It was hotternhell™ this summer. What’s a boy and his dad to do when it’s 100 degrees outside (and has been for three weeks straight)?
Wash the car, or course:
I don’t know that we got the car clean that day, but we did get pretty wet, and had a good time doing it!
Jack’s teacher at pre-school, Mrs. Terry, sent Christine two videos via email. I’ve combined them into this movie for you:
Terry told Christine that Jack likes to play a lot at school, and that when he does, it’s usually doing his own thing. He’ll go find something that’s fun to him, and then he’ll try to talk a few of the other kids into doing it with him… yes, I realize he can’t talk yet, but that doesn’t stop him from talking them into doing it.
He’s enjoying school, and that’s what’s important.
Christine, Jack and I drove down to College Station on Saturday, to take Jack to his first Aggie game!
Long story short: The Ags won, and Jack had a GREAT time!!!
We got to town around 4:00, picked up Bussy at the mall, and drove to the reserved parking that Bussy has (he didn’t want Christine to have to walk too far, since she’s 8 months pregnant). After parking, we walked over to the quad, saw a few old BQ buddies, and waited for the band to step off.
He didn’t quite know what to do when the band marched by, but he loved every minute of it, even if the drums were a little loud for his taste. (He’ll get used to that).
Then we walked over to the Corps Center to watch the band march by again. Then on to the MSC to get Jack a good Aggie shirt (they’re hard to find in Austin folks). We ended up buying him a regulation 12th man jersey for $40. Why we spent $40 on a size 2T jersey when the shirt I was wearing probably cost $5, I can’t explain…
After cooling off a bit, we went to the car to change diapers and put away the stroller, then on to the game.
After huffing and puffing up two levels, we climbed about twenty steps to get to our seats in row 27 on the second deck on the parents side of Kyle Field. The seats are great! They’re on about the north 35 yard line, two rows down from the sky boxes, and look like they’re always in the shade.
We said “Hi” to Norma and Jake, and then Andy Kollman and one of the Luedke boys showed up to sit in front of us (they’re all from Bellville).
I could just tell Jack was impressed with everything that was going on. About 10 minutes before the game started, I went and bought us all hotdogs and water, and a pretzel. Jack ate a whole hotdog (sans bun) before the game really got started.
We sang “Spirit of Aggieland” with the band, and the National Anthem, and Texas Our Texas, and watched four F-16’s fly over before the game… then it was time for kickoff.
About half-way through the 2nd half, we said our good-byes, and headed towards the car, but we met Mike Elmquist (one of my buddies from the band) at the Reveille graves on the way out. Man it was good to see Mike!
Jack passed out once we got on the road, before we even got out of Bryan. The trip home was uneventful, but, we did get to hear the last few minutes of the Ohio State v. Texas game on the radio once we found the station. In lieu of the radio, Mike Kamp (Chrsitine’s brother) was giving us the play-by-play of the game via text messages on my cell phone (thanks Mike!).
There’s a video from the day if you want to see how much fun Jack had. It’s a big file (about 60MB, so it might take a while to download, but it’s worth it if you want to see his face when the drums marched by, heh!):
Gig ‘Em!
(oh, and by the way, since Texas lost to Ohio State, I’m thinking Thanksgiving will be a fun game this year)
You gotta love it when your kid has this much fun brushing his teeth:
More photos here: Brushing Teeth.
Christine and I were looking through old photos today. This is one of our favorites:
Last week, I flew to LA, drove down to Irvine, then up to Santa Babara, then over to Pasadena, flew back to Austin, spent the night consoling Josh, and then drove to Bellville after work on Friday. Long week.
But what a great weekend!
Christine had driven down to Bellville on Thursday, and spent two days with Mo-mo (my mom’s name from the grandkids is now “mo-mo”) while I was traveling. They had an absolute blast for two days, and then we kept it going through the weekend.
We didn’t do anything spectacular, other than just hang out with each other, visit and catch up with each other, and let the kids play… and play did they!
Jack and Ella had a lot of fun on Saturday playing outside, and I took a few photos:
After a long day, Jack took his bath, and then we all sat on Ella’s bed reading books while Jack drank his milk. Ella read to us, and found Jack’s “piggies” when she got to the “This little piggy…” nursery rhyme:
After reading nursery rhymes, we sang some songs:
Like I said, it was a fun weekend. Even mowing the lawn at Mo-mo’s house was fun with the new riding lawn mower.
This past Sunday morning, Reese and Karen brought Kade and Gabby over to Evan and Shadel’s house. Lori and Conner joined us too. Evan was cooking lunch: Chicken, Sausage, Beans, and Green Beans… mmmmm….
Before lunch, we let the kids play, so I took some photos of them all for their parents:
Great kids! See the rest of the photos of them here.
This past Sunday, Christine and I met Amanda and Murphy up at the Hyde Park pool so that Ben and Jack could go swimming together.
It was really cute to see the boys playing with each other, and giving each other five:
Here it is, 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night, and Christine and I just got done getting ready for a garage sale we’re having tomorrow.
Having a garage sale when you have a 19 month old is tough work. We really couldn’t work on getting stuff ready for it until 8:30 p.m. every night, and by 10:00 we were exhausted and frustrated… We pretty much worked on getting ready for the garage sale every night this week. Maybe took one night off.
I was supposed to come home early from the office today, but, I got stuck there until 5:30… ugh…
So I got home, and poor Christine had been pricing stuff since about 2:00, and then when I got home, we started cleaning out the garage. At dinner time, we took a break from that and then gave Jack a bath. After putting him down, we worked hard again until just now.
And we’ve probably got $500 worth of stuff for sale in the garage, all priced between $0.50 and $20…
We start at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow… I’ll report back the earnings tomorrow night. Hope we make some money! If we do, it’s all thanks for Christine’s hard work this week.
update: It’s almost noon, been out here since 7 a.m. I’ve got about $140 in my pocket… that’s about what, $25/hour? Not bad so far.
another update: It’s 1:15, 94° F and I have $206 in my pocket. Traffic has really dropped off, and I’ve got a lot of shit to take to Goodwill now… hope someone comes by before 5:00 and buys some of this crap. Ugh, it’s hot out here in the garage!
last update: It’s 2:45, and just started sprinkling… I’ve pulled all of our stuff inside the garage, and am heading inside to eat lunch. It’s still freakin’ hot. We’re up to about $230 or so if I had to guess.
really, the last update: We stopped selling everything at 3:40. Packed up all the leftovers and took them to Goodwill. We probably sold 1/4 of all the crap we had for sale this morning. At the end of it all, I had $240 in my pocket. Take out $40 that I started with (for change-making) and the $45 that we collected for Heidi and Lee (neighbors) and we earned roughtly $155 and some change. Was it worth it? Well, Jack just got some more money for college… Last time we do a damned garage sale in July though… ugh, it was hot!
On the evening of the 4th, we drove out to Lakeway. Josh, Elise and Maly met us out there. Debbie and Raymond cooked dinner (mmmm, porkchops). We went to watch the Lakeway fireworks at the Lakeway City Park, but stayed in the car, because it was raining. Jack said “Gow, Gow!” a lot. Oh, and Josh almost ate his daughter:
Christine and I spent the night out in Lakeway, and I got up around 7:00 to head to work. The commute was about 45 minutes… which is about 40 minutes longer than my standard morning commute.
Since it was a short week at work, I ended up trying to get to work pretty early each day, and stayed until 6:00 or 6:30 each evening.
I got home on Friday afternoon to Christine and Jack out in the front yard:
Jack sure loves those sunglasses 😉
After playing outside for a while, we ate dinner (Christine cooked for us) and then we played with Jack’s cars inside before bed.
Since July 4th was on a Tuesday, I decided to take Monday off. Which was cool, because on Mondays, Jack goes to swimming lessons in the morning.
Christine and I headed to the Emler Swimming School at 9:00, and while Christine and Jack got ready to go swimming, I introduced myself to the other Dad there, and got my camera out. He had his camera too.
Jack had so much fun learning to swim, and interacting with the other kids. He’s supposed to be learning to hold his breath underwater, so that by the time he’s done with lessons this year, he should be able to swim independantly for 4-5 seconds, and should be able to jump into the pool from the side feet first. Totally cool to think that a two year old will know how to swim (maybe).
Then, on Monday afternoon, we met the family (Greg, Cheri, Debbie, Raymond, Lisa, Gerry and kids) at Zilker Park, and caught a few photos of them on the train, before heading over to Guerro’s for dinner. Mmmmm, Guerro’s.
Jack started wearing his sunglasses this week without tearing them off his face as soon as we put them on. In fact, now, if the sun is too bright, he starts asking for them:
On Saturday, July 1st, Christine, Jack and I got up and drove to Round Rock to paint a room for Marc and Cyndi. Cyndi’s baby girl is due in two weeks, and Marc was out in Johnson City building Cyndi’s mom a deck, so we decided to go help them get the nursery painted. I hate painting, and am no good at it…
So we talked Josh and Elise to driving out, so Josh could help me.
Josh and I painted, pretty much all day (my fault that we had to repaint a few parts) and it was fun… Actually, the painting wasn’t fun… hanging out with Josh all day was fun. We closed the door to the room, and enjoyed the paint fumes, kept the girls out and bonded for a good 4 or 5 hours.
After getting high painting all day, Marc got home, and the girls cooked us dinner… it was a fun day, even though I hate painting.
At the same time, we had a lot of family was in Austin for the Fourth of July weekend.
Lisa and Gerry from Arkansas, plus their kids Taylor, Chase and Aubrey, drove down to spend the long weekend with Debbie and Raymond, and Cheri, Greg, Paige, Patrick, and Matthew drove up from Houston.
We drove out to Lakeway to see them on Sunday. I got on a boat with Lisa, Gerry and their boys pretty much as soon as we arrived, and we took the boys out tubing. Then Greg joined us with the little kids, and Lisa and Greg headed back to the house. We had a lot of fun taking the kids out on the boat and throwing them in the water repeatedly from the tube. I even built up my courage enough (thanks to the beer) to try a round at tubing. Greg threw me off pretty quickly. Taylor and Chase were really good at helping the little kids, and teaching them how to ride the tube the right way. I was impressed.
Dinner was left-over barbque and shrimp. Mmmmm, good.
After diner, the boys played poker, and Christine and I got on the road with Jack… he was exhausted from all the swimming he did in the pool that day.
It was great to finally meet Aubrey and see Taylor now that he’s turning into a young man.
Last Friday, Christine and I got on a flight, with Jack, to Seattle. We were heading up there for the weekend to see friends (The Penfields) that we really hadn’t seen in 3 or 4 years, and to meet their daugher (who is 3 now) and let them meet Jack, and to see how big Joel has gotten since the last time we saw him.
Long story short, we had a great trip, but it was way to short, and getting there was “half the battle” so to speak… Needless to say, American Airlines cancelled our Dallas to Seattle flight, so we were facing the possibility of not even going to Seattle for the weekend, but one of their star ticket agents understood our plight, and booked us through Denver to Seattle on Friday. Instead of arriving at 2pm as we’d intended, we arrived at 11:00pm. Jack was pooped.
We were staying at a friend’s condo in downtown: Fourth and Pike. An amazing address, and a great little one bedroom condo: Perfect for “getting away” for the weekend, or a week or two…
On Saturday, we got up ‘early’ and met Kelly, Greg, Joel, and Aubrey at Pike Place Market, and watched the fish throwers throw a few fish… then we walked down to the park, and then headed to our Harbor Cruise reservation. On the cruise, we chatted and caught up, and enjoyed learning about Seattle from the water, and spending time with the kids.
After our cruise, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Red Robin, and then walked back to the fish market. Aubrey was cute… helping me push Jack’s stroller (he was passed out tired. We said our goodbyes and took Jack home for a nap.
After napping, we headed to the Seattle Aquarium… talk about fun for Jack. He really enjoyed looking at all of the fish and seals and starfish. It was really cute to see him exploring the aquarium.
We ate dinner at the Fisherman Restaurant on the peer, and let Jack have fun running around while we ate… I got up with him and ran around with him… the waitresses thought it was cute.
On Sunday, Jack and I got up early and went for a walk, and took some photos. Then we brought breakfast and coffee up to Christine. And then Christine packed while Jack and I took a nap.
As we were leaving our condo, we realized that the Seattle Gay Pride parade was taking place right outside our condo. Heh… “too funny” is all I’ll say.
We got in our car, and drove to the airport for the flights home. Jack was great on the 4.5 hour flight to Dallas, and fell asleep in Dallas before we even took off, and didn’t wake up until the morning.
It was a great trip, long overdue, and way too short.
The photo galleries are here:
“The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world — but, as in whispering-galleries, they are clearly heard at the end and by posterity.” -Jean Paul Richter
We spent the day working in the yard and enjoying each other’s company all day. We did try to go buy me a good pair of shoes, but the store didn’t have what I wanted. I also made a trip to JCPenney’s to buy some new shirts…
We capped of the day with a few hours out in the front yard in the pool. Then we put the pool up:
