Here is Ethan jumping on a inflatable bouncer with his friend Zane during his 6th birthday party.

Ethan had his sixth birthday party this year. I cannot believe he is already six. Time really goes by fast. We had his party at a jumping castle place. It was two big rooms full of different inflatable bouncers. We invited Ethan's Kindergarten class, some kids from the neighborhood, and a few friends from his old school. It was a great time. Ethan had a Lego theme. Dad made a Lego Starwars fighter jet to put on the cake.

Here is Ethan with Dad blowing out the cake and the kids eating.

There was a little kids plastic car at the inflatable place. The kids seemed to spend just as much time with this car as with jumping on the inflatables. I love this picture of Ethan.

The Huies were in Austin and stopped by for the party and so was grandma Sharon from Florida! Here are the Huies.

Grandma Sharon was in town for the whole week! We took Ethan to SeaWorld for the first time. We had lots of fun - despite the long lines. Grandma and Ethan played a water game and won a stuffed Shamu - here are some pictures.

We went to the Shamu show. I thought it would be fun to sit in the splash zone. We got splashed alright. In fact, we got totally soaked with cold salt water from head to toe. Ethan was not happy about this at all. He wanted to leave the show right away. We had to buy him a dry outfit in the gift shop. Here I am wet and Ethan in his new outfit with wet hair!

It was a great birthday and an excellent week!

Ethan had his first big homework project to build a rocket. It was a family affair with dad helping during the initial design stages. Ethan and dad found two large wrapping paper tubes and cut them to size. They also used some balsa wood for the cone nose and fins. The picture above is Ethan standing outside of his school with the rocket.

After the boys finished gluing the pieces together. Ethan and mom worked on decorating. We used foil and construction paper. We cut out designs in the construction paper and layered with different colors.We were all very happy with the rocket. Ethan's rocket was the biggest rocket in Ms. Collin's Kinder class. Ethan also reported that his was the second biggest in the whole school! The picture above is of Ethan in his classroom.

The January 2007 Ice Storm in Cedar Park, Texas shut down Austin and the surrounding area for three days. Monday was a holiday already (MLK Day), but Tuesday and Wednesday were Ethan's first "no school for bad weather days." William and I were also off of work and school for the weather. We also were lucky enough to get some snow in the mix. In the picture above Ethan is checking out the ice on the bushes.

We did not get much snow accumulation. If you look closely you can see the snowflakes.

Above are some examples of the big icicles hanging off the house. Ethan ate a few icicles, and we still have a big one in our freezer that we are saving.

Here is Ethan and his friend Zane as they head out to play in the little snow/ice that was accumulating. At one point, Zane's mom called and recounted a funny thing Ethan said. Zane's mom asked Ethan if we had a fireplace. Ethan responded "we do not have a fireplace, but we have a big warm dog." Ethan came home a bit later, and immediately started petting Holly to warm his hands.

We had a nice visit with my grandparents and Ethan's great grandparents Baevich in San Antonio over the Holidays this year. Ethan had fun opening the cool presents from his great grandparents and putting together his Lego Batmobile with the help of dad. After present opening, Ethan and dad headed outside to pick some delicious tangerines on G&G Baevich's tree (which they planted themselves). We brought a great big bag home with us and are germinating the seeds. Our little minerature pinscher "Ginger" loved grandma. I have never seen her so excited about one person before. Ginger kept running around the house and asking grandma to pick her up. It was very cute. We had a great dinner from a nearby mexican food restaurant and enjoyed catching up. It seemed Ethan was playing and not paying attention to the conversations, but he was listening. Every once in a while Ethan added a funny remark.

Part II Christmas in Corpus 2006 - While in Corpus Ethan had is first piano lesson from Grandma Gail. Ethan enjoyed learning about the piano. Aunt Claire was in Corpus as well, and Ethan and Aunt Claire played several challenging games of Othello. I am not sure who won, but to hear Ethan tell it he won every game! He is quite the competitor. We also played a few games of croquet in G&G Billy's back yard. Christmas morning Santa visited and left lots of presents for Ethan. This year Ethan got to use dad's stocking from when he was a kid. This was a real treat especially since "the stocking is huge." Everyone had fun opening presents on Christmas day including the dogs who got to open two wrapped presents each. It was a doggy christmas! Ethan loved his Christmas gifts, and we thank all of our family and friends for sending us gifts, cards, and well wishes for the Holiday season. Last but not least we celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary this year! To commerate our anniversary, I ordered us matching Dunder Mifflin Paper Company t-shirts! Those of you who watch "The Office on NBC" will know what I am talking about. Here we are. Happy New Year everyone - Love, Stephanie, William, and Ethan

Christmas in Corpus, Christi 2006 with Gail, Grandpa Billy, and Aunt Claire was lots of fun! This was the first Christmas in Gail and Grandpa Billy's new house. The had a beautiful 9 ft tree. While we were in Corpus, we went to the new addition of the art museum which was very beautiful and designed by an architect from Mexico. We also went to lunch at Water Street Oyster Bar - one of the Huie's famous haunts for oysters on the half shell. Ethan and I passed on the oysters, but still had lots of fun doing the word search on the kids menu. Ethan is really into world records these days, and during lunch he imagined a world record word seach that would cover the entire world and people would have one year to complete it. Here are some pictures of the museum (Ethan is using his new digital camera) and our lunch at Water Street. After lunch we all headed for a walk on the bay and to visit the replica of the Columbus ship the Nina on the T-Heads. Here is the gang by the ship and another picture of Ethan and me outside of the museum. While we were in Corpus we had the opportunity to go to the beach with Ginger and Holly one morning. We found a strech of beach with no one else around and let the dogs run loose. Ginger loves to run in the water and so does Holly. We all had a great time at the beach. This time Holly did not drink the salt water!! Ethan got to practice real golf (as opposed to mini golf) on the course behind G&G Billy's house. Ethan has a putter at the house and went out with mom and dad for some practice shots. Ethan did a great job, but mom was the real suprise - a perfect hole in one! We also took some time out to feed the ducks in the golf course pond. I am going to finish up the story of Christmas in Corpus 2006 in Part II - stay tuned.

Christmas trees and air guitar ... We went to get our Christmas tree last week. We picked out a 6 ft frasier fur tree. At the christmas tree tent, Ethan challenged one of the men to stand on the Christmas tree shaker after they strapped the tree on the car. The man happily accepted the challenge - it was quite a sight. After getting the tree, we went home and had a small tree decorating party with appetizers and champagne (lemonade for Ethan). Ethan topped the tree off with the gold star. We will actually be spending Christmas in Corpus this year, but we like to decorate a tree at home as well. Here are some pictures from the evening. Oh - air guitar ... Last night Ethan was supposed to be brushing his teeth after his bath. I walked into the bathroom to find a boy in underwear only with wet hair sticking up atop his head and strumming an imaginary guitar as if he were some sort of a rock star. I asked him if he knew what that was called and he replied "air guitar." I asked him "how do you you know what air guitar is?" His response was "I play it in theater arts class."

This Thanksgiving 2006 we went to Phoenix to visit Grandma and Grandpa Bond and Great Grandma and Grandpa Bond. The weather was perfect and we had lots of fun. We spent our days taking walks in the foothills surrounding Grandpa Bond's and playing a miniature pool set. We also set out to hike up Silly Mountain here are some pictures of us on our hike. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast prepared by Grandma Leanna complete with vegetarian stuffing - yummy! On Saturday we headed for Canyon Lake and rented a pontoon boat. Canyon lake is beautiful and by boat is definitely the best way to admire the beauty of the stunning canyon walls. Here are a few more pictures of the group from our trip - a picture of Ethan and Grandma Leanna on the boat and a picture of Ethan with his Great Grandparents on the boat.

I recently came across some digital pictures from when Ethan was first born and shortly thereafter when we were living in Maryland. He sure has grown a lot. It is really amazing how time passes. He was about 5 months in the picture where he is sitting up with the blocks. This morning he was asking me how old he had to be "to have a girlfriend" - and he's only five. He was also making a very cute pitch at dinner last night for a Nintendo DS - what happened to Winnie the Pooh?

Ethan had his first trip to NYC this year - November 2006. Ethan went to cheer mom on as she ran the New York City Marathon. We met grandma Sharon from Florida, Gail and Grandpa Billy, and Aunt Claire in NYC. Ethan had a lot of firsts on this trip. After arriving at the airport, Ethan had his first Taxi ride! Ethan visited Central Park - during the marathon. The photo at the top was taken just after mom finished running right outside of Central Park. Ethan visited the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History. We also went ice skating in Rockefellar Center! Ethan seems to have perfected the art of ice running. He zoomed around the rink somehow running on his skates - everyone had a great time - especially grandma! After skating, mom, Grandma, and Ethan took a bicycle taxi back to the hotel to dry off -that was a real treat!
We also visited the top of the Empire State Building. As we were looking at the skyline point out the sights - statue of liberty - chrysler Building - Roosevelt Island - etc.. Ethan yells "look I see McDonalds!" Here he is pointing out "the Golden Arches." Ethan also took several subway rides on this trip. It was a great experience for everyone.