Tuba

It's a good thing Tyler grew a lot last year because his tuba grew too! He started last school year playing the French horn, switched to the euphonium, and then landed on the baby tuba. This school year he's moved up to the next size tuba. He is lucky that his school keeps extra tubas at school so that he doesn't have to lug this bad boy to and from school on the bus.

Caught Napping

I still can't resist taking photos of sleeping kids! We've been making the kids get up earlier to get ready for back to school; however, we keep finding Tyler napping in the afternoon.

Replaceable????

Michael and I were relaxing on the couch, looking at something on the laptop, when Brad came by yesterday to pick up Bumblebee since we had been dog-sitting for him. We helped Brad get all of Bee's stuff and load her up in his truck. When we came back to the living room, we found Daphne on the couch with her giant bears sitting as we had been sitting. The taller bear in Michael's spot and the shorter bear in my spot with the laptop. Most diabolical was the search the mama bear had up on the laptop: "how to replace daphne's parents". That Daphne is something else!

Braces!

 

Tyler got braces on Friday! Nothing says awkward middle school years like braces. He only needs to wear them for 14 - 16 months. Tyler is bummed about some of the foods on the do not eat list his orthodontist gave us like popcorn and gummy candy. The orthodontist said that Tyler did really well and sat super still. She also noted that he salivates a lot. It made me laugh and remember his baby\toddler years because he drooled more than any other kid we knew! We think Tyler should change his Xbox gaming name to The Salivator but he disagrees.

Throwback to The Salivator during

his baby years- look at that drool!

Let it Snow!

By some miracle we got snow in Austin today! We didn't think it would actually happen especially when we got a bunch of rain this morning. Slowly snow flakes appeared with the rain and eventually it all turned to snow. We ventured out for some snow fun in the afternoon and took a walk through our neighborhood and the park.

The kids barely fit in their snow gear from last year.

Many snowballs were thrown! The wetness of the snow

made the snowballs really easy to pack.

Daphne made this giant snowball
especially for Daddy.

Even covered in snow, the kids wanted to stop by their
favorite workout station on the park trail.

We all enjoyed some hot chocolate after playing in the snow.

Happy New Year!

We had a very nice low-key family New Year's Eve with the kids this year. We had crab for dinner and then had game night. Clue and Trouble were the top picks. At midnight we did sparklers in the driveway. Daphne kept asking if it was legal! She couldn't believe we were waving fire around. We assured her it's one of the few "fireworks" that are legal within city limits.

We started with basic sparklers.

As Daphne got more comfortable, the kids battled it out.

We also had some short morning glories and then our neighbor gave us some morning glories that were several feet long. Those were pretty cool and we liked the pretty colors they made!

Rum Cake

Tyler is less traditional in the types of desserts he likes compared to most kids. Ice cream? Forget it! He would rather have salted caramel gelato. Cookies? Not really- sometimes the occasional sugar cookie. Definitely not chocolate chip cookies. Cake for his birthday? Usually red velvet or strawberry. Tyler recently discovered rum cake. Mary made one that my dad brought at Thanksgiving and he loved it! So Tyler and I got Mary's recipe and made the rum cake yesterday. We ended up using a different liquor since our liquor store didn't have the one Mary uses. It came out pretty tasty but Tyler says that Mary's rum cake is better.

I caught Tyler on video unaware while he was singing a rum cake song he made up while he was greasing the bundt cake pan.

Getting ready to make the batter

The first piece! Tyler isn't wild about nuts in baked
goods so we only sprinkled chopped pecans on 
half of the cake.