A little Guitar Hero World Tour before bed....

What do you do when it rains all day at the beach?

Play lots of Wii......

and eat a lot of food....

Some early morning beach time before the rain started.....

We're at the beach!

The beginning of Travis' new room......

Here are some pics of Travis' new room. It's still a work in progress but we are definitely a lot closer than we were a few days ago! The dark blue walls look great with the white trim! We got him a new bookshelf from Target (as seen in the pics). The blue bins will eventually have toys in them. Evan put up the 6 movie posters along the one wall and was pleased they fit so well!

The graphic above his headboard is Anakin I think but I'm really not sure-lol. It's one of those removable stick on deals. The pictures around the decal are from his old room. They were hanging on a "clothesline" above his bed--they are pictures from a Clone Wars calendar. We took the best 5 pictures to frame the decal. He already had the Clone Wars sheets but the comforter is a new addition he hasn't seen yet!

We still need to get a carpet for part of the floor, place the glow in the dark planets and stars on the ceiling, clean out the closet (it's all baby stuff from when it was a junk room right now), get some type of drapes, and ask him if he still wants his name on the wall-like it was in his baby room. I am so glad we got so much done while he was at Grammy's/before the beach. When we get back from the beach we don't have any free weekends for awhile because of football!

I hope he likes the room when he sees it when we get home! I will show him the pictures when we see him today though! :)

Travis is at Grammy and Poppy's!

He got in the car without a fuss yesterday morning to head down to NC for a few days! This was his first adventure there without us so we weren't sure how it was going to go. I got a report today that the car ride went really well-he chatted with Grammy the entire way there! Apparently they counted police cars on the highway and saw a total of 10-there were 9 in VA and 1 in NC. The ones in VA all had pulled people over-no shock there. They stopped for lunch and Grammy gave him the choice of McD's, BK or 5 guys. She was shocked when he chose 5 guys! He ate an entire cheesburger/fries and somehow had room still for a "brownie explosion" from DQ! Man he must be going through a growth spurt! Once they got to their house he was quickly inside and started building the Lego set that Grammy had waiting for him. Grammy thought it was a dump truck but Travis quickly corrected her and told her it was a pumper truck! After dinner last night, Travis and Poppy went out to the golf course behind their house with his clubs to get in some practice. He loves going out there. We were wondering where he would sleep since he normally sleeps upstairs in the bedroom next to us. Well last night he slept on an air mattress on the floor in their room and apparently slept like a rock---well until 6:30am! :) Stories to be continued......

Travis' attempt at Wii basketball!

Benihana is Travis' new favorite restaurant!

He loved the show and was very easily entertained!

A new u/s picture

Kind of blurry but you get the idea!

"Starless Night"

Saturday afternoon Evan, Tammy and Travis painted Travis' new room. He wanted a black room but we were able to convince him to choose this super dark blue color called "starless night". The vision for his new room was "Star Wars". I got him the 6 movie posters for the walls and he already has the Star Wars bedding for his bed. Needless to say he was very excited for this new room to get started on.....

The 3 of them painted the room in the time it took me to go to the grocery store. I got back and peeked in.....it looks AWESOME! We used the new Behr paint and primer in one stuff and it works just like they say it will! The walls in this room were originally this weird light mint green color-I compared it to the color of Crest toothpaste. Up until now this room had been our junk room. Cleaning it out to just get the paining done was a chore as well. There are so many things in Travis' closet, the hallway and the computer room now!

We hope to have him moved into his new room this weekend but only time will tell if that's possible. Unfortunately I didn't take a "before" picture of the room but my toothpaste analogy should help. :)

The chicken battle....

Last night we had a chicken battle.....Travis went to the late TKD class (6:15-7:00) so I had asked Evan to have dinner ready for us when we got home. I had suggested these frozen stuffed chicken breasts and noodles. The chicken comes in a variety but Travis has eaten and liked the broccoli & cheese one and that is what Evan made him. When we got home the 1st thing out of Travis' mouth when told that was dinner was...."that is disgusting-I'm not eating that". He then proceeds to ask for a Lunchable which Evan tells him no. Now the whining and yelling starts. Evan decided we were going to get him to eat this or he was going to bed hungry. I got him to try a bite but he started pretend gagging-I told him if he threw up he was going to A) clean it up himself and B) any toy that got barf on it would be thrown away. This made more whining, yelling and tears. Then I offered ketchup for him to dip the chicken in.....this worked and I got him to eat 1/2 of the chicken. Whew! That was MUCH harder than it was supposed to be! The thing that's the most annoying about it is that he LOVES this chicken and for some reason just wanted to throw a fit about it. I wonder what will happen the next time we ask him to eat something that he doesn't want to eat......

A busy, busy Sunday!

My Sunday started with driving over to my parents house to get Travis. They had already eaten breakfast when I got there. I think it was pancakes and eggs but I could be wrong. I heard Travis "yucked" the eggs since my dad put a little bit of parsley in them. Yeah that never works--he calls it grass and moves on. :) Oh well.

We hung around there a little and then it was time to get moving since we were heading out to Manassas to meet JP, Logan, Jenni, Amber, Chance and Glory at the movies out there. The kids have all really wanted to see the movie "G Force" and that is what we were seeing. Of course the bigger boys started to beg/whine about seeing GI Joe when they saw the huge posters in the lobby. I told them one of the dads needed to see it first to deem whether it was OK for kids. Of course it won't be-I'm sure it's loaded with violence and bad words. ;) All of the kids seemed to really enjoy the movie. I thought it was cute as well-there were definitely some jokes that were aimed at the adults as well. Chance fell asleep at some point during the movie so I'm not sure how much he saw. lol

After the movie we headed back to the house to get ready for the pool! We packed up some pb&j, juice boxes, apples, string cheese etc and drove over. Yes I said we were driving over.....when it's over 100 with the humidity we drive to the pool. :) We had a great time at the pool-Travis played with Kelly, Kate, Jackson, Declan and Robert at various points in the 3 hours we were there. I got Travis to do a bunch of good swimming as well. I found that if he keeps his head in the water his legs don't sink to the bottom and therefore can kick more effectively. It's hard to get him to do that every time since a kids 1st reaction is to keep their head above the water. He had a blast and was exhausted when we left at around 6pm.

We had a quiet rest of the evening. I put Travis in the tub when we got back from the pool. Poor thing had red eyes from the water and not wearing his goggles. Oh well. Great Mommy and me day!

Dave Matthews Band concert!

Last night Glory and I went to go see the Dave Matthews Band at the Nissan Pavillion. They have been a favorite band for both of us since around the college days-scary I know. Evan doesn't go to the show anymore with me since he hates the Nissan Pavillion. This year was no exception in general but he was also out of town at Lollapalooza with Mike, Chris and CL. So I drove Travis over to my parents for a sleepover and I headed out to PW county to pick up Glory.

Glory's neighbors were having a pock-luck type dinner when I got there and they were nice to let me join in the fun. We had a yummy but quick bit to eat and then we got in the car to head over to the concert. Anyone that lives around here knows the issues with traffic around this place well. This is why Evan hates the place so much. We only had a little traffic coming into the parking lot-but we bypassed the worst part of the traffic coming off I-66. The part that scared me was we were routed into a parking lot I didn't even know existed! It was the Mountain Dew lot. ;) Once we parked the car Glory had a pre-concert beverage (or two) and then we started our long walk to the gates.

Once we got up there we weren't quite ready to go to our seats. We wandered around a bit and I got Glory this enormous swirled margarita thing. It was huge! We also got our picture taken with the Geico Gecko-lol. Then it was almost show time so we got to our seats and were pleased to find that we were in the 8th row! I knew it was the orchestra pit but I thought we were a little furthur back based on the alphabet but the left side didin't start at the letter "A". :)

The show was aswesome and I was so glad Evan bought me the new CD since about 3/4 of the show was new stuff. Here was the setlist:
Why I Am *
Funny The Way It Is *
Seven *
You Might Die Trying *
Lie In Our Graves *
Shake Me Like a Monkey *
I’ll Back You Up
#41 *
Raven *
Burning Down The House *
Lying In the Hands of God *
Dancing Nancies *
Grey Street *
You and Me *
Crash (Into Me) *
Time Bomb *

__________________

Squirm *
All Along The Watchtower *

Hopefully I will be able to get a few of Glory's pictures to add to this entry but for now just now we had a blast and it only took us about 15 minutes to get out of the parking lot! (mainly because we left at the encore) :)

5 full days this week of TKD!

We were making up some classes this week from the past 2 weeks. Normally Travis goes 3 times a week but we had 4 classes to make up so he went 5 times this week! I think the sparring class is still his favorite by far but the other days went very well too. I can't remember if I mentioned it before but there is this one kid that torments some of the other kids. He punches, hits and pushes them on purpose during class. When I see this kid is in class with Travis I get upset since Travis is normally the person who gets the business end of it and I don't want him to get in trouble for retaliating (though he hasn't yet but it's only a matter of time). So today there were only 5 kids total in class and that kid was one of them. At the beginning of class Master J sits all the kids down and has this talk with them about how TKD is not about hitting and punching people. He goes on and says how it's to defend yourself from a bad person etc and if you kick or punch when it's not in self defense that is bad....So I asked the parents beside me if they knew what sparked this talk. This kid's dad (the one I mentioned in the beginning) piped up and said he spoke to Master J since his kid is constantly punching and kicking them, friends etc and claims he is "practicing". This explains why he is always doing it in class-I've seen him do it maybe a dozen times and only got caught once. Hopefully the problem will know go away! He and Travis seem to get along well now which is definitely a good thing! :)

Sparring is hard work! :)

Dinner with old friends.......

I wish I had brought my camera but I didn't so I don't have photographic proof.....

Kari came into town and we decided it would be a great idea to get together for dinner. In attendance were myself, Kristen, Glory, Kari and Kim. We met at Jackson's in the Reston Town Center and had a BLAST! It was like we were all back in the sorority house in the early-mid 90s! No topic was off subject...once again just like the old days! We stayed for 2+ hours and I was sad when we had to go home.

Hopefully it won't be so long before we get together again!

Orange Belt ceremony!

Travis and Kate waiting patiently for the ceremony to begin.....

Travis sitting in the yellow belt row watiing for Grand Master Kim....

Getting his orange belt tied on by one of the Masters...excited!

A perfect TaeKwanDo sit by Travis after getting his orange belt....

The entire group of new belts from our location with Grand Master Kim....

Showing off his new belt and his official certificate! So excited and proud!

Travis getting his orange belt certificate

Paul McCartney show last night.....