Hamilton Family Vacation 2012

The Hamiltons, (Pops, Granny, Greg, Amelia, Trent, Dena, Maddie, Tucker, Beckett, & Finn) that is, took our annual family vacation this past week. We rented a lake house in Granbury, Texas and it was a great time! 

Granny & Pops with the grandkids!

We, mostly, just hung out around the lake house, which was literally steps from the water, but we did venture out for a few fun things.

Beckett is ready for the PGA tour!

On Thursday, we drove to Glen Rose to visit Dinosaur World and Dinosaur Valley State Park. At Dinosaur World, Maddie and Tucker got to dig for fossils and see "life-sized" replicas of about 30 different types of dinosaurs. They thoroughly enjoyed it! Tucker would run up to a dinosaur and growl at it, then he would run away saying, "Scary! He gonna eat me, daddy! Save me!" I don't think that he was really scared, he was just being dramatic and playing games because he would run up and growl at the next one on the walk. Next we went into Dinosaur Valley State Park to look for real dinosaur tracks in the Paluxy River. The water was too high to see the tracks, but Tucker and Beckett got to splash in the river and have some fun.

Tucker, in the mouth of a T-Rex

Maddie & Tucker, future paleontologists

Does he look scared to you?

Beckett & Tuck, enjoying the Paluxy river

 On Friday, we visited the Granbury city beach, which is awesome! The city sectioned off a portion of the lake from boat and fishing traffic. They also trucked in enough sand from South Padre Island to make a true beach and go out about 50 yards into the lake. It was the nicest lake beach that I have ever been to. The kids spent the day splashing, throwing sand, building sand castles, and "swimming". I think that Beckett had the most fun of all, splashing and swimming the entire time.

Granbury city beach

Beckett, the little fish!

Tucker, enjoying the water

We also spent some time attempting to catch fish. The lake house had a boat dock and a sun-deck above it. The dock was perfect for fishing and we saw lots of fish. After a day and a half of losing tons of bait, I realized that our hooks were too large. After a quick change of hooks, we started catching some fish. Maddie caught a perch, as did I, and Tucker caught a small catfish. They were so excited to catch the fish, but didn't want to touch them.

The view of Lake Granbury from the dock

Maddie, fishing woman

The sun deck

Tucker's whopper!

It was a short and simple trip, but we all had fun and were able to spend some quality time together!

Beckett giving Finn kisses

Oh, and yes, Finn was there too, but he pretty much slept the whole time!

See! I told you Finn was there!

~Trent

Spring Break

We had a great Spring Break!

YOU are invited!

Before I get into all of our family stuff, I want to share an opportunity that is coming up. I have been planning the first Whole Hearts Foundation event for Dallas for months. The time has finally arrived to put all of that planning into action. Our Whole Hearts "social" and fundraiser is this coming Sunday at 1pm at Medical City Children's Hospital. It will be a reception in the atrium of the hospital and it will feature an acoustic performance by Matt Hammitt (Bowen's dad). He and his wife, Sarah, founded Whole Hearts and they will be sharing their vision for the foundation. All money raised at the event will go to support a special project at Medical City and heart families in Dallas. You all are invited to join us at the event, just RSVP to info@wholehearts.org to let us know you are coming. I have attached a copy of the invitation so you can see it. 

Tucker knows his ABC's

So, for Spring Break we took a short trip to Oklahoma City. We took Tucker to the zoo, which he loved, we went to Bricktown, and we visited the Oklahoma City bombing memorial and museum. It was a great little trip and we had a lot of fun and made some memories. You can read a little more about it on Tucker's caringbridge site here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/tuckerhamilton

Mommy, Tucker, and Daddy at "Pops" on Route 66

Can you tell he is ready to go to the zoo???

Tucker and his "pride"!

Tucker & Mommy having lunch at Leo's BBQ in OKC

The other big event for Spring Break was to get Finn's nursery ready. If you didn't know, the nursery was our guest room. It was painted the color of a Tiffany jewelry box and VERY feminine. This would not do for our new little man. We picked out some crib bedding after we found out it was a boy and it is red, white, and blue. The idea was to save the red and white stripes that were in the middle of the room and paint the Tiffany's blue to match the bedding.

I started priming the walls on Wednesday night and then moved on to the paint on Thursday. The top half of the room is light blue, almost like denim, and the bottom half is navy blue. I finished up on Friday afternoon, with some help from my mom and dad. There was only one mishap, a puddle of spilled navy blue paint in the middle of the beige, carpeted floor. After trying numerous things to clean the stain, I gave up and decided to up the stain with beige paint. It doesn't look great, but I think it will be okay until I can find someone who can patch the piece of carpet. See the before and after pictures below.

Before - "Tiffany's" room            After - Finn's room

It was a great Spring Break, not too busy, but not boring. Now comes the countdown to the end of school and the arrival of Finn. We are ready for the new little guy to get here and join our family.

Thanks, as always, for visiting and sharing our family journey with us.

God Bless,

~Trent

A Piece of our Little Heart

You may not know this, but we LOVE Sanctus Real. When we found out that their lead singer, Matt, was going to have a son with HLHS, we went to their concert to meet him. We actually had never heard their music before, but we instantly fell in love with it. Even if you take away my friendship with Matt, I would still listen to their music. I have yet to find a Sanctus Real song that I didn't like.

All that being said, we listen to Sanctus Real fairly often. In fact, that is pretty much all I listen to in my truck because of Tucker. Every morning when we go to school and every afternoon when we go home, the first thing Tucker says upon entering my truck is, "Daddy...Tucker...listen...Matt...peese!" This is Tuckerese for "Daddy can we listen to Sanctus Real please?"

With all of that time spent listening to Sanctus Real, you can imagine that we know the songs well. We know them so well, that Tucker knows most of the words to the songs on their cd "Pieces of a Real Heart". He even knows the music without the words, he can recognize most Sanctus Real songs within 2-3 seconds of their start. Often times, if the music is low enough, we can catch him singing along in his sweet voice.

A few weeks ago, we were sitting around listening to music and we were actually able to catch him singing with the video camera on our phone. I have included the videos for your viewing pleasure!

Tucker isn't the only one who enjoys Sanctus Real. Since we met Matt, we have been to 6 of their concerts and have enjoyed them all. We will going to our 7th this weekend. Sanctus Real is wrapping up their tour with Casting Crowns and The Afters, so Dena and I are driving to Temple, Texas to see them. We are especially excited about this concert because Matt will be performing a song that he wrote for his son, Bowen, called "All of Me". We have seen him perform it before, but this will be the first time that we will see him share Bowen's story with a special slide-show going, and this will be a much larger crowd than usual. Here is Matt singing "All of Me" at the last concert that we went to, I know you will enjoy this:

In addition to the concert, Dena and I are taking the rest of the weekend to spend some time together. We will be going down to San Antonio after the concert to enjoy the River Walk. We are excited for a weekend away and are happy that we can leave Tucker to have some fun with Granny & Pops!

Thanks for visiting us and we hope that everyone has a great weekend!

~Trent