Mom's in DC

My work hosts what they call Bootcamp in DC every few months for new employees. Since I have been working there over two years, you can see this is a trip I have been putting off. I have been asked to go so many time I finally decided that I better get it over with. The reason I have not wanted to go is that the training is in DC, it is a week long and my family was not able to go.

Sunday I was off to DC early in the morning so I could be here in time for the opening reception. I was lucky to have some people from my office on this trip. Once we arrived we all decided to take the metro to get to the Ritz-Carlton. Of course, we ended up going the wrong way, but we realized soon and turned around and got to the hotel in no time. I have never stayed in a Ritz hotel and it is so nice. My only complaint was that they charge you for internet, haha.

We had a small reception on Sunday, and then the real training started on Monday. They are serving us breakfast everyday, but Monday they also served us lunch. This is worth mentioning because it was so awful, haha. They served us curry chicken, curry rice and curry vegetables. It was like the cooked the meal, didn't like how it looked and poured a whole bunch of curry sauce on it. I know everyone has different tastes, but I would say the majority of this room (of over 100 ppl) did not like the lunch they decided to serve us. I would think that if you are going to serve a big crowd, you would go for a more bland choice, but who knows. Lets just say I am glad they served dessert afterwards or I would have had to go buy something, haha.

Anyway, I will get off that rant and move on to more important things. Man do I miss my family. I have really been so much more busy here than I ever am at home with a small child. Since Linc goes to sleep at 7 every night, I mostly have the evening to relax. Here I don't get back to the hotel room until almost 9 at night each night and I am exhausted. I am glad I got this opportunity, and I hate to say this (b/c I am still young), but this trip is for young people, haha!

Today we got to visit our Central Office to see where our headquarters are. Here I am with some people from my work and one person from San Francisco that I met a few months ago.

My dad has been filling in for someone up in DC at Central Office for about 3 months, so I went up to his office to see where he works. He decided to take me out on a mini tour to see the White House and a few other things. This is a picture of the place that the diplomats stay at when they come to visit the White House.

Here is my dad at the White House.


Back of the White House.

Front of the White House.

Washington Monument.

It was fun to see these historic places and tomorrow I will get to go to one of the famous museums.

I can't believe that tomorrow will be Wednesday and I will only have two more days before I can see my family, I am so excited. It is so hard to leave Lincoln, especially when he changes so much every day. I imagine that he even looks different. It would be nice if Craig could send me a picture of what he is up to, wink wink! Love you boys!

Snip Snip

I had said from the beginning that I didn't want to cut Lincs hair for as long as I could. I think the little shaggy boy look is cute and figured it would save us some trauma as well since I always hear that children scream at the first hair cut. If you can't tell from the million pictures I post, Linc has some strange hair. It is really straight in the front and curly and long in the back. It is also very fine and every morning it ends up in a rats nest that is impossible to get out without a good, wet brushing. It didn't look good anymore, so I finally broke down and decided it was time to cut his crazy mane.

After some research and referrals, we decided to go to Cool Cuts 4 Kids on Saturday. I was a bit nervous, but Linc seemed to be excited about getting his hair cut. He watched Daddy get his cut a while back ago and wanted to get his cut too. Cool Cuts was great, they had toys and tvs to distract the children.

After waiting for a bit, Linc was called back and got to sit in the little red car! Here he is right when he sat down. He is showing you that he is about to get his hair cut.



Like I said, he always has a rats nest and the stylist had to use leave in conditioner to get it to straighten out.

Not sure about the slicked back look, haha!

See how long it is when it is all combed and wet.

We were so amazed, he did not cry once. I think he actually enjoyed it. He was looking at all the people and just ignoring what what happening to his hair. Here he is after the cut with gel in his hair, another first. He looks so stylish and now you can actually see the curls, so cute!


He is all done and no tears where shed! Yay, I hope it always goes like this, good job little buddy.

What a stud!

Go Cougars!

To those of you who went to high school with me, you may think I am talking about our Alma mater, but I am actually cheering on my nephew's middle school who are also the Cougars! Ryan had another tournament this past weekend and this time I remembered my camera. He is really enjoying the last bit of the season and doing such a great job. Go # 45 (that's Ryan)!

I have never seen him run so fast, not even in baseball. I guess his speed is up since you have to do a lot of sprints to get the ball down and back. I would have never thought that watching a middle school game could be so action packed, but it sure was. They were up against an equally good team and it was point for point until the end.

Ryan about to make the shot!

They ended up winning the game and 1st place in the tournament, so it was a great game to go watch.

Linc did great and sat down and watched up until the 4th quarter. Then he was ready to run the bleachers and make us chase him. There was this little girl that kept wanting to hold him and she was 4. I told her he might be a little heavy, but she could hold his hand. He is already a ladies man. But from the look on his face you would have to wonder why, haha.

Linc enjoyed watching his big cousin Ryan win his game. We enjoyed spending time with Bob, Ginger and Ryan. It was a great Saturday!

A Little Gym Grad!

Today was Lincoln's last day at Little Gym. He has grown so much in this class and really shined on his last day. He even got a medal (well all the kids did, but hey, good job)!

His class has always been really big, but today there were only 5 kids in the class. This was great because then Lincoln got a chance to show off for the teacher. He does a great forward roll now, and loves the balance beam. But I would have to say his favorite part of class is when they bring out the bouncy balls. He always wants to help distribute and put them away, what a big helper.

He just loved the medal and wore it everywhere today. He was really proud of himself. While Linc has no problem coming out of his shell, it is a great place to build self-esteem.

We will always remember this day as the first time he got a medal and graduated from a class. Like I said in a previous post, we will be taking the semester off so we can explore other things on Saturday's, but we had the best time and I suggest it to anyone with small kids.

A Bloggy Memory

Check out the two latest posts. I don't know if this blog is making my memory bad, or if it was the 48 hours of labor with Lincoln that made me lose some memory cells, haha. For some reason, if I don't blog about my weekend right away, I forget what we have done. It is like I am putting all my memories in here and then they are just gone in my head, kinda weird.

This weekend started out great with Friday off. We all slept in, and then Linc and I headed over to the gym. After that I got my hair cut, and this is where my memory gets foggy, I can't really remember what we did the rest of the day until dinner. Paula came over for dinner and we made steaks and sopapilla cheesecake (for the 2nd time this week! Yikes!). Craig and I finished off the night watching some alien movie with Keanu Reeves in it and then headed off to bed.

Saturday started off busy with Linc and I showering and getting ready for Little Gym. He only has one more class and then the session is over. We did not sign him up again for the spring session so that we could use our Museum & Zoo memberships. We might sign him up again in the summer or we might do swim lessons again. It was a great class, but I want us to not be so booked on Saturday like we have been this past year. After Little Gym, we headed out for Lincoln's first live basketball game. We went and saw my nephew, who is in eighth grade, play basketball. Ryan did great and they won the game. Linc did great as well, he only made us walk around the bleachers a few times and was satisfied to sit in Daddy's lap as long as he had a bag of Skittles (bribe much?!?).

After lunch we all went down for a nap and then over to my parents. My dad has been working in DC for a few months and doesn't get to see Linc much, so he wanted to play with him for a bit. After that we headed over to Niki and Philips. It was kind of a boys and girls night. The boys got Whataburger and watched the Cowboy Game. Us girls went to Olive Garden and then watched criminal investigation shows. It was a fun night!

Sunday was a little less busy. I went to church and target and that was the bulk of our day.

Lincoln loves to water the flowers, and while watering on Sunday we realized he figured out how to open and shut the front door by himself. It is both amazing and scary to us at the same time. Luckily I started back in college always locking the door behind me even when I am home, so he can't get out. He has not figured out the locks yet!

Here is my little man coming to help water.

What a cutie!

Here he goes, opening the front door.

He got it.

Ever since we went to Niki's on NYE, Linc has wanted daddy to build a fire. We have lived in this house over a year and have two fire places and have never made a fire in them. Craig finally broke it in and now Lincoln wants a fire every night. He even talks about "Daddy on Fire" at school. I bet that scares the teachers, haha. He just means to say he wants daddy to make a fire. Here he is relaxing by the fire.

I am glad I got that all written down, it sure was a lot of stuff. I guess since we are so busy, I sometimes forget the small fun things we do. I am thankful I have a blog I can go back to so I can remember.

New Years Eve 2009

I got my camera back and have just now had the time to do my NYE post. I have been slacking but there has also been a lot going on. We spent NYE at The Brawley's this year. We have done something with them the past few years and it has always been fun. Normally we go to On The Border and then just hang out at one anothers house, pretty low key. This year Niki invited 2 other couples over to their and we stuck with our Mexican Themed Dinner. We started out with homemade quac and chips. Then we made turkey tacos and black beans. To top it off we had sopapilla cheesecake, yum! (Shh...but I have made this dish twice since being at Niki's, it is that good!) Craig made the best non-alcoholic party drinks and we also had ginger ale punch.

Here is Niki's tree. I am glad they kept it up because it just made the house very festive. She has such cute classic ornaments, mostly Christopher Radko, very pretty!


I love this little TCU one, it is super cute.

The kids had a great time running around and playing in Levi's room. They found his musical instruments and made a little band. Here they are posing for their future band picture.

Avery wanted to make sure the instrument was clean.

I think Linc got hit in the head, haha.

Cute!

Family photo by the fire. Goodbye Gabbard's of 2009, hello 2010 Gabbard's!

Here is Niki and Avery. Avery was dressed up all cute in her NYE wear.

You can see why Linc loves this girl so much, what a doll!

We let Linc stay up until 8! That is late for him and he was having so much fun, it took him a while to go to sleep. After he was in bed, we played games and just hung out. It was really hard for us to stay up late this year, but we did it. As soon as 12 hit, I was ready to pack up and head home. I was so tired from such a great night. Thanks to The Brawley's for a wonderful NYE!!!

First Day of 2010

We had a great NYE, but I left my camera at Niki's so I will have to post about that when I get it back. 1/1/2010 was a pretty uneventful day for us. We got to sleep in which was nice. My parents where out of town, so we did not have the traditional black eyed peas. With no plans for the day, we headed out to get Lincoln some diapers! We ended up buying a new diaper pail too, the old one we had masked no odor, so we needed something that did. The rest of the day was pretty low key, we even made dinner at home and just watched a movie after Lincoln went to bed. If this is the outlook for the year, low key weekends, I am kinda liking it.

Linc resolved to be more gangster this year, haha! "What up diaper dudes!"

These were taken with Craig iPhone and they came out pretty good. He just looks so cute in a backwards cap!


I know a lot of people start the new year with resolutions, but I have decided this year to not make any. All I really want to do this year is make it a great year. That may sound like a resolution, but I have not attached any action I need to take to make it great, so it is not, ha! 2010 just has a nice ring to it and I think it is going to be a great year for a lot of people. This year my little boy will turn 2, Craig and I will have been married for 4 years, I will have been out of college for 6 years. There are so many good milestones coming this year and that doesn't even include the things I don't know about yet. I can't wait to see what is in store for the Gabbards this year. I hope we all have a wonderful 2010.