Mason is Famous Again

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0804/gallery.rice_b_plan_competition_08.fsb/23.html

In an effort to not get completely out of order on my blog, I thought I'd go ahead and post this since I've been meaning to for a while. During the business plan competition Mason and Claudia were photographed for this spread. Way cool.

A Quick Trip to Galveston

One perk of Houston is our proximity to Galveston. Sure, it's not the most desirable beach in the world, but you can smell the salty air and pick up a few sea shells. Keep an eye out for those glass shards though. On this particular morning, there was a kind old fisherman who drove up in his pickup truck and told us to keep an eye out for the "ki-oats." That's "coyote" to those of you who aren't familiar with the accent. He said he'd picked up a dead one on the beach recently and didn't want one to get my dog or baby. Thanks, Mister. So sweet of you. Now don't let that mental image spoil these pictures and video of our morning in Galvatraz.

"Skip Skip Water" is Avery's version of "Skip to My Lou." She's just discovered this skill and is a skipping maniac. Notice how she gets freaked out when the waves come her way but she tries to play it cool.

Ahem

I've been really proud of myself lately for going to the gym at the crack of dawn on a regular basis. Clearly, I'm not missed. This picture is 100% legit...not one bit posed. Dang dog lifted her head when I walked back in the room like I was really getting on her last nerve for disrupting her beauty sleep.

Lemon

Have you ever been driving full speed ahead down the highway when this warning suddenly pops up on your dashboard? Did your car thrust and jolt and your baby was in the backseat and you panicked but your dad always told you the worst thing on earth you can do is pull over on the side of a busy highway so you just kept driving? I have. Lots. Way more than my fair share of times. The warning light and the thrusting wasn't the biggest issue. The part I was most disgusted about was that the dealership didn't believe me and my warranty is up in May. Mason and I were really sweating about what to do because we didn't want to buy an extended warranty(though we finally did), didn't want to pay for repairs out of pocket and didn't want to sell my car. I told them no less than 5 times that this warning light is a fairly common occurence. They said they saw no record of it in the car computer and blew me off. After the 3rd time they replaced my battery and told me that it would "definitely" solve the problem. Thank goodness the warning light came on for Mason last week. He blew a fuse, took pictures and stormed down to give the guys a piece his mind. Bingo. I got a brand spanking new transmission courtesy of BMW Midtown. Thanks, punkasses.

Avery's 2nd Birthday

For Avery's second birthday we headed up to the local elementary school park. The weather was perfect (but too windy for candles!) and the kids had fun playing on the playground.

Avery and Maggie patiently waited for a cupcake....

...and their patience paid off.

Avery found this technique much more effective.

We came home and opened up her presents. She loved her baby dolls (no surprise there) and all of their accessories. Look at how excited she is. She can hardly wait until I get it out of the box.

She loves this one even though it's clearly an obese newborn. The thing must weigh 10 pounds. Mason and I think she may throw her back out playing with this "Baby GG."

The end of a good day. We gathered up all of her charges and let her sleep with everyone.

68 Seconds of Fame

Good job, Mason! We are proud of you.

All Synced Up - It's a Google Miracle

I'm not a technology guru by any means but I thought this was so important that it may just reduce the divorce rate. So we all know that you need to be an Outlook user to sync with Blackberry. But did you know that if you don't use Outlook and have programmed your entire life into your Yahoo! calendar as I have, there's hope for you? Better yet, did you know that you can share a Google calendar online so that when your husband is at school getting candy out of airplanes (see previous post) he has no excuse about missing events because the paper calendar (that's so 2006) is at home? If you have not already synced your life with that of your significant other, please do this. Blackberry syncs with Outlook. Outlook syncs with Yahoo! Yahoo! syncs with Outlook which syncs back to Google. See? Round and round your calendar goes. If you're sitting at a stoplight wondering what you're doing later in the afternoon, you can check your calendar on your phone because you've automatically synced Google to Outlook which has magically synced itself to Yahoo! which has then transferred all of your information back to Outlook and onto your Blackberry. AND YOU NEVER LIFT A FINGER. I'm offering free syncing advice to all 4 of my readers because it has no doubt improved my life and I want to improve yours too.

For those 2 of my 4 readers who still have plain old cell phones, I'm afraid there's no hope for you. I bet you even still use paper calendars. Geez.