We attended a Birthday Party at Burns Park on Saturday for one of Brandon's KidCo friends. It was a beautiful day & Laedyn enjoyed watching all the kids playing. She also like the cake & cheese puffs! Brandon being goofy...he wanted to go play on the jungle gym set....
so we went to play on the jungle gym set.
The party was at the picnic area right next to the big yellow caboose. Brandon is always excited to be able to climb around on it.

The little girl is the birthday child - Townley. Her Mom always has the best ideas for gifts. For Townley's party she had everyone bring a wrapped book. Then at the end everyone took a book from the box home with them. What fun! The little boy in the hat is Brandon's friend Kaleb. We're sad Kaleb will be leaving Kidco in the fall to go to public school pre-K. The little blond boy is Garrett. Brandon says Garrett always makes him laugh. A future class clown perhaps?
Daddy and his little princess. I took her while he was eating cake. She cried and reached for her Daddy...or was she after the cake???
Brandon loved the merry-go-round. He also enjoyed pushing it for the other kids.
Townley & Brandon on the big slide. We spent alot of time watching the kids slide. It's a really fast slick slide - a little scary at first.

SPOTLIGHT ON LAEDYN!!!

Laedyn has begun eating regular food. Here she's having her first taste of rice pilaf. She really enjoyed it and ate most of what I gave her.

She really wanted me to try it too...
I just love this hat...the dress too!
She's so interested in Brandon's things. Here she's checking out his coloring/craft table. It drives Brandon crazy - he hates when she's anywhere near his things. We're trying to work on his attitude, but it's not easy...
Finally - sort of a smile...
Yum - french toast sticks. She kept begging them from Nick - he ran out before he got enought to eat himself.
See the mosquito bite near her ear and another huge one near her elbow on the arm that she's holding the french toast with? I'm feeling itchy just looking at them in the picture! I'm considering calling some mosquito exteminators to spray our yard. It's really bad out there.

Just a quick shot of Laedyn from this morning. She crawled out on the back porch to look out the door while we were getting ready to leave for the day.

We drove to the Promenade on Kavanaugh last night after Brandon & Laedyn had dinner. From there we walked to Cajun Sno for some shaved ice - YUM!Brandon had cherry. He thought the red tongue was pretty funny.

Mark has "tiger's blood" it too was red...

Nick declined having any. Laedyn LOVED it and wanted to have a full spoon ready for her at all times. I should have brought a bib - she had red ice all over her front by the time we were done.
We closed the place down and then headed back to the car.

Mom requested a picture of Brandon carrying Romeo. He does this all the time and Romeo is very patient with the whole thing. He's such a good natured cat!

Remember when I mentioned Nick ran the Ouachita Trail 50K? Well, here are some pictures from the finish line...
Brandon amused himself by throwing sticks into a puddle while waiting for Daddy to run into the finish. He wore a headband and running shirt so he could be like Nick. Jennifer and Mark came down to support the runners too.
Here they come down the final stretch.
Brandon ran over the finish line with Nick & Ted. When he went over it before them, he shouted "I win!!! I win!!!" Everyone thought he was really cute of course.

Nick & Ted got handmade ceramic medals for their finish. Brandon got to throw leaves in the air to celebrate his finish.
This is Ted, Nick's long time running partner, and Sandra,Ted's wife. She runs too, but not this race. Nick, Ted and Sandra are all running in the South Bend, Indiana marathon on May 31. The kids and I will tag along as the cheering section.
Brandon threw LOTS of leaves...
We wanted to picture of Nick & Brandon together, but Brandon refused to cooperate. In his defense, Nick WAS pretty sweaty & dirty after all that effort. Look at the mud on his shoes!

Sunday Breakfast - Brandon was eating toast with cinnamon & sugar. It left a lovely mustache... He wanted me to take a picture of his big muscles. Laedyn is eating her favorite - animal crackers. Later we were in Brandon's room playing with his Kid K'Nex. Sara Claus left him the "Bucket of Buddies" because he did such a good job keeping his room picked up all week. Not only was he a good picker-upper last week, he was all around GOOD. For the past 2 weeks, Brandon has had a grand total of only 2 - yes TWO - timeouts. Amazing!

Brandon's not the only one who had fun playing with these things ;-)

Brandon & Jake (a friend at soccer AND at preschool) during a "hydration break." Don't their shorts look like little skirts? These uniforms are way too big.Laedyn got fed up with sitting in the stroller, so we put her in the grass. She never complained again and proceeded to pull up as much of the grass that was within reach as possible. He hates the uniform when we get dressed for practice, but once he's there he's fine. Besides - all the other kids are wearing the exact same thing & it doesn't fit any of them either.

Ate outdoors at McAllisters the other night. Just as we were finishing up it started to rain. We got packed up and to the car just in time.When we got home, we all hung out in Brandon's room playing for awhile before bedtime.Brandon has a variety of hand puppets that provide endless entertainment. Brandon's favorite is Piggie. Piggie squeels when Brandon pulls his curly tail. This time Nick decided to animate the Elephant (who does not have an official name). Laedyn loves when Nick makes them talk to her too!

Brandon, Laedyn & I were on our own Saturday morning while Nick was participating in a trail run (more on that later). Brandon did the Saturday morning kid thing, watching cartoons while eating breakfast in his jammies.Laedyn, between watching TV with Brandon and trying to grab his food, finally figured out how to pull up. Since then all she wants to do is stand up...walking won't be far behind I'm sure.

Last week, Brandon & I went to a Twisters football game with Jennifer & Mark. Jennifer had complimentary tickets!

As you can see in the background, it was a decent crowd.
We got the guys throwing stuff into the crowd to give a football to Brandon. He really wanted a white one, but finally got over it & was happy with blue...
At halftime they had all these motorcycles come in with the cheerleaders. It was pretty noisy.
Toward the end of the evening some Disney guy came over and asked Brandon to move into the "Twisters Kidzone" All the kids in the zone were given a "Stamp Out Smoking" t-shirt to put on and then the Jumbotron zoomed in on them. Brandon was intently watching for his appearance on the big screen.
Believe it or not I took all these pictures with my new Palm Centro PDA phone. The color in some of them is a little off, but overall I'm impressed with how they turned out!

I met Nick for lunch yesterday. We went back to the Tin Fish since the food was good & it's right across from the convention center. One of the guys he worked with at Tufts happened by & joined us. Nick's all dressed up because he chaired a session that morning. That book he's looking at is the program for his conference - Experimental Biology. He was trying to decide what to attend in the afternoon. After lunch, I did a little shopping in the Gaslamp District and then headed over to Balboa Park. My first stop was the Botanical Gardens. The building is made of wood lath & is one of the largest of its kind in the world. It was built in 1915 and houses over 2000 plants both permanent and seasonal. Apparently there is a "carnivorous plant bog" in there, but I didn't see it...They had a large display of Easter Lilies right inside the front door.
Lots of iris and orchids all over the place.
I'm partial to the ferns. I think I was fascinated by the visual effect of this same kind of fern last time I was at the Balboa Park Botanical Garden.
These two plants seemed to have a nice contrast, both in shade of green and in texture.

This building houses some of Balboa Park's museums. All of the architecture is similarly ornate. It was originally built for an exposition celebrationg the completion of the Panama Canal in 1915-1916. Additional structures were added later at an exposition in the mid-1930's that was held in the hopes of alleviating some of the economic trouble of the Great Depression. The Balboa Park complex is massive. It includes more than a dozen museum, parks, gardens, performing arts venues and the famous San Diego Zoo.The museum of Photographic Arts is housed in this building.
Natural History Museum. I'm going to check out their special exhibit on Pompeii today.
I came across some more ferns in a little place called the Zoro Garden. They were just uncurling. I think it's pretty cool how they develop, so I spent a bunch of time taking pictures of them.

Here's one that's almost fully spread out.
When I was done at Balboa Park for the afternoon, I headed back toward the Convention Center to meet Nick. We went back to our room to change & get ready for a reception hosted by Tufts University for it's alumnai. There were quite a few of Nick's friends & colleagues there. Left to right - Sue, Dan, Sai, Nick, & Gaston. Sue was everyone's advisor, the rest were working on their PhDs together. It was a really nice reception & we both enjoyed seeing old friends.

(Sorry about the quality - my camera setting dial moved & I didn't notice!)

After the reception, Nick & I went to a restaurant around the corner from our hotel called the Indigo Grill for a bite to eat. Have you ever seen such massive servings??? It was really delicious & the restaurant had interesting decor. My dinner was a Pork Porterhouse with orange kiwi salad (spicy), grilled plantains, smashed potatoes and some kind of onion string things. Nick had grilled chicken with rice pilaf, a huge mixed green salad in a shell and black beans. It felt like we needed to be rolled to the door when we were done. It was so tasty it was hard to stop eating it all!