Airplanes, football, Thanksgiving and Camping!

November has been a fun month. We're loving Texas weather now that it's cooled down a bit. Mid-70's in November is awesome! The boys are getting bigger and bigger, and Spencer keeps getting sillier, as evidenced here by a few snapshots:

We were outside working on a Saturday morning when we heard this loud droning sound. We looked up and saw a group of three Osprey airplanes! They looked like something out of Avatar and, after some internet research, Brant found out they can rotate their rotors 90 degrees and can take off and land vertically as well as fly horizontally. Spencer and Gavin (and Brant!) were captivated. They flew over our house 5 to 10 times, so they got to relive it again and again.

Because A&M is (unwisely) moving to the SEC for football, this Thanksgiving marked the last Texas A&M vs. University of Texas football game for the foreseeable future. So, the night before, we packed up and went to Kyle Field for 'Yell Practice' (a very intense form of a pep rally). It was fun to get in the stadium and see all the fans (a.k.a. crazy people).

This picture was taken 30 minutes before it started. By the time the rally started, the stadium was filled with probably 30,000 people--for a rally! Crazy.

Unfortunately, we didn't last very long once it started. It got so loud that Gavin was scared after just a few cheers. But, that meant we got a cool picture of the stadium filled with people...and beat traffic :)

We spent Thanksgiving day with some great friends here in College Station. Although we were too preoccupied with the tasty food to take pictures inside, here's a picture of some of the kids having a great time outside.

Because it's so warm here, we decided to camping with some friends the Friday/Saturday after Thanksgiving (unthinkable in Ohio!!). It was awesome!

Spencer, Layla and Jackson fishing and relaxing on the banks of our campsite. We didn't have an actual fishing pole, so Brant cut some rope and tied it to the end of a stick. Spencer loved it :)

The dads overseeing their kids. This was my favorite part of the trip--just relaxing on the banks of the lake, having fun...

...which is much better than actually trying to sleep on a campout! Overnight, there was a massive storm that raged from midnight to about 4 am. So, needless to say, there wasn't a lot of sleeping done. But, we are thankful to our tent because out of five tents, ours was one of only two that kept their occupants dry! So, the next morning was a little wet, but still fun.

Gavin eventually worked up the courage to walk around (also, the fire was out at this point so my fear of him falling in to the fire was gone...which was probably the bigger factor that allowed him to walk around freely!). He had a great time and loved looking at the ducks on the lake. It was a great trip and might just have to be a Thanksgiving tradition!

ice cream and play time

Last month we went to the Blue Bell ice cream factory with some friends. It's supposedly some of the best ice cream in the U.S. It's pretty good, but it's no Graeter's (Ohio ice cream).

Seriously, we're at an ice cream factory guys, show some excitement! Gavin looks absolutely miserable and Spencer looks bored out of his mind. They did get a lot happier once we reached the end of the tour and got ice cream samples.

I love watching Spencer's imagination grow. Who knew that pencil holders made the perfect Batman hands?
This is a favorite hang out spot for the boys: the trampoline on the back patio.
Half our day is spent out here.

Spencer's second favorite place to play is our 'treasure chest' in the living room.
I'm in a 'Mommy Preschool' for Spencer and five of his friends. The moms switch off teaching and then we go on a field trip once a month. This was at the Children's Barnyard where the kids got to see lots of different kinds of animals. Once Spencer worked up the courage to pet the baby chickens, he didn't want to leave.
Back in September Brant and I went to see Brian Regan perform. He's our favorite (and only known) comedian and it was super fun!

Not the best picture, but we had to get something.

Halloween

Spencer is really into super heroes lately. He knew he wanted to be a super hero for Halloween, but was having a really hard time deciding which one. The Hulk came up a lot, Green Lantern, Spiderman, but he finally decided on Batman. I'm glad he did because a Batman costume is a lot easier to make than a Spiderman costume. I just bought some black long johns and used a freezer paper stencil for the symbol. I made a little cape out of felt and freezer paper stenciled again. For the bat belt I painted a piece of belting yellow, velcroed on a felt batman symbol and we attached two batarangs that Spencer got at a birthday party a couple weeks ago. We made a little mask and some bat boots out of felt (I really like using felt and velco) and he was ready to go!

The costume was finished on Wednesday and of course he couldn't wait to put it on. He wore it everyday leading up to Halloween. I was just hoping it wouldn't get ruined before he actually went trick or treating.

As soon as Spencer put on his bat cape he made sure to put his superman cape on Gavin.
Apparently, this is what super heroes do in their down time.
The ward trunk or treat was Saturday night and luckily the costume survived until then. Gavin ended up being a giraffe. He'll probably always end up being what Spencer was 3 years before, though I don't think the Batman costume will still be around.

Birthday in Houston!

Well, it's official: at 31, I'm firmly into my thirties (plural), and no longer just 30. But, we had an adventurous weekend in Houston, so that makes up for it. Since Spencer's birthday is in only a couple of weeks, we thought we would just go to NASA (for Spencer) and IKEA (for me!) in Houston Friday afternoon after Brant was done with class. Once we factored in travel time, however, we realized we'd only have two hours at NASA, which seemed too short. So, we decided to go to IKEA on Friday, stay at a cheap hotel in Houston, then spend all day Saturday at NASA.

IKEA was...amazing as always. Brant's parents got me a set of shelves I've been wanting, so we found those and then spent about 3 hours looking, walking, and eating delicious swedish meatballs. I love IKEA :)

This all seemed like a good plan...until we got to the 'hotel' we reserved. For all those who would consider traveling to NASA, DO NOT stay in the Oxford Inn & Suites near the Space Station, pictured below.

Don't let the picture fool you--it's ghetto. So ghetto in fact that soon after we checked in, we noticed suspicious behavior from the guy just two doors down from us...standing without a shirt on by his open hotel room door (red flag #1), random people parking their cars and coming and going from his room (red flag #2), and looking noticeably nervous at the sound of a police siren (red flag #3). We thought about alerting Hotel management, but when we realized the manager was driving a brand new Land Rover, we realized he might be on the take, too. So, we said the kids were 'sick' and turned the key back in, opting to lose our deposit over spending the night next to a drug dealer :)

The next day, after swimming in our much-safer 2nd hotel, we went to NASA! Spencer was absolutely thrilled. The look on his face of absolute awe is indescribable and, unfortunately, impossible to capture on camera. We did take a few fun pictures, though.

Spencer, our fearless tour guide :)

They had a real Space Shuttle inside, it was amazing!

Brant and Spencer at the Space Shuttle cockpit. There were HUNDREDS of switches, knobs, and levers. Crazy!

Gavin liked it, too...but just isn't quite old enough yet to appreciate it.

This is THE mission control where they have run all of the Space Shuttle missions. This was Brant's favorite part, by far. In the middle screen you can see a map of the globe, where it tracks the position of the International Space Station, then on the other screens are live feeds from the Space Station itself. It was cool to see the space station cross all of the African continent in 15 minutes!

Next stop was to the building where the Astronauts train. Spence called it Astronaut School :)

Part of a full-scale model of the Space Station where the astronauts train.

Me and the boys in front of a Space Shuttle that's used for training.

This was at the Rocket Park. We forget what this rocket was used for...but it was HUGE!

Inside, they had a full Saturn V rocket, the same kind used to launch the Apollo missions to the moon! It was almost 400 feet long...

Gotta love our Spencer :)

All of us at NASA. It was an amazing experience!

So much so, in fact, that Spencer (above) and Gavin (below) fell asleep within 30 seconds of getting in the car...

When we got home, Brant got to work on putting up the shelves (he hates unfinished projects...which I love!) The before and after, shown below.

It was a great birthday filled with fun and adventure! We would highly recommend NASA to anyone visiting Texas...just call us and ask for recommendations on Hotels :)

Strawberry Freezer Jam

The only problem with homemade jam is that it tastes so good that I never want to eat store bought again. I try to make some every summer, but we usually run out in the winter sometime. Then we are without jam until strawberries go on sale again. This year I made 3 batches so hopefully we'll have jam for a while. First I took out everything I needed. Brant got me these bowls and colander for Christmas last year. I love kitchen stuff for Christmas. Seriously, I really do.
Making freezer jam is so simple, it's just a little time consuming. After washing the strawberries it seems like it takes forever to get the stems out. In the past I've used a pastry cutter to mash the strawberries, but this time I used the food processor (also a past Christmas present). It was much faster and made the strawberries less chunky which I prefer anyway.
I used two different kinds of pectin. The first was the Ball brand (in the first picture) and then Sure-Jell. I usually always use Sure-Jell, but Ball was on sale so I thought I'd give it a try. The Sure-Jell is much, much better. It probably has to do with the 4 cups of sugar to 2 cups of fruit ratio. The Ball brand had more fruit than sugar so it's going to be the healthier option. It almost tasted kind of bitter, though. I think strawberries need lots of sugar. :)
Another time consuming part of the process are washing all of the dishes that are used. I'm so glad we have a dishwasher which makes everything a lot quicker.

Here's our jam for the year!

It helps that I have plenty of entertainment while I'm in the kitchen. Gavin never gets tired of playing peek-a-boo with the colander. I tried to get him in action, but it's just blurry.