The first two days of fall break we took advantage of some Groupon deals. If you haven't heard of Groupon it's a deal of the day website where you can usually get vouchers for 50% or more off of admission to places or off of dinner etc. There are different deals for most major cities around the US. You usually have a year or so to use your groupon, but it varies.We take advantage of it often and have scored some pretty sweet deals. One of those deals was for a $10 admission up to 4 people (it's usually $7 per person) to the McKenna children's museum in New Braunfels. Tami and I both bought this deal. I had also "liked" Tanger Outlets on facebook and because of that I was able to get a $50 gift card to the outlets for $25. Well, the outlets are only 20 minutes from the Children's Museum soooooo Tami took her girls and Allie to the museum to play while Ave and I shopped at the Outlets. Sorry, we don't have any pics from our first day of fall break. :( The girls had a lot of fun though.
Day two was the zoo. A few months ago there was a groupon for a one year membership to the zoo for $30 for a family membership(2 adults and 4 kids). It's usually $65 for a family membership or $10 per adult and $8 per child over 3 for general admission. If we were to go just one time we would be at $28 so getting this was a no brainer for me! The day felt sort of rushed since we got a late start, but I think the girls still enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to going back sometime.
The school system down here has fall break the whole week of Thanksgiving. I think it's actually kind of nice in case we ever want to travel home for the holiday. Allie sure did miss school though. When I dropped her off on the Friday before I told her she was going to have all of the next week off and she started crying! I was like "Why are you crying!?" She said she would really miss her teachers. She is becoming quite attatched to them. Everyday after school she is always the line leader holding Ms Bellah's hand. So cute! Anyway, I tried to calm her down by telling her all of the fun things we would do. It helped a little but she said she'd still really miss her teachers and that she'd rather go to school.
Anyway, that weekend was kind of a relaxing one. We ended up washing the cars Saturday and the girls even played in the water. Yep, the weekend before Thanksgiving was hot enough for that! So crazy!
Old Town Helotes is such a neat and charming little town. Tami and the girls and I drove the 2 minutes to the heart of Old Town a couple weeks ago. We just walked around and enjoyed the small town atmosphere and cute little shops. We stopped in one store and they even gave us free drinks! Now that's the small town hospitality that I miss! It's a rarity these days.
Outside Floore Country Store ~ A Texas Tradition since the 1940's
Enjoying the perfect fall weather
Then the next day was the Market at Old Town.....our original plan was to go to Corpus Christi but since we hadn't been feeling well the girls, Derek and I stayed home and walked around town. It was so fun! It kind of has a European feel so it brought Derek and I right back to this time last year when we were over seas. There is another market in a couple of weeks that I'm really looking forward to!
Yay for bounce houses!
You can tell this poor girl doesn't feel very well. A few days later she was pulling at her ear.....she had an ear infection and is still taking antibiotics.
Last weekend we went downtown to walk around the RiverWalk and see the Alamo. We've walked by the Alamo several times, but never really stopped to take a good look and walk around the premises. It was a beautiful day to be outside.....I have to say.....I love the FALL weather here!
It was nice to have Derek home for a change! All because he so willingly sacrifices his time and efforts to help serve our country. It was a well deserved break for him (and me). We tried to take full advantage of the day. We started off by working on bunk beds for the girls. Derek and Kevin were doing sanding while Tami and I were staining. I had to stop early to get Allie ready for school.......and after I dropped her off Derek and I met at Applebee's for the free Veteran's Day meal. There was an hour wait, so we drove right down the road to Chili's and got right in.....and then when we finished up went back to Applebee's and got right in!!
After the girls got home from school we all went on a nice family hike @ Friedrich Park.
Two weeks ago on Wednesday we went on a family bike ride. This was a usual habit of ours, but it had been put off for a few weeks prior due to busy schedules. I was excited to get back out. The trail we go on is nice and secluded, although can be full of other bikers and joggers at times. Derek wasn't too keen on going out that night because he had a PT test the next day that he wanted to do good on. We decided we would go ahead and go, but we just wouldn't go as far. We probably went about 4 miles and then decided to turn around (yes, that short ride was turning into an 8 mile ride). On our way back there was a pretty steep hill that had a fairly sharp turn. Well, of course, since it was downhill we were all picking up some speed. I always yell for Derek to slow down on those hills because he always has the girls behind him in the bike trailer. As Derek was going around the turn there was a jogger right in the middle of the trail! He slammed on his brakes (primarly the front..oops!) and the bike trailer started fishtailing like crazy. He couldn't gain control and he went flying over the handlebars head first....landing mostly on his left shoulder but smacking his head too. Thankfully he had a helmet on! After he flipped the bike trailer flipped over as well. I was so scared. I must have hit my brakes pretty fast because I was off of my bike in no time and rushing over to Avery and Kaiya in the trailer. Tami helped Derek and Kevin called 911 because Derek was in extreme pain. We knew something was wrong right away just by feeling his shoulder and he was as white as a ghost. He was having a really hard time breathing and every time he tried to sit up he just about passed out. Super scary stuff. By this time it was just about pitch black out and we were no where near any roads.....and our car was probably another 3 miles away. It was taking forever for the ambulance to get to us. We could hear it, but couldn't see it anywhere. I finally got on my bike and took off on the path and ran into some firemen and showed them the way to Derek. Kevin and Tami took off with the girls to get them home for something to eat and get put to bed. I stayed with Derek and rode with him in the ambulance to the hospital.
We thought for sure something was broken, but come to find out it was probably even worse than a broken bone. It was a total separation (A-3) of his tendons in his shoulder.......meaning his shoulder and clavical aren't connected anymore. His clavical is just sticking straight up. We thought he'd have to have surgery, but after consulting with the surgeon last week he has decided not to do it. He started physical therapy yesterday. For awhile he couldn't move his arm at all, but he's made a lot of progess already. So, thank you for all of your prayers! Oh, and by the way, the girls are completely fine! Luckily the bike trailer has a roll bar so they were protected.
Avery has changed so much in the past month or so. All of a sudden she can count to ten (eleven really.....just like her sister used to do)! She's talking so much more. She's using sentences, I mean sentences we can understand! Yesterday she woke up extra early (the change in time probably had something to do with that) so she was super tired by the time we got to church. She fell asleep as soon as we put her in the car on the way home. Sooo, by the time we got home she didn't want to nap. Derek kept trying to get her to go to sleep. I finally said we would just put her to bed early because I could tell she wasn't going to give in. When I went up to get her she said, " Daddy throw blankey down!" I couldn't help but laugh.......she was tattling on Daddy! I went down and asked Derek if he did that and he just laughed....guilty! And then, this morning she woke up super early again (agh!) and so I brought her in bed with me. She was really squirmy so she must have pushed her blankey down far enough to where she couldn't find it. So she said, "Where my blankey?" Daddy take it!"
She's definitely entering her terrible twos. She's always been an ornery little stinker, but it's getting worse. On top of all of that she throws some pretty big temper tantrums. We still love her though!
Potty training is going better. I think she's just about there now. We started up a potty chart and she's already been able to put on 20 stickers and get a prize! She also has an incentive to go potty. Every time she goes she can have a small piece fo candy. Well, she's pretty smart.....so I'm constantly hearing, "Potty, Mom!" and then "candy please!" I would give it to her there for a while even when she didn't go, but now I know that half of the time she's telling me she needs to go potty is just becuase she wants a piece of candy!
Anyway, that's about it. Enjoy these videos of our little stinker!
We never got around to carving our pumpkins this year. We had a night planned for a pumpkin carving contest, but that was suppose to be the night after the dreaded bike accident. Sooo, we had to cancel that and we never got around to it because we've all been under the weather. (We had planned on going to Corpus Christi today, but decided it would be best to try and get some rest and recuperate - pretty bummed.....it would have been fun, but we still have plenty of opportunities for it).
Anyway, so Mony & Papa sent a fun Halloween package to the girls and it had a these Potato Head type things in them to decorate the pumpkins........so that's what we did this year!
Thank you Allie & Avery's Mony & Papa!
they picked out the pieces themselves, but needed help putting them in. In their defense, it wasn't easy!
This year for Halloween we had a butterfly, a spider and two bunny fairies. The girls had fun dressing up in the costumes a few days ahead of time. They even went to a story time at Barnes & Noble in their costumes (Avery was a fairy princess that day........wish I would have taken a pic of that). Trunk or Treat was on Friday night. After going around to all of the cars for candy we went inside for a carnival. Allie got her face painted and asked for a butterfly.......as you can see it matched her costume just perfectly. We decided to stay in on Halloween night this year. We set out a big bowl of candy for trick or treaters with a sign that said to take just one piece. Well, either we had a LOT of trick or treaters or they were taking handfuls because we were out of candy super fast. That just about sums up Halloween 2010 for us!
