stephanieandluke.com

Lego Cars Table

2012-01-27T15:50:00.001-05:00

For Calvin’s birthday present, I decided to copy an idea I saw on pinterest and make him a Lego Cars Table! I must say it turned out SOO cute!!

So basically I bought the lack side table from IKEA and glued a 15x15 lego duplo base to it with E-6000 glue. Then I made vinyl street lines with my Silhouette, but you could just use sticker paper. And to top it off, I bought the Big Bentley Duplo Set which happened to have Calvin’s 3 favorite Cars characters :)

It doesn’t stay all cute like this for long…usually within seconds he tears it apart and then asks me to fix it, haha!

Calvin’s Cars Party

2012-01-16T14:47:00.001-05:00

To celebrate Calvin turning 2 we turned our house into Radiator Springs and had a Cars party! I got a lot of the ideas from pinterest including this site and this site.

Here is the invitation. It was a combined effort of both Luke and me using photoshop and an idea we saw on etsy.

I used my Silhouette to make most of the decorations, but some of them were just created in photoshop using images I found on Google.

Of course Little Man didn’t want to smile for us, but here he is sporting his birthday t-shirt.

I made a “Happy 2nd Birthday Calvin!” banner with chronological month to month pictures from birth to 2.

Sarge’s Surplus of Sweets was our dessert station.

I found a tutorial for a Mater Cake, and I must say it turned out super cute!

Flo’s V8 Café had all the other snacks.

Ramone’s House of Body Art was the coloring station.

Then we had our “rest stop” aka bathroom.

Our party favors were little bags of “Car Parts” or trail mix.

And here are some pictures of the party. The birthday boy enjoying his Mater Cake.

Having fun at Ramone’s.

Opening all the fun cars presents! This little boy sure was spoiled :)

Playing around outside…the weather was really nice, “not too hot, not too cold, all you need is a light jacket” (movie anyone?)

Rachey Baby who is due 3 days after me also with a little girl! :)

The party was a huge hit! Thanks to all our friends and family who came to celebrate with us!!

I love Santa!

2012-01-15T17:41:00.000-05:00

Or not….

Calvin is 2!

2012-01-14T17:35:00.000-05:00

On Dec 13 our little baby turned 2! I can’t believe how fast time has flown by but I am loving every minute of it. For those who know Calvin, you know he’s a crazy, fun and sweet little boy. We just love him so much!!

So to celebrate, I took him to his favorite place for breakfast (and lunch practically b/c we were there for 2 hours!).

As you can see, he really enjoyed his birthday brunch :)

Stay tuned for the Cars Party pics!

CEC in B-town

2012-01-13T16:47:00.000-05:00

You know that the Warners/Edgars always have to celebrate birthdays with the Chuckster, and Thanksgiving was Katherine’s 12th birthday so we headed to CEC for some fun!

Calvin probably rode that horse ride 20 times, it was so cute :)

Warren on Black Friday

2012-01-12T16:36:00.000-05:00

As usual we headed to Warren to have some fun in the woods.

And we had another photo shoot :)

Thanksgiving in Beaumont

2012-01-11T16:03:00.001-05:00

On actual TG we headed to Beaumont to hang out with the Edgar clan. Of course Calvin sported his turkey shirt again and had fun playing iPad with Poppy.

Calvin has a little OCD and always has to pick up any messes.

Then we had a little photo shoot of all our stylish outfits :)

Besties!

Thanksgiving in Paradise

2012-01-11T00:40:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know it’s January, but we have a bunch of past posts headed your way…Starting with Thanksgiving Round 1 with Luke’s fam in Paradise, TX that is :)

We got to see a bunch of Luke’s cousins and 1st cousins once removed aka his cousins’ kids..It was a really fun day of hanging outside and eating casseroles!

Luke’s cousin Caren’s daughter Claire (what a mouthful) was Calvin’s favorite person that day as you can see

Of course I had to make Calvin a shirt for the big day.

Calvin kept running around making this super weird face:

And here are our cute family shots :)

We’re thinking PINK!

2011-12-21T10:08:00.001-05:00

Yep, it’s a girl :) Let’s just say, I am super excited about this! I was hoping all my craftiness wasn’t going to be put to waste, haha.

This time we also got some video of the sonogram, which is pretty cool.

Advent Calendar

2011-12-01T17:24:00.001-05:00

This year I decided to make a cute little Advent Calendar made out of a 24 mini muffin pan. I used my Silhouette to cut out the squares and numbers:

Here are the “activites” we have planned:

Decorate the tree
Go to the Trail of Lights
Open your special ornament and put it on the tree
Choose a special treat
Make a craft with Mommy
Have breakfast for dinner
Wear new jammies to bed
Read the story about the birth of Jesus
Make popcorn and watch a Christmas movie
Drive around to see Christmas lights
Happy Birthday Calvin!
Sing Christmas Carols
Wrap Christmas gifts
Visit Santa Claus
Decorate cookies
Make a Christmas decoration
Enjoy homemade hot chocolate
Color a Christmas picture
Calvin’s Car Party!
Build a fort and have lunch in it
Read a Christmas book
Got out for lunch/dinner

Then I just put Hershey Kisses in 2 of the spots. And the activities are in no particular order.

Here’s another little craft I made today:

I bought the letters from Hob Lob (or Rob Lowe, eh Lala?), covered them with scrapbook paper and double-sided tape, then embellished with ribbon, buttons and snowflakes.

Tiny Prints Christmas Cards

2011-11-27T19:07:00.001-05:00

Like I said in our previous post, Tiny Prints has the cutest stuff and I highly recommend them for your stationary needs. This year we’ll be using them for our Christmas Cards, which you can check out here. They have tons of cute options to check out :)

Also, this year we’ll be displaying all your cards using a cute garland made out of clothespins and ribbon like this one:

Tiny Prints Talent Search

2011-11-16T18:04:00.001-05:00

Now through Mon, Nov 21, you can enter to win Tiny Prints Talent Search!

The prize for winning is $1,000 cash plus a $500 gift card to Tiny Prints, and they have the cutest stuff :)

They are looking for winners in the following categories:

Cutest Baby (0-24 months)
Cutest Kid (25 months – 10 years)
Cutest Family
Cutest Couple
Cutest Pet & Owner

You can check out the Official Rules here.

After Monday, they will open the contest to everyone for voting. I entered Calvin for cutest baby, and we might enter cutest family too :)

I guess we’ll live in this room

2011-11-08T15:18:00.001-05:00

Ok VA friends (and others of course), here is a pic of our new living room…all decked out in Fall décor.

We got all the pumpkins at Sweet Berry Farms in Marble Falls in October. I made the maple and oak leaf garland using my Silhouette, but you could follow this tutorial. And I found the fall subway art here, printed it and framed it. Go fall!

Trick-or-Treat!

2011-11-03T10:50:00.001-04:00

Brace yourselves folks, this year our family was as cute as can be for Halloween :)

It was a fun-filled day! First we headed to Luke’s work to enter in the costume contest they were having (results next week). As you can see we decided to go with characters from Disney’s Up! Calvin was Russell and Luke was Carl Frederickson…you’ll see later in the post what I was :)

After showing our little Wilderness Explorer around to Luke’s co-workers, ~~Russell~~ Calvin and I headed to MOPs. We had a little party in honor of Halloween and I won the door prize! I’m not sure if I should be ashamed of this, but they figured out who won by asking who had been to Chick-Fil-A the most times in October. Well, I said we went about 7 times, which is most likely true :) It was free breakfast Tuesdays this month and I know we went a couple other times too…so yeah, I don’t know if I should brag about that one!

Anyway, the prize was a cute little CFA cow and some coupons, so of course we went there for a free lunch!

Calvin was sporting his cute “Daddy’s little Monster” shirt from MaMaw while he was giving his Russell costume some rest!

Then we went home for naps and such. Around 6 we got back into costume. As you can see, Calvin was a cutie pie! Luke’s costume was pretty awesome too! A big thanks to Auntie Katie for the idea!

Ok, ok, you’re probably wondering what in the world is Stephanie?? Well I wanted to go along with the theme too, but I didn’t want to be Carl’s wifey that died at the beginning of the movie…so I went as Kevin the Snipe! If you haven’t seen Up, Kevin is a girl :)

Here’s what we were going for:

I thought we did pretty good overall :)

Here are some more pics of Calvin’s costume.

After our photo shoot we headed to a Trunk-or-Treat at a nearby church. Calvin just kept walking around wondering why he would go up to strangers and take candy from them. Everything seems so wrong with that, but he had a blast!

Next we trick-or-treated on our street. It was Calvin’s first attempt at this b/c last year we hosted a party with our home groupies and didn’t go trick-or-treat.

Then we spilled all the candy out when we got home.

For any of you who want to make Up costumes some time, here’s a breakdown of what I did:

I found the Wilderness Explorer badges online here and the logo here. Then I printed them onto fabric paper, ironed that onto fusible paper, then cut everything out and ironed it onto a fabric sash and flag that I made.
I just sewed a rectangle out of orange fabric for the “bandana”.
I couldn’t find a yellow hat small enough for Calvin (that wasn’t like $12), so I just painted one of the cheap hats at Hobby Lobby, that’s why it’s not the best shade :)
I made Luke’s bow tie following this tutorial and sizing it up slightly for a man.
Luke’s glasses are the 3D ones you get at the movies with the lenses removed.
I found Luke’s wig on Amazon, the closest I could find was a Colonel Sanders Wig!
I found Calvin’s yellow polo, Luke’s coat and pants, and my colorful shirt at Goodwill. The rest of the clothes are just our stuff.
I tied random stuff onto Calvin’s backpack like a tambourine, blanket and pampered chef steaming pot (b/c it was plastic and light!)
And LaLa can attest to me hand drawing the little house and coloring it…I mean Calvin did all of that :)
Lastly, we picked up some balloons from Party City that morning and luckily they lasted all day!

We had such a fun time dressing up, and Calvin loved wearing his costume! I was worried about that b/c he never wanted to try anything on, but once he saw Luke and me dressed up, he was all about it!

We hope y’all had a Happy Halloween! Now onto listening to Christmas music :)

Fall Festival

2011-11-02T13:54:00.000-04:00

Well as you’ll see in the first video, we had some bad luck this past weekend with fall festivals. We found a website with a list of Halloween activities going on near us. So we decided to check out one at the Humane Society…all they had were dogs, no bounce house or games like it advertised. It was so unclear what was going on that Luke asked a worker if they were having a Halloween thing that day, of course she said yes, but it didn’t look like it :) Calvin loved the dogs though, but we were on the hunt for something else.

The second one we went to was a church fall festival that was supposed to have carnival games, a bounce house, food, candy…we drove up to an empty parking lot…0 for 2.

But on our way home, we drove past an elementary school hosting a festival, so we decided to check it out. They had a toddler area for Calvin to play in, a petting zoo, pony rides, and bounce houses & slides :) It was a hit!

We didn’t want to use Calvin’s official Halloween costume until Trick-or-Treating, so here’s what we decided to strut around in for the day...don’t look too closely at the little baby’s fingers, it was hard to work the stencil with such a small shape, next time I’ll get an exacto knife :)

And LaLa came to hang out with us for the weekend!

As you can see, Calvin didn’t want to participate in a family photo :)

Park Days

2011-11-01T13:32:00.000-04:00

We’ve been having some cooler days lately and I’ve been feeling better, so Calvin and I headed to our neighborhood park to play.

Weekend in Waco

2011-10-31T13:55:00.000-04:00

We got to spend some time in Waco with Drew & Rachel last weekend. It felt like old times…playing games, watching tv, eating Tex-Mex :)

My Houston zoo membership got us in the Waco zoo free, so we spent Saturday morning checking out the animals. Calvin loved it! He walked through the whole thing searching for the “fafants” otherwise known as elephants.

Calvin loved playing with their dog Ruby, poor thing was terrified of him though. Anyway, little man thought it would be fun to be a dog for the day..

Sweet Berry Farms

2011-10-30T17:47:00.001-04:00

A couple of weekends ago, we got to meet up with some new friends at Sweet Berry Farms in Marble Falls for the pumpkin patch. Unlike VA, the pumpkins in TX are pre-picked…kind of a bummer, but what are you gonna do?

Playing Soccer

2011-10-26T13:24:00.000-04:00

We’ve been having nice nights these days, so Calvin wanted to play soccer in the backyard..

Church Fall Festival

2011-10-25T13:13:00.000-04:00

The church that’s basically in our backyard hosted a fall festival a few weekends ago. They had a petting zoo, horses, a bounce house and carnival games. It was a fun day. Calvin especially loved the petting zoo. Except there was a little black bunny that wouldn’t give him the time of day :)

LaLa is starting a style blog, so we took a couple of pics to show off her talent, haha…here’s a preview for you.

Oh yeah, and they had a fire truck you could check out.

Weekend in Paradise

2011-10-24T11:00:00.002-04:00

Texas that is! I hope you all can forgive my lack of posting these days, but maybe you can cut me some slack considering our last post :)

Anyway, the first weekend in October we headed to Luke’s family’s house in the country to hang out. On Saturday morning, Luke and PawPaw took Calvin to see some animals at a friend’s house. Calvin even got to ride a horse!

Then we spent the day watching the Aggie game and enjoying the beautiful weather outside.

Calvin kept going toward the pool, so we thought “if he sticks his feet in, he won’t want to swim (b/c it was freezing)”. But Calvin is a kid, and kids don’t care how crazy something is at the time :) He lasted about 10 minutes before he was screaming of the cold. We had to warm him up in a bubble bath.

Then the boys decided to do my favorite thing ever (can you hear the sarcasm?).

And finally, we tried to get a good pic of Calvin with the grandparents. Of course he didn’t want to be a good sport, I guess it was nap time :) But here’s what we got.

Baby (featuring Ludacris)

2011-10-19T23:03:00.001-04:00

We’re excited to let you all know that Stephanie’s got a bun in the oven and little Mr. or Ms. precious baby should be here sometime roundabouts April 23rd.

Here’s our first picture of baby #2. This is a sonogram from the 10 week appointment.

Popular belief says there will always be exponentially more photos of the first baby than of subsequent progeny. Well, so far this has held true. The Leander baby doctor only gave us 2 measly little photos, of which the above is the only good one. If you’ll recall, the Williamsburg baby doctor gave us 15 photos of Calvin during his first ultrasound, including a 3D one. To be fair, Calvin’s appointment was at 13 weeks and Baby #2’s was at 10 weeks, but regardless, I’m going to chalk one up for Virginia.

In any event, Calvin seems pleased with his promotion to the prestigious title of “Big Brother.” He commissioned a t-shirt and accompanying portrait to celebrate the occasion.

He seemed so content in the back of that truck amongst the pumpkins and hay that we decided to sell him to the man who owned the truck. They drove away shortly after we snapped this photo. This is the last photo we’ll ever have of Calvin, and we miss him dearly already, but wherever he is, I sure hope he’s still holding on to those 2 pumpkins.

Fiesta Texas

2011-10-11T15:07:00.000-04:00

Luke’s company rented out Fiesta Texas for their employees and family and friends the last Sunday in September. Even though it was super hot, we had a fun time with MaMaw {Luke’s mom’s name that we decided, not sure how she wants it spelled though :)}, Trix and LaLa.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures, but we have a couple of fun videos for you.

Outside Fun

2011-10-10T14:45:00.001-04:00

Here are some videos from the fun we had at the park and with water in September.

MOPs Coloring

2011-10-10T14:01:00.001-04:00

Look what Calvin made for me at MOPs….if you look really closely, you can see a hint of blue coloring :)

Little Luke’s Birthday Party

2011-09-05T15:04:00.000-04:00

This year we got to celebrate “Little Luke’s” 4th birthday at Veteran’s Memorial Park. It was a really fun waterpark with a huge area for Calvin to play in. You can see from the video that he enjoyed the slides in particular :)

And of course there is cake at a birthday party and Calvin got to try some..

Looks like he liked it!

Thanks Luke for letting us celebrate with you!

Good Morning, Calvin

2011-09-04T21:57:00.001-04:00

The Oasis

2011-09-03T10:47:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, LaLa & FerFer came to visit and we ate at the Oasis. That place is huge now! I guess there are like 20 restaurants in the area or something b/c they had seats for like a million people :)

Then we went back to our house and watched Beastly, best. movie. ever. But not as good as My Future Boyfriend.

Dance Calvin Dance

2011-09-02T11:21:00.001-04:00

We went to this fun little diner a couple of weeks ago with the Warner fam…here are some videos from the live band:

Muscle Man

2011-08-24T13:07:00.000-04:00

Trix got Calvin this awesome muscle man swimsuit, so of course we had to try it out. It works pretty good and not to mention, it looks ridiculous! :)

Calvin wanted to make sure Woody, Buzz & Sully had some pool fun too.

I’m thinking about using the suit to make some sort of muscle man outfit for Halloween. What do you think? Or I’m thinking about doing Russell and Carl from UP.

Happy Birthday Luke!

2011-08-23T12:57:00.001-04:00

Friday was Luke’s 27th birthday and we spent the weekend celebrating! Friday night we went to The County Line on the Lake with Sandy & Mike (unfortunately we didn’t get a picture with them..)

Then Saturday we had fun around the house before heading to the Circus!

(Sorry for the ghetto picture, I was told you couldn’t bring detachable lens cameras into the arena, but we totally could have!)

Saturday night, Joe & Mona & their kiddos and Axel & Heather came over for dinner and to hang out. Calvin loved ~~playing with~~ pushing Faith, Aliza & Luke :) The Elliotts spent the night too, so we had a fun Sunday morning dance party with them!

Happy Birthday Luke! I hope you felt extra special this weekend! We love you :)

Look what finally came!

2011-08-21T17:03:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, my new ring set finally came in the mail! It has been no fun not having a wedding ring for the past 7 weeks. When we sent the rings to the jeweler, they acted like we’d have them within 3 weeks. So I was getting pretty anxious to get them back! But it was totally worth it :)

Doesn’t the scar on my pointer finger look lovely :)

I have to brag on my man, he’s da bomb (dot) com…Seriously, I love him!

Yummy Enchiladas

2011-08-20T10:10:00.000-04:00

Looks like Calvin enjoyed the Cheese Enchiladas we had for dinner the other night..

Are you kidding me??

Look what we got in the mail today!

2011-08-19T11:42:00.001-04:00

Omg, we have the best friends in the world! Our sweet friends Josh, Jessie & James sent our little family a fruit basket as a house warming gift! They are so amazing and we miss them so much! We are rooting for Josh to get a grad school position at A&M so we can see them more :)

Of course Calvin wanted his picture taken when he saw the camera!

The basket was full of pears from Argentina and apples from New Zealand, mixed nuts, crackers & cheese (some of Calvin’s favorites!). It also had a sweet note saying they missed us in Williamsburg :)

Thank you so much Lewis family! We love you!

New Curtains

2011-08-19T10:02:00.001-04:00

The past owners left their living room curtains up with the rod after moving out. We really liked the rod, but the fabric for the curtains didn’t match our décor.

So I decided to take the red curtains we had that were too short and extend them by adding some gold fabric I found at Ross (they were actually gold curtains themselves).

It was a really simple project. I just made finished edges on the gold panels after cutting them to size, then I sewed them to each of the red panels. And there you go!

Total cost for the project: $8.99 +tax for the gold fabric. Buying new curtains that size would’ve been pretty pricey I’m sure. Then there’s the task of finding what you want, which is never easy!

And because the original fabric is nice looking (and had tassels!), my mom took the curtains to use in on of her rooms! Way to reuse :)

New Bathtub

2011-08-18T14:37:00.000-04:00

Calvin gets to take his baths in the big Jacuzzi tub. I think he liked it, especially all the bubbles!

His eyes went kind of freaky here :)

iPad with Pawpaw

2011-08-17T13:19:00.000-04:00

Well Calvin has decided to call Luke’s dad Pawpaw or Papa, not sure on the spelling yet. So here are the boys, doing what they do best, playing some Angry Birds:

Home Sweet Home

2011-08-16T15:34:00.000-04:00

We pulled up into the driveway of our beautiful new home on Aug 2. It was a great feeling :)

More pics of the house to come. Stay tuned.

Goodbye Virginia

2011-08-16T13:13:00.000-04:00

Our last day in VA was July 31, sad day. We loved living in Williamsburg. We made amazing friends and loved our church. It was definitely hard to leave, but we knew it was going to be good to get to Texas.

We got to go to church one last time on the morning we headed out.

Then we spent the day playing xbox while the movers were loading the truck. You can see that our friend Jacob came to VA, he actually came to help us drive back, what a great friend :)

Then after everything was out and the house was cleaned, we were ready to go. Just look at Calvin’s face in each of the pics, he was excited to hit the road :)

Going Away Party

2011-08-15T17:53:00.001-04:00

Well we haven’t posted in a couple of weeks, but I hope the 1500 mile move will allow you to forgive us :)

Anyway, before we left, our friends Amy, David & Joshua threw a little going away party for us! It was a great way to end our time in Virginia and we loved getting to share it with all our friends!

We tried to take pics with all the couples/families, but we only got a few of them (of course!). Here we are with the Lewis’.

And this was our way to get Calvin to stop squirming around :)

Here’s little Ava, and you can see Jeni’s beautiful smile as she holds her!

With the Mortiers.

Calvin chasing Nathan because he doesn’t want them to leave.

With the McMillians.

With the Millers.

With the Hoffmans.

Thanks Amy & David for such a nice party! We will miss you :)

Cool Sunnies

2011-07-26T13:18:00.000-04:00

Calvin saw me put my sunglasses on to go outside, so he went to get his…

He wanted everyone to know the cool brand of his sunnies…real D 3D, pretty awesome :)

Also, you probably see the booboo on his forehead, well boys will be boys and he face planted on the gravel…oops.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!!!!!!!!

2011-07-25T17:13:00.001-04:00

If you’ve ever played FIFA or watched a soccer game in Spanish, then you’ll understand the title of this post.

Anyway, Luke and Mark have been playing soccer together on an indoor men’s team called Stroller Striders, cute name huh? :) Most of their games are after Calvin’s bedtime, but this week it was at 6:30, so we were able to support the boys!

The game was stressful as you can see from the look on Calvin’s face.

Our team scored, then the other team scored, then our team scored, then the other team scored…for the whole game until we finally won 6-5! Go team.

Calvin & Hobbes

2011-07-22T14:51:00.000-04:00

Does Calvin really like Hobbes?

Haha! He wanted to feed Hobbes, but he had to make sure he was wearing a bib :)

VA Living Museum

2011-07-21T15:06:00.001-04:00

We headed to the Virginia Living Museum today with Jessie & James and Amy & Joshua. It was a really nice museum full of fun exhibits and animals. I didn’t really get cute pics of Calvin, but here’s what we have…

Baby James was a cute little spider!

We walked thru plants trying to attack us!

And Calvin got scared..

Luke told me to go get my hair chopped…Ahh!

Random

2011-07-21T14:43:00.001-04:00

Cheese!

His feet are almost big enough :)

Big Boy at the Park

2011-07-18T17:05:00.001-04:00

Mow that Lawn

2011-07-14T12:56:00.000-04:00

Anytime Calvin sees a camera or a phone, he says “cheese.”

So the reason we got the camera out was because Calvin thought the grass was too tall and needed mowing.

Look at that strong boy!

He’s thinking the grass might be too tall to mow.

Yep, let’s get out of here.

The Line Up

2011-07-13T12:31:00.000-04:00

Calvin was trying to figure out “who done it?”

The water is all murky b/c we gave him an oatmeal bath to relieve a rash he got. Don’t worry, the rash is all gone now.

First Goodbye

2011-07-12T18:51:00.000-04:00

Calvin and I had to say our first goodbye today to our friend Mary Frances. She taught me all the ins and outs of being a professional organizer and has her own business, Orderly Places.

Not only is she an organizer, but she is a big time quilter. Look at this awesome quilt she made for Calvin to go with the book The Quilt Maker’s Gift.

She has been a great mentor and friend, and we will definitely miss her!

Eat Mor Chickin

2011-07-12T11:14:00.000-04:00

Friday was Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A, you dress up like a cow and get free food. Of course we took advantage of that deal!

Calvin & I met up with our friends Jeni & Evie and Amy & Joshua for lunch.

I like how Evie is sticking her tongue out at Calvin :)

Good looking group!

Well because it was free food and all, we headed to the other Chick-Fil-A for dinner that night :) No, I’m not that cheap, I just really like CFA!

Calvin wanted to see the cow.

But he was too sure about him.

So he needed to double check that he was a friendly cow.

He was, but just to be safe, Calvin stayed a safe distance away.

Little man also got a sweet hat!

VA Zoo

2011-07-11T11:12:00.000-04:00

We headed to the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk to meet our friends and take advantage of my Houston Zoo membership. The membership we have is pretty awesome, I got all of my friends in for free! Thanks Poppy & Trix!

Here’s Calvin with Evie & James.

He loves blowing bubbles, he gets them pretty big too!

And after they pop his face is nice and slobbery :)

Here’s everyone checking out the bears…Calvin was over there too, but he decided it was more fun to run off.

This was the only way he stayed happy.

But of course he wanted to go the wrong way and wasn’t too happy when I made him turn around….boy was that the biggest tantrum I’ve ever seen. You would think I was being a selfish mother for torturing my child by taking him to the zoo….sheesh!

Here are the little guys (& girls!)

Calvin must be trying to tell me something….doesn’t like elephants! Ahh!

And here’s the whole group. We had a good turn out and a lot of fun!

Calvin’s First Movie Theater Experience

2011-07-10T12:02:00.000-04:00

That’s right, we decided to take Calvin to the movies. If he wants to be part of this family, he has to have a love for movies. As you may have picked up from past posts, Calvin is a little obsessed with the movie Cars. And Cars 2 just happens to be in theaters now, so we took the little man to see it.

Calvin did pretty well. He sat through the 15 minutes of previews and about 2/3rds of the movie. By that point he was getting antsy, so we let him walk up and down the stairs. We went to the 10 AM showing on a Tuesday so there weren’t many people seeing the show with us.

Luke said I could get arrested for taking this pic :)

This is what he did as soon as the credits came on….back and forth in front of the screen :)

Here’s how he enjoyed his new favorite movie!

He didn’t really like sharing his coke with me though :)

I like how he’s pointing at Lightning McQueen here.

And the word “Cars” here…is he a genius baby or something?

He also had to wear his favorite “Cars” t-shirt which is actually part of a pj set :)

Starbucks Bottled Mocha Frappuccino Recipe

2011-07-10T09:20:00.002-04:00

I love these drinks! I want to have one everyday, but at $1 a drink it could get really expensive. So I googled a recipe for the Mocha Frappes and came across this one:

Fills 6 9-oz Starbucks Frappuccino bottles

Ingredients
3 ½ cups espresso coffee*
1/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
4 cups milk (whole milk is best)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking cocoa

Directions
Make espresso coffee. Mix coffee, still hot, sweetened condensed milk, cocoa, and sugar in your mixer until sugar is dissolved. Add milk and continue mixing, about one minute. Pour mix into individual 9.5-oz Starbucks Frappuccino bottles. Store in fridge until ready to use (Note: Do not store any longer than you would milk).

*May use regular coffee that has been run through the coffee maker twice, or add 4 teaspoons instant coffee granules to regular coffee.

I made it last night so I could enjoy a frappe this morning and it tastes exactly like the Starbucks drinks! I also didn’t have any espresso coffee, so I just ran regular coffee thru the maker twice.

I might have to buy the SB bottled drinks another time just so I can have bottles to refill :)

Alaska Day 7

2011-07-09T10:35:00.000-04:00

Exploring Anchorage
7:30 – Eat breakfast at the Denali Cabins
8 – Drive to Anchorage
12 – Eat at Krazy Moose Subs
1 – Visit the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Headquarters
2 – Spend the afternoon exploring downtown Anchorage
7 – Head to the airport
8:40 – Fly back to Houston

This was our last day in Alaska. We started by driving back to Anchorage, but before we got there, we stopped in Wasilla to eat at Krazy Moose Subs and explore the Iditarod Museum.

Think you have bad gas prices? Here’s what they charge right outside the park.

There was a volunteer’s picnic at the Iditarod “museum”, which was basically a wall with paintings of the winners and newspaper clips from some of the races. Oh well, now we can say we’ve been there :)

We decided to check the status of our flight and noticed that it was delayed 3 hours! Ahh, what do to with the time. We’d been wanting to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4, so it seemed like a perfect way to spend our extra time.

After the movie, we went to explore downtown Anchorage. The whole trip I wanted to see salmon jump up river and a bear catch it in the air. So we went to a salmon viewing spot and no such luck. We didn’t even see any fish at all…bummer.

We did see Sarah Palin though!

And we were recommended by both our Nathan friends to eat the whiskey bbq ribs and house root beer at The Brewhouse, so we did and they were delicious. We had to get it to-go b/c the wait time was 2 hours!

Then we headed to the airport and waited until 11:45 before boarding…it was a long day. I opened Surprise 7 on the plane. It was a list of all the funny things that happened in planning a surprise trip across the country. Including Luke opening a no-interest credit card so I wouldn’t see all his charges!

It was such a fun trip and I have the best husband for planning it! I love you Luke.

Alaska Day 6

2011-07-08T14:47:00.000-04:00

Denali
5 – Breakfast at the Denali Cabins
6 – Embark on the Denali Backcountry Adventure
12 – Enjoy a buffet in Denali National Park
8 – Dine at the Black Diamond Grill

This was an EARLY day. We had to wake up in the 5s b/c our bus was coming at 6 AM to pick us up for our adventure. When we boarded the bus and saw that it was mostly older people, I knew it wasn’t going to be too “adventurous”. They gave us a packing list of rain gear, hiking boots, jackets, bottles of water, bug spray, thermal (NO COTTON) long underwear and more. We didn’t need any of this b/c we were on the bus for the whole time except for a few bathroom stops. They even had water and snacks for us. Anyway, despite the exaggerated name and packing list we had a fun time getting to see the park up close and personal. Especially when we saw 4 of the top 5 animals. We saw grizzly bears, moose, caribou, dall sheep, but no wolves. But after seeing the movie Frozen, I’m glad we didn’t see any wolves :)

Notice the caribou running merrily along…

And then noticing the bear…

And then running merrily away…

Panoramic picture, click to see bigger:

After the long 6.5 hour bus ride, we made it to the interior of Denali National Park and ate lunch. While everyone was eating a guy from the local airport came to ask if anyone wanted to fly back instead of taking the 6 hour bus ride. Of course Luke jumped all over that opportunity! So we took off in the little Cessna plane to view Mt. McKinley up close and personal.

Mt. McKinley is the tallest point in North America standing at 20,320 feet. Although there are plenty of taller peaks out there, it is the tallest vertical rise from base to summit in the world. It was pretty amazing seeing it so close from the plane. At one point I thought we were going to crash right into it, but the pilot said we were still miles away, it was just that big!

Another panoramic:

Here’s the route we took:

We made it back to the park’s visitor center around 4:30. We had time to grab some dinner, get back to our cabin and watch 2 episodes of Law & Order before our bus got back at 8 PM. That would’ve been a super long 14 hour day if we rode the bus back. Good choice Luke! That night I opened Surprise 6 which was kazoos from our wedding reception :)

Alaska Day 5

2011-07-07T13:25:00.000-04:00

The North Pole
7:30 – Breakfast at the Lodge
8:45 – Board the Riverboat Discovery
12 – See the Trans-Alaska Pipeline
1 – Grab lunch in and explore Pioneer Park
4:30 – Drive to the North Pole
5 – Check out the Santa Claus House
6 – Head for Denali
8 – Eat at Prospector’s Pizzeria & Alehouse

After checking out of the lodge, we boarded the Riverboat Discovery. It was a fun little boat cruise up the Chena River. We got to see a floatplane take off and land in the river next to the boat.

We stopped at the home and kennels of the Iditarod champion Susan Butcher. She passed away in 2006 from cancer, but her husband owns and operates the kennel. He gave us a show of the dogs pulling a “sled.”

Our main stop was at the Chena Indian Village where we learned how the Athabascan Eskimos lived back in the old days.

The roof of their cabin was covered in grass!

An old salmon catcher.

Santa’s knappy haired reindeer.

After the cruise we ate lunch at the Pump House Restaurant on the river. It was nice and relaxing. Then we headed to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The pipe carries oil 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay in the north to Valdez, AK in the south. In 2010, about 16 billion barrels of oil shipped across the pipeline.

This pic is for Lunsford…those oil companies are just money crazed :)

Next we went to check out Pioneer Park. We were expecting a small theme park, but no rides here. Just little touristy shops and a playground. It was still a little fun area though. I could see bringing Calvin there to play.

Then we drove to the North Pole. Biggest tourist trap ever! All it was was a smaller more ghetto version of Yankee Candle without the candles :) It is still fun to say we’ve been to the North Pole though.

Then we did our traditional vacation activity, enjoyed a hot fudge sundae at McDonald’s….and some fries, coke and burgers :)

After that it was on to Denali! On the drive I got to open Surprise 5 which was our Wedding Program…good memories :)

Alaska Day 4

2011-07-06T13:19:00.000-04:00

Chena Hot Springs
8 – Eat breakfast at the Lodge
9 – Check out the Museum of the North
10 – Watch the Dynamic Aurora Movie
11 – Drive to Chena Hot Springs
1 – Eat lunch at the resort
2:30 – Check out the Aurora Ice Museum
4:30 – Swim and relax in the mineral baths
7 – Dinner at Two Rivers Lodge

After breakfast we headed to the Museum of the North to learn some about Alaskan History. There was a high school field trip there, so kids were sitting around everywhere writing stuff, I don’t know what.

At the museum we also saw a movie about the Aurora Borealis Northern Lights. Luke and I thought the 30 minute movie was well made and interesting. Not the others in the audience though. Probably about 10 adults, you know, grown ups, left during the 30 minute movie. I mean, they couldn’t just watch it? They paid for it. It was very distracting, and I was shocked that it was adults and not kids doing it. This is after people were coming in late too.

After the museum we headed to the hot springs. It was about an hour drive out to the resort. Once we got there, we ate lunch and walked around the property. It was a little drizzly, so we tried to stay indoors mostly. I had been enjoying hot chocolate everywhere we went but I was extremely disappointed with the $4 pack of Swiss Miss they gave me!

Basically the resort was discovered by some dudes in search of “Healing Waters” aka the hot springs. Currently this guy Bernie Karl owns and runs it. He is trying to make it all “green” friendly, so they use the hot springs to run electricity to the resort. Impressed? I paid attention on our Geothermal Tour :)

Here I am feeding one of their goats and drinking my nasty hot chocolate.

Next we walked through the ice museum and boy was it fa fa freezing. You can actually pay $600 a night to stay in one of the rooms, but Luke knows me well and decided that wouldn’t be a good idea :) Supposedly this is the second ice museum on the property, the first one melted, haha...talk about poor planning.

After touring around a house of ice, we warmed up in the hot springs. We couldn’t really take a picture without getting wet, but here’s one from online. There wasn’t snow around when we were there, but it was pretty cool outside so the hot springs felt really nice.

After relaxing in the springs we got all dressed up and headed to dinner. On the drive to the restaurant we saw a Moose on the side of the road taking a drink!

At the restaurant, I got to open Surprise 4. Now let me just tell you how awesome my husband is. Not only did he give me this surprise trip, he also got me a 2nd wedding band to complete my ring set! Actually I just opened the mold of the band b/c they needed my rings to custom make it, but it’s in the making now :)

I told Luke that when people meet him or just know him a little, they’d never know he has this super romantic side…I love that about him.

Alaska Day 3

2011-07-05T16:05:00.001-04:00

Talkeetna & Baseball
7:30 – Eat breakfast at Earth B&B
8:30 – Hit the road for Fairbanks
12 – Soak up the views of Denali from Talkeetna
12:30 – Eat lunch at the Talkeetna Roadhouse
7 – Check out the Midnight Sun Festival
8 – Grab dinner downtown
10:30 – Cheer for the Alaska Gold Panners at the Midnight Sun Baseball Game

This was our big driving day, 387 miles from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Anchorage is Alaska’s largest city with a population of 292,000 and Fairbanks is the 2nd largest with 35,000….talk about small cities! Alaska’s population as a whole is only 710,000…smaller than Austin! Fairbanks is basically the most northern lived in city.

Anyway, to break our drive up some, we stopped in Talkeetna to enjoy small town life and some lunch at the Talkeetna Roadhouse. It was basically one main street with a couple of restaurants and gift shops on either side. Nobody drove the street either, you just park and walk. Our lunch was pretty good, except the service was slllllloooooowww. It was a “seat yourselves” type place and we had to sit outside. Luke went in several times to ask for service, even though they assured us someone would be with right with us. Let’s just say their food better had been good by that point! We were starving :) We enjoyed their famous “pasties” and chili. The pasty was basically all your food wrapped in a croissant, pretty tasty. And the chili had reindeer meat in it…don’t tell Santa!

After enjoying some homemade ice-cream, we continued our journey to Fairbanks. Although the drive was super long, it paralleled Denali National Park, so the scenery was beautiful!

We finally arrived around 6 at A Taste of Alaska B&B, where we would be staying the next 2 nights. It was a cute little place where we had our own cottage. SOO much nicer than Earth B&B. Then we noticed that the Midnight Sun Festival was actually on Sunday afternoon and it was Tuesday…oops on that one! So, we decided to take a nap because the baseball game didn’t start until 10:30 PM and we didn’t want to fall asleep during the first inning! That night we ate at the most expensive Chili’s you could eat at…$8.99 for chips & queso!! Can you believe that???

Anyway, we arrived to the Midnight Sun Baseball Game around 10 PM. Little did we know, that to get a good seat, no, to get any seat, you needed to show up hours early, except Luke thought the gate didn’t open until 10. We were total tourists looking for somewhere to sit. We searched back and forth and back and forth until we finally decided to sit on the floor in front of the 1st base seats. Also this “stadium” was the size of a little league stadium. Luke got the impression that it was like a AAA league, but it was a team made up of college players keeping their skills up for the summer.

It was sprinkling a little, so some of the fans left and we got a real seat :) Most of these pics were taken at or around midnight. Pretty crazy.

And because it was midnight we thought we’d leave and go to bed. It felt like Alaskans shouldn’t need as much sleep because it is dark only like 2 hours of the day, but we’re Texans and we needed sleep :)

And it turns out that although the sun was still out, the game was postponed at 1:30 AM due to rain.