Post-Wedding

We had a pretty relaxed day today. We didn't get up until around 9AM and took our time getting ready and out of the hotel. We proceeded to my uncle's house, which is an hour away. They had a whole roast pig, they had fish, and they had barbecue--lots of food. The best part was sitting around chatting with relatives and friends. The kids spent much of their time in the basement media room where there is a huge projector screen that comes down from the ceiling and several reclining seats all in a row. They even have a popcorn machine, although we didn't use that. The kids watched TV at first but then we all ended up watching "Star Trek". Eric ended up falling asleep during the loud movie. It wasn't until we were about to leave that he finally started warming up to my aunt.

My sisters and I used to spend most of our summers with my aunt and uncle and their kids. My aunt asked Alex if he wanted to come visit next summer and stay for a month. I'm not sure if Patrick and I want to do that, but the offer brought back nice memories of being spoiled by my aunt and uncle. For now, the kids had enough fun that they begged to go back tomorrow before we have to go to the airport. That means more driving, but being with family is worth it.

He Did It!

I don't have any pictures to post today because they're all on my camera--no mobile photos. The big highlight of today was that Eric walked down the aisle without crying or screaming-yay! He didn't look happy and he wasn't smiling, but he did it, and we are so proud of him! Read on if you want the rest of the story.

We all went to bed at around 11PM last night. We're not sure exactly what time Natalie and Eric got up, but Patrick thinks it was by 8AM. We got up around 9AM because my sisters were texting me about going somewhere for breakfast and the little ones wanted to go to my parents' room. We ended up eating downstairs in the Hospitality Room. My uncle had arranged for a complimentary breakfast for everyone that was staying at the hotel for the wedding. It was just pastries and fruit but it was filling enough. The kids especially enjoyed the chocolate muffins and chocolate filled pastries. Eric only ate a little fruit. It was also nice to be able to talk to my cousin, the bride, and some other people that we haven't seen in quite a while.

We basically just hung out at the hotel after breakfast. The girls made up a schedule of whose room they were going to be in, the traded Silly Bandz, and the boys AND the girls played on electronics. The kids all ended up swimming at the hotel pool, except for my niece who hadn't brought a swimsuit. After that we all ended up at the mall across the street for lunch. I also needed to get some black socks for Eric. He threw a fit at lunch because there were some little kiddie rides that he really wanted to go on, but we wouldn't let him unless he ate first (since he hadn't had much to eat already and we knew dinner was going to be really late). Of course, he also threw a fit when we had to pull him away from the rides to go back to the hotel. We can't win!

The shuttle bus again picked up people at the hotel to take them to the church at 4PM. It was actually pretty easy to get Eric to wear the tux, even though we pulled him away from playing on the iPad to do it. We weren't going to make him wear the jacket until later, but he wanted to go ahead and put it on. We think that's because his brothers and Papa were already wearing their suits and he thought that was the way it was supposed to be. Personally, I think he made a nice entrance into the lobby where my parents and some other relatives were. He looked very spiffy. :)

Let's just say that we "bribed" Eric with iPad game time so he would walk down the aisle. He did it! I still can't believe that he did it. The ring bearer didn't make it past the back pews. Eric was the coin bearer. He also seemed like he was in a good mood during the long mass. Just before communion, he wanted to sit in my lap with his head on my chest. He promptly fell asleep. No fussing and no crying that he sometimes does before he falls asleep--he just fell asleep. That meant that he missed the wedding party photo. That also meant that in the extended family photo, I carried him and tried to face him outward, but he was still asleep. He awakened after we rode the shuttle bus all the way back to the hotel for the reception and Patrick tried to put him down in bed. Poor guy! He asked if we could ride the bus again. He loved riding the bus but he didn't remember riding back to the hotel in the bus!

They didn't open the reception room for quite a while. In the meantime, they passed out some appetizers and Eric once again settled into my lap. My uncle (my dad's older brother who flew in from the Philippines for this wedding) asked me why Eric was always sleepy. He's never been married or ever had kids, so I explained that Eric was off his usual routine especially his sleeping pattern and that he was behind on sleep.

The reception was really fun. I always love to go to Filipino weddings because you always know there will be some good dancing music and some line dancing too. Eric even got out there and boogied with Patrick and me. Natalie was out there dancing quite a bit with her cousins. The flower girl (who was 2 years old) was such a "ham" and the girls all danced with her. Anthony and Alex really seemed to enjoy themselves on the dance floor. They also had this cool photo booth. It was just like a classic photo booth but the attendant put the photo booth photos into an album and we could sign the album with our own greeting. My whole family (all 14 of us) crammed ourselves in there and took some fun photos. We also went in with smaller groups. We didn't go up to our room until about midnight.

Tomorrow we plan on sleeping in again. There will be a brunch at my uncle's house. They are reportedly setting up tents for everyone. It's been great weather here, low 80s with a breeze, so being outside has been pleasant. I just hope the kids get some extra sleep tonight.

Shuttle Bus

My uncle hired a tour bus type of shuttle bus to take friends and family from the hotel to the church to the rehearsal dinner. Great idea, actually, since there are quite a few out of town guests.

We're here at Maggiano's right now having appetizers. My sister Cynthia and her family arrived just when the rehearsal ended because they were stuck in traffic on the bridge from Canada for two hours. They had visited Toronto and Niagara Falls yesterday and today.

Eric fell asleep just before his rehearsal, so hopefully he will be able to go down the aisle the way he's supposed to tomorrow. The flower girl is two years old and as cute as a button. Eric awakened when we got on the bus to go here, and he's on his second plate full of noodles. It's been fun seeing my relatives, but somehow, Patrick and I found ourselves at the kids' table. Oh well, hopefully we'll be able to be more social tomorrow.

Onward

We got up at 4am so we could catch the 4:20 shuttle bus. We were all so awake as you can see. (We're watching The Cartoon Network on the TV at the gate.) Chicago Midway airport is definitely used to more volume at 4:30am. They had four security lines open for business-- and all of them were being used. We only have a short non-stop flight to our final destination today and we get to see a bunch of relatives today too. Yay!

Worst Plane Trip Ever

We've been on many plane trips as a family, but this has definitely been the worst. In short, we were supposed to take off from San Antonio at 12:55pm, but we were delayed by bad weather at our destination--Baltimore. When we finally got to Baltimore, our connecting flight to Detroit had already departed, and the last flight out to Detroit was already boarding. We didn't get to go on that flight. They sent us through Chicago Midway, and we are presently staying at a nearby hotel so we can catch the 6:30am flight to Detroit tomorrow. The rest of this blog post will be about the details, which may only be important to me, but feel free to skim through them or skip them all together.

We didn't board our plane in San Antonio until around 2pm. If the times are a bit approximate, it's because I didn't have a watch on, and I kept having to turn my phone off when on the plane. We finally pulled away from the gate at around 2:20pm, only to be told by the pilot that they had received word that the Baltimore airport had shut down completely due to weather. So, we waited on the plane on the Tarmac until around 3pm.

We made up some time but also lost some time due to taking a more circuitous route to avoid some of the bad weather. We finally landed at around 7:30pm (Eastern time) but we had to wait a while because another plane was at the gate our plane was assigned to. We were told in San Antonio that all connecting flights in Baltimore would wait for us. Well, obviously not, since I already said above that our connecting flight left without us.

At the Baltimore airport, while I changed a poopy diaper, Patrick ran around to several Southwest Airlines gate agents asking what we should do. A couple of them basically blew him off and told him to look at the airport monitors himself to find which gate the last flight to Detroit was departing from and to go there. This was after the flight attendants on our plane had instructed us to ask the nearest gate attendant for information.

We all ran to the next terminal to where that last flight was departing from. Let me just say that Eric isn't that heavy unless you're trying to run while carrying him and that it's very difficult to run with flip-flops on. By the time we got to the gate, there were other people that had been on our plane already waiting there. They gave 7 of them seats. There were no more seats for us, and there were no more flights to Detroit from Baltimore tonight or tomorrow. The best they could do for us was take us to Chicago Midway and then Detroit as I already described above. The most infuriating part was that one of the gate agents (who wasn't even the one helping us) made a comment about how they had been told that the weather was going to be bad that morning. What?!!! That was such an obnoxious statement, and one that was best left unsaid.

The Chicago flight was fairly uneventful, at least, but it was already 10pm. When we got here, we had originally thought about staying overnight at the airport but quickly realized that even though we would have to take time to find a hotel and find a way to get there, we would still get more sleep or at least better sleep than if we stayed at the airport. Of course, we still didn't have luggage, toiletries, car seats, Patrick's medications, or extra diapers.

The gate agent at Chicago Midway was very helpful, and gave us a flyer with a number of hotels listed that might give us "distressed passenger" rates and a free shuttle to and from the airport. With our car seats supposedly already in Detroit, a shuttle was our only option.

A few minutes after we got to the shuttle bus stop, about 30 other people showed up to take the same shuttle, many of them of course got on the shuttle before us. Luckily, the shuttle bus driver allowed us standing room only or I would really have broken down and cried.

Kudos to the Fairfield Inn at Chicago Midway. Not only did they give a good rate of $99 for the night, they also let all six of us stay in the same room. They gave us complimentary toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo, and conditioner. Also, they gave us free detergent. Yes, just when you think all the bad stuff already happened, Eric leaked on Anthony's shorts when Anthony was carrying Eric on the shuttle bus. We of course had extra clothes for Eric in the diaper bag, but none for Anthony. Patrick is currently doing laundry, the poor guy. The job he does almost constantly at home he's doing here in Chicago.

We did have a few highlights. (I'm trying to see the silver lining.) Eric was pretty well- behaved on the planes, and he even took a nap without much effort from us. We got to eat quick Subway sandwiches at the Baltimore airport when I wasn't sure we were even going to have time to get anything to eat. We also found a place that was still serving food in Chicago Midway, so we got to eat a little more. We're together in a comfortable room right now. Even though Anthony and Natalie are sleeping on the floor, they're both asleep and so are the other kiddos. I'm praying that tomorrow will make up for today.

Testing 1, 2, 3

We're here at the airport waiting for them to tell us when to board. Apparently there is a lot of congestion in Baltimore, where we will be taking a connecting flight, and they don't want us to land there too early. Supposedly they're holding our connecting flights there so we won't end up missing them. For us that means that we have no idea when we'll finally make it our hotel room. I guess it's a good thing I got some sleep last night when I was on call.

Natalie has discovered that she can take photos with my old iPhone, which of course is now essentially and iPod Touch since it's no longer got calling capabilities. She's been taking photos including this silly one of Patrick.

Alex has been taking videos with his new phone which involves his sister appearing and disappearing. They're cute videos that I might have to share here when we got back home.

Anthony is surfing the Internet. Eric is watching the movie "Happy Feet" that they have playing on the TV screen here at the gate. Electronics--thank goodness we have electronics.

Okay, the picture doesn't seem to be adding. I'll have to try again later.

Back and Forth

This is a picture of Anthony with his new iPhone. The new phones arrived yesterday afternoon, which started the mad dash to get them activated. It was a mad dash because it took a long time and Patrick was trying to get home in time to get Natalie to her piano lesson at 4PM. I went ahead and took her to her lesson because Patrick had to get home so the boys could pack up their soccer stuff. I met him at Schlotzky's while Natalie was at her lesson and then I headed to work. He picked up Natalie from her lesson then went straight to the boys' soccer practices at 6PM. Doesn't that sound hectic? Well, on the way to soccer practice, we found out that Anthony's iPhone wasn't getting the 3G internet reception, so while the boys were in practice (and with the little ones in tow), he headed back to the AT&T store to get Anthony's 3G connected. I felt guilty since all I had was work, and we weren't even all that busy.

This morning we're still packing like crazy. Patrick is heading out yet again because Alex's Flip camera isn't working. He's going to try to exchange it at Costco. Why is it that going on a trip is always so stressful?

Tech Junkies

Can you tell he's addicted? He didn't even want me to change him out of his pajamas yet, and it was past 10AM! I think it's particularly cute that he has Maya the Dog next to him while he plays on the iPad. I left him home with Patrick and took the big boys to Velocity for their strength and conditioning. Natalie and I had our nails done so we would be ready to go to the wedding this weekend. This afternoon we've just been hanging out at home. Alex and Natalie have been playing with their neighborhood friends. Alex played on the Wii while Natalie usually goes "low tech" and plays outside.

Eric played on my iPhone while we were waiting for Anthony to finish with his training (which is half an hour longer than Alex's training) and then he had to play once again this afternoon, except he played while on the stairs instead of on the sofa since Alex was on the sofa playing on the Wii with his friend. He's not the only tech/game junkie in this family, of course. Patrick and Anthony's new phones (iPhone 4) just arrived by FedEx a few minutes ago. I got mine last week and they've been watching the email closely since then, looking for the email saying that their phones had shipped. Alex was anxious about them getting their phones too, because when Anthony gets his new phone, Alex gets his new phone. Hopefully I'll be able to get a photo of the boys with their new phones later today before I have to go to work.

Waterparks

We haven't been to the Sea World waterpark yet this year and the theme parks in general seem to be less crowded on Sundays, so we went there today. I took this picture of Eric putting his face in the water. Mind you, the water in the toddler area is probably only 6-12 inches deep, and that's why he looks so bent over, but he still kept bending over and putting his face in the water. As a mother, this site was a little disconcerting, but apparently, he likes putting his face in the water now.

We stayed there around two hours and Eric stayed in that one small area the whole time. Doesn't he look like he had a lot of fun? :)

The big boys went to the Lazy River and the Wave Pool. Natalie went with Patrick to the Lazy River and then Patrick and I switched duties and I went with her to the Wave Pool. Later, when we were about to leave, Anthony said that he liked the waterpark at Fiesta Texas better because there are more girls his age there and "they're not fat". Patrick and I did notice that there were more young adults and families with young children there today, maybe because it was Sunday and therefore a family day or maybe because Sea World attracts those groups more--we're not sure. Natalie said she liked Fiesta Texas better because the wave pool there has the waves more often and the little kids' area was bigger. Alex liked the rides better at Fiesta Texas. Patrick and I like Fiesta Texas just because it's a shorter drive from our house. Eric didn't seem to care, but he does love to see Shamu and the other animals, so I guess we'll have passes to Sea World just a little bit longer.

I just wanted to end with a photo of my "Plants vs. Zombies" obsessed little boy. Natalie, Eric, and I went to Target this morning and at first he insisted on walking while playing on my iPhone. I was worried that he would run into something, so I was relieved when he consented to sitting in the shopping cart. He ended up in a similar semi-reclined position in the shopping cart. Sometimes he'll lay like this on the sofa while playing on the iPhone. Today, he was laying like this on the floor. Maybe I should collect all of these photos of him playing video games and compare them to later when he's playing them like his big brothers? He gets away with it now because he's such a cutie. :)

My Salmon Eater

Whenever we go to Chili's Restaurant, Natalie always begs me to order the Grilled Salmon with Garlic and Herbs so she can share it with me. Sometimes I don't feel like having salmon myself, but recently I've ordered it just because I know she'll eat well when I do. She usually eats most of the salmon and a few pieces of the broccoli. Last week when she was visiting in Houston, they took her to Chili's and she apparently ate most of her salmon and all of her broccoli.

Natalie has never been a big eater, but she always been a picky eater. As an infant, she ate mashed up bananas with rice cereal mixed with breast milk three times a day for months. She wouldn't eat anything else. When she has something she really likes, she can eat a lot of it. I remember when she ate a whole bowl of Easy Mac when she was two. I also remember being amazed when she first ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at one sitting (although I don't remember exactly how long ago this was).

We decided to take a "before" and "after" picture of her and her plate tonight. Look at that huge piece of salmon in the "before" picture and look at the missing huge piece of salmon in the "after" picture. Also notice how she looks so pleased with herself. She ate almost all her broccoli and would have eaten more if I hadn't mentioned leaving space for ice cream.

I think this means that she might start ordering her own Grilled Salmon with Garlic and Herbs at Chili's. Of course, the current menu price of $14.29 is rather pricey for an almost eight-year-old. Are my kids spoiled, or what?

Red Nail Polish

My little princess asked for red nail polish a few days ago. She picked out a nice bright red that I thought might be fun for me to use, so I bought it. She's been asking me ever since then if I could help her put on the nail polish. She couldn't contain her excitement any longer this morning so she started doing it all by herself while I was in the potty--not the best time for me to help her. Luckily I had thought ahead to make her apply it in the bathroom on the counter, because she got that red stuff all over the counter. She had been using a tissue to wipe off the excess nail polish around her fingernails, which of course meant that she smeared the nail polish that was already on her fingernails. I told her that next time she should wait until I was ready, if she wanted me to help her, that is, and then I gave a few tips in applying the nail polish a little more neatly.

If you look closely at her fingernails in this picture, you can see that she still went "over the lines", but overall, she did okay (although I did help with cleaning up the margins with some nail polish remover). It's nice that she wants to be so independent, I guess, as long as she cleans up after herself. Also notice all of those "Silly Bandz" on her wrists. Yes, she bought three packs with her own money on Tuesday after constantly badgering me since this past weekend. Also notice that she wore an outfit to match her bright red nail polish. Yes, that's my little princess. :)

Oh, and I wanted to add that I took this opportunity to practice some of the lessons from my photography class on focusing in different objects a certain distance apart from each other. I'm excited that I was also able to tinker with the white balance and the lighting to come up with a pretty good image right out of the camera (without any editing). :)

All Together Again

It's nice all being home together again, although anyone that reads my blog probably thinks that all my family does is watch TV while crammed onto the living room sofa. Here the kids are watching our DVR tape of Mythbusters. The story behind it is that the boys actually wanted to watch our "Terminator" movie from Netflix, but Patrick and I didn't think that was appropriate for the little ones. Natalie didn't want to watch it anyway. We were going to watch tonight's episode of "Wipeout", but we didn't tape it like I thought we did. Our next choice was "Unnatural History" but Alex had gone upstairs to take a shower all of a sudden so we didn't want to start it without him--and Natalie didn't want to watch that one either.

Patrick and the boys got home around 1:30-2am this morning. I didn't sleep well, maybe because I was waiting for them, or maybe it was just because I was overtired. I brought Anthony to his last day of PE Camp this morning at around 7AM so Patrick could sleep in. This meant that I got to work an hour later than usual, which made me feel a little rushed, and my day was long and hectic. The little ones didn't let Patrick sleep, of course. Instead, he moved furniture around so that our new AT&T U-Verse could get hooked up today. Well, long story made short--the AT&T U-Verse signal to our house was too weak, so we ended up going back to cable. On the up side, our local cable company gave us another DVR box, but AT&T would have given us many more features.

So, we spent another night watching cable TV while crammed onto our living room sofa. We were together again for the first time in a couple of weeks, though, so even if we had differences in opinion as to what we were going to watch, at least we were watching together. :)

Just The Three Of Us

I didn't get any good photos today, so I'm using this one from this past weekend. Eric has been obsessed with the iPhone/iPad game called "Plants vs. Zombies". He asks to play it often and every day. He was even playing it while walking to the car after getting ice cream this evening. I have to admit that I used it as a potty training tool today. When he wanted to play, the price was that he had to go to the potty first. I guess I'm desperate for him to proceed with potty training!

Only Natalie, Eric and I were home this afternoon/evening. Patrick left this afternoon around 1:30PM to pick up Anthony from his PE Camp and then on to Houston to pick up Alex and go to the big MLS (Major League Soccer) All-Stars vs. Manchester United soccer game. They're trying to fight the traffic out of the stadium and drive back home as I'm typing this. They're rushing back because Anthony doesn't want to miss the last day of PE Camp tomorrow. The things we do for our children...

I was pretty wiped out today after working last night, so I slept the morning away and I didn't do much for most of the afternoon either. The two "productive" things I did were to set up our Wii to stream videos from Netflix and to set up my new iPhone 4 that arrived this afternoon. Those two things actually took big chunks of time. I consider myself somewhat tech-savvy, but I still get apprehensive about messing stuff up, which slows me down while I check and double-check--and call Patrick for passwords and such.

After I was finished with all of that, we went to Target, the kids' favorite store. I always have to laugh when I say that, but it's so true. Natalie really wanted to go to Target so she could get bright red nail polish and gum, and she wanted to spend her own money for both. When we were there, she showed me the red camera that she wanted for her birthday. Last week she told my sister that her favorite colors for clothes are red and black. My favorite color is red, but I'm not sure where her professed love of red and black comes from, especially when she used to LOVE pink so much.

Natalie insisted on eating the Spicy Crispy Chicken Nuggets at Wendy's for dinner. I really didn't want to eat there and just when I was about to park, Eric got upset and said he wanted Chick-Fil-A for dinner. He could see Chick-Fil-A directly next door to the Wendy's but this was after I had already asked him if he wanted to go to Wendy's and he had insisted that he wanted to go eat AT Wendy's and not just pick up and go home. So, we picked up food for Natalie and headed to Chick-Fil-A. Because Natalie has been gone for a couple of weeks, the three of us haven't been to Baskin-Robbins for a few weeks, so we went tonight. Eric got distracted by Natalie playing on my old iPhone that he didn't even finish his Rainbow Sherbet. He wanted to play "Plants vs. Zombies", of course!

Chopsticks

This is what you see when your three-year-old eats with chopsticks. You see a greasy, food-covered mouth, his arms, and his food. You don't really get to see his face because his arms are in front of his face holding the chopsticks. Natalie ate her noodles with chopsticks too. At least they were both eating over their plates. They both pretty much finished their noodles and left their chicken alone. At least they ate well and they were quiet during lunch. :)

Toddler in a Tux

Success!!! Sort of, anyway... Eric will be in my cousin's wedding in a week and a half, and we got the tux yesterday. I asked him if he would put the tux on and he just looked at me blankly and ignored my question. He tends to be a little more receptive in the morning before he's too overtired, so he consented to put it on this morning. I managed to take a few pictures until I got a decent one. He had some M&M's earlier as a reward for going to the potty. I tried to reward him with M&M's again, but he didn't want them. If he looks like he's a little restless in this photo it's because he is. He wanted to take this thing off! Now we have to work on convincing him to leave it on for the whole wedding and reception. It's going to take more than M&M's...

Expensive Teeth

Today, Natalie had a dentist appointment to fill two more cavities. She had another cavity filled a while back (last year maybe?). I hope this is not a trend, because filling the two cavities today cost $320! We even bought her an electric toothbrush at the beginning of this year, but apparently that wasn't good enough. She seemed excited to show me her cute little crooked smile when I got home. The crooked smile is, of course, from the anesthetic.

Patrick said it was definitely noisier today than in the past two weeks when Natalie was staying with my family. Anthony pointed out, "At least there wasn't the sound of gunfire coming from the TV." That sound is usually due to Alex playing "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" almost daily. Alex is having lots of fun, though, and knowing that makes up for how much I'm missing him. Love you, Sweetie!

Car Washes and Movies

We all have such a great time when we visit family. This photo was taken yesterday. My brother-in-law decided to wash my sister's car. Upon hearing that, Patrick told the boys to go outside and wash our car. They were reluctant, but as you can see, they had fun getting wet. Later, Eric wanted to join in the fun too. He came inside saying, "I got wet!" and sounding very excited about it. The girls helped too. The truth is, the kids probably slowed down the process, but at least they all went outside for a little while.

I love this photo of my nephew Nick. Isn't he a cutie? ;) Look at those cute freckles! I was taking a picture of him to show how the water sort of just beaded up on his hair. His hair is thick and coarse and doesn't really move, rather like his father's hair. :) He usually doesn't like photos of himself, just like Alex, but I'm glad he posed for me this time.

Yesterday morning we went to a "presentation" at the local Apple store. Nick had taken an iMovie camp there where they learned how to edit and put together movies using the iMovie program. He and everyone else that went to the camp got to present their finished products at this "presentation." They even served popcorn to the audience. Nick's video was about the things he liked to do, like play soccer, ride his bike and scooter, and read books. It was even set to music. He put his mom as "Cameraperson 2" in the credits. He videotaped some of the action scenes himself with the camera on a tripod.

This is a picture of Natalie at Nick's iMovie event, hugging her Uncle John. She stayed with them the first week and then she stayed with Lola and my other sister Melissa this past week. Apparently when she stayed with Cynthia and her family, Cynthia's daughter Aly got a little jealous from Natalie and their other cousin Emily hugging on John. Natalie can be affectionate, but only when she feels like it. She had such a great time visiting Houston that she cried when we were about to leave. Alex is going to stay for another three days and she didn't understand why he got to stay but she had to leave. I think she felt a little better when I told her that Patrick and I missed her and wanted her to come home with us. We'll definitely have to do another kid swap next year. Our kids have so much fun playing with their cousins. I'm sad that we don't live closer to them, but I'm thankful that we live as close as we do.

Thanks for the hospitality, dear family!

Shopping With The Girls

I went on a shopping trip to the local outlet mall this afternoon with my Mom and sisters. It was so crowded there, but it was so fun just hanging out with them. Later, after dinner, my sisters and I went to a local mall with our daughters and Eric. He heard the word "mall" and he wanted to go too. I got the feeling that he expected a different mall, like one of the ones back home, but I think he still had fun in the end. This is a picture of Aly and Natalie trying on shoes at Macy's. They were probably a little bored, but at they found something to do. Notice the "attitude" in Natalie's post--that's my girl! Eric kept trying to get on and under the displays which was both entertaining and frightening at the same time.

We were pretty tired from all that walking when we got home tonight, but we bought some essential things, like a dressy dress for Aly and some dressy shoes for me. Both are for my cousin's wedding in a couple of weeks. I wish I lived closer to my sisters and parents!

Summer Switches

We're visiting family in Houston this weekend. We got here this afternoon and although we haven't seen Natalie for two weeks, my nieces and nephew were outside to greet us on our arrival way before she was. Patrick says he thinks she missed us a lot, but I'm not so sure. I initiated a few hugs that she returned easily, but she acted a little perturbed for one of the hugs because she was reading at the time and I "interrupted" her!

Eric has been in heaven because he's getting lots of attention and he has lots of people to play with. My sister Melissa even gave him a new "Thomas the Tank Engine" shirt. Alex has been enjoying his cousin Nick's company. Alex will be staying here until Wednesday while the rest of us will be leaving on Sunday. We have tickets to the MLS All-Stars vs. Manchester United soccer game here in Houston on Wednesday. Patrick will return on Wednesday for the game and to pick up Alex, only to turn around and go back home on Thursday. It'll just be Anthony and me at home then. Anthony was originally going to go to the game, but he decided that being with his friends at PE Camp would be more fun. Next Thursday is the last day of PE Camp.

We wanted my nephew Nick to come visit us for a few days, but between their family cruise, an away soccer camp, and visiting us, he said he hadn't been home very much this summer. One of these days I wish he and his sister would come spend some time with us at our house. Lots of kid-switching this summer--I used to love staying at my aunt and uncle's house for weeks at a time when I was a kid. I'm glad my kids are getting to enjoy a similar experience this summer.

Shattered

This afternoon, Patrick sent me a picture of our back door that he took from his iPhone. Alex was playing on the PS3 and Eric was playing upstairs with Patrick when they all heard a loud bang (yes, the bang was loud enough that they heard it from the gameroom). There was a cracking sound that they thought sounded like rain. Patrick saw that the outside pane of our double pane back door had shattered. He looked for a bird or something outside, but found no evidence of what could have caused the window to break like this. He forgot to take a picture with the big camera, so I took this one when I got home. He had already taped the outside with packing tape--half with clear and half with the more opaque brown tape, to keep it all from falling apart. This is horrible timing, of course, since we had planned to visit my family tomorrow and we just spent a lot of money yesterday. :(

On another note, this is Eric, our "little stinker". This afternoon, Patrick could smell the urine from Eric's full diaper, but when Patrick told him to go upstairs so he could change his diaper, he screamed and refused! Tonight he was trying to hide his face from me while I was trying to take pictures for my photography class. He only grudgingly "posed" when Anthony told him that I wouldn't let him play with the iPad until he let me take pictures of him. That little boy is addicted to Plants Vs. Zombies. He can be quite a "little stinker" sometimes!