The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Celebrating Samantha

Samantha woke up on Thursday morning as a 7 year old! Well, she actually climbed into my bed about 3:30 am as a 7 year old but that was fine with me. 🙂 She was very concerned that I had not decorated downstairs since I didn’t get up early. Thankfully I had decorated the night before! As if I wouldn’t decorate the kitchen for my only baby girl’s birthday?!

kitchen

seven

She was off to school for a great day!

birthday

She took “GJ’s chocolate chip cookies” for her class.

ccc

She helped me make them the day before…

ccc

Don’t worry, we made two batches of dough – one for her to eat and one for the class! She said the cookies were good but not the best. Why? They were missing a “sprinkle of GJ.” Love that girl. And I can’t argue with that! That afternoon she came running home happy – can’t beat it!

birthday

She headed off to tumble and that night we headed to dinner at the club to celebrate our birthday girl!

bday

bday

bday

bday

Dinner at the club is even more fun when one of your besties is there to celebrate her sister’s birthday which is on the same day!

bday

bday

After dinner we headed back home for presents and ice cream cake!

omg

omg

omg

omg

7

Make a wish!!

bday

bday

bday

Happy 7th birthday to my favorite little girl!!

The Big D

For Christmas, we gave the kids tickets to see the Mavericks play in Dallas and took our trip last weekend. What a great trip! I loved being back in Dallas and the kids had so much fun. We took a direct flight after school on Friday…

flight

flight

and were sitting down to dinner by 8:00! We had dinner at Hudson House and Maxwell even tried an oyster! whoa!!

oyster

oyster

Samantha turned her nose up at the oysters but ate plenty of chocolate pie!

hudson house

We stayed at the Highland Dallas right by SMU which worked out great.

dallas

The weather was unusually cold and blustery on Saturday but that didn’t bother us. We grabbed breakfast…

bird bakery

dallas

drove around Highland Park looking at houses and then headed to Northpark Mall! Shopping all day…just what the boys love! ha!

northpark

In all seriousness, it was the best way to spend the day. Everyone did some shopping and came home with new stuff – well, everyone except me! who would have thought that?! We had lunch and an afternoon treat at Neiman Marcus, the boys got to do a VR experience at the movie theater, and Samantha got some cotton candy. It was a win all around!

coat

dallas

northpark

dallas

dallas

dallas

dallas

dallas

dallas

dallas

That night we had dinner at Mesero, a mexican restaurant close to the American Airlines Center. It worked out because we could park in the garage and leave our car there during the game.

dallas

dallas

The game was really fun. Lots of action and entertainment! The kids loved seeing Luka Doncic play, I loved watching the ManiAACs and the “entertainment squad”, and we all loved seeing Boban!…even if he was injured and couldn’t play.

dallas

dallas

dallas

boba

dallas

dallas

We didn’t get back to the hotel until after 11 and had an early morning on Sunday because we had to get back to Birmingham for another, much more important, basketball game…

magic

Go MB Magic! Go Mavericks! Such a fun, easy weekend trip that I would love to do again!

More Naples

After a week of fun and adventure we wrapped up a stay in our favorite place…

naples

naples

naples

naples

naples

and said our goodbyes…

naples

naples

and headed back to Birmingham…

naples

naples

naples

only to land and find out school was delayed 3 days! We could have stayed! Oh well…

naples

until next time Naples!

Naples Adventures

We went on a few more adventures than usual in Naples this trip! Fun all around! The boys went fishing…

fishing

fishing

fishing

fishing

Samantha and Robert went on a wave runner…

wave runner

wave runner

and the kids and I went parasailing!! Woohoo!

boat

parasailing

Robert opted out which meant I got to go twice since the two boys weren’t heavy enough on their own. There was a big rock paper scissors battle for which boy got to go twice and Spencer won out. That ended up being the best thing though – once Maxwell got up he decided once was enough! It was really, really cool but it definitely took your breath away at first when you went up. We were high!!

para

sail

sail

sail

sail

sail

sail

sail

Dip!

dip

Up we go with Maxwell!

dip

sail

sail

sail

sail

sail

sail

sail

Maxwell had time to check his watch while sailing through the sky! ha!

sail

While Samantha waited in the boat, she got to be captain!

boat

Down we go…

sail

and dip!

dip

So great that the kids are getting old enough to enjoy a little more adventure on our trips!!

Snaggletooth

While in Naples sitting on the beach, Samantha’s suuuuuper loose front tooth finally came out!! It was so loose it came out while she was drinking a smoothie! ha!

tooth

tooth

She was pretty happy!!

tooth

tooth

Later in the week, Maxwell also lost a tooth!

teeth

and Samantha lost another one on the bottom!!

teeth

What a trip – lots of fun and 3 teeth down!