Where does the time go?

It's VISTA-tastic

That was aA movie made up of freeze shots from my laptop's camera, as you can tell the kids love it. And it turns out VISTA isn't as horrible as I thought it would be, it even came with the software to make this little movie. Too fun!

Aquatica, SeaWorld Orlando, and Halloween - Friday to Friday it was a busy week...

I'm not sure if these are the best photos from the past week's adventures, but at least it's a start. Besides, if I didn't put something up now, I'm not sure when I'd get back to it.
Our whirlwind Florida vacation was super awesome! - No, we didn't do anything Disney - While we were there we checked out the new SeaWorld Aquatica water park & SeaWorld Orlando.

Aquatica was lots of fun, full of splash pools, water slides, and plenty of sunchairs to relax on if the excitement got to be too much.



The water park also had a few animal exhibits and interaction areas - here's Tayne with a lizard.

And a neat feature was the lazy river that took you past 2 fish tanks and the Commerson's dolphins (pictured further down) Here's a picture of the whole group (Troy, Tayne, Troy's Parents, and Pallas) before going around.

I think Tayne's favorite was walkabout waters - a giant water playground, I think it took him a couple of hours to explore everything to his satisfaction. Pallas got some splashing around in too.

Here are the fun little Commerson's dolphins - they were so cute, almost like little Shamus (probably why they chose them for this park) -There was a nice area where you could watch them underwater and that tube you see is part of a slide that runs through the tank (supposedly so you can see the dolphins as you go streaking past, but I think it's probably more entertaining for the dolphins)

Moving on to SeaWorld - Here's Tayne with some of the costumed characters they had for the Halloween trick-or-treating (Did you guess it was a school of fish and their teacher?)

Pallas and I were busy playing in the sandbox while Troy and Tayne went exploring, but as you can see they had to get in on the grainy fun.

Did I mention there were bubbles everywhere on the way to Shamu (yes, including in kids eyes)

Both kids had a great time though, here's Pallas and Tayne waiting for Troy and his mom to come by on an insane roller coaster (it not only flipped them upside down, it also went underground 3 times)

Here's Pallas enjoying some of the animals (Seals and Sea Lions and weird looking birds)

And now on to Halloween -

Here's Tayne at the spooky house -

And Pallas at the community carnival - she had a great time and lots of admirers (I think other people took her picture more times than we did - but to be fair I had to keep chasing after her as she toddled around)

Here she is on the move -

Not a baby anymore!

Yesterday Tayne and I were talking and Pallas was being cranky so I told him that she needed a nap. He asked if it was because babies need more sleep, and I said yes, then he informed me that Pallas was being a baby today but that tomorrow she wouldn't be a baby. I started to tell him no, that babies stayed babies for quite a long time when it dawned on me he was talking about tomorrow (which is today) being her birthday - sniff!- as usual he was right, my baby isn't such a baby anymore, she's a one year old (and since she's walking pretty consistently these days we'll bestow upon her the title of toddler which is acceptable to Tayne as of October 15th because Wikipedia's definition of toddler includes ages 12- 36 months and he's a stickler for details). Anyway, because I'm to lazy to do a montage of then and now pictures, or through the first 12 months pictures, I'll instead leave you with a collection of brand new pictures from our San Antonio trip & party with the cousins!

Naturally we went to Sea World San Antonio, but since you've seen pictures of pretty much everything they have there I'll just include a couple of new things - here's Tayne showing us the Halloween version of the park map - Spooky!

We did visit the usual stuff, you'll be happy to know the penguins are doing well, and it's fun to watch Pallas there, you can tell she just wants to pick those penguins up and squeeze them if she could only devise a plan that would get her past the thick glass and through the water over to the island where they are standing, I really should get a picture or movie of her little hands doing that little finger wiggle over an imaginary ball/penguin while she watches them, it's too funny! AND yes, I realize this story has nothing to do with the picture of Tayne walking in the sand, but I only took movies (no pictures) at the penguin exhibit and I didn't bother to add those here.
Tayne had a good time trying to fling sand up at the people who would pass overhead climbing the nets, but as gravity is a harsh mistress, he didn't manage to get sand on anyone but himself - luckily he didn't get too much sand in his eyes -
This picture was just too cute with the two of them playing together in the sand... Now we move onto the "party with the cousins" photos - all three girls were wearing pink stuff (though you can't see Megan's shirt, it has pink on it and she's got a pink skirt on), being cute and posing for photos so there are probably more shots of them than Tayne in here - he was kind of outnumbered - but he had a good time too!)

Grandma Dee had lots of activities to keep everyone busy, here they are decorating pumpkins. Lindsey made a vampire dog, Tayne made an elevator, and I think Megan just drew a face on hers.
Pallas was a bit stumped for ideas so Lindsey did a face for her pumpkin. Here she's trying to convince Pallas to let her give that plain pumpkin a makeover - sassy!
We opened the gifts early, before candles and cake, mostly because the guests weren't hungry yet but they were interested in playing with the presents. Here they are discussing the ground rules for a game of cow bowling (one of the joys of infant and toddler games for the older kids is the lack of written rules for how to play, leaving them free to decide their own rules).
Tayne is busy timing something...
Time for an art lesson - here Megan is showing Pallas how to draw correctly after Pallas was only able to scribble on the paper she was given, I thought this picture was funny because it looks like she's giving Megan's picture a thumbs down rating (as if to say, "You didn't think I could draw, well this is what I think of your picture...")- every one's a critic!

I just couldn't believe how much she looks like a toddler and not a little baby in this picture...
Watch out Tayne! Crazy girls in pink are coming at ya!
They are really playing catch and throw here, I know it looks like Pallas is mad, but really she just threw the ball.
Here's another one of the girls being goofy and Tayne being "outta here"

You've gotta toot your own horn sometimes!

Just me moving Pallas somewhere (maybe over to her highchair for cake and candle time?)
Ah-ha! I was right, this picture she looks grumpy because she twice burned her finger putting out the candle before the song was done and we got to the "BLOW it out" instructions. Her little face is saying, "I'm only one, this is my first time at this, why would they stick something so flickery and interesting in front of me and not bother to tell me I'm supposed to blow on it instead of touch it, saying, "blow it out and make a wish" should not be the last thing it should be the first thing they tell me!"
Here Pallas and Megan were sharing a rocking chair, Pallas had fun but Megan was rocking too slow for her taste (see the happy smile on Megan and the weak, "yeah this is fun I guess..." smile on Pallas), sometimes she felt like she needed to lean forward and push on the cushion to make it rock faster. What a little daredevil.

That's all for now, gotta go play with the birthday girl and her super cool brother! The days are going by too fast.

It's coming

Happy Halloween Comments
- Can you tell I'm itching to decorate for Halloween? -I know, I've really been oranging up the blog here lately, probably because I'm too cheap or lazy to buy things to put up at my real home (which is no real tragedy because most of you never actually come to my home, so I might as well decorate here instead), and the scariest thing about this was I could post it right from the critical layouts site, I didn't even have to cut and paste code - they could transport the Great Pumpkin here by magic! Whooooo!

You can tell its October when...

Here's a picture of the funeral park we often drive by on the way home & the description from their website -

"Forest Park East Funeral Home and Cemetery has been a part of the Webster community since its founding in 1951 by the Eubanks family. Conveniently located adjacent to the cemetery grounds, our funeral home offers a large cathedral-type chapel replete with beautiful stained glass. Situated on approximately 143 acres, our cemetery boasts stately oak and pecan trees on meticulously maintained grounds that provide a quiet and picturesque park-like setting in which to honor the memory of your loved one."

-and what does Tayne ask as we are driving by the other day (after buying his Halloween costume no less)?

Tayne: "Is that a bone yard?"

Me: "A what!?"

Tayne: "A bone yard, where the RIPs are staying."

Me: "Oh, um I think the preferred term is cemetery, and by the way, are they running Spongebob Halloween cartoons On Demand already?" - (thinking "Thanks a lot Comcast!")

On the upside, Tayne found a Halloween costume he loves, and I've set a new record for getting the Halloween costumes for the kids squared away!

** No, I won't tell you what the costumes are - you'll have to be surprised on Halloween!**

Sept 27th Swim Meet

It's fall and the water may be cooling off, but the competition is heating up! I can't think of a better way to spend 6 hours on a Saturday than hanging out at the pool~

Tayne is all business as he makes ready for his first race

That water is colder than it looks
Pallas loves being part of the action - she had the very important job of keeping track of the goggles between races
Here's a video of Tayn'e last race of the day -

and just so she doesn't feel left out, here's one of Pallas walking

and some random flashing to remind us all how fun Market Square in San Antonio is

Back home!

Even though our "hurrication" to San Antonio was fun, it's good to be back home. Luckily there was only a little damage to our yard and carport - the house, fences and even our shed held up pretty well -so it's basically just sweeping up, killing mosquitoes, and raking leaves/tree debris to get our place back to it's normal state. We did see quite a lot of damage to trees, fences and roofs as we drove into town yesterday and while driving around today- and there are traffic lights out randomly pretty much everywhere (but at least most of the homes and businesses have power, so nobody is really questioning the electric company's priorities) it just takes some planning and extra time for the 4-way stops. Overall things are getting back to normalish (which is normal except for the lack of fresh carrots in the grocery stores -why doesn't anyone have fresh carrots???) I'd like to think we were pretty smart and that's why we came through the storm so well off (after all we before we bought we researched the flood and storm surge maps, and had the place inspected so that it met windstorm standards, etc. etc.) but the truth is we were just really lucky & luckier still some of the bananas were ripe enough to keep even though the plants themselves had to be cut back or down - so there's hope for banana bread soon, but carrot cake it seems is a no-go, at least for the time being.
*FYI - I'll try to add some cool storm damage pictures later, today we were just settling back in so I didn't get a chance to take many yet. Sadly, there will be plenty to photograph around here for quite a while, Ike was quite a storm...

Travel makes you do strange things...

No, it's not Halloween yet,
but Friday the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile rolled into San Antonio - it's seems these days you can't just get your picture taken next to the wienermobile, as if that wouldn't be embarrassing enough, now they want you to hold up the wienie costume - whatever, as you can see Troy wouldn't even pose with us, and I tried to hide behind the baby - the kids had fun though and that's what counts.

Update after Ike...

As you can see, some of us got up pretty early this morning to see what the weather was doing -
Then later, because we needed something to do while we waited to hear news about what was going on back home in Houston, we strolled it on over to SeaWorld San Antonio -
Always lots of whales, fun, and walking...
No word on when the power in our area will be back, and no word on when Troy has to go back to work yet, but we did hear from a couple of friends who stayed in town and weathered the storm - it seems our house made it through pretty well (yeah!) -and it seems our neighbor who stayed for the storm is doing ok too.- So thanks to everybody who was thinking good thoughts and sending your prayers our way.

Cross your fingers!

Well, it looks like hurricane Ike has decided to check out Galveston this weekend - frankly, I blame their tourism board and their heavy advertising to attract new and international visitors - see what it get's ya, Galveston?!?, Anyway -after watching the track of the storm shift toward us twice last evening, we decided to get out last night in the wee hours before too many other people got the same idea. Lucky we did, this Thursday morning they are calling for lots and lots of mandatory evacuations from our area - I don't envy the lots and lots of traffic on the road today- long story short, we're already in San Antonio so there's no need to worry about us - but feel free to say a prayer for our house, er I mean neighbors -yeah, neighbors...

Summer wrap-up...

Well, since we didn't have to flee a hurricane at the tail end of this Labor Day weekend, and seeing how we previously canceled our other plans for the long weekend, I guess this is a good a time as any to catch up on what these kids have been doing with their summer.

JULY:
The 4th was too dry for fireworks (at home) which was ok, because dry weather equals less summer mosquitoes - and there's always glo-sticks!

probably safer for Pallas anyway...
And there were professional fireworks put on in the local park. Ah, memories...

Cindy, Everett, and Oakley came for a visit - and what visit would be complete without a trip to Space Center Houston?!?

AUGUST:
We didn't travel at all this month. Pallas entered that jabber-walky stage, not quite talking/but adding her jabbers to the conversation and not quite walking/but more step-step-dive. (*Sept. update - She's really getting better at the walking, she can take 3 or 4 steps, so maybe she'll be getting around on her feet by her birthday next month)
Tayne's room got a bit of a makeover - a new computer desk (that doesn't wobble when you bump it or turn on the fan, or look at it funny...) and a new computer chair (his old chair had to replace a bench from the living room that Pallas' jabberwalking kept tipping over on top of her and somehow I didn't think a straight trade, bench for chair, would be the way to go. -Look at this kid, would you trust him with a bench???) And last but not least, Troy. No, he did not run away to join the circus, the Space Center had an interactive exhibit with all sorts of crazy stunt stuff - I guess the trapeze swing was calling to him, it's debatable whether he knew we were getting this on video....


That's pretty much it for our summer - now it's back to school work, and building the new BBQ grill that was my "birthday present"/ "for hurricane preparedness" (if the power goes out you have to cook somehow right???)