Sweet Little Rachel

Rachel is such a happy baby and she loves going on our outings. Thank goodness because we are always going! But when she's tired you can tell because she pops that little thumb in her mouth.







Her first table food is squishy green peas. She loves them!



I put some peas on her high chair and I just love watching her try to grab them with her little fingers. Sometimes she just smashes several of them in her little fist. She usually gets the ones she's after and most of them manage to make it into her mouth, except for these that I found in her seat....



Tonight, Stuart came over to Rachel while she was eating puffs in her high chair. She grabbed a puff and held it out for him. He proudly ate it. One could say that she didn't even know that puff was stuck to her hand. One could say that she was just stretching out her hand which she does at random sometimes. However, to a proud daddy, she was showing him affection by offering him that puff!

I usually like to read books at bedtime but Rachel gets so excited that it needs to be more of a daytime event. She sits in my lap and watches as I pull out one of her board books to read. She instantly starts laughing and bouncing up and down in my lap. She laughs at each page and then tries to eat it. She likes to hold the book herself and try to turn the pages but when that doesn't go well she just sticks the whole thing in her mouth.

A Little Boy's Treasure

Today one of Nicholas' friends opened a lemonade stand to raise money for the Heifer Mission project in Mozambique. Since it was a squillion degrees outside, we thought that sounded like a great way to cool off. We enjoyed the sweet lemonade and even sweeter time with our friends. There was lots of fun to be had with sidewalk chalk, face/hand painting, and bug hunting.

At some time during a bug hunting excursion, my sweet little boy discovered a real "treasure" (remember - treasure is in the eye of the beholder). He came running up to me to show me his find...a toad that had been flattened by a car and then dried to a crisp in the sun. Eeewwww! The boys found a couple of these and, being the boys that they are, they all thought they were pretty cool to play with.

"A treasure to a little boy does not consist of money, gems or jewelry. He will find far greater pleasure in the wonder of a rock, pebble, stick or beetle." -- Author Unknown

...or in this case, a squished dried out toad!

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The Artsy Side of Dallas

Surely the Earth is falling into the Sun and someone forgot to tell us about it. It is so hot out there! So what did we do? We went to the Dallas Arts District to enjoy the CityArts Celebration, an art festival in the streets of Dallas. It was sweltering hot and not a cloud in the sky. We drank tons of water and frequented the "Cooling Tent" which was a covered spot with chairs and cool misters. Ahh, nice!

We saw some neat works of art at the show - paintings, stained glass, woodworking, metal art, and soft glass molding. We watched dancers and singers perform on stage. There were lots of vendors selling the regular festival fare like ice cream, sno-cones, corn dogs, and steak on a stake.

The highlight of the whole show for Nicholas was getting to meet Michaelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The turtle van was there as part of a martial arts exhibit. Nicholas loves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and was very excited to finally meet one of them. But he quickly said, "He's not real. He's just a person in a costume. I can see where his mask starts." But that didn't dampen the big smile across his face as he posed for a picture with the big turtle.



We also got to go into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle van to see all of the themed toys, posters from their movies, etc. Nicholas loved it!





We had to take a break in the shade to cool off and re-energize. And what better way to re-energize than with a little festival funnel cake? Yum!



Stuart and Nicholas played around this waterfall while Rachel and I stayed in our shady spot and did some people watching.







Afterwards, we drove around some looking at interesting buildings and potential backgrounds for pictures. We ended up on the east side of Dallas in the historic Deep Ellum area. We haven't lived in DFW long so we don't know a lot about Deep Ellum. It's kind of the "industrial" area and it looked very dead on a Sunday. But I've heard that it is a wild and crazy party place at night with lots of bars, tattoo shops, and people mingling up and down the streets. We saw a city sign that said that "cruising" was unlawful during the hours of 8 PM and 4 AM and it even defined cruising as passing a control point 3 times in a 2 hour period. There was really a sign posted for that!

We were a little nervous driving around there just because we don't know anything about the area and didn't even know where we were going, just aimlessly driving around and around (yes, I think we were cruising!). We stumbled upon this really cool mural and just had to get some pictures. I like the way Stuart posed these shots of Nicholas. They look really cool.







After we got home we looked at this picture of the whole mural on the building. Click on the picture to enlarge it.



We first admired the incredible artwork again. But then we noticed the barbed wire just above the mural and then lots more barbed wire on the upper left side of the building. Hmm, that's a lot of barbed wire. What are they trying to keep out? Again, we don't know much about Deep Ellum but I think we might just keep it that way. At least you don't see barbed wire out in the 'burbs.

Concerts In The Garden

Last night we had a great family outing. We spent the evening at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. We had a lovely picnic dinner on the lawn and then listened to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra delight us with their musical talents, led by conductor Andres Franco.





The performance featured favorite music from Harry Potter, Star Trek, and most importantly, Star Wars. There were even Star Wars characters roaming the garden for photo shoots. Nicholas was excited to get his picture with a Stormtrooper and an Imperial Guard from Star Wars!



I seriously don't know how these people could stand to be in these costumes. It was very very warm and incredibly humid and there they were in full costume! Ugh. We were resting on our picnic blanket but you can see that even little Rachel's hair is drenched with sweat!



There were squillions of people there to see the performance. We had a great spot even though we were in the "back 40"! Stuart walked Nicholas up to the stage so he could watch the orchestra up close. He loved having his glow stick necklace that a new friend had given to him at the show.



There was fantastic music choreographed to a brilliant laser light show and fireworks! The laser show for the Star Wars piece was most impressive. It was complete with laser formed characters, spaceships, and fully animated scenes from the movie. For the finale, the orchestra wrapped up the Star Wars set with fireworks overhead. It was really awesome!







We always love going to the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens but this was a new exciting way to experience the gardens. There are more Concerts in the Garden throughout the summer so check out the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens website for concert information.

A New Experience at Komart

We've been hunting for some special Cheetos that are only made in Hong Kong. We were told that Komart carried them. I researched Komart and learned that it is a Korean market so I'm not sure that we were on the right path but we checked it out anyway. They are located on Royal Lane in Dallas deep in the heart of a whole Korean community where businesses post signs that have no English translation (what's up with that?!). Unfortunately, no Cheetos were to be found. But we did see quite a lot of other unusual items that we don't see at Kroger and Tom Thumb.

Fresh Squid...



Beef Feet....Goat Meat...



Giant tub of Dried Shrimp...



Look at the size of this Korean Pear. It's as big as my whole hand!



Boiled Royal Fern in Water...



Sliced Lotus Root...



Nicholas didn't like the smell of the store which had a weird seafood smell which wasn't very pleasant to us. Nicholas commented that we were the only white people in the store and that everyone else was brown. Odd, because I don't think of asian skin color to be that much more brown than ours but he certainly picked up on the difference. As we walked through the store we talked about the differences between cultures. Different skin color, different foods, different ways of cooking, different languages.





We even bought a few things to sample at home. However, we didn't try the lotus root because honestly I don't know how to cook something like that or if it even needs to be cooked!