American Girl

Abby has been asking for an American Girl Doll since last Christmas. Since I had bought all of her Christmas presents when she began pleading for this doll, I told her maybe for her birthday. Well, her birthday is only a week away, and we gave her the option of having a friend birthday party or getting the American Girl doll. At $100 for this doll, we felt like doing both was a little over the top. Some people may think this is odd, but we really struggle with trying not to overindulge our children. We don't want them to think that the community we live in is the "real world", which is really tough to do. Sure, we could have spent the money on the party and the doll, but we opted not to. So, she decided on the doll.

Luckily, they have recently built an American Girl Store in Dallas - it is not as large as the New York and Chicago stores, but it was so much fun! I was secretly excited to visit the store, and Brian and Emma stayed behind (try explaining to a 4 year old that she can't have a new doll). The Dallas store has all the American Girl dolls, MANY accessories and clothes, as well as a hair salon (for your doll) and an upstairs bistro where you can have lunch with your doll sitting next to you in her own little chair. To me, it was every little girls' fantasy world. And, the look on Abby's face when the cashier took her doll out of the box and placed her in her hands was one I'll remember. Abby had already named her doll months ago and spent some time this weekend making signs and a bed for her "Gabby" doll to sleep in. So much fun!!!

Ready, Set, Go!

Saturday turned out to be quite a busy day for the Butler household. The morning started out early with me participating in the Neighborhood 5K run. Since it was my first 5K since early in college, I was a little anxious about how I would do. All in all, it went well. I finished in 23:20. Not sure yet where that puts me in my 'age group' but by my estimate it was about 10th overall. Considering last week was the first time I stretched my normal 2 mile run into 3.2 miles, I'm quite pleased. Below you will see that I had a wonderful cheering section along my run.


Next up, we decided to head out to the Dallas Zoo. It was a beautiful day and we had never been to the Dallas Zoo, so we thought we would give it a try. So we packed up our lunches and headed out. We got there around 10a and were surprised at how few people were there. We are used to the Fort Worth Zoo and how busy it gets. It seems that the Dallas Zoo doesn't have quite enough parking, but there was never a problem of getting right up to an exhibit to look at the animals. First, the girls checked out the pony rides in the children's area. They thought it was really fun.


The zoo was very clean with lots of big, shady trees and not at all crowded on a gorgeous spring day. We ventured around and checked out all the other animals. The only negative I could find with the Zoo is that they didn't seem to have a lot of 'animals'. Maybe one or two per pen. Maybe it just seemed that way because it's technically the largest Zoo in Texas (per wikipedia).


After lunch we headed over to the Wilds of Africa section and took the trip around the monorail. Once again, lots of land and habitats, but just not a lot of animals. I guess they could all still be hibernating? Anyway, we found the Penguins which were in their pen singing some kind of song.


Finally, we headed out. As if my legs weren't killing me enough, we decided to head up to lifetime for a 'light' workout. The girls pretty much had their pick of activities in the child center because there was hardly anyone there. Then it was burgers and dogs on the grill for a family dinner on our back patio.

To cap off the day, we thought we would try to bribe the girls with ice cream if they would listen and take some bluebonnet pictures. So, after seeing pictures of our friends, we thought we would head on over and snap a few. We should have known that with all the activities from the day that the girls would be less than willing. After snapping a zillion pics, we did find a couple 'moments in time' that turned out ok...



Of course, the evening ended with a thud watching the Mavericks play the second half like they were sleepwalking. Is it bed time yet?

Play ball!

It has been a few years since I made it out to opening day so my Dad and I decided to go. Its a bit overcast but I think the rain will stay away long enough for the game to play.

Compared to some of the games we went to last year, this flag is truly a Texas sized flag. As the anthem completed, a bald eagle landed at the mound... But it was a good minute before the B1 made its flyover. I think he got caught up in some DFW landing traffic patterns.

Go Rangers!

HSM on Ice

We made it to the winter wonderland that is High School Musical on Ice. I already had to make a trip to the car to get a blanket for my little ladies cause its quite cold inside the Fort Worth Convention Center.

They are still selling tickets at the box office if you can make it down by 1:30p.

Go Wildcats!

Wild Night

We had been hearing all the warnings for several days now that Thursday night could bring the potential of thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes. So, when our weather radio went off at 3:00 a.m. and the pounding quarter-sized hail began at 3:15 a.m., we knew exactly what was going on.

Then, the scary tornado sirens began wailing - we are only a block away from our sirens, so you can't miss them. I quickly began clearing out our tornado closet (probably should have done this earlier) while Brian checked the weather on TV. I ran quickly after clearing the closet to see which child he was going to grab, and he announced the rotation they were concerned with was well past us. "Huh?" The same thing happened on Monday afternoon - our sirens went off a good 3-5 minutes after the rotation had already passed us and the potential tornado was already in the next city.

Everyone I've seen or spoken with today has the same tired look on their faces; we were all awakened at 3:15 by then hail and sirens. Luckily, it was nothing too serious other than a little roof damage from the hail. Emma slept through it all, our dog let out a little whimper from her crate, and Abby told me this morning that she woke up at 3 a.m. because it was the loudest rain she'd ever heard. Spring is definitely here in Texas!

NASCAR

I took the girls after school to see the Lowe's car that was outside of (you guessed it) Lowe's! For some reason, my girls like race cars, and Abby and Brian can sit for hours watching the cars go lap after lap around the track... with Abby calling out '30 laps to go Dad'. I think it's the one sport I don't really get, but we had fun seeing the car.

Dance Competition Part 3

This past weekend was dance competition #3 out of 4 competitions for this season. Abby and I left our house at 9:30 a.m. and didn't return until 10:30 pm. It was a long day. We knew ahead of time that it would be a long day though, so Brian and Emma opted to stay home. Fortunately, Abby LOVES these competitions and loves watching all the other dances. Being there close to 12 hours was pure bliss for her.

The competition was held at UT Arlington, so we had lots of choices for things we could do during our breaks. Brian mapped out all the fast food and restaurants in the general vicinity for me. We went to eat at Applebee's for lunch, and I tried to talk her into going to the mall for some shopping, but she wanted to head back to the competition to watch more dancing. Many of the girls went home from the morning session to the evening session and skipped out on one of the awards ceremonies at 3:15. Abby's first dance (tap) looked the cleanest I've ever seen it. It scored High Score 1st place and 7th place overall for all the "petite" category dances (I believe there were a total of 20-25 dances). Since Abby was one of only a few there from her dance, she ran up to get the trophy and actually got to talk in the microphone when the announcer asked what studio she was from. She's waited 2 years to do that, and it was fun to see her standing so proudly (only 1 girl from the dance goes up to accept the award, and Abby usually isn't agressive enough to run up there before anyone else).

After awards, we had an hour or so 'til her next dance, so we decided to leave to get dinner. I turned the key in the car, and it doesn't start - ughhh! Dead battery. So, Brian did get to drive out to Arlington with Emma after all, bring us dinner, and a new battery from Autozone. Praise God that this didn't happen to us at 10:00p that night -wouldn't have been fun at all! The 2nd dance (jazz) scored 4th place overall out of 4 total, so it didn't do as well but it did receive High Score marks. The girls didn't quite have it together. Maybe for the last competition....

Dance Competition Part 2

A couple of weeks ago was competition #2 just before Spring Break. It didn't start out so well since we got a call from school around lunch time on Friday that Abigail had a fever. In the end it was a blessing... Abigail's dance schedule on Saturday was not a favorable one. She had her dances scheduled fairly close together around 3:45p and 4:30p-ish, but the awards weren't scheduled to complete until 8p. So, with the lingering fever, we gave her some motrin and headed to the competition.

When we arrived, we found out that it was running at least 2 hours behind. First up was her tap dance, which ended up getting 4th place out of 5 dances, then was her jazz dance, which I believe got first in its group but somehow it got entered into the recreational category (level 1) instead of the lower of the competitive dance categories. Oh well, bonus for us! However, since we did have a semi-ill Abigail (she had a fever when she woke up, but it never came back), we took off after her second dance which had us leaving around 6p with 2 very hungry kids.