HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAUNA!!!

Well, we finally got it right. Every year we miss Shauna's birthday. We are always too early or too late. This year we were 2 days early (again!!!), hopefully this will make up for it.

Shauna, we love you and hope you do something fun!

Apparently Y-D-L-L-O-W spells YELLOW

I forgot to charge the camcorder before school today, so of course, I only got a few seconds of the performance! Huge bummer. But we made a cute little video none the less. Enjoy...

Yesterday's excitement...

Yesterday when we left the pool AJ found this tiny bird in a bush. He was obviously too young to be on his own, but we couldn't see a nest anywhere. We picked it right up and took it home. We obviously didn't have anything to feed it, so I mixed up a sugar solution and we fed it with a dropper. It drank quite a bit, and we left it on a towel in the garage (because it was very warm in there.) We headed off to the pet store to get some worms and stopped at Chick-fil-A for dinner, and low and behold, Tuesdays are family night,


and there was a guy there making balloon hats for all the kids. So they loved that!
Anyway we got home and apparently the sugar water had worked because the bird was flying around, although not very well. He obviously thought he was a better flier that he is, and flew from his nest. So we have been feeding him worms and he has perked right up. He cheeps so much I had to but him in the closet last night so we could sleep! I don't think we will have to keep him too long. We'll keep you posted. He's lucky AJ is such an observant little kid, I never would have seen him in that bush.

Orange Song Video

Here it is, the second installment in the 5 part video series "Color Songs"

A couple of cute kids...

ARASCAPE AMIGOS!

Jackie finally earned his Rescue pack (it was a pooping thing) and he hasn't let it out of his sight yet. So all day long we are subjected to random renditions of, "Aahh RESCUE PACK!!! COMIN' TO THE RESCUE... ARASCAPE!!!" Good times.

Marching Band

Friday night we went to our High Schools marching band fundraiser. It was a fun little event with marching (obviously) face painting, instruments for the kids to play, etc. A fun family event for a Friday evening. (Something I am really coming to love about Austin.)

IMAX Sharks

We took in the IMAX underwater "Sharks in 3D" and I must say it was pretty awesome. There was a scene where you feel like you are floating through a swarm of jellyfish and I have to admilt I reached out my hand to touch one. I couldn't help it, it was reflex! It felt like I was going to start breathing them!

The Kids' Favorite Place

So far, the kids's favorite place to go is the "lake at the restaurant," which is really a water feature that runs down the "al fresca" tables outside of Whole Foods Market. So we go get lunch and let them play in the water for 2-3 hours...literally.

Jack has really enjoyed having Brett home all the time. He always has someone to read to or hang out with. It was an adjustment having Brett home for me. It was just weird. I kept feeling like asking, "Don't you have somewhere you need to go?" Of course he didn't, and I was being a jerk. It was weird because I just had to keep on doing all of the things that I have always done (vacuuming, laundry, dinner, etc, etc, etc) while he was suddenly sitting in the family room watching me. I don't know why that unnerved me, but it did. Finally we had a big fight and I realized I was being really insensitive and and things were much weirder for him. Where things basically stayed the same for me (only 1566 miles to the southeast) his whole world had turned upside down.

And now after a few weeks I have gotten over it and it is really nice to have him home. Of course, just when I have come to appreciate him being around, he's leaving me!!! So now I can sit all by myself and think about how I didn't take advantage of him being here. And I can call him and tell him how much I miss him and can't wait for him to come home...

The Red Song

Well, I have figured out video, so this should be a lot of fun.

This is AJ's R-E-D song that all of the Kindergarten classes performed last Friday. Apparently they will be doing a different color and song every week in assembly--so get ready to learn your colors!

In other news we are getting Brett packed for his trip to Visalia tomorrow. We are going to miss him, but secretly I'm hoping he will be there until Halloween so we can go to Visalia for Halloween! We'll see. He is excited to see everyone.

YO GABBA GABBA

Our new favorite show--Yo Gabba Gabba on Nick Jr. For those of you who haven't given it a chance due to it's kind of crazy first impression, you should really check it out. The songs are so catchy and good, we are singing them all the time. We all watch it. DJ Lance is awesome! Brett described it very well, "Ska Sesame Street."

It rains SO HARD here, and it is still warm so the kids can play in is for as long as they like. Last week they were floating rubber duckies down the gutter and sliding in a big puddle on the lawn. Any slight depression immediately turns into a pool and any water-tight vessel fills up. Paradise for 5 and 2 year olds! Have I mentioned that we don't have a sprinkler system? Isn't that wild--it rains often enough that you don't really need one. Amazing.

This weekend was "Batfest."

There is a big bridge downtown that hosts the largest "urban bat colony" in the US, and everynight you can watch like a billion bats fly out at dusk. Anyway apparently every year they close the bridge for a weekend and have batfest, with lost of fun things for kids to do, and everyone is supposed to dress up like bats. So we took the kids Walmart and told them they could choose any fabric they liked for their capes. Their choices were very funny. AJ choose this old-lady polyester floral print, and Jack chose one the exact color of his blanket because, "It's my favorite color!"

Anyway, Batfest was rained out, unfortunately, but I still thought the bat capes were funny.