For three days we’ve lived without the TV remote. When I write it like that it doesn’t sound like a big deal but let me tell you it’s been pretty horrible. Take a guess where you think I found it……..the fireplace. Andrew loves to climb up to the fireplace ledge and he loves to chew on the remote so my best guess is that he put it in there. I found it today when I was playing with him on the floor and happened to glance into the fireplace. Life can now return to normal.

The website move looks like it completed a couple of hours ago too. I was just checking checking things out and noticed that the blog wasn’t there but this time it wasn’t any technical problems but because I had not moved it to the new site yet. So, if your reading this post then everything is working for you.

Were living in 70’s here since we’ve lost the remote control for the TV. Last night we spent about twenty minutes turning the place upside down and we didn’t find it and it still hasn’t turned up. It’s very frustrating watching TV just knowing that if you wanted to get up and change the channel I’m going to have to get up to do it. Ugh.

I’ve finally decided to drop our current web hosting company and move to a new one. In the past year or so the current company has raised their rates and then I just got a notice the other day that they are going to be raising them again. On top of the fees going up I’m not sure if anyone noticed but the blog disappeared for some period of time last week. I say some period since I’m not sure how long it was gone for. On Friday when I was reading through other blogs I keep up with I noticed that my rss reader couldn’t get any updates from our site. I checked it out and sure enough our blog had been replaced with a page from the current hosting company announcing a blog site coming soon. It appears that they have decided to offer a blogging service, fantastic, only about two years too late guys, and they had set up any website that had a directory named /blog/ in it to link to this new service.

I complained and they fixed it but that was it for me. That afternoon I signed up with a new company and started getting things set up on the new server. vI suspect that in the next couple of days or so mceachernfamily.com might end up disappearing for about 24 hours or so while the dns changes propagate throughout the system but fear not, we’ll be back.

Now on to the brewing battle in my stomach. Tonight for dinner we had “Baja Spicy Pepper” Sausages and jalapeno flavoured noodles. Be thinking of me tonight at 3am while I’m fumbling around the in the dark trying to find the bottle of Tums.

Over the Easter weekend we decided to take the kids over the Fort Worth Zoo to check out the “DinoRoars – Robot Giants Come to Life” dinosaur exhibit. You just can’t go wrong with anything Dinosaur related these days and it’s been a couple of years since we’ve made the trek over to Fort Worth. We’ve taken them to the Dallas Zoo a couple of times in the past but the Fort Worth Zoo is way better but we rarely go because it’s such a long drive.

We decided to go over early in the morning to try and avoid the worst of the heat and spend as long as the kids could hold up. I figured after a couple of hours we would be headed home but as it turned out we ended up staying pretty much the whole day. Alex loved the “DinoRoars” dinosaurs which were large animatronic dinos that moved and the fierce meat eaters also roared to go along with the motion. I would ask him if we needed to get a picture of this dino and he would always say, “Ya, but wait until it opens it mouth.”

In addition to the dinos we spend some time in the herpetarium, which was air conditioned….ahhhhh, looking at the reptiles and snakes, and Alex and I went into the Parrot Paradise exhibit where we got to feed the parakeets. I’m pretty sure Andrew enjoyed looking at the animals too. We would hold him up so he could look into the animal habits and would look, point to the animals, and in some cases start yelling at them. We interpreted his screams as “Hey, this is really cool, look at those elephants.”

If you haven’t already seen the pictures I posted yesterday you can find them here.

On our way to the zoo we were sitting in the car waiting at a traffic light and Jen commented that it kind of felt like a Sunday to her. (It was Saturday.) It was a little odd because we were both off Friday and since I normally work on Saturday we typically don’t get to do these types of family activities until Sunday. So this being a Saturday, both of us being off from work, and it being the second day in a row that we weren’t at work it was a little weird.

“Ya, it kind of feels like a Sunday to me too.” I responded. About ten seconds later Alex piped up from the back seat,

“Ya, me too. I feel like a Sunday. A chocolate Sunday.”

You know I could start a blog devoted entirely to the funny things that Alex comes up with. It’s non stop. Plus with another one coming along I’m sure I would have enough material to sustain me for quite a long time. Come to think of it I could probably fill a novel with just poopy pants references let alone everything else.

I would like to say that my lack of updates to the website over the last couple weeks have been due to the fact that I’ve been really busy and things have been completely crazy but that just wouldn’t be true. The truth is that just about every night this week I’ve ended up going to bed about eight o’clock which really hasn’t left that much time to do much of anything. I’m not sure what the deal is but I’ve been really tired and the other night I was asleep before Alex fell asleep.

We started spring cleaning last week and in the process we ended up making things worse before before we could start to make them better. We emptied out one of our closets with the goal of sifting through all the stuff, throwing some it, keeping some, and generally trying to consolidate things into smaller containers. It’s amazing how six months ago there was no way that we could part with something but now it just ended up in the junk pile. Additionally we ended up side tracked from the main task and coming across things we haven’t seen for a long time and it turns into “Oh, remember this” and “Oh remember when”. Reading the comics this week, (I a big comics fan), For Better or Worse summed up what ended happening to us.

We are still working with Alex on trying to tone down the “poopy” usage. Somehow it seems that every conversion we have with him somehow finds its way back to poop. We were sitting at the dinner table the other night and Jen sat down and said,

“Man, I’m pooped”

“What does that mean?” Alex asked.

“When people say they’re pooped it means they are tired or they are worn out.” I told him. This got him thinking for a couple of seconds then he said,

“But you know when we say “poopy pants” it means that someone has pooped in their pants”.

Just in case you were in doubt on the exact meaning of “poopy pants” Alex is here to sort it out for you.

As promised, but sooner then anticipated, I’ve updated the web site with Alex’s birthday pictures and the Half Maraton pictures.

It was a busy weekend around here. On Saturday we had Alex’s big birthday party and on Sunday Jen and Amanda ran their Half Marathon.

We decided to have Alex’s party this weekend since Jen’s parents were going to be in town and Amanda was also going to be here for the Half Marathon. Since Alex is so into dinosaurs Jen found out that the Dallas Museum of Natural History does “Dino” parties so we thought what a perfect fit. We invited all the kids in his class and then a couple of other close friends and I pretty sure everyone had a good time. They started off with a small dino arts and crafts activity, then they got a tour of some of the exhibits at the museum including a T. Rex skeleton, (one of the highlights), and it all culminated with a “dino dig”.

Wade was our official birthday photographer and took some great pictures which I’m currently working on getting up on the web site. I have all the picture parts done and now I just need to add the write up and then it will be complete.

Then on Sunday morning Jen and Amanda ran in the Half Marathon race. The race started at eight in the morning and even at that hour it was pretty hot out. I would guess by the time they finished it would have been in the mid 70’s, close to 80, and humid on top of that. Since I wasn’t running I brought my bike down and after they had started the race I rode backwards up the course and met them just past mile eight. Kelly and Wade also drove down and we all stood together to cheer them on. After they past us I rode the course back to the finish to meet them there. I got some pretty good pictures and I’m working on getting those posted so look for them in next couple of days as well.