My Favorite Moments of Christmas 2010

The 2010 Christmas holiday time has come to an end and I just wanted to do a quick recap of my favorite moments of this holiday season.

• Receiving a BIG hug from my little man the morning of Christmas Eve.
  We had been gone for a week on an anniversary trip to Jamaica and his hug told me how much he missed us.
• The reaction of my best friend’s three children when they received their prizes for the 2010 Wallace Family Christmas Eve Cookie Contest at my parents’ house.
  I don’t think I have seen more grateful children than them in a long time.
• Finally getting an upgraded wedding band from Cara.
  My old band was pretty boring and it was time I had a band that reflected my feelings about my spouse.
• Me crying when being surprised by a new tv from my parents.
  Now I know at first you might roll your eyes at me crying over a tv, but the real reason I was crying was that my parents didn’t have to spend that much money on me and I was truly thankful for what they did. I joke a lot with my parents about being the lowest ranking son, but I know they love me and I love them back.
• 3.0’s reaction to getting a rocking horse from us.
  Now, we didn’t wrap any of his gifts until Christmas Eve so that he would be surprised at the gifts under the tree the next morning. After wrapping his gifts, we realized we had under done it a bit so Cara sent me out (at 11pm, no less…) to find a 24-hour CVS that had the rocking horse he had played with when we were in the store earlier that day. An hour and multiple trips to CVS stores in both Fort Worth and Keller later I returned home with the exact horse he had so much fun with earlier in the day. So hearing his 17-month old voice say “Oooooooo” when he saw the horse made it all worthwhile.
• Finally coming home with a “man gift” from the Toulouse family gift exchange.
  The Toulouse family has a big gathering for Christmas every year and they have a big gift exchange between all the teenagers and adults. Every year I have somehow managed to end up with the girliest gifts each year. I mean I have come home with glass bells, candles, and even a decorative dish before. So this year I lucked out and drew the last number so I got to pretty much pick the gift I wanted. So I will treasure the ratcheting screw driver and drill bits I got this year. I already had some of both, but a man can never have enough tools.

All in all, this holiday season was a success. It is nice knowing that I have such loving family and friends. I truly feel blessed to be associated with such loving and caring people.

4 Days and Counting…

By this time 4 days from now I will be enjoying this view…

And I will be missing this one..

The Countdown to Anniversary #5

Time has flown by and by this time next week Cara and I will be on the verge of celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary. We decided since it was a milestone year we wanted to do something special. We thought long and hard and decided we would take our tax return and turn it into a return to where it all began. That’s right folks. We are returning to Jamaica, the home of our honeymoon. We are even doing it completely over by returning to the same resort, Couples Tower Isles (previously Couples Ocho Rios).

This trip will be a little different than our honeymoon though. This time we will have a little companion tagging along in Cara's belly. You see, we booked this trip in March with visions water sports at the resort and climbing water falls. Little did we know that someone had other plans for us. We found out we were pregnant with our second child in June. The practical guy I am wanted to cancel the trip as Cara would be almost 7 months pregnant at the time of our trip and would be limited to relaxing on the beach and maybe some snorkeling (not to mention the ride form the airport to the resort is a 2 hour ride of road bump hell...). But Cara, she was having no part of the cancelled trip. Even though she won't get to be Mrs. Adventure (her vacation nickname) she wanted to just get away with me for a week as it will likely be the last opportunity for a while. This new baby boy will keep us local for a while and we are pretty sure the next time vacation time comes Liam will understand that Mama and Papi are going on a trip without him (Plus there is no way I will be able to get her to leave not one, but two children behind. I'm fairly certain she would sneak Liam to the resort in our luggage if she could...).

All in all, it is going to be a fun trip. We've already done some shopping for maternity swim suits and we are all geared up to go. We will take LOTS of pictures and be sure to share. In the meantime, here are a few pictures from our previous trip.

Coming Soon

This blog has been terribly neglected. There are so many things going on with us Wallace’s that I’m sure everyone would love to hear about. We just need to sit down and actually write them out. I am going to try and start getting posts done so you all actually have something new to read. So keep your eyes open for some new posts and who knows, maybe we will even redesign the site so it actually reflects all members of the family.

Growing, Growing...

Liam is growing more and more into a "big boy". He has finally decided that walking might be kind of interesting. He has a nice toy lion walker toy that he uses to walk laps around the house over and over while laughing. It is pretty funny. He is also talking a lot more. He can say more than a few words and can even sign to ask for food and milk. We started taking him to The Little Gym once a week to play and learn how to do a little bit of baby tumbling. So far he has had tons of fun and is enjoying it. Initially I had no interest in going, but it is pretty funny seeing him explore the room and climb over all the obstacles.

It is really fun to see how the little guy is growing into his own little person. I have really enjoyed the ride so far and am even more excited to see how he will be as a big brother. That's right, we have been blessed with another Wallace on the way. It came as a bit of a surprise, but we are really excited to be adding another addition to the family in the early part of next year.

The Cake of All Cakes

I am sure Mrs. Wallace will have her own post about Mini Me’s first birthday party, but I wanted to take a second and give her some props for the cake she made. She was determined to make her train cake despite all of the odds stacked against her. She didn’t have the amount of time she initially allotted for the cake, due to Mini Me’s impromptu hospital stay for an infection that zapped the PTO she planned to use to make the cake. That meant she had to make the cake the night before the party after she had spent a long day at work. With the help of her mother, sister,  and best friend she was able to not only cook all the cakes for her train, but also add all the icing and get them decorated and arranged.

Now, you may be wondering what I was doing during all of this hard work. I had been doing hard manual labor installing shelves and other things for the party all week and that night I mowed the lawn in 100+ degree weather. So when it came time to make the cake I just sat and watched and gave some nice constructive criticism to keep everyone motivated haha.

In all seriousness, it was a really great cake and a great party. I am very thankful that so many people came to celebrate Mini Me’s first birthday. If he could speak English, and not his own native language he has created, he would thank everyone individually. :)

Mother’s Day 2010

Cara decided that she wanted to go to one of the Oklahoma casinos with one of her friends as her Mother’s Day present, so she got her gift the Monday before.  So the actual Mother’s Day was very low key. We went to church that morning and then met my parents and brother for brunch.

Zoooooo!!!

A couple weekends ago we took a family trip to the zoo with some of our new friends we met in the neighborhood.  They have a precious little girl who is about 7 months older than Liam (they will actually be in the same grade when they start school, yay!!!) so we thought it would be fun to get them both out to the zoo so they could see all the animals.  As you could imagine, Liam was far less interested in the animals, but I did get him to actually look at some of the fish in the aquarium. I am already looking forward to taking back when he is a little older and actually cares about the different animals.

Liam and Mama in the wagon car by the petting zoo

Liam and Mama in front of the ape exhibit

Liam and the bronze alligator

Playground!!

Last month, we finally got around to taking Liam to the park. Our neighborhood has a really nice park about a half mile from the house so one Saturday morning we grabbed Liam and walked over. He had a lot of fun swinging and going down the slides (though I probably had more fun!!). Since then we have taken him back numerous times. We are going to have so much fun there this summer!!

 

 

 

My Little Maverick

A couple days of the week I am responsible for getting Liam ready for the day. This means I get to dress him however I want, so I never hesitate to get him into some fine UTA gear. We received a nice UTA onesie from Liam's Aunt Vanessa, but I found this shirt at the UTA bookstore a few weeks back. I was going to save it for when he was able to go to his first UTA event (after being overexposed to those Frog events. I kid, haha), but I was afraid he was going to outgrow it before I got a chance to get him over to the campus. So Liam got to sport his nice Blaze Maverick shirt for all the ladies at the daycare. Now I just need to get him out to a game. It's baseball season now and with the weather starting to get nice I don't think it will be a problem. I see a UTA/TCU home and home baseball series in his future...

Countdown to 3-0

Last week I turned 29, beginning my final year of my twenties.  I’m not too worried about it all, but it was night to kick of my final year of “youth” with some nice birthday fun.  Cara and Liam took me to Kincaid’s Hamburgers for a nice birthday dinner and made me a whole plate full of cupcakes.  She also made me where a kid’s birthday hat and “Birthday Boy” button the whole time.  It sounds funny, which it was except for when the creepy old guy at Kincaid’s whispered “Happy birthday…” to me when I was refilling my drink haha.

I’m really looking forward to this year and I think it will be a great one.  I plan on making the most of it as I know Cara and Liam have many more surprises for me to come!!

Tuesdays with Papi

I’ve started my new work schedule where I get to work from home on Tuesdays so I can be home with Mini Me.  It is pretty difficult trying to

work sometimes when he is craving my attention, so sometimes I have to take a nice break and have some quality male goofiness with him. Usually we just play around on his mat or I let him be my personal workout machine and lift him up and down as he laughs.  Occasionally I will have the bright idea to put him in something goofy and give myself a laugh.  Sadly, I don’t think he finds it as funny as I do. Here’s an example…

I don’t know why, but every time I see this picture I not only laugh, but I have to singe Big Poppa by Notorious B.I.G. haha!!

Alumni Game Time!!!

This weekend we had the Crowley Soccer Alumni games. It was a lot of fun to get out there and run around with the youngens that now were the Eagles uniforms. Even better, it was a nice chance to see the Barkers (Ryan, Casey, and their daughter Audrey).

Ryan and I played at Crowley together and had been playing some local soccer together until we both decided to move. Cara and Casey became friends when they had to sit and watch us do our best professional player impressions during our games each week. So it was really nice to get to see them after going from seeing them every week to not at all. Plus it gave us a chance to finally get a nice pic of the daddies with their kiddos.


The actual alumni games didn't go as well as we would have liked. The Boys' Alumni lost 2-1, breaking our 3 year winning streak. When we left during the girls' game (Liam told us it was time to leave...), the Girls' Alumni were trailing by 1 goal with about 15 minutes left in the game. Oh well, maybe next year we can all be in shape and make sure the game is no contest, but then again we all say that every year....