Busy Rockstar

Mr V has been very busy lately. Yesterday, he had a bright idea... "let me fit as many things as I can on a window ledge"... then, he quickly ran to the living room to get a train. He set it down, and ran to get another train, then did that again, and again, and again. And after he fit the two Easter decorations in the front, he wanted to fit all his crayons there as well.

He was so proud of his work. He posed for several pictures with it. In fact, in this first picture I tried just to get a picture of his trains, and he poked his head in and said cheeeese!

When I was uploading the above pics.. I found these in my camera from a couple weeks ago, when V's cousin Warreeen was visiting.. David never gets a chance to play his video games... so he took the opportunity to play with V and W!

Vince loves playing the guitar so he was strumming along (without a controller!) As an aside, when he hears music.. he plays an air guitar a lot.. his old school taught him that!

Thomas, Gordon, Edward, Percy, James, Emily, etc, etc, etc

I don't think I've ever mentioned on here before, but Vince loves trains ;). They rule our lives. Vince thinks the purpose of going to any store is to buy a train. We say we are going to the store, and he says, "buy percy?" or "buy hero?"... and we say no!, we have those trains already! But there are motorized trains and magnetic trains, plus over 40+ different train types (of which we have a few thomas ones, percy's, henry, james, emily, edward, spencer, arthur, bill, ben, douglas, some diesels, etc, etc... omg, I just realized we don't have gordon!)! So as I figure, there is are over 80+ trains that we could actually get. So maybe we really don't have as many trains as I think if we only have 25% of what we could have, right?

Well Thomas came to town so who goes to see them... we do!!! Grandma, Grandpa, Warren (who Vince has dubbed, Wareeen) Vince and me. The actual train ride wasn't as great as the activies within the center. Train tables galore, temporary tatoos, train coloring tables, a video room, a huge giftshop (that we didn't let Vince go in.. because then he would want to "buy percy?" or "buy hero?")

Here's Vince with me, Gordon, Percy, and James...

and with Wareeen too...

During the actual train ride, we told Vince we were riding Annie and Clarabel, Thomas's coaches. He liked the ride... which is not evidenced in these pictures...

Grandparents and Grandkids... the boys are a bit serious, but at least everyone is looking!

and...... Sir Topham hat!!! Vince did not like him... he kept sayin... no Toppy hat, no Toppy hat. Even when he sees pictures he says that.

Maybe next year we'll just participate in the activities and not ride the train... which we didn't even get a picture of...ggrrr..

Children's Museum

Last weekend we had a full weekend in San Antonio while David attended a conference for work. We had such a great weekend, hung out with a middle school friend and her baby, cousins who were in town, riding the trolley around town, ate on the riverwalk, and had an especially great time at the Children's Museum which was around the corner from our hotel. Vince could have stayed here all day.. so many cool things to play with.. or as Vince would say.. AWESOME!

First... there was this massive ball contraption where you can put the ball in multiple places and it got sucked through all different obstacles... check out Vince playin!

and some pictures from the AWESOME ball area...

and more pics that Vince posted and put captions on...
"Look at all these blocks mommy"

"I don't like being in the control tower alone!"

"Look at all the pretty colors.. all I have to do is press buttons to change it!"

"Ooohh... big lite brights"

Snow, in Texas?!?

Day 2 - Snow in Texas

We unexpectedly all got to spend Friday together after one foot of snow blanketed the area. I felt like we were skiing... never have I seen snow like this in Texas! Here are pictures from the day and some from our house... pay attention to Vince's shoes in the last pictures... we didn't have boots so had to protect his shoes!

and these next pics are from yesterday, playing at my mom's house!

Birthday Boy

Vince is 2. Crazy. I look back at baby pictures and hardly remember him so small, thankgoodness for pictures and videos to help jog that memory. For his birthday, a few of his 2 year old friends came over... 5 to be exact. That means six 2 year olds running around... when you couple that with additional family and friends and really cold weather, it makes for a crowded house! Everyone was in good spirits and had a great time. Some pictures from this wonderful day...

First things first. Almost immediately Vince migrated to his presents and started opening them... not my plan, but it worked. He got some much needed & appreciated pajamas, books, towels, plates, cloths, and toys!!

My dream for his party was to wrangle all the 2 year olds to do one activity at a time, including eating... well here's 5 of them! I consider that a success! This was the most toddlers we had together at one time!

A friend from my indoor soccer team stopped by to paint faces... Amazingly, Vince is sitting here calm as can be while he gets a train painted on. Several of the kids had their faces painted... a real treat!

Tia Jessica, or Yaya as Vince calls her, bought Vince a tricycle (that's what I called her when I was young and it stuck). He hasn't mastered the pedals yet, but he enjoys walking it :).. or in this case, sitting on the back while a friend drove!

A party is not a party unless there is a pinata right? It was too cold to do outside, so we did it in the garage. This pinata was actually a number 21 but my dad doctored it to have just a 2. It's funny how vince is such an expert at hitting the pinata (amoung other things).

My attempt at being a homemaker with a train cake... looks a ton better in the picture. And we almost went out and bought one the night before when the face looked really bad... but then my creative mom cut out a thomas from a giveaway bag and made it 100% better.

Vince did so well when it came time to sing and blow out the candles. We've been singing happy birthday all month, so when everyone started singing, so did he!! He also blew out the two candles!! We were so proud (yes, we are easily pleased!)

A couple of our friends stayed pretty late in the evening, and their daughter was the only toddler at the party. Vince had a BLAST with her. They played and played and played. I tried hard to get a picture of them together LOOKING at the camera, but of course did not... check out this sequence of pictures...

Glad we have a bunch of great friends and family.. thanks for sharing this special day with us and we missed those who weren't there!!

And here's one more picture that I wanted to include because 3 kids are looking!

Phone Phun

I don't always have my camera around to capture precious shots (if I was supermom I would, but it's just not possible), but I do happen to have my phone 98% of the time. Luckily my phone has an ok camera and allows me to capture some pictures "in the moment". These phone pictures are so important to me because they capture the here and now (or the there and then), whether Vince is acting silly or just playing away. Most of the time, these pictures just stay on my phone, ready for me to show off to the random co-worker, but I thought it would be fun to post the recent ones.. especially since I don't get to the home computer much to download the actual good pictures I take.

Here goes my phone stories...

Picture 1: Swim school / tonight. We enrolled in swim class again. We went to this same class when V was 7 months to 13 months old. He did very well then and I think he remembers because he did AMAZING tonight. He couldn't stop dipping himself in the pool (he must trust me with his life to pull him up each time!) He consistently went under for 6 seconds at a time (long seconds... one one thousand.. two one thousand). I'm so looking forward to the next 4 months of swim class. I'm glad to because it's hard to get all our gear ready and get our butts there after work/daycare!

Picture 2: Our house / this past weekend... I kept telling David the past few weeks "Vince needs a small table because he has no where to play with his playdoh" .. I really wanted a place that he could sit comfortably and play/draw/eat. So we finally made a trip to Ikea to buy this little table on Friday night. Saturday morning David had to work so I got up with Vince, put the table together, and let Vince play with his playdoh! I was so surprised on how well he played and how clean he was with it!

Picture 3: Our house /A couple weeks ago at bathtime... when V didn't want to take a bath, I told him we had to wash his butt because it was dirty... about 5 minutes into the bath he stood up and backed it up... I figure this picture doesn't show anything so it's ok to post! To me this was Hilarious!

Picture 4: Cooks Children's Hospital - one month ago. Vince got tubes put in his ears due to constant ear infections. It required a quick hospital stay. We had to be there by 6 and we were out by 8:30. I have to say the hardest part of it all was not being able to give V anything to eat or drink after midnight. So far, I think the tubes have helped tremendously. I would recommend them to anyone who has a child with a lot of ear infections..

Picture 5: Our bathroom / a few weeks ago... he fit himself in a little tub!!!

Picture 6: on the plane / I think heading home from Cali during Thanksgiving... little dvd players are a godsend sometimes!

Anyways... I love my phone pictures... and since I don't download pictures from the camera much, this is all for now!! However, we did just get a new video camera (Vince broke our last one) so hopefully I'll be able to upload some videos in the near future!

Then and Now

At the Gaylord a couple weeks ago I tried to recreate a picture that we took one year ago... so here we are.. Vince and me Now... Xmas 2009

Vince and me Then....xmas 2008

Now why couldn't I get that smile in the recent one? I think it's because he's smarter now... we can't fool him anymore by people making funny faces in back of the camera... Now that I look at the different pictures, I see they changed the sled! And here I thought I was on the same sled...