Pumpkin Painting

Our lion cub can not be trusted to carve his own pumpkin yet, so to keep it safe we let him go to town on his very own pumpkin with paint...

 He seemed to have a whole lot more fun painting the board the paints were on...

 Then he ripped his smock off and painted the subject at hand.

 As you can see he painted himself in the process...

 No matter though, a little paint never hurt anybody. He was so proud of his work he told me "Momma, all done!" and then leaned over, kissed his pumpkin and told it, "Love you, pumpkin".

 Job well done Jackson! Et le Pièce de résistance:

Tone Deaf

My poor son. He has no voice. It's not his fault. There are about 4-6 songs that I sing to him EVERY day. Did I say EVERY day? I mean ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY. He asks me to, so I do as I'm told.

'Happy Birthday' happens to be one of those songs on constant rotation. For those of you who don't quite understand him he is saying, "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, to you, to you, etc". I give translations because his own dad doesn't always understand him....Enjoy!

A proud moment

Apparently at Jackson's school they do lots of paintings and projects. I say apparently because I am usually ushered out quickly and can never really see what all goes on there.

Today, Jackson came home with one of his projects. They made Halloween t-shirts with their feet and he was SOOOO proud of it!

I asked him about it and he grabbed his shirt, smiled and said, "Mama, poner, poner!" (put on) so I put it on him and he LOVED it. When we got home he asked me to take pictures of him outside in it he asked, "Mama, fotos, afuera, afuera" (photo, outside). He ran to different corners of the backyard and said, "Aqui, foto aqui" (here, photo, here).

It was definitely a proud moment for our cub. And for his momma!

The District

We were invited to Jack's friend and fraternity brother, Charlie Stern's wedding in Washington D.C. so we decided to make a trip out of it and take our cub (and my parents) along for the ride! 

Jack is in charge of buying plane tickets in this house and he secretly put us on the same flight from Dallas as my parents were on. They had NO IDEA and thought we were just meeting them in D.C. 

When Jackson saw them walking in the airport he RAN through soooo many people and jumped into Gigi and Abuelo's arms! It was a great surprise moment and they were all happy campers. 

 Once there, we settled in and mapped out our itinerary for the days to follow. Jackson's favorite DC landmark? The subway. Yup, he was obsessed with the tren (train).

We very slowly peeled him off the subway by telling him all about the Smithsonian's we were about to visit. He was enthralled with the Space and Aviation museum and adored the dinosaurs and elephant at the Natural History one. 

 
 Jackson even got to go to his very first planetarium which he thought was soooooo riveting ;).

 We got to tour the Capitol building as well as the White House. Jackson of course was a perfect angel on both tours (not at all) and made sooooo many friends along the way.

Special thanks to the groom who hooked us up with last minute White House tour passes and gave the tour himself! If anyone is ever in need of the best tour guide known to man, please contact Charlie Stern. He was seriously unbelievable AND he was getting married the next day! 

One of Jack's other friends (and fraternity brothers) Matt Stevens just moved to DC with his lovely wife Clare and their 3 month old, Olivia. We were able to catch up with them and meet the sweet girl herself. 

Jackson was an absolute doll with Olivia. He kept wanting to hold her hand and sit next to her. It was really sweet to see. That is until he decided to pick up a pile of dirt and throw it in her face. I'd like to think it was because we were overrunning his nap time. Regardless, it was pretty embarrassing.

Clare and Matt LOVED my parents and asked them, not us (wonder why) to come back whenever they'd like. Thanks for meeting us guys, promise our boy will be better behaved next time around ;)

 On our last day we toured Alexandria, VA where incidentally the wedding was held. The town was beautiful and my parents even pretended to move in:

The wedding itself was absolutely spectacular chalked full of Fall perfection. This is a real place people!

 Special thanks to all of our friends who made our vacation so easy and pleasant and GRACIAS mami y papi por toda su ayuda!!! Love you guys :)

Tough Mudder

Tough Mudder is an excruciating race that takes place all over the country and it just so happened to be in Austin this past weekend. 

No, our cub did not participate, (we were there to cheer on Tio Bibi) but that didn't stop him from trying... 

My brother asked us to go watch him/cheer him on about six months ago when he first signed up so he had the whole family out there this time. My parents included!

Jackson loved watching all the different people run by and had fun watching all the obstacles they had to endure, but the thing he loved the most was getting to play in the dirt...

Fortunately for Jackson his dad picked him up just in time to see his Tio Bibi run by. As usual, Bibi was having wayyyyyy too much fun running through mud and even paused for some 'candids'....

These shots are my favorite by far though. At the end of the race they have an electric field all the participants have to run through to finish....

So yea, my brother definitely got electrocuted...

But he survived and finished in great time! Congrats Bibi! 

FALLing

Behind that is. Apologies for lack of posting. The change in season has also brought on various life changes. Some good, some not so good, all part of this circle we call life.

Our cub? Amazing as usual. He is the light in our lives, the sun in our sky, the reason for the season. Every season. He is our everything, and I am reminded constantly that he is a lot of people's everything, and that in of itself is, well, everything.