Lazy Sunday?

We haven't been too busy on weekends since Natalie stopped swimming, but we don't usually end up just hanging out at home either. With Patrick's and my exercise kick since last year, one or both of us usually ends up at the gym. I went there at about 8am this morning. He didn't go because he left some time after 9am to drive to Austin. His high school friend Jim Z. was there for a convention, so he took the opportunity to go have lunch with him. Yes, it took over an hour's drive to go have lunch with him, but they haven't seen each other in a few years, and it was good to catch up. Patrick "forgot" to take a picture of the two of them together. Haven't I taught him anything?!

Meanwhile, I got home from the gym at around 10am. I took Natalie to her friend's house at noon. She has been trying to be more social, and we try to encourage that. This friend is going to be going to the same high school as Natalie next year, which is important since many of her other friends are going to the other high school that her middle school feeds into.

I offered to take the boys somewhere for lunch, and Alex suggested McAllister's Deli. There is a new one that opened recently down the street. He has been wanting to go there with Patrick since Patrick is more of the sandwich lover, but they haven't gone yet. Alex wanted to drive there. I had a brief second of panic, since Patrick has been the one that has driven with Alex. I have not been in the car with Alex driving--ever. Alex reassured me, so I agreed to let him drive. Of course, I couldn't resist taking a picture of him driving. He took his eyes off the road to look at me just as I was taking the picture. He didn't say anything and just continued driving.

We survived the experience, of course. Alex did pretty well. He says he still has trouble parking, so we made sure to park away from any other cars. He was very careful and still obviously inexperienced, but I am willing to let him drive with me in the car again. ;)

Eric was in a goofy mood this morning. I recently got him some T-shirts and pajamas from the Disney store, plus he received a couple of T-shirts as gifts from his party yesterday, so he cut the tags off them and put them away. He decided to stick the stickers that were on the clothes all over his face. I heard him mumbling since he had covered his mouth with a sticker, and I heard Natalie let out an exclamation of surprise when he showed her. When he came back downstairs again, he took the sticker off his mouth briefly just to ask me to take a picture so that I could text it to Anthony. I laughed when I took this picture because I asked him to smile for the picture, knowing that his mouth was covered up with the sticker, but he smiled anyway.

Besides putting away his new clothes, he also wrote thank you notes. It might have helped that I told him that he couldn't play with his new toys unless he wrote thank you notes first. He finished all eleven of them basically by himself. All I did was show him the list of toys that he had received, and made a couple of suggestions, and he wrote everything. He wrote sentences like, "Thank you for the money, I will use it wisely." He also wrote on another card, 'I love Legos and Star Wars Lego. Star Wars is awesome!" Alex's favorite card was thanking his friend for a Jango Fett toy--"I'll build it right away today! Hey, that rhymes!" I was gone taking Natalie to her friend's house when he wrote most of these notes, and I was glad he was able to do this by himself. Now he just has to write the thank you notes to family.

Patrick stopped by his parents' house to visit on the way home from Austin. He got home before 4pm. I picked up Natalie around then and the kids all watched Iron Man (the first movie) this evening. I made some Banana Cream Cheese bread and finally wrote a blog post. Yay! It's back to work and school tomorrow. Next weekend we'll be busy getting ready for our trip to Disney World.

Eric's 9th Birthday

Today is Eric's 9th Birthday! I can't believe my youngest baby is 9! His first choice for a birthday breakfast was IHOP, but since we planned on going to Austin today to visit my cousin Rachael and her family, we didn't have enough time to go to IHOP. His second choice was Starbucks. Interestingly, Facebook reminded me that for several years, he has had breakfast at Starbucks on his birthday.

Today he had the Bacon Gouda Breakfast Sandwich and a Vanilla Bean Frappucino with no whipped cream. He usually has the blueberry scone and "shares" the Bacon Gouda Breakfast Sandwich that either Patrick or I order. Now he can finish the whole breakfast sandwich by himself. He also had a blueberry scone at home waiting for him. I used my "sweet receipt" yesterday to get the blueberry scone since I was able to use my Starbucks receipt from the morning to use after 2pm to get a bakery treat for $1.

When we got back home, Eric wanted to open presents. By that time, Alex had gotten up and gotten washed up. Natalie was still in her pajamas, but she was more awake than when we left to go to Starbucks.

I hardly use my "big camera" anymore. It's just so much easier to use my iPhone to take photos and video plus it's always with me. I wanted better pictures, though, so I took a few with the "big camera". I stacked up Eric's gifts and had him stand behind them. He decided to wave at one point, and I decided that the expression on his face was more genuine instead of the usual posed grin, so I kept the photo.

My sisters and Mom ordered gifts from Amazon, as we often do for each other, but we would rather spend our money on the present and not the wrapping paper, so we ship our gifts unwrapped. Last night, I wrapped all the gifts that had arrived for Eric, and that's why they are all wrapped with the same Avengers wrapping paper. I ran out of wrapping paper when I had one more gift to wrap (our gift to Eric), so Patrick got a gift bag for me and we put the present in there.

These are the gifts he opened today:

Lolo and Lola--Lego Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus Ambush
Cynthia and family--Harry Potter shirt (pictured), and Kylo Ren electronic lightsaber
Melissa and Emily--Lego Star Wars Resistance Troop Transporter
Us--Lego Star Wars Battle on Takodana

In this photo, Eric is modeling the T-shirt that he got from Aunt Cynthia and her family. The writing says, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." That is a phrase from the Harry Potter books that they have to say in order for the Marauder's Map to reveal where the characters are located. Cynthia said that Eric is "always good, so the shirt is pretty ironic".

Alex commented while I was taking this photo that Eric could hold the T-shirt on himself instead of just balancing the T-shirt on his chest. Eric got a kick out of this shirt because he has been plowing through the Harry Potter books lately--he is now on Book 7, the final book.

After we opened presents, we had a little time, then we left for Austin. I'll put those details in another blog post in the next couple of days or so. After we got back this afternoon/evening, we went to Chili's for dinner--Eric's choice. I was able to convince Alex to pose for this photo, just after he had been tickling Eric--that's why the smiles are so big. I love this photo of the two of them. We were missing Anthony and his friend Alejandro, Eric's "other brother", who usually joins us for Eric's birthday dinner. Alejandro is currently studying in Italy this semester and having a lot of fun.

When we got home, Eric played with his new lightsaber (together with his other Bladebuilder lightsabers) and the Lego Jurassic World Dilophosaurus Ambush set. He finished building that set before he went to bed tonight. He seemed to be pretty happy with his birthday, and I'm thankful for that.

Art a la Carte Plus

Today was Eric's monthly Art a la Carte class. I was on call last night so I could have the day off today, and since it's also the day before his birthday, we did some other special things. The class today was about the artist Robert Wyland, who is best known for painting large outdoor murals of whales and other ocean life. Today's project involved using oil pastels to draw turtles.

They started with a pencil drawing to get the proportion of the shell over most of the page and then leave room for the head and part of the flippers. They then colored in the turtle using colored oil pastels. Mrs. R described a technique to use two colors of the oil pastels to make the shell look more three dimensional. The last part was outlining everything in black and adding the scales.

I've been volunteering for Eric's art classes for a couple of years now, and it still amazes me that there are kids (usually girls) who are so concerned with making their artwork look a certain way (usually they want it to look exactly like the teacher's example), that they have trouble doing the project. I was trying to help one girl who kept erasing and erasing that she wasn't really drawing anything. She was so frustrated that she had to put her head down. Another girl asked me to draw the turtle's head for her. I refused, of course, because this is supposed to be her project. Eric doesn't often do his art like I would do it or even the way I wish he would do it, but I let him do it his way. He has more fun that way and in the end, the result is all his.

I brought Eric his usual lunch from Wendy's--eight pieces of their Spicy Chicken Nuggets and a small Frosty. This time it was a chocolate Frosty instead of the usual vanilla. On Art a la Carte days, art class is at 8:40am. I help clean up after class, so I don't leave until around 10am. I only have a little time at home before I have to leave to get his lunch. Lunch is at 11:25am. I rarely stay more than 20 minutes since he is ready to rejoin his friends after finishing his lunch. For some reason, he took a little longer to eat today, and I didn't leave until 11:50. Maybe it was the selfie I took of the two of us, or maybe it was the trailer for the new Star Wars movie coming out in December called Rogue One that I showed him, but either way, I got to spend an extra five minutes with my not so baby boy.

I would have then had to go pick up his birthday doughnut cake from Krispy Kreme, but Patrick picked it up for me and brought it home. Some of the school staff that saw me bring this in thought it was a great idea. I had to agree.

When I arrived at Eric's school, his class was in the gym with the rest of the school, so I put the doughnut cake on his desk and took some pictures. He got a "special birthday gift" from the school, which included this plastic chair cover that said "Happy Birthday". He apparently also got a pencil and something about Chili's the restaurant (maybe a coupon? I haven't checked his backpack yet).

Eric's classmates were excited when they saw the doughnut cake. They sang "Happy Birthday" to him, then his teacher and I distributed the doughnuts. It worked out that the kids got the type of doughnut they wanted--glazed or chocolate iced. There were three dozen total, half of each type, and enough for each child to have two. Many of the kids asked if they could have seconds. At first, Mrs. S said that we would probably want to take the rest home to feed the rest of the family, but I didn't really want to have that many to tempt me, so I said "Yes!" A Not all the kids had two, but at least one said "I should never have two doughnuts again." Even Eric said he started to feel a little ill after having two, and this is the child who had three last Sunday when we went to Krispy Kreme for breakfast. Regardless, I got rid of most of the doughnuts. The rest of them went with Alex when he went to his friend's house to watch movies tonight.

Tomorrow is Eric's actual birthday. We're planning on visiting my cousin Rachael, who just moved to Austin. I'll definitely take some photos and share them here. I can't believe Eric is already going to be 9 years old!