Happy Birthday John!

Happy birthday to John.  He is a wonferful father, husband, son, brother, friend and firefighter!  Thanks for all you do for us.  Lots of love to you on this special day. 



The Princess

I ordered this dress the other day for Jocelyn from Disney and it came in, so I couldn't help myself but get her to try it on.  I got it for our upcoming Disney trip for her to wear for our princess lunch (and probably Halloween too).  She is getting so big!  Not my little baby anymore (although she'll always be my baby).

Father's Day Camping Trip

For Father's Day this year, John wanted to go on a camping trip to a state park.  Turns out that the weekend of Father's Day was a long weekend for me (Friday, Monday and Tuesday off) so I figured we could go camping Friday to Sunday and I'd have Monday and Tuesday to recover and catch up on sleep.  We left Friday at around 10am and drove the 4 and 1/2 hours to Martin Creek Lake State Park.  We would have left earlier but we spent half and hour looking for Jocelyn's movies (we keep them in this CD case) and long car rides with her are much more enjoyable when she is distracted by the Lion King.  We asked her where she put it (we saw her with the case while we were getting all of our stuff together) and she said something about the Tot Cot.  How could it be in the Tot Cot, that was tied up and there is no way she could get it in there?  We finally gave up and grabbed a couple of other movies that we had on the shelf and took off.  Sure enough when we were unpacking, I took the Tot Cot out of it's little sleeve and there were her movies.  She told us exactly where they were.  What a sneaky little girl.

The weather wasn't too bad for us since it stayed over cast most of the time and only rained a bit over Friday night.  Jocelyn did well with taking a shower (her first shower instead of her usual bath) and slept pretty good.  I on the other hand did not sleep all that well, but air mattresses are never that comfortable.   We tried to go for a walk on Saturday morning, but Jocelyn just fussed the whole time and we had to carry her most of the way.  She spent most of the time saying "I have something in my shoe."  We also went swimming in the lake, and of course she enjoyed that.

John made a wonderful dinner for Saturday night.  He prepared it before we left and wrapped it in tin foil, and then Saturday night put the wrapped tin foil packets onto the hot coals and let it cook.  We had potatos, carrots and grilled chicken.  It was really good. 

The only downside was I got stung on the neck by a wasp just before dinner on Saturday.  Ouch.  Good thing I'm not allergic. 

We left early on Sunday morning (around 7:30am) to head back to Houston so that we could be at my Dad's house by noon for lunch.  I had been up since 6:15am, so it was no problem getting out of the park in time.  Jocelyn was really worn out and feel asleep after about 2 1/2 hours of driving.

We had a really nice lunch at my Dad's house and Jocelyn got to spend some quality time with Grandpa.  Jennifer, Thaden and Owen also were there and the kids played really well together.

Photo Box

My sister, Jennifer, and I had this idea to do a large photo box that could be decorated over and over again to be used at kids' parties.  We came up with the size that we thought would be ideal and John built it for us out of wood, very light weight.  Here is the unfinished box -

We got to use it for the first time at Chelsea's 5th birthday party.  It was a Wonder Woman theme, so we all got together and decorated the inside of the box like a city-scape with some comic book type finishes.  It was a group effort and I thought it turned out so cute.  Here we are in our super hero gear posing for our pictures.

Countdown to Disney Craft - Rapunzel

Jocelyn and I will be heading back to Walt Disney World in October and taking with us Mom, Aunt Melanie and her friend Paul and his little girl Riley (she is 4).  This will be Riley's first time in Disney World (and Paul hasn't been since he was a kid) and I love going to Disney World with first timers.  So, to help build up some excitement for Riley, I wanted to make her a countdown to our trip but wanted to do it in a creative way and not just use a calendar.  Riley loves Rapunzel, so I decided that I would incorporate Rapunzel's long hair into the countdown. 

First, I had to do the long braid of hair.  I got some yellow yarn and braided it with the end wrapped around an embroidery hoop.  The braiding took about 3 hours and ended up being really long.  I wanted it long though and I figure she can use it to decorate her room later on.   I glued a little sign to the embroidery hoop that I made to look like a crown that says "Countdown to Disney."  Then I made 100 purple paper flowers that I attached (I used a punch out and purple card stock) for the length of the braid.  On each flower is a circle sticker with a number (1 to 100, with 1 at the top and 100 at the bottom) and on the back is a sticker that has something that you can do at Disney World (ex. Have dinner with Mickey, Watch fireworks, Bounce with Tigger, etc). 

Beginning with 100 days from the trip, Riley will be able to take off one flower and read something we will be able to do while at Disney World!  The project overall was very easy to do, just took a long time to put together...kids are worth it though.

Here are some pictures of my craft project.

Comedy Sportz

Before Jocelyn was born, I took a couple of improv classes at Comedy Sportz Houston and continued with a few of my group members with informal practices for a few months after that.  Once Jocelyn was born, I fell off the improv wagon.  This past January, Comedy Sportz introduced a Rec League for people who have taken the 101 and 201 improv classes and what a perfect time to get back into the groove of improv-ing.  I love having an outlet to be a little silly!

What a great group of people we have in the Rec League and it has been so much fun.  We meet every Sunday night to practice and then the last Sunday of the month we put on a show for our friends and family (and anyone else who wants to come see).  Last night's show was awesome and so much fun.  Many thanks to all my peeps who came out to root for me (or point and laugh...either way).   Jocelyn had a blast.  During one of our gimick games, I could hear her say "Mama so silly" and her laugh was just contagious throughout the audience.

Here is a picture after last night's show.  The girls won and that's why we're all smiling...looks like a couple of the boys weren't too happy.

Zoo Trip

One my favorite things about my work schedule is having every other Friday off.  This past Friday I took Jocelyn to the Zoo in the morning, one of our favorite Friday activities.  We became a Zoo Member since we go fairly often, which lets these outings really inexpensive for us.  The only thing I had to pay for yesterday was 2 rides on the carousel ($2.50 total).  What a bargain!  We got there right at 9am when the Zoo opened and for the first 1/2 hour we barely saw any other person.  The weather was nice, but we left at around 11am before it got too hot and too crowded.  We ran into some old friends and their kids...always nice to see friendly faces and catch up a bit.  Here are some pictures of our fun times.