It took me three days to get this post together.

It’s been a while since I’ve managed to find to find the time to sit down and actually but together a post. I just put Andrew down for his nap and Alex is on the computer upstairs looking at the Dino Planet section of the Discovery.com website so I have a few minutes of free time. I should probably be doing stuff around the house while I have the time but instead I’ve opted to take a timeout to post.

Mother’s Day was this past weekend and Alex made Jen a very nice card at school. It was a “I love when my mom makes…” and they got to fill out the rest and draw a picture. The other kids in the class did cards that said “I love when my mom makes pizza” or “cookies” and things like that and Alex’s card was “I love when my mom makes ice cream pizza.” I have no idea where he got that idea but it was pretty funny. If I could find the the card I would write down exactly what he said but it seems to have disappeared somewhere. When I find it I’ll post what he wrote.

Next week is our nine year anniversary. I can’t believe that it’s going to be nine years. I’m going to have be honest that I don’t have anything spectacular planned for the big day but we just booked a trip to New York City for a weekend in June and Kelly and Wade have graciously agreed to watch the kids so I guess that could count as an anniversary getaway. Every time we say “New York City” we can’t help but mimic the Pace Picante commercial from the 90’s, “Nooow York City!” (I so know you just did it.)

So last week when I was driving to work early in the morning to go swimming I was getting off the highway on the last exit ramp when the car in front of me swerved hard to the right and lurched violently up into the air. Suddenly out from under the car came flying a tire. Not just the tire but the tire and the rim off what looked like a pickup truck. I swerved to the right but there wasn’t enough time and the tire bounced off the left front bumper of my car making a large thudding noise in the process. The person behind me said he thought the tire when flying off my car into the lanes of traffic and then went flying into the oncoming traffic lanes after that. When I got to stop and asses the damage the driver side headlight is cracked, the bumper needs to be replaced and the left front quarter panel is slightly squished from the impact. I guess it could have been much worse and I’m glad that I didn’t get hurt but now I’m going to have to go through the hassle of getting the car repaired.

I haven’t been really keeping up with hockey this year, I know, I know, what kind of Canadian am I, so to redeem myself have been watching a little bit of the playoffs with Alex. Out of the remaining teams there isn’t really one I care about but I would like to see Ottawa beat Buffalo. Considering they are down 3-1 in the series it’s going to be tough for them to advance.

When I came home from work this afternoon Alex was watching the New Jersey/Carolina game on TV. I asked him for an update and he told me

“The New Jerseys are beating the Carolinas 1 to nothing.”

He loves adding an extra “s” on the end of the names.

I put some more pictures up on the website Friday. Last weekend we took the kids to see a butterfly exhibit that the mall had going on. In one of the large open sections they had built a large netted butterfly habitat that you could walk through. Before going in you could grab a piece of cantaloupe to attract the butterflies but to be honest the minute I walked in the door I had one fly right at me and land on my nose. On the way out it was more important to make sure you weren’t carrying out any hitch hikers with you.

Andrew liked looking and pointing at the butterflies and he tried really hard to grab them. The one time he did managed to get hold of one the first thing he did was try and put it in his mouth. Apparently butterflies look a little more appetizing then green beans. Alex on the other hand wasn’t really excited about it and decided that he didn’t want them to get close to him. After we left he did say it was exciting and he had a good time.

You can the pictures here.

I’ve finally managed to get around to updating the website with the latest pictures.

The first page is a couple of pictures from April that just didn’t fall into any specific category. They are mainly of Andrew and cover walking, (or because these aren’t animated it looks more like he’s just standing there so you’ll have to take my word for it), playing outside, and playing with toys. You can find those here.

The second page is a couple of shots of Easter Activities. Dyeing eggs, the Easter Egg hunt, and a couple of good pictures of Jen and Alex just before they headed off to church. Those are on the Easter page.

The last page has the pictures of Andrew’s first birthday party. For some reason we don’t really have a lot of pictures from the actually party day but there are some good ones of him eating cake and opening some gifts. Birthday page.

Andrew just had his first birthday a couple of days ago and I’m going to sound like a broken record, and every other parent on the planet, but it’s really hard to believe that a whole year has already gone by. When did that happen? It’s also hard to believe just how much he and Alex have changed in the past year. In fact it’s amazing how much Andrew has been changing in the just the past couple of weeks.

Just over a week ago Andrew was just experimenting with walking taking two or three steps before falling down and then just the other day he walked from his room all the way into Alex’s room. That required him walking out into the hall and navigating around the toys on the floor to get to where he was going. That’s official walking. It seems like every day he’s learning something new, or just about.

Yesterday Jen took Alex to the doctor because he wasn’t feeling well and since they finished right around lunch time I drove to meet them. We decided on McDonald’s since it was easy for both of us to get to and we could be in and out quickly. They arrived before me and while they were waiting Jen happened to be standing near a life size cardboard cutout of Ronald McDonald. Andrew looked at the poster and yelled out:

“Da Da”

So it appears we’re only making great strides in the walking category but the Dad recognition receptors need some refining. Or the horror, maybe I really do look like Ronald McDonald. Once someone told me I sounded like Kermit the Frog but no one every mentioned looking like Ronald McDonald. What a combination, the voice of Kermit and the face of Ronny McD, there’s an attractive combination. Good thing I’m already married 🙂

After I picked up Alex from school this afternoon we came home and were playing a game of hockey in the living room. Just as we were about to start the game he said,

“We need to have a face off first.”

We came to the center of the “ice”. He had his stick on the floor and was holding the ball.

“Now we have to look each other in the eyes, and bring our heads in close.”

So I looked him in the eyes and we got our heads real close and then he added,

“Now we have to make mean faces at each other.”

We frowned at each other, added a growl for good luck and he dropped the ball. Now that’s a proper face off.

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.