Ice at the Gaylord Texan

Every year the Gaylord Texan (big, expensive hotel and conference center) puts on a display of ice sculptures. This year's theme was How the Grinch Stole Christmas so we thought it would be fun to go check out when Kelly's brother, nephew, and niece were in town. I checked out the website and it said that the Ice display is kept at 9 degrees so "All guests are provided calf-length, hooded winter coats to keep them warm. Coats are available in all sizes, including children and infants." I asked someone from our church who I know has seen the Ice display in previous years how long it takes to go through and they said about an hour and a half so we planned accordingly.

In preparation that morning, we packed a stroller, the Beco baby carrier, and a fleece snowsuit type thing for Bryce. But when we got there, I thought that if they put Bryce in a coat, he wouldn't fit in the Beco and I wouldn't need the fleece snowsuit for him either. So we left those in the car. We also left the stroller in the car because we barely used it at the zoo and just ended up pushing around an empty stroller while Cason ran around and one of us held Bryce. Big mistakes.

We didn't realize that we'd have to walk a mile (might be a slight exaggeration) through the hotel before we even got to the Ice display. By the time we got there, we were tired of carrying the boys but Cason refused to walk. They did not have any infant coats and the coat they gave Cason was huge on him. He FREAKED about having to wear this coat. Complete meltdown. I really wish I would have prepared him better for that. Or better yet, just taken a few sweatshirts for him to wear instead of their coat. Kelly calmed him down enough to go into the Ice exhibit. I had to wrap my coat around Bryce (at least we thought enough to bring his hat) and try to carry him wrapped up. But my coat wasn't big enough so I had to hold him awkwardly and then use my other arm to keep the coat around him. Not very easy. Was really wishing I had put him in the fleece snowsuit and plopped him in the Beco carrier. So I didn't really have my hands free to take many pictures. Some of these I stole from Chris' camera. Anyway, if we could do it all over again, I would have done it much differently but we got the gist of the thing. Pretty much everything you see is made from ice.





Nick and Natalie.



Kelly loves the Grinch. We prepped Cason by reading him How the Grinch Stole Christmas several times over the past week. Now when he sees the Grinch he says "awful idea" from the line "Then he got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch had a wonderful, awful idea."



Sorry for the blurry picture. You know how on a camera you have to push the shutter button halfway down for it to focus and then push it the rest of the way to take the picture? Yeah, I just learned that like a year ago. After all these years of NOT doing that, it's hard to get into the habit. Especially when I have to hurry and take a picture or else miss it.





The best part of the Ice exhibit is the big room with the ice slides. Cason said he wanted to do it so Kelly took him up the stairs and waited in line with him. After all that waiting, it was finally his turn. Kelly set him down and then Cason decided he did not want to go down the slide and started trying to crawl off. Kelly gently nudged him down the slide anyway and he screamed the whole way down.





You know how someone told us it took an hour and a half to walk through? It was only a few small rooms. I think we went through in about 30 minutes, and half that time was waiting in the room with the slides. So we were a bit disappointed. The last room had a huge ice nativity scene, which I did not get any pictures of. But we had Chris take this picture of Cason next to a goat. The goat only comes up at opportune times now. Like when we ask Cason to do something, if he doesn't want to do it, he is suddenly terrified of the goat.

"Cason, let's brush your teeth"
"No! The goat! I'm sared (scared)!"

Note that we keep his toothbrush in the kitchen, nowhere near where the goat resides in our bedroom.

Or after throwing something, we ask him to pick it up and he can't because he is too scared of the goat. Niiiice.



The lobby of the hotel is huge and all decked out with huge 50 foot trees, 1.5 million lights, 10,000 ornaments, and a few big model trains that run around tracks. I have no idea why I didn't get pictures of these decorations. Here is Cason checking out the model trains.



Sitting in a sleigh. I just love Bryce's smile.

Teeth!

Bryce is finally getting teeth in. I felt his lower left front tooth on Monday, followed by the emergence of his lower right front tooth on Tuesday.

He has also been trying to pull himself up to standing. I try not to assist him but it's hard to not help a little.

Our Texas art

Our master bedroom has been pretty devoid of any real decoration since we moved in three and a half years ago. We have talked about finding some sort of art or something to hang above the bed but it has never been a high priority. One day in mid August, I was bored so I started searching etsy for inspiration. I found this, which I thought was pretty cool:



But this thing was tiny, I think it was less than one foot long. We wanted something that was 5-6 feet long. I showed it to Kelly and he agreed that it was pretty cool so I suggested making one ourselves. Kelly had the idea to use pictures of Texas landscape or architecture since we live in Texas. I searched all over the internet looking for cool postcards or pictures we could buy for cheap. I ended up using some royalty free photos from stocklib.com. I payed $3 per jpeg, which allowed me to download it and have the rights to the photos. So I can print them out as many times as I want, change them, etc. So the first thing I did was to weather the photos. I used photoshop and a free texture that my cousin in law (thanks Carol!) e-mailed me a long time ago to turn this:



into this:



So now that we had the pictures, we had to figure out what we wanted to do with them. It started out that we were going to make it look like my inspiration picture. We were going to either buy an old piece of weathered barn board or we were going to try to weather it ourselves. After thinking about it for a week or so, I decided that would be boring. It would be just like a giant picture frame. I wanted something more, something that would make it really stand out and be unique. I ended up getting busy with other projects, like Pages We've Turned and Kelly got busy working on the landscaping so we just set this aside and didn't give it much thought for awhile.

Then one day, I had the idea to use corrugated tin in some way. The project took many turns in my head as I worked through logistics until one day it dawned on me to use magnets to attach the pictures to the corrugated tin. I finally had it all figured out in my head how I wanted it to look but we had to sit on it for another month because Kelly was so busy at work that we didn't have much time to work on it. But over the past week, we got the chance to get started and it has come together exactly like I had pictured it.

First I used some spray adhesive to mount the 5x7 photos on thin pieces of plywood to make them more sturdy. Next, we cut out the wood for the frame, making good use of Kelly's newish miter saw. Then we trimmed down the corrugated tin. We stained the wood frame, mounted magnets on the back of the pictures, and put it all together. It was very easy to make after I explained, re-explained, and drew pictures for Kelly to understand what I wanted. It will also be easy to switch out the pictures if we get tired of them.







Our Texas art includes the Texas flag, railroad tracks (because they're everywhere down here), a Texas Longhorn, the 360 bridge in Austin,



the Alamo, a windmill, a Cowboy roping cattle, a fence post with lasso and hat, and a pumpjack. I learned that those things are called pumpjacks through this project, I always just called them oil drills.



Now I can get going on my next project, seems like I always have a few going in my head.

Finally.... annual Cowboys pictures

It has become a tradition to take pictures of the boys (Kelly included) in their Dallas Cowboy attire every year. The past two years (which you can see here), we took the pictures at the beginning of the season so Kelly was still optimistic about the year. This year, he worked almost every game day in September and October. If he was here and we thought about it, it was cloudy and dreary outside, which made the house too dark to take pictures. So we just got around to it today.

Looking back at the past two years, I'm nostalgic for the cute, sweet little boy who was so easy to photograph. He is so DIFFICULT these days, especially when it comes to taking pictures. These here were the best that we got (and aren't all that great). This is even after we bribed him. At least I can still get cute pictures of Bryce.









Then we moved outside for two reasons. One, for better lighting. But the more important reason is it gave Cason less options about running away. We didn't let him wear shoes and told him if he went in the grass, the ants would bite him. This kid has gotten more fire ant bites this year than I've gotten in my whole life so he believed us. We're mean like that.









And here are some outtakes. These pictures almost made me title this post "Why we probably won't be sending out Christmas cards this year" but it was just too long.



Hugging his brother... I think.





Yes, he is biting the football.

Tattletale

You know how most kids get really quiet when they're doing something naughty? Cason actually does the opposite. I always know to go running to him if I hear him in another room laughing. In the past week alone, he has tattled on himself by laughing quite a few times. One day I found that he had gotten a hold of the squirt bottle I use to squirt the dogs when they're barking. He was giggling with glee and the carpet was all wet. Earlier today, he was laughing and I ran in the playroom to find that he was ripping apart the train tracks on his train table. And it seems every day he ends one meal or another by dropping food on the floor or teasing the dogs with his scraps and laughing about it. At least someone finds it funny.

6 month appointment

Bryce's 6 month appointment was this morning and he did great. He was so happy, smiling and making faces. Until the doctor made him lay down on the table anyway. Such a difference from his 2 month appointment where he screamed the entire time. Here's the rundown on his stats:

Weight: 19 pounds, 10 ounces -- 75-90th percentile
Length: 26.5 inches -- 50th percentile
Head circumference: 43.5 cm -- 50th percentile
Cuteness -- 99th percentile
Teeth -- none
Sitting up -- yes
Crawling -- nope
Sleeping through the night -- he's almost there, depends on the night
Hair pulling -- he's a professional

We also started food last week. I had started oatmeal a few weeks ago but he wasn't that into it so I didn't bother half the time. For his first "real" food, I chose avocado. He's only had it twice now but he seems to be a fan.







PS -- this is my 100th post!

The zoo

As I have mentioned before, it's been about a year since the last time that I took Cason to the zoo. At that point, he was just over a year old and wasn't even talking yet. He enjoyed the zoo back then but didn't pay much attention to the animals. So I thought now that he is two, things would be a lot different. I had visions of Cason being enthralled by the animals and how he would talk about them for weeks or months to come. Today was perfect weather wise so we packed up and headed to the zoo. Cason, however, was only mildly amused by the animals.







He was actually way more interested in the fences,



grass, leaves,



and of course rocks.



My little gymnast.



So here's the rundown on Cason's interests.

Likes:
rocks
leaves
acorns
letters
hanging on things
jumping
climbing

Completely indifferent:
cars
trucks
trains
animals

All of Cason's friends seem to love vehicles of all sorts and animals. I have tried to get him interested in all of those things but I guess Cason is my nature lover. I do have high hopes that he will love gymnastics though. I'm planning on enrolling him as soon as he turns three.



Isn't Bryce's shirt way too cute?! A tree frog shirt, to match his room.