A visit to the aquarium

Parker loved seeing all the fish this past weekend at the Houston Downtown Aquarium. Check out some of the pictures of him in action, soaking it all in. :)

Here's my favorite one... of course, I am a little biased. ;)

Swimin' with the fishes

Well, we didn't exactly swim with the fishes, but Santa did. We had breakfast with Santa today at the Houston Aquarium. Check out Santa and his helper elf behind Parker and Ms. Claus. Parker loved looking at all the fish. He got to see sharks, stingrays, eels, and a bunch of other types of fish. We ate sausage, bananas, eggs, waffles, pancakes, chicken fried steak, and bacon. Boy was it good!

Sunday night videos

I wanted to post a couple of videos I thought were cute for those of you who don't get to see Parker as often as others do. The first video is of me waking Parker up one morning. He is so sweet when he sleeps. He is usually pretty groggy in the morning when he first wakes up. This video shows it a little, but some mornings are even worse. I try to take it slow in the morning to give him time to wake up before we do anything too exciting like play with the dog or toys.

This next video is of Parker walking in the grass in the back yard. That may not seem like much, but for the longest time he didn't like the grass because it gave under his feet and he didn't feel stable. Now he begs to go outside and walk in the grass. There is just so much to see and do out there. Check him out!

Love me some BBQ

After Gymboree today, Parker got his first taste of Spring Creek BBQ. He thought it was pretty good, especially the mac-n-cheese. But as you can see from the "after" photo, a lot of it ended up on his clothes.

Here is a blow up of some of the more obvious stains. :)

Santa photo op

Parker went to the Galleria mall today and got his picture taken with the big guy. He was pretty good... for a 16-month old. This image was the best of the lot. After we paid for the photo, we proceeded up stairs so Parker could run wild in the play area. He loves to climb on things. I took some great Polaroids that I will have to post later.

Happy Holidays!

A Spooktacular Halloween!

I have been swamped at work, so pardon me for the lack of postings last month. I meant to get these pictures up the weekend of Halloween, but with Grandpa in town, it just didn't get done.

Anyway, Parker had a lot of fun during Halloween. The fun started at school on Friday. Parker wore his costume and went trick-or-treating. He got a lot of goodies from the other class rooms. Below, Parker posed for a few photos near some of the decorations in the hallway.

Saturday, we all went to the Houston Zoo for ZooBoo. Parker got a stamp on his hand as you can see below.

In addition to getting some more goodies at various places in the zoo, Parker got to pick his own pumpkin and decorate it. As you might have guessed, Parker took his time picking out his pumpkin. He must have pulled out 20 of them before we decided on one as shown in the pictures below.

We ended the day at the zoo by taking a train ride around the grounds. Parker loves trains. He rides them at the malls around Houston all the time. This was a much bigger train and it was outside compared to just riding around inside the mall. Parker loved it.

On Monday, Parker, Grandpa, and I took a trip to see Great-Grandma Hogan in Beaumont. We arrived a little before noon and visited for a bit before going to lunch at Cheddars. Parker found some wooden apples on Great-Grandma Hogan's table and starting playing with them. He thought it was so much fun to take them all out and put them all back in again.

Parker visits Dewberry Farm

This past Saturday, Parker took his parents to Dewberry Farm, located a few miles north of Brookshire (about 20 minutes from the house). It is a neat farm-like place that has a bunch of fall activities mainly geared towards kids. Parker got to visit the petting zoo and see a lot of animals including bunnies, goats, cows, chickens, horses, and ducks.

Parker had a lot of fun riding on the "corn train", which was a series of 55 gallon drums on wheels pulled behind a tractor. It was dusty, but it was a blast. As you can see from the next three photos.

After riding the corn train twice, once with mommy and once with daddy; Parker wanted to take a break. We sat on the hay in some shade while we had a drink. Parker watched all the kids playing on the rope swings, wishing that he was just a little bigger so he could partake in the fun.

After doing some other fun stuff like riding a real pony and sliding down a tall slide with daddy, Parker took off in a corn maze. As you can see from the photo below, he fell a few times because the ground was quite uneven, but he didn't cry or get upset. He just got back up and kept on truckin'.