The month started off slow as far as activities just some normal TV watching and a few meals out to eat, trying to save a few extra bucks to take to Chicago. We left a couple of days early in order to have a visit with my cousin, Benita & family and my Aunt Gene. Aunt Gene was named after her mother Genevieve and I was named after them, Gena. There's ya some FYI! Anyway, our Chicago trip started with Berik excited and hollering, AIRPLANE, AIRPLANE, over and over as we approached the airport and he picked out every plane in site, from the ones on the runway to the specks in the sky. All the while Jaimie was driving at mach speed and sputtering a few choice words as it appeared we would be too late to make the flight.Can you say stand by for 3 hours with toddler in airport? Fun, fun, fun!! Humm...? Somebody said we should leave earlier!Once we got on the plane things went smoothly and B was very curious checking out all the passengers, but over all good. Jessi was helpful and she and B and myself sat together. Jaimie sat else where but arrived to take B up and down the aisles a couple of times. Probably at the exact instant we were landing, B fell asleep and slept through everything from getting off the plane to luggage claim to the car. Then he woke up drowsy, with the, where am I look?
He played well at Benita's house, who we also call "B" and my B, was meeting her & family and Aunt Gene for the first time. Of course they thought he was darling! They only had two days of him..lol!
We went to Lake Michigan shore/beach and played in the COLD, COLD, COLD, water and to my amazement there were people swimming. No thanks, too cold for me. We also went by Michael Jordans (house),make that gate,as that was as close as we could get, you know short notice and all! Ha!
Benita is a voice teacher and plays piano and sings professionally and my Aunt plays piano too, so My B, loved the fact that they helped him play the piano as he is very excited to play every time he sees one.
In the evening we went for walks and tried to wear Berik out at the parks,and we loved the beautiful neighborhoods and trees. We enjoyed it as it was much different than Texas. After the couple of days, we put Aunt Gene back on Amtrack to Michigan and then Benita took us to the Lincoln Park Zoo,where we 
had a good time looking at all the animals. Late afternoon B dumped us off at the hotel for the Kazapalooza,and you thought we'd never get there!
We took this fun bag as a donation for the raffle and it was a huge success as it had the most tickets sold toward it, so I was told. I will have to have a bag made for me one day and will most definitely have to get these books for some fun with B. We finally met up with some of the people we blog with from Kaz and it was really neat to catch up with them. The Kaz kid's are even cuter in person, here are a couple to drive the point home!
We had a pizza party, meet and greet the first evening,a luncheon with activities such as facing painting and a balloon artist for the kids.In the afternoon several groups of peeps went to the aquarium and/or to the park with this neat water feature!
Berik and Serena had fun on this turtle. Aren't they cute?!
Also a slight malfunction with a group shot. You see my child is oh so cooperative!
We had a lot of fun. We saw "the bean" ,
a reflective art piece of sorts where you can see the whole city in kind of a 360 kind of view. I guess that's what you would say. Here is a regular picture of it and then one from underneath.
We also meet up at the pool and Jessi was good to help with Berik as always!
Thanks, Jessi! All in all we had a fantastic time and visited Navy pier were I was dumb enough and still barely not fat enough not to fit on the swings, so I went on the ride. Ugh..
it kind of made me sick to my stomach.We loved the view of the lake and had a nice person take a good family picture of us.
We snuck in a quick trip through the stained glass display but Berik was bored and tired so he tuckered out with Manny's tail literally cliched between his teeth.
We have had Manny since before Kaz so he goes with us everywhere. Here is a 9-11 piece 
that I thought was pretty neat!Here is the little blurb about it, quite interesting really. You can enlarge it to read it.
After so much fun in Chicago we hated to go home but the time came snuck up on us in a hurry and we returned home to the hum drum work schedule and Jessi returned to "My Space" and Berik to daycare.
He is having an awesome time there!He loves Splash day on Fridays and making food like the cinnamon rolls he was up to his elbows in ! I got to see pics of that but none of making pizzas but I can imagine that had to be equally messy! He is learning alot and we think he has learned some daycare defensive tactics as he tried them out on Jessi. A little nibble here and there, some hair pulling and a little bull dozing! Along with that, his verbal skills are progressing nicely and daddy has really taught him some great things to say like, "boodylicious" and has taught him to cup his mouth with his hands and YELL, "Mama" in Wal-Mart. It is effective I must say as I do hear him. The cutest is his fichin po (fishing pole),pot/sit/sul (popsicle) and poo man (policeman) and of course they go, Woo Woo! and he yells that out daily as you arrive to daycare, which backs up to the police station parking lot.Not to funny when your inspection sticker is expired and you are feeling guilty. I know, I should get it done before I get a ticket. He is also extremely curious about everything. One evening he was sitting up on the island in the kitchen "helping" make dinner. We had a box on the counter and he points to it and exclaims, Chicken! Jessi and I said , no and before we could tell him what it was, he exclaims, Spaghetti! and again we said no and he exclaims, French fries!!! and we said no and he looks up at us and says,(in very plain English), "Well, what is it?" as if we were being mean to him and he was wasting his breath and effort on us. It was really cute, you probably just had to be there :).
Dora Dora continues to be a big hit and he is learning Spanish well. He knows "empuje" means to push and when that particular episode comes on (we have it taped , look out, as he will run up behind you and push back and forth on your booty trying to move you and says over and over, "empuje, empuje". The song is about the characters trying to get a boat off the sand and into the water and it seems like it takes them forever and he stands behind you and pushes!He says alot "that's funny" and then starts cracking him self up at what? Sometimes we don't know? Hum? He has a good imagination! He also does this dance about stiring up a bowl of choc and sings it in spanish. So far I have managed to catch nothing on video as he will stop completely if you get the camera out.He is very funny and I hope one day to catch it secretly. Well this about sums up June as we were broke and tired!
All the little stuff sure adds up in a hurry! Until next time, you'll take care. Love, Gena, Jaimie and Berik
May started off with a trip to San Antonio, to join in a celebration for one of our best friends, sons, first Communion. We had our first experience in a crying room, there in the Catholic church. As we are Methodist, we don't have this but I might add, I rather liked it, quite well. Basically, he played and we watched and a good time was had by all! Berik and this little girl were most interested in playing in the cabinet.
We had lots of fun at our friends house and Berik's favorite place there was the play set out back. He fearlessly climbed to the top with lightning speed and I got this really cute picture of him before he zoomed down the slide. 
On the way home we stopped at the wildlife drive thru park and saw the animals. Berik enjoyed himself, although he was not as excited about it as we thought he might be. We will try this again when he gets older, as we love the animals. Berik is getting better and better on car trips and we learn and play more and more games as he gets older. Jaimie and I just hate the whole video in the car thing and therefore, so far, we have not caved into that, although at times it sure would make it easier. We count lots of trees and cars, read books and sing songs. Unless Berik is totally wiped out, car rides for him are NOT soothing. Quite the opposite, stimulating to say the least, pointing out every white truck, "daddy's truck" , telling daddy, "drive daddy drive" over and over and over again. You know it's coming when you accelerate ,like getting on the highway or passing a car. Cute , the first few times, not as cute the next 50 times, but still cute! He tells the trees on our street bye when we leave, "bye tree, bye tree, bye tree" and if you chime in with "bye tree" then you get the whole toddler gone wild.. "NO, MY TREE!!!!!!!!!" Everything right now is HIS! After the 5 hour car trip from San Antonio, we got as much rest as you can during the work week and then took off to Southlake, only 3 hours , to see my brother and his family, to celebrate Mother's day. Friday night we watched my niece, (14 ) in an interactive melo-drama, where you throw popcorn at the villain. Before the play, they announced not to eat the stale yucky popcorn, just to throw it. Well, B certainly had the hang of throwing it so when we looked off from time to time but then discovered that he had eaten a whole bunch of it. The joke later was that they had probably used that same popcorn the night before! Saturday we shopped and played in the pool and Sunday we 
had a delicious breakfast at the Cheesecake factory . Berik walked hand in hand with Reid, my brother, and I just thought they were so cute. 
Jaimie let Berik sit on one of the many cows they have in that shopping area and Berik thought he was a big man!!
After breakfast we went to church and we rounded out the day by hanging around the pool and exchanging mothers day gifts.
I got a really beautiful James Avery cross from my boys and my sister in law gave me some new clothes, just because!
This month Berik finally won't sit in the highchair anymore so we got as much use out of it that we could. He can reasonably sit anywhere but we have just been using it. Isn't it funny that the switch just turns off, nope, not sitting there any more. His bed will be next. To date he has never tried to climb out of the crib and it switches to a toddler bed, but so far we just haven't switched. He only had one sinus infection this month so that was good for us. He continues to love the water ,
from the hose, to the pool, in the bath, anywhere! except toilet water, thank goodness! For that, he just loves the paper !! 
Berik is into glasses this month and I have two Superstar look alike moments for you! This first one, looks like Tom Cruise in Risky Business
and the second one he looks like Elton John. 
Neither, moment was planned , it just kind of happened. The last weekend in May, Jaimie drove over, to Alabama and picked up Jessi. 10 hours over and 10 hours back(no Berik), no one brave enough for that one for now. He was glad to see his "sissy" ! He loves her to no end! She is good with him and they play really well together.
Since daycare, Berik has had some really cool artwork. He made this butterfly ( his footprints) in April but it didn't come home until May. It was the biggest butterfly in the whole room! 
He painted this pot for plant week. 
I am thrilled , as I love kids art! Well for now, I am outta here. Maybe one day I will be all caught up. I have lists of what he does to put on the blog but sitting down ,with uninterrupted time doesn't come often around here. Take Care. P.S.-I don't know how to get this silly underlining off of here so sorry you had to deal with that.
We went to Lake Michigan shore/beach and played in the COLD, COLD, COLD, water and to my amazement there were people swimming. No thanks, too cold for me. We also went by Michael Jordans (house),make that gate,as that was as close as we could get, you know short notice and all! Ha!
Benita is a voice teacher and plays piano and sings professionally and my Aunt plays piano too, so My B, loved the fact that they helped him play the piano as he is very excited to play every time he sees one.
had a good time looking at all the animals. Late afternoon B dumped us off at the hotel for the Kazapalooza,and you thought we'd never get there!
We took this fun bag as a donation for the raffle and it was a huge success as it had the most tickets sold toward it, so I was told. I will have to have a bag made for me one day and will most definitely have to get these books for some fun with B. We finally met up with some of the people we blog with from Kaz and it was really neat to catch up with them. The Kaz kid's are even cuter in person, here are a couple to drive the point home!
We had a pizza party, meet and greet the first evening,a luncheon with activities such as facing painting and a balloon artist for the kids.In the afternoon several groups of peeps went to the aquarium and/or to the park with this neat water feature!
Berik and Serena had fun on this turtle. Aren't they cute?!
Also a slight malfunction with a group shot. You see my child is oh so cooperative!
We had a lot of fun. We saw "the bean" ,
a reflective art piece of sorts where you can see the whole city in kind of a 360 kind of view. I guess that's what you would say. Here is a regular picture of it and then one from underneath.
We also meet up at the pool and Jessi was good to help with Berik as always!
Thanks, Jessi! All in all we had a fantastic time and visited Navy pier were I was dumb enough and still barely not fat enough not to fit on the swings, so I went on the ride. Ugh..
it kind of made me sick to my stomach.We loved the view of the lake and had a nice person take a good family picture of us.
We snuck in a quick trip through the stained glass display but Berik was bored and tired so he tuckered out with Manny's tail literally cliched between his teeth.
We have had Manny since before Kaz so he goes with us everywhere. Here is a 9-11 piece 
that I thought was pretty neat!Here is the little blurb about it, quite interesting really. You can enlarge it to read it.
After so much fun in Chicago we hated to go home but the time came snuck up on us in a hurry and we returned home to the hum drum work schedule and Jessi returned to "My Space" and Berik to daycare.
All the little stuff sure adds up in a hurry! Until next time, you'll take care. Love, Gena, Jaimie and Berik
