Hurrication pictures

So, despite the fact that I had one kid with a constant stomach ache and the runs, and another who projectile vomited on me more than once every day, we tried to make the most of our "hurrication" in Dallas. We went to the Dallas Zoo one day. If you haven't been, skip it. It's named the biggest zoo in Texas, and it may very well be but in my opinion it's a whole lot of nothing. Lots of trees, lots of hills, lots of walking, not many animals. The kids had a ball though, so that's all that matters. Another day we went to the Dallas World Aquarium. You should check this one out if you're there, VERY cool. Sort of pricey, but the most unique aquarium I've ever been to. It's several stories of winding paths and it looks like you're outside in a rain forest. Here are some pictures from the week:

Jacob and his Texas sized breakfast. ;)

The highlight of the zoo trip for Jonah, getting to pet a pig. Here's a question for y'all in the Golden Triangle: where (within a reasonable distance) can I take him to see piglets? It would TOTALLY make this kid's day to hold a baby pig, he's been obsessed with pigs since before he was two. Leave a comment or shoot me an email if you have any ideas.

This is what Caleb did for most of the zoo day, so this is the only picture of him.

Jonah and his souvenir from the zoo. A pig. Imagine that.

At the aquarium:

This is what it normally looks like when I try to take a picture, we always have about 8 like this and maybe one semi normal one.

And because there's only one picture of him in this post, and because he's cute when he's not spewing formula all over me:

Nav E. Gator

Becca's phone has a navigator on it, this nice lady gives turn by turn directions and tells you EXACTLY what to do. Very helpful little tool when you're in an unfamiliar (and big) city. We named her "Navvy" and by the end of our trip, even Mom was saying "ask Navvy what to do!" :D If you don't have one, or have never used one, you should really try it. We would set out having no idea where we were going, and Navvy would guide us there every time. It's really useful for people like me who get lost going straight...really. I have no sense of direction whatsoever. It was really neat because we would type in where we wanted to go, Target for example, and Navvy would find the closest one to us. She only got snippy once or twice (GET IN THE LEFT LANE! STAY LEFT, STAY LEFT!) which caused Becca to swerve quite a bit because she waited until the last minute to give instructions but we always made it to where we were going. I was so impressed that I thought Navvy deserved her very own post.

I love you, Navvy.

I think I may have an item to put on my Christmas list this year. ;)

Caleb and the ducks

How about we get back to some happier posting?! Today was Caleb's first experience with feeding ducks at the park. He LOVES animals and thought the quacking ducks were hilarious.

This picture looks worse than it really was, he was buckled in the stroller, the wheels were locked and it wouldn't have fit through the hole anyway. (Take a deep breath Mom.) :P







Em on the monkey bars, she just hangs for a few seconds then screams for help.



We may could do this more often since the weather has been so nice but the skeeters are HORRIBLE, are they not?! Avon Skin So Soft, just in case you haven't tried it. Smells much better than OFF and works just as well. Contact your local Avon Representative. Wink, wink. :)

965 Beaumont Dr., Crystal Beach, Texas - Part 3

Here's the last set of pictures. Enjoying the beach and cabin way back when.

Little baby me:








We used to spin ourselves sick in this hammock:

Not many other cabins around in 1976:

Me and Uncle Gary:

Mowing the grass (and drinking beer) with Papa. Ah the good old days, when it was OK to let a two year old chug beer. I bet I was a good sleeper.

Bec and Papa:

Bec and Geah:

Little baby Becca (looking a whole lot like Caleb):

Nice flattering picture of myself. Showing my arse even back then.

That's me way waving from way at the top, in 1982-ish:

My kids heading up to the top in 2008:

Becca and I in 1982:

My kids in 2008:

965 Beaumont Dr., Crystal Beach - Part 2

I made up a slideshow using pictures from our beach visits over the past 6 years. From Jacob and Jonah's first visit to our last one this past July. I chose the song for a very specific reason. Mom decorated part of the cabin with tropical stuff, and there was this one battery operated parrot decoration (toy) that spun around on his perch, told jokes and sang a song. He sang Sitting on the Dock of the Bay and my kids would play that over and over and over again while they sang along. It was always the first thing they ran to when we got there and the last thing they put up before we left.

The video is a bit longer than I planned on it being, but I had more pictures than I thought.

965 Beaumont Dr., Crystal Beach - Part 1

We join with the MANY people across Texas (and elsewhere) who are devastated by the destruction at "the beach." Hurricane Ike totally effed things up, that's for sure. Our family cabin is no more, all that's left are the numbers from the address on a thin piece of wood stuck to the poles. I have such sweet memories from there, really the only vacation spot I (and my kids) have ever known. Jonah cried when we told him that it was gone, Emmy keeps mentioning the waterslide and the Big Store, she just doesn't understand. It's hard for even adults to understand, the power of water is amazing.

Before:



After:

You have to look really close to see (click on the picture to enlarge it) but if you look right between the telephone poles, you'll see what I'm pointing at. The sad little piece of wood with 965 on it. That's all that's left. :(



I'll be making a few more beach cabin posts in the next few days as I gather up some of my favorite pictures from over the years with my kids, and Mom is going to dig some of hers out from WAY back. We'll never forget all of the good times we had there and we'll miss it like crazy. Maybe we can rebuild one day but it'll never be the same.

Well that was fun

I'm so over hurricane season, just so everybody knows. We went all the way to flipping Dallas this time. We ended up in Plano in an extended stay hotel which was really nice, Plano is a beautiful city, by the way. We're home now though and everything is fine with the house. We were lucky and didn't have any damage. Our fence fell over but so did everybody else's in the neighborhood.

We took the kids to the Dallas World Aquarium (really cool) and to the Dallas Zoo (not so much) and we found some nice parks to play in. I took lots of pictures of course, and will try to get them uploaded in the next few days.

No idea when school starts back up, not soon enough is all I know. Last night I was watching the news and Greg Bostwick had the nerve to talk about another "disturbance" in the tropics. WTF?! He didn't talk about it for long though, that's right Greg, move on to the 5 day forecast, nobody wants to hear it. I bet he's afraid of walking into an angry mob in the parking lot after work. It IS his fault, afterall. Mr. "Ike will not be a threat to the Gulf." PPPPPPFFFFFFFTTTTT!

That's all for now, I'll have another post with pictures later on!

Evacuating

Hence the million posts tonight. We're leaving in the morning, heading to Dallas. PLEEEEEEEEEASE don't let it take all day to get there. Hopefully things are just being blown out of proportion again, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Everybody stay safe!!

Video

I made this video last year when Jacob and Jonah started school, it has the same song that I have up on the blog to go along with the pictures. Turn the blog music off (scroll way down to the bottom of the page to do that) and listen to the song with the video, that way it'll match up. ;) I cry every time I watch it!!

Bike riders

Jacob and Jonah rode their bikes to school for the first time this week. We cheated and parked at a friend's house because she lives in a safer place for biking. Our street doesn't have sidewalks and people drive way too fast on it. It's a short ride, but their friend James was excited to have somebody to ride with. My friend and I pushed our little ones in strollers while the "big boys" rode their bikes. We only did it the one day, I had to stop on the way back to the car so Em could yak in the grass and the week just went downhill from there. I'm sure we'll do lots more of it especially when the weather cools down some.

Jonah

Jacob

Dancing queen

Emmy had her first day of dance Tuesday. She's taking ballet and tap. She was VERY excited about her "tapping shoes." Thank GOD we don't have more hard floors in our house. I thought I would die when I was dropping her off, my head was already pounding and there were 10 little girls all trying to out tap one another. Emmy went on in just fine and said that she had a good time and wants to go back next week. :)

Vomit

Lovely topic of conversation huh? Emmy's nasty sick, we (she and I) must have had 3 hours of sleep total last night and it was broken. She was up every 20 or so minutes puking. The first time she was convinced that she was just hungry, so we came into the living room (at 2am) so she could eat some crackers. They didn't stay down long.

What are the odds that this won't pass to anybody else?! CROSS YOUR FINGERS!!!!

Meanwhile, the boys are riding their bikes to school for the very first time today. We're parking at a friends house and borrowing her sidewalks, it's really not feasible to bike down our road in the morning since people think it's the effing cut-through speedway. PPPFFFFTT! I'll push the other two in the stroller. I'll have pics I'm sure, it IS a first and all. ;)

9 seconds of just plain mean

Watch first and then I'll defend myself.



So you're either laughing (Becca) or saying "poor baby!" (Mom) but let me just say, Jacob and Jonah's favorite holiday is Halloween. They LOVE scary things, they always pick out the most horrid decorations in the stores. They like that sort of thing! They like jokes and tricks, the combination was not a hit though. Jonah wouldn't sit by me for an hour afterwards, if it makes you "poor baby" people feel any better. :P They've not stopped talking about it all day, Jacob is sure now that he wasn't scared and he says that it was funny afterall. I have to disagree, he looked like he needed to change his pants just as much as Jonah did. They did feel better when I told them that a friend of theirs ran from the computer all the way to his room. His Mom is mean like me.

Here's the link to the "game" if you know anybody who will fall for it. ;)

Tic Tac Scare

Vacation (I mean evacuation) pictures

Jacob said "Mom, you took us on an extra vacation and it isn't even summer anymore!" I'm so glad they enjoyed themselves, it sure was worth it to drive for 5+ hours to go to a Houston Chuck E Cheese's and swim in a nasty hotel pool. If we would have booked a better hotel (NEVER stay in a Super 8, just FYI) then we may could have stayed a few extra days and maybe hit Splashtown or the zoo. Next evacuation maybe. ;)

Jacob playing games (God bless Gamaw and her laptop)

Too much swimming. She sleeps with her eyes half open, it's a little freaky:

That's Bec down there with Caleb in the not so hot tub.

Caleb's first time at Chuck E Cheese's. (Ok so it's really not his first time, but I forgot the camera the other times so for future reference, it's his first. I'll never remember that I lied.)

We don't have this game/ride at the Beaumont CEC:

He was playing peek-a-boo with the plate, this is the first picture I have that shows his two cute little top teeth. (Nice picture taking Becca!!)

Jonah was pathetic on Sunday night. We'd been gone a whopping 24 hours and he was crying because he missed his daddy. I had to call Basil and let him talk to Jonah and that made things all better. When we got home Monday he ran in the house looking for him and was disappointed when he found out that Basil was at work. He came home not long afterwards though, and Jonah ran out the front door and met him in the driveway, it was cute. Ridiculous but really cute.

This is what the front of my car looked like when we got back. EWWWW! It was raining lovebugs!