He is home!!

Last weekend Chris made it home to Texas. He flew into Ft. Hood and the boys and I went up Friday night to see him and stay the weekend since he wouldn't be able to actually come home yet. We just missed the bus driving up because we got stuck in bad traffic but boy were we all excited to see Daddy!
The boys even "helped" him load his things in the car to take to our hotel.
Chris still had work to do over the weekend so that he could get out of there and back home so the boys and I had some free time. We passed a museum several times with lots of tanks and cool things outside so we decided to check it out. The boys even liked the indoor part of the museum which showed lots of mannequins in uniforms and weapons.






Saturday night we met my parents & one of my sisters for dinner. My parents also brought Chris his car so that he could get home on his own after the boys and I left on Sunday. Chris actually ended up rocking through the rest of the things he needed to get done and came home on Tuesday afternoon. I really didn't except him until closer to the end of the week so it was a great surprise. This week has been nice with the family back together again. Chris is having to learn some of our routines since he's not done the school thing with the boys before, Chewy's medication, etc. He'll be off work for about a month so he's got plenty of time to "learn".

Finally, our whole family together!

Busy, busy, busy

The two weeks since school started have been jammed packed. Not only have we had to get back into the school routine but Alex is still continuing his karate class twice a week. There were lots of promotions at class yesterday. Two lower stripe boys got new stripes plus the three bear stripe boys all got their orange belts! They were so proud.

This was good timing because he's been talking lately about wanting to quit karate. I think part of the problem is that Zachary's gymnastics class, which is once a week, looks like too much fun and he wants to join. I just don't think that Alex can do all of this:



We finally heard from our fall soccer coach and soccer practice will begin next week. That's three nights a week that we'll have activities plus a Saturday morning game. I'm hoping that once Chris gets home (soon!!) we can split the kids up so Alex doesn't have to sit at gymnastics & Zachary doesn't have to sit at karate. We'll see what happens.

1st day of Kindergarden

Today was it, the first day of Kindergarten! Last night the boys picked out clothes, decided on what to have for lunch, and headed to bed just a tad early. They woke up with no problems this morning although I'm sure that will change when the newness of school wears off again! Here they are with all their gear ready to go!

I've decided to drive the boys to school in the morning again because the bus comes so darn early (it runs the route for the little kids first & then goes out a second time for the big kids) and it still won't come to our house so I'd have to drive them to the bus stop anyway. The boys did change schools from Pre-K and it's only about a 15 minute drive away which I love. We were there plenty early this morning and went to Zachary's classroom first. Poor kid with a Z name had to have a makeshift hook for his backpack which pulled right out of the wall when he tried to hang his backpack on it! The teacher said another child is leaving in a couple of weeks and Zachary will have a real hook. I guess he's in a full class this year!
The teacher had paper & colors waiting at the desk to color a picture of what the kids did during the summer. I wonder what Zachary drew?

Alex's class was next. His teacher just had them leave their things at their desk while all the parents were there. It was probably too crazy with a room full of extra people anyway! I was happy that there is one boy from his karate class at his table. That was the only child we recognized in either class.

Alex's teacher also had a basket on each table with books to read or pages to color.

Finally Alex told me to leave. Yup, ready to be on his own I guess. He did ask me for a hug and a kiss before I left though!

Off to meet the school bus!
**The bus was about 15 minutes late, yuck! The boys both had a good day but were tired! Both of them fell asleep on the car ride home from karate.

Gymnastics

As school is getting closer and closer so is everything else. Alex is going to continue with his karate classes but Zachary finally got his wish to take gymnastics. His first class was today and he loved it! It was an hour long class which seems kind of long but his class moved around the whole gym so it never got boring for them. When I signed him up online I thought that the class that I wanted for him was full so I picked something else. It turns out that this was the class I wanted all along and it just had a different name. The class is all boys (just four of them) and they will learn the rings, vault, horse, parallel and uneven bars, and floor exercises. It was hard to get good pictures because the viewing area was a balcony so the kids were sometimes far away.



Of course some things I could tell that Zachary was better at than others. He wasn't very coordinated looking jumping on the trampoline but I thought he was great at the rings & bars. That boy's got some muscles!

......And just because I saw my sisters this weekend. Here's the five youngest cousins together this morning. They are in reverse age order. Sorry I missed the two teenage cousins!

New Jersey/NYC sisters vacation

Alot has happened in the two weeks since I last posted. I went on a fabulous vacation with my two sisters! It was all very last minute, I know. We originally were trying to plan a big group vacation but it didn't work out and ...... somehow we ended up with the three of us going alone to visit a cousin of ours that live in New Jersey. Kate was very sweet to let us stay at her place and be our tour guide of New York City. We had a blast! I will admit right now that (a) this will be a long post and (b) I stole some of these pictures from my sisters.

The first full day of our trip we took a bus into NYC (about an hour). We grabbed some coffee and then cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. Delish!

We did a ton of walking. We made it to Wall Street and found the stock exchange.
Near there is also a large bull. You can see that some people took pictures at the back end of the bull. Hee hee! We stuck to the front.

We found ground zero. There's lots of construction going on there. Some new towers are being built as well as a large 9-11 museum. Unfortunately that wasn't finished yet.

In Battery Park there is this huge sculpture called "The Sphere". It used to be in the plaza of the World Trade Center and was damaged but not destroyed during 9-11. It was moved to Battery Park as a temporary monument.
We had lunch in or close to little Italy at Lombardi's which says it's the first pizza place in America. Whether it was or not it was pretty darn tasty!
Everyone said that you cannot go to New York City without seeing a Broadway show. We agreed. We saw Mama Mia which was right up our alley since we were all fans of the movie. I must say that this "Sam" was a much better singer than Pierce Brosnan. Not that it would take much (sorry Pierce!).

We hit up FAO Schwartz for a little toy shopping (and I do mean little). We did see the famous piano keyboard thingy but although it was free to play on there was a line so we passed. They had a huge Lego section and some cool things built with them like Indiana Jones, The Statue of Liberty (of course), and a pirate (Captain Jack Sparrow maybe?).


The second day we spent most of the morning taking the ferry to Liberty Island and Ellis Island. We weren't able to go up inside the Statue of Liberty (you have to get tickets way in advance) but we were right there.



Ellis Island had a museum that was full of interesting things to read but not lots of photo op kinds of things. Don't let the lack of pictures here make you think we didn't like it.

In the afternoon we hit up The Top of The Rock. This is an observation deck (or three) at the top of Rockefeller Center. Because we did this we skipped going to the top of the Empire State Building but we had a great view of it along with Central Park and just most of Manhattan. We couldn't really see the Chrystler Building but that's about it.




If it was possible we did even more walking this second day in the city than we did on the first. This is the Flatiron Building. I'm not even sure what it is but I'm guessing apartments or condos. The only thing I do know is that it was in the opening of "Friends".
Our next two days were spent much less busy in staying close to "home" in New Jersey. We did a little walking here too since we were so close to the beach. We hit up the boardwalk & did a little more souvenir shopping but never actually went in the water.

I've always wanted to go to NYC and am so glad that I finally got the chance. It was also really great to get to do it with my sisters and Kate because we all wanted to do some of the same goofy things (like eat at certain places) that I'm not sure other people would always want to do. Maybe this sister trip thing should become a yearly (or every other year?) tradition!