That Ol' Janx Spirit!

Can't get enough of that Ol' Janx Spirit! When you can't think of a post title, throw in random lit references that nobody will get.

So here are a few more of the vacation photos. These are from the first day of hiking, we hit the Falls I Can't Remember The Name Of, Issaqueena Falls, and then did some mini-golfing. Enjoy!

This is the Stumphouse Tunnel, an attempted rail tunnel that was started just before the Civil War. The mountain this tunnel is going through is solid granite. The company eventually ran out of money, then war broke out. The tunnel was never finished and ends in a blank wall. I actually thought this was one of the more fascinating things we saw all trip. We saw lots that was historical, but this had a weird sense of immediacy. I can't explain it, but being inside was really, really neat.


Inside it was wet and very dark. No grues, though. (Another obscure reference - HA!)


Liam got excioted when he sank a putt.

It's a bit of camera trickery, but this ball is actually moving at about 85 mph.

Procrastinators 'R' Us

Yeah, it turns out I'm not so timely with the introduction of new photos, even when I promise to be so. Better late than...well, you know.

These are all photos from the hiking we did at Oconee State Park in far western South Carolina. We're in the foothills of the Great Smoky mountains, part of the Appalaichan range. We didn't see a whole lot of wildlife, but we did make it to some great waterfalls and had fun giving the boys some outdoor time.

Their motto was "speak LOUDLY and carry a big stick". Liam sang "Livin' On A Prayer" and "Say It Ain't So" over, and over, and over, and over...

After awhile Logan like to get way out ahead

Eatin' lunch at Station Cove Falls

The tree with the built-in bench

Liam got pretty good with the whole Smores thing. Not so good at the "eating neatly", though.

...And, We're Back!!!

Well, we made it back home.  After a THIRTEEN HOUR trip back from the SC mountains, no less.  Oy vey.  

The camping/hiking bit was great.  We spent two days in and around Oconee State Park, in extreme far western South Carolina.  Most of the time was spent hiking to waterfalls, mini-golfing, and chilling at the cabin.  We have a lot of pictures that we'll try to get posted in the near term, but here are a few highlights:

- First hike was a long one, about 30-40 minutes to a great, 75-foot waterfall coming down a granite face.  

- Second waterfall we never found, but we did drive the van off-road down a rough gravel path for about 10-12 miles into the South Carolina wilderness.  I don't recommend this.

- In our first game of mini-golf, Jill opened with two consecutive holes-in-one.  

- Still no hot boiled peanuts

- It's actually not easy to go through a dozen eggs in two days.

- The trip back today took thirteen hours because after about an hour of windy, twisty North Carolina roads, Liam threw up all over himself and the car seat.  Jill and I spent about a half hour cleaning it all up on the side of the road.  We drove about twenty minutes to the next town and stopped to wash our hands.  Within literally 60 seconds, I am not making this up, Logan threw up.  So we stopped AGAIN to clean up vomit.  No further episodes, but it threw the whole thing out of whack.

So anyway, I'm not going into a whole lot of detail cause it's late.  More to follow in the next couple of days.

Surf and ... More Surf

Once again, the desire to get up and hit Charleston was thwarted by the complete lack of any real need to do so. Vay-cay-shun.

Our only real item on the agenda today was the South Carolina Aquarium. We saved it for the one day when rain was a possibility, since it was the only real indoor item we had planned, pretty much all week. It’s not a huge place, but it turned out to be just the right size. We actually got the boys to just sit and watch stuff for awhile, which was great. Everyone had a fun time, after some initial apprehension. The aquarium is arranged to take you from the mountain streams “down” into the lower rivers and lakes and then to the ocean. The first room we walked into was set up like a mountain rain forest, and it was really misty and foggy. Liam freaked out, saying “I can’t do this! I can’t do this!” until we showed him it was just fog. He has a tendency of freaking out like that, and then when you explain it to him, he just utters a matter-of-fact “oh, yeah” and then he’s fine.

The aquarium has what they claim is the tallest (not sure if it’s the largest) seawater tank in North America, holding all manner of really big fish, including the sharks that the boys were so excited about. We also saw an enormous leatherback sea turtle, an enormous puffer fish, a couple of bright green moray eels, and Logan got really excited by a couple of menacing-looking barracudas in the tank.

Down on the lower level they have a touch tank where folks can get up close and personal with some aquatic life. The gentleman running the booth was really good with the animals and gave us some great information on the horseshoe crabs, snails, urchins, and hermit crabs you could touch and pick up. Logan and Liam got a big kick out of playing with the urchins.

After heading out from the aquarium we stopped at Ben & Jerry’s for lunch (say it with me – “va-ca-tion”), which was perfect timing as the weather chose that moment to start dumping rain. Did you know that Ben & Jerry has a yellow cake batter flavor, with real chocolate frosting swirl? My guess is that you either find that completely revolting or heavenly delicious. As it turns out, it was the latter.

After lunch we decided we needed to take the boys back to the beach, so this time we decided to try Sullivan’s Beach on the east side of the bay. It’s a nicer beach, but more isolated. We practically had the place to ourselves. There was an enormous tidal pool from the low tide, and the boys had a blast running around in the 6 inches or so of water. The tide started coming in as the afternoon went on though, so it rapidly started filling up. They had a great time though.

After the beach we cleaned up and hit the town for dinner at the Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza joint. GREAT pizza, just what we needed to round out the day. They make a great flatbread there with grapes, rosemary, honey, salt, cheese – sounds weird, but it’s fantastic.

So tomorrow we’re heading west to Oconee State Park for a couple of days in the great outdoors before heading home. We’ll almost certainly be without internet, so this’ll be the last post until we get back home. Imagine us taking some short hikes to waterfalls, playing some board games, and enjoying the obligatory hot dogs and smores over an open fire.

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Up-to-date vacation note – here are the boys’ favorite parts of vacation so far:

Logan – “playing with toys in the van”
Liam – “riding the elevator”

So apparently we could have taken them on vacation to the mall.

Alligator Mississippiensis, a.k.a. How To Keep Two Boys Silent

Our intention, industrious and carpe-diem-ish, was to rise early, breakfast nearby, and head off to Magnolia Plantation.

Ha.

The problem with getting up early on vacation is that a) duh, it's vacation, and b) hotel rooms have wonderfully thick curtains that keep the room at a level of darkness I'd roughly describe as "3:00 am". Naturally, it was after 9 this morning before we finally ambled out into the sunshine.

We really lucked out with this hotel - there are so many good places to eat that are literally just down the street. This morning's breakfast choice, Joseph's, was about half a block away. It was apparently featured on Rachael Ray's "$40 a Day", but we ate there anyway. (I mean, seriously - if you can't survive on $40 a day, your standards are too high.)

Joseph's was great. Good food, nice cosmopolitan atmosphere, and the kids got to draw on the tablecloth. Logan drew a caterpillar. Liam asked me to "draw a chinchilla from Diego". Uhh...what? Anyway, I gave it a shot.


Jill had some sweet potato pancakes that were really good - sweet enough to skip the syrup. We also got the boys to try some beignets. It was a good way to start the day.

So today's activity was the Magnolia Plantation, where slaves grew rice here in the Charleston area back before the Civil War. It was founded in 1676, only 6 years after the city of Charleston. It was actually quite a bit more interesting than I expected, we got a lot of information on how plantations operated, what the culture and social climate was like back then, and how the plantation grounds have been kept up over the years.

The big attraction for the boys was the alligators. Magnolia Plantation grew rice, which you may know requires a LOT of water. The grounds of Magnolia Plantation are perfect, because a large portion of them is swamp ground. There are also a number of lakes, a river, and a whole network of canals. Nowadays, all this water is home to over 500 alligators, including several enormous gators that are estimated to be 14-15 feet and over 1000 lbs. We took a train tour of the grounds and ran across a 5-6 foot gator near the front gate.Later in the day, we toured the Audubon swamp garden where we saw several other gators, including several sunning themselves on elevated "gator ramps" built out in the swamp for this express purpose. Keeps them from coming up onto the banks where the guests are, I suppose.

The highlight of this part was that the boys really wanted to see the gators, and you had to be quiet so as not to scare them off. That’s probably the quietest 90 minutes we have had all trip. It was great. If only there hadn’t been the prospect of scaly reptilian death lurking 5 feet away, and all the ginormous orb weaver spiders everywhere (GAH!), it would have been perfect. As it was, it was still pretty enjoyable.

The plantation house itself is enormous, and is surrounded by a huge garden. There's also a long white bridge nearby that is supposedly one of the most photographed views in the country.

During the middle of the day the boys spent most of the time in the petting zoo. We discovered that Logan apparently speaks hawk, he traded words with one of the raptors on display. Jill asked him what the hawk was saying, and Logan's response was "I don't know. I just talk to them, I don't know what they're saying." Later on, one of the sheep nearly bowled Liam over, who immediately freaked out and climbed up practically onto Jill's head. After he was safe and the sheep wandered off, he started taunting it from up high - "Ha ha, you can't get me sheep!" Thankfully, the sheep didn't try to prove him wrong. We'll have to work with Liam on that.

After getting home we were famished and dog-tired, so we headed off to a close (again, thankfully) barbecue place for dinner. (KC still rules that area.) Afterwards we hit a local dessert spot called Kaminsky's that Jill had read about. Quite good, although Jill probably should have had the chocolate torte instead of the Mountain of Chocolate cake. It was indeed a mountain, but it's still cake.

That's it for day 2. We're beat. However, it's only 8:30 and the kids are already bathed and in bed - SUCCESS!

The South May Decide to Secede All Over Again

A child is a curly dimpled lunatic. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It turns out that Logan and Liam are remarkably good travelers. What they are not, however, is remarkably good visitors. They're not even passing average. If they were on the Visitor team, they'd be the waterboys, or maybe the ones the coach sends to pick up another box of Skoal. No offense to them, but if on the one hand you have Logan and Liam visiting Charleston, and on the other hand Charleston is overrun by a large pack of howler monkeys, it would be fairly hard to tell the difference.

After getting into town last night after about 10 hours on the road, finding the hotel, checking in, and coaxing the boys into displaying at least a semblance of humanity, we headed out to dinner. Our hotel is thankfully right downtown, with a plethora of restaurants, suprisingly good restaurants, right nearby. We found a little bar and grill called T-Bonz that had cheap eats for the boys, a good burger and a tasty raspberry wheat for me, and the Bama-Georgia game in HD right where I could easily watch. It was a great decompression, even if Liam's dinner did amount to what was essentially a $4.95 french fry, since that's all he ate of it.

This morning we had breakfast at a little place right next door that Jill had heard about called Poogan's Porch. Pretty good breakfast, nice service and a great atmosphere. However, in one of those picture-worth-a-thousand-words moments, this photo really captures the tone that permeated most of the day:




Poogan was apparently a dog that sat on a porch. Or perhaps was left a porch in some old lady's will, so that the expression "Poogan's Porch" expresses a literal ownership of said porch. I don't know. The statue wasn't talking.



After breakfast we headed out to Fort Sumter, which (if you're not a Citadel grad) was the site of the first shots of the Civil War. When South Carolina seceded from the Union (the first state to do so), they also claimed ownership of all Federally-constructed fortifications in Charleston Bay, including Fort Sumter. The Union soldiers manning the fort decided not to surrender immediately, and the other 5 or 6 forts ringing the Bay opened fire on Sumter in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861. Interestingly, Fort Sumter is built on imported granite from several Union states, and at the time was an island. It's still pretty isolated, and you can only get there via boat. So we took a boat.



Liam spent most of the boat ride asking when we could go home. We've been telling him we can go home at the end of our vacation, which is in 7 (now 6) days, so he's been asking when 7 days will be over. He eventually calmed down and sort of enjoyed the ride.

The fort's actually pretty cool, although smaller than you'd think. There was a brief but informative (and entertaining) talk, then we got about half an hour to walk around. Liam got a big kick out of manning the guns and "shooting bad guys".


After the fort we grabbed a quick bite of lunch and headed to Folly Beach. This was the first time the boys had been to an actual at-the-ocean beach, and they both had a grand old time. Within the first 90 seconds on the sand Liam found a hermit crab.
Logan made a friend with another boy there visiting and increasingly braved the surf, which was fairly calm but to him was probably monstrous.

The boys were hacing so much fun that Jill and I even got to relax a little and have some fun. When we left, Logan said "Hey, can we come back to the beach again? That was actually sort of fun."

Okay, so it hasn't been all bad. We're having a pretty good time, taking it easy and not trying to cram in too much. We had an awesome dinner tonight at a place called Justine's Kitchen, a sort of down-home soul food kind of place. We forgot the camera, so I can only describe it. There's no waiting list, you just wait outside until there's a table free and they invite you in. We had pot roast, pecan-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, the boys had peanut butter - banana sandwiches and we had a whole mess of desserts - banana pudding, berry cobbler and chocolate Coca-Cola cake. I'm still stuffed.

So next up will be more beach, maybe a trip out to a plantation and probably the aquarium before we head out west for some nature immerson. Assuming we haven't shipped the boys to Zimbabwe and bolted for the Ligurian coast. Relax, we'd pack them some snacks.

Countdown to our Family Vacation

Well, we haven't done a great job of posting lately. A lot has been happening...we're just not keeping up with the documentation! Sorry about that!

Hopefully this next week will bring lots of posts complete with pictures!

On Friday we're headed to Charleston, South Carolina! Logan is on Fall Break, so we're jumping at the chance to take a family vacation when the crowds should be minimal.

Both boys are particularly excited about visiting the South Carolina Aquarium and Folly Beach. So are we!

Stay tuned for news from our trip!

This Is Never Good To Hear, vol.86

While the boys were eating dinner tonight, I thought I smelled something...off. I couldn't put my finger on it, but apparently Logan smelled it too. From a distance, I heard him ask Liam if his pullup was dirty.

Liam's reply - "Yeah, I'm poopy. It's a big one."



Joy.

Camping (Very Late)

Okay, so we're really late with the camping photos. We took a weekend tent trip over to Lake Shelbyville in Illinois with friends from both St. Louis and Chicago. It's become sort of annual tradition, at least one that we're trying to make. Does two years in a row count as tradition?

Anyway, we spent Friday and Saturday night camped out under the stars, with a bit of unexpected rain Saturday night. Luckily it all came and went as we slept snug in the tent, although it's getting a bit crowded in there. Might be time to upgrade to more of a portable chateau.

For the most part it was a pretty low-key camping trip. We had a party for Josh who turned 40 sometime around the trip, so the kids got to go on a little scavenger hunt. There was a lot of eating, some semi-successful fishing, a big watergun fight, a lot of time on the playground, and just a general all-around good time.

I walked into WAY too many spiderwebs, though. Lake Shelbyville - YOU'RE ON NOTICE.

Hrmmm

We really need to update this, don't we?  There was a pretty fun camping trip last weekend, and we ought to have some photos from that.  I'll work on it.

Hardwood Floors!

It's the moment so many of you have been waiting for...a glimpse of our new hardwood floors! Jason and his dad spent an entire weekend getting the living room and kitchen done, and then Jason tackled the computer room/toy room on his own. While all the baseboards were down, Jason and I decided to repaint our formerly forest green rooms a lovely shade of brown. And then just a couple weeks ago, Jason's parents came out to help with some of the final details: painting doors and trim, cutting and installing baseboards and quarter-rounds, installing a new kitchen ceiling fan...that sort of thing. The end result? Well, we absolutely love it!

His Funny Is Not My Funny

This morning Liam came in with Logan as they always do to ask me to get their breakfast. (1,000+ days and counting, and they still haven't figured out that I'm always going to shower and get dressed before going down to eat.)

Anyway, I was ironing my pants, and Liam says "Dad, you're already wearing pants!" I'm actually standing there in my boxers. Jill looks over and says "Liam, that's Daddy's underwear." Just then Logan comes in, and Liam says "Logan! LOGAN! Dad's wearing underwear just like YOU! That's HILARIOUS!!" And laughs hysterically.

I wish I could say that's an unusual way to start the day.

Coasters Cannot Be Trusted

Last weekend we took the boys down to Six Flags along with a few other couples and their kids. It's been quite awhile since Jill and I have been there, and most of the time we focused on the coasters. I didn't recall what there was for younger kids, but as it turned out - quite a bit.

Part of Six Flags St. Louis is a water park, so we started there. They had an enormous wave pool, a kiddie area, a sort of slow-moving river you can float around on inner tubes, and a couple of water slides that were open. Logan had fun in the wave pool, and Liam sort of enjoyed the inch or so of water that he allowed himself to be coaxed into. It's kind of comical to see a kid who's around 3 feet tall and suited up in full lifejacket regalia being freaked out by water higher than his ankles. Oh well, we're working on it.

We did get Liam over into the tube river, where he sat on my lap as we floated around. I think this is probably what he had the most fun with in the water park, since he was doing something, and yet no portion of his body was actually in contact with water.

At some point, something occurred in the water park, and most of the kiddie area was shut down. So, we ditched the water park, changed everyone back into street clothes, and hit the park proper. We took the boys up to the Looney Tunes area, where there were lots of playgrounds and tame rides for them to enjoy.

Logan managed to get in not one but two roller coasters, and we're talking full-size coasters here, not the Zambezi Zingers. First up was the new Tony Hawk Big Spin, which consists of a fairly mild coaster ride, but the cars are free to rotate around as you go through the track. At first glance, I was dead-set against riding this one - my abhorrence for any sort of ride where you spin very fast in tight circles is well-documented. I was told the spinning was pretty light, and I really wanted to go with Logan on his first coaster ride, so I went. And it wasn't too bad. Logan was pretty excited until the first drop, and then his face went from "this is pretty neat being on this ride" to "OH DEAR LORD WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO". Any time we hit a curve or dropped or did anything that upped the G-forces, his eyes would get really big and sort of dart around in half-panic. I think there was only one instance where he actually got a little freaked out, but like any coaster it only lasted .8 seconds, so he made it through just fine. Afterwards we asked if he liked it:

"Yeah, it was pretty fun."

"Do you want to go ag-"

"NO."

At the end of the day, he and I rode the Screaming Eagle, which is an awesome all-wood coaster way in the back of the park. He only went on it because his friend Savannah was a big fan, although after the Tony Hawk ride I don't think he was quite so keen on coasters. I sat next to him and told him to hold my hand and just scream as loud as he wanted. The coaster goes up the first hill, then down a gentle little slope to get a rolling start before the first big drop. Logan started screaming at the gentle slope and didn't stop until the very end of the ride. He thought it was fun, but has no interest in ever riding that one again either. EVER.

The log flume, though, was a big hit. He rode that probably 4-5 times. It seems to have just the right combo of relatively low speed and a decently steep but very brief drop at the end. That was the highlight of the park for Logan. Liam's favorite was the carousel, or as he called it, the horse ride.

All in all a fun day, helped enormously by the perfect 83-degree weather and astonishingly light crowds. Jill and I managed to both ride the new wooden Evel Knieval coaster (Verdict: Awesome), and even that was only about a 15-minute wait. Maybe someday we'll get Logan on that one (probably not before 2035).

First Day in First Grade

It's official! Logan is now a first grader. He hopped on the bus today sporting a new lunch box (black and white camouflage), a new backpack (Batman), and new tennis shoes (black and silver with a yellow "lightning" streak). There were no tears this morning ~ but maybe a few butterflies.


Logan's new teacher is Ms. Hill, and his good friend Bryce is in his class. He has the honor(?) of having a second floor classroom (almost directly above his kindergarten room). Oh! And this year, as an older, more responsible first grader, he has the privilege of checking out not one, but TWO library books each week.


When Logan came home today, he told me that EVERYONE in his class stayed on "green" today. (Think classroom behavior management in the form of a stoplight. Green = good!) What a nice bunch of kids Ms. Hill must have!

Logan also said that he thought he was going to like first grade for the whole year. I think that's a pretty good indication of the type of day he had. At least, I hope it's an indication of the type of day he had, because I wasn't able to extract any further details about the day. Wait, I take that back...I also learned that they didn't do math.

So there you have it, folks! There's no denying it. We have a bona fide first grader in our midst. Look at that face...you know he's ready to tackle some new challenges. Bring it on, First Grade!

Have a great year, Logan!

Happy Birthday, Jason!

We love you so much!

Happy Birthday, Jeremy!

As Logan and Liam would say...
We hope you have a suh-weet birthday!

Do Whatcha Wanna!

Happy Birthday, Alex!

You're one cool dude! Hope you have fun being 4!

Love,

Aunt Jill, Uncle Jason, Logan and Liam

And here's probably the best picture I've ever taken of Alex, an oldie but goodie

...one of my all-time favorites...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALEX!!

Congratulations Logan!

Logan, we are so proud of you! Your handwriting is looking so nice. Your classwork shows great effort! Your art projects are very detailed and colorful! And we are amazed at how well you are READING! You have made such wonderful progress in kindergarten. We are so excited to see what you will achieve in first grade!

A big thank you to Logan's energetic, enthusiastic, fantastic kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bertino!