A Little Adventure

I just need to vent…

When I compare Texas drivers to Utah drivers I generally prefer Texas drivers by a good amount. My experience is that most of the time folks are courteous and reasonable. Sure, I find myself screaming at the occasional moron, but this happens a lot less often than when I drive in Utah. However, I do have one major pet peeve. It is rare for anyone around Austin to use their blinker. This isn’t a big deal when you are in the turn lane. It is SUPER annoying when you are at a 4-way stop…and there are PLENTY of those around the neighborhoods in suburbia. I mean a 4-way stop is one place where it is useful to communicate w/ other drivers…right? Well, folks around here don’t seem to think that way. One example of the annoyance this causes me… Last night I was out running and I came to the 4-way stop on my route home. There is a car at the stop sign across from me. The car starts to go, and I figure I can go as well since they are going straight. For some reason I decide that I am tired and will use the car as an excuse to catch my breath. The car of course proceeds to turn left. I am glad that I wasn’t in the crosswalk. Morons! Use your blinker to communicate your intentions. It seems like I have a similar experiences at least once/week either driving or running around here. I guess the police don’t care about signaling your turn although they pulled Monica over last week b/c we hadn’t bothered to install a front plate on the car. Go figure…

Okay, I feel better. Thanks for listening….

I’m can’t believe that Milo is 6. He is growing up so much. Milo was very excited for his birthday and had been talking about it for weeks. We planned out a party for him as well as what we were going to take to school for his treat with his class.

On Milo’s birthday, he was able to wear a new cars shirt. At school he got a birthday crown, and happily wore it all day. His teacher requested that I bring in the treats at 11:30 which worked great. Holly and I went to pick up the donut holes (from Round Rock Donuts). Luckily I gave myself 30 minutes to get the donuts and get to school. This donut shop has been super busy the last couple of times I’ve gone. I had to wait probably 5 or 10 minutes just to get them. I had a box to the brim full of donut holes. Wow. I had so many donut holes the kids were able to have quite a few (5 to be exact). I got a comment that they were still warm…yummy!

After school we did the normal things. We had Milo’s favorite thing for dinner, Hamburger Stroganoff. This is the recipe that he told his teacher how to make for their recipe book. I made it the right way. We were going to eat dinner and then open his gifts, but of course, Milo couldn’t wait. We opened gifts and then ate dinner. For dessert we had ice cream cookie sandwiches.

Milo was ready since he got home from school to open his gifts. We had a request to have the webcam running for the gift opening. It was really fun. Holly loves showing the gifts to the webcam.

Milo was very excited to get gifts.

The look on his face is priceless and it gets even better.

Milo got Mario Kart for the Wii and was very excited to get it. He was yelling he was so excited.

Milo got a lot of Star Wars items. Here’s pictures of the items.

Star Wars books

Star Wars jammies

Star Wars legos. He got a few different sets of Star Wars legos.

Star Wars Visual Dictionary. Milo was excited about this, because you can learn all you want to learn about the Star Wars movies. It is very cool for a little boy who loves Star Wars.

Milo got a few clothes and some swimming items. He had a great birthday. Thank you to everyone who gave him gifts. The following day was Milo’s birthday party. He was very excited about his birthday and couldn’t wait until his party came. We invited over 3 of the neighbor boys. We had pizza for dinner, played Wii and had ice cream cake. The boys seemed to really enjoy themselves. They played Mario Kart, Lightsaber Duels, and Bowling.

Milo’s ice cream cake. It turned out pretty well, but we could improve it. It did taste pretty good.

I’ll do a post about Milo’s birthday here in the next day or two. A few months ago, I had been thinking about getting Milo into swim lessons. We realized that in the summer here in Texas, that everyone goes to the pool all the time. At that point, I knew that I needed to get Milo in swimming lessons. We decided to go with a lady who teaches private lessons and who will teach Milo and his neighbor friend and it will be the two of them with the teacher.

In preparation for swimming lessons (which begin next week), we have been taking Milo to the pool in our HOA for some practice with his swim goggles and getting his head under water. The first time we went, Milo only wanted to sit on the edge of the pool initially. I then got him to sit on the first step with me. Eventually he started playing with his friend, but didn’t get too far in the water. The next time we went to the pool, I got Milo in the 3 foot deep water. I then got him to jump to me in the water. The last time we went to the pool he, was “swimming” around in the water and doing just fine. I think we are where we need to be to start swimming lessons.

Last night was the first time that Holly has gone to the pool. She heard Scott tell Milo to go get his swimming suit on. She ran to her room saying “suit, suit.” She insisted that Scott put on her swimming suit and that she was going too. We decided that we’d all go to the pool. When we got to the pool, Holly basically wanted to jump in the water the minute we got there. She is so different that Milo it amazes us. She wanted Scott to swim her around the pool quite a bit. She also wanted to jump too. Holly’s friend has a float suit, and so we are considering getting Holly either a life jacket or a float suit, so that it will be easier to take her to the pool with Milo. After that trip to the pool, we decided we needed to get a few new things to take with us to the pool.

We will be spending quite a bit of time at the pool this summer…

Milo has now finished up kindergarten. It was a very interesting experience for me. Milo did really well and learned so much. He is headed to 1st Grade.

We’ve had a request for a picture of his new shoes. I had gotten him some shoes at the first of the school year. They were a “cheap” pair because I didn’t know if they would last or not. In March or so he informed us that his shoes were wearing out and he needed new tie shoes. When Jill was visiting, we went and got him a pair of tie shoes. We are still working on having him learn how to tie his shoes, but he seems to like the shoes. He wanted to take a picture of the shoes, not a picture of him with the shoes on.

A few days before school ended, the Kindergarten had their Awards Ceremony. I thought, okay, we’ll go they’ll have a slide show, give the kids awards, sing a little song and we’ll be done. I took a bunch of stuff for Holly and told her she needed to be a good girl for it. I was at least smart enough to realize I needed to arrive early. When I got there and was sitting with Holly, I realized that A LOT of parents though more of this as a “graduation.” Several ladies in the crowd were wearing dresses. I saw a lot of parents where both the mom and dad were there. I was amazed.

The slide show was really great. I enjoyed it. Holly enjoyed it. Milo was given an award for optimism in his class.

Here’s my sorry attempt at getting a picture of Milo getting his award. I’m sorry it is blurry, but you get the idea

Here are some of the children in his class with their awards.

After the awards were given out, the kindergarten kids did a fabulous job of singing Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World” with sign language. It was really sweet.

After the awards ceremony, we were invited to the classroom to get some of Milo’s things. In the classroom, his teacher gave us a few things for us to remember kindergarten. It was fun. I got a few pictures of Milo and a few of his classmates.

Here’s a picture of Milo in his last few days of kindergarten.

I did manage to get a picture of Milo with his teacher. She is a great teacher! We have enjoyed working with her.

Milo finished up school yesterday. He seems to be pretty anxious to be able to play wii games and write stories. He also seems to be getting a touch bored, probably because we are giving him until Monday before we start into our summer routine (we’ll be reading, writing, doing chores and other fun things this summer).

These photos are the ones Scott took of the butterfly exhibit when we visited Houston. These butterflies were very fun to watch. We will definitely go back again sometime.