The Week Inbetween

The title says it all…this is the week between Alexis’ birthday and her actual party. 

There are a lot of people out there that plan when they will have kids so they don’t fall around other kids birthdays or around holidays.  We are NOT those people.  It is a story for another day, but just the fact that we were pregnant was a miracle so when she would be born didn’t really matter.  So on July 3, 2007 we had our Munchkin. 

At the time we really didn’t think much of it, but now that she has parties for her birthday, it is really a pain to invite people to.  Most everyone is either out of town or has plans on the 3^rd so we have tried to do her birthday the weekend after the 4^th…which with the way the days fell this year gave us an entire week between her birthday and her party!  Try explaining that to a 4 year old!  Wow!

But the week has not been without issue!  No, see that would be too easy!  So lets recap, shall we?

So Friday afternoon we went to pick out her birthday present.  We figured that she would get all kinds of dolls and clothes from people, so we didn’t something different…we got her 2 hermit crabs.  She is very excited and has named them Mac and Cheese.  They sit in a little “box” in her bedroom and she really does like them.

That night we went to dinner with some friends and then over to 31 Flavors for some ice cream.  Nice night!  As we were walking back to the car, Lex mentioned that her foot itched.  So scratch it we told her.  Not rocket science here.  Lol. 

The next morning we woke up and had breakfast and in the process of getting ready to go to Build A Bear to get her a Bear, she mentioned her foot itched again.  Once again, we told her to scratch it.  But as Heather told her to scratch it, she turned around to look at it.  That is when we noticed that she had been bit by something and her foot was red and very swollen!!  We gave her some Benadryl and off we went!

Went to Build A Bear and she got a stuffed puppy, which she named Susie.  Susie has roller skates and shoes to go with her collar and leash.  $75 later we headed home to get ready to meet my parents for dinner at Joe T Garcia’s.

While at dinner, my dad saw her foot and remarked that it looked really bad and we needed to take her to the CareNow clinic or the hospital.  Now we had a few people tell us through the day we needed to go, but when your Dad tells you to take your kid in, you take your kid in.

So off to CareNow we go.  Sure enough, it was a bite that had been infected and required a shot as well as antibiotics.  She did not like this too much!  The doctor drew on her foot and told us if the swelling/redness got outside the marker to bring her back.

So we woke up on her birthday and got ready head to church.  We checked out her foot and sure enough, it looked worse!!  We went to church and debated on what to do most of the morning.  Once church was out, we figured it was just best to take her in and let them look at it.  How bad could it be?  We just thought maybe the meds hadn’t kicked in yet.  Nope!  Still infected and required ANOTHER shot. 

However, this time she knew it was coming and for 20 minutes she just cried and cried.  Not much fun and no one should have to do that on their birthday.  Especially when you are 4.  She we get the shot and head home.

Up until this point she had been having a pretty crappy birthday, so we invited our friends Tim and Katie over for burgers and some swimming.  Since her birthday hadn’t been going well, we asked if TJ could spend the night!  We figured it was the least we could do for her!  Those two had a blast and hopefully it made her actual birthday worth it!

The 4^th was a pretty lazy day!!  We went over to some friends’ house and went swimming and then went over to my Dad’s house for dinner, a movie and some fireworks!  So it turned out pretty well!

All in all her foot is doing much better! As the swelling went down you could see where a fire ant had lunch on her poor foot.  She had 5 bites and I guess that was 5 to many for her little foot.

And that brings us to today and the middle of the two weekends.  We have the Dora cake ordered and will be working on the goodie bags tomorrow night.  Most all of her friends have RSVP’d and her cousin Harley will make it so all is right with the world!!

I hope this finds all of you well and you all had a great 4^th! 

Take care!

Happy Birthday Alexis Noelle!

Four years ago today, you were born.  The four years have flown by faster than we could have ever imagined.  When we brought you home we had no idea you would be the amazing little girl that you are today.

The first night we had you at home, we were so worried we were going to mess up...but you handled it like a pro!  I know along the way you haven't always agreed with what we have said and you have had your fair share of accidents, but always know that your mom and I are beyond proud of you and we could not have asked for more from you!

This picture of you above is by far my favorite.  It was taken just a few hours after you were born.  You are so peaceful. 

Since it is your birthday and birthdays are for celebrating, I wanted to share with everyone a couple of videos that I don't think everyone has seen.

The first one is Alexis crawling.  She had just figured it out about 12 hours before I recorded this.  When she first started to crawl, she would only crawl to something.  And in this video, it is a comb.

The next video is of Alexis walking.  When I took this video, she had only been walking a day or two, as you can tell by the wobbles.  This was the beginning of the end!  It wasn't long before she was running all over the place and she hasn't stopped since!

 So Happy Birthday Munchkin!  Mommy and Daddy love you very much and we are so proud of you!

What Would You Do?

Anyone that knows anything about me will tell you I love technology.  I one day hope to have a solar powered house that I can control with my iPhone if that tells you anything.

But it is not just the technology that interests me.  It is the people behind it.  I love learning about the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world.  I like to know what they did before they made it big and what they are doing now.

Two of the guys I have been following for a few months now are Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey.  While their names might not sound familiar, what they created will…Twitter.

Now they weren’t the only two involved and their amount of involvement is different, but in the grand scheme of things they were both there in the beginning and help get it to where it is today.

But once again, it is not what they are currently doing that I am interested in, it is where they started and what they are doing now that I like.

For Evan Williams, this wasn’t his first company.  Not by far.  He has created several other start ups, including a little one called Blogger that he sold to Google.  For those of you that don’t know, Blogger is a “template based” website that allows you to post your blog.  It is what I use mainly because it is simple!  Anyone can do it!

Jack was a little bit different.  For him, Twitter was his first successful startup.  And for him, it is what he is doing now that is interesting.  While he still has a role at Twitter day to day, he founded another startup called Sqaure.

As a side note, I am a huge fan of Square.  I loved the concept and the ease of use. 

From squareup.com: Square is the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s easy to use and comes with a free credit card reader for your phone or iPad. Sign-up is quick. No complicated contracts, monthly fees, or merchant account. When you swipe cards with Square there is just one fee: 2.75%. 

Now, the main reason I am fascinated with this is because my wife sells Mary Kay and taking credit cards has always be a challenge and expensive for her.  Not anymore!  If you have a small business or sell something on the side and you want to take credit cards, check them out!

OK, sorry about that! 

My point is, Jack moved on and did something else that he was passionate about with his time and his money.

And it was just announced yesterday that Evan (along with 2 other guys he started Twitter with) has moved on and created another start up company.  The name of the company is TheObvious Corporation.  The Obvious Corporation makes systems that help people work together to improve the world.

So that brings me to you and my question.  If money was no object and you could start a startup or start a non-profit, what would you do?  Would you tackle AIDS like Bono?  Would you battle disease in third world countries like Bill Gates?  Improve schools like Mark Zuckerberg?  Or would you continue to find niches in technology where you could make a difference like Jack and Evan?

What would it be? 

What would it look like? 

What would you do?

Burgers, Beef and Security

So with our 10-year wedding anniversary behind us and Alexis’ birthday just a few days away, I thought I would recap our weekend for everyone! 

It started on Saturday morning with us taking Alexis to see Cars 2 with TJ and rest of The Leckie family.  Since this is my blog, I will give you my review…it was NOT as good as the first one.  Way too much action for my liking.  It was the characters that made the first one and they seemed to get away from them in this one.  But I digress.  The kids loved it and that is all that mattered. 

After the movie, we took Lex over to my Dad and Stepmom’s for the day/night.  I thought since we had time before check in at the hotel, we would hit one of the new In-N-Out burgers in D/FW.  I will blog about this later, but we LOVE In-N-Out.  Great food.   We waited in the drive thru for about 20 minutes and then sat under a tree in our car to devour it.  Man, it was worth the wait!

From there we headed to the Hyatt Regency in Dallas for the night!  We got checked in and hit the “pool”.  I use the quotes, because it was like a large hot tub.  It was BAD.  This is a 4 star hotel with a 0.5 star pool.  It was about 15 foot wide and about 25 foot long and only held about 10 people comfortably.  No swimming could be done unless you were the only one in the pool.  Really disappointing.  BUT we were at the pool with no kid and it was nice! 

After the pool, we headed back to the room to get ready for dinner.  But because we are “Peery’s” things didn’t go as planned.  There was a horrible noise in our room…our room with a king size bed and great view of downtown.  It sounded like someone was dragging cables through the wall.  Really annoying and no way we wanted to spend our one night away from Lex listening to the noise!!

I got ready and went downstairs to see if we could switch rooms and the hotel was booked except for one room with double beds.  Not ideal, but we still had our good view and we didn’t have to listen to the crazy noise!!  We finished getting ready and took all our stuff to our new room and headed to dinner.

Dinner was at Al Biernat’s.  I have heard about this place for a while, but we hadn’t had the chance to go until now.  Two or three times a year we try to go to a nice restaurant so we save our pennies so we can get what we want.  There are 4 parts to dinner…cars, food, security and atmosphere…so I am going to break them down for you.

Cars:  We pull into the parking lot and there are 2 Maserati’s parked next to some really nice Mercedes and a Range Rover.  Being a car fan, I just wanted to go over and look at them all.  I quickly remembered that we were eating dinner and not at a car show!

Thinking that it couldn’t get any better, we walk outside to leave and parked on either side of one of the Maserati’s were two Rolls Royce Phantom’s.  If you don’t know what these are, google them!  They are $450,000 each!!!  I was looking at over a million dollars in 3 cars!!!  It was crazy!!!  So when they pulled our Ford Fusion around from the auxiliary lot (you didn’t think they would park us with the nice cars, did you?) we jumped in as fast as we good and left!!  This is where having our Lexus would have been nice!  We wouldn’t have seemed so out of place! 

Food:  One word…amazing!  We spilt the calamari that came with two sauces (for which there are fancy French names for) and each had a Caesar salad.  I had the dry aged 16oz NY Strip and Heather had the 8oz filet.  We split mushroom risotto and creamed corn.  While the steaks were great, the risotto was unbelievable.  So good!  For dessert we split a chocolate cake with a scoop of ice cream.  We were stuffed!!

Security:  As we were wrapping up, the owner comes over to the table next to us and tells the guy setting up that this table will be “security for table 12”.  Next thing we knew, they were setting up the table behind us for “security” as well!  We were intrigued.  This place was the hottest ticket in town for the Super Bowl where you couldn’t get a table no matter who you were!  Not only that, but President Bush lives in the neighborhood.  All the local athletes eat here too.  Who could it be?  Who is that big that they need two tables for security?  I was really thinking it might be the President! 

Well, to this day we have no idea who it was!  It was a Hispanic family that was not dressed to go out or they just had so much money they didn’t care what they had on.  But they came with a “security detail/entourage” of 5.  We were slightly disappointed. 

Atmosphere:  This place really was nice!  It was in an area of Dallas were all the “money” is.  This is old Dallas money.  This isn’t money that a rapper gets for selling records or a reality tv star gets…this was old Dallas oil money.  The cars in the parking lot were not rentals or leases or loaners.  These people were the real deal.

As a side note, we were wished Happy Anniversary no less than 5 times by the staff.  There was a good chance we were the poorest people in the restaurant that night, but they all made us feel like a million bucks.  If you ever have a chance to go, save your pennies and go!  It really is worth it all!!

So that was our weekend!  Picked up Alexis Sunday afternoon and back to the real world!  It is always nice to get away, even if we only went 20 minutes away for 2 days!!