Lisa

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

This morning, Rachel and Noah went for a run.  They ran most of the way to Starbucks.  Then they got some stuff at Starbucks and sat down.  They walked most of the way home.

Evan saw a kicking tee that he wanted to buy at Academy.  He had a gift card there so he and I went and he bought it.  We then went to Clayton where we threw the baseball and he kicked a football off the tee.

We came home and had lunch.

After lunch, we left to go to Barry and Lisa's.  Lisa was diagnosed with breast cancer and had her first chemotherapy session on Thursday.  We brought a fruit salad up to them.  We stopped by Tiff's Treats first to get some cookies.  Lisa has been using Rachel as a sounding board which I think has been good for both of them.  Lisa's sister, Angie was there helping out.  Barry and I played football against Evan, Noah and Lincoln.  Not surprisingly, there was some questionable calls that went the way of the boys over the fathers.  Evan was behind most of those questionable calls.

On the way home, we stopped at Zen for dinner.  The boys ate really well there.  They said they want to go back.  We didn't realize that on Saturday it was Kid's Eat Free.  It ended up being a very cheap meal.

Rachel is making stuff right now for the get together we're having tomorrow.  Some of the families from the Bucs are coming over for the Super Bowl.

Until next time...

Jocks

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

Evan had a basketball game this morning so I got up early.  Evan was already up, though I think he had just gotten up.

I got him ready for basketball and we drove over there.  This was the playoffs.  Evan's team was in last place and they were playing the first place team.  Unfortunately, it definitely showed.  Evan's team got killed.  I felt the other coach did not show much sportsmanship as they were still running plays with under 2 minutes to go and a huge lead with picks and everything.  Evan didn't seem upset and Evan's coach had a little party for the kids after the game.

We came home and had lunch and then went to the baseball fields.  Noah had a scrimmage today against the Yankees.  I don't know why, but I just can't stand any team named the Yankees.  Noah's team played very well and won the scrimmage.  Noah ran really well and listened.  He also made a great stop in left field to whole a boy to a single.  Evan found some older kids and played football with them during the game.  These kids seemed much older but they asked Evan if he wanted to join.  He had a great time.

We came home and took quick showers and drove up to Barry and Lisa's for Lincoln's birthday party.  Evan and Noah went right out back and played more sports.

We had a good time at Barry and Lisa's.  Noah started to play with Lincoln right as we were about to leave.

For dinner we stopped at Enchiladas Y Mas.  They have my favorite fajitas.  They are really really spicy.  But we don't get there very often - maybe once a year.  The boys were good there.

On the way home, Noah informed us that he is a jock.  It was very funny.

We are about to put the kids to bed.

Until next time...

Inside Rainy Day

We have been getting a lot of rain. It rained most of the day.

We stayed at home until it was time to leave for Lincoln's birthday party (3:00).

Evan and Noah had fun at the birthday party. They enjoyed playing with Lincoln's toys.

After we left the party we went to dinner at Enchiladas Y Mas. We had to wait a while for a table. The boys were both tired and whiny. Evan was especially whiny. He said he wanted scrambled eggs, but when it came he made up excuses as to why he wouldn't eat them.

We just got home and now we are putting the boys to bed.

Very Big Day

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

Today was a very big day in terms of how much stuff we had.  It started off with a Pancake Breakfast.  The Clayton Elementary School teachers were putting on a fundraising drive at Applebee's.  They were serving pancakes.  We were told that it gets ridiculously crowded, so get there early.  Noah was still sleeping, so Zayde stayed home with Noah.  Rachel, Evan and I went and got there early.  We were the first people there.  The teachers dressed up for Halloween and the kids were supposed to dress up.  Evan went as Darth Vader.  We saw his teacher, Mr. Valdes, and his friends Patrick and Liam.

When we got home, Rachel and I laid down while Zayde played with Evan and Noah.

Then we went to Evan's football game.  Barry, Lisa, Lincoln and Justine came to see Evan play.  Noah and Lincoln played together with the football on the sidelines. In the second half, Evan got to play quarterback.  The coach had him throw downfield several times.  One of the times, unfortunately, he threw an interception, but overall, he did well.  I was proud of him.

From football, we drove to Doc's Backyard and had lunch with the Kincarts.  Lincoln insisted on sitting next to Noah which was nice.  Once lunch was over, the boys went on the playground together that they have at Doc's.

We came home for a bit and the boys "relaxed" some.  Then we had a block Halloween party at the end of the cul-de-sac.  Evan immediately started playing football with some of the older boys.  Noah asked for his big wheel and rode that around.  We enjoyed spending time talking with our neighbors.  The boys had so much fun that they didn't want to leave.  We didn't get back to the house until 9:30.  Evan was exhausted.  Noah spent quite a bit of time with the 4-year-old girl across the street named Bryn.  Noah told me that she was his girlfriend.  It was really cute.

The boys are in bed now and I don't imagine they'll be getting out of bed.  They both were very tired.

Until next time...

Groupon

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

Today was the day of Groupon. We were actually able to use four Groupons in one day.

It started out this morning. Rachel had an 8am appointment up in Round Rock at a salon to get a Brazilian Blowout. She left the house around 7:20 or so. The boys got up shortly thereafter.

They played in the game room for a bit and then we left to go to Barry and Lisa's. We were giving Lisa a sling for when she had her baby. We forgot it when went to Lincoln's party. Plus we didn't get to talk to them much. So Evan, Noah and I drove up there. They were excited to go on the swing set at their house. They played in the backyard for most of the time, and then played with Lincoln's toys for a bit inside.

Rachel met us over at Barry and Lisa's when she was done.

We came home and had lunch. The boys and I ate our lunch upstairs in the game room on TV trays as Rachel was tutoring.

In the late afternoon, Rachel and I had a massage class to go to. It was an hour long class with a massage therapist that we had gotten on Groupon. It was four two couples but the little girl of the other couple got sick so they had to cancel. So our lesson was private. It was kind of nice learning how to give real massages.

To do this class, we dropped Evan and Noah off at the Clubhouse for Kids. It's a drop-off daycare. Rachel had gotten a Groupon for 20 pre-paid hours. They served the kids pizza there.

We went to dinner downtown at Garrido's since the boys were being taken care of. Rachel had gotten a Groupon for Garrido's as well. We had a nice dinner there with another large discount.

We haven't figured out how much we saved today. I'm thinking it was over $300 that we saved today with the hair thing being the largest savings. That also doesn't count that we bought another group coupon from a site called Urban Dealight for a tree trimming. I made an appointment for them to come out on Monday. That's another $125 we saved there.

After dinner, we picked the boys up. They seemed to have had a good time. They said they'd go back.

We just put the boys to bed but somehow they are down here. Normally every night, I read Captain Underpants before bed to Evan. Noah listens sometimes, but he doesn't sit still very well. We just received a book from Zayde called "You Can Count on Monsters". Evan decided, instead of having me read Captain Underpants to him, he'd read this new book to Noah. They were sitting in Evan's room as Evan read the book to Noah.

We are going to have to put them back to bed now.

Until next time...

Long Day

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

The day began early for Rachel. She got up to go to meet with a running group downtown. Evan was up while Rachel was getting ready.

I got up after the boys were playing. When I came out of my room, I could hear Evan and Noah playing. I realized they were playing in Evan's room and they had the door closed. It sounded like they were throwing a ball and trying to catch it. I don't know. But they were definitely having a good time.

Rachel came home around 11:30 after she went to Luke's Locker - a running shoe store - and got some new running shoes for herself.

When she got home, Evan and I left to go to the park. I wanted to bring our tee for him to hit off of at a baseball field and work with him on running the bases. We stopped at the bank to deposit some checks before we went and then we went to the park. It was a really nice day. I set the tee up at home plate and then I'd yell out "single", "double", "triple" or "home run" after he hit a ball and I wanted him to tell me what base to run to and he'd run to it. I worked with him on running the right direction and to drop the bat after he hit the ball. He picked it up very quickly and he seemed to know which direction to run before I even told him. We both had a good time. Sunday is Evan's first tee ball practice so I wanted to introduce him to concepts he hadn't done before so he'd be more prepared.

We came home and had lunch and the went upstairs because Rachel was having a student over to tutor.

When Rachel finished tutoring, we left to go to Barry and Lisa's for Lincoln's third birthday party. As soon as we got there, Evan and Noah asked to go outside to play on the swing set out back. At one point, Noah and Lincoln were on the glider together. It was very cute.

After the party, we drove back home, stopping at Little Caesar's to pick up a pizza for the boys. Rachel had arranged for us to go to a cooking class at Central Market and Blanca was coming over to babysit. We got the boys set up with dinner, Blanca came and we jumped back into the car to drive to Central Market.

The cooking class was good. We had taken one there before. Actually it was before we had kids so it was a long time ago. They have a kitchen set up and you watch them cook it, like a cooking show and then they serve you the food. The chef obviously like pork products because there was some appetizer with serrano ham, prosciutto covered asparagus, and bacon in the scalloped potatoes. But it was good and Rachel and I enjoyed ourselves.

We had planned to see Just Go With It as we had a Groupon for Fandango that we had purchased a while back and it was expiring. Since we had a babysitter, we figured we'd just see a movie. The cooking class ended a bit earlier than we expected, so we had some time to kill. We bought some stuff at Central Market to kill some time.

The movie was very good. Of course, Rachel and I are Adam Sandler fans, but really it was enjoyable.

When we got home, we heard crying. It turns out that Evan had heard the garage door. It woke him up and he had run to the window overlooking the garage crying for me. Apparently, he had told Blanca he was going to wait up all night for me and he had fallen asleep. I guess he was worried that somehow he wouldn't see me or something. I don't know. But Rachel held him for a bit and then he wanted to come to me and I put him to bed after reading Captain Underpants. I read that to him every night and I think he had been a bit upset that I hadn't read it to him tonight. I think he's asleep now.

Until next time...

Getting out of the House

This morning Morry got up with Evan and got him breakfast and a movie. Then Morry was able to go back to bed for a little while.

Barry, Lisa, and Lincoln came over this morning. They brought some dinners for us. We hung out at the house for a little bit and then we went out to lunch at Cheddars. The boys liked looking at the fish tank they have there.

When we got home we put Evan and Noah down for naps.

For dinner we had the chicken and rice Barry and Lisa had made for us.

Evan and Noah played for a while after dinner and we just put them to bed.

Like always, Evan is still up.

G-Force

Hello everyone, this is Morry.

This morning we planned on going to see G-Force at the movie theater. Evan had seen the previews and wanted to go. So we knew we had to get going on the earlier side. Around 8am, while we were still sleeping, the phone rang. It was the vet calling with Mottel's blood test results. The results were negative so he is not vitamin B-12 deficient and he won't need any more B-12 shots.

We were able to get going and go out of the house when we had planned to leave. I had set that as a target time figuring that we not make that and so buffer was built-in. So we got to the mall early where the movie was playing. We bought the tickets and Evan and Noah played with the fire truck strollers that you can rent at the mall. Also there was a photo booth which Evan said was his spaceship. After a while, we went into the theater and Evan and Noah pretended to play with the video games while Rachel held seats for us as well as Aunt Susan, Aunt Donna and Leslie. 5 minute before the movie I brought the boys in and then went and got popcorn for us.

The movie was pretty stupid. I knew it would be. But I think Evan enjoyed it. Noah did pretty well there too. Both boys ate a bunch of popcorn. I also had soda (we had a coupon for free popcorn with the purchase of a soda) and Evan kept grabbing my soda when I wasn't looking and drinking it. It was Coke.

Before the movie, there was a preview for Toy Story 3. It was the same teaser trailer that Evan had seen at home. Nevertheless, Evan was mesmerized while it was playing. As soon as it was over, Evan looked over at me with a huge smile. I think I'm getting just as excited as him to go see it. The thing is I'm excited to see Evan see the movie. In October, they are re-releasing Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Obviously, we'll take the boys to go see them.

After the movie, we went to Rudy's with everyone. The food was good but I think the boys were starting to get very tired. Evan was very antsy.

On the way home, Evan fell asleep. That is really bad news because Evan doesn't transfer. Once you wake him up, he won't go back to sleep. That was the case today as he didn't nap. Noah took a good nap though.

After naps, Barry, Lisa and Lincoln came over. Evan was very excited to have Lincoln over. He said he was going to show Lincoln all his toys. The boys seemed to play together well. I made chicken fajitas and we had salad. I made Spanish rice in the steamer but forgot to put water in the steamer. So there was no steam to cook the rice. In my defense, I was doing about 50 things at once, but still that's a pretty obvious thing. For dessert, Lisa made brownies and chocolate fondue. She brought fruit also. Evan ate the fruit and had a brownie. Noah also ate some fruit and part of a brownie.

After dinner, I helped Lisa with the Content Management System that someone set up for her, for her website. It was not at all intuitive. I think I had it figured out, at least one part of it, when they left. Hopefully that helps her out a bit.

We put the boys down to bed, but Evan is out of his room saying he needs to go potty. Rachel is dealing with him.

Until next time...

Wet

Hello everyone, this is Morry. It's my turn to write the blog today.

This morning, Rachel got up at 5am so she could help Alissa with the garage sale. She picked up McDonald's coffee on the way for the two of them. Rachel thought the coffee was pretty good.

I stayed home with the boys and we had plans to meet Barry, Lisa and Lincoln at the fountain that's part of Zilker (I think it's still considered Zilker). Evan got up at 8:50am and I went in and put on his swimsuit and got him all lathered up with sunscreen. The two of us went into Noah's room and got him ready. We came downstairs and the boys had breakfast while I got everything together like towels and food for lunch afterwards.

This was the first time I was taking both boys to a place where they were going to need sunscreen and swimsuits by myself. In fact, I'm not sure if I have ever taken Evan by himself to something like this. I was determined to get there on time. I had us moving and we got there 5 minutes early.

Unfortunately, it was raining when we got there. It seemed like a quick shower and it was. By the time the Kincarts got there, it had stopped raining (they were on time by the way). The boys had a great time playing. Noah started to kick and squeal when he saw the water. It was also really fun hanging out with Barry and Lisa and getting to see how big Lincoln is getting.

After we were there for 45 minutes or so the skies turned black and a really cold wind picked up. We knew it was about to rain, and rain hard. Thank God Lisa and Barry were there. We each had to grab a very wet kid. I grabbed Evan, Barry grabbed Lincoln and Lisa grabbed Noah. We ran back to the cars and each changed a child. Lisa had the toughest time because Noah was screaming and carrying on.

After we got the kids dressed, we drove over to Mighty Fine Burgers. On the way, though, Rachel called to tell me that, during the garage sale, the skies opened up without much warning and just started pouring down on them. They got soaking wet trying to get everything out of the rain. They are going to have to do the garage sale again.

I was thankful, again, that Barry and Lisa were with me at Mighty Fine Burgers. They helped me bring the stuff and the boys in and helped again on the way out. Barry actually strapped Evan in the car for me on the way out. The food was good at Mighty Fine but it was packed. Noah and Lincoln sat next to each other and it was really cute. I had told Evan he could have a milkshake after lunch if he was ate well. He didn't eat very well so we didn't get a milkshake. But the Kincarts had a gift for Evan so I think that made up for the lost milkshake. Evan ended up playing with it for the rest of the day.

The boys took good naps today. I watched the Preakness. I thought Mine That Bird was going to pull it out again. I think, had the track been longer, he would have won. Of course the stupid sports reporters say nothing about that.

For dinner, we went to Logan's. When we got there Evan remembered that he had heard the Life is a Highway from the Cars soundtrack the last time we were there. He wanted to hear it again. Their jukebox is free so we went and picked it out. Both boys were incredibly well behaved at dinner.

We gave them baths and they are now in bed. They seem to be quiet which is good.

Until next time...

Bookstore and Birthday Party

This morning Evan got up around 9:00. I got up with him and got him dressed. I tried to let Morry sleep, but Lizzy ended up waking him up.

We just hung around the house this morning. I went for a run with Lizzy.

For lunch we went to Natural Planet, a restaurant near our house for lunch. The food was good, but the service wasn’t so great. It took forever to get our food and then it took a long time to pay the bill. Something was wrong with their computer system and they weren’t able to print receipts.

After lunch we went to Barnes and Noble for a little. Evan and Noah enjoyed playing with the train set.

Then, we drove to Barry and Lisa’s house for Lincoln’s first birthday. They have a little rat terrier. Evan spent most of the time outside with the dog and playing on their swing set. Barry and Lisa have a doggie door and Noah discovered how to climb through it. We had a hard time keeping him away from the door. We were inside and he kept wanting to go outside through the doggie door.

After the party we decided to come back home instead of going out to dinner. Neither of the boys had naps since the party was during their nap times. Aunt Susan met us at our house. We called in a order for pizza and dad/Lenny/Papa went to pick it up.

It has been a long day. We are all pretty tired. Hope we all can sleep well tonight.

Austin Snow

Well, we actually got a light dusting of snow last night. When the boys woke up around 9am I took them outside to play in the snow. At that time it was already melting, but they still had fun with what was left of it. Below are a few pictures. Evan was very excited about the snow. He said it was like Polar Express. I showed him how to make a snowball. Then, I tried to make a very small snowman. I had the 2 lower balls on top of each other and was making the top ball for the face when Evan kicked the lower two balls. I don’t think he realized what I was trying to do. He just thought they were snowballs to play with. Noah enjoyed watching Evan run around.

Evan seemed in a better mood today. He ate a better lunch today. He had mac and cheese, black eyed peas, corn, and fruit.

Noah ate his cereal mix at lunch but then was very fussy. I put him down for a nap at 12:30 and he slept for a little bit. I tried to put Evan down for a nap but he would’t sleep. Around 4:00 we walked over to the Circle C Mom’s club Christmas party. Evan had a good time playing the toys and running around with the other kids. Noah seemed to enjoy himself too. We walked back around 5:15. Evan walked the whole way home. It was maybe a 10 minute walk. Morry had just gotten home when we walked in the door.

Morry made chicken and rice for dinner. I was able to eat a little of it. I’m still not back to normal. I’m just trying to take it easy and eat small amounts.

The boys are in bed now and all is quiet.

At Barry and Lisa Kincart's house the other night.
Evan, Noah, and Lincoln