Jack and I drove down to the Aggie game last Friday, 11/23. My mom also came up from Bellville. Here’s one photo she grabbed from that day:
More coming as soon as I have time to think about downloading photos from our camera…
Jack went and spent the afternoon with Rowan (and family) on Sunday, while Christine and I finished moving into the new house:
Thanks Marc and Cyndi
This video by Barry Tramel, a sportscaster for the Oklahoma is great. Dub sent it to me… Go watch it.
It’s Sunday night, around 10:30 p.m. as I write this. I’m sitting on our love seat in the “family room” in the back of the new house, watching HGTV on our HD TV. Christine is eating a chocolate mousse pie and drinking a glass of milk, and I think Frank is asleep in the guest room (Frank drove down on Thursday, and has been staying at the new house and working throughout the day each day, to help us get moved in faster). Jack and Grayson are both sleeping in their rooms, and Jack is in his new big boy bed.
We started moving into this house on Thursday of last week (we packed on Wednesday). Once we got everything over here on Thursday afternoon, we realized the house just wasn’t far enough along for us to actually move in… walls still needed paint, tile work needed to be done in the bathrooms, and the floors (and pretty much every other surface) were all still covered with a lot of sheetrock dust (like 2 or 3 millimeters deep in some places).
So, we ended up staying with Josh, Elise and Maly for the past few days. (THANK YOU GUYS!!!)
But, we were bound and determined to move in today, and have the boys sleep in their own beds, so, we did it. We moved in.
And we’re all exhausted. But, we’re glad to be in the house…
Now I’m going upstairs to see if I can figure out what boxes all of my clothes are in, so I have something to wear to work tomorrow.
I’m sure every dad has a story like this, but this one is mine:
This past Sunday morning, Christine asked me to get up with the boys, so that she could sleep in. So, around 6:30 in the morning, I rolled out of bed.
I watched a Baby Einstein movie with Grayson as I drank my first cup of coffee, and as Grayson drank his first bottle of the day. When he was done with his bottle, he just stared at the boob tube for a while, while I sipped the coffee… and around 6:45 or 6:50, I heard Jack’s door creak open, and then he poked his head around the corner in the hallway and said “Hi guys” in his sweet little morning voice.
As I said “Good Morning JACK!” he sprinted across the living room, and crawled up into my lap to finish Baby Einstein with Grayson and I. He snuggled into me, and said “Good morning Daddy. Good morning my baby.”
At that point, I knew it was going to be a good morning.
We all sat there, just holding on to each other, until the movie ended…
Then I got up and made eggs, and cinnamon toast, and grapefruit.
The boys ate while I drank my second cup of coffee.
After breakfast, Jack was ready to play, but I wanted to make sure Christine could sleep, so, I asked Jack if he wanted to go outside. To which he replied “YEEEAAAAHHHH! AGGIE FOOTBALLLLLLL!”
So, we grabbed his football and Grayson and went into the backyard.
We played with the football in the grass for a few minutes, and then Jack wanted to play on the patio, so we headed over there. I sat Grayson down and Jack climbed onto his Bobby Car (that’s two years old now, I think). Grayson then got up, and started “pushing” Jack around (or at least he tried… he’s not quite strong enough yet) and I joined him, and together we pushed Jack around on the Bobby Car while Jack used the phone to call Momo and Nana and Papa and Uncle Michael and Uncle Evan and Aunt Shadel and Ella (and everyone else he knows).
After we (Grayson) got tired of pushing Jack, we headed out to the hammock.
All three of us jumped on, and started swinging.
Grayson and Jack were crawling all over me &emdash; both of them having a blast.
When Grayson is really excited, he kicks… kind of like a bucking bull would kick… and he does it with both legs at the same time. And you know he’s really excited.
When we were just about done on the hammock (around 8:00) Jack and Grayson both climbed on top of me, and Jack said “Let’s go really really really high Daddy!”.
So, I basically stood up with my back on the hammock and then sat down in the hammock as it started to swing forward… and we went “really really really high” as Jack would say.
At the top of the first swing, Grayson started kicking wildly, and yelling “eha! eha! eha! eha! eha!” over and over… so I kicked and yelled along with him, and then Jack started doing the same.
We all kicked and yelled for a good five or ten minutes, stopping periodically for me to start the hammock swinging wildly again when it started petering out…
After we got off the hammock, we headed to the back door to find that Christine was up.
We’d accidentally woken her up.
I asked her in my best apologetic voice “I’m sorry, did we wake you up?”
She replied: “Me and all of our neighbors, I bet.”
I said “were we that loud?”
She just smiled and said “Let’s just put it this way, I could tell you all were having a lot of fun out there.”
And we were.
I kissed the boys, and sat them down on the kitchen floor, and Jack took off to his room to play, with Grayson close behind…
It was definitely the best Sunday morning I’ve ever had.
This past week, Jack learned how to ask that all important question: “Why?”
I was in New York all week, and when I got home on Friday, I woke up with Jack and Grayson. To kill some time that morning before I drove over to the new house to deal with our crappy “cheap” contractors, I took Grayson and Jack for a walk in the two-seat stroller.
At some point on the walk, Jack asked me about the trees in one of the neighbor’s yard. Then he asked me “why do trees grow?”
I said something like “because they grow when the sun hits them?”
Jack said “why does the sun hit them?”
I said “well, it doesn’t hit them, but it’s rays do, and they make the tree grow.”
Jack said “why does the tree grow?”
I replied something like “because that’s how God made it work?”
To which he replied “oh”.
A few seconds later he said “Daddy, why did God do that?”
I then realized that my kid had learned the most important question in the world:
“Why?”
Jack is full of wonder, and he is wonderful.
So, it’s Sunday as I type this and Jack has pretty much asked “why” about a thousand times. I think Christine and I are answering his every why with as good an answer as we can come up with at the time… and all the while I’m thinking “we have to buy a set of encyclopedias for this kid”.
I’ve had the urge to answer “because I said so” about 999 times, but have refrained. I’ve also wanted to say “because we have faith, son” but have stuck with “because that’s how God made it work” because I’m not sure he’ll get “faith” yet…
My mom has always told me that I asked “why” about a million times a month when I was a kid. If these last three days are any indication, I totally understand now.
“Why?”
Christine posted a photo gallery on her brand new .Mac account. Go see the photos here. Needless to say, we had a blast this year at Halloween.
BTW, she’s now gushing about how easy it was to create a web page with iWeb and .Mac. That’s how Apple gets the money out of you… they make it easy.
Two more movies for you folks.
The first is a movie of Jack and Grayson, generally playing in Jack’s room… Daddy makes an appearance or two as well:
The second is a few segments of Jack and Grayson playing with cars, and then playing with their push carts (which Jack calls his “cars” too):
You may be wondering if we’re still taking photos of Jack or Grayson, since we haven’t posted any since July.
The short answer is: yes, we’re taking photos and movies. In fact, here’s a list of galleries I’ve posted, but haven’t linked to yet:
The long answer is: yes, we’re taking photos and movies, but because of all the stuff going on in our lives, we’re not taking time to look at them like we did three months ago, and finding time to actually post them online has proven difficult. Which is why I’m now posting this at 1:30 in the morning… had to find time to do it, and this is when I found it.
Grayson is a talker… boy is that kid a talker. Right now, he doesn’t say many words, but he sure does talk alot.
His first word was “Jack”, his big brother’s name. On September 29th, Jack and I were at an Aggie game in College Station all day… and Grayson and Christine were in Austin, at the house. Grayson kept crawling all over the house, looking for stuff to do, and Christine finally asked him “Are you looking for Jack?” Grayson replied, “Daaaat”.
Christine said “Jack?” and Grayson said “Dat.”
So, Christine started walking around the house calling for Jack: “Ja-aaack!” and Grayson followed around behind her yelling “Da-aaaaat!”
“Ja-aaaack?”
“Da-aaaaat?”
Over and over again…
And when we got home from the game, which was right before Grayson’s bedtime, Grayson freaked out when we walked in the door… “Da-aaaat!”
It was pretty cool to know that Grayson loves his brother, missed him a lot, and knows how to call his name.
On September 11th, Christine took Jack and Grayson for a ride in the little red wagon while I was in California for work:
They are so much fun at this age. Jack loves his little brother, and Grayson is learning and copying everything Jack does.
In the video, you’ll see that Grayson is playing with his little duck toy, but instead of doing what he normally does with it, he’s putting it in the sides of the wagon like he just saw Jack do.
They’re growing up to fast.
On 9/1, Christine and Grayson were home alone while Jack and I were at an Aggie Football game, and Christine had the video camera:
He’s so funny with that camera.
So, last Friday, we ended our option period by accepting the offer that we’d come to agreement on with the current owner of the house we’re buying.
We close on 9/5. On 9/6 we’ll start demolishing the kitchen, tearing out all of the carpets, cleaning and painting all of the walls, and more… Remodel here we come!
I’ve posted a “walkthrough” of the inside of the house that Christine made one day while we were over there inspecting the house for potential problems. If you want to watch, here it is:
Walkthrough of the new Engler house before it is the Engler house. (by the way, it’s a 200MB file, so let it download… it’ll also likely require a relatively new computer to watch it, and the latest version of Quicktime)
I haven’t written about this yet, for which I’m ashamed… I should have written something earlier… but, Christine sent me this photo and that makes me want to write it:
Earlier this year, Christine and a group of her friends decided to run the Danskin Triathlon. At first, I was dubious that they’d actually do it… But, as time wore on, and the event loomed near, Christine and her friends were training more and more…
And then, all of a sudden, it was the day: June 9th.
It was hotter’n’hell™ in Austin that day, and Marc picked me up earlier than early. Jack and I were going out to the park to watch Christine and show our support for her and all of the girls.
We arrived, parked, and then trekked 30 something miles from the parking lot to the swimming area, and arrived just in time to see Christine emerge from the lake. She ran to the bike area and tagged Cyndi (they were on a relay team).
Marc and I went and found some shade, (ok, we brought a tent) near the finish-line, and a few hours later Cyndi and Christine came running (they met up at the end of the bike event and ran together) up the hill towards us.
When Jack and Rowan saw their moms, they took off to join them crossing the finish-line, and I have this photo to show for it:
That’s Christine finishing her first Triathlon, and Jack helping motivate her… which I think it just precious.
Cyndi and Christine’s relay team name was “Dos Mamacitos” and they crossed the finish line, both with their oldest kids running along side them… definitely a day to remember for us, and them.
Congrats on running the race babe. I’m very proud of you for doing it.
Sorry, I’m a month late on writing this.