Since we were in Houston with my parents (who love to babysit our boys),
Jacob and I got to go on a date for New Year's Eve!

Here is a picture my mom took of us as we're about to leave...
Jacob wonders why we have to have a picture.

Mom and I encourage him to smile, and this is what we get:

I told him that smile didn't feel genuine, so he gave me a dip me to show his enthusiasm.

Before we headed downtown, we stopped at HEB (an awesome Texas grocery store) to get our dinner for our picnic.


My mom warned us that it would be crowded, but we were in no way prepared for what we encountered:

MASS CHAOS!

a policeman directing traffic into and out of the parking lot



We fought the crowds and made our way to the sushi bar and picked out a tray of rolls.

Then we saw the lines of checkouts backed up at least 15 people in each line, and every register was open! This is a HUGE grocery store... I've never seen so many people in one grocery store!

With our sushi tray in a cooler in the trunk, we arrived at our destination:
Discovery Green, a new "eco-friendly" park in downtown Houston that had an outdoor ice skating rink especially for the holidays.

Jacob laces up his boots:

At Discovery Green, there is a little lake called Kinder Lake where you can rent remote-controlled model sailboats. They partitioned and froze part of this lake to create the skating rink.

It was really cool skating around in the middle of downtown with all the tall buildings all around.

After ice skating, we took a walk around some other parts of the park.

This walkway was lined with trees with huge ornaments hanging from them.

Next, we found a picnic table to have our sushi picnic dinner. We had a great time!

On New Year's Day, my Aunt Margaret's family came over to spend the day with us.

My cousin Kellie's baby (Dylan) is a few months younger than Isaac.

Isaac's checkin' him out.

We had a big meal and played lots of games. Here's a typical Jacob moment caught on camera: "How long do you think it would take me to stack all these cups? Time me!"

Isaac rounded out his evening with some time well spent in his Johnny Jumper.


Sweet brothers!