Happy 3rd Birthday

Hard to believe it's been THREE years since we had Brookston. He's growing up so fast and it's been so fun watching him grow into this sweet, fun, loving, and awesome 3 year old!

When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, I showed him a Nemo and a Lightning McQueen...well, I was not in the least bit shocked when he chose Lightning McQueen, but I was VERY nervous as red and black are the two HARDEST colors!

I did a practice cake, red turned out great (after adding in half of a bottle of icing dye)...however the black tasted terrible! So, for party day, I made the black out of chocolate icing, so not only did the chocolate flavor take over any possible bad taste, but it also started out brown, not white, so I only had to add a very little, instead of TONS of black. I was so proud that I got black to taste good! Hahaha!

Anyway, here are some pictures from Brookston's 3rd Birthday Party...at The Little Gym!

The kids having fun

The kids warming up

Kaisley is really loving Little Gym! Or maybe she just loved it extra special because Daddy was there for the party!

Crab walk

Poor boy...playing so hard he was a bit hot! :)

Special ride for the birthday boy!

This seemed to be a favorite for Brookston...especially when he got to go first climbing under and finding feet to tickle!

Richard with Kaisley and Piper (our niece)!

For anyone without kids or only girls...Lightning McQueen, from the movie "Cars" is red, his number is 95. The other cars in the movie are The King (blue), number 43, and Chick Hicks (green), number 86!

Thus, the cupcakes!

The CAKE!

Kaisley enjoying pizza...such a big girl!


Brookston blowing out his candles!

Happy 3rd Birthday Brookston!!!!

Turkey Baby

This post would be a whole lot more exciting if I had access to my computer. Instead, my computer crashed tonight...everything...gone!!!! I'm okay with it, my pictures are fine (all backed up) and that's the only "priceless" item. It's just going to be a huge huge pain to redo the entire computer. We're talking microsoft office, virus protection, quicken, my photbook software...everything. This sucker is back to BEFORE day one since the store at least loaded the basics for us. Arg!!!

Okay, to the exciting point...this Thanksgiving we're set to have Hall Baby #3 join our family!!! Yes indeed! To be specific, our due date is November 29th. So I guess we could just as likely have a newborn on Thanksgiving, as I could be big and waiting! But our family is growing and we cannot wait to see our family grow!!!

So...pictures of the cute shirts I made for the kids will have to wait until next time...when I can get on my computer, not just my phone and post properly. Then the sweet first ultrasound pictures and so on too! Don't worry, I'll have lots to post about when I can get the computer back to running properly!

So...that's our newest, latest, and greatest!!! Yay!!! :)

Big Boy Bike!!!

Ever since attending a friend's 3rd birthday party, Brookston discovered big boy bikes! And we were impressed with how well he did. So, we knew what to tell Nana and Papa he wanted for his 3rd birthday! However, they were on sale a week or so ago, so we got it a little early! ;) And he knows this is his birthday present from them!

He could not WAIT to ride around the drive way!

Thanks Nana and Papa! We go for a walk, pushing Kaisley in the stroller and Brookston rides his bike almost every night!

Round and round he went, up and down the driveway!

Here's a short video of him just getting started:

LSU's AgMagic

On Thursday Brookston, Kaisley and I met a group of friends at LSU's AgMagic. The kids had a great time seeing a little bit of Louisiana...

Animal foot prints in the sand

Louisiana fish

Crawfish...I was totally impressed that Brookston wanted to hold it!

Little Gator...notice his mouth taped shut! :)

corn :)

Kaisley was pretty into the butterflies

Cows...although Brookston never wanted to look at it up close!

Holding the baby chick...so cool! I think he held about 10 of them!

Kaisley wasn't quite sure of the chick!

Kaisley loved the pigs at first, then she looked like she wanted to fight them!?!?

I think Brookston prefered the baby animals!

After AgMagic, we headed over the LSU's Dairy store...for ice cream.

The kiddos made an ice cream train and had a blast!

Kaisley enjoys the outdoors anywhere we are!

Easily entertained boys!

She's getting to be such a big girl!

Mexico - Another park

We went to a great new version of an amuzement park on one of our last days in Mexico. It basically had all of our fun activities we enjoy on a trip, in one "park".

One of the really cool things is that there were automatic cameras everywhere and they knew who you were based on a scan it did on your helmet (which you had to wear everywhere in the park). So, at the end of the day, you could buy a thumb drive with all of your pictures! So, that's how we got so many great pictures of the two of us!

First there was zip lining....

There were 13 zip lines (including 3 water landings...and one water slide), total included 2.5 miles of zip line!

One great thing was you just went from one to the next! No waiting for a group, no sitting around. Just when you did one line, you had to hike up the huge ramp and tons of steps to get to the next! So at leats we got our exercise!

Water landings! Very fun! We've zip lined before, but never had a water landing!

Then the "amphibious vehicles"! Two courses at 3.1 miles each.

We could see the cameras now, so we would pose!

I'll be honest, this bridge really freaked me out!!!!

Here was our view...there were 2 courses,

so the bridge on the 2nd course was even freakier!

Again, posing for the camera as we came out of a cave!

Then canoeing through the underground caves, about 600 yards.

Richard was pretending to be asleep in this picture!

The stalagtites in the caves

In the center of the park there was this heart. It was like the meeting place to get to or from every course. So, what else would you do but take a picture in front of it? So, like EVERYONE else, we took a picture...of our backs! :)

There was a 500 yard swim!

It was pretty darn cold being in the underground river...but, not as bad as I first thought! :)

So, this is the last of my Mexico posts...not bad it only took me a week! :) I think I covered the main things we did! It was a blast. Very strange to be without our kiddos for an entire week. But we had so much fun. And we did race home, only to get to see them both fast asleep when we peeked into their bedrooms.

Mexico - Park

We spent an entire day at a park, which is described as an open sea aquarium. I'm not sure I quite agree with that, but we enjoyed our day there! It was a lot of land to walk around, swim in, bike on, lazy river through, and eat and drink all day long!

We started out wakling around the entire place. It probably took us about 1 1/2 to 2 hours and we enjoyed stopping along the beaches, rocks, sitting in some chairs and watching the lazy river and the rope walk, and just plain old walking.

We enjoyed some time down the lazy river, with a stop at the rope walk. Our lazy river didn't end too lazy though as Richard and I raced to the finish with a full on sprint, tube in tow! :) So, at least we got yet another good work out in (as if the 2 hour walk wasn't enough for us out of shape folks!)

We did some snorkeling, which wasn't the most impressive snorkeling I've ever seen. Honestly, in my opinion, it didn't come close, but I've been to The Great Barrier Reef, so I'm sure my standards are a little off! :) But, one cool thing was the caves we snorkeled through!