Speedway Spectacular

On our most recent “date”, Will and I attended the Brazos County Children’s Museum’s Mom & Son Speedway Spectacular. The event was held at the Texas World Speedway, which is just outside of College Station, and to me, sounded like a classy venue. This is what the scoreboard (is it called a scoreboard in car racing?) looked like – not so classy.



The event reminding me of the Ann Arbor Touch-a-Truck, which Will loved, but with fewer trucks and more reptiles.

We enjoyed a hotdog, potato chip, and fruit punch dinner.


Watched a car race.




Went on a limo ride around the track.


Drove pedal go-carts.


Visited with Banana the snake and his/her reptile friends. (shudder)






And spray painted Will’s hair blue. You might be thinking that the evening contained an odd collection of events, and you would be right.


Though I spend A LOT of time with both kids together, and quite a bit of time with just Hallie, I am rarely able to spend time with just Will. And while Tom spends a fair amount of time with Will, and Will and Hallie together, he rarely spends time with just Hallie. Tom and I decided to remedy this situation by occasionally going on “dates” with the child of the opposite gender.

The night Will and I went to the Speedway Spectactular (which I considered a successful date, what with only one injury and one meltdown – I’ll let you guess which one of us was injured and which one of us had a meltdown), Tom and Hallie walked to McDonald’s for dinner and to play on the indoor playscape. Their date was a resounding success as well – Hallie Claire loved having her daddy all to herself, and as anticipated, McDonald’s was a hit.

I have lots of good ideas for future dates with Will – mini golf, movies, frozen yogurt (sorbet for Will) – but have a feeling that, for at least the next few months, Tom won’t have to come up with new date ideas for Hallie. The Golden Arches suit her just fine.

Wordless Wednesday

A New House to Call Home

On May 31, 2005, Tom and I purchased our first home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And today, exactly six years later on May 31, 2011, we purchased our second home in College Station, Texas. In honor of this coincidence I wore the same outfit to our closing today as I wore to our closing six years ago. The skirt still zipped, so I thought that was a good sign.

The house has been vacant for nearly a year, so it needs a little TLC both inside and out. The lease on our rental runs through the end of July though, so we have a few weeks during which we can work on the new house while still living in the rental. Starting tomorrow we’ll be, among other things, painting walls, ripping up carpet and replacing flooring, lining up folks to service the air conditioner (the most important home appliance in Texas) and fix a couple of electrical problems, replacing a leaky shower surround, and landscaping the heck out of the yard. Oh, and shopping for new throw pillows, my favorite home accessory.

The house, though it needs some work, has some great features as well - brand new kitchen counters and back splash, newer kitchen appliances, new paint in a few rooms, an extra bedroom, an extra bathroom, a laundry/mud room, a playroom, and a good-sized yard. We can't wait to make it our own!

Army Guys

Will has always been fascinated by people in uniform...

Waving to the Washtenaw County Sheriff


Getting a little too close to an Ann Arbor police officer and his "moca-cycle"


...especially military service members, who he calls "army guys" and "army guy girls".

Last weekend I flew with the kids (by myself, but that's a story for another time) to Wisconsin, and then yesterday I flew with them back to College Station. On both journeys we had layovers in Dallas, which, as it turns out, seems to be a "hub" for service member travel. I've often seen military service members in airports, but in Dallas we saw HUNDREDS of individual service members as well as entire companies traveling, as best I can guess, to serve our country overseas. Will was in awe, and for every single service member we walked past, he said "Look Mama! An army guy!". (Yes, this meant that when we walked by an entire company he said "Look Mama! An army guy! And another army guy! And an army guy girl!" and on, and on, and on...)

Some of these service members were talking and laughing with their comrades; others were sitting quietly by themselves, no doubt thinking about the travel and missions ahead as well as the friends and family behind. Eventually Will asked me why there were so many army guys at the airport, and so while we waiting for our final flight to take off we had an age-appropriate discussion about why our country has a military and what the members of the military do for their jobs. Will decided that the next time he saw an army guy he would tell him "thank you for keeping our country - and our plane (there was a service member on our plane) - safe".

On this Memorial Day, let us all follow the lead of my wise four-year-old and thank a service member for keeping us and our country safe.

Memory

Tom and I have been playing Memory with Will since he was about Hallie’s age. Learning to play Memory is a gradual process – match just a few of the cards facing up, match all of the cards facing up (Hallie’s in this stage right now), match just a few of the cards facing down, and finally match all of the cards facing down. Will graduated to the final stage, which is of course actually playing the game as it was intended to be played, a couple of months ago.

While both Tom and I will admit to altering the outcomes of board games – I’ve definitely stacked the deck in Candyland and blown on the spinner in Chutes & Ladders to bring ridiculously long games to a close – we’ve never done so while playing Memory. Whoever has the best strategy and the best memory wins. “Deal with it, Will – Mom and Dad rock at Memory.” (For the record, Tom and I’ve never actually said that to Will. But after a long day of losing every single sword fight, running race, and basketball game in which we’d been involved, we may have said it to each other after he went to bed.) Until last week, that is, when for the first time, neither Tom nor I had the best memory.

Here’s a picture of the victorious Will with his slightly-taller-than-my-pile pile of matching cards.


Embarassing.

Wordless Wednesday

It's Just a Little Crush

We went to our second Powersports birthday party, this time for a little girl in Will’s class named Kennedy, back at the end of April. (Kennedy has a little sister, Kandace, who is exactly the same age as Hallie, so Kennedy and Kandace’s mom kindly invited Hallie to attend the party as well.) Will had an absolute blast the first time we visited Powersports, and this time was even better.



I loved watching Hallie step timidly onto the trampoline, slowly start to bounce, and then eventually go crazy jumping up and down.

Sorry about the blurriness - I didn't have time to adjust my camera before she moved on to the next activity. I like this picture though, because you can tell she's smiling.


Hallie followed her big brother around trying to do whatever he did, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.





Will didn’t pay much attention to Hallie though, because – and someday Will is going to hate me for sharing this here – he has a little crush on Kennedy.

That's Will on the right, and of course Kennedy is the pretty little girl in between the three boys.


Will talks about Kennedy all the time, to the point that now Hallie also talks about Kennedy all the time because she thinks that’s what we’re supposed to do. He waits for or runs to catch up with her so they can walk in and out of their preschool classroom together. We’ve been going to the same church as Kennedy’s family, so Will and Kennedy wait for each other and then hold hands on the way into Sunday School as well. (We’ll be out of town for the next two Sundays, so yesterday Will told Kennedy he regretfully wouldn’t be able to eat Sunday School snack with her again until June.)

Kennedy seems to like Will as well. Her mother shared with me that every morning while she makes Kennedy’s lunch, Kennedy checks in to find out which of her lunchbox items Will could eat (all of the kids in Will’s class know about his allergies) in case they want to sit next to each other and share treats at lunchtime.

Kennedy is from Texas, and I believe her parents are as well, so they all have Texas accents. With a Texas accent, “Kennedy” is pronounced “Kinnidy”. I of course don’t have a Texas accent, so I pronounce Kennedy’s name differently than she and her mother do. One day, while Will and I were having a discussion about Kennedy’s upcoming birthday party, Will stopped me mid-sentence and said, “Mom, you’re just not saying her name right! It’s Kinnidy!” So though Will has a decidedly Midwestern accent, he speaks just the name of his girl Kennedy like a true Texan.

Both Will and Hallie enjoy Rascal Flatts’ music, so we rotate though quite a few of their CDs while driving in the car. One of Will’s favorite songs is Oklahoma-Texas Line, the chorus of which includes the line, “She has long blond hair, and big blue eyes. I’ve got all I ever need when that girl is by my side.” After a few listens through the song, Will suddenly shouted from the back seat, “LIKE KINNIDY! Kinnidy has long blond hair and big blue eyes!” Oklahoma-Texas Line is now affectionately known as Kinnidy’s Song in our car.

Will’s first crush: perhaps a silly topic for a post, but one worth spending a little time on in my opinion. In the years to come I want to remember how full my heart felt when I watched Will find so much joy in another little person.