After The Tenth..... When The Fun Really Begins

Often times things happen during the course of our day that I intend to write about. Sometimes those posts are written within 1-2 days of the events, while everything is still fresh in my mind, other times the post is delayed a number of days and I'm only able to recall the highlights. In this case, this post has been on my mind for so long and is so overdue that I could have been watching Conan O'Brien do his Tonight Show monologue while writing this.

Have any of you received bookmarks with pictures of my little ones? Have you received a thank you card written on card stock that had a photo of a Sznitken on it? Mailing labels with our little ladies on them? How about a crayon box with some custom images? If so, you might have thought that Annie and I were pretty talented and while you are correct, we can't take credit for those items. The real wizard is my Great-Uncle Jack, who is great in more than name only. These items are just the tip of the Sznitken spoiling iceberg.

Here he is donning a fabulous Easter Hat

 He may be Uncle Jack to us, but he also goes by another name...Great-Grandpa Jack

 Here he is, catching up on Macy's day via a Skype call

Great-Uncle Jack is an avid reader of the blog and I hope he won't mind us singling him out today. (He's kind a private man...so I'm guessing he's either blushing or a bit upset with me...but I'm willing to take the heat)

In the last few days I've received a handful of requests to include more photos and videos with the posts. I will try to have the camera out more and to then add more multimedia to the posts. In the time being, while I can only promise to try harder and I don't necessarily have a ton of pictures OF the girls today, I can offer you pictures taken BY one of the girls.

Don't forget to check out www.TheItsyBitsyPhotographer.com. While daddy has been a bit delinquent, Macy has been snapping away and upload new pictures every day.

So here is the rest of the update...

On Sunday we headed over to Tradewinds park and met up with some friends. Every weekend you can go and on a pony ride, which we did and on a special weekend each month, you can also go on the Tradewinds & Atlantic Railroad miniature train ride. The trains are one-eight life size, or scaled a 1-1/2" per foot and only cost $1 a trip. You go around a lake, go under an unnel (*not a typo--its like a tunnel), go on a tressel and just have a pretty unique experience. I'm pretty certain we'll be going back next month....

Here are two pictures from our ride. The first one is from my view, showing both our friends the Moorman family and the locomotive. The second image was the view of another train on the other side of the lake.

After the train ride, we headed over to the pony rides. (It was a big afternoon)

In a completely unrelated matter, I've begun work on the "Orange Indoctrination", my attempt to get both Macy and Laney excited about Syracuse University sports and last week I had Macy on my lap as we watched my beloved Orange battle Louisville. Throughout the game I tried to get Macy to learn to cheer for SU and during a crucial moment of the game, Scoop Jardine hit his second big three pointer, eliciting a "Go Orange" out of daddy, to which Macy promptly replied, "Go Purple." Purple? Clearly Syracuse wears orange and Louisville wears red, so she wasn't rooting for the opponent, but what was she cheering for? It took a minute, but then it hit me...Macy knows which color is Daddy's favorite, so she decided in that instant, that if daddy could yell out his favorite color, why couldn't she? (you can't make this stuff up)

The house is all a flutter this morning, with the fact that Aunt Kim and Uncle Adam are coming this afternoon. We only get one night with them, but Macy and Laney both seem to be quite excited about the upcoming arrival.

I would like to propose a change to the "official" holiday season. Why should it end at New Year's Day? I think it should end at Valentine's Day. That way, this post about our Christmas trip and Christmas photos wouldn't be so ridiculous.

I'll be honest, I thought about just skipping this post all together, but then I wouldn't have an excuse to share my new favorite photos of my girls. The first three photos in the list were while we were killing time in the Tampa airport on our way to Austin. Shortly after I took these photos, a nice gentleman from Southwest came up to us and offered us free coloring books, crayons and a few other assorted items for the girls. Guess flying on Christmas Eve day has its perks.

Our time in Austin was a lot of fun. We got to spend some time with Grandpa & Granny Kupper, the Austin Kupper's, the Murphy's and even cousin Matt made an appearance, driving down from Dallas. The girls really enjoyed spending time with Moxie (the dog) and their cousins. The Austin Kuppers have a fun tradition that I might "borrow" in the coming years. They have a special train set that goes around the tree and is only brought out for the holiday season. You'll see that I wasn't the only one who enjoyed the train; both Macy and Laney sat and watched it go 'round and 'round.

Once the season is over the train gets put back in its packaging and is stored somewhere safe. See...if my proposal goes through, the holiday train could still be chugging around the tracks as I type this post.