturday. We may create a separate entry for the one on Saturday, but this is what we created for Friday.

Fair Time Again

Wow. It has been about a year or so since I started the blog. It was time for the Austin County Fair again. Mick and Ike played hookie again, and this year they got Kristy to do the same. This is a picture from last year's parade:
And the 2007 parade:

Dewberry Farm....but no dewberries?!

On Sunday, we went to Dewberry Farm in Brookshire with the Rosebuds group. There was tons to do and we had lots of fun, but there were no dewberries there.

They also had a pumpkin patch where you could choose your own pumpkin, but we didn't do that. It would have cramped our style too much to have to lug around a pumpkin or interupt our fun to put it in the car.

Ike got to pet a rabbit and feed corn to a turkey. That turkey pecked the corn right from his fingers! Late in the day, Ike found the jumping pillow and jumped himself out for about 30 minutes.

We missed out on the corn maze because there was just SO much to do that we didn't get to it. It was about 90 degrees that day, and late in the afternoon, a storm brewed (as you can see from the pic with Ike jumping) so we decided we'd had all the fun we could stand that day. We'll definitely have to go back another time!

While the cat's away...

While Ike was off running around with Grandma and Grandpa on Sunday, Aggie took advantage of the opportunity to play with Ike's tube. He calls it his "cube". Reminds me of Popoids from when I was young. Isn't she just adorable? And doesn't she still appear bald in pictures?!

Halloween Preparedness Week

Yesterday Ike helped Grandma and Grandpa put up the Halloween blowups. He helped rake leaves and was Grandpa's helper. The spider is a new edition this year.

Earlier in the week, Grandma got out all of her Halloween decorations. She loves the noisy, scary ones, and I've never seen Ike leave Grandma's house quite so fast as he did Friday night! On the way home, he said "I don't want to go back to Grandma's house anymore. Those things scare me!" When asked if he wanted to go with Grandma on Sunday (usually a no-brainer), Ike asked, "Did she put those things away?" Grandma ended up putting away a cackling witch and turning some others around and now Ike is happy to visit her again.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

Here is a picture taken just this morning of the two munchkins. They are big kids, and it's unusual that they are both sitting still long enough to take a picture like this. They must have still been groggy! Lately we've been kept busy trying to keep these two in line. School is back in session for Mick, and life is back to its normal rapid pace.

Suessical

Ike went to the Pajama Time storytime at the college library last night. It was a Cat in the Hat theme since Suessical the Musical is playing at the center next to the college right now. Ike heard three stories: The Cat in the Hat, Horton Hatches the Egg, and Horton Hears a Who! As seen here, some of the characters from the musical came over for the storytime. Ike has started getting into Dr. Suess books. We went to the Sealy library and checked out the maximum number of books, a whopping 3 whole books, all of them Dr. Suess. One of them was a compilation of six stories. It is old and the pages have started coming away from the binding. A big chunk of pages fell out and Ike cried and cried. Poor kid. I think the lecture about how we need to take good care of the library books really made an impression on him.

C'mon Mom, Keep Up!

I have been informed more than once recently that I have been extremely slow to update the blog. I've offered to pass on the responsibility, but that didn't fly so here I am.

We've been busy since we last posted (coloring Easter eggs two months ago!). We experienced the busiest weekend yet. Zoobilee was Friday, the 15th. Ike's "Tigger" party was Saturday, the 16th. Father's Day was Sunday, the 17th. By the 18th, we were ready to go back to work because we couldn't take anymore excitement!

We've started a bit of a tradition (if Aggies do something twice, it becomes Tradition) with our Father's Day lunches. This year we returned to Pappadeaux's because Mick wanted to eat alligator (and there was no wait). Mick got a free coffee mug to commemorate the occasion.

In other news since April, Aggie is now eating table food and drinking cow milk. She's walking and says "dada". Her hair is really growing in the back, but she still appears bald on top. She has taken on an endearing nickname at daycare: they all call her "Pelona" which means no hair, baldy. I think she's going to take this nickname with her to the toddler room.

Ike is potty training. He's doing a pretty good job so far. He's got standing offers for rewards once he gets it down pat. His vocabulary is improving and his speech is improving. Lately he's been saying "yessss" and "why-eeee". Today is his 3-year check up so we'll find out how big he has gotten. We know he's a big boy, but we can't wait to quantify it. On that note, today is our last visit to see Dr. Readinger. He is moving to Fort Worth, and Mommy is sad about that. Ike had a great Tigger party with his friends at Monkey Bizness, and last weekend he went to Hopey's gymnastics party.

Mommy's work is very busy, hence no posts. Houston is booming right now because of the oil industry, and Cameron stock is up. Our division moved to our new location over the Memorial Day weekend, and a month later, we are still dealing with build out issues. I've also gone through Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt Level I and II training. All I need is some more work, right?!

Daddy is busy with the first summer session that he affectionately refers to as "Summer Boot Camp". He has about two more weeks of that, and then he's down to one class per week. But when his real job simmers down, his "honey do" list kicks in. There is plenty to do around the house to keep him from becoming bored. We got gutters put on the house, and our next project is getting a patio installed. Decorative Concrete....who knew? Once that's in, I'll have to post about it.

In other interesting news, Bobby Jones, as in Bobby Jones Czech Band that played at our wedding, is currently missing. He was last seen on June 22nd and no one has seen him or heard from him since. He missed two gigs over the weekend and didn't show up to work Monday morning. According to the news reports, it doesn't seem like they are looking too hard for him. They don't yet suspect foul play....they seem to think he might have taken off on his own. But either way, we feel they should be doing more to locate him. Godspeed.

Eggs, Glorious Eggs

We colored Easter eggs last weekend. Ike had an Easter party at school on Thursday and learned about coloring eggs there. He was a pro when we did them at home. He wanted to be the one to "catch" the egg with the dipper. Aren't our eggs pretty? Turns out that we tried two different kinds of coloring kits from Wal-Mart, and the cheaper one without the fancy cups had better color. I'm not sure which one of us had more fun though. We had to take an intermission to boil another dozen eggs!

"I'll be there when the bluebonnets bloom."

We took the kids out Sunday to take pictures in the Bluebonnets near Welcome Community. The flowers were pretty good in our usual spot. Ike was slow to warm up to the camera for some reason, not his usual ham-self that day. Aggie enjoyed pulling the blooms off. We had a picnic at the park in Industry, and Ike played on the playground.

Aggie Girl

You may have been wondering what Aggie was up to during all of our adventures. She's been along for the ride, but she enjoys sleeping on these trips.

She went for her 9 month checkup last week. 17.1 lbs and 27 inches. Two teeth, and more on the way. Crawling and cruising. Finally growing some hair.

Happy Independence Day, Texas!

The first weekend in March, we went to the Texas Independence Day celebration at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park. The weather turned out to be great that day. Sam Houston IV was the speaker. His speech was brief, and he basically said that Texas History as a subject in public schools was suffering because of standardized testing. He has been focusing his political efforts on getting rid of the TAKS test, and his report was that it looks like the legislature is going to can it. I don't know about that, but it seemed an odd subject for an Independence Day address. The guy looked just like portraits I've seen of the original Sam Houston! We shopped in the gift shop along with Congressman Michael McCaul, and Ike got a patch and a walking stick.