Marine Corps Birthday, Veterans Day and More!

We had a great Marine Corps Birthday and Veterans Day weekend, and we hope you all did as well.

Since Veterans Day fell on Saturday, I had work off on Friday (the Marine Corps Birthday), but the kids still had school. We decided to finally go and see the Sixth Floor Museum in Downtown Dallas. What better way to celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday than by going to a museum dedicated to the most famous shot ever taken by a Marine? Too morbid?

Here Eliza and I are on the seventh floor, since (a) they don't let you take pictures on the sixth floor and (b) they have the infamous window surrounded by some sort of plexiglass. So here we are, exactly one floor up from where the shot happened. Gotta be honest, looks like an easy shot to me. Eliza was really well behaved, though she did ask more questions about the exit wound than I was comfortable with. 

From up in the Sixth Floor Museum, we saw that they were having a Veterans Day Parade right nearby, so we went over and watched for a while. My wife was very happy to see a parade for Veterans Day. Eliza was happy to get candy handed to her by strangers. Just with Mommy and Daddy, okay?

Gotta have cake on a birthday.

Clark has been intentionally wearing clothes to match Sabrina recently which I think is super cute, but can annoy Sabrina. On Veterans Day, Clark decided to wear clothes to match me (and I helped a little by switching shirts to have one the same color as his) and I still thought it was pretty cute.

Okay last thing! Sabrina told me about the Dude Perfect YouTube videos where a group of guys do a bunch of trick shots. I thought it sounded lame, but she got us to watch one and I loved them! So after watching a whole bunch yesterday, the kids and I decided to start doing a little trick shooting of our own. This is super short, but we might do more in the future.

Clark's Birthday!

 The big event this week was that Clark just turned 6! He is growing up so fast, and it will be nice for a little while to have his size and age match up a little better. Planning for Clark's birthdays is usually pretty easy - he knows what he wants for gifts and to eat all day. He had chocolate chip pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, a Lunchable with an Oreo for lunch, spaghetti with meatballs for dinner, and a s'mores cake for dessert.

Clark had already blown out the candle before taking a photo, so we had him pose like he was blowing it out. It looks like he is unhappy with the cake, but I assure you this is just his attempt to look like he is blowing out the candle.

Clark got a lot of presents he was looking forward to. Here he is holding nerf-like blaster guns. Along with the transformers he got, his gifts kept him entertained for a good deal of time.

A side view of a piece of yummy s'mores cake. in addition to the chocolate cake, there were melted chocolate pieces between cake and graham cracker crust and beneath the marshmallows.

Clark got a little backhoe that has sensors that enable it to follow a black line that you draw on paper. I had a big board with a non porous white surface out in the workshop. We tried a couple different patterns with a dry erase marker, and the little guy followed it just fine. This Clark shaped track was my favorite. 

One of Clark's big wishes was to go to Legoland in Grapevine (about 30 minutes away)(not a real Legoland like in Carlsbad, a much smaller one). My lovely and resourceful wife found major discount tickets so the whole family was able to go for much less than I thought we would. Now if we could only find such a deal for places like Disney Land, maybe I would consider going. No probably not.

While the older kids rode the two rides that were for bigger kids only, Eliza got to play in Duplo land. She really enjoyed herself. 

Eliza and some new friends.

They obviously have lots of things made out of Legos in Legoland. I had to put one of my favorite parts from the section with downtown Dallas buildings. You'll notice that a certain one of the windows is open. I would say that's nice attention to detail, but there is nobody with a gun on the grassy knoll.

Clark had a wonderful birthday, and we are so glad to have him. He has been learning so much in Kindergarten and we can't wait to see all he learns over the next year of his life.

Just in case you want to know how autumn is going for us here in Dallas, this is a picture of our backyard thermometer today (Nov 5) when we got home from church at 1:15. And no, this has not been in the sun at all today.

Halloween

For Halloween, the kids have a "Characters Alive Parade" at their school where everyone is encouraged to dress up as a character from the book on which they are doing a book report. We decided to find a book that had an easy read kids version for Clark and a normal version for Sabrina so they could dress up as characters from the same story. We settled on Peter Pan.

Tinkerbell, of course. 

Peter Pan himself (dagger not pictured).

Tiger Lily.

You'd be surprised how many people hadn't heard of Tiger Lily. After dressing up that way for Trunk or Treat and her school's event, she decided to just start telling people she was an Indian. I was worried that if she said that somebody would give her a lecture on cultural appropriation and white privilege (heaven forbid they learn that she lived in Charlottesville), but we are in Texas, so most people were disappointed not to see her in redface.

Off to trick or treat at the first house of the night! Eliza insisted on carrying her own bucket and walking all by herself for roughly an entire hour of trick or treating. I had forgotten how much two-year-olds love Halloween.