Port A weekend

I just wanted to post my pics quickly and I will have more to write later. I will sum up the weekend, in that we had a WONDERFUL time. It was everything I was hoping for in our first family beach weekend.

Fire Truck song

Well we all know how much Christian likes Fire trucks. Last night he and I went out and got something to eat at Wendy's. Theses days whenever we are in the car we sing. He is learning lots more songs theses days. Songs like "This little light of mine" and "I've got joy down in my heart" and "Joshusa fought the battle of Jericho"...all thanks to the Veggie Tales CD we play when he plays outside on the porch. Last night there was a new song. The fire truck song he sings in this video. I asked his teacher about it this morning. She said they sing it everyday by demand. All the boys in the room love to sing the fire truck song. I think the Firehouse Subs sandwich shop has added to the love of this song because of the fun firehats they hand out with kids meals.

He was the perfect showman this morning while we all drove to daycare. I promise it was safe, Chris was driving and I was taking the video with my new camera.

Christian and Baby brother?`

I noticed Christian playing with a baby doll that he has. The first thing he did was to put him on the tool bench and start hitting him with a play hammer. I thought WHOA! that is not what I would want you doing to your new baby brother. I explained that we needed to be nice to baby doll and the baby doll wanted to watch him play with the hammer, not be hammered.
Then I watched as he carried baby doll to the living room, by the hair. Again, I explained. Let's hold baby doll when we carry him. Here are a few pictures I snapped while he was playing with baby doll.

Messages to Pa

Christian wanted to send some special blog messages to Pa, who is at home resting up.

Love you Pa!

Nature or nuture

Ah! There is always the eternal question of nature or nuture when raising children. I noticed a behavior in Christian that I can only guess is a natural habit in most children. I really don't think Chris and I have ever taught him this... Please see the video below for the behavior in question.





Yes I do believe that opening an Oreo cooking and just eating the center icing is indeed a natural occuring behavior in2 year old little boys, not a taught behavior. I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I ever had an Oreo cookie myself, much less showed my son how to open it and lick off the center icing and toss the cookie aside.

Also, for you blog watchers...sorry I was so late in getting new stuff posted but 3 in one night should be a new record for me ; ) love ya!

New Camera

I am very excited today. I got a new camera. I can hear what you are saying....what do you need a new camera for? You have that digital SLR camera..that big fancy one you always have around your neck.

Well that is part of the problem. I LOVE My big fancy camera. I love the pictures it takes and how fast it takes them. But it is BIG and bulky. I have wanted to get another small point and shoot camera to have with me more often that isn't as big and bulky. Our other Canon Digital Elph died a while back so I bought another Canon Digital Elph SD1000. It is AWESOME. It is so tiny, it fits in the palm on your hand. It is about the size of a standard deck of cards.

I have played with it a bunch already and it takes great pictures. It also takes little movies. That is one feature we missed with our Digital SLR.

Here is Christian with my new camera

Here is Chris after I told him I got the camera...I forgot to tell him until last night that I had even ordered it. oooppsie!


Here is Christian at dinner. We went to Firehouse Subs. They are a sandwich shop that was founded by firemen. They have a fun firehouse motif at their sandwich shop. They also give out cute little fire hats with the kids meals. YEA Firehouse Subs! We love free hats.
And yes, Christian is wearing his firehat backwards. I think his is used to wearing baseball caps that have bills in the front so he feel better when he wears his hat this way.

MS150

This weekend was the big MS150. It was Aunt Debbie's first time to ride in the race. Uncle Jack, Kathie, her friend Susan and Paul were all also in this year's ride. The wind made it a pretty tough ride but they all made it from Houston to Austin safe and sound. A little tired, a little sunburned, a little wind blown...but safe none the less.

The rest of the family crew had fun off bikes. We all had time to visit over yummy mexican food at the Wenck family's favorite restaurant....TEXICAN. The kids did really well playing together. Emmy girl wasn't feeling her best so she rested most of the time. But she was super excited when we said it was time to go see Mommy and Daddy. She talked the whole ride about how Mommy and Daddy were riding their bikes.

I wish I had pictures of Debbie and the rest of Team Choate (as I like to call them) making it across the finish line. Emmy was running a really high fever so we thought it best to let her rest at our house while Abby and the rest of the crew (Rand, Grandma Ann, MeMaw, DoDaddy, Russell, Melissa, Mona and friends) waited for Team Choate to ride across the finish line. We were able to join up with everyone later for dinner and bring Christian and Emmy with us. Emmy was her happy normal self but the time we made it up to meet every one for dinner.

We heard from very exciting news over the weekend too. Russell and Melissa are ENGAGED. CONGRATS to the happy couple. We also heard about Russell's very sweet proposal and saw the very pretty ring.

Here are the pictures I was able to take over the weekend.

Busy weekend

We had a fun but busy weekend. First thing on Saturday morning we participated in the Asthma Walk 2008. It was fun and at one of my favorite locations. The COSTCO shopping center. We walked around the shopping center. After that I treated us all the breakfast at Panera Bread. We love our new Panera Bread. Chris and I were first introduced to Panera Bread by our cousins, the Thames, when we visited them in Chicago. My personal favorite is that they serve soups in a bread bowl....so yummy.



Next we drove north to Cedar Park to visit ours friends David, Rachel and Julian.



Then on Sunday after Church we drove to Gran and Pa's house to help with some organizational chores around their house. They are adding shelves and getting their garage in tip-top shape. Christian supervised from the living room in Pa's lazy-boy chair. And thanks to some snacks it now has several pint size chocolate fingers prints on it. But his parents aren't too worried about it, because Gran gave him the chocolate snacks.



Here is the crew responsible for the heavy lifting.


Aunt Sassy, Jonathon, Aunt Sara and Uncle JJ all came out to help. Aunt Sassy and Aunt Sara weren't feeling well that day, so they helped out the most by keeping a close eye on Christian, along with watching Shrek the 3rd and Jungle Book. The guys did most of the tough work, installing shelves and rearranging the garage some. I emptied a dresser and help Gran run errands.

Here is a bonus pictures. It is of Gran and Christian playing one of Christian favorite new games. He calls is "Playing night-night".

New Video

Here is some new video of Christian being a very busy boy around the house. We noticed how well he could climb the night before when he got into his stroller all by himself to go for a ride.