My Zara Niño

Ryan went out last night with some coworkers and was showered with a nice stash of clothes for Brooks. I love the store Zara. I am sure to many others it's about a medium grade store....kinda in the middle price range and quality. But to me, the Old Navy shopper, it's a bit more than I like to typically spend on clothes unless they are on sale. So when Ryan came home with these little man Zara jeans, I just had to laugh. How adorable they are. Not to mention I really like that my little kiddo will be dressed in Spanish apparrel. Viva Espana. And they even have the Euro cut legs.

Jack's Back

I wanted the title post to also mention Ava's back as well, which is equally as important, but I just like the rhyme of the title, and so it remains.

Our friends are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Chance has been waiting all summer for the return of his friends from their LOOOOOOOOOOONG trips back to the US. We met up at the park today and spent 3 hours watching the kids run and play, while the moms mostly parked ourselves on the blankets and had very nice chats ourselves.

I was telling Ryan the other day how play at the park has changed so dramatically this summer. Seems only yesterday at this same park I was camped out underneath the climbing equipment with my hands held high, in the event that Chance might fall as he scaled the ropes atop a very high climbing structure. Or waited at the bottom of the slide to catch Chance at the bottom of it, or tried to prevent him from falling off the pole as he tried to slide down it with very little grip. Well, not no mo. Chance can now scale the pole, ground up, in a matter of 3 seconds...and stop half way up and just hang there looking around. He can climb the rock wall to the top of the rope structure with confidence, and instead of sliding down the slide, he is now running up it at lightening speed. My little man is not so little anymore....actually Monday he is now my first grader. Ay yay yay.

DEFINE: "Nubicious"

Today for lunch we made breakfast bagels, with eggs and bacon inside. It was Ryan's idea and he worked very hard in the kitchen to pull these bad boys together. We sit down to eat and Chance proclaims after taking a bite:

"These are delicious, nutricious and nubicious. You know what "nubicious" means? It means that they look a lot better than they taste"

Get Up Get Up Get Moving

Chance has been out of school for 7 weeks of summer, and I've gotta say I have turned in to one of those mothers I swore I would never be. I've spent the last 5 years dedicated to nurturing the brain of my child, stimulating his mind and encouraging some advanced learning so that he could get ahead in this life...ok, so it's probably been way over the top but this summer the pendulum has swung the other way.....WAY the other way, and I have become one of those mothers that doesn't stop her child from picking up his gameboy and playing it until the battery dies, or stop her child from watching the same episode of Super Why for the 12th time in the same day. My only saving grace is that at least Super Why encourages reading, and enough of it might then counteract the brain cell destruction that comes with hours on end of gameboy playing. And I justify all of this with the reasoning that I am pregnant and doing the best that I can, but I just had an epiphany today in the kitchen while prepping dinner, that maybe it's cause I know that I am about to start groundhogs day with the next 5 years of my life, and the pressure of stimulating a child's brain is about to start all over again, and maybe just maybe I just happened to need the last 7 weeks off!

All this sitting around did get to me this past weekend. The boys took off for a little while on Saturday to get Chance out of house, and while it was so nice to be alone for a couple hours I am so glad that on Sunday I decided to participate in the activities. We headed down to the lake and walked along the promenade towards town. So many people were out and about and Chance kept himself very entertained with his remote control jeep and ice cream cone.


I started playing with some more of the Photoshop features today and here's the boys down at the lake feeding the swans....with a little watercolor touch up.

The Swiss alphorn players were out playing some tunes which we captured on tape,



and then we passed the man who takes rocks and magically stacks them on top of eachother. I've gotta say the balancing act is pretty impressive.

The day ended up taking us to the train station so I could get a new phone. My prego brain caused me to leave it on the tram the other day, and somehow I didn't luck out to get it back. Someone is now walking around with my phone on their ear but at least my new one works in our apartment, which is a very nice new upgrade. I used to have to hang my head out the window to get phone reception. So with new phone in hand we went to Sam's Pizza, a great Americanish pizza place we've found near the train station with thick crust and melty cheese. The 6-sliced pizza that we devoured with no left overs still cost us a nice 40 bucks (before drinks and a side salad) but sometimes it's just nice to get out!