Max's Dancing Debuet

Check out Max's dance performance in Mary's blog. For those in the know, when you see his solo at the end, am I crazy or do you get a distinct Grandma Brown vibe too?

Lucky Duck

A couple months ago at work, Abram won a night out on the firm. So tonight we went to The Capital Grille with the Hales and the Virays. It was beautiful. I had a few moments of food ecstasy, fantastic adult conversation, and an extra hour of sleep tonight. Who could ask for more?

P.S. Check out that chocolate cake. That was after I ate half of it.

P.P.S. I had few bites of calamari (completely edible and of course deep fat fried) and a bite of a crab cake (gagged twice).

Yes, the Ears Are Crocheted

I've never claimed to be crafty. I've never even secretly thought it. So why I thought if I attempted to create Max's Mickey Mouse costume it would turn out better than the costumes I found online, I'll never know. Luckily, he's so stinkin' cute he can pretty much make any goofy thing he wears a hit.

One of Max's favorite things to do is pretend there are sharks or witches coming, and then hiding from them with us. Then we shake our finger at them and tell them to go home and leave us alone. Well, you can imagine Max's shock when we were trick or treating and he looked up to see a real life 10 year old witch standing next to him. He nearly wet himself (actually, he probably did for all I know) and leaped over to my leg, clinging to me for dear life. I kept trying to tell him it was okay, but he didn't get brave until we parted ways on the sidewalk and he screamed ferociously over my shoulder, "GO HOME WITCH!"

Everything's Better Fried

Here's the Birthday Boy and his two best friends. We went to The Carlyle last night for Abram's birthday (of course) and it was delicious as always. Which leads me to some very big news. I have decided to learn to like seafood. They say that kids have to eat a new food 10 times before they learn to like it. So I told Abram that from now on, when he orders seafood at a restaurant I am going to try a bite of it. Last night was my first time. We ordered Firecracker Shrimp for an appetizer and I had two bites. I am proud to say that I didn't even gag. I'm sure it helped that it had been deep fat fried. That helps everything.

The other big news is that Vivi has started sleeping for 3-4 hours at a time. Just in time too, I've been doing pretty well with no sleep, but yesterday was the first day I felt tired all day. I remember a while ago we were all asking my parents questions about how they parented us when we were really little and they kept saying they couldn't remember. My dad said that that whole period is just a blur in his memory. That sounds about right. Just last week feels like a blur to me!

The Office

Abram's birthday is this Saturday and while Sherry was here she gave him a calender titled: "The Office: A 2008 inspirational wall calender" It gave us a few good laughs since it is our FAVORITE show. However, I was a little disappointed it didn't include one of my favorite quotes from Dwight:

Jim: Dwight, if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Dwight: I can travel anywhere, except Cuba, and I will travel to New Zealand and walk the Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor and I will hike Mount Doom.

My favorite line last week was from Creed in the middle of that brilliant sequence of dialogue about the use of the word "whomever":

Ryan: What I really want, honestly, Michael is for you to know it so that you can communicate it to the people here, to your clients, whomever.
Michael: Oh okay.
Ryan: What?
Michael: It's whoever, not whomever.
Ryan: It's whomever.
Michael: No, whomever is never acutally right.
Jim: Nope, sometimes it's right.
Creed: Michael is right. It's a made up word used to trick students

To trick students! Creed kills me. Definitely my favorite character. So on that note, I'm about to go watch this week's episode and go to bed happy.

More From This Weekend With Preston

Get Off My Back Lisa

All right, all right, I'm back. Here are a few highlights since Abram has gone back to "I'm too busy to blog" mode.

1. Adam came to town and met Aviva. He quickly won Max over with a Diego megaphone. Just what Max needed, a megaphone.

2. Sherry came to visit with Preston to begin his best friendship with Max. We spent Friday and Saturday with all the Ellis cousins, and I'm telling you there is nothing that makes Max happier than playing with cousins. I can't believe how my heart just fills up when I see it. This part of parenting has been totally unexpected. I never even thought of it before. It's the same way when he's with his Quinn cousins and I love it.

3. Staying home with two hasn't been nearly as bad as I had convinced myself it would be. Here are some updated photos of Aviva. I swear every time I pick her up she's gotten bigger. Last night she only woke up one time! I'm sure we'll go straight back to twice a night, but you gotta love those flukes.