Austin Texas Real Estate Blog

I finally had a few minutes to sit down and put together a few clips of our newest baby girl, Jenny.  She is growing so quickly!  At her last doctor's visit, she was almost 19 pounds already (more than that now, it would seem) and super-tall, at nearly 28 inches!  People always seem surprised, as if my wife and I could even make a small child (I am 6'4", she is 5'11"). 

I hope you enjoy the video, which includes clips from about 2 1/2 months old up to last week.  You can even see her first real laugh!

As of Friday evening, I wasn't even positive what we were going to do to celebrate the 4th of July.  However, yesterday turned out to be just about perfect in my eyes.

My wife had been planning to go garage sale-ing (probably not a word) with her sister yesterday morning, but that didn't work out.  I offered to go instead, since I actually enjoy this, as long as I don't have to start at 6:30am.  :)

We left the house around 9am, and spent 3 hours picking up some amazing deals on books, clothes, toys, and more.  We spent about $18 total and ended up with a vanload of new stuff.  The kids were thrilled to get an armload each.  Not too shabby.

We had a great and healthy lunch at Souper Salad in Round Rock, and my two older daughters are apparently both experiencing a growth spurt, since they ate several plates full of food.  In fact, I think our 8-year-old ate more than I did!

After that, we went shopping for some nice patio furniture at a couple of specialty stores.  We are in the midst of working with a contractor to cover our patio in the next month or two, since we've lived here for almost seven years and never really used it that much.  We found some great stuff which will frankly make me feel like entertaining more often!  The daybed that we bought seems like the type of thing I have only seen in magazines or movies before now.

After finishing up at the furniture place, we headed home to grab a bite before the fireworks show nearby.  I cooked my signature dish, "Noodlemania" (my son named it), then we loaded up and headed to Lake Pflugerville for fireworks.  Thankfully, we live in an area that enables us to take the back way and avoid traffic, so we were seated with 15 minutes of leaving our house.  The show was awesome again - this is the second year for this particular event.  Even our baby enjoyed the fireworks, surprisingly.  I was concerned that the noise would bother her. 

We ended up running into our former next-door neighbors so we sat with them.  It was nice getting a chance to catch up - I still can't believe that their son is graduating next year, since I first met him when he was two years old!

We got home around 10pm, got the kids to bed at a reasonable hour, and spent some time watching "This American Life" before we went to bed.

All things considered, that was one of my favorite days in awhile.  No stress - just special time with my family. 

Thanks for reading!

Photo above via Flickr.com from lepetitsaboteur.

Our kids' bedtime routine has long been my domain, as it were.  My wife homeschools our three kids, so she doesn't get many breaks.  When it's time for bed, I am in charge of getting the two older kids ready, including the tooth brushing, stories, prayers, and tucking them in.  Sometimes, it involves keeping them in their rooms, or getting a snack or drink for my daughter, who seems to require less sleep than the rest of us.

We had gone through a period when they didn't want me to read to them, but then they suddenly showed renewed interest in having "story time" again.  Recently, I decided to forgo reading a book to them - instead, I told them a story from my own childhood.

THEY ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!

Now, when it's getting close to their bedtime, my seven-year-old daughter starts jumping around frenetically, while saying, "I want stories from your life!  Stories from your life!"

Who knew that my life was so entertaining?  I am considering writing a book about my life now, if for no other reason than the fact that my kids love these stories so much.

Last night, we talked about the fact that I used to listen to records all the time when I was their age. 

Yes, records. 

Vinyl records. 

I feel ancient thinking about it now.  At any rate, I explained to them about how the smaller records were 45's and the bigger ones were 33 1/3's because of the rotational speed per minute of each one.  I am not old enough to have listened to 78rpm records.  I put that last sentence in because I know that someone will mention the fact that I am young compared to them, and that they remember the days before television or shoes, or something.  :)

If you're interested, I even wrote a post once on AR about my record collection from when I was 7 or 8 years old:

Transported by Song - A Look Back on My Collection of Records from 1977-1978

Truth be told, I still have at least 200-300 records here in the house, and a functional turntable, although it doesn't get a lot of use these days.

One night a couple of weeks ago, I taught my kids the "Fishheads" song from the late 1970's, which I used to hear while roller skating with my friends.  Does that make me a bad father, or a fun dad?  Either way, we had a good time.  I can actually hear my son singing it RIGHT NOW downstairs!

I have shared a lot of funny and interesting stories with them lately, along with a few that are a little scary or gross (like the reasons for some of the scars that I now have).   

I guess it keeps me on my toes each day, since I am forced to be creative about what we talk about and share at night.  Today, they have both requested that we listen to some records, so I think that's on the agenda for later.

Now, it's time to start on that book.