Thursday, March 31, 2011

Girls Trip 2011

I had the opportunity to take a girls trip this year with my mom and sisters. It was quite the relaxing get-away! My mom's cousin owns a cute little cabin in the mountains of Ruidoso, New Mexico. So off the four of us went. We left very early Saturday morning in the denali. I started out driving, Meredith was my co-pilot, and the "kids" (well, actually just Mom and Dede) were in the back enjoying the DVD player. ;-)





We were quick and efficient travelers (traveling without kids tends to do that!). Plus, there are not many places to eat or get gas on the route from San Antonio to Ruidoso. We had to be strategic about where we needed to fill both our gas tank and tummies. We made it to Pecos, Texas where we planned to find lunch. We found an ity bity town with not much more than a Sonic. Imagine our surprise to find the best Sonic burger I have ever tasted in my WHOLE life! If you ever find yourself in Pecos, give it a try. Hopefully you'll have the same cook we did. ;-)


Our first stop in New Mexico was to Carlsbad Caverns. It was impressive, and a nice walk after spending 8 or so hours in the car.




During our time in Ruidoso, we didn't plan too many activities. Just took our days there at a nice, slow pace!



Photographed the beautiful St. Joseph's Mission. (And learned this is the same church in the photograph that has been in my grandmother's house!)
Went back in time and got a bit on the rowdy side!


Fell in love with the Ruidoso Bears! (Even brought a few home with us!)




Did a little Wine Tasting at The Cellar (yes...brought a few of these home with me too!)




Spent a few days shopping the Main street in town. It's full of really cute and fun shops!



Enjoying the scenery and hiking at the Petroglyphs site in Three Rivers, New Mexico.





Finally, at Pine Knots, we did a lot of stressing. Stressing over catching perfect "close-up". Stressing over the perfect mixture of a cold morning and hot coffee. Stressing over who would get the peanuts first...the deer or the blue jays. And when we couldn't stress any more, we stressed ourselves to sleep.




Thursday, March 10, 2011

Super Brock and his Super 6th Birthday Party

This year, I got creative. Or crazy?? I wanted this birthday party to be fun for a bunch of 6 year olds, so I knew it had to be organized or there would be kids going every direction.

On Brock's birthday invitation, it stated we needed all super heroes to help save Brock's birthday party by finding the cake. The villains had captured it, of course!
Activity #1: Decorate your goody bag while waiting for all the super heroes to arrive.
Activity #2: Begin "caping" the super heroes!

Activity #3: Pin the Mask on the Super Hero
Activity #4: Super Hero Shoot-Out

Activity #5: Show off your Super Hero Moves!
Activity #6: Find the moons in the sea of asteroids (or ball pit)

Note: After each activity was completed, the Super Heroes received a CLUE! They had to match the shape on the back of the letter to the one on the door. After all the activities were completed, it spelled out the location of the cake!!



Activity #7: Super Obstacle Course! (Since the weather didn't cooperate, I was so thankful for two stair cases. They went up the main staircase, through the tunnel, around the pool table, over a dog, over the slide, under the boogie boards, through a tent, through the bathroom, into the family room, shot a basket in the basketball goal, down the second staircase, through another tent, and back into the main room downstairs!)
Activity #8: Villain Tie Up! (Special Thanks to Carlos and Tom who may not have actually agreed to be our villains. But we did make them promise to be good before we let them out of toilet paper captivity.)
All that, and we spelled the word PANTRY! So off they went to find the cake!
Happy Birthday to our little Broc-quito! I simply cannot believe you are already SIX years old!!

I Love you Super Brock!

.....The Incredibles don't have anything on us!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The Making of a Super Hero Party

How would you go about making a super fantastic super hero party? I'm not too sure. But here's how we did it! ;-)
Step 1: Take one over-achieving mom who has a habit of taking on too much with a background in "try to do it yourself, it's cheaper".

Step 2: Make a trip to your local fabric store, only to check out and realize you just spent the same amount of money in fabric that you could have bought the final product for.

Step 3: Spend two whole weekends, and about 15 evenings sewing capes, cuting out initials, cutting out masks and sewing elastic/velcro. (Don't forget to profusely thank mom & sister for helping the first weekend)

Step 4: Go even further and dream up a series of games with prizes and clues to eventually get to the grand prize: The CAKE!

Step 5: Invite about 25 kids (ages 6mos to 6 years) to your HOUSE for this big festivity. Hey, only a handful ever actually show up, Right??

Step 6: Wait for RSVPs. Iron on initials of kids to their capes after they RSVP.

Step 7: Make more capes after RSVPs out-number the stock pile of capes you had already made!

Step 8: Sweetly ask your teacher sister to make a "pin the mask on the superhero" poster. (Then thank her because it was better than you even imagined!)

Step 9: Pray for good weather. You now have made 29 capes total and have no idea how to pull this off inside your house. *Note: two capes were for the brave (or crazy) parents and there were 6 on standby for any surprise guests.

Step 10: When it rains all morning of the party day, you get creative and are thankful your house has 2 staircases which make the obstacle course flow rather nicely.

Step 11: After managing to hold your sanity for two hours with a smile on your face, 18 kids in your house, and pulling off a very successful party...kick back with a couple drinks and vow never to do that again!

Step 12: Refer back to step #1. Will most likely repeat this process (with another theme) in the near future.


I LOVE my kids, and I LOVE being a mom! (I also love breaks from time to time though!) I love party planning, and although I go a little crazy periodically, love the smiles on their faces to have such a happy day!

Now that we know how to make a super hero party, I'll review Brock's party in the next post.