Weekend wedding (Arlington, TX)

What was supposed to be a nice weekend trip to Dallas (Arlington to be specific) for a wedding of Lynn's old family friend turned out to be much more than we had expected. The plan was to bring the two little ones, leaving behind the two big boys since they had soccer games scheduled. The day before leaving, Tyson got the dreaded pink eye at school and was sent home early. Then later Elliot spikes a fever and is quickly not feeling well. Uh oh... but we can't not go. But we also can't leave all the kids behind, especially two sick kids. There was nothing left to do but power through.

Avengers assemble (again)!

Houston Half Marathon ✔

On Sunday, I popped my (racing) cherry when I completed the Houston Half Marathon. This was all to prepare for the upcoming Houston Marathon in January 2020. I've never participated a road race before... 5K, 10K, anything... so it wouldn't have been smart to have the full marathon be my first one.

For me, the Houston Half was to experience the process of a race... to see if there are any issues that might arise... to see what works. Here's what I did and the lessons I learned.

Random pics of the week

Halloween activities and decorating.

State Fair of Texas (Dallas, TX)

The temperature finally dropped to feel like fall weather and the kids had a 4-day weekend for Columbus Day so we made a quick trip up north to the State Fair of Texas. It's been nine years since we last went together as a family. Since then, we added two more kids and the ones that did go have no memory of their prior visit. All things considered, it was a good time to visit the biggest state fair in the country once again.

Who am I?

Elliot turns 4

Rainbows galore!

When it rains, it pours (literally)

When it rains in Houston, there's always a chance of local flooding. So when a hurricane or tropical storm comes, flooding is guaranteed. It began on Wednesday when Tropical Storm Imelda made landfall. The school district canceled all classes so everyone got to stay home. The day was pretty uneventful, raining on and off, nothing too heavy. On Thursday, schools were open and we're back to our regular schedule... or so we all thought.

Elliot's first school pictures

Just ignore the watermark.

Family Fantasy Football

Football season officially begins and our whole family is playing fantasy football for the first time this year. Why? Because now we'll have a reason to watch any random NFL game that's currently on. It'll also help us learn the current players in the league. Like who's Saquon Barkley or Nick Chubb? *shrug* Apparently the top running backs. But what I really like is that sports bring us together, whether it's watching it or talking about it. And playing fantasy adds an element of friendly competition and trash talking.

Labor Day soccer tourney

Our Labor Day weekend was spent outside... literally all day long... in the heat... both Saturday and Sunday... for soccer. Now that Jacob's playing in a competitive league, we now have to travel for both big boys. Luckily they played in the same tournament. But that also meant we had to stay for twice as many games. It's gonna be a long season...

4 kids, 4 different schools

School is back in session. And with that, all four kids are going to four different schools. Andrew is now in junior high (6th grade), leaving Tyson (3rd grade) as the only family member in elementary school. Jacob (8th grade) is also in junior high but is bused to another school since he's in the STEM program. Which leaves Elliot, who officially started going to preschool/Mother's Day Out. She was so excited to being going to school, just like her big brothers. They're all growing up so fast! 😭

LAN party

Although we celebrated Tyson's birthday earlier, we had another celebration for him on his actual birthday. We gave him the two things he wanted: a sleepover with his cousins and to play video games. So I setup a LAN party so that he could play StarCraft 2 (currently his favorite game) along with other multiplayer games. It was a weekend of non-stop gaming for my video game addict.

A LAN party is a gathering of people with computers or compatible game consoles, where a local area network (LAN) connection is established between the devices using a router or switch, primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer video games together. (source: Wikipedia)

Nostalgic birthday (Dallas, TX)

We time traveled to celebrate the fact that I'm another year older. We stayed at an 80's themed house in Dallas where the walls were painted in a bright color palette. Beds fitted with retro sheets. Artifacts dispersed throughout the house, e.g. cassette boombox, Sony Watchman, original NES console. It even had a TMNT arcade machine and a McDonald's Officer Big Mac jailhouse in the backyard playground. It truly felt like we traveled back in time. And to go along with the nostalgia theme, we also visited the National Videogame Museum. It was fun to show the kids a glimpse of my childhood. And of course, we ate a lot of good (unhealthy) food. It was totally radical.

Summer trip (Breckenridge, CO)

I ❤ Colorado. We frequent The Centennial State to ski/snowboard but haven't been during the summer. I've always heard it was nice during that time but wanted to experience it myself. This would be our fourth trip to Colorado since 2018. At this rate, we may as well move there...

So we packed up the minivan and went on another road trip. Even though we're on the road for two solid days each way, it's actually not that bad. I like exploring new places along the way. Or even going to a random Walmart in the middle of nowhere... you never know what you might find.