Mamma Mia!

*Disclaimer - The information in this entry is old...we know that.  But that doesn't mean it's not good stuff*

Do you have a favorite movie?  Okay, that's a stupid question, because of course you do.  Everyone has a favorite movie....you know, that one movie you can recite all the lines to without skipping a beat.

Well, me and Lizzie, we have a favorite movie...actually quite a few favorite movies.  Anyway, one of our all time favorite movies is Mamma Mia.  You really can't get better than a movie with lots of singing and dancing and a boy and a girl kissing.  It's got all the makings of a great movie.

Now, have you ever wanted to put yourself in a movie?  Okay, I'm not saying go to Hollywood and be in a movie because that's just silly.  I mean, have you ever wished that you could be one of the characters in a movie and do what they were doing.

Well, on our vacation to OBX, Lizzie and I had just that chance.  We got to be just like the boys in Mamma Mia and we got to ride on a JET SKI!  And it was all the movie made it out to be and more!!

Daddy's friend Mr. Dave has his very own jet ski and he dragged it all the way down from Pennsylvania so we could ride it around on the water.

We both got to take lots of turns out there with lots of different drivers.  Me, I liked going out with Daddy.  He drives that jet ski all crazy and wild...just like he drives our van.  We zipped and zoomed all over the place.  Lizzie didn't like riding with him as much...she just screamed and screeched like a little girl...which I guess that's what she is.  Whatever, Daddy was fun.

Mommy was an okay driver.  Lizzie liked her better because she didn't go as fast.  Which is weird when you think about it.  Because in our van she puts the pedal to the metal.  However,on water she was like an old grandma out for a Sunday drive.

Anyway, here's some pictures from our jet ski adventures.  If you listen very closely you can hear us singing.....

Don't go wasting your emotion
Lay all your love on me.
Don't go sharing your devotion
Lay all your love on me.

Last Days of Summer

Yeah...we know.  We've kind of been slacking this month.  It's just, we don't have many days left before we have to head back to school, so we are trying to make the most of the little time we have left.

We've been up to our usual...arguing, fighting, complaining, griping...we just want to make sure that Mommy and Daddy fully remember what they will be missing when we go back to school and cannot spend as much quality time as we usually get to spend with them.  It will be sad.

Now, don't get me wrong.  We have been doing some fun stuff too.  We've been back to the local splash pad and several playgrounds.  We've had play dates with our friends and we finally got to see the bats fly out from under the bridge in Round Rock.  (And we're hoping we can see it again and that this time Mommy will remember her camera so we can share some pics with you...but like I said, it all depends on Mommy and we all know how she is...)

We even still have some fun thing left to do in these last few days of summer.  So we're going to go ahead and get off the computer and get our fun on....but we promise to come back and share all our Shenanigans just as soon as we can.

I'm on Vacation Too! (7/31/2011)

So I've got it all figured out.  Adults go on vacations to get away from everyday life....you know, from their jobs and other daily stresses.  They go on vacation so they can relax and have fun and not have to be as responsible as they normally are.

Well darn it, I want to be able to do the same thing.  So I am officially on vacation.  What does this mean?  It means that I am not responsible for healthy eating and I am avoiding the stresses of everyday life...which include listening to my parents and doing what I am told.

So, how am I doing? 

Well, my diet currently consists of Beach Cookies (Oreos for you lay people), sugared cereal, cake, chips and pop tarts and pan cakes made from a can that squirts just like whipped cream!

And the listening...I'm doing good there too!  The other night Mommy and I went down to the beach to watch the sun set.  She specifically told me not to go in the water because I was not dressed to go swimming.  Well, I showed her that I was on vacation.....

I did stop along the way and pose for some pictures.  Notice my cute smile!

Checking out the ocean...and waiting for slow poke Mommy to stop taking pictures already and just catch up with me!

Quick stop to meditate...I want to make sure I'm REALLY ready to not listen!

Ahh....the ocean in all its glory.

It's okay, Mommy...my shirt is barely touching the water.

Oh...I guess my shirt is a little wet now...sorry. :)

Ahhh....thank God for vacations.  This not listening is GREAT!!

And let me tell you....this is just the beginning of the week.  I'm sure I have some other great things up my sleeves.

Back to the Beach (7/30/2011)

It only took us a bazillion years, but Mommy and Daddy finally have taken us back to the beach.  See, it used to be that every year we would get on two planes and fly far, far away to the beach where we would get together at a big house with Daddy's friends and their families.  And just when we were really starting to get into the trips and getting to know all the families and the kids, the trips just stopped.  It was NOT cool.

But then this year the stars aligned and the heavens opened up and shined down upon us and we were told that we would be making a return to the beach to see everyone.  And then they dropped the bomb on us...we'd be driving....26 hours....stuck in the van with just us and our thoughts. 

Now Mommy and Daddy aren't completely insane.  They have joined the ranks of all good mommies and daddies and have purchased an entertainment system for the car.  Because let's face it, I know they used to ride twice around the world and back again and all they had were books and a cassette player, but that's just not our style.  Of course they have this really lame rule that we can only watch 2 movies a day...but I guess we really got to them, because after lunch that rule seemed to just fly right out the window.  And in the end, while the drive was long and it really is NO FUN to sleep overnight in the car, we made it to OBX, North Carolina.

Now as I said previously, we usually fly to the beach which means we don't actually get to our house until late in the evening.  But because we drove there and Mommy and Daddy took one for the team and drove through the night, we got to the beach early.  So early that our house wasn't even ready yet.  We met up with some of Daddy's friends, spent some time at the rental office pool and then hit the beach.  All I can say is IT WAS AWESOME!!! 

We did the usual: sand play and surf jumping.

Now here's the REALLY exciting part.  Because we are not babies any more (and that includes Lizzie...weird, I know.  I would have kept her in that category because she is just a little baby, but Mommy and Daddy told me to zip it....whatever!), we got to try out something new....Boogie Boarding!  Seriously, Mommy and Daddy have been keeping some seriously fun stuff from us!!!  And with our newly purchased life vests, it meant we could venture out even further to catch some of the big waves!!

Based on the amount of fun we had...and all before lunch...I'm thinking this week is going to be an absolute blast!!!  Stay tuned for more!!!!

Happy Anniversary Mommy and Daddy!

So we found out that today was Mommy and Daddy's anniversary.  It's crazy....we just finished celebrating Mommy's birthday and along comes another holiday.  Basically we had a week of celebrations and dinners out and sweet goodness.  Definitely cool!

Anyway, we headed out this evening after my gymnastics practice.  We had to go and pick up movie tickets so Mommy can go see the Harry Potter movie with Daddy tomorrow.  Now I'm kind of perplexed.  I mean, I want to see Harry Potter too, and it is a kid's movie and all.  So I just don't get why they aren't taking us along.  They said it's to celebrate their anniversary, but shouldn't we get to be a part of this?  I mean we are a product of this great event that they celebrate every year.  In case you care, this reasoning got us nowhere...we are being left with the sitter so they can enjoy the movie without us.

After they got the tickets, we told them we were hungry.  They started naming off all these fancy shmancy restaurants we could eat at.  Now, let's think about this for a second.  These are the same people who are constantly grounding us from "dinner out" because of our behavior, and tonight they are saying we can go to a nice place to eat dinner...all because they've been married 11 years.  I guess they're getting so old they can't remember how nightmarish we can make things.  But, being the nice kids that we are, we decided we would be fine with good ol' Subway.  You could see it on their faces...they felt defeated.  But in the end, I think they realized that our decision was really the best.  Otherwise they would have had to endure some horribly long wait before we were even seated, followed by the normal annoyances we pull out of our bag of tricks for the actual meal.

Now, because we chose Subway, we were finished with our meal super quick which left us time for a quick romp through the fountain!  Yes!!!  There was a fountain right outside the Subway that shoots water into the air and you can play in it!  There were tons of kids in it and it just looked like so much fun, so we put on our cutest pathetic faces we could muster up and pleaded for a quick run through the water.  Mommy relented (and Daddy kind of grumbled under his breath) and said we could, but we needed to stay relatively dry.  Well, they didn't say what our "dry" was relative to....so we decided to stay dry relative to how wet you would get going over Niagra Falls in a barrel.  As you can see, we had a blast!!

Happy Anniversary!!!  We love you so much...even if we don't always listen to you.

Game, Set, Match

For those of you who don't live in Austin, you might not know, but the Davis Cup quarterfinals are being held here this weekend...specifically the Spain vs. USA match.  Because Lizzie and I are learning tennis this summer, we had the chance to go downtown yesterday for a Davis Cup Fun Day.  And fun it was!!

When we got down to the UT tennis courts, we got ourselves signed in and picked up our "scavenger hunt" cards.  Basically we had a bunch of different activities we had to complete to try and win the Jr. Davis Cup.

Here we are sporting our scavenger hunt cards.  Not sure what is up with Lizzie...she should be excited to be here!

And then we had to wait.  Why, you ask?  Same reason every time...Mommy and Daddy got us there good and early, as usual.  While we were waiting, Daddy took some pictures of Lizzie and I posing with some of the USA team players.  Okay...it's not really the "real" players, just their pictures, but we figured this was probably the closest we would get to them.

Finally it was time to get down to business.  The first game we played was Lobster Catch.  One of us had to stand and gently toss a ball to the other person.  The other person's job was to catch the ball between two racquets.  I did a fantastic job of bouncing the ball to Lizzie.  So good, in fact that she was able to catch one.  Lizzie, on the other hand, didn't understand what "gently" meant.  She kept firing the balls at me really hard so that I couldn't catch even one!

After this game, we took a quick break to get our faces painted and make posters cheering on the USA Davis Cup team.  Lizzie copied my sign because she's still a baby and doesn't know how to spell.

After our break it was back to the court for some more games.  Over on the courts for kids our age, we got to play two new games.  The first one was called Alligator Alley.  Everyone lined up in 2 lines and we had to roll the balls back and forth to each other using only our racquets.  Then, one by one, we each got to take a turn being the alligator.  When we were the alligator, we were trying to avoid being hit by the balls.  When we weren't the alligator, we got to try and hit the alligator.  I love games where you try to hit people!!!

The Alligator Alley

Lizzie making it safely through the alley.

My leap through the alley!

Then it was time for some Koosh Ball Tennis.  Not much really to describe here...it's exactly what it sounds like.  We practiced passing and catching a koosh ball using only our racquets.  It was actually a lot of fun!

After Koosh Ball Tennis we got to head over to one of the big kid courts to try out something new...wheel chair tennis.  Before we could test out the chair, we hit some ground shots with one of the pros.

Then it was wheel chair time.  It was weird trying to move them around.  It took me a little bit to figure out how to make it turn.  Lizzie never figured it out.  She just got out of the chair and turned it on her own.  But even better than just rolling around in the chairs was trying to hit tennis balls in them.  It was really wild!!

Finishing wheel chair tennis basically had us finishing everything on our scavenger hunt list except for one thing: shaking hands with one of the players.  We found out that they weren't even going to show up at the event for another hour so we took a quick break for dinner and hit a German Biergarten that happened to be right down the street.  We timed it pretty perfectly and only had to wait about 15 minutes before we spied the team coming from their practice at the Erwin Center.

That's them in the distance!

And here they are up closer.  That's Andy Roddick in the black shirt.

 Once they arrived, I'm sure you can imagine the craziness that ensued.  Each player was put at a different court to hit balls with the kids.  Mommy decided that we were going to head to Andy Roddick's court (along with 75% of the people in attendance).  It was mass chaos, but in the end Lizzie and I each had the chance to hit 3 balls apiece with Andy.  It was really cool!  And Mommy even got pictures!!

Me hitting with Andy!

Lizzie hitting with Andy!

 Once everyone had a chance to hit, we all filed up into the bleachers so we could see the entire team.  Here they are...the 2011 USA Davis Cup team.

Coach Jim Courier, Andy Roddick, Mardy Fish, and Mike and Bob Bryan

The Davis Cup team with their big heads!

 Overall it was a really, really, REALLY fun night.  I hope it's something we can do again....although Mommy says it's doubtful.