The Barnes Family

We threw a little birthday party for Cullen the day after his birthday. We had our Texas family over and enjoyed a wonderful day together.

My attempt at a #1 cake, with a little cake just for Cullen.

We had such a great afternoon hanging out and chatting! We love getting together with Rob and Anne and their kids.

Kids waiting for dinner.

Cake time!!! Notice Cullen's look of caution :)

Wondering what it might be...

Giving it a taste...

mmm, not bad...

Remnants of the cake!

 I do believe he enjoyed that, especially the icing!

I didn't take many pictures on Cullen's actual birthday. We went out to dinner at Pei Wei, which turned out to be a crazy night! We always order the same thing when we go. GF Asian Chicken Salad and GF Sweet and Sour Chicken and we share it together. This night they accidently put wonton chips in with our salad (usually in the salad, just not GF version). Carl was merrily munching away on his first few bites when on my first bite of the salad I bit into a wonton. I immediately told Carl to stop and that it had gluten in it. Instantly he spit out what he had in his mouth and he went over to talk to the manager to tell them about it. The manager was extremely apologetic and refunded us our money, had a fresh salad made for us and then gave us a gift card for the next time. The manager said they had new cooks in the kitchen and was so sorry this happened. We appreciated the way they handled it, but Carl stressed how important it is when they have a specific GF menu that if they makes mistakes like that it can make people very sick. We finished our meal,  but poor Carl couldn't really enjoy it as he was wondering what the next few days might be like for him and whether he had eaten enough to be poisoned. Thankfully, he did not become sick, but this experience made us much more cautious, if that is even possible, when eating out.

Anyway, after that exciting evening, we came home to open Cullen's birthday present. Poor little guy was cutting a molar and being very grumpy, so we decided to wait until the next morning to open it.

Attempting to celebrate his birthday that evening, but he would have no part in it :(

He was much happier the next morning and got to open his present.

"What is this?"

"Yay, this looks like fun :)"

I love this picture Carl captured! Cullen thoroughly enjoying his present! :)

Then mommy opened his birthday Cards and he immediately lost interest and began playing with the box the toy came in.

This year Carl and I celebrated 6 years of wedded bliss! We had planned to have a special date night just the 2 of us. Sadly something we haven't done since around Christmas. Unfortunately, Cullen came down with a runny nose and a cold the day before so we had to change our plans. We decided to just go out to dinner as a family instead. While nice to not have to cook that night, the meal was anything but relaxing. Aiden wasn't having the best attitude and Cullen kept shrieking (a new ability he has recently acquired and are trying to break him of) and trying to eat the food off my plate. At first it was a little frustrating the way the evening was going but then Carl and I just started laughing because it really was comical and it just is the way that life is right now. We are in a season with little ones. Someday they will be all grown up and I just know we will miss these days. We then laughed some more and took a couple pictures to remember this crazy night.

Carl sat next to Aiden and had to deal with his grumpy ungrateful attitude. Here Carl is showing how crazy he is feeling :)

Cullen sat next to me and I had to keep trying to keep him quiet with all the shrieking he was doing! He also decided that my food looked way better than his. You can't see the rest of the table, but all the plates were pushed down to my end of the table trying to keep everything out of his reach.(He is sitting in a booster chair, you just can't see it, so he wasn't free roaming, that would have been really crazy!)

Behind again! I have so many good intentions to keep up better with our blog, but time just seems to run away from me. We are in the middle of refinancing our house at the moment and so that has kept us busy of late. Although my biggest time sucker right now is the fact that I began kindergarten with Aiden at the end of August. We are having a great time with our curriculum and loving all the new things we are learning together, but I am still trying to get into the groove of a fuller schedule each day and then trying to keep up with everything else that needs to be done.

Anyway, enough excuses. Here are some pictures from our recent trip to the zoo. I had bought tickets to the Dallas Zoo very inexpensively through Groupon a few months back and we decided to go on Labor Day. Carl had the day off and so we were hoping it might be quieter than if we were to go on a Saturday or Sunday. It was still pretty busy but not too bad, I guess when you have endured the crowds at Disneyland, everything else looks tame in comparison!

We had a super fun day and it was very enjoyable now that Aiden is older and is really interested in learning about animals.

The zoo had a new attraction, a baby giraffe named Jamie that was just 6 weeks old. She was so very sweet.

We took the opportunity to feed the giraffes. They sold their lettuce for a steal... 2 leaves for 5 bucks! Insane! The boys each got a leaf to feed to one of the giraffes. I had to pry Cullen's out of his mouth first as he thought it was a snack for him!

Having fun already!

Our monkey sitting on a monkey.

We bought our own lunch to eat and had a picnic together.

Cullen did so well in the stroller. He happily enjoyed being pushed around.

Looking at the penguins.

A photo opportunity with the elephant statue.

I thought this was funny :)

Aiden with a HUGE python!!

They had a children's area that we stopped at at the end of the day. A little river runs through the area and then kids were all able to splash in it.

All ready to go home. We were tired from all the walking, and if you look closely you can see Cullen crying. Poor boy was exhausted since he missed his morning nap. He conked out as soon as we got him in the van.

"Say what??"

"It's my birthday?!?!"

 "This is such good news!!"

"HOORAY!!!!!!"

Happy 1st Birthday to our precious Cully Bear!! The Lord has greatly blessed us with you, sweet, smiley boy!!

We Love You!