ICE Exhibit In Dallas

Last weekend we took a quick trip to Dallas to go see the ICE Exhibit. This years theme was The Grinch That Stole Christmas.

We ended up buying tickets for the 8:30 pm Saturday thinking that the crowds would have died down...silly us. Apparently everyone had the same idea. The lines were like something I have never seen before, not even at Disney in the summer!!!

At least they were not tearing the place apart.

Izaac being goofy, while he still had a sense of humor. The 5 degree temperatures took a toll on his sense of adventure pretty quickly, and by the time we were near the end he was almost in tears because of the cold.

Lynn and Heather were very gracious to host us for the weekend and then join us in this outing.

Don't think were were supposed to touch the ice...

The ICE was amazing and I am glad we went. But by the time we were done, we were all happy to be out! Makes you appreciate the mild Texas weather.

Thanksgiving in South Carolina

For Thanksgiving this year we headed across county to Myrtle Beach to celebrate with the Gallagher family. I really went to get my baby fix, but it was good to see Katie and Mark as well;-) In the end we traveled 2500 miles and we had a wonderful time!
Here Mark is concentrating very hard on the turkey. It was a massive bird! I think it weighed in at 22-24 lbs. for four adults. I am sure Katie and Mark had tons of left overs after we left.

We stayed at Marks hotel and the kids shared a pull out bed. This is how we found them one morning. Amazing they can sleep like that.

Ivy Marie LaBauve 11-08-06

What an absolutely wonderful day 11-08-06 was! Ivy joined our family and made it very much complete. It is hard to imagine that three years have passed by so quickly! I still think of her as our "baby" and I am sure I always will. I have been truly blessed with a wonderful family and I look back at these pictures and have such great memories.

Happy Birthday Baby!!!

Cake

Well this year we did the Halloween theme for Ivy's birthday party again. Everything was very cute, but turns out we actually do not have too many photos. I think the Halloween part over shadowed the birthday party part and we got a little forgetful when it came to pictures.

Air Show

I have always enjoyed the fact that every year we can watch a small portion of the air show fly over our house...Especially when it is the Blue Angels. I am always amazed at how close to the ground they get. We got two days of enjoyment out of it this year.

One year we were outside having a garage sale during the air show, and I saw what looked like a bat float by between two houses. I saw this "bat" two more times before I mentioned it to Tobie and Mom. I told them that I might be going crazy but I thought I was seeing the Stealth Bomber...But sure enough it came by again and they both saw it and verified that I had not gone crazy. It was amazing because it made no noise at all. So I don't know if it was back out this year, but if it was we missed it.

The Blue Angels are always wonderful to watch. I love living in this area:-)

Monster House

So Halloween is upon us once again and Tobie has outdone himself this year! Tobie is now in possession of one of those light show computer thingies that make the lights "dance". He has worked very hard to program a light show for everyone's entertainment. Every night starting at 7:30pm the lights start going, but he has also programed them to "dance" to music. Maybe we can get a video of that...

More Summer Pictures

This summer while we were Galveston the kids and I took one day off from going to the beach and we headed to Moody Gardens. We saw the 3D Shark movie and then went to the moving dinosaur exhibit. We were pretty disappointed in the animated dinosaurs and the kids spent most of the time digging in the pretend excavation site.


The kids took turns being buried in the sand.

One of the first days we were there a small lagoon formed and Ivy had a blast.

Summer Beach Trip

This summer my parents decided to rent a beach house in Galveston for two weeks....we had a wonderful time. Being so close to Galveston I think we forget that it is a good place to go visit and enjoy what they have to offer. And to be honest after Ike, we did not know what to expect. There was still a lot of areas that needed work, but it seemed like for the most part people were working very hard to restore their homes and community. The neighborhood that we stayed in seemed typical...some homes were done, some were still being worked on, and some seemed abandoned.

The kids had a great time. The first day Ivy had to stop a dozen times on the walk to the beach to dig in the sand. She did not quite understand that if she would just walk past the next house there was all the sand she could ever enjoy.

Izaac developed quite a love for boogie boarding. He would convince Papa to take him out into the serf and then shove him and the board ahead of the "perfect" wave. They would do it until Papa had to rest:-) Izaac never seemed to get enough.

It took us about half of the trip to realize that there was wonderful crabbing opportunities available to us. We attempted the 'ole string, chicken neck and a net procedure, with no luck. Then one night the neighbor came over to give us a bag of left over crabs. He was catching so many that they could not eat them! So then, we adopted a different way of crabbing, and had major success. Every night after we ate crab. And in the mornings when we would ask Ivy what she wanted for breakfast, her reply was always, "Crab."

The crab had to be something like 5" in order to be legal...the string in the picture is 5"...

We also ended up catching so many crab we could not eat them in one sitting. Here is a picture of the craziness in the refrigerator.

Random Pictures From The Summer

Since I have been so bad about keeping up with what we did this summer I thought I would start adding random pictures. These first two are of the kids at Gran and Papa's pool, on just one of many swimming afternoons.

A neighbor had a fish fry...neighborhood kids played like crazy on a water slide. This was later that night, they actually took a break for popsicles.

Izaac was old enough for "Take your kid to work day" and he was so excited! As you can see in this picture they set up a desk for him and he took it really seriously. He played office for days afterward, and if you got his pens out of order...watch out! Future engineer?

This was a picture after a birthday party, not even sure whose it was at this point. But they LOVED the silly glasses!

Summer Home Renovation

Well, we finally bit the bullet so to speak and decided to have someone come in and do our floors. We had a hard time deciding what we wanted and where it would go. The first thoughts were to have wood through out alot of the down stairs. But, our rooms do not have very good divisions and we were worried that there would be too many transitions. So to solve the problem we decided to tile the whole thing. Turns out we really like it!

These pictures are just showing some of the mess we had to deal with and actually still are. The company wanted to tile right up to the baseboards and then put shoe molding in to cover the transition. But we did not want that because our already short baseboards would be even shorter. So Tobie tore out the base boards and we replaced them with taller ones.
The study got the wood, but this picture was taken before it was put in. I will add more pictures soon. The house is so different now. We have painted the walls and Tobie is in the process of putting in chair railing and crown molding in the dining room...

Key West

Tobie and I went on a wonderful "kid free" (Thanks Mom and Dad) vacation to Key West. We packed in a ton of activities into the time we were there and were exhausted when we got home. That is how trips are supposed to be right:-) I put just a fraction of the pictures we took here. We had a blast and would definitely go back. It was hot, but not as hot as Houston. I think we felt the heat more because we walked or rode a bike everywhere we went. So we ended up spending more time then we ever would in the heat. Luckily where we were staying was centrally located, so we could keep stopping in to cool off.

We took a trip to the local cemetery were there were lots of "famous" Key West people buried. But what we went looking for was this head stone. If you ask me it sums up the whole Key West attitude, in that nothing is taken too seriously. One stone next to it said "I'm just resting my eyes".
This is the fort that was built on the Dry Tortugas. It never served as a working fort, and at one time they used it for a prison. It was quite a strange site to see this pop up in the middle of the ocean. It was 75 miles west of Key West, so the trip there took over 2 hours. When you were there you were closer to Cuba than you were to the U.S. It was worth it, but next time I would find a different way there, then on a tourist boat. Maybe charter a boat out, because it is a national park, so you can camp.

We made two snorkeling trips. One off of a beach in Key West and another we went to the Dry Tortugas. We managed to see some wonderful wildlife and were actually able to get some good shots, using our new camera. The barracuda was a little off putting. His stare made you think that at anytime he would turn and bite. Off the beach, I am pretty sure I saw three black tip sharks, no photo though because Tobie had the camera. At the same time I saw a sting ray swim by.
Tobie and I went to tons of restaurants that ranged from shacks to fine dining. We really put a lot of thought into where we went, because we did not want to just go to any old tourist trap. We thought we would actually lose weight while we were there because we walked, biked or snorkeled everywhere. But as always, the food won:-) This picture of Tobie was taken at BO's Fish Wagon. Wonderful food! I had a cracked conch sandwich. Yum, Yum.
Hemingway's house was only one block from where we stayed, so it was an easy trip to make on foot. Which was lucky because the parking was a nightmare in front and all around the house. It was a beautiful house with equally beautiful gardens. Tons of history. Very interesting life. I really went because I wanted to see the six toed cats. Turns out not every cat there has 6 toes but they all carry the gene. Each cat is allowed only one litter of cats and then is "retired" from the breeding life. The cats were all over, but not as bad as I thought it would be. The cat pictured did have six toes, so if you click on the picture you could probably get a better look. Now I am on the hunt for a 6 toed cat, so if anyone knows of one, let me know!

The place that we stayed in Key West was perfectly placed. We were one block off of Duval Street (the main drag) and 7 to 8 blocks in each direction to most attractions that we were interested in. The walk to the southern most point was just that, 7 or 8 blocks.

Summer Fun

So the summer has begun and the kids are having fun. A neighbor of my parents brought by a package of water balloons...so we had to all of them. As we would fill them they would get tossed into the pool. It was quite interesting to see all of the balloons floating around in the pool. The top picture is of the boys trying to pose with the balloons. No too easy trying to wrangle the balloons into one area for a picture. The bottom picture is the "after" picture. It took Kyle and me forever to fill 100 balloons, but just about two minutes to kill every one of them in a massive balloon fight!

Memorial Day Weekend

We went to the Swansons for the long Memorial day weekend and had a wonderful time. The kids played non-stop and actually got along for most of the trip. We were treated to a wonderful mudbug feast...don't think I have eaten that many crawfish is a looooong time! Thought I would throw in some random pictures of the weekend.

New camera

Tobie bought a new camera that is water proof and its really cool! If you saw it you would have no idea that it was able to get wet. It is tiny and has no bulky case.

The only problem is having the kids stay still long enough under the water to get a clear shot. Im sure with a little practice we will get better.

It is also very nice to be able to take shots while people are in the water and not have to worry about the camera getting wet.

Tobie loves showing people that he can put it in the water...
























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virus?

Izaac has been fighting a virus basically all week. He went to school Tuesday not feeling great and the school nurse called me at 1:45 to say he had a fever and he needed to be picked up. He spent Wednesday home with Tobie, seemed to be feeling better, by dinner time he seemed to be fine. Thursday, 5:20 am he wakes up to puke. He pukes again at 6:35am, and still has a fever, so he stays home another day, only this time with Papa. By mid morning he is feeling great. He eats two whole peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, washes it down with sprite and proceeds to feel great! They decide to try some fishing...why waste a perfectly good day off of school. They fish, his fever spikes again, he spends the rest of the early evening on the couch. By that night we thought he was back to his old self, torturing his sister and running around like a mad man. He wakes up this morning with yet another fever. Tobie takes him to the pediatrician. His ears, eyes, nose and throat all check out clean. By 9am he is feeling great...see a pattern.

The picture above is after this afternoon of supposed good health. Tobie turned around and he was gone...fever, headache and exhaustion returned.

Besides being sick, the bad part is all of the stuff Izaac missed this week. He had his final show at gymnastics where he would earn his medal. Then today he missed his "Elegant Day" at school. He was going to wear a suit, dance with a girl and eat "fancy" food (this replaces kindergarten graduation). I feel bad for him. Hopefully this bug will let up soon, but now he is complaining his throat hurts...

Big Girl Hair Cut

Ivy got her first "Big Girl" hair cut on Thursday. I have been putting it off because our first experience was such an unpleasant one. So much so that I resorted to trimming it myself. There are definitely reasons you have to go to school to cut hair;-) I have been getting increasingly tired of the mullet look and having to hide it with piggy tails, and I did not know how to fix it. So, enough was enough and I stopped in at Cool Cuts for Kids, even though I felt they were over priced....it was worth every penny!
She sat in a car without even flinching and then proceeded to "drive" her car while watching the Cars movie. The lady said the only way to get rid of the mullet was to take it up so there was not a drastic length change from the sides to the back. I am pleased with the result, and will be taking her back there for all of her hair cuts.
It is short, but still long enough to put in piggy tails. And this cut, looks a lot better down. She is even showing more interest in her hair and let daddy put clips in it...this could mean trouble:-)

Flood Pictures

Two times in two weeks we got very close to having the house flood. These pictures are from the Saturday afternoon that the mustang went underwater. Tobie had been checking the street on and off all morning and the next thing we knew we were getting a phone call from a neighbor telling us the mustang was under water. When we went out to push the car to higher ground, I stepped off the curb into thigh high water...quite a surprise.
This was the highest we had ever seen the water. I tend to think the road construction around our neighborhood had something to do with it, but then again maybe not.
In the first picture you can see the water was up to our front walk. It actually got about a foot closer then this.
The second picture is just a little bit later and you can see how high it got. We kept using the fire hydrant as our gauge. We pretty much though if it reached the top of the side parts we would probably be in trouble. But luckily, that was as high as it got.

The following Friday it did this all over again. Luckily or unluckily we were at the Rockets game so we did not have to sit around the house watching it...we just kept getting texts from neighbors about the progress.

Lets hope the next rain storms do not produce quite this much rain.