A Playdate With Atticus

My oh my! Where do I begin?? This was the most amazing, well thought out playdate in history. Apollo, Atticus's dad, had constructed this entire playland in the backyard, complete with a castle and a labyrinth of obstacles and surprises. Sophia was a little apprehensive at first, but warmed up rather quickly.

 The slide was one of her favorites.

 There's Atticus in the castle.

 Now, he's showing Sophia how it's done on the trampoline.

 Another one of Sophia's favorites...the trampoline.

 Atticus is holding an egg. Why you may ask? Because Apollo hid eggs around the play area with cool snacks inside...including doughnut holes.

 That was so fun! They looked everywhere for those things.

 Then it was time for Atticus to show Sophia how to ride the perfect wave...I mean skateboard. Either way, he did a great job.

 Sophia preferred to ride it on her feet. She's never been a lover of tummy time.

 They even have this cute little play house complete with crayons and surfaces for drawing.

 Little drummer boy!

 Sophia even tried it.

 Then it was time to color the castle.

 Wagon time!

 I even got in on the swinging action.

 Then we headed inside for a quick round of Don't Break the Ice and lunch.

It was an awesome playdate! The weather was perfect. There was tons of stuff to do. And let me just add that Apollo makes one mean smoothie (and one mean JibJab video)!

Thanks for a great playdate! You've set the bar really high. I hope we can keep up. :)

The Day After Thanksgiving

Traditionally, the day after Thanksgiving has always meant that we have dinner with Uncle Brice  and Aunt Cynthia and watch the Aggie/TU game. However, last year, they switched the game back to Thursday so instead of watching the Aggies, we watched Auburn vs Bama. This year we cooked a rib roast instead of lamb. Sophia helped with the seasoning.

 Lately, anytime she can't reach or see something, we hear, "wait mom" and off she goes to retriever her stepping stool...aka her potty, which she no longer uses. The seat part actually fits into our toilet seat so she can sit on it without falling in. So she no longer uses the pink potty. On a side note, Operation Big Girl Panties has been going very smoothly with her only accidents being overnight. The first night she refused to wear a pull up over her panties and guess what, she didn't make it and wet her bed. So the next night when I told her she was wearing a pull up over her undies, she was cool with it.

 Uncle Brice and Aunt Cynthia

 Sophia got bored with the game so she decided to watch Caillou on her ipod, inherited from her dad.

 We also did our first fire of the season. Uncle Brice kicked it off for us.

 Oops! When unpacking some boxes today, I opened one as part of it shattered on the floor. It was Russell's Grinch Countdown to Christmas. I felt so bad. He was able to glue it all back together.

 So later that night, we started to decorate the tree. Sophia would come and get the ornaments from me and give them to Aunt Cynthia to help her put them on the tree.

No broken ones that night. However, Saturday morning, I handed one to Sophia, the first one Russel ever gave me from 1994....the year we started dating. She dropped it and it broke into a million pieces. It was a cute little soccer ball with the year 1994 printed on it. I still can't believe it's gone. Once the ornaments are on the tree, she's been great about leaving them alone. Knock on wood!

Oh and as far as Black Friday shopping goes, I'd rather pay full price than get a bargain on that day. :)

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day started off with me running in the Ft. Worth Turkey Trot. When I say run, I mean I tried to run. It was wall to wall people. I started off running with my running partner Amanda. Oh my gosh. This was her first racing experience and truth be told it was the craziest one I'd ever run in. There were sooooooo many people there. And we kept wasting half our energy trying to get around the slow, walking people. And then there was the weather. It was misting and crazy cold. And sooooo windy. But I felt good after I finished until I couldn't find Russell and Sophia. They were supposed to meet me at the Starbucks right by the starting/finishing line. I waited for 15-20 minutes and finally ran down to the car (which was about a half mile away because we parked and ran to get to the starting line because the traffic was so bad getting there). They weren't there. So I ran back and finally found them. Russell said that they'd wanted to see me finish the race and that Sophia didn't want to go to the car. She wanted to see her mama finish the race. Well, apparently they missed seeing me finish and headed to the Starbucks to see if I was there. Thank goodness we found each other. What a morning! Then it was back to the house to clean up and cook for Thanksgiving Day.

Here's Sophia in her Thanksgiving dress.

I could have sworn that when I added this pic it was turned the correct way....oh, well. I'm too busy to change it.

So we went over to my mom and dad's house for Thanksgiving lunch. Sophia was very excited to play with her cousins.

Koby showed us his new band skills on the bassoon.

Sophia was captivated.

Sophia's hair had a mind of it's own that day.

Of course, her playing so rough didn't help matters.

Of course, we watched the Cowboy game. We had two guests join us this year, my cousin Phillip and Aunt Beverly (Phillip is between my dad and Tim).

When Sophia went down for her nap, I was able to relax and read.

Sophia wanted to change back into her comfy clothes before her nap.

It was a really fun, relaxing Thanksgiving (except for the Turkey Trot which was not relaxing at all, but I still enjoyed running in a race again). Next up, a 10K.