bluebonnets! eh...

Every year Betsy and I take a short day-trip up to Brenham to take the official bluebonnet picture for the year. We typically go to the same field and it's just FULL of bluebonnets. We had even heard this year that people were skipping the bluebonnets this year because there were so many rattlesnakes hiding in the. Yeah, it would be a REALLY tiny snake to hide in these bluebonnets. LAME! To get over our overall high level of pissiness in having wasted half a day coming to Brenham, we contemplated just taking pictures in the big pile of dead weeds that was evidently what was left of this years bluebonnets. We decided to go drown our wasted road-tip in food and ice cream instead! The BlueBell creamery is now open on Saturdays and they have scoops for $1~ Yum! Emmy ate hers and then mooched off everyone else. At the creamery, we got the inside scoop on a patch of bluebonnets that you could at least fake a picture in. We got excited that maybe the day was saved! eh...Here's Emmy and Caroline saying "Where are the bluebonnets?"

Even these were kind of (ok totally) lame and REALLY itchy. Paired with a gigantic wind and tired and post ice-cream rush little girls, it was a short bluebonnet session. We managed to snag a few.

The best ones they got were of them togehter. While the adults were a little, uh, grouchy, the girls had a GREAT time! At least we have pictures, right?

It's a.....!!!

It's finally the big day! We have been very excited to see what vacekito #2 will be! It seems like we got to this point in the pregnancy a LOT faster than with Emmy. We decided to have a "gender reveal party" for this one. It's the new thing to do! You invite everyone over to cut into the cake and the color of the icing is either pink or blue to tell the big news! I didn't want to decorate just pink or blue so I decided to go with a "game of Life " theme. My favorite part of that game was always sticking the different color pegs in the car, so this was a chance to have a real life application.

Mom made up a cute game where everyone had to guess boy or girl and then we read a bunch of old wives tales to see what they said boy or girl (they were incorrect, by the way)

Blake and I had planned on being surprised with everyone else, but it was just a little too hard =) We kept tight lips and didn't even bust out a "he" or "she" before everyone else knew! After a quick dinner (everyone just wanted to cut the cake) we went ahead and dug in!

That's right! Our big news is that we're having a little brother!!! Emmy has been saying it's a little brother all week, so I guess she just knew! We're so excited that our family is growing! I have NO clue what to do with a boy, but Blake is very happy to have someone to share sports with. We are also beginning negotiations on the marroon nursery (NO WAY!)

Blake's Mom saved his blanket from when he was a little boy. I can't wait to wrap my new little man up and bring him home in it! What a special thing to have! We are so happy to have gotten to share this time with our friends and family. This little boy is certainly loved already.

More Birthdays

We decided to have a party (yes another one) for Blake's "real" birthday. One more won't hurt right =) All the fam came over to celebrate the big 3-1. This weekend we headed down to Port Neches for Kate's 2nd birthday. Kate had an adorable "hungry catepillar" birthday party with the cutest little details. It was so fun to get all the girls together. We actually managed to get a picture with all four of them. It's a miracle!

Here's the birthday girl! She even had a Hungry Little Caterpillar outfit for the party!

The kids had the best time playing together in the playroom and doing all the birthday games in the baclyard.

It's so great to get to see my girls and all their girls. They're all growing up toooooo fast!

2 Days Early, Happy Birthday Daddy!

We continued the Birthday month with, you guessed it. eating. As if there was anything else to do! We started off with an adult's only gorging at PF Changs to celebrate Lynn (61) and Blake's (31) birthday.

Did you know that they sell fried Green Beans at PF changs? They are AWESOME. Usually eat until you want to throw up gorgings take place with my family, it's not a Vacek-type thing to do, but they went all in on this one. Maybe I'm rubbing off?

We went for a quick trip to our old house (wierd to drive by your old house and not live there by the way). Our old next door neighboor Andrew was turning one!

His parents Roger and Amy had Ruffles the clown come to entertain all tke kids at the party. We tried to paint Emmy's face around Halloween and it was an epic fail. We couldn't wait to see what happened when she a) got near Ruffles the clown and b) Ruffles tried to put paint on her. She started out a little hesitant,

but by the time Ruffles was through she told me. "I want paint on ALL emmy's body." We'll have to have a discussion about tattoos. She and Ruffles were best friends by the end of the party. Mommy maintained a safe distance. You know how I feel about clowns.

We headed from the party to... eat more! After a yummy lunch at Kasra (Blake's favorite place for lamb) we headed over for dessert at Ruggles Green. Blake is starting to get a little spoiled with all this partying in one weekend.

Emmy's getting pretty good at Happy Birthday now (she'll sing it 7 times this month), but since this is a special one, we had to include another version just for Daddy.

Spring Break

It was too nice to be inside, so even thought a trip to the beach is probably not on the approved list of tonsil removal recovery activies, we did it anyway! We're counting this as our spring break because there's not really anything else coming =) Don't worry, there are no pictures of me in a maternity swimsuit. I guess I'm going to have to break down and buy one this year but I am NOT excited about it.

This is the first official trip to "Gigi's beach" this year. Emmy likes it again.. A LOT. She spent a couple hours transferring sand, pouring sand, and stomping castles.

Emmy loses her tonsils and paints her toenails

After three months of not sleeping more than two hours consecutively and five rounds of antibiotics, we were all almost excited to go in for Emmy's big surgery on Friday. Her first round of tubes also fell out and she immediately got fluid in her ears, so we decided to get tubes round 2. Just to really finish it off, she also got a "Sinus powerwash." We headed to Texas Children's for the big day. They gave Emmy her own pair of Baby scrubs to wear during her procedure.

The surgery took literally less than 20 minutes. I thought they had decided not to do it when they called us back to the back. They had told us we were going to have to spend the night in the hospital after the surgery. Emmy had other ideas. They said if she could drink a whole juice box and eat a few popsicles they might let us go home. After two hours, Emmy had eaten almost FIVE orange popsicles, drank a juicebox and half a Sprite, and had led everybody in a few rounds of songs. They let us go home! Hooray!

She's doing well, but she still has her moments. She's going to stay home all week with a different family member every day. She's eating lots of popsicles.

Today (I HAD to get out of the house) I took her to get her first Mani/pedi. We went and picked out some new sparkly flipflops for the occasion. She actually sat there and let them paint her nails and her toes. I was amazed! After the lady buffed her nails, she turned around and told me "See it. It looks better." Of course she picked blue, but oh well! It matched her outfit!This will most likely be the first of many. I might have cried if she didn't like it. Pedis are too important in my life ;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPS!

Happy 58th Birthday...

...From Your Favorite Granddaughter!

Famous People You Share A Birthday With Include:

Ron Howard, Alan Thicke, Harry Caray, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Chris Webber and Justin Bieber

Goodbye Praha Beach!

We woke this morning to plummeting temperatures and snow flurries.

With the tempeeratures not expected out of the 20's all day, the final day in Prague would be the coldest one so far. After grabbing a quick and unhealthy breakfast snack at Starbucks (I needed a double shot of espresso as a pick me up and nothing else was really open on Sunday), we met our tour guide for the morning, Jana Hronkova, for a trip through the Jewish Quarter in Prague. For those of you who don't know, the Jewish section of Prague is the largest in Europe.

As many of you are aware, the Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years, and it only continues today. The Christian majority in Prague allowed the Jews to inhabit a certain section of the city in the old town that no one wanted due to its flooding problems. The Jews were forced to live in this section only, and had curfews and limited rights beyond its borders. A series of synagogues were built and life was generally difficult due to continued over-crowding and issues with disease, fire and whatever else could spread quickly. It was funny to learn that the Christians that so persecuted the Jews looked to them even then for loans because it was believed that charging someone interest on money borrowed was a component of the deadly sin greed. The Jews, however, had no issues. Later, we would learn that as the restrictions on Jews loosened and they were able to leave the ghetto and function as normal members of Prague society, they would look to the Christians to cook food for them on the Sabbath, as it was against their beliefs to do so. Finding a way around the rules went both ways. It was also interesting to learn that many times the government would borrow money from the Jews to fund wars and other works and re-pay them by giving in to more freedoms.

Size of the ghetto was an issue that could be seen in the Jewish cemetery. If there was no way to gain land for living, land for the dead was limited even more. The Jews would continually stack the dead in the same cemetery. Over time, it has been said that at least 20K people were buried in the cemetery that takes up a small portion of the land that they were allowed to utilize. As can be seen in the picture, the headstones fill every possible space, every nook, every cranny. Obviously, with the snow coming down and covering the grounds and stones, it only added to the experience.

We listened to Jana as she provided information on life of the Prague Jews as well as background on the Jewish religion itself. Much like Czechoslovakia, the Czech Jew has had a difficult time maintaining their identity. As we learned again today, not too long after they found equality amongst the Czech people, the Jews lives were again shattered by the German occupation and subsequent attempted extermination at the hands of the Nazis. Side note. Europe's oldest synagogue resides in Prague. When asked why the Germans did not tear it down during occupation, Jana replied that they had planned on using it as part of a museum for extinct races. The world can be quite sickening. We also saw a unique Hebrew clock. Just like Hebrew is read"backward", so is the clock. You can see with the modern clock above, it's exactly opposite.

We couldn't take pictures in the synagogues, but we left excited about learning something new. This sounds pretty "well la-de-da" but old churches start looking the same after a while.

At the start of the 19th century, they leveled the ghetto and built an area they call "New Paris." At the end of the street the communists placed a GIGANTIC, and I mean Gigantic, statue of Stalin. Once communism fell they put this equally gigantic metronome. Fun Fact: Michael Jackson once started his world tour in Prague and he put a gigantic statue of himself in the same place (1996 HIStory Tour, look it up, totally true). Hmmm... questionable...

We finished up a little shopping, Blake took 500 more pictures of the Charles Bridge from different points in the city,

and we hiked down river to take this picture of the "Dancing House." It looks like Fred Aistaire and Ginger Rogers! I had this great plan to take a picture with my leg up leaning against Blake. It was going to be great except, there was no one around and we'd have to stand in the middle of the highway, so that didn't so much happen.

Next we decided to put the "Fun" in Funicular and ride up Petrin Hill.

We hopped on the Cable Car for a short trek WAY up to the very top of Prague. Petrin Hill is the Central Park (or one of them) of Prague. In the summer it's a gorgeous green space to take picnics and get panoramic views of the city. In the winter it's just freaking cold (about 18 degrees at this point.) It's topped with a mini-Eiffel tower that you can climb. They closed five minutes before we got up there. Nothing makes me madder than that. Way up at the top of the hill, it did give us some gorgeous views of Prague at night and the Castle.

When we couldn't feel our fingers or faces anymore, we headed down and off to our last night in Prague. One more good dinner, beer, and we we're done. Goodbye Prague!

Our car comes at 4 am, so we're pondering ways to spend the next two hours.... midnight polar bear run around Prague? It's only about 10 degrees...Who knows!