Teaser

We were definitely spoiled last year with the huge amounts of snow we received.  This year has been disappointing - so far.  We woke up one Saturday morning with just a dusting of snow.  What a tease!  My kids were going to play in it and have fun anyway!

So, I took out the scarves, boots and mittens.  I didn't even bother with the snowsuits with the amount of snow outside.  Every year I regret not buying boots for the kids.  Why buy boots for just a little bit of snow and never be worn again until they need another pair of boots that fit.  This year, I bought all the boys some boots and they will be used over and over till my last child can wear them.  This made me feel better about spending the money.  Lucky A, she got a hand me down from a classmate of hers.



Next, I will buy some of those cute scarves and gloves for my kids.  Really colorful ones that look great in pictures with snow in the background.  Somehow, we have a shortage of gloves, scarves and hats.  They are in the laundry waiting to get cleaned, some get lost in school, some are getting too small, some are just too big.  I figure, we need more winter gear for this large family.  Just not used to this sort of thing.  I grew up in a small family.  This is why we need more snow - to make all the buying of snow/cold gear worth it.  Till then, we will just throw parts and parts together till we are covered somehow.

I had to use a pink glove to cover E's cold hands.  Ran out of boy colors!  He's wondering why he has a pink glove on.  He stared at it for a second and then continued on his way.  Good boy!

Then the  snowballs started flying.  I decided to move away from that.  I never liked snowball fights.  I have an early memory of me as a child playing outside with my sister and father.  It must have been evening, because...well, it was dark!  I remember wearing a long velvety purple coat with gold buttons, something like that.  I remember feeling like Grimace when I wore the coat.

                                                                      

Anyhow, my father started to throw snowballs at me for fun, but I just stood there getting pummeled by these icy hard balls.  Why is he hurting me?  I just started to cry.  Geesh, I must have been such a cry baby!

I moved on to my other son who decided to ride his bike in the snow.  He wasn't getting too far, but enjoyed trying nonetheless.

I was outside taking pics without my coat.  That's called laziness!  It was time to go inside and get ready for their coming in from the cold.

B stayed inside and was content watching from the door.  So cute!

When they came in I made them leave all their stuff outside so I could get all the wet stuff together and bring it downstairs to get washed.  This whole process sometimes takes a while.  Most of my kids still need some assistance. 

  It's funny how my kids expect hot chocolate after they play in the snow.  They also expect Dad to start a fire as well.  As Dad was absent that day, I did not start the fire myself.  My job is to make and serve hot chocolate in really cute mugs my mother-in-law handed down to me.  They are the cutest set!  The tiny mugs are just adorable and just right for my kids.

Ahhhh!  Yummy!

So there you have it.  This will probably be my winter snow blog for the year.  How sad.  That's ok because we made the best of it.  Who knows, God may bless us with tons of white powder, yet to come!  We'll be here waiting for it.

I love this!  Look at those gums!

Some Time Away

Sometimes, Coach's job has some perks!  We love to take advantage of them when we can!  One of his players was chosen to play in the All American Under Amour Football game in Orlando, FL.  They pay for airfare, hotel, tickets to the parks and a bunch of Under Amour gear.  I had to pay my way and there wasn't any cool UA gear in the bag in my size.

We have gone once before and it was such a great change of pace to leave the kids with their grandparents, be with just adults, sleep in the mornings, stay up late and take your time doing things with NO interuptions.  This time around, we took our littlest one, B.

  She still needs me.  This was a great time for her to receive all the attention from Mommy & Daddy.  She is a great traveler.  However, I didn't get to enjoy the restful nights I did like the previous trip, unfortunately.  That's ok.

The night we arrived we decided to go to dinner at the resort we stayed at.  On the way, we met with Coach's player and invited him to join us during dinner.  I was a bit distracted when the waitress was listing the specials that evening.  I ended up agreeing to try the featured margarita sampler of some sort, "Yah, ok, that sounds good."  Hm...I wondered how much that cost after she walked away.

Oh yum.

I don't get out to often.

I'm sporting my daughter's Christmas gift to me, snowflake earrings.

We were able to go to any Disney park we wanted for one day.  We decided to do Epcott since we did the Disney Theme park the previous year.  It had been 10 years since my last visit and almost 20 years for Coach. 

It's hard to believe how long Epcott  has been around.  I still think of it as one of the new parks there - clearly it isn't.  They always are adding or improving something at Disney.  I like visiting the countries best.  However, I have one complaint.  I expect with all the details they put into the countries that they would at least get the food right.  Not authentic enough for me.  10 years ago I was so excited about getting a Napolean (french pastry) and when I arrived in France I was so disappointed in the creme fluff they put in the middle.  I take my food seriously!  Can't you tell with all the pictures?

This time around, same country, I decided to get a chocolate crepe.  They had one of those cute little glass vendor cart thingys with a frenchman inside making these yummy crepes.  It reminded me of my weekend in Paris in college when I bought a crepe off the street from a vendor and was hoping for the same party in my mouth that I did then.

I will not buy anymore sweets in Epcott, France again.  Looks good, though.

Coach opted to try a French beer.

I enjoyed Moracco.  A tableside view outside from where we had lunch.

All of a sudden four teeth are poppin out on top.  You can't see them, but what a cute smile.

We didn't have a car so we spent a lot of time on one of these Disney buses.  I tell ya, Disney is a well oiled machine.  They've thought of almost everything. 

Coach and I love seafood so we chose to have lunch here the next day in Downtown Disney before we had to leave for the game. 

My oysters were so tiny for the $$.

Thanks to ESPN, Under Armour, SJC HS player, Gran & Bips & Disney for making this getaway possible!  We had a good time.

PS - Sampler margarita shots - $18.

Da Bears!

Coach and I recently took a trip to Orlando, FL to attend the 2011 ESPN All American Under Armour Football game.  One of the reasons it's so fun to attend this event, besides leaving the kids behind, enjoying warmer weather, visiting Disney parks, seeing young football talent and alone time with Coach is the sports celebrities you may run into.

My husband, being more knowledgeable than I, in the the who's who in sports was surprised when I spotted Mike Ditka in our hotel before a football event.  I didn't recall his name, but started pointing at Mike Ditka while hitting Coach the same time saying, "Look, isn't that that sports guy?"  I often wondered what I would do if I stumbled upon a celebrity and since he was busy being ushered around by several event personal, I decided just to be in awe from afar. 

Celebrity?  Well, I know that he's a member of the Hall of Fame, former player, former coach, and in all those beer commercials!  I've grown up seeing his face, but that's about it.

We did see him again later that evening, but a swarm of people seemed to catch him for autographs and I didn't want to bother him again since he seemed to be heading somewhere important.  Geesh, how annoying it must be to be interrupted all the time - hmph, being a mother isn't much different in my domain! 

At the game (Tropicana Field), we arrived two hours before game time.  I thought we'd be bored, but we weren't.  We decided to get seats down near the field. There was a lot to entertain us for two hours.  We saw Deion Sanders and Doug Williams there.  I knew them.  Who knows who else was there!  During the half-time show was a performance from Fabolous - never heard of him, but he seemed well received.

Coach Ditka was coaching the white team for the game.  He came to our area of seating to talk to someone and people started lining up getting autographs.  He was right there!  I almost missed another opportunity thinking he had lots to do before a televised game, but I got up and stood in the short line and got my picture and autograph.  Yeh!  We look like best friends, don't we?

Trip West, Part 2

After getting my boys out of jail we started getting ready for the wedding festivities.  Up to this point we had some good weather, but then came the rain.  A lot of rain.  An unusual amount of rain for California and it lasted almost our whole trip.  This did not stop us from having a great time.

Here are my kids all dressed up!  They did have their shirts tucked in and hair in place, but it only took a few minutes for that to change, as you can see.  This was taken right after the wedding which was beautiful!

This is B with her signature smile!



The wedding and reception went very well and the happy couple were off to Hawaii!  The rest of us Pattersons went on our ways to continue our trip around California.  We planned to spend the rest of our time in the LA area.  We wanted to spend the big bucks and visit Disneyland, but with all the rain we decided not to do that.  We had already purchased tickets to visit Knott's Berry Farm.  Have you ever heard of this place?  I never have!  It's such a fun place to go.  It's a Peanut's themed amusement park.  The day started with very light rain, but it ended with LOTS of rain.

We did all the train rides, of course.  That kept us sort of dry.  A and I did a roller coaster together called the Sierra Sidewinder.  She was just tall enough to ride.  With the bar securely fastened, I also had my arm over her the entire ride just incase she happened to fly off during the minute-long ride.  We survived and when I asked her what she thought of the experience, she sorta shrugged her shoulders and said it was ok.  She later said it was a bit more scary than she thought. 

Even though the lines weren't terribly long, we were terribly wet.  We decided to take refuge in a Peanut's Christmas ice skating show.  I wasn't expecting much, but it was a great show.  We spent a good amount of time at the park doing some small rides and hanging out in the arcade.  We ended the day by running across the park, through the rain, splashing through all the puddles to our car.  It's not every day that you get to let your kids play in rain, jump through all the puddles and get wet.  It was fun!  Thank God that the weather was warm enough to enjoy the rain that way.

We spent some time at Griffith Park's Travel Town Railroad Museum the next day. 

Doesn't the train look like it's smiling?

We couldn't get into all the trains, unfortunately.

Impressive engine!

These trains are so big.

I find it funny how P loves trains so much, but once he hears one of them "toot" he starts crying because they are so loud!

We also visited the Science Museum, hit a local LA mall, visited some touristy roads and some old family haunts.  Although we didn't go to Disneyland, we did visit the Downtown Disney area which was very nice too.  We let the kids choose one thing to buy from there.  I chose a fruit drink from Jamba Juice - heard of it in magazines and movies.  I sort of think of it as a west coast thing (have none here in the DC area).  Ok, been there and done that! 

All through this trip was continuous rain.  Wait, did I say that already?  Oh, and lots of traffic!  We had a great time nonetheless and so did the kids.  My only regret is that I didn't take enough pictures.  Oh, and a raincoat.

Trip West

After looking back at 2010 we realized we didn't do much traveling due to the fact that I had a baby around this time last year and was not in any mood to be traveling.  Even though our recent adventure to California was at the end of 2010 (and recently, a trip to Orlando) I think I'm ready to stay home for a little bit!  Boy, was I dreading a trip in an airplane across the country with 5 little ones.  Who knew what to expect.  I am happy to report my children did wonderfully.  It was still a challenge nonetheless, but nothing any other parent doesn't have to deal with.  I wish I did a better job at taking photos during this trip, but with the amount of  luggage to carry, children to direct and rain to avoid, I only got a handful of shots.

What brought to us to California was my husband's first cousin's wedding.  Most of the Pattersons made it to California making this trip a very special event. 

We spent time together at the Calico Ghost Town in the San Bernardino county area.  What a fun place to be!

While we were there we were able to go on a train ride to see all the parts of this historical silver mining town.

This is pure delight written all over E's face!

There were a lot of friendly people there to tell us about the place.

He had some neat boots.

They had a unique way of decorating for Christmas - pretty good use of ice skates.

I thought this was cute. I want to buy a pair of boots now.

Before we left Calico Ghost Town, I had to grab my boys out of jail.

To be continued...