A Very Harry Birthday Party!!

Today was Bean's birthday party. Since this is the biggest Harry Potter summer ever, we decided to have a Totally Harry party this year. Her dad and I spent all day decorating the house with Hogwarts banners and loads of balloons. We had all her friends meet us at Chili's for dinner,

then we provided the Muggle transportation to get them to the movies to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix".

Then, it was off to "Hogwarts" where they enjoyed Cauldron Cakes and Butterbeer.

In the morning, they'll be having Pumpkin Pasties, Treacle Tarts (bleh!) and Pumpkin Juice before they get picked up at Platform 9 3/4.

After a long night of wizard's duels and Harry Potter movies, everyone was exhausted!!

American Idols Live!!

We saw American Idols Live last night at the AT&T Center. It was SO cool!!! Blake was AWESOME and LaKisha brought down the house. Jordin was also great. It was a super experience for Bean's first concert. We had a blast!

STAGS

This weekend, Bean, my mom and I went down to Corpus Christi for the South Texas Age Group Championship meet.

It lasted four days!! This meet was a very different format than what we swim in Europe. This was the first meet where Bean had to swim an event for pre-lims and then swim that same event in the evening for the finals. It was rough on both of us. I didn't really know how to feed and rest her for that kind of meet format. Plus, our meets in Europe never start until around 11:00 am. For this meet, we had warm-ups at 6:30 am!! Yikes!

Bean had a GREAT meet, especially when you consider our season ended in February and she's only been doing off-season training since then. By the time we got to Texas and joined the team there, they were already tapering down for this meet. In spite of all that (and definitely in spite of Momma's Alarm Clock Goof-up the first day of the meet -- Bean had warm-ups at 6:30 and we woke up at 6:09! Yeah, I *set* the alarm, but forgot to turn it *on*! Oops), Bean dropped 0.61 seconds off of her 50 Free

and 1.98 seconds off her 50 Back!! WOOHOO!! Go Bean!!!

Hubby's oldest brother drove Abuelo, Abuelita and two of her sisters down from Houston so they could all cheer on Bean. We definitely had the loudest Panamanian contingent there!

TTFN~

Happy 4th of July!!

We had a very wet day today. First, Bean had swim practice at 0645 and it had rained so much the night before that the water from the pool had overflowed out onto the deck and was flowing toward the grass!

Then, we rushed home to get ready to go see my dad in the local 4th of July parade. It was pouring and his group pulled out at the last second. We decided to stay and watch the parade anyway. We ended up soaked to the skin in spite of our umbrellas (ellas, ellas, eh, eh, eh).

After the parade, Dad's group had their annual cookout at another member's house. We might have been wet, but the food was GREAT!!! I made pasta salad and Bean made these awesome White Chocolate Coconut cookies. Yummy!

TTFN~