Holiday 2007, or Hey! Where Did My Year Go?!

Wow, it's Christmas 2007 already. I've heard it suggested that time seems to go faster as you age because each successive year is a proportionally smaller part of your total life. I'm not sure if I believe that, but something seems to be making the years go by faster. I was just reading the Holiday 2006 post here on Cobapple, and wow - quite a few changes.

Regular readers of the blog know that the boys are both growing up quickly. Logan just turned six a week ago, which means he's practically a teenager. He's already halfway through kindergarten and doing quite well. He was even "cordially invited" (that cracks me up) to join the Firecracker program at his school, which is sort of a Kindergarten AP kind of thing. Apparently school these days is just like the professional world - if you do a great job and really excel, they just give you more work. He seems to really like kindergarten, though, so hopefully the Firecracker program will be even more for him to get excited about. His reading ability has progressed quite a bit this year, and he's reading entire books and doing a really great job of it. He still gets a little frustrated at times, and I don't think he's quite reached the point where the light bulb goes off and the whole "world of reading" opens up to him. He still wants us to read bedtime stories and he still seems to prefer picture books, but I think the reading bug is right around the corner. In other news, Logan has also already lost two teeth, and earned himself $4 (inflation's a killer). He lost one in the middle of his birthday party, bravely allowing me to pull it out. The rest of the year's been pretty normal for him. Logan's big obsession right now (and for the past year, really) is Star Wars - I'd say 90% of his birthday was Star Wars-related, from the cake to the plates and cups to the presents. Kind of neat to see him excited about something that I was into as a kid.

Liam is full speed ahead into his "terrible twos" period, and man is he good at it. He's right in there with Logan all the time, wanting to do all the same stuff as his big brother and not standing for any inequality. Around this time last year he was still struggling with a lot of words, but let me tell you - those days are over. He's talking up a storm now, and has even managed to learn how to say Logan's name properly (it went from "nnn"-click, to click-"ogan", to "Nogan", to "Logan"). He still tends to call him Nogan a lot, but Jill's been working on it. Liam has usurped Logan's adoration of Scooby-Doo, and loves to read Scooby-Doo books and watch shows and all that. He's also a whiz on the computer, which is kind of scary. It's amazing to see a not-yet-three-year-old kind of lounging at a computer, working the mouse and navigating around nickjr.com or one of his kids' games.

It was a pretty good year for Jill and me. We ran our triathlon back in April in Emporia, KS, and although it was probably the hardest physical thing either of us have ever done we both finished. I think both of us would like to give it another crack at some point, but the training is pretty hard to manage with the kids in tow (particularly the swimming). In May we celebrated our ten-year wedding anniversary with a 12-day trip to Italy. It was Jill's first time overseas and my first time actually vacationing overseas, and we both had an amazing time. Pictures are in our blog archives if you missed them. We visited Rome, the Cinque Terre, Florence, and Venice. Twelve days was the perfect length of time (maybe even a day or two too long) and we got to see almost everything we had planned on. It was great having that much time to ourselves, and I'm already thinking about the next one in a few years.

Jill's still keeping up with the boys here at home and has continued to be involved in a lot of activities with her church groups. I finished up my last year at Boeing on the JDAM program, after the new year I'll be moving on to another position in an engineering rotation program that Boeing recently started. I'll be spending 2008 working in F-18 Business Development, which is essentially sales and marketing, so I'll finally get to put that MBA to use. In 2009 I'm scheduled to go into a Propulsion job in Flight Engineering, where I may get to finally put that aerospace degree to use. It's a really great opportunity and I'm pretty excited about it.

As in years past we'll be spending the holidays in Kansas City, so look us up if you're in the area. Hope everyone has a great holiday season and a great start to 2008. Cheers!

A Little Bit Older, A Little Bit Wiser

It's been a big weekend so far! Logan is now 6 years old. This morning, he came into our room and immediately shared this bit of newfound wisdom:

"I know why it's called underpants...because it's under your pants!!"

Yep. That's our boy!

In the afternoon we got home and Jill still had some work to do on the cake, so we entertained Logan as much as possible. Not only did he get to do a little birthday celebration at school, it was also Crazy Hair Day. I don't know, I think he should consider wearing it like that all the time.

Eventually we got the party started and Logan started into the presents - but not before a little starting excitement. While eating his corn dog, he started freaking out because his loose tooth "felt really weird". I snatched it out of his mouth (with permission) and once he calmed down the gift-ripping-into commenced.

There was a lot of Star Wars stuff. Some clothes, a few books, a new Battleship game, and some Castle LEGOs. After opening all the loot and playing with it for a bit, I had to have some cake, so we carved into Jill's Boba Fett cake.

Logan and the Boba Fett cake

Another beauty shot of the Boba Fett cake because Jill INSISTED

Liam partook a little too much of the cake

Logan fielded a lot of calls during the evening. Liam managed to talk to the callers even more.

Happy Birthday, Logan!

It's December

Just thought you might need a couple of pictures to tide you over until we get our 2nd annual holiday blog letter out. We've been trying to do some December-ish things...watching holiday movies, making (and drinking) homemade hot chocolate, reading Christmas books, and assembling Christmas puzzles. All the while we've been enjoying music of the season too. It's been fun.

Logan is getting excited about Christmas, and occasionally he remembers that he has a birthday this month too. I'm not sure Liam knows what's coming, but he does know that when a toy catalog comes in the mail, he needs to get out his crayons so he can circle every toy on the page. (Logan's apprentice learns quickly!) Both boys are quick to point out the holiday light displays all over town.

This morning, Liam woke up and asked for "a bowl of Beeps" and "The Grumpy Movie". (That's a bowl of Crispix cereal and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas.) What a nice way to start a December morning! After filling his belly and giggling at the Grinch's dog, Liam headed off to Mother's Day Out. At craft time, he made gingerbread cookies...a house and a boy. He was extremely proud of his creations and was kind enough to share his yummies with Logan. Don't they look delicious?

No Matter Where You Go, There You Are

Liam's picked up a few new bedtime habits lately. Apparently Jill started giving him a couple of books to read in bed during naptime, which he seems to peruse for awhile before going to sleep. Now he's been asking for a couple of books at bedtime as well, so I throw a couple in. I warn him I'm going to turn the lights off, and he's always fine with that.

Until, of course, I actually turn the lights off. Then he shouts "Hey! I can't see where I'm going!"

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I have no idea where this other one comes from. Every so often, after Liam's been in bed for a bit he'll call down for me in the familiar litany: "Dad...Dad...Dad...Dad..." On and on. I'll go up to his room and ask what he wants, and sometimes it's just to utter a bit of wisdom.

"Dad?"

"What, Liam?"

"When it's time to go, it's time to go."

"Uhh, okay. Thanks, buddy. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

I'm convinced that 30 years from now this will prove to be a crucial fact that will resurface like a cliched movie flashback, to save my life in the midst of some ill-advised derring-do. I'll call up Liam and say "You know son, you were right. When it's time to go, it IS time to go." And he'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

I Like Popcorn

Today, Liam made a little ear of indian corn as a craft during Mother's Day Out. They used different kinds of flavored popcorn to decorate, and it was just so cute! Liam was very excited to show it to me, and when I buckled him into his carseat, he asked if he could hold it.  Sure, why not. I handed him the paper, and we headed home.  

So we're driving along and I hear Liam say, "I like popcorn."  Hmmmm... 

"Liam, you're not eating the popcorn, are you?"

"Mmm hmm"

I can't really blame him.  I like popcorn too.  

Who's Ready to ROCK?

I picked up the new Guitar Hero 3 game this past Friday after trading in a bunch of old games, thus clearing out some clutter and making Jill happy too. Everybody wins! Liam and Logan have always liked dancing around when we play the game (mostly because I tend to crank the volume), but now Liam wants in on the action. Time to shred!



Side note: for those of you reading this who own a Wii (hint hint) the new Rock Band game is releasing on Nov 20th. Right in time for Thanksgiving!

Edit - Okay, I was wrong. A Wii version of the game hasn't been announced yet, other than to say the chances of it are "absolutely". Guess somebody needs to buy me an XBox 360...

Diego's Getting Serious About This Rescuing Thing

We're now about 45 minutes into the annual sugar high. Logan and Liam probably set a record for trick-or-treating this year, we were out for over an hour. Liam wasn't all that keen on being Diego or carrying his rescue pack around - that is, until the candy started to flow. What he DID want to carry around was Logan's Boba Fett blaster - apparently the jungle's getting a little rough for an animal rescuer. Time to pack heat.

Happy Halloween!!

Don't Try to Pull One Over on ME...

Earlier this year Liam got a couple of new jammies from Grandma Sue - nice, fleecy pajamas with feet, good for the oncoming winter. It's been getting colder here in St. Louis lately, so we put Liam in one of the new pajamas last night.

Five minutes later, I start hearing the familiar refrain of "Dad...Dad...Dad...Dad...Dad...Dad..."

That'll go on all night if I don't go see him.

So I walk into the bedroom, and Liam's standing in his crib, stripped down to his diaper, and the new fleecy pajamas are crumpled in a wad on the floor. Liam looks at me and points down to the forlorn little pile of new pajamas and says "Dad...those are not jammies."

"What?" I wasn't sure what he was talking about.

He pointed again. "Those are NOT jammies. Need some jammies on."

So I got some of his old Diego jammies and he wore those to bed.

Sorry, Mom. They ARE nice, though.

Camping, Camping, and Some More Camping

The last two weekends have been camping weekends here in Missouri, while we enjoy our two weeks of fall before winter sets in. I fully expect it to be freezing by mid-next week. The first weekend we spent at Long Branch Lake in north Missouri with the Barlands. It was supposed to be a weekend-long trip, but rain forced us home a day early. At least the night we had was pretty fun, and the campsite was great. The boys had a great time at the lake, mostly by throwing whatever they could find into it. Once it got too dark to throw things into the lake, they figured out how fun it is to throw things into the fire. Mostly a weekend with a lot of throwing.

We woke up the first morning to rain, and the campsite was soaked. We did our best to get up and get breakfast and still let the boys play once the rain quit, which they did, getting absolutely FILTHY in the mud. Getting dirty was to be kind of a theme for camping, kind of like the fire.

This past weekend we spent camping at a campground near St. Louis with some local friends. It was a much larger group, and the campsite wasn't quite as remote, but the weather was much nicer and everyone had a good time. There was still a lot of desire to throw things in the fire. In addition to Logan and Liam there were 6 other kids there, so they had lots of playmates for the weekend.

Photos From the Shedd Aquarium and Field Museum

As promised. Unfortunately, like all museums both of these were fairly dimly lit, the better to see the animals and exhibits inside. Great for vision, sucks for photography. There were plenty of fun moments, but most of them were hard to get in a photo. Here are a few of the better ones.

The Aftermath

Okay, okay, I promise there will be more pictures soon. Yesterday was the last day in Chicago and we didn't get home until after 10pm, so it was pretty much get out of the van and get into bed, for everyone. I'll have time tonight to go through the last day or two of pictures and post.

The Field Museum was pretty good, better for the boys than I anticipated actually. They spent a lot of time in the animal exhibits, which despite being stuffed instead of alive were still pretty interesting to them. They had a lot of exhibits where they challenged visitors to "find 1 turtle, 3 snakes, and 7 beetles" or something like that. Combining two of Logan's favorite things - animals and "I Spy" games - was a surefire hit. We also took them to see the Dinosaur Hall upstairs. In retrospect, it might have been better to do that first. This was later in the afternoon and I think both of them were getting tired of the museum. They both still thought the dinosaurs were cool, and I got a kick out of Liam's reaction. Pretty much every time we turned a corner and there was some new huge animal skeleton, he'd cry out "WHOA, look at THAT little guy!!" They also both thought the fossilized mammoth poop was hilarious.

We packed it in around 4pm and made it back to St. Louis in right around 6 hours. All in all, a very good vacation.

Vacations Really Should Not Be This Much Work

We got up this morning (Sunday) ready for a trip to the Shedd Aquarium. We wanted to try and get there when it opened at 9am so we could avoid some of the crowds.

Ha.

We also thought that if we got through the aquarium by lunchtime, we could do the Field Museum, which is right next door, in the afternoon.

Ha ha.

We made it to the Shedd around 10:30. Not too bad, all things considered. We got right into see the sharks, which Logan was badgering us about all day. When he got up, he was impatient to see the sharks. All through breakfast, he was impatient to see the sharks. All the way on the walk to the aquarium, he was impatient to see the sharks.

Total time spent viewing the sharks before he got impatient to leave: maybe 10 minutes.

This proved to be the theme for the day. The boys were interested, but only for a few moments. Liam kept hounding me to go see the whales. We finally got to see the whales, and he immediately wanted to go see something else. Perhaps what we're missing is that when they say they want to "see the X", what they really mean is they want to see it. Not watch it, or see what X does for awhile, or see the X show. Just see it. As in "Okay, there it is. What's next?"

We made it back to the hotel around 4pm, got some dinner, and then hit the pool. All in all, a pretty good day. The "strain" of vacationing is starting to wear a bit on the boys, particularly on Liam, who is going napless pretty much every day. Tomorrow we'll visit the Field Museum before heading home.

Sorry for the lack of photos, Blogger's photo upload is not working this evening. I'll get more posted when we get back home to a better internet connection tomorrow night.

This Just In...

Oh yeah, they're pooped.

9:23pm:

Logan is singing, Liam is asking for and then spilling water, neither one of them will quit babbling.

9:25pm:

Party's over, folks. See y'all tomorrow.

The Days Just Aren't Long Enough

For our second full day in Chicago we took the boys up to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was, in all honesty, probably the one place that was most likely to not be as big a hit, particularly with Liam. He seemed to have a good time, but both boys are getting pretty worn out on this trip. We had another good breakfast this morning and headed off to the Museum around 11am. It turns out we're a week too early for their new "Star Wars" exhibit, so it looks like we'll be coming back in the near future. I mean, Star Wars. Come on.

Despite the fact that this was our only stop for the day, we didn't even come close to seeing it all. We did see a lot of the transportation exhibits, the U-505 German submarine (unbelievably cool), an Omnimax show, the space exhibits, the chick hatchery, and the farm exhibits. We also took the boys to the Idea Factory, which is kind of similar to the Magic House in St. Louis. We squeezed in lunch somewhere and finally made it out around 4pm.

After we left the museum we went downtown to Michigan Ave. and took the boys to the LEGO store. Logan was, as expected, rendered pretty much incoherent when he saw the store and all the Star Wars stuff right in front.

Yes, that is an R2-D2 and a Darth Vader made entirely out of LEGOs. They had quite a bit of other cool stuff in there as well, although thanks to the internet there was nothing really that you couldn't get anywhere else. Still, a cool store. The boys both walked out with a new LEGO set, and a lot of Christmas ideas.

Tomorrow we're aiming for the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. They're right next door to each other, so we're going to try and do them both in one day, but who knows? The Aquarium ought to be the highlight so that will be first. The Field probably has more that will be over their heads and not as exciting, but the dinosaurs ought to make up for that. That will leave Monday's half-day wide open, but I'm not even sure I want to try and make it downtown on a workday. Chicago traffic is horrid.

Anyway, so far so good! No more sickness, although the boys are getting cranky around dinnertime. Hopefully they hang in there through tomorrow. More then!

Vacationing with Kids. Well, it's...interesting.

We've had our first full day in Chicago, and it's been eventful to say the least. We left home yesterday afternoon and took our time getting up here. It was probably 6 1/2 hours, but we gave new meaning to the word "meandering". Jill found some good info from an Illinois travel office (their rest stops rock) and we decided to stop along Route 66 for some original road food - corndogs.

Cozy Dogs, to be exact, in Springfield IL. They're pretty good, and only $1.50. Logan discovered he likes root beer, and Liam still can't make his way through a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

We rolled into Chicago around 7 or so, and found the hotel. We're staying at the Hyatt Lodge on the McDonald's campus - basically the hotel that all the Mickey D's executives and "Hamburger University" students stay at. It's pretty nice, tucked into a little forested preserve right on the edge of a lake. We got a good deal, they threw in breakfast, and they have the best hotel pool ever.

Afterwards we headed out for dinner and introduced the boys to Chicago style pizza at Giordano's. I think they liked it.

The rest of the evening went fine, the morning not so much. Logan woke up around 6am and promptly threw up all over his bed. Since Jill was just getting off a pretty brutal bout with stomach flu earlier this week, we feared the worst. He kept getting sick all morning, and we'd pretty much resigned ourselves to a lost day at best, and a possible canceled vacation at worst. We finally decided to take everyone down for breakfast after Logan went awhile without getting sick. Apparently something did the trick, and he has been fine the rest of the day.

Around noon we decided to risk it and head to the zoo. It's close by, and the day was just too perfect to spend inside - sunny, around 70 degrees, you really couldn't ask for better weather. The Brookfield Zoo is Chicago's larger zoo and one of the better ones in the country. It's really nice, very shaded and park-like. We caught the dolphin show and the Children's Zoo, and saw a lot of other cool stuff.

Tomorrow I think we're headed to the Science and Industry Museum - bottom of Jill's list, but I think it's pretty cool. They have an intact German WW2 submarine, a bunch of Apollo space program stuff, an entire working Boeing jetliner that does a whole takeoff/landing bit with all the landing gear and wing bits flapping around. It's very much for the engineer in me. There's a lot to see and I think the boys will have fun. We're also going to try to make it to the Lego store, just to see the look on Logan's face.

More later!

Off to Chicago!

Logan is on fall break, and we're heading to The Windy City for a few days of fun with the kids. Both of the boys are very excited to see sharks at the Shedd Aquarium. Also on the itinerary are visits to the Brookfield Zoo, the Field Museum, and the Museum of Science and Industry. (And we're likely to take a dip or two in the hotel pool as well.) We plan to take it slow and follow the boys' lead. This trip is for them...but it's going to be a blast for me and Jason too! We'll be sure to share all of the highlights!

Wildebeest? Dunk Your Head!

Last night as the boys were getting ready to get ready for bed, they were still a little hyper and started holding a little impromptu "WWE Raw In The Toyroom" action. Mostly they just jump all over me and call it "wrestling". It all started when I lay down and Liam decided it was great fun to jump on me. Logan used to do that too, it was only a matter of time before Liam figured it out. It was eventually time to go upstairs, which was met with whining, and for some reason I told Logan that he could stay up for one more minute "if he could knock me over".

Where do I come up with these ideas? I have no clue.

Anyway, he and Liam took turns crashing into me, to little effect. It helps to outweigh them by at least 140lbs. Finally, Logan took a new tactic - he lowered his head and shouted "WILDEBEEST!" as he charged me. I don't know what was different, but it worked. I toppled and Jill cracked up.

Liam, not to be outdone, had me stand back up, then lowered his head just like Logan and charged - but with his own unique battle cry: "DUNK YOUR HEAD!!"

He knocked me over too.

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Liam's getting big on counting lately, and I've actually seen him correctly count as high as eight or nine. Mostly his fingers move slower than his counting and he's counted to 5 or 6 before he's pointed to the third item. At least he's trying. One night a few days ago he was reading "Ten Little Ladybugs". When we got to the last page he started counting all the ladybugs and got really excited.

"One, two, three, four, fivesixseveneight NINETENELEVENTWELVE THIRTEENFOURTEENFIFTEENSIXTEEN!!!"

I asked him how many ladybugs there were.

He looked back down at the page for a moment.

"Five."

A Few of My Favorite First Day Pics - In Color