Swimming and Balloons and Blueberries, Oh My

Sean reminded me that I haven't posted for a little while. So, here is out latest update.
We started swimming lessons through the City of Phoenix at the Sunnyslope High School swimming pool. It's eight classes for a 2 week period. So far, it's been more just swimming and getting used to the water than lessons but Patrick really likes the water. He is able to blow bubbles underwater and we practice kicking and floating and he just loves it (well, maybe not the floating part yet).

The picture below is from another swim day, it's of Patrick full of sunscreen at Aunt Katy's house. I think I went a little overboard and made a little ghost baby. I didn't know how to cover his scalp knowing he might not keep his hat on. So, I covered his head and made him have greasy head for a few days, but at least he didn't get sunburned. There are more pictures on our web album.

We had a lot of fun swimming in Katy's pool with Patrick's cousins. Despite the fact that this picture looks really refreshing (and it was), it was ridiculously hot out and if you didn't have a hat, you felt like your face was melting. But the melting didn't last too long as long as you splashed some water on your face."Boon boon" is what Patrick calls balloons. If you recall, I posted a cute video of Patrick with his first balloon from Trader Joe's. At the time, he wasn't sitting up that well yet. Now that that is not a problem, it is a balloon graveyard in our house. Every time we go to the grocery store, we have to get a balloon or Patrick is not happy. Thank goodness Safeway and Trader Joe's offer free balloons. The balloon in this picture below is from our fun Father's Day in Tucson. Grandpa got Patrick a Burt of Sesame Street's Burt and Ernie. I'm happy to report that the Burt balloon is still alive and in our living room. What a great find!! Thanks Grandpa!

The following weekend on June 21st, I turned 30. Wow, I can't believe I'm 30 now. I don't feel older but I feel like I need to act older or something. Like I need to practice speaking in a deeper voice. We had a great day and did lots of fun things. Sean had suggested that we do 30 fun things for my 30th birthday. I am proud to say that we got them all done. Some of the items included seeing the summer solstice light show/lecture at the Burton Barr library (see picture below).
And going to Pane Bianco for lunch. Here's Patrick flirting with the cute girls who work there. Sean had the best sandwich he thinks he's ever had. It was a prosciutto, mozzarella and basil sandwich. MMMMmmmmm.Other things on my list included: not doing dishes, not taking the garbage out and the like. Hey, it's hard to get 30 things done on a list...but we did it. Other highlights were going to Lee Lee Oriental Market for some banana leaves and shelf sight seeing. This place is great! We needed the banana leaves for a recipe that I'm making this weekend for our luau party. We also swam in our pool and Sean and I watched the mid-season finale episode of Battlestar Galactica. It was a great day!

We also ate Patrick's new favorite food: blueberries. He gets excited just looking at them. So, thank goodness it's blueberry season. He's also started crawling more. He's into the drag-leg crawl. It's pretty funny but he just like the option that he can just lean back and sit at any second.

I've also found my new favorite kid show. Patrick really isn't into TV but when I desperately need a little time to get dinner ready, I look for The Backyardigans. They have great music and a cute theme song. I am actually having trouble getting it out of my head but that's okay for now. I've been looking for more great summer music and I downloaded the new Verve remixed CD. It's the fourth CD now in this series and it's just great. One of the faves: Gimmie Some.

Any other great summer music picks?

Baby's First Haircut

This is the before:

Well, this isn't technically his first haircut. Technically, I cut those last 15 wispy last hairs that hadn't fallen out - on Easter. But tonight after a terrible mommy job haircut this morning in the highchair, it was finally time to get it cut. We debated about going to Sean's place or the "kiddie cuts" place and we decided we should leave it up to the professionals. Cool Cuts 4 Kids it was. We went to the one at the Paradise Valley Mall and I think we made it at a good time since it was pretty empty. While we were able to blow bubbles at Patrick, flash Elmo movies in front of him and sit him in a little yellow car barber chair, he still screamed and yelled and Sean had to hold his head. But...we did it.

And here's the after:For those of you who don't know already, they give you this nifty little souvenir card with a polaroid and some hair to take home and put in their baby book. Pretty cute. You can click on the picture and you can see Patrick a bit better when it goes to full size.
It's super cute but I'm still mourning the loss of his natural punk rocker hair style. However, this is much more polished and maybe we won't be hearing as much of "wow, look at that baby's hair!" exclamations anymore from strangers. You'd think we hear "oh what a cute baby" but no it's "check out his hair." So, we'll have to see what people think.


After the haircut we went to 31 flavors and let Patrick have a little lick. I must say I was surprised that he liked Sean's Reese's somethingerother vs my Strawberry. I'm just hoping he remembers happy ice cream and haircuts instead of crying and haircuts. $1 scoops on Tuesdays...cool.

Unbollweevably tasty food and an Elmo plane

Before you get distracted with all the tasty food, here's (finally) the picture of Sean's new ride. He was kind enough to let me drive it home the other day and I only stalled 4 times. Twice while backing up before getting on the road. It drives like a race car. It makes me want to be the next Danica Patrick. So super fun. And cute, don't you think? Let the drooly food talk begin...

This week, my mom came to visit for a few days and it seems like all we did was eat. Well, we did a good job at that. We went to Los Reyes de la Torta (second time for us, first time for my mom) for dinner Wednesday night. It's almost a joke how huge this food is - and how good it is too. That first picture up there is of a swimming pool sized goblet of strawberry milk. It's - for real - a 32oz+ sized cup of yum. We kept saying "mmmm, mmmm" after we'd take a sip. We're not super sure what's in there besides strawberries. It might be some cinnamon or some dulce de leche. Whatever it is, we're getting that again. We ended up taking it home and finished it for breakfast the next morning.



Sean got the Torta Del Rey (see tall tall sandwich above). King sized sandwich with king sized layers of flavor. I can't remember all that's in it but I am going to try...breaded pork, ham, breaded beef, tomato, egg, avocado, refried beans, cheese, banana peppers, jalapenos and chorizo. It's just nuts. So tasty. Something you are not going to eat everyday. I can't believe they make these sandwiches, it just makes me want to laugh - they're soooo big. It's the equivalent of a 64 oz Coke - in sandwich form. If I ever order this, I'm splitting it with 3 other people.



We topped off the meal with this unassuming plastic-clam-shell-packaged chocolate cake with flan baked on top. What what? Did you say flan baked on top of a chocolate cake? Who comes up with this stuff? Fluffy and rich and creamy. We can't get enough of this place. If you're wondering what Los Reyes de la Torta means, it's Sandwich Kings. True dat.




Patrick has been enjoying his Elmo plane rides to the bathtub. Here's a picture to prove it. He rests his legs on the wings while Sean pushes him down the hallway to the guest bathroom that houses his ducky tub. It's really cute. It makes bathtime fun for all!

Below are some pictures of out trek to Gilbert yesterday to try out some more customer and critically acclaimed food at Joe's Farm Grill. We're huge fans of Joe. I have known him (not closely) since I moved here in 2000. His BBQ joint was one of my larger customers when I worked at Coke. He's got great business sense and a clever menu and we are addicted to the BBQ restaurant Joe's Real BBQ - but I have to say that the Farm Grill didn't deliver for us. Patrick got the 4 cheese pizza, Sean got the bacon bleu cheese burger and I got the ahi tuna sandwich. No big deal. It wasn't bad food but it wasn't tasty - it was weird. Maybe we were hoping for too much. Too bad too, it's really cute out there and has a neat atmosphere (except for the swarming flies at our outdoor table). Nonetheless, it was a fun family outing and Patrick got to taste his first sucker. I think you should check it out if you don't care if the food doesn't blow you away. Except for the chocolate malt, that was pretty tasty. Get that. Okay...more food talk to come I'm sure. Happy Sunday!

Happy Birthday Will!

We had a busy weekend this past weekend. Saturday morning we celebrated our friends' son Will's birthday at BounceU in Scottsdale. It was super fun, lots of bouncing and Sean took Patrick down the big slide. I am not sure if Patrick liked it or not, just a stunned look was on his face at the end. We ate yummy pizza and watched Will sit on his kid throne. So cute!
We then headed down to Camelback Rd. to see about trading our gas guzzlers in for some more economical cars. Watching the gas prices go up everyday was one of the reasons we did this. We thought that if we didn't try to trade our cars in now, we might not get any trade value in at all. So, it was great timing and they made us an offer we couldn't refuse (this offer, of course, was made as we're packing the kid up to leave). Now we might be able to fit both of our cars in the garage.

Sean is now the proud owner of a speedy little Honda Civic and I am in a mini minivan (as the gal at the dealer called it) a Mazda 5. Today watching the news about creeping to $4 a gal avg, I wasn't as nauseated as I had been these last few weeks.

Then Sunday we went to the baseball game to pick up a bobblehead doll of Wilbur, no...Oscar, no...what's his name...oh, Baxter (the DBacks mascot). Patrick loves his bobblehead doll. We didn't stay at the game long since he'd been super tired from the day before and we went home to snooze.

We then spent the evening at Aunt Katy's house. We had yummy lasagna and played with the cousins. Then rushed home to see about selling this huge file cabinet we have that I posted on craigslist. The guy bought it, yay! So, now we just have a few other things to sell so that we can get those cars in the garage. Anybody need a 4 drawer file cabinet, 65 Corvair and a weight set and bench? Let us know!