Whitney broke out of jail

Whitney loves role playing and her latest favorite is being put in jail. Probably because in almost every barbie movie, barbie somehow gets put in and escapes from jail. Our play doesn't last very long since she usually seems to find a way to break out within seconds, unless dad's involved.....then she gets tied up when she goes to jail. She loves it, and actual is a pretty good escape artist. Aaron was pretty creative with this jail.
Here are her escape attempts, I actually had mercy and helped her out after laughing.

Wonderful September

I don't know about you, but I have absolutely loved this month. I think I might proclaim September my new favorite month. Since my life doesn't involve worrying about school or sports or .....really anything, this month of great weather has been so nice. I take my morning run with almost no one else out there and then head to the uncrowded park. And have I mentioned the weather has been perfect.... 80's.....ahhhhh my favorite. Plus fresh peaches and fresh salsa, healthy and delicious! Anyway, I just wanted to say how nice this month has been. A get away to Houston sure helped, but it's been nice to just slow down and enjoy life with the kids.

I definitely had some benefits of coming home from vacation early. The Saturday after we got home (when we were supposed to be flying) on my way to a soccer game I noticed a neighbor selling a sweet air hockey table in a yard sale. I called Aaron and told him to check it out. We bought it and our kids love it...they're a lot better than I expected too.

Later that afternoon I talked Aaron into going to this workout equipment discount store, we must've felt like big spenders, because I walked away with a sweet treadmill (one with a built in TV and mp3 player dock...for a steal of a price), and a huge weight set. I'm in love with my new workout room and have loved all the added exercises I can do now to switch things up. If only I had a finished basement and some more free time I could start being a personal trainer again.

Last Wednesday It was my turn to host Whitney's play group. It's once a week from 10-2 with 7 girls. I thought I was in for it, but it went really well. All the girls are really cute. Travis loved that he got to stay and play this time and the girls loved that he would be the bad guy chasing them around the house. At lunch everyone wanted to pray....so we all did.... at the same time. I know, I know, that's not how it's supposed to be done, perhaps sacrilegious, but heavenly father hears all our prayers right? It was pretty funny though, definately a highlight. Whitney has seemed so grown up lately, and seeing her playing with all the girls rubbed it in my face that much more. I've found myself not looking forward to her growing up and going to school....then real life begins. I really just want to enjoy having my kids at home with me as long as I can (but I refuse at this point to homeschool, that won't happen!). How nice it is to wake up, take our time, go running, playground, popscicles, walks, toy store, ect.... without worrying about anything except nap time! My life is so good right now, life is great!

SNL

I heard about this - so when I saw it and laughed real good - I thought I would share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xEJ-lGneso

Beach House

So...although this probably isn't the exact location, it is pretty darn close to where our beach house is/was, the one we were supposed to stay in during hurricane Ike last week. Guess it's a good thing we decided not to ride out the storm. Wouldn't be surprised to see the owner take our money and run.

Aaron's Jinx

When me and Aaron were dating - well, at the beginning stages, we once went to the Riviera lobby with a couple other people and played some doubles ping pong. I was definitely more into having fun at this time than hard core ping pong competition. Apparently Aaron was so appalled with my ping pong skills he didn't know if he could date me anymore (what guy ever makes that an issue?). Anyway, obviously I didn't hear this story until after we were married and attempted to play ping pong again - when I did hear the story I was ticked, because....honestly, who says they wouldn't date someone because of their ping pong skills.

So ever since I heard the story, which was after I schooled him the second time we ever played, I made it a priority to NEVER let Aaron beat me in ping pong, just so I could smirk a comment at the end of "you wouldn't date me if....." Well, it's worked, and although I haven't completely shut him out, he has beat me only once, I have pretty much schooled him in ping pong. It is a healthy competition - one that produced a score of me beating his trash today twice : 21-12, 21-3. That's right folks, 21-3. Never judge a girls ping pong skills while playing doubles!

eye of the hurricane

Well, for those of you who haven't been watching the weather channel, or the news, or the internet.....there is a hurricane headed right for Galveston and Houston TX. Problem - we were supposed to be at a beach house in Galveston at this very moment. Although I'm not there, I can visualize myself reading in the sun by the ocean very well.

Last Sunday we flew to Houston for a week vacation just me and Aaron. He had a business convention there for a day, so I tagged along and extended the vacation plans. Sunday We flew out way to early. The plane flight went smoothly - I'm an uptight person in the airport from an incident when I was a kid - so it's so nice to travel with Aaron who is completely relaxed. When we got there I was pleasantly surprised to find that for our rental car choice there was a convertable in the same group as a buick = not a hard decision!! We headed to Emily & Lukes house that evening. Heather & Troy came to visit also, it was really fun to sit, relax, and visit without worrying about my kids tearing apart the place or whining. Plus, Emily & Luke sure know how to cook up a gourmet meal - it was impressive!

On Monday we went and played tennis. It felt sooooo good to play again, and even though somehow Aaron beat me :) I still had a blast. Plus Emily and Luke joined us for doubles after. That afternoon we headed to a very nice JW Marriot in downtown Houston. I was more than pleased to see that I had a HUGE (big enough for an iceskating rink) mall directly across the street. We explored our surroundings and then when to a Houston Astros game that night. I haven't been to a professional baseball game in a long time, and even though they don't have the funky colored rainbow outfits anymore, watching them play brought back memories of my own little league when I was an Astro. We had some pretty good seats as well.

Tuesday was the best day I've had for a long time. I'd say best day of my life - but I don't remember my life that well, so it would be biased :). I woke up, worked out (plus the treadmill was broken and said I was going faster than I was - good for my ego), read and swam by the pool, went to lunch with Aaron, shopped all by MYSELF all afternoon. When Aaron was done with his meetings we went to dinner, got massages (if I was rich I would do this weekly!), and saw The Dark Knight (which I absolutely loved, I'm a batman fan). I was amazed that even though we were traveling back to the hotel at 12:30pm I had tons of energy still. It made me feel a little young again, and validated the fact that although I absolutely love my kids, they suck the life out of me. After that day I could handle the news we were about to receive.

So as we turned on the weather channel to see the latest on Ike's plans we were informed that it was most likely a Cat 3 or 4 hurricane headed for Galveston. As I mentioned earlier, that was a problem, since we were supposed to stay in a beach house in Galveston Wednesday - Saturday (flying out Saturday morning when the eye actually hits land).

Wednesday morning we called the lady who owned the beach house - she gave us credit because she didn't think the conditions would be that bad - but perhaps when I'm done explaining you'll see why we'll call back and ask for a full refund. We called the airport to change to an earlier flight out - it would cost $300 dollars unless they saw it needful. The woman we talked to was very helpful though and told us to check back that day about 5 to find out if we could switch for free if they were evacuating.

Despite conditions, it was still good weather, and I was needing a day at the beach WAY too much. So we headed to Galveston for a fun day of boogie boarding, skimboarding, and getting fried! It was really fun and the waves were boogie boarding worthy thanks to Ike. It's fun to watch the news on the hurricane today because they are reporting in Galveston right were we were swimming......the waves are just 12 feet higher now! We took a break that afternoon about 3 to call the airport. Someone was definitely looking out for us because they changed our flight to Thursday for free. As we left Galveston that evening traffic seemed heavier - so when we found out that Galveston had just been issued a mandatory evacuation it all made sense.

We headed to Emily & Lukes house to return the boards, and stay that night before we flew out. About 3 min. after we showed up at their place we found out that their county had been issued an evacuation. I wish I could have been more help to them in that moment, because even though it was to bad we were cutting our vacation short, I felt a lot worse that Aaron's two sisters were having to leave their houses behind, not knowing what might happen. We booked a hotel by the airport to avoid traffic the next morning. All went smooth traveling Thursday and we were glad to be by the airport since they then evacuated Houston = a lot of traffic!!

Anyway to make a long story short, we had a lot of fun while there, we are home early, and I'll just have to wait till we go to Orlando in Nov. for more beach time. It's amazing how you don't notice your kids change until your gone for more that a couple days. We're back, burned, and making the most of what we would've missed if we were gone. Thanks mom and dad so much for letting my kids have the time of thier lives while we were gone. I think they were more bummed you guys were leaving now than we were to be back early from vacation - thanks a ton!!