Veggie Tales Live!

Friday afternoon we drove down to Houston to see Veggie Tales Live! Caleb loves Veggie Tales and was so excited to see the "Bob Show." Our friends, The Turners, were so nice to get us tickets. They spoiled Caleb with a glow stick and a "Bob ball" too. Caleb was a bit quiet during the first half of the show just soaking it all in. But by the second half he was dancing in the aisles and having a good ol' time.

The show was awesome and then we went for ice cream. Thanks guys, for everything! We had so much fun with you!

Here is Caleb in his new fashionable bob hat:


We were originally going to go to a baseball game and go to the aquarium and such. But because of the hurricane a couple weeks ago, every hotel room was still booked and our poor friends STILL didn't have power back on at their house! (Luckily it came on late that afternoon). So we decided to come back late that night and had to miss the fun birthday party on Saturday too.

But we didn't leave town without tracking down a Kroger that sells my coveted Cincinnati Chili. It is one of the many things that I seriously miss from Cincinnati. You eat it over spaghetti noodles and it is soooooooooooo yummy! So we were soooooooo excited when we discovered a couple years ago that some Kroger stores sell it. (Maybe because Kroger is based in Cincinnati or something? I don't know...but it doesn't matter as long as they keep selling it! :) But we don't have Kroger in San Antonio so whenever we go somewhere that does, we have to try to stock up!!



We didn't get home until after 2am, but Chris and I had a lot of fun on the drive back talking and laughing. We spent a good portion of the time devising ways to open the soda Chris bought that required a bottle opener that we didn't have. After too much time and effort, we finally got it open--only to find out it was pretty gross. :)

Hawaii

We just got back from a week long trip celebrating our 10th(!) anniversary. Our anniversary isn't actually until December, but we decided it is always too crazy around all the holidays to take such a trip, so we went a bit early. Chris planned the whole thing and refused to tell me where we were going until we were at the airport ready to check our bags. He tricked me because earlier he had given me a hint and said that we were staying somewhere on the east coast. So that's where I thought we were headed. But we actually went and stayed near the east coast of Hawaii! Chris did a fantastic job planning everything!

First of all, I have to say that it just about killed me to leave Caleb for a whole week! And if leaving him wasn't bad enough, he had double ear infections and a hurricane was supposed to come through the day after we left. Here...watch my kid with double ear infections during a hurricane while I'm in Hawaii...thanks! But our good friends, the Plumlees watched him and we knew he was in good hands. He had soooooooo much fun with them! Most of the time when we called to chat with him, he was too busy playing and having fun to take much time to chat! Thanks again, guys!

We stayed at a cool place right on Waikiki Beach (THANK YOU, Kaylyn!). It had a pool, ping pong tables, pool tables, tennis courts, a playground, tons of picnic areas, etc.



We arrived just in time to go to the Aloha Festival which just happened to be going on that day and happened to be a block from our hotel. They had tons of food and vendors and live music.

We went to the huge Swap Meet where just about everything you could imagine is sold for cheap prices. It was held at Aloha Stadium--we were also hoping to catch a Hawaii college football game, but they were playing away that week.



We went to the Polynesian Culture Center which was awesome! I really enjoyed our day there! The show at the end is very worth the price!!



We went to a Luau and the food was sooooooooo good!




We also went to Pearl Harbor



We attended church in Tongan

We went to the LDS Laie temple



To the Dole Pineapple Plantation



We enjoyed walking up and down the streets near our hotel. At night, every few feet there were different artists, musicians, magicians, dancers, singers, mimes, people making huge balloon animals, and all kinds of crazy stuff. It was so fun to check everything out! This guy was dressed head to toe in newspaper stuff and just sat totally still like a statue:



We went to the beach every day, sometimes several times a day. Sometimes we'd just walk around, other times Chris surfed while I read a book on the beach. There was also a different show every night on the beach with live singers and hula dancers.








And of course, what is a vacation without lots of card games and tons of good food!

Chris took about a billion pictures that turned out really good, but I'm too lazy to go through them all right now for the best ones. I'll have to post a slide show of them later!

We had a wonderful time ! Thanks, Chris, for all your hard work planning this trip! I think the only reason we came back was to get Caleb!

I can't believe it's already been 10 years! Time flies when you're having fun!

It's a...

It's a boy!

We are due February 5th and we are VERY excited to be having another boy! Everything looks good except they did tell us today that he has a moderate dilated renal pelvis--basically both kidneys have some urine going back into them for some reason. Or something like that. Maybe some of you could fill us in better on what that is exactly. But the doctor didn't seem worried and said that we will be watching it for the next few weeks and that in most cases it clears up by itself-- so that is what we are hoping for.

We are pretty much just giddy to be having two boys in a row!

Just About Perfect...

We had so much fun together this weekend. Chris had no schoolwork to do (yahoo!), nothing for work that had to be done, and few church responsibilities which made for lots of time together!!

We've been wanting to go on the train down by the zoo for quite some time, but wanted to go when Chris could go. So we headed down there Saturday morning. Caleb was just about in heaven!




He also got to buy a train whistle while we were there. At first he would just put his mouth on it and make the sound with his voice. But he figured it out pretty quickly and then he bugged everyone at the zoo for the next few hours by constantly blowing it. Here is a little taste of what all the lucky zoo patrons got to hear anytime Caleb was around:



Caleb did take a quick break from the whistle to feed and brush the goats with Chris:



We went out to lunch together and went home and we ALL took a late nap during the afternoon. An unheard of event at our house.

We played Candy Land together (Caleb legitimately won on his first time playing ever! Darn him! :) He proved once again that he is definitely half Nelson by showing his competitiveness. Even in Candy Land. Every time he got a good card he would say, "Oh yeah!" and such phrases. Later that evening we did some shopping together.

Sunday we were lucky enough to have dinner with the Weatherholtz and then they came over to play games. Always so much fun! Thanks, guys! (We took some pretty hilarious pictures, but I thought I might get in trouble with certain people if I posted them here, but you'll have to ask them about the cool pictures....)

Monday we went to Botanical Gardens. Here is Caleb climbing all over:



Then we went out to lunch, and hit the Kung Fu Panda movie. We were going to go swimming, but the pool we joined this summer was closed. So we did the slip-n-slide in the Weatherholtz backyard and had a barbecue there. Again, too much fun!

Overall, it was pretty much a perfect weekend together and the way every weekend should be in my mind! :)