When Jen and Alex got home from school yesterday afternoon Jen was grabbing all her stuff out of the trunk of the car when she dropped a hanger on the ground. Alex went and picked it up for Jen and starting waving it in the air and calling out
“Hey Mom, Here’s your hooker! Mom, here’s your hooker!”
The other day Jen told me, “We’re getting a cleaning lady.” It was just put out there as a statement really not meant to be debated, just more a statement of fact.
Now I don’t think that we’re really all that dirty that we needed to get someone in to clean our house but I wasn’t going to argue it. Well, I did kind of put up a little resistance but I figured it was best just to let it go. So, yesterday she came and cleaned the house and I’ve discovered that we must live like absolute pigs.
I was pretty skeptical that we would really be able to notice what was done but when I came home from work the whole house had this fresh piney smell. The floors were shiny, the counter tops were sparkling, it was totally incredible. There isn’t a spot in the house that I don’t think she didn’t clean, spots I didn’t even notice existed before just shine. I’m almost afraid of touching anything since I’m just going to make it dirty.
Last weekend we all went to a “Day out with Thomas” event. I’ve posted a couple pages of pictures from the outing which you can get to from the home page.
We got tickets for the event out four months ago, I think Jen discovered it on line when she was surfing the Thomas web site with Alex one afternoon and we got tickets. We didn’t tell Alex about it at the time so it was a big surprise when we told him a couple of days before we actually went. It’s a big outdoor carnival where they have trains set up for the kids to play with, entertainers singing Thomas songs, and of course the reason we are all there for is a ride on a real Thomas the Tank Engine. Of course it wouldn’t be complete without a gift shop stocked full with every imaginable Thomas train ever.
It turns out the Thomas really isn’t much more then a hollow rail car constructed to look exactly like the real Thomas. I don’t know what I was expecting but I thought it was going to be a genuine steam engine. It’s set up so that Thomas is at the front of the train followed by a couple of passenger cars, and on the end is an old fashion diesel engine which pushes the whole thing out and bank.
Even though I felt a little cheated Alex thought it was the greatest thing ever and we got to get a family picture in front of Thomas which he now has up on the bulletin board in his room.
When we were all done we had to drive over the train line that Thomas was parked at and Alex said that he wanted to see Thomas one last time.
“Well, we’ll be able to see him if he hasn’t left on another trip yet” I told him. We then rounded the corner and Thomas was still waiting as passengers were still getting on the train.
“See, Thomas wouldn’t leave me” Alex told us from the back seat.
Yes, we’re still here, I just haven’t made an update in ages.
We have finally got around to putting up shelves in the kitchen which pretty much completes the kitchen project. (Well, expect for some touch up paint that is.) These were shelves that we put in the old wet bar area which is now a desk. We couldn’t decide for the longest time what type of shelves to put up so Jen finally had enough of my indecision and went and bought some. I took a couple pics so you can see what they look like here.
Now, you see the thing is, the pictures you see here were taken right after the shelves went up. I like to think of myself as a handy kind of guy but for some reason hanging stuff on the walls seems to be beyond my skills. So about two days after they went up, one of the shelves came tumbling right back down.
Not only has my handy guy ego taken a whipping but it was the small shelf on the top left that came down which had our wedding plate on it. Someone gave us the plate as a wedding gift and it had our names on it with our wedding date. (You can see the plate in the pictures.) I really liked it so I was a little bummed out that it’s now in a paper bag on our counter in a million pieces. I think that we are going to get out the crazy glue and see if we can put it back together.
It’s been ages since I’ve managed to make any updates to this site, sorry folks. Things have been pretty busy at work and the computer has been on the fritz. Things are in a little better shape but it looks like I’m still going to need to get a new video card for this thing since it’s doing all kinds of odd stuff to the picture.
Anyway, I’ve added a couple of pages of recent pictures to the home page. One of Alex playing soccer in the park and another of Alex and Jen at the Arboretum.
I promise I’ll get to more updates soon..
We took Alex to see another installment of Sesame Street Live today. This time the production was “Elmo’s Coloring Book.”
Last year we took Alex to see the “Out of this World” show which he really enjoyed so we figured he would like this one too, which he did. For the first part of the show he was a little afraid of everything that was going on, especially when the stage lights would shine into the audience. Lately he has been going through a phase where all kinds of stuff scare him that in past really didn’t bother him so we hoped this wouldn’t be too big a shock.
After the first five minutes he said “I want to go home” but I put him in my lap and managed to convince him to try and stay a little longer. He was pretty funny since whenever something happened that would scare him he would put his hands over his eyes but he would always leave these gaping holes between his fingers so he could still see what was occurring on stage.
After the intermission he was really into the show and things went much better. Whenever one of the characters would wave to the audience he would wave back and he started tapping his hands to the beat of the songs.
We were smart this time and before the end actually rolled around we prepared him so we wouldn’t have a repeat incident of the Winnie the Pooh movie.
Overall all it was a very successful show and Alex enjoyed himself.
We took Alex to the movies this afternoon to see Pooh’s Heffalump Movie. We didn’t tell him that we were going to see it since he didn’t take a nap today, (which seems to be re-occurring theme here,) and we had to run a couple of errands before going to the theatre and we figured if he was in really bad shape we wouldn’t go. We were pretty confident he would fall asleep in the car and sure enough, ten minutes into the trip he was out like a light.
The dilemma is do you keep him up and end up with a grumpy kid or do you let him sleep so he’s not so tired but when you have to wake him he always has a really hard time and is pretty much miserable for a period of time. So far we’ve always just let him sleep.
Once we got him up and calmed down he was pretty exited about seeing the movie. It was a good movie but we made the mistake of not preparing him for the end. I guess he didn’t expect the end when it did and he was really disappointed. He just kept saying, “It’s not over yet, it’s not the end.”
He figured it was just like the movies we have at home and we could just start it over whenever we wanted. He also had a hard time figuring out that we can’t rush right out and buy him a copy of the movie to watch at home. Despite all the heartache he really did enjoy it.
We decided to stay home on Valentine’s Day instead of going out since it has to be one of the busiest days of restaurant season and with Alex not taking a nap it wouldn’t have been a good scene. I could just see it now. Us standing in line waiting for table and Alex having a melt down.
We thought we would make it a little special and dimming the lights and put some candles on the table. Alex was pretty intrigued by the change of scenery and asked what the candles were for. We explained that it was Valentine’s Day which is special so we were doing something different. That seemed to satisfy him for a couple of minutes when he asked again.
“Why do we have candles on the table?”
“Well, what day is it today?”
“Oh, I don’t want to tell you.”
“Well, it’s Valentine’s Day which is special so we put some candles on the table.”
“Okay”.
We continued eating for another five minutes when,
“Why do we have these candles on the table?”
“Well, what day is it today?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
This went on for pretty much the rest of dinner.
Today while Alex was driving with Jen they had to stop at a red light. Alex piped up from the back seat that
“When my Daddy has to stop at a red light he says Scheiße.”
Jen thought this was an interesting development and had Alex relate the story to me over dinner. I figure what happened is that last week when we were driving around I had to stop suddenly for a red light and just maybe I let it slip out. Now it appears that I swear profusely for all red lights.
I’ve posted a couple of pictures from January. We didn’t take that many pictures so I’ve picked a couple of the better ones.