12-12-12

It was fun to have Julia's 7th birthday land on 12-12-12.  Being a busy time of year, we celebrated as a family on the day of her birthday and planned her party with friends for January.

We had the traditional cinnamon roll for breakfast and I took her Whataburger for lunch at school.

With her birthday being on a Wednesday, she still went to dance class and then she chose to eat as a family for dinner at IHOP afterwards.

Matt did such a great job on Julia's cake that we felt bad eating it.  

piano performances

Kylee and Brayden had their fall piano recital on November 17th.  They gave a great performance.   

 

On December 8th they both were a part of the SAMTA Winter Festival and played Christmas songs at the Rolling Oaks Mall.  

Since we were already at the mall, Kylee asked if she could get her ears pierced again.  She had them done when she was 8, but they were too much work for her to keep up with them.

Thanksgiving with Family

Grandma Mindy and the Morris Family came on Saturday, November 17th to spend the Thanksgiving Holiday in San Antonio.  We took pictures of our family on our back porch after church.

On Monday we spent the day at Sea World.  It was a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed it. The weather was perfect and the lines were not too bad.  Megan rode the Steel Eel 8 times and Zach and Brayden were trying to break their own record of riding the Shamu Express.  They ended up riding somewhere between 30-50 times.  All the riding made it difficult for them to count correctly.

On Tuesday we let the kids play and hang out in the morning and then we tried to go to the Children's Museum.  It is free on Tuesday  afternoons and so that made it way too full and crazy.  Luckily there were some neat places to explore near by.

So, we went with plan #2 and rode the Brackenridge Train

and walked around the Japanese Tea Gardens. 

On Wednesday we went to walk around the Temple in the morning and had Rudy's for lunch.

We painfully tried to take pictures of all the kids at the temple.  We took about 20 pictures of this one pose. If one was cooperating the other wasn't.  They were closing their eyes, or putting their hands up, or looking away.  Matt had to get Blake to sit down a few times. 

In the afternoon we did the downtown sights.  We explored Hemasfair Park

We caught Jaxon trying trying to give Blake a nudge into the water.

Then on to the Riverwalk

and the Alamo

Other activities in the week:  Wii dance, playing outside, cartoon drawing, painting rocks, and hand games.

On Thursday we had a yummy Thanksgiving dinner for which Uncle Carlos joined us.

Artwork for Thanksgiving.  A turkey Julia made and a turkey that Blake had to disguise so it wouldn't get eaten.

Blake and Julia practiced having a Thanksgiving feast earlier in the month.  They even used a turkey puppet as their main course.  

On Friday we decided against the Dickens on Maine in Boerne and hung out at home and the Morris' packed up.  We took pictures at the Del Webb entrance and celebrated Brayden's birthday.

Laser Quest birthday

Since the Morris family was here for Thanksgiving, we decided that we should celebrate Brayden's birthday with them before they left.  So, Matt made a football cake and we had a little celebration on 

November 23, 2012.

On November 26, 2012 Brayden had the traditional cinnamon roll breakfast.  That evening we meet Uncle Carlos at Red Robin to eat dinner.  Uncle Carlos gave Brayden a UT sweatshirt that he LOVED.  We came back home to open his presents.  The first present Brayden opened was a box of rocks and sticks.  Matt had been teasing him that he was only going to get rocks and sticks, so that is what he got. 

Brayden had his birthday party with friends at Laser Quest on December 1, 2012.  The boys that came were Dallin's cousin who was visiting, Wesley Mason, Joey Faylor, Taylor Dahlke, Harrison Snarr, Dallin Anderson, and Josh Faylor.  

They played 2 games of laser tag, and then we had a room where they ate pizza, sang Happy Birthday, and ate birthday cake.  

Brayden had fun.  It was the perfect party for a group of boys.  

refrigerator drinks

Blake has been a milk addict since he was little.  He would prefer to drink milk like it was water.  He would ask often to have a glass of milk.  I noticed that he would not always finish his milk so I would put the cup in the refrigerator and save it.  That way when he asked me an hour later for milk I could tell him that it was in the fridge.  He liked the convenience of not having to ask for help in getting a drink and started storing it in the fridge himself.  He even started storing cups of water in the fridge, when he can easily get some from the water dispenser on the fridge. Lately he has been storing multiple cups in the fridge.  We will  open up fridge and he has several cups of drink.  

Falcon Football

As a number of Brayden's school friends have played football the past couple of years, he had been asking for a chance to play as well.  He really didn't know much about the game, having never really seen it played other than an Air Force Academy game when we all went up to my 10-year class reunion.  He was somewhat handicapped from the start given the complexity of the sport and a father who really doesn't ever watch or follow it.  However, he was undeterred.

We signed Brayden up for the 9-10 year-old YMCA league.  I tried to explain the idea of the sport and some basic rules, but there was still a huge learning curve.  From the beginning he felt like he was REALLY FAST (and actually is much faster than anyone else on the team except one other kid), but he says he needs to work on throwing and catching the ball.  He is the tallest boy on his team as well, though he doesn't have mass on his side.

He has really taken to it and has improved considerably in the short season.  On his second game he ran the ball twice, the second time 3/4 the length of the field for a touchdown.  He was fast enough that he was able to stop and look back three times to see how close the defense was.

At his most recent game he explained that Tanner, another boy on the team, was able to pull seven flags during the game whereas he normally only pulls two.  The reason, he expounded, was that his father had offered him $2 for every flag he pulled and he had a lot of motivation.  This was obviously going somewhere.  Just think how many flags Brayden could pull if he were more properly motivated, he suggested.

When asked about the season, football is the sport he has enjoyed the most so far.  Baseball was also fun, but basketball not so much.  There are also some sports he has not played yet, like "hockey in the sky", which on further investigation I discovered to be lacrosse, and "swimming soccer", or water polo.

Temple with Kylee

On November 13th Kylee went for the first time to the San Antonio Temple to do baptisms with the youth of the Wiseman Ward. We were both able to go with her because Nicole Faylor offered to watch our kids.