While celebrating Mason’s awesome performance tonight in goal, without Mason, Cutler discovered the art of the selfie. Most of it was done on Melanie’s phone and I haven’t had a chance to download them, but I do have this one on my phone and the kid has some skill. I also videoed him performing his new found talent. The wagging of the tongue reminds me of a scene from Cars where Mater does something similar when he sees his reflection.
As today is Valentine’s Day, I feel it is appropriate to share my valentine’s last date night, which also happened to be in Dubai. I have shared a few pictures of the “seven star” hotel, Berj Al Arab that was just off the coast from our hotel, including a failed attempt at a joke where it was my dinner date for a night when Melanie had a work function. https://teamfricke.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/my-dinner-companion/ I had heard marvelous things about the lobby of this hotel and the only way to visit it was to have tea, dinner, or drinks at their 27th floor bar. Since I don’t drink tea, but I do like alcohol we chose to head up to the 27th floor for a lovely date night.
The kicker for having drinks is that you have a minimum per person set for what you have to spend that equates to around $200 total for the both us so we were expecting some really marvelous and fancy drinks as well as we fully expected to walk out of there feeling really good. What we quickly discovered when we got there was that the minimum could be hit pretty easily given their pride in the drinks. For example, a glass of champagne cost around $40 and an import beer was $30. Fortunately our love has no cost so we marveled and chuckled at the prices and had a grand time. We were even fortunately enough to get a table facing out to the ocean with a view to the downtown. Unfortunately the inside is lit in such a way, think disco, that you really can’t get much of a view but it was still great to kick back and relax with the love of my life for an extravagant date night. Something we seldom get here in Dallas.
As for the lobby that I had heard so much about, it was a bit underwhelming. They do have two interesting fountains and some nice tile work, but I wasn’t overwhelmed by the beauty, aside from the one that was on my arm that evening. Below are some pictures from our evening as well as a video of each fountain, including one that shows how high the fountain shoots up into the lobby.
Editor’s Note: The extra cheese in this email is prodded by my love for my wife and because it is Valentine’s Day. I shall resort to less sap starting tomorrow.
Melanie just received this letter from Mason at his Valentine’s party at school. He is so full of love he has enough for the both of us. So glad Melanie was home from her trip and able to attend. The boys missed her terribly.
Was just looking through my photos from the past year and ran across this one. Melanie is already a pretty awesome mom for all that she does for the boys, but this just further proves that she will do just about anything for them. Can’t wait for her to get home today, so she can continue to do things for them and give me a break. 🙂
This is what I heard being screamed from the other room by Cutler this morning when he was supposed to be getting dressed for school. The picture below is what I found when I went to help.
This morning, before school, Mason and I were watching the Olympics and in a cross country sprint skiing event a competitors ski broke and despite the ski being broken the competitor continued to push on including a couple of falls. No matter how much he struggled he kept getting up and pushing on. Mason asked if he was allowed to quit and didn’t have to finish and so I thought it was a great opportunity to show him that you don’t quit no matter what and rebutted with confusion as to why he isn’t allowed to quit. I continued to explain to him that he could quit, but he pushed on out of pride and that you only get so many opportunities to represent your country and compete like this. I thought that I had finally got him to realize what I was talking about and that it was a perfect learning opportunity, but alas the conversation ended with…”So, he doesn’t have to finish?” I just shook my head and walked away.
With the SMU, my graduate alma mater, moving into the top 25 in basketball for the first time in almost 30 years I thought I would post a few pictures of Mason playing catch in his only SMU shirt last November. I’m also hoping these sunny pictures will help bring back the warmth and sunny days just in time to start outdoor baseball practice.
I had a parent/teacher meeting with Cutler’s teacher this past week and while reviewing his progress she showed me several words that he is now able to read by sounding out the letters. I was a bit skeptical when she told me, but I withheld the skepticism and just smiled at the time. Then on Friday a book was sent home with the instructions for him to read it to me so we put my skepticism to test and low and behold the kid can read. Granted, some of it is him learning words from repetition, but when I found him getting stuck I worked with him on sounding it out and he knew what he was doing. Below is a video of the finished product from tonight. Very proud of our little monkey.
With Melanie still out of town the boys and I headed out tonight for a Stars game. After an interesting experience taking them both to a Rangers game this past summer I swore I would never do this again. However, with Melanie out I figured I would give it another shot and in the end I was pleased with the outcome. Aside from Cutler’s constant button pushing it was a great time. Only way it could have been better is if Melanie had been there. We miss her.
So my calendar won’t show it on the site, but at least somewhere it is still Friday and so my streak of daily posts lives on. I would have posted something sooner, but thanks to Grammy giving me the night off by watching the boys I am just now settling down long enough to write a few words about absolutely nothing. I will share a photo of rookie from Dallas’ version of being vortexed and Mason enjoying a small flurry this afternoon. I’d complain about the cold, but ours is white mild compared to those north of us.
Team Fricke 