Tag Archives: pictures

Disney Pictures

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For Christmas this year we surprised the kids with a trip to Disney. We went at the beginning of January which was a really perfect time since the weather was great and the crowds were really not bad at all. If you follow me on Facebook I posted a couple of updates and pictures while we were there and I’ve just now finally got around to putting all the better pictures on the web site.

Picture Update

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I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to get caught up on all the pictures from 2012 that I have been meaning to get to. I think today I’m finally caught up and ready to start on 2013. There are a lot of updates so here it goes.

  • Vacation to Florida – As it has been our tradition for the past couple of years we spend the first week of summer vacation in Florida. This year my my sisters family joined us and the cousins all got to hang out and have a great time.
  • Summer Swim Team – Pictures from a couple of the swim meets the boys did this summer.
  • Alex Triathlon – Alex had been asking to do another triathlon and this year we finally managed to sign him up for the same Dallas kids tri that he did a couple of years back.
  • Trip to New Orleans – Before the kids started back after the summer break we took a trip to New Orleans to see the Grandparents. On this trip we also did some things that we haven’t ever done before like visit the Old Mint, the Pontalba buildings, and the Mardi Gras Museum.
  • Caroline at the Gym – Caroline did an introduction to Gymnastics class.
  • Caroline Ballet – She also took an introduction to ballet class.
  • Halloween – Halloween pictures from this year.
  • Christmas – To finish out the year some pictures from Christmas.

Now I have a couple hundred pictures of the recent Disney trip to sift through 🙂

Website Updates

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I haven’t completely abandoned updating the website, it just seems like I have less and less time to do this stuff. If you have been following the home page there have been a couple of updates but I haven’t posted about them her so here’s the summary from the last time.

  • Caroline’s Birthday – Back in February we had a Mary Poppins themed birthday party for Caroline. It started off with her listening to the movie soundtrack, then she saw the movie, and then it was the party.
  • Alex and Andrew’s Birthday Party – The boys decided that they both wanted to have a bowling/laser tag party so we did a combined party.
  • Andrew Spring Soccer – Couple of pictures from Andrew’s spring soccer season.
  • Alex Spring Lacrosse – Couple of pictures from Alex’s spring lacrosse season.
  • Caroline’s First Haircut – I think we actually held out a really time before we took her for her first haircut but it was starting to get out of control.
  • Yearly Pictures – We did take our traditional yearly pictures again this year and we did do it right around their birthdays which was a small miracle. Here are Caroline, Alex, Andrew, and the Group pictures.
  • Mammoth Caves and Ryan’s Graduation – In May Ryan graduation from Law school at IU and as part of the trip up there we also visited Mammoth Caves, a bit of Louisville, and the Indianapolis Children’s Museum.

Basketball Pictures

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I haven’t posted pictures to the website for a while and part of reason is that our camera died a couple of months ago. We’ve had our small pocket camera but our SLR started getting flaky and then totally quit. The small camera is ok but it certainly doesn’t take pictures as nice as the SLR did.

So a week ago I ordered a brand spanking new camera and it arrived just in time for the last game of the boys basketball season. Of course I had to test it out at the game and capture some pictures.

We had originally only planned on Andrew playing basketball since he had such a good time with it last year but after going to one of Andrew’s practices Alex pleaded with us to play as well.

We gave in since it was the church league with the goal of coaching basketball fundamentals and having fun instead of high pressure competition and winning at all costs. They both had lots of fun and said that they wanted to play again next year.

 

Website Update

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Once again I’ve been pretty lax in keeping the website updated. There has been all kinds of stuff going on but I’ve just been falling behind.

We kept our tradition of taking yearly pictures of the kids but with all the bad weather we had around Caroline’s birthday we ended up taking her pictures a little late. In fact we didn’t get around to it until May so we just did everyone’s pictures on the same day. This worked out really well since we were able to take a bunch of group pictures that we’ve never done before.I think the group shots turned our really nice and we’ll probably try and do those every year.

Here are the links to the individual picture pages.

Right after the kids got out of school Jen drove with them to Watercolor Florida like we did last year to vacation with her family. Unfortunately I had a conference I needed to attend for work during that same week so I was only able to join them on the last day. Even though it was only for the day it was still fun and on the way back we stopped in to visit the USS Alabama battleship in Mobile Bay.

Then last weekend we surprised the kids with a trip to Sea World San Antonio. Over the summer Jen has been doing a “theme of the week” activity with the kids. The week they started piano lessons they had a music themed activity they did each day. The week before Sea World they were doing water animal themed activities. On Thursday I came home from work early and we surprised them with the trip. I wish I had a picture of Andrew’s face when he made the connection that we were going to be leaving right now, not in a couple of days, he looked like he was going to explode with excitement. Unfortunately we’ve now set the bar really high on surprises and I’m not sure we can top it.

 

Website Updated

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It’s been a really long time since I’ve updated the website with any pictures. Looking back the last update was the pictures from Andrew’s spring baseball back in March. I finally sat down and started working through the backlog and uploaded a bunch of new stuff.

  • In February we celebrated Caroline’s 2nd birthday. Since Jen was on bed rest at the time things were a little toned down and in fact the day of the party she started to get sick too.
  • Alex played spring lacrosse this year. He was back with the Frisco team that he played with in the fall and played with a bunch of the same kids. He had a good season and managed to score a bunch of goals.
  • Andrew did spring soccer with the Lizards, the team he has been on for the last couple of years. Like the previous season he was a defensive machine and even played goalie a couple of times.
  • At the end of March Auntie D and Cousin Corey came for a visit. We were sad that Uncle Doug couldn’t make the trip as well but we managed to have a great time anyway. It was lots of fun to see how much Corey had grow since we had seen him last and the cousins had lots of fun playing together.
  • Next up Alex had his birthday party. This year it was a Lego theme and we took all the kids to the new Lego Discovery Land center.
  • We had Andrew’s birthday party next and he too wanted to have a Lego theme. That was two Lego figure cakes to make within a couple of weeks for Jen and as always she did a super job.

Enjoy.

Snow Days

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Here in Texas we usually get at least one day of snow per year. I know, not much compared to how much our northern family and friends get but it’s snow just the same. This year a couple of days before the snow arrived the local news weatherman were all talking about the “arctic blast” and “heavy snow” like it was going to be the end of the world and as usually I just blew it off as sensationalism.

That night the freezing ran rolled in around 3:00 am and at 6:00 am the phone rang and it was the school district letting us know that there would be no school that day. Around noon the snow rolled in and we got about 4 inches at the house. The cold weather stayed around and the temperature didn’t get above freezing for the next four days and school was canceled for the remainder of the week. It was the first time in the history of the school district that they had ever had to cancel 4 days of school in a row for snow.

Since we don’t have the ability to clear snow and ice from all the roads I ended up working from home the entire week. In addition to all the cold and snow the state wasn’t prepared for the surge in electric needs and they had to implement rolling blackouts to conserve electricity. My work building lost power for an entire day so even if I could have made it in I would have sent me home.

The boys certainly enjoyed all the time off school since it meant more xbox minutes but after being cooped up in the house for 6 six days we were all starting to get a little stir crazy.

True to Texas weather a week later we were outside and didn’t even need a jacket.

Here are some of the pictures that we took during our days at the house.