Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Paige sings the Frozen "Let it go" song


On our Disney cruise, we saw Frozen and we all loved the movie, although nobody loved it as much as Paige. She watches it on her iPad and loves to sing Queen Elsa's song "Let it go". She actually knows quite a few of the words and can sing along to the song when it's on. When the song isn't playing she can sing it fairly well, but sometimes gets distracted and loses track of where she was. She was dressed up very cute in an old Halloween costume this last week and after I took a pic of her in it she started singing the song and I got it on video.


Chloe


We don't talk about Chloe much on the blog, so I decided to make a post for her. I took a pic of her the other day while she was maxing and relaxing on her chair in my office. During the week, she spends the day on the chair with me and sometimes we talk a little when I get frustrated with my work. She's getting old now, and this past August turned 10. She seems to be in pretty good shape, although a few weeks ago she got a really irritated and bloody "hot spot" on her neck and had to wear a cone for a couple weeks. She's doing pretty well now and I hope to have her around for a while longer, she's been such a great dog for us.

Upward Basketball - Connor's last game


This past Friday was the last basketball game of the season that Connor could go to. There's one next week, however he's already got a booked up day with soccer and a party so this week was the last game he could play for basketball. He played a hard team this week and he did well although it was a difficult game. The game is split in to six 7 minute periods and Connor played four of them this week.

Each time Connor went out he was matched up randomly against another player and every single time he was matched up against another little boy that was a very good player. The other boy he was playing against played hard defense and at one point knocked Connor down. Surprisingly, no foul was called and Connor was pretty upset about it but he got right back out there and shortly after he scored his first basket. He had a decent number of opportunities to score and managed to make two baskets. Connor played great defense and shut the other boy out completely.


Vegas girls trip - Britney at Planet Hollywood


Andrea went to Vegas to see Britney Spears this last week with her friends Gail, Angel and Clara.


Britney was performing at the Planet Hollywood casino, so that's where Andrea and friends stayed. They flew in on Sunday and left on Wednesday. They did quite a bit of exploring the area and did a bit of partying too before the show.









Britney had a good performance and Andrea said they had pretty good seats pretty close to the stage.


Everyone enjoyed the show and it was a fun trip for everyone. 

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Busy week with my guys


This past week while Andrea was in Vegas, I had to get the kids ready for school and activities all by myself. It was a lot of work and it made us appreciate all the things Mommy does for us throughout the week. Thankfully, Mommy picked out some cute outfits for the children so I didn't have to think much, but it was still a lot of work to get them out the door on time. I took some pictures in the mornings to show Andrea how cute they looked for school on Monday and Tuesday.


On Tuesday night we had to go to soccer practice and I picked Paige up on the way there and we had a picnic for dinner.


Paige liked eating her apple.





Paige liked throwing some of our leftover food in the pond for the fish.


Connor had a funny blue mustache from his Gatorade after practice.

I thought I'd throw in a random picture of Paige being disappointed after she dipped her cookie in ketchup and decided it tasted bad.



Sunday, February 16, 2014

Day out with Daddy


Today I had all day Sunday with the kids since Andrea left for Vegas, so I decided to get out of the house and have some fun with them. The weather's been super cold all over the country and although our state is the only one that didn't get snow, it's been much colder than we're used to recently. Today it finally warmed up a bit and it was sunny, so it was a perfect day to do some stuff outside.

We started off the day with lunch at Tijuana Flats for tacos and then we went to Latitude 30 to play some games. We typically do poorly on games that win tickets, so usually we just ride some of the rides and play some of the games that are fun. Today, while the kids were riding the video ride together, I decided to try a new game that looked like a huge slot machine. On the first try I won the jackpot of 1000 tickets. We played it a few more times and won a few hundred more, so we were flush in tickets and we were excited that we were able to pick out something more interesting than usual. The kids gravitated towards stuffed animals and there was a neat light up wand/scepter thing that Paige wanted. They were both pretty pleased with their goodies.


After we were done at Latitude 30, I didn't really have any other plans so I asked the kids what they wanted to do. They said they wanted to go to the park, so I looked at my Google maps app and punched in "park" and went to the closest match, which was Losco Regional Park. It was an absolutely beautiful park with a lot of playground equipment, huge trees, fields, and walking paths. There were four groups doing birthday parties there and it still didn't seem over crowded.







One of the big oak trees had branches that grew all the way down to the ground. The kids loved climbing on it.


After an hour or so we'd seen everything and got thirsty, so we went to the store to get some drinks and go potty. After that, we decided to try another park so we went to Mandarin park. We'd been there for a birthday party last year, and this time we played at the playground for a little while, but spent most of our time exploring down the paths through the woods.



The kids loved hiking through the forest. Paige was a little nervous about it at first, but soon she insisted on leading the way through the woods. She got scared at one point when she walked through a spider web and ended up with a bug on her arm, but Daddy rescued her and we were able to press on.


We talked about all kinds of plants and animals and the kids couldn't get enough of exploring. 


The kids had an amazing time for such a simple day, I enjoyed my special time with my guys.


Andrea's third tennis match


Andrea had her third tennis match this past Friday. It was a home game vs Ponte Vedra and it was Andrea's third game. She was very excited to get her second win (6-2 and 6-0). She's now 2-1 overall. She's been improving quite a bit and getting more comfortable with her games. She even offered to let me come watch this game, but I didn't want to make her nervous and I was too busy with work this past week.

Andrea played line 4 and all of the lines of her team won. They took a group picture after the match.


Valentines day


Andrea was super sweet with the kids this year for Valentine's day and got them some special stuffed animals they've been wanting, candy bags and balloons. 



For dinner, we took them out to the local Chinese restaurant together. The kids complained a little at first until they started eating it. They both loved it and gobbled it all up. It was fun to spend our Valentines day with the children.



Trevor and Logan


Connor's buddies were over this last week goofing off and we decided to take a pic of them chilling together. They had a bunch of fun playing outside and on the iPads together. We got them some pizza for dinner and they were cute eating it together and chatting.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Clip on dress Disney Princesses


Paige's favorite toy recently has been Disney princesses with clip-on dresses. They're her favorite thing to play with and she's amassed quite the collection. She's got Snow White, Belle, Ariel, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Anna and Queen Elsa. We've also purchased Princess Tiana and Merida, but haven't given them to her yet. They're socked away for her to have when she's extra good one day.

The princesses are perfect for her since the dresses snap on and off pretty easily. She's able to get the princesses in and out of them as she pleases, although she typically puts them in the dresses that they should go with. We like to play pretend with them and the princesses will often spend quite a bit of time preparing for a royal ball. We don't have any princes, so typically Connor's Power Rangers or Jedi's play those roles. There can be quite a bit of drama with the princesses because sometimes the prince won't want to marry the one that the princesses think he should. Inevitably there's a wedding and there's one white dress the lucky princess wears and we have a short wedding and then a dance. Sometimes I'll have Ursula (the sea witch from The Little Mermaid) show up to inject some drama into the story, but typically Paige has a pretty good imagination and it's always interesting to see what kinds of situations she comes up with for the princesses.

I took a short video and was hoping she would go through and show her princesses, but she wasn't exactly in the mood. It was a cute video anyways.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Shawn's new ride


This past week we decided it was time to get a new vehicle for me. Our 2006 GX has needed a few repairs lately and we were tired of putting more and more money into it. I've been super busy lately and Andrea was awesome about researching options and going shopping. On Thursday she went out all by herself, did some test drives, and negotiated the deal for our new (to us) vehicle.

We'd looked at a lot of options and ended up coming back to the GX again. It's a good size for our family and we really liked our old one. The new one is a 2013, it's a bit bigger than our old one, more spacious inside, and it's the newest vehicle we've purchased together. There weren't many for sale and when we've seen them available used they usually get snatched up quickly so I'm glad Andrea was able to find such a nice one locally. It's an awesome upgrade and I'm so proud of my sweet wife for doing so much work for me.

Princess dress


Paige's friend Kenlyn has some things she'd outgrown and gave them to Paige. Paige really loves the new pink dress and has been wearing it everywhere.

Trevor's 7th birthday party at Rebounderz


On Friday night we went to Trevor's 7th birthday party at Rebounderz. The kids jumped on the trampolines and played a bunch of games. It was an enormous area with all kinds of things to do and lots of children.

Paige was required to wear a helmet, which she wasn't crazy about.



Paige started out at the foam pit. She didn't quite get the idea of bouncing directly in to the foam, but she enjoyed herself with it.



Paige loved bouncing on the trampolines.




Connor did a lot of jumping and practiced a lot of tricks off the wall trampolines. He also did the dodgeball at one point, but it wasn't when we were watching so we didn't get any pics of it.




The cake was yummy!


Paige rode the motorcycle for a while, but got mad that she didn't get any tickets for prizes.