Brennan and Brayden Christmas Program

Brennan bobbed up and down while Brayden (my little "Vanilla Ice") rapped.

Brayden's First Recital

Brayden sang "If I Only Had a Brain" last Saturday at his first recital.  It was his first time singing a solo in front of a crowd.  He was extremely excited to do this beforehand.  However, when we arrived at the concert hall and he saw all the people, he kept telling his teacher backstage, "I think I'm going to throw up."!  :-)

Are we in Kansas or Texas?

Just down the road from our house is a shimmering yellow field of sunflowers.  We couldn't resist taking a picture on the way back from church in front of these beauties!  

April Fools Day Doo-Doo

On April Fools Day, Christi always has a surprise waiting for the kids.  This year, the skill of making life-like "doo-doo" from an old paper towel roll shredded and moistened provided quite the entertainment.  Here, Brennan is not yet convinced that one of his siblings did not miss the target.

Trip to "Jerry's World"

Perhaps the “bunny ears” by someone above me are due
to the fact that there is a Broncos shirt in the midst of Cowboy territory.

 

After living here in the DFW area for 8 years, we finally ventured over to “Jerry's World” (a.k.a. AT&T Stadium, a.k.a., Cowboys' Stadium) for a football game. Jerry Jones (owner of the Cowboys) wants way too much for tickets to attend an event in his Texas Mecca, so we have held off on gracing our presence in the Taj Mahal of North Texas. Well, we found our opportunity and pounced on it. The Denver Broncos were coming to the Lone Star State for a preseason game at the end of August. Tickets in the nosebleed section of the Great Structure were a paltry $12. Game on! We rushed through an early dinner (“come on kids, this is no time for manners, just eat!”) to leave plenty of time to arrive for the kickoff, but alas, traffic was quite backed up on the way to Jerry's Hangout. I maneuvered “Bessie” (our faithful Ford van) as close as I could to the stadium, where Christi and the younger kids hopped out to trek the rest of the way on foot. A quick u-turn and a few minutes later, Blaize, Brodie, Aliyah and I were parked in an offsite parking lot with 25 minutes to spare. I decided this was a good time to go over the benefits of exercising whenever you get the opportunity. They kept up very well (with a minor amount of prodding) all the way to the stadium entrance. From just outside, we could hear the excitement brewing inside. We finally made our way past the Gulag-run inspection point, where all you could carry into the stadium was the clothes on your back (and, if you're lucky, a wedding ring on your finger and watch on your wrist). Eight minutes to kick-off. It was a race to the literal top. Unbeknownst to me, there were huge escalators that whisked people from the bottom floor to the upper levels of this 320 foot high structure. I made the mistake of interrupting a young vendor engrossed in his smartphone as to how to make our way up to the seats. He paused and pointed to a sign at the base of some stairs. (In hindsight, I'm wondering if my Bronco shirt had anything to do with it.) Without missing a beat, the kids and I sprinted up the steps. After about the 20^th zig and zag, we arrived at the top, only to find we were on the wrong end of the stadium. I figured a restroom break at this point would be counterproductive to the goal of kickoff (not to mention immaterial, since we had sweated out all of the liquid stored up by this time). Off we sprint to the far end. We popped into the stadium with a minute to spare – mission accomplished! Christi was sitting with the younger kiddos and asked why we were sweating so much. It was then that the fact of escalators was revealed, followed by a sheepish grin from the dad, followed by a kind, reserved chuckle from the wise mother.

Reenactment of Spraying Wasps

We just had a 50th wedding anniversary celebration for my parents in Kansas - what a great time!  Sunday afternoon included some fun reminiscing about Dad and Mom.  There was a "slight" disparity in that Dad was "roasted" a bit more than Mom.  Here is a video of my brother, Chris, explaining how it looked as we kids peered out the picture window at Dad spraying wasps.

Summer Reading

The kids love reading to each other.
Here we caught Ava reading to Brennan and Brayden during the day.

After putting the "little boys" to bed, we heard a some noise and still saw the light on.  Brayden was up in Brennan's top bunk reading a story to him.  They pleaded with me to finish the book :-)