The sad tale of Woody

Hudson loves Toy Story. We luckily had Reed's old Buzz and Woody for him to play with and for weeks he has carried them around and slept with them. We took them on the Blevins vacation and spent a lot of the time making Hudson share with Grace (who also loves Toy Story). Like I said, these toys are 3 years old and have been played with hard. Buzz no longer has wings and Woody doesn't talk, his brown hair paint is worn and a few days ago his left foot broke off. After the broken foot incident (and Hudson making a sad face and constantly reapeating "Oh no! Woody break!"), I was planning on buying him another Woody doll, but after I went to Target and saw it was $35, I thought it better to super glue that silly leg back on.

Grace's birthday was this week and we got together with the Blevins clan to eat. Gammy and DadDad gave her her birthday gifts - a new Buzz and Woody. Hudson was in awe. Buzz has wings that pop open when you push a button! Woody was brand new and had BOTH legs attached! Grace wasn't about to share (which I totally get - she's two, just spent the last week watching Hudson play with his Buzz and Woody and now that she had her own, she didn't want to share them right after she opened them - can't blame the girl). Now I can usually say to my kids to suck it up - they have very blessed lives and I rarely feel sorry for them. :) But this proved a little too much for me and Brian. Hudson didn't cry or throw a fit, he just looked at the toys like "Wow." I decided that night after we got home that I was going to go buy him a new Woody doll the next day, $35 or not. When I told Brian, he smiled and said he was planning on going to the store and buying him one too. :)

My mom and I went to Fort Worth the next day to run some errands and she bought him a Woody doll and pajamas at the Disney store. The next picture to me is priceless.

I love that precious little boy.

Canning

Brian has gotten me into canning. We knew that we needed to can some of the extra food from the garden, but I had no idea that I would like it. It is a lot of work, makes a mess, and there is a lot of 'equipment' to get out but it's really neat to have something that we made from a vegetable that we grew. A couple of weeks ago we made our 4th variety of pickles.

Aren't I just little Miss Farmers Wife with my stockpot? (By the way, I am wearing my free t-shirt from the 4th of July parade. I don't know what it is, but I love me a free t-shirt. Anyway, I yelled the loudest so they threw it to me. Very proud of that.)





My parents had a wild plum thicket at their house and they ended up picking almost a full 5 gallon bucket of them. The plums are really sour and so I got them ready to make jelly. (Why yes, that IS my copy of The Farmer's Wife's Canning and Preserving Cookbook you see in the background there. My husband bought that for me and I like it. Wow.)


Moving on, I spent a lot of today making our wild plum jelly. All those plums made quite a bit...


And for dinner, we had to try some on biscuits... And it is SO good!


After dinner, Reed asked if he could have a jar of jelly and a spoon. Awesome. :)

Blevins Vacation

We spent a few days with Brian's family at a house near Kerrville last week. We played in the river, hiked a little and just relaxed. It was a good time. Here are a few pictures from the trip. The walkway across the river...

Some of the hidden walkways up on the side of the hill..


The view of the house from the top of the hill


Hudson


Reed


The three cousins walking in the river


Grace and Hudson


Sunset

On our last morning in New York, we spent some time exploring Central Park. It was so pretty and I can see how it is an oasis for people whoe live in that crazy city. We only saw a small sampling of what it had to offer...

I took this next picture especially for Brian. This is the only thing he would be interested in in the whole city.... machinery. :)



To my mom- thank you for an AWESOME birthday present. I love you!!!!!

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Location:Last Day in New York

Day 4

Yesterday morning we got up and headed to the Statue of Liberty first thing. I'm glad we did because we were able to get through it pretty fast (well, fast compared to the hours long line we saw when we got back to Manhattan on the Ferry.)

We ate lunch at a yummy place in Soho and I hade to get a picture of the street sign... :)



We hopped on the double decker tour bus and headed to the Top of the Rock.


The view from up here is amazing!!!





We went and saw Stomp in the afternoon (LOVED it!!!) and got back on the bus for the nighttime tour loop. It wasn't quite nighttime, but the sunset pictures sure were pretty!!

Day 3

First let me fill in some things from Day 2. The subway is a mess. Once you figure the map out, it becomes slightly easier. Thank goodness, because somehow I got to be in charge of the map and deciding which train we should get on. I only got us on the wrong one once, but that was enough for me. We sat down at Coney Island to figure out our route and Becky sneakily (is that a word?) took a picture of me that speaks for itself...

Here we are headed to eat dinner and then off to Wicked.






After the show, we walked through Times Square and oh, my goodness it was packed! I'm wondering if that's normal for a Friday night or if it's leftover Lady Gaga people...





We had a great night.
Now on to Day 3...
This morning Becky went to meet a friend of hers for brunch, so my mom and I decided to do some shopping. We met back up a couple of hours later and headed to our double decker bus tour. We saw the soup restaurant from Seinfeld where the Soup Nazi was (this one is for you Brian)...



This is the building where John Lennon was killed and Yoko Ono still lives there to this day. Her apartment is the one at the top right corner. Interesting, huh? ;)



I loved the old buildings and really enjoyed the architecture. Here are just a few of the shots from the tour...












After our tour of uptown Manhattan, we went back to the hotel and freshened up for our next Broadway show...



It was a great show. When all the animals came out in the first scene, I got chill bumps! Here are my mom and me heading into the theater. Thanks to Becky for all the pictures!


We are hitting the sack for an early morning... Statue of Liberty, World Trade Center site, Top of the Rock observatory and much, much more! Yay!

Day 2

This morning we got up really early and headed to the Today show and Lady Gaga was performing for the summer concert series. Not having ever been to New York, I had no ideas what to expect. The amount of people was unbelievable. We decided to leave because of the sheer number of people and I'm glad we did. We heard reports of 18 to 20 thousand people which is the largest crowd they have ever had. Not wanting to go back to the room, we just rolled up my sign and stuck it in Becky's backpack. It stuck out a little, but we didn't worry about it. We walked over to Rockefeller Center and it was so neat to see something that I've seen on TV and movies so many times.

Radio City Music Hall



We decided that we would get on the subway and go to Soho. I had gotten some recommendations from a friend about restaurants. I wanted to go to Magnolia Bakery and thought we could eat breakfast there. We were at the wrong end of Bleecker Street, so we had to walk a long, long way to get there (sadly enough, my sign for the today show fell out of Becky's backpack and we didn't know it. Bummer!). We finally made it to Magnolia Bakery and it the bad news was that it didn't open until 9:00 and it was only 7:30. Ugh. SO, we decided to go to another recommended place called Balthazar's. We ended up just taking a cab because we were 10 blocks away. As Becky said, it was the best $8 we ever spent! Anyway, the food was awesome and I'm so glad we went there. It was wonderful!!

We hopped on the subway and headed to Coney Island. I don't really know what I was expecting, but of course everything was closed up tight. Well, it was still very quite early in the day because of the Today show/Magnolia Bakery fiasco and it makes sense that people wouldn't be on a ferris wheel or roller coaster at 9:00 in the morning. :)






We decided to head back and wanted to go on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was really cool. This is my best picture by far...


After we walked the bridge, we took the Subway back to Grand Central. My mom and Becky went back to the room and I went downstairs in Grand Central and found this-


Yay!!!!! So I bit the bullet And bought these...


Oh my goodness. We split them into thirds so we could all try them. My favorites were the smores one, the red velvet one and the yellow iced one. They were yummy.
Tonight we are heading to Wicked and could not be more excited!!! Stay tuned!

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