Winter and Spring Fun

Well, we’ve fallen behind again…but we’ve been having a lot of fun!  Here’s a quick look at the first part of 2012.

Connor woke up to his Valentine’s basket and heart-shaped muffins.  Later that day, we finished off dinner with chocolate fondue complete with strawberries, apples, marshmallows and, of course (Connor’s favorite) maraschino cherries. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had the 3^rd annual Easter Egg Hunt at our house.  Connor and some of his boy friends enjoyed decorating eggs with stickers and then hunting eggs to see what was inside.  We also participated in the annual Castle Hills Egg hunt and Connor and his friends got to go with the “big kids” group.  On Easter, the Easter Bunny came to our house and left big pink and white footprints on the floor all the way to Connor’s Easter basket. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandpa took Connor fishing for the first time.  I’m not sure who was more excited and they both had fun.  They used a variety of baits that we had around the house like ham and pepperoni.  The first time they put the lure in the water, they had a fish within just a few seconds. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 For Mother’s Day, we went to Scarborough Faire.  Connor and Daddy rode the elephant (we don’t know the girls in the back).  We rode lots of rides, ate lots of food and watched a few shows.  It was a beautiful day with my boys. 

 

 





  Other fun things we have done include going to see the Fresh Beat Band Live



and he tried karate.  He loved karate, but he didn't quite know how to use what he learned at the right time, so we pulled him out after he got his orange belt.  He wants to do it again someday. 

 

Birthday 2012

While Mamaw (my mom) was in town to visit, we had Connor's birthday party at this place called "The Ark" -- which was converted from a church sanctuary. The theme this year was Sesame Street, so we had all kinds of decorations, and even had some Big Bird, Elmo, and Ernie mylar balloons. But these weren't just balloons. They were life-sized with cardboard attachments (for arms, legs, etc.) to weigh them down just enough so they wouldn't float to the ceiling. They simply look suspended in mid-air, as if they're standing there just like the kids are. Well, the kids got kind of rough with the balloons, fighting over them, and sometimes inadvertently standing on the feet, while pulling the balloon part in a different direction. So the now dismembered characters were at risk of floating away if the kids let go of them. What do you think happened? What will kids do? I'm sure you know the answer. Eventually Big Bird floated his way to the apex of the ceiling. Connor freaked out and started crying. We were hoping we might see it again at another kids birthday party a few weeks later. But alas, we did not. 

Some of Connor's more favorite birthday gifts were some Hot Wheels cars and track, and a baseball pitching machine. He's been learning to hit the baseball quite well. I captured some great video with my camera phone, but haven't yet copied the vids over to the computer. He had learned to point-step-throw to throw a ball. Sometimes he has good technique, sometimes he forgets and points-steps-throws, then brings back his foot and throws with his other foot forward. We still laugh at it. We understand it's a lot to coordinate all-at-once. We're sure he'll master it soon.

On his actual birthday, he woke up to more presents and for dinner we went to one of Connor's favorites, Chuck E. Cheese. For you newbies, it's a pizza place for kids, with some small rides, climbing structures, and games. Connor gets his fix with seeing the CEC mascot walk through the restaurant and have kids follow him like a pied piper. Then CEC sings a song and throws a bunch of prize tickets up in the air for all the kids to scramble for. While Connor does that, I get my Guitar Hero on playing some Joe Satriani.

Christmas 2011

After making the trip to Renee's parents house in Houston for Thanksgiving, we prepared for the Christmas season. Of course, Santa couldn't come early enough for Connor. We used his Elf-on-the-shelf (Elfie) to encourage to behave, be kind, control his outbursts, etc. It was somewhat successful, but Connor still had some trouble obeying mommy and daddy. If Connor mis-behaved, we told him that Elfie would tell Santa about it; and that freaked Connor out a bit. Sometimes, we were at our wits end. We tried many different tactics, with varying degrees of success. We still haven't found the perfect solution; if you have, please tell us about it.

We put up a special tree for Connor's room that was decorated in all of his favorite Sesame Street characters. 

In early December, we had the chance to stay overnight at the Great Wolf Lodge. We even had some friends join us. GWL is essentially a luxury hotel with a massive indoor water park, so we enjoyed the water in December. Not only that, but they have an arcade where Connor likes to play the whack-a-mole type games and earn tickets to "buy" prizes. GWL also has a room where kids can do crafts, color, paint, and other fun stuff, so we spent a little bit of time there. Since it was the holiday season, the lobby was decorated with Christmas trees, a huge Gingerbread house and it snowed every hour.  Connor wore his jammies to the lobby and enjoyed hot chocolate while an employee read a Christmas story about Rowdy the Reindeer.  It won't be long until Connor is old enough to want to play this adventure/scavenger hunt type of game based on magic, wizardry, etc.

Grandpa Hal visited a couple weeks before Christmas. We all had "Breakfast with Santa" at the nearby golf club. This has been a tradition for us. We eat a buffet then Connor goes to sit on Santa's lap and get his picture taken.

We enjoyed Holiday in the Park at Six Flags so much last year that we are going to make it another holiday tradition.  We picked him up early from school on a day that happened to be Pajama day, so we let him wear his warm and cozy jammies.  It was cold, but we still had a lot of fun and drank a lot of hot chocolate.  Connor got to meet characters such as Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, Tazmanian Devil, Tweety Bird and reindeer.  He rode the carousel and a lot of kiddie rides.  He enjoyed hearing Mrs. Claus read a story before getting to see Santa Claus. 








Connor had been in home-based daycare until early this year, so this year was his first time to participate in a school Christmas program.  His class wore Santa Hats and sang "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  Although he didn't want us to leave him with his class to practice, he came out of his shell and gave quite an animated performance on stage. 



This year, we went to the Gaylord Texan hotel again to see all the Christmas decorations and trains they have in this enormous indoor atrium. We even went to the indoor snow hill constructed in the huge convention center. The line was enormous, so we had to disappoint Connor and tell him we didn't have the time to spend/waste waiting to go down the hill. But on the bright side, Renee and I were able to have some alone time eating lunch while Connor hung out with Grandma and Grandpa.

Renee's extended family visited us this Christmas. It was a full house, and lots of fun was to be had. Connor and Jordan decorated cookies for Santa and after nightfall, we celebrated our Christmas Eve tradition with hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows in our patio firepit. Sometimes it's difficult to keep the small flame lit when it's windy. So I toss on a few  pieces of wood or fallen leaves to keep it going. Well, Connor noticed me doing this, and tore some leaves off a small tree I'm growing in a pot on the patio. At first, I was upset. Then I thought to myself, "what would I have done if I was him? ...probably the same thing." Connor was just trying to help daddy however he could. I couldn't help but laugh after that. 

We saw lots of Santas during the holiday season, so Connor was able to tell him over and over again that he wanted a "marble machine."  As usual, Connor received a ton of gifts on Christmas morning because he was on Santa's Good List. He got a "big boy" computer and desk.  A gift that we expected would be a huge hit was a Sesame Street remote control race track -- a little like one I had when I was a kid. Connor played with it a little bit, but then grew disinterested, perhaps because the car had trouble moving smoothly on the track. It would get stuck frequently. Maybe the batteries weren't powerful enough, whatever. We don't know. I think his favorite present was a MarbleWorks set. He loves placing marbles at the top and watching them fall down different chutes and pathways. He even repurposed (that word courtesy of Renee) some marbles used in different board games that he already had, and put them in the MarbleWorks "machine". He's even put small rocks in to see how they will fare.

A couple of weeks after Christmas, Mamaw came to town and Connor got to have Christmas all over again.  Then we put all of the Christmas decorations away and got ready for his birthday. 

Halloween

This Halloween was extra fun.  Not only because Connor was old enough to really get excited about it, but because he had two costumes.  During a trip to Walmart, Connor picked out a Spiderman costume.  Although we don't yet have any Superhero stuff at home, he must have been learning about them from other boys in school.  When he picked out the costume, he didn't know that I had already pieced together an Ernie costume including a mask that I found on Ebay from 1979 (they don't make them anymore), a red and blue striped shirt, jeans and red Converse shoes.  Both costumes stayed in the closet until just before Halloween, so he wouldn't get bored with them and want something different.

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, we had our annual visit to the Pumpkin Patch, Castle Hills Falls Festival and playgroup party.  We also bought a pumpkin to carve, of course as....Ernie! 

Having two costumes worked out well because he ended up having 3 events to wear them to.  The first event was a party at his school and he wanted to be Spiderman.



 Next, he had his annual playgroup (Camelot Cuties) party and he dressed up as Ernie and then he decided to be Ernie again on Halloween night.  He had tons of fun on Halloween because he got to go trick-or-treating with his buddy Cookie Monster (Reid). 

The boys enjoyed going from house to house collecting goodies and then we went back to our house to pass out treats, which was the highlight of the evening for Connor.  He kicked into gear and gave two pieces of candy to each trick-or-treater.  (he gave more as time went on and we needed to get rid of candy.)  I love that he gets just as excited about giving out candy as he does getting it!  He may not be good at sharing his toys yet, but he loves giving things to people. (yes, that is a teenager with a pillowcase.)

 

Fall Fun

Connor loves to be outside, but Summers in Texas are extremely hot so our outside activities are usually limited to going to the pool or playing at “Connor’s park” in our backyard after the sun goes down a bit.  But as soon as the weather starts cooling off, we start spending a lot more time outside. 

In early October, we joined a few members of the playgroup for our annual trip to the Pumpkin Patch.  Connor rode a couple of rides, played in the bounce houses and we all rode the hayride before picking out two small pumpkins that Connor could decorate with stickers. 

I grew up in this area so I have been to the Texas State Fair many times, but have not been since Connor has been around.  This year, Connor and I joined our friends Becky and Reid for a fun day at the Fair.  The boys enjoyed eating lots of Fair food such as fried Ding Dongs, fried cake balls, fried oreos (notice a theme here?) and hot dogs.  They rode lots of rides and Becky and I got to go down the HUGE slide with them. 

We couldn’t get the boys to both want to go on the Ferris Wheel at the same time, so we took a trip through the air on the gondola and the boys had a great time looking down at all of the sights. 

Last year, I lost a dear friend to a brain tumor and started participating in the Brain Tumor Walk in her memory and to provide support to families going through a difficult time due to this disease.  The event is held at Trinity Park in Fort Worth in early November and I plan to participate as long as I can walk.  Although the morning started out a little chilly this year, it turned out to be a beautiful day.  We walked with our friends Becky and Dave while our boys rode in the wagon.  Surprisingly, Connor wanted to ride the whole time instead of getting out and running around like the crazy boy that he is.  After the walk, the boys enjoyed playing in the bounce house and got to pick a rubber duckie out of the water to win a prize.  We stopped off in Downtown Fort Worth to eat at Taverna, which is a Fort Worth favorite of mine. 

Castle Hills has over 20 parks, so there is plenty to do when the weather is nice.  Each park has a different theme and different activities, so we try to visit different ones to keep Connor entertained although he would be happy just swinging if that is all there was to do.  He has learned to kick on his own in a big boy swing and he can now swing so high that it makes me nervous. 

 Connor has enjoyed riding his tricycle for a long time and frequently rides it as fast as he can around the house.  But we have had to encourage him to ride his blue “big boy” bike.  It probably doesn’t feel as stable to him and he likes to ride fast, so he prefers the tricycle.  But he has been riding the blue bike a little more lately.  He frequently goes outside to the sidewalk and rides around the block on one of his bikes with Mommy or Daddy chasing him. 

We've had Connor in a class called Soccer Tots since he was 18 months old, but this Fall we get him on an outdoor "team" called The Sharks.  Brad coached the team of ten 3-year olds and had lots of fun.  Connor did pretty well with his skills, but since Soccer Tots wasn't a team environment, he wasn't used to having to share with his team and he got really upset when the other team would take the ball away.  By the end of the season he learned that it what they were supposed to do and it didn't upset him as much. 

The most exciting part of fall to Connor this year was Halloween.  So much fun that it deserves a special post...coming soon. 

Philadelphia and Sesame Place

As we said goodbye to Ocean City, NJ, we began the second leg of our journey. We drove north about 30 minutes to Atlantic City. We wanted to see what it was all about, having heard about it for years. Well, we were not impressed. There were quite a few casinos on this "strip". But there was seemingly no casino traffic. I saw no hustling and bustling like you see in Las Vegas. It looked like AC was past its heyday. Only a block away, there were significant signs of urban blight and decay. It was depressing. We looked for a lighthouse, and finally found one. But we didn't stay around for long. We headed inland to the Borgata and Harrah's casino area. This was more like what we expected, although it was a couple short miles from the main strip. Things were happening here. But we had to get to Philadephia.

Back in Philly, we drove to the near west side to what I understand is the cultural district...theatres, parks, zoo, and museums. The Please Touch museum is kid-focused -- it encourages hands-on with all the displays and themes. There were too many displays to recount every one of them here. But Connor couldn't contain his enthusiasm. He was a kid in a candy store. It was as if someone told him "ok, you have 10 minutes to touch everything in the museum". We only had a couple hours to spend there, for we needed to get to our hotel northeast of Philly in Langhorne, home of Sesame Place (SP).

Once we checked in, we were in a hurry to get to SP. They offered 2-day tickets for the price of 1. We got there around 6pm and looked around the park. We should have brought pool clothes, but we didn't. Connor was begging to jump in the water. Instead, we looked for the SP characters to get Connor's picture taken. We saw the Count and Zoey, but Connor wasn't interested.


We went to Ernie's Bed, which was a giant cushion that the kids could jump on. That was probably our longest wait. There were only a few kids allowed at a time. But Connor finally got to jump around on it. I think that might have been his favorite thing at SP. 




That night there was an SP parade down the main drag through the park. We were camped out at the very end, at the back of the park. Connor loved the music and dancing and eventually got to see all his favorite SP characters. Immediately afterwards there were fireworks, but at the very front of the park. We hustled to get a good spot to see, but the streets were jammed, and everyone stopped walking. We were stuck. We still saw the fireworks, just not as up close as we wished.

It was time to go back to the hotel, for tomorrow would be a looooonnnnnggggg day.

We arrived back at SP when it opened. We rushed to the roller coaster. On the ride, the park took our picture, but we didn't buy it. Connor didn't really like it, because it went too fast. Then we went to the water park area. We rode some water slides and Connor jumped around in the wave pool. Then it was time to look for some lunch. Once we walked around the corner of one of the buildings, I looked back over my shoulder and saw Bert and Ernie posing for pictures. Renee remembers me saying something like "Oh my goodness!" or something like that. I was so excited, because Connor LOVED Ernie. This was our chance! So we ran over there and got in line so Connor could pose with both of them. I could only imagine what would've happened if I hadn't looked over my shoulder because we never saw them hanging out on the street again and we would never have gotten a picture of Connor with them.








Later, we ate, and went to another part of water park called Count's Castle. This is where Connor wanted me to go along with him, so I went everywhere he did, with water splashing all over my face and head. He didn't seem to mind, but he had his swim hat, which blocked water from going directly into his ears. We rode some slides and then got dried off to see the show called Elmo Rocks.









We tried rides like Elmo's Flying Fish and the swings and the Cookie's Climbing Mountain. Then it was time to ride more water slides. This was a double tube ride. Connor sat in the front ring and I sat in the back ring. This was a nice long slide that ended in a huge splash at the bottom. After seeing Connor's face splashed so much, I thought he wouldn't want to ride anymore. But I was wrong. We rode it 3 more times -- maybe 4, I can't remember. 

Then we saw another show called Elmo's World Live. Connor really liked that one too. After that we rode the carousel and prepared to see the parade again, this time in a more strategic spot where Connor would have more time to watch Ernie and Bert dance around. 



Then the park closed. We headed back to the hotel and went for some Philly cheesesteaks. Well, I really got a chicken steak, and it was very good. The next morning we headed back to the airport. After the return flight, Connor was so exhausted, that he fell asleep on the couch.