Our First UT Soccer Game

We recently spent Friday night watching the University of Texas Women's Soccer team play Baylor.  Austin no longer has a professional (or even semi-professional) soccer team since the Austin Aztec moved to Orlando, so we figured this was a good introduction to truly competitive soccer for the boys. And I LOVE the idea that they can see some kick a$$ sportswomen.

Texas did a good job of holding off Baylor.

 The score was tied 0-0 the entire game, and with about two minutes left, we decided to leave early to avoid some traffic.

As we walked back up to our car,I stopped to admire the view of the Austin skyline over the fields.

 And watched as Baylor scored with thirty seconds left in the game.

:(

Captain Alexander of America's 8th Birthday

Last month we celebrated Alex's 8th birthday with an all-boys party at The Main Event.

Alex wanted a Captain America themed party, and we had decided not to have it at our house due to 1) the horrific state of the grass and plants thanks to close to 100 days of 100 degree heat and no rain, and 2) the mess from the flooding of my living room back in January is still present (although we have progress! Carl and I finally reached an agreement on the wood floor, and its been purchased and the installers arrive October 24 to make all my flooring dreams come true).

After studying the various boys-themed party locations, we ended up at The Main Event with sixteen boys,  and Tatianna (our neighbor whom Alex insisted be included, and when I reminded him she was of the female variety, he gave me a blank look like, Tati? A girl?) Cousins Connor and Matthew stopped by to watch the big kids climb and play.

I did my best to tie things in to the Captain America theme. Not sure that many people appreciated it other than myself, but that's enough to make it worthwhile for me.

First, the invitation. I went evite again this year, and only evite. No paper invitations, but since I'm moving towards only doing digital scrapbooks, who needs a paper invitation as a memento?

Decorations: happily, there is a line of Captain America themed decorations currently for sale thanks to the First Avenger movie. So I bought the Cap plates, napkins and cups. I bought red and blue plastic utensils from the Dollar Store, and the Main Event supplied me with red and blue tablecloths. We re-used the giant cardboard shield Carl had made last year for Alex's 7th superhero birthday party, and then I gathered up every Marvel Superhero toy I could find from the house, and we used them as table decorations. Ryan has a bunch of these little SuperHero Squad toys, so that made things easier.

  
Cake: I thought about trying to go all exotic, but since they actually have a Captain America cake in the current cake books at the grocery store - almost a first for me - I went ahead and ordered that one.

Party favors: red and blue bags containing: my handmade Captain America comic book, Captain America puzzles found at the Dollar Store (rarely have I been so happy with a Dollar Store find), the Captain America masks sold at Party City, the Captain America plastic wristbands, some various red-white-blue candy marked down after Labor Day, and some Marvel Superheroes candy (which, of course, includes Cap, but not everyone got Cap).  What I cried when I saw these at HEB two days after the party and wished I could have included in the goody bag instead of the aforementioned candy: Captain America themed fruit snacks. I kept thinking there was a chance these would come out, but were they there any time I looked prior to September 17? Nooooo...

More on my homemade Captain America comic book: I loved doing this! When I first started thinking party favors, I thought about buying a comic book for each child. But this was so much better, and a lot of fun to make. I was considering printing out a Captain America word search or MadLib for the goody bags, and doing some googling for good options, when I came across the Marvel kids website. Not only did they have great coloring pages and word searches, but they had a link to "Create Your Own Comic!" Which is how I then proceeded to spend an entire evening on this:

 

 

 On to the party... Although Alex's birthday was on Saturday, we had the party on Sunday since we don't receive the soccer schedules early enough for me to make plans. The party started with an hour of rock climbing.

 

We've been to rock climbing parties before, and the boys always love it, and its nice for the adults to be able to stand around or sit and talk with each other while they climb. Everyone had a chance to make several climbs, and both Alex and Ryan reached the top multiple times. Considering this was Ryan's first time to actually rock climb, we were most impressed with him. He had a blast, and even managed some of the more difficult climbs that Alex wasn't able to make (but don't tell the birthday boy!).

Then they moved us into the party room, where there was pizza, cake and ice cream. Alex wanted to open his presents, which he's never done before at one of his parties. I hate wasting people's time, and I'm always afraid of bad reactions from the guest of honor. Happily this was a success.

Then we were off to play a game of laser tag. I went into the laser tag room, and took several pictures. Of course, its completely dark while you are in there, so I was never really sure what I was photographing until later.

Finally, it was time for video game play.

And then everyone went home, and I went home to a clean house, with one very happy First Avenger.

I would have loved a cameo appearance at the party by my favorite actor, Richard Armitage, who just happens to appear as Heinz Kruger in the 'Captain America' movie, but somehow he never did respond to the evite I sent him. Too busy filming a little Hobbit film in New Zealand, I guess. Maybe next year Alex will want a 'Hobbit' party? Hmmm...

Disney's Photo Pass

Since I don't seem to be making much progress in wrapping up the rest of the Disney trip, I'm going to rant and rave a bit about their Photo Pass Photographers.

These are the guys that wander around the park and take your picture. Its all down to a science now, and you have a little card you carry around, and every time they take your photo, they scan it and its added to your account. You then have thirty days to decide if you want to buy the pictures.

During our week there, we ended up with 162 Photo Pass images. Several of them were duplicates of what I had taken. But for some events, like Captain Jack's Pirate Tutorial, the photographer had a much better view than we did. So his pictures were a thousand times better than what we took.

And thus my dilemma began. For $150, I could order a DVD with all 162 images on it. But I didn't want all 162. I only wanted about 15 of them. But I have to spend $9.95 per photo I want to receive two 4x6 photos, of the same print, or $14.95 to get a digital download of the photo. At that rate, I should just buy the DVD.

I've spent the past 30 days trying to decide just how important it was to me to get the upclose photos of Alex fighting Captain Jack. The ones that actually showed their faces, as opposed to the back of their heads.


So at 10:45 pm last night - 15 minutes before my photos would expire, I caved.

And bought just these two photos.

I especially love Alex's smile in this one with Captain Jack's arm around him.

And here a few I really wanted, but ultimately didn't want $14.95 worth.

Carl did a print screen editing trick to get these for me. They are extremely rotten quality and would never print out in an actual photograph, but at least I can see the little logo they insert at the bottom for you that says something like "I Met Captain Jack Sparrow." Since I can't enlarge it into any kind of decent quality - and that font is pretty darn small - I'm not exactly sure what it says.

This one cracks me up. I want to say its priceless, but since I didn't think I should spend $14.95 on it, I suppose it does have a value, and calling it priceless doesn't seem right. Anyway... this is one the photographer shot of Ryan after he realized that Alex and three other children got to go up on stage, and that he was not going to be selected.

My poor baby! I knew he was sad about it, but I didn't realize he was this sad.

But its okay... because he was one of the second batch of kids picked to come up at the end for the Pirates Oath.

See? We're Similin' Ryan again.

I just wish that I didn't have to make a difficult, Sophie's Choice-like decision as to which photos to buy. I get that Disney is a huge corporation, run by executives whose job it is to find as many ways possible to take as many of my dollars as possible. But would it kill them to offer some sort of option between $14.95 per digital file and $150.00 for 162? Even 5 for $50 would have been better, and made me feel I was getting a bulk special. I probably would have spent the $50, and bought all 5 of these if that were the case. But instead, I just bought the two images, and Disney, you lost $20 of my dollars that I know you would like to get.

The Wedding of the Century

Normally when I look in my email inbox and see the words, "Fandango Fan Mail," I hit delete.

But there were a few key words in the title that made me double click on the email instead, and open it.

A personal invitation to something Breaking Dawn related? You bet your Edward I'm going to open this one.

So I click on the red seal.

Which causes my name to float by on an animated envelope. Nice touch.

The envelope starts to open.

 What could it be??

 And then...

ITS MY VERY OWN WEDDING INVITATION 

TO EDWARD'S WEDDING!

THE WEDDING OF THE CENTURY! 

And if this isn't cool enough, there's a new trailer for the film. A much more, ahem, detailed trailer.  Enjoy.

 

SuperMom Success (of sorts)

We did make it to Baskin Robbins this weekend.

Alas, they no longer carry the Captain America flavors and sundaes, and there aren't any Baskin Robbins in the greater Austin area that carry any, either. They've moved on to football themed ice creams.

But we did make our way to the new Toys R Us, which moved from the rather convenient, easy-accessed Lakeline area to the over-crowded, heavily trafficked Arboretum area. Alex needed to finalize his birthday wish list which is only next weekend. Yikes!

And guess who was there?

That's right.

SuperMom scored a BIG success on Saturday.

SuperMom Failure

As the mother of a superhero, I am usually pretty alert for any sort of superhero tie-ins that come around. And as the mother of Captain America's #1 fan, Captain Alexander, I am on high alert for all things Captain America.

Which is how I have no clue how I missed the Captain America tie-in promotions at Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins this summer.

These aren't exactly places we frequent, but its not unheard of for me to step foot in one of these stores. Alex and I have even had more than one conversation as to how surprising it was that neither McDonalds or Burger King had any kind of Happy Meal featuring Cap.

So color me stunned when we walked into Dunkin Donuts last weekend on our way to Houston and found plastic cups with a familiar looking red, white and blue shield on them.

They even had a gigantic cup, which came with three different flavors of their fruit slushy drink. And the lid was his shield.

 

Even though it was breakfast time, I broke all sorts of rules and let him order it. The sales associate mentioned they used to have Captain donuts last month, but not anymore.

So I did a bit of internet sleuthing today, and it turns out that I also missed this tie-in at Baskin Robbins.

So now I'm torn.

Do I take him to Baskin Robbins this weekend, and hope they still have some Super Soldier Swirl, or the Hydra Force Sundae?

Or do I just keep my SuperMom Failure a secret?

Skateboards, Star Wars, and Smoke

We went to Houston for Labor Day weekend, and while we were there, Mom took Alex shopping for an early birthday present: a skateboard.

Carl and I had talked about it before hand, and had decided Alex was finally old enough to venture into the world of extreme sports.

  He was thrilled!

He called it the best present EVER, and by the end of the weekend, he was already frighteningly good at it.

 Mom also got Ryan a "mini" skateboard. He's still not quite sure what to do with it, so when we went to her local elementary school for some nice flat surfaces, Ryan mostly hung around this pole while Alex went to town on his skateboard.

 Our other big event for the weekend was getting together with my good friend, Lisa, and her kids Xavi and Jane, for a trip to the Houston Museum of Health. It was actually cooler than it sounds - more of a children's science museum. And most importantly, it was host to the exhibit, "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination."

We looked at a lot of costumes and props from the films.

Alex was especially enthralled with the weapon display. It featured elegant weapons from a more civilized age, blasters, and even had a thermal detonator.

But everyone's favorite part was the hands-on display where you build your very own landspeeder, out of, you guessed it, LEGOs and magnets. It was actually quite exciting, when you could get your magnets in the right place and your craft would hover like it was supposed to.

Sadly, the Millennium Falcon ride had sold out right before we got there. But Lisa and I were the only disappointed ones - the kids didn't even notice.

We had a great weekend, and the only dark spot was the dark spot so many Texans suffered from - the horrific fires which engulfed Bastrop and so many areas of Austin. This was an insane weekend - when we drove out to Houston on Saturday, we passed a fire on the side of the road. The flames were crazy huge, but there were no fire trucks in sight. I called 911, and was shocked to be told I was only the second report of the fire. Within five minutes, we passed four fire trucks rushing towards that scene, but given the way those flames were going, I can't imagine what destruction the fire caused in those five minutes.

Twice in Houston we drove past what we thought were accident scenes - but they were fires that had only just been put out.

And our drive home on Labor Day took us over five hours - a drive I can normally make in 2:45. We always take Highway 290, but we still travelled with a scary view of the Bastrop fire for much of the drive. And when we were finally in Austin, and I took the completely out of the way toll road home just to get off the not-going-anywhere 290 as soon as possible, we made that high up turn from 45 to 183 south, and the vistas looked like something out of a war zone. You could see the Leander fires, the Steiner Ranch fires, the Spicewood/Pedernales fire, and of course, the scary Bastrop fire, even though we were 30 miles away. It looked as if someone had dropped bombs over Central Texas.

I hope I never see a sight like that again.