Peggy just emailed me this photo of Jack and Grayson playing shuffleboard out at Aunt Debbie and Uncle Raymond’s new house:

The weather sure does look nice down there.

Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 254 user reviews.

Tonight, Christine called me on her way home from her 16 mile bike ride with Cyndi to ask if I wanted to go to the park with the Swendners to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner and let the kids all play with each other. I said “sure”, so she came home, we got the kids dressed, then we stopped at KFC to pick up dinner and met the Swendners at the park over in their neighborhood.

We had fun. The kids played. The kids ate well. The kids played some more. The adults chatted with each other. We found a guy with a great dog that would fetch a ball after the kids threw it for her. All around, a good evening with friends at the park.

Then we all went home.

When Christine and I pulled in the driveway, I asked if Christine brought a key for the front door (we’d locked it from the inside before escaping out the garage door). And last week, Christine broke the garage door opener in her car…

She said “no” and proceeded to get out of the car to check her diaper bag, just to make sure she didn’t have a key, while I checked to see if my car was open because my garage door opener still works. The car was locked, and she really didn’t have a key.

So we checked the fences on either side of the house. Both gates were closed, and only open from the inside of the fence.

Christine climbed on top of the A/C unit and reached over the fence to unlock one of the gates while I held the kids.

We went into the back yard. I knew one of the windows was unlocked, but we had an idea:

Let’s send Jack in through the doggy door and he can unlock the dead-bolt on the front door, and we can get in.

So, I walked around the house to the front door, while Christine got Wesley to come to the back door to open the doggy door (it’s an automatic doggy door that only opens when Wesley gets close to it, and it’s locked otherwise, so someone couldn’t really just break in too easily).

When I got to the front door, I looked for Jack, but didn’t see him… so I turned the knob and pushed, and the door opened…

So I called for Jack, and he came running from the kitchen.

I don’t think he’d made it to the front door yet, but I’d tried the door just five minutes prior and I could have sworn it wouldn’t open.

He did unlock the back door, so we could let Christine and Grayson in, though… silly me, I didn’t even think to have him unlock the back door.

Long story short: it’s nice to know we can break into our own house without a key, as long as Wesley is willing to come to the back door, and we have our three year old with us.

Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 179 user reviews.

Last night, Christine and I went to see a movie while Aunt Peggy came over to baby-sit the boys for us. We saw 10, 000 B.C. which was very good.

When we got home, Aunt Peggy had to tell us a story:


She was putting Jack down for bed, and it was time to put on his Huggies for the night.

So she told him, “Jack, let’s take off your under-pants and put your Huggies on”.

Jack said “No, I want to put the huggies on over my underpants.”

Peggy replied “Jack, I really think you should put the Huggies on, and then we can put your underpants over them, so that if you have an accident, you won’t get all wet.”

Jack told her “But I have a rooster in my body that will wake me up if I have to go potty and I won’t have an accident.”


Peggy told us that she couldn’t really argue with that logic, so Jack was sleeping with a pair of underpants on, and a pair of Huggies pull-ups over his underpants.

We just sat there and laughed with her in the kitchen when she told us that.

Cock-a-doodle-doo everybody!

Average Rating: 5 out of 5 based on 286 user reviews.

Every year, Austin throws a big party at Zilker Park, and calls it the Annual Kite Festival.

This year, because the weather was nice, the boys were old enough, and Aunt Peggy lives in Austin now, we decided to attend. And boy did we have fun?

We couldn’t get our kite to fly, but luckily, Josh Baer had a kite in the air when we got there, so he let Jack fly his kite for a few minutes, while Amy Baer held Grayson (who never goes to strangers as easily as he jumped into her arms) and helped him pet a friend of their’s puppy.

There were other friends from work there as well, and we all took turns flying Josh’s kite.

Then, Aunt Peggy went and bought a kite that would actually fly, and she got it up in the air, while Grayson held the rope for her

While Peggy and Grayson were flying a kite, Christine and Jack went over to the rock wall to climb it. Jack actually climbed up around 6 or 8 feet, and had fun until he realized if he went any higher we couldn’t help him hold on… it’ll be fun to see how high he gets every year from now on.

All in all, it was lots of fun.

We left right as the first signs of rain started to show, and on the way to the car we felt a few drops of rain, but it never really rained on us.

We stopped at Wally’s Burgers on the way home, ate quickly and took naps. It was a full day.

The rest of the photos are here.

Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 based on 256 user reviews.