A Christmas Visit from Grammie and Gramps!

Grammie and Gramps came for a fun visit to NC which started with celebrating Gramp's 70th birthday the day that they arrived. I had fun spending time with Grammie and Gramps at our house. Even though it was the beginning of December it could have practically been Christmas because all of the pieces were in place! We went to see Christmas lights at Hill Ridge Farm, complete with snow and rides down the tube slide. Then, we saw a spectacular Bulls, Bells and Barrels rodeo, complete with stubborn bulls that had to be roped to leave the ring. Following that, we took in a festive Wake Forest Christmas parade, complete with more candy canes that we can carry! And we finished our glorious visit with them by opening presents and waking up the following morning to 8 inches of snow on the ground! It was completely magical and it felt like Christmas morning!

I was sad to see Grammie and Gramps leave, but luckily they were able to drive with all the snow! Cora and I spent a good part of the week playing in what was left of the snow after it rained. I just love playing in the snow! Finally, the snow melted and it was time for more fun Christmas activities. One day we drove to Busch Gardens Williamsburg to see Christmas Town! The lights were so much fun to see although I don't know if I'm ready for all of the amusement rides yet! Even the pirate ship ride was a lot to handle! I enjoyed seeing all the shows and thought that is was crazy that we drove home that night and were up at midnight! The next evening we went to a show for kids called Santa's Enchanted Workshop. That certainly got me in the mood for Christmas, and not a few days later a letter from Santa arrived in the mail. I was so excited to see the letter, that I had been good that I started screaming and throwing my hands into the air. I managed to simultaneously smack Mom AND Cora right in the face! Hope Santa didn't know I did that! I'm looking forward to Christmas now - only one week to go!

2nd Quarter - DONE!

It was an eventful few days leading up to our December trackout. Following family tradition, we went out on Friday evening to pick out our Christmas tree! Tree selection went really quickly, I think the first one we looked at, we bought! There was only one way to describe the tree that we got and it starts with an F. (Long dramatic pause) F as in F-A-T! Not only was it fat, but tall too! Dad went to stand it up, it hit the ceiling! A few adjustments were made and we got it standing! This was my year to hang the star, but the tree was so tall, instead of hanging it, we just sort of placed it at the top of the tree. We decorated the tree the following day along with the rest of the house. Little Santa made his appearance and the playroom looked festive too.

 At school, lots of fun things were happening as well. I got to visit the bookfair and buy myself some books. Mom and Dad gave me money to buy some books, and I took some of my own money to get a few other things. The best purchase I made was Dogman Unleashed! On the first day I owned it, I read it from cover to cover! The evening before trackout was the reading fair! As a family, we went to the school in the evening, I set up my excellent board for display in the hallway and we got to look at all the other reading fair projects. After looking for a while, we went to the gym to watch a chorus concert. After that, they announced the winners of the reading fair. I didn't win, but I did received a participation ribbon which is now hanging in the wall of my bedroom!

The last day of school was CRAZY! At school we watched the Polar Express and drank hot cocoa. After school, we had Faith Formation as usual, but we left early! We had to go visit Santa! I was so excited to see him, I could hardly contain myself as we waited in line. Santa was very talkative, although oddly enough, he never asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Luckily, HE KNOWS! What a fun way to end the last day of school for 2018!
The very next morning, almost like a treat after our last day of school, it was December 6, St Nick's Day! While we were sleeping St Nick brought us gifts. He brought puff ups! I got a snow man inflatable that I couldn't stop puffing down and up. I would have done it all day if it weren't for Grammie and Gramps who arrived just after lunch!

Turkey Time!

We celebrated an excellent Thanksgiving in Texas this year. There was lots of excitement and activities during our visit!
Day 1: We arrived around lunch time and after grabbing something to eat, we walked to the park and played for a bit. Cora, Saige and I had fun doing America Ninja Warrior courses at the playground. After that we headed over to the roller skating rink. Roller skating was fun, and after a while I was showing a ton of improvement. Unfortunately we left abruptly after Mimi lost her balance stepping out of the rink, fell on her wrist and broke it! Oh no! We had to be careful around her the rest of our visit, but luckily she was still able to participate in most of the fun.

Day 2: In the morning we made blueberry pancakes for breakfast with Papa. The day was chilly and overcast, but not too cold to spend the day at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center where Saige, Cora and I enjoyed climbing around the unique fort installations included in the Fortlandia exhibit. My favorite was the fort that looked like a three sided tent. I had fun running in, out and through the a frame enclosure. We enjoyed a picnic lunch halfway through exploring the forts, and I especially liked swinging in the Live Oak grove after lunch. Before heading out, we got to climb the tower and enjoy the view over the gardens. It started to rain just as we left so on the way home we stopped by a huge library to explore it before we went home. I had lots of fun reading with Papa on the Reading Porch overlooking downtown and picking out books with him.

Day 3: Happy Thanksgiving! We started our morning early by heading downtown for the Turkey Trot. The first race was the Kids K - a race just for kids! We were grouped by age to start the race, so Saige and I were in the same group. I ran my fastest when the race started! I ran so fast that my sweatshirt was practically falling off me when I got to the finish line!  I had so much fun in my first race ever! The rest of the day was spent relaxing, playing soccer with Uncle Marcus in the backyard, visiting Saige's house and playing (or annoying) with Olive. The day flew by and before I knew it, we were eating turkey dinner! Dinner was delicious and I was pleasantly surprised by the pecan pie which I had never tried before!

Day 4: Today was especially fun! In the morning we played a big family game of Life! Marcus was my partner and we almost won the game, we had so much money! After lunch, we went to see a show, The Tortoise and the Hare at a theater. The show was really entertaining, I was giggling with glee at some of the funny parts. After that, we walked to a place where we got to play miniature golf! I had never tried it before, but it was fun! Plus, the weather was so nice - we didn't even need coats to enjoy our outing! We got to enjoy a pizza dinner that night and before I knew it, the day was over! Day 5: I was sad because we had to leave this morning. The highlights of the day were running like crazy through the airport in Atlanta trying to catch a plane, only to see it pushing away from the gate 10 minutes early. Luckily, there was a flight just an hour later to Raleigh that would take us home - in the dark! We flew at night! Yippee! I'm thankful that we had a great trip to Mimi and Papa's house.

Paws in the Air

Petey's Pawsitivity Fun Run was so much fun! My paws were in the air the whole day of the big event, even when I was running! It was just so Pawsitively Pawsome, so Pawfect! I love school by the way, recently I've been waking up on weekday mornings all pumped and ready to go for the school day. It may also have something to do with the fact that the clocks "fell back" last weekend and it's nice and bright when we wake up in the morning!

Halloween 2018

Another Halloween is in the books. I really got into all the decorating and preparation for Halloween, even made decorations for my room but I think Mom was a bit surprised that I wasn't more excited to dress up and go trick or treating. I do enjoy getting candy and looking at decorations, I'm just not as enthused as most other kids. This year, with Dad as my witness, I did go up to the scary house and I even let someone drag their claw hands down my back. Plus, many trick or treaters complimented my carved pumpkin with carrot horns. They thought it was really creative. However, I'm still NOT OKAY with putting my hand in the gooey pumpkin slop. Maybe next year.

Movie Makers

After starring in our own movie, Cora and I were inspired to create our own movie. We not only created a movie, but we provided the entire experience including tickets for entrance, exit, snacks of fresh popcorn straight from the machine, and enhanced lighting during the show (i.e. the lights were turned out and I shined a flashlight on the movie screen). The seating was the most comfortable it could get: my bed! I really think Mom and Dad enjoyed the movie night that Cora and I put on for them. The Adventures of Bear and Deer was superb!
School is going well for me. I still think it would be better if we didn't get homework. That is NOT my favorite thing to do! I did have a great first quarter report card, well, because I am so smart. Mom and Dad are proud of me because I was selected for displaying good character traits, specifically RESPECT at school. My handsome pic was displayed on the bulletin board in the hallway! In the mix of all the madness, we also had our first Marco's Pizza night of the year. As always it was great decorating my box!
 One weekend, Mom went out of town for a wedding with her friends and we got to spend the weekend with Dad. She left on a Thursday, and because of Hurricane Michael, school was cancelled both Thursday AND Friday. Needless to say, we got a long weekend filled with lots of Dad time!

A Visit from a Filmmaker

The week before going back to school for our second quarter, Mimi and Papa came for a visit. Papa is taking a film class and for his final project he needed Cora and me to act in a short film for him. I managed to get through the filming, but boy was it tiring! Mom had decided that I am a dramatic actor needing lots of breaks and perks to get me to perform on camera! Hopefully Papa was able to complete his project with the footage he got during their visit. Luckily when we were't filming, I enjoyed time with Mimi and Papa. I enjoyed building blocks and playing cars with Papa and kicking the soccer ball with Mimi while we were at Cora's soccer game.

Road Trippin'

We had a spectacular week-long family vacation that was so much fun I didn't want it to end! We had fun doing all sorts of different things in different places, I'll let the pictures do the talking and provide some of my favorite highlights for you!

Day 1) Hurricane Florence was swirling out in the Atlantic Ocean and was projected to fall somewhere in North Carolina. It caused us to start the vacation early (no problem for me!) We left Thursday morning and drove to Northern Virginia where we visited Government Island, a unique island surrounded by tidal marshland where stone was quarried for important buildings in Washington, DC. I was the bus driver and I led our trek around the hilly island. The end of the day was concluded with a yummy dinner at PF Chang's where I expertly used chop sticks to shove rice into my mouth. After dinner we eventually found our way to a hotel (A HOTEL,YAY) in Virginia.

Day 2) We took a relaxing drive to Altoona, where we would spend the next two nights. In Altoona, Dad showed us where he first when to college, then we had a surprise visit with Grammie and Gramps which included touring the Railroader's Memorial Museum and a fun dinner followed by checkers on the porch of Cracker Barrel. And yes, I did eat a cracker at cracker barrel!
Day 3) Arising early, we drove to State College for a college football game. We had the chance to see more of the Penn State campus in addition to an exciting football game. Luck would have it that we ran into the Nittany Lion mascot outside of the stadium to complete our football game experience. After goofing off with some special friends (kids of Mom's friend Doreen) we filled our bellies with delicious food from the Commons (aka the cafeteria where Mom and Dad used to eat when they were in college). What an experience!

Day 4) One would think we would be exhausted at this point after trekking all over a college campus, viewing a long college football game (which Penn State won!) but the next day we were ready for another new adventure in Pittsburgh. We arrived at Kennywood, an amusement park outside of Pittsburgh mid-morning. We spent the beautiful day riding rides before driving to downtown Pittsburgh. No sooner had we gotten to our huge hotel room, we left to go ride something called the Monongahela Incline. It was a weird train thing that drove on a track straight up a hill. At the top of the hill, we have beautiful views of Pittsburgh! Once we got back down to the bottom of the incline we had dinner at Joe's Crab Shack and had fun watching a dancing fountain in a plaza along the river before heading back to bed.

Day 5) Well, Hurricane Florence finally caught up to us, so we took the opportunity to see the Carnegie Museum of Natural History while it rained outside. I had a blast looking at all the dinosaur bones that were in the museum. We also went to a show where we met some live animals: a snake, a lizard, a bird, a baby crocodile and a skunk! Fortunately the rain slowed an eventually stopped so that we could go to a Pittsburgh Pirate's baseball game! My first professional baseball game ever! It was so foggy, many of the skyscrapers were hidden by the fog, but the rain stayed away!

Day 6) In the morning, the weather had improved so we could walk around downtown Pittsburgh and explore Point State Park. We enjoyed sitting along the rivers and counting train cars in the distance. There are lots of trains in Pittsburgh! We at lunch in the car as we headed off to our next stop: Washington, DC! On our way we stopped to see the Tower of Voices at the Flight 93 Memorial. Once we got to Washington, Dad easily navigated the rush hour traffic and found our hotel no problem at all. We enjoyed a nice dinner sitting outside along the bustling sidewalk taking in all the sights and sounds of the city!

Day 7) Today we explored the Monuments of Washington, DC. Walking a huge circle around the National Mall, we started at the White House. We passed by the Washington Monument, then went through the World War II Veterans Memorial. The next stop was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the way to the Lincoln Memorial. Abraham Lincoln looked huge in his chair! We took in the view of the mall with the Capitol in the background atop the steps there before wandering over to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was an interesting stop before we arrived at the FDR Memorial. This was one of my favorites because I liked looking at the different fountains in this memorial. We circled around the tidal basin and ascended the steps to the Jefferson Memorial which was our last stop before going to the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was a hot day, so it was nice to take a rest in some air conditioning. The Air and Space museum was after that, where we saw an IMAX movie about astronauts exploring space, then we got to see some of the exhibits and explore the airplanes around the museum. Before I knew it, we had walked almost 11 miles and I didn't even realize it. I was hungry though and was glad to sit and enjoy dinner before going back to the hotel.

Day 8) The final day of our trip did not disappoint! We took a city bus to the National Zoo. I enjoyed walking around the zoo and seeing different animals. It was nice to get out in the morning, because in the afternoon we had to drive back home.