BJ's Wholesale Cuteness

Who knew that a simple trip to BJ's could produce such a sweet photo-op This was Maeby's first ride in a shopping cart. I think she enjoyed herself and Kinzie really liked sharing the large BJ's cart-riding-space with her sister.

One More Look

Mackinzie has been a big fan of Mamma Mia! ever since she first saw the movie with her Grand-pop. Since that time she has come to know each character and every song. When we heard that the stage performance was coming to Baltimore, we knew we had to get tickets. This past Saturday Laura and I took Mackinzie, along with both of our parents - Gigi & Pop-pop, and Mimi & Grand-pop - to the Hippdrome to see Sophie, Donna, Harry, Bill, Sam, and the gang live on stage. Needless to say, Kinzie was extremely excited!
The show was excellent, the music was really good and a great time was had by all.
At the end of the show, for a monetary donation, the audience was offered the opportunity to get their picture taken with the actors portraying Sophie and Sky. This was the icing on the cake for Kinzie. Here is the Polaroid we got to take home.

More Chuck For Your Cheese

When one visit to Chuck E. Cheese's isn't enough, you can count to Gigi to make a second visit happen!
This visit was special because Kinzie's and Maeby's cousins, Emma & Brooke, had just returned from a long visit to Walt Disney World and they were eager to reunite....
... and where better to do it than where "a kid can be a kid".

Kinzie and Maeby both took a ride with Chuck himself...
.... these photos were captured by one of those new speeding cameras you're seeing now on the busy roads. I keep telling those girls to slow down!
(it looks to me like Chuck needed a designated driver - too much pizza and skee-ball will do that to a mouse)

Where A Kid Can Be A Kid

On Friday night our family was invited to Chuck E. Cheese's in Bel Air for Tasha's birthday party. Tasha is Kinzie's friend from school. Here is a picture of Kinzie and Tasha at Kinzie's birthday party, back in October. We had a great time at the party!
And of course, what is a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's without a stop at the photo booth... it only costs one token.

... a small price to pay for an original piece of artwork drawn by Mr. Chuck E. Cheese himself!
We last visited Chuck E. Cheese's and his photo booth back in December of 2007.

Kinzie was just two years old and we were still seven months away from getting married... (not even engaged yet!)
Here are a couple more shots from the photo booth:

Our big girl!

Kinzie and mommy!

I Heard I Was In Town

Laura and I made a "long-weekend" trip to Nashville, Tennessee a couple of weeks ago (sans kids) to visit some old friends from college. I attended Belmont University from the Fall of 1998 through the Spring of 2001 and continued to live in Nashville until early 2004. Over five years later, I still have a lot of good friends down there - mostly Phi Delta Theta fraternity brothers. As soon as we got off the airplane and got our rental car, we headed over to my friend, Garth's, house. He and his wife, Laura, would be our hosts for the weekend - for which we were very grateful! After briefly settling in, we hit the town to meet up with friends.

On Friday night, we had a great time at the Varsity Grille and the Red Door Saloon. It was quite a switch for us to be out till almost 4:30am!
After some Saturday afternoon recovery time, we hit up the Embassy Suites hotel bar (where Blair was staying), Pie In The Sky for dinner, followed by a visit to the Riverfront Tavern... capped off with a final stop to the "World Famous" Lonnie's Western Room in Printer's Alley. It was great to share with Laura some of my old stomping grounds from my college days.... and another post-4:00am night!

Here I am with Garth, who has been one of my closest friends in Nashville since we were both Freshman at Belmont back in 1998.

It was great to have Blair in town to hang out with us too! He is a big fan of Laura's. "You look just like Sara Evans!", he always says.
Sunday morning included a trip to Sam's Sports Bar & Grill to watch the Ravens lose to the Vikings (I used to watch every Ravens game at Sam's), a trip to Sonic!, and some relaxation at Garth & Laura's house after two straight long nights out.
I'd just like to, once again, thank Garth and Laura Click for opening their home to us while we were in town.... also, to Laura, thanks for taking some great pictures and sharing them with us!
Check out their blog too!

-Bert

Kinzie's 4th Birthday!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... So the blog has been on hiatus for a while now. Even today's post is about an event that took place over a month ago! Better late than never.
For those of you who were unable to join us for Mackinzie's 4th birthday party, these photos are for you!
Each year, Laura strives to make Kinzie as cute as humanly possible on her birthday. Many people still talk about the shiny, sparkly silver dress from her 2nd birthday. This year, Laura really outdid herself and made this puffy, colorful tutu all by herself. It was pretty awesome!
We celebrated Kinzie's birthday at the Bounce Party N' Play in White Marsh.
Kinzie had previously attended her friend, Ava's, birthday party there back in January - in fact we blogged about it way back then.
This was the first year that Kinzie was able to invite some of her friends from school and we were very happy to have them join us.

Of course, the usual family members were in attendance... including Uncle Play-Doh!

The Bounce Party N' Play is a really fun place. Its basically a small warehouse painted in bright colors and housing some of the largest moon-bounces you've ever seen!

Most of them require a lot of climbing, crawling and maneuvering to get through them.

The kids really enjoy it... almost as much as the adults, who are also welcome to join in the jumping fun!

Baby Maeby was such a good baby all day! We were at no shortage of people willing to hold her throughout the party so that me and Laura could participate in the jumping fun.
Here our friend Tana is taking her turn with Maeby.

Kinzie's friend, Tristan, from church, had a great time!

This was probably my favorite moon-bounce there: the giant slide!

.... at the top of the large staircase was two huge slides... as Kinzie demonstrates in these photos.

For the bigger kids, there was an over-sized boxing ring. Me and Will duked it out like we did when we were kids.

Grandpop had a great time too, although he may have wore himself out a bit!

After almost 2 hours of jumping fun, we were treated to some snacks and cake.

... it was a pretty packed little room, but all the kids were hungry and thirsty after all of that excitement.

After eating, Kinzie opened her gifts.

Here are Kinzie and her cousin, Emma.

It was a really great party! I think that everyone had a great time and we brought Kinzie into her fourth year with style.
-Bert

Maeby's First Ravens Game

Our little baby Maeby turned four months old yesterday (August 13th). Her big sister, Kinzie, was in Virginia for the week, so she got a special treat....
... a trip to M&T Bank Stadium to watch the Ravens first preseason game of the year! The official Ravens photographer came through our section and snapped this picture. Its then made available online for purchase with a Ravens frame to put on a shirt, or mug, or whatever. I chose to rip the picture from the website - gotta love the 'print-screen' option! - and post it here on our blog for free!
Maeby was a good baby all evening. She was really interested in the game and all the excitement for the first hour or so, but then she eventually got a little tired and cranky. She slept for about 30 minutes and by the time the 3rd and 4th string players were scrubbing it up in the fourth quarter we were all about ready to head home.
Great win - by the way. Any time, preseason or not, when we get to stick it to the Redskins is a good time. Hopefully the 23-0 win will precede another great season for the Ravens.
I love being able to take my girls to Ravens games - but it is strictly a pre-season thing. The regular season games are a little too intense for my little girls.
Laura took a lot more pictures, so maybe she'll post them later.
We leave this evening to pick up Kinzie. We're very excited to have our big girl back soon!

The last Disney Park & the last Character breakfast

We picked MiMi up from the airport on Wednesday evening. (yayy!) Then Thursday for dinner we headed back to (you guessed it....) Margaritaville! We aren't sure who got more of our money during this trip Disney or Buffett haha...
Here's daddy and his two girls waiting outside...

daddy in his glory...and the brainfreeze that came with it haha...

And here's daddy with his youngest in front of Jimmy's plane...

Then Friday we did our last day at the Disney parks! We started off at Holleywood Studios where Bert auditioned for Aerican idol.....

He didn't make it, but thats because the lady was a crazy woman (enough said ;)) ....

We went to playhouse disney and as you can see Kinzie liked this alot!

It was a really cute show and Kinzie had a front row seat

We got to meet Buzz LightYear and Woody... in the line to wait there were many photo-ops!

Oh no, Kinzie! Look out!!

Of course daddy thought he could do it better than kinzie... haha

She was not very excited about being attached to a rocket and flying all over the neighborhood

then we met Woody!

and Buzz...

heres the whole gang

outside was a green army man (geez, he had to be hot!)

Then we took a long hot boatride over to epcot... we walked around the world and met a few lovely friends... such as belle in france :)

Mackinzie LOVED her! "She is soooo beautiful"

In Germany we had to make Grandpop jealous by stopping for the best soft pretzels EVER!

The whole walk around the world, Kinzie kept saying "when are we gonna get to China" because she reaaaalllly wanted to meet Mulan. When we got there...there was no Mulan, but we bought a beautiful umbrella to match Kinzies fan (see previous charleston posts). The ladies working there told us Mulan would be out shortly. Here is the umbrella and they write her name in chinese on it....well.... at least we hope it says her name haha...

Then Mulan came out!

Mulan was fun :) She was showing Kinzie how to peek out of it like they do in the movie

After a few rides, we wanted to head back to Morocco to try to meet Aladdin...on the way in Germany we got to meet Snow White!

When we got to Morocco we waited 20 minutes for Aladdin and jasmine to come out and then the photographer told us they actually wouldn't be coming out for another 45 minutes (forget that!)

So Bert and I did a spaceship ride where it feels like you are actually in a spaceship going to outerspace. It was crazy! I was a nervous wreck in line for this! Then as we are standing on our spots about to get on.. this lady in front of me asks her husband "Isn't this the ride a man died on" (WHAT!??).... then as I sit in my seat, the 10 year old boy next to me kindly shows me where the barf bag is but asks me nicely to turn my head the opposite way if I do need to... you know... haha... so my job in this ride is pilot (nice, right?) so during the ride it tells me to push some button or something or another and since I was spending my time freaking out instead of listening i had no idea what to do... so the little 10 year old boy pushes my button for me and sarcastically says "This is why woman should not be allowed to drive!" hahhahah.... what a funny little kid!! :) Anyway... I survived! And it was pretty fun!

Then we took the hot boat ride back to hollywood studios....Kinzie was sleeping so Mimi sat outside with her while Bert and I road the Aerosmith RocknRollercoaster twice and then we got on the tower of terror twice (we used fast passes from the previous visit a week ago and no one noticed.... Bert felt like the man!.... and as he said.... we were..... "stickin it to the mouse!"

So then the next morning we got up and headed to the Contemporary Resort to have breakfast at Chef Mickey's.

We got to meet Mickey.... goofy...

Minnie....

Pluto...

and Donald Duck!
This was the closest we could come to Minnie holding Delaney. You can see how thrilled Maeby is haha...

heres daddy, donald, and the girls

And MiMi and Maeby

And Mimi and both her girls

We decided to head to downtown disney one last time after breakfast to give us our Disney experience closure .... heres daddy and his girls with the pirate

And Beautiful Mackinzie with her Minnie Mouse ears :) I love this picture :)

So we are done with our 3 character meals, and our 3 hopper days at Disney. We are spending just a couple relaxing (and for bert - working) days before we head back to Maryland on Wednesday! It was a WONDERFUL vacation in which we fully spoiled ourselves and our girls! But we do look forward to being home and spending time with our friends and families! We miss you! See you soon!!