We have decided to create a little blog about our family. Mainly as a way to share what is going on, with our friends and family, who we miss and don't get to see too often. Our family is growing up so fast and we want make sure that no one misses our every accomplishment.
I have always wanted my child to have a wonderful playroom. I look in the pottery barn catalog and just dream. Our house currently does not really allow for a playroom. There just is not enough room. I love our house, but other than the master our rooms are not very large. We were not really thinking about all of the toys our child would have when we bought the house. Since Brady's room is not really big enough for his toys, we had all of his toys in the living room in a corner. They weren't that accessible, and he did not really play with them often. He actually does not really play with any of his toys, he would much rather play with measuring cups, or something else he found in the cabinets. We hardly ever use our office, the computer in the office is broken right now, so it is just an unused room. I had the brilliant idea to make it into a playroom for Brady.
We hope to possibly finish our basement, which would add an extra 1000 sq. ft. onto the house. When that happens, the guest bedroom/ office will be in the basement. Until then I managed to push everything into a corner in the office and allow for more room for Brady's toys. While in Houston we went to Ikea and I got a couple of cute things for the room. I am happy with the way it turned out, and it will be even better when/ if we are able to move the office to the basement.
I took these pictures before we did anything to the room. I also took these at its worst. I was going through all of our filing, sorting papers, and of course Brady had to help, so it was a mess. We have a futon, bookcase, filing cabinet, and desk in the room. These are pictures of the room as a playroom... We had an old TV that Brady can use to watch his shows when get gets a bit older. We got these cute wall decals and Brady loves to point at all of the animals. These are neat art work displays for future Brady masterpieces. These curtains are super cute and match the decals on the wall. We also got some matching pillows. A happy boy in his playroom, with half of his dinner on his face, and ready for a bath. Brady playing, he is so skinny that his pants fall off so he goes without pants around the house most the time, which he loves. So it is really cute, and Brady enjoys it. It may not be a pottery barn playroom, BUT how blessed are we that 1- we have a house, 2- we have an extra room, at all, and 3- Brady has enough toys to fill up a room!
We got our moneys worth out of Brady's costume this year. He was a tiger, and the cutest little tiger I have ever seen.
The weekend before Halloween we went to a friends party. Jeremy and I were Jon and Kate and Brady was the tiger. Friday night was our Harvest Festival at church. It was so crazy that we barely got any pictures. It was fun, but Brady was mostly interested in playing in his normal classroom with the toys. For Halloween we had pizza at Nana's and then we did a little trick or treating with Brady's cousins. Toward the end of the evening he had the trick or treating part down, and was very hyper from all of his excitment and candy.
Last Thursday was one of those days where we were stuck inside due to the snow, and it was really too bad to go out. It was a perfect day for hot yummy chocolate chip cookies. I started to make the cookies, with Brady helping by pulling everything put of the cabinets, but after i had already started I noticed I was missing a few ingredients.
1st mistake - no butter, I only had 2 different kinds of margarine. 2nd mistake - no brown sugar, substituted with real sugar 3rd mistake - ran out of vanilla mid pour, used half almond extract 4th mistake - did not have high altitude directions
So this is how my cookies turned out... So bad, not even edible, and I was left with a huge mess, from Brady and myself. The worst thing of all was that I still really wanted chocolate chip cookies, so we ate half of the Halloween candy instead. I guess I need to stick to the premade dough.
This is part two blog of our vacation to Houston, Texas in October.
Tuesday we woke up and headed to Richmond, on the west side of Houston, to Jeremy's grandparents house. We were treated to a nice lunch made by Jeremy's grandma, and we ate with Jeremy's grandparents, Uncle, and Brady's 2nd cousin Mason. Mason was quite shy that day, but we had a very nice time. Brady loved playing with his great-grandparents, and running around and being his crazy self. Sadly I forgot to take pictures that day, but I do have cute pics from our 1st visit when Brady was just 6 months old. Tuesday afternoon we went to my dads and Brady and I went for a little swim. It was a little cold, but not too bad for OCTOBER! Crazy that you can go swimming in October in Houston. Afterwards we went to have some yummy pizza, and once again Brady had a great time with Grandpa and Grandma Karen.
Wednesday was a pretty low key day. We started with delicious Mornings Kolaches. Colorado does not have kolaches so we ate them a few times :). Afterward we went to visit with Jeremy's 92 year old Grandmother, who still lives alone! She is an amazing woman, but she loves to talk! Her house is not Brady friendly so we spent most of the time out doors while Jeremy visited with his Grandmother. It was wonderful to see her and she really is inspirational.
A side note, Brady is so blessed to have 4 Great-Grandmothers, and 3 Great-Grandfathers who are still living. 2 of his Great-Grandparents are in their 90s, and all of them live on their own, not in any sort of assisted living facility. Maybe this is not surprising now a days but think about 50 years ago. I am so glad he has so many Grandparents who love him, and I hope one day he realizes how special this is. Also maybe he has really good genes and will live to be really old!
Wednesday was date night and we were thrilled. We went to one of my favorites Churrascos for a fabulous dinner. We also tried to find a neat place for dessert, but we are not familiar with the area, and also it was a Wednesday night, so we had dessert at Katz's deli. It was so nice to get out and I am very thankful to our parents who are our baby sitters and give us our date nights.
Thursday, we were really looking forward too. I knew that what we had planned that day would be awesome, so I was really looking forward to it. We headed into town to meet with my aunt and my cousins who are 3 and 17months old, and also my Grandparents. We all piled in cars and went to the Houston Children's Museum. I remember how awesome the children's museum was when I was little, and knew that it had been re-done recently, but it was even better than expected. If you are in the area you must go. If we lived there we would have memberships and go all the time! Brady was in heaven. i think his favorties were the flow works and tot spot. We were there for hours and did not even see it all. Here is a video of Brady at the flow works part.
We also went to lunch and a church pumpkin patch. The kids had a blast and were nice and tired after a fun day. Brady was so sweet giving Jordan a hug at the pumpkin patch. Thursday was date night again, while Brady played with Grandma and Grandpa Max. This time we went on a double date with our friends Brad and Jessica, and then went to see some other friends' new baby.
Friday we visited with more family, Jeremy's Uncle Jerry and Aunt Carol. We always have a great time with them and Brady had fun playing with toys Jeremy remembered playing with as a boy. Here is a picture of Brady and his Great-Uncle Jerry playing together. Friday afternoon Jeremy played golf while Grandma and I drug Brady to eat Vietnamese, (another thing you rarely find in CO) play with his Great-grandparents, and shopping. Friday night Brady and I relaxed and packed while Jeremy went out with friends.
Saturday sadly was our last day. We played at Grandpas in the morning and then headed to the airport. Brady and Zoey the dog loved playing with this big ball together. It was a very busy, but fun trip. We had a blast, and miss everyone already, but it was nice to be home and get back to normal.
I have not really been in the blogging mood lately. I have become a blurker (which is someone who reads blogs, but leaves no comments and does not do there own blog.) I just can't make myself do it. Well I have the motivation at the moment, so here I go.
Where we left off in blog land was our trip to Texas. Jeremy has 3 weeks of vacation time each year, and if he does not use it, he loses it. We have taken little trips around Colorado, but Jerm still had 2 weeks of vacation time left. We had not been down to Houston in a while, so we decided to wait for what we thought was cooler weather and we headed down in the beginning of October.
Brady did very well on the plane, I think because he sees that no one is allowed to really move around so I think he figured that he isn't either. We have decided that 2 hours is his limit for being still, though. The flight was about 2 1/2 hours long and the last 30 minutes were a little rough. The minute we landed though, he fell asleep. I guess he did not understand that he was supposed to sleep during the plane ride.
Every time we go back to Houston, I always think it will be cooler, and less humid, it never is. I always feel like I need gills just to breathe, but it was a nice change from the snow we were getting in Colorado.
Our first day we relaxed and had to get the special groceries for Brady that my mom did not have like whole milk, and diapers.
Friday we were taken on a special tour of NASA, and got to meet some of moms work friends. She took us to see alot of the simulators for the space station which was very neat. We then met a friend for lunch, did a little shopping, and went to Ikea. I wanted to go to Ikea because I knew they would have the perfect items I was looking for to decorate Brady's playroom. That evening we had dinner at our friends Brad and Jessica's house. They have a 6 month old little boy, Hudson who we had not met yet and we were very excited to meet him. We were amazed at how well Hudson can crawl and get around at just 6 months. Brady and Hudson will be good friends, but he was of course more interested in their dog, than Hudson. Saturday we got to have lunch with my Dad, Step mom, Brother, and Grandparents. Here is Uncle Andy and Brady.
Brady does not do well in restaurants, so we were very happy when he did so well. Saturday evening we went to spend time with even more friends, and had a great time visiting.
Sunday we had a BBQ with my moms side of the family. It was so nice of my mom and step dad to invite everyone over, because otherwise we might not of been able to see everyone. Brady enjoyed playing with his 2nd cousin Riley, who is almost two. He really enjoyed playing with her toys, which of course Riley did not like. We also fed the ducks and almost lost a finger or two, those ducks are very aggressive. Sunday evening Brady and I got to spend some time with two old friends of mine, Michelle and Tiffany. it was so great seeing them, and it made me wish I had more time to see them. Brady of course was on his worst behavior during dinner, so they just had to take my word for it that Brady is a good little boy.
Monday we planned on going to the beach. It was so gross and rainy outside, and I was scared that we wouldn't have much fun. But as soon as we got there, the sun came out, and it was beautiful. Brady had a blast. The mud like sand and water were right up his alley.
We chose the perfect day to go to hiking to view the beautiful changing colors of the aspen trees. We had a great time and even learned a little. Even though out of the ground there might look like there are seven aspen trees, under the ground there is one large root, and therefore it is one tree. I thought that was very interesting.
So we hiked, had a picnic, and ended the day with a little blue bell ice cream for dessert. Even though we had the hiking backpack for Brady, he decided to hike a lot of the way. The trees were beautiful and I plan on enlarging and framing some of the pictures and hanging them up. They are not as good as the ones you see in the art gallery's, but they are not hundreds of dollars either.
It was a wonderful day, and if you are ever in Colorado during the fall this is a must do.
We are still in Houston and have been very busy, we will update on all of our fun soon.
Before Brady we used to go to every Air force football game. Two weeks ago was our first game in almost two years. It was also Brady's first football game. I think he had fun, but he ended up falling asleep midway through. The best part of Air force games is the jet fly overs, and parachuters.
Brady, Nana, and Jerm waiting for the game to start. Plane with parachuters overhead Parachuters Parachuters landing on the field We were disappointed because they used to have a parachuting falcon mascot, but I guess he has retired. Brady sleeping on Nana, I guess the game was boring.
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