First day of School 2010

Monday was the kids first day of school. I didn’t take the entire day off just took off in the morning for a couple of hours and left early enough  to pick them up from school. Lyssa’s in 4^th grade now and Tommy’s in 2^nd! Can you believe that? My kids are getting so big and too fast for me. I made them pancakes for breakfast and got them all cute and dolled up J Their backpacks were full of all of their supplies, well minus the Kleenex, but they can take that with them tomorrow…We got to the school and we had to try and find their teachers. We found Alyssa’s right away, but Tommy’s wasn’t outside yet. Once she came out, Tommy told me that he was in 2E and not 2F but I knew that wasn’t right, but to prove it I asked them both to see who’s roster he was on…I was right! Ha! But before I could say HA to him, we realized that we were standing on an ant pile and were getting attacked by ants! I got the worst of it, cause I wore flip flops…Alyssa shoes were covered in them though, so I took off her shoes and took off all the ants…Tommy got a few bites, but he was okay. The rest of the time he stood outside he looked down to make sure ants stayed off of him…I thought it was pretty funny. My baby was scared to get bit again…

I picked them up from school and they both said they had a good day. They didn’t like their lunch that day – Lyssa got PB & J and Tommy got a Burger… the school is still going thru some remodeling in the cafeteria and they weren’t able to make their lunches – instead they were brought in. Lyssa couldn’t believe they gave her PB & J – I was like “But you hate the J” and she said, “I know!” so she really didn’t eat lunch that day and as soon as we got home I made them dinner… chicken and veggies – their fav! While at the table they were discussing the burger that Tommy had eaten- he stated it wasn’t really good, but he ate it anyway. So Lyssa asked him, “what kind was it, was it cheeseburger, hamburger, what kind was it?” He said, “ you know the squeeshie burger…” and as he was about to continue she said “ew! And you ate it?!” he said “yes, that’s all they had and I was hungry.” She said with a disgusted look on her face, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you ate the squeeshie burger.”  I had to interrupt and ask them what’s a squeeshie burger… they said that it’s a burger that has squeeshie bread and it’s usually cold… I said well that doesn’t sound delish…and told him I was sorry he had to that burger. He continued to eat his dinner…

Tigers Scrimmage vs Vikings

So my son Tommy decided to join Tackle Football this year…he plays for the Tigers along with his cousin Damien. For the first two weeks he just about cried at every practice. Why you ask?  It was for various reasons – his head hurt, he felt like he couldn’t breathe, he said he was hurt whenever they practiced tackling and blocking… he finally started getting better at last Friday’s practice and then went back down again in the beginning of the week. But he was getting better at doing his job while crying so it wasn’t too bad. Then his first scrimmage game came up (which was yesterday) and I really felt bad for my kid. I was scared for him cause I knew he was nervous and scared of getting hurt. His dad and I both talked to him about that and just told him to go out there and focus on doing his job for the team. We told him that it was okay if he was scared but he can’t let the other team know… he has to believe in himself and tell himself to block or to get them out of his way while he tries to get to whoever has the ball… I tried siking him up the night before and when I yelled “WHO’S THE BEST TEAM?” He said “I don’t know we haven’t even played anyone yet” I couldn’t help but want to giggle a little…my boy and he’s over thinking mind…just like his daddy… I was able to finally get him to yell that the Tigers are No. 1 and that he’s the best and that they’re going to win and I hoped that it boosted his confidence up a little bit more.

It was finally game time and he seemed a little nervous and I seriously was praying and hoping that he wouldn’t cry and that he would try his best to tackle and block the opposing players. Then at the last minute before we got there…I offered tommy money for each tackle and for each time that he got tackled and got right back up without crying… $1 for each. I’m not sure what exactly helped him do as well as he did yesterday, but now I owe my son $20 bucks and I was just so happy when I saw him complete his first tackle…and got extremely happy when the other player hit him pretty hard (you could hear the helmets hit each other) and he got right back up and got ready to do it all over again J That had to be one of my proudest moments for him. He managed to put his fear to the side and play Tackle football! GO TIGERS! Oh and he can’t wait to do it again at the next game J

HOT SPRINGS 2010

This past weekend we took a mini-vacation with our kiddos and with my husband’s family. His grandma and Uncle are in town from Mexico City and well my mother in law thought it would be good for us to go out of town – she requested somewhere North this time around. I remembered that she always mentions Arkansas and after speaking with my co-worker, Jim, about where we could go, he suggested Hot Springs, Arkansas. Jim is the thrifty travel planner of our office J

Back to the trip… we left Friday morning with our Feefee in tow…it was a huge concern cause we didn’t know how she would handle the LONG car ride, but she handled it pretty well. We did have to make 2 stops for her, but that wasn’t too bad. She slept the majority of the time as did the kids. Tommy fell asleep as soon as we hit Rockwall (it’s like 5-10 minutes from the house) and Alyssa fell asleep near Texarkana. They didn’t bug too much about how long the drive was or asked if we’re there yet 10 million times like you see on TV. We were also concerned because Tommy can get car sick and we were hoping he wouldn’t – we gave him some car sickness medicine and he was all good. But the winding roads in Arkansas, did get me a little dizzy and nauseated. Well we had finally got there about 1 or so and decided to try and take a nap – well that’s not quite what happened – we became daycare for our nephews  L oh well, right? We survived – I was grumpy but by the next day I was refreshed and ready to go and in a better mood J  

Saturday after a nice and yummy breakfast we headed out to the Mountain Tower. The map said about 10 minutes but I think it took about 20 minutes – traffic on the way there was awful. It goes from two lanes to just 1! But we finally made it up there and it was just a really beautiful sight. We thought it would be hot up there, well cause it was in the 100’s that day, but surprisingly it wasn’t. It was a little warm but the nice breeze helped out a lot.

Right after the Tower we went on a Duck Tour. It’s a boat with a tour guide that says “quack” after just about every sentence. The kids fell asleep during part of it and every time I turned to see them Alyssa would mouthed out “I’m hungry” while rubbing her belly J it was already like 2 or 3 so I didn’t blame her for being hungry at that time. The tour finished right after we took a nice short tour on Lake Hamilton and Lake Catherine.  It was a nice little trip and we learned a little something. Alyssa remembered some of the fun facts that were told to us on the tour J

We then went to eat dinner. His mom, dad, grandma and Uncle went to eat elsewhere, while us “young folks” and our kids went to this spot I had read about. It had good reviews and supposedly good food. Well the food was good – after waiting for 2 hours for them to bring it out to us! Yes, we had to wait that long…supposedly it was because of the Tilapia that some of us had ordered – don’t really know how fish takes two hours to cook, but what can you do, you know? We complained and we didn’t leave a tip. The food was really tasty and everyone loved it – the service is what killed our experience. That was like our one bummer for the day. We know now, that if we’re ever in Hot Springs not to go to Jason’s Burgers – Lesson learned!

Sunday we had breakfast at the Hotel as we did the day before and then started to try and figure out where to go and what to do that day. My in-laws thought about renting a boat and Jose was going to call and get all the info. I thought it would be cool to go to the Alligator farm and watch them be fed at noon – Diana and Jose thought that it would be cool to see that too, so they wanted to go with us. Irene and Rock wanted to go to the Gangster Museum. Once we got back to our rooms we had found out info on the boat – max seats is 12 and we had 15 total with Baby James. So that option was out. Then we decided to go on the Belle Dinner cruise on Lake Hamilton. I called to make reservations and then got everyone’s orders and put them in. By the time we were done with this it was almost noon- we were going to miss the  Alligator feedings so we changed plans and decided to go ride bumper boats, go –carts and play at the Arcade. Irene and Rocky decided to join us and they would do the Gangster Museum once we were done at this place. I loved this Arcade! I’ve never won so many tickets anywhere like at this place! It was awesome. Tommy won 133 tickets at one game, Damien won 200 tickets on another and RJ won 100 tickets at this other one…my poor Lyssa wasn’t as lucky as they were but she did win 40 tickets at one game…but we ended up with over 500 tickets, RJ almost 100 and Damien won over 700! We all did well there and had a fun time. It was scorching hot outside during mini – golf, but the kids had a blast. That’s what matters, right? J

We were kind of hungry and we knew that we wouldn’t be eating till after 7 so we decided to grab a “bite” to eat at Rod’s Pizza Cellar close to our hotel. Well we over did it and ate WAY too much! We were stuffed by the time we were done and would be eating again in about an hour! L We were so full…we got ready and went to the Belle… I’ve never been on a boat, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The boat didn’t move too much or anything like that, it had a great view! The kids loved sitting next to the windows to see outside. We were still full from eating an hour and a half earlier, but had a nice surprise when they brought us our food -small portions!  WOO-HOO! J  We were on the boat for about 2 hours and then headed home. The kids went swimming for the last time and we called it a night.

The ride back was kind of long and Feefee didn’t need us to stop once! She slept almost the entire time. We did stop once but it was for us humans…and we let Feefee out for that. We finally got home and all we did was lay around at home and did a few loads of laundry.

Our trip was lots of fun and I can’t wait to plan our next one!