JJ's Jabbering

Christmas 2009

Joey's First visit from Tooth Fairy

When I picked Joey up from school yesterday he was proudly holding a little plastic baggie with his first missing tooth. The poor thing had been barely hanging in for the last two weeks so I was not surprised.

However, I was surprised to hear that he'd decided to pull the thing out by himself.

So after dinner we went walking through the toy store so that Joey could give the Tooth Fairy some ideas. He was a little confused when TF didn't magically appear and purchase the toy that he wanted right then and there but waking up this morning and finding a little treasure under his pillow made it all worth while.

Sadly, TF didn't have time to give him anything other than gold "pirate" coins - but he's been saving his allowance ever since we found the Lego store so we might have to make a special trip this weekend.

Stay tuned - because the tooth right next to this one isn't going to last much longer either!

School Year 2009

One of the nice things about living in Alabama is that the school year starts early Well OK ... it's nice for some of us!

It's time for our annual first day of school photos at the mailbox. Both boys were very excited about school starting.

Roy is in 2nd Grade this year with Mrs. Hellmer. He's very excited about her classroom because there is a traveling Teddy Bear that he's booked to go back to MN with us in December.

Granted it has only been two days but she's doing a fantastic job of working with him. We are very excited about his year!

Joey has started Kindergarten this year with Mrs. Greer. He was a little star-struck when I walked him into school on Monday. It's the same school he was doing preschool one day each week last year, but now it's "Big Boy" school and he was too cool to acknowledge his preschool teachers.

His teacher called us last night to tell us that he had a great first day and then she called us again tonight to let us know that Joey is pushing all of the limits. She explained that it is all totally normal 5 year-old behavior but she thought he might benefit from a talk at home tonight.

I think he might actually be a little too confident since he's been at the school before, he is kind of being a bossy pants with the other kids. We reiterated what his teacher told him about that not being the best way to make new friends. Everyone has their fingers crossed for tomorrow!

Who's A Big Boy?

OK OK So HE doesn't look very excited about it but Joey tied his new Kindergarten"Big Boy" shoes by himself after only 5 minutes of practice.

He's a genius I tell you

Joey is so excited about Kindergarten that every morning for the last week he wakes up and ask "today I get to go to Kindergarten?" Only a couple more days until we get to say "yes."

Good Cry

While I was getting Joey's hair combed and his daily sun screen applied he said "Dad, why can't I hear through my ears?" The pure innocence on his face and in the question just hit me like a ton of bricks!

Fathers' Day

Our morning started off with breakfast in bed. The boys had already started their morning cartoons when they remembered so our cuisine was a hastily prepared PB&J on a hamburger bun. I'm just thankful that they allowed us to sleep in until 7:30am.

After a quick trip to the grocery store and lunch we packed up the car and the boys took us to the Cullman Aquatics Center for a lovely afternoon of swimming, diving, and watersliding.

Joey has apparently overcome his fear of putting his head all the way under water. He was actually diving under water and spinning around/swimming. He really really really wanted to go down the cool water slides but he's not quite ready for that yet. We can use that to encourage his hard work at swimming lessons

And Roy was his usual fish self. Although I did catch him doing flips off the high diving board. It was his first exposure to a diving board that high but he's not one to let that stop him from trying what the "big boys" were doing. I'll post a little video when I get a chance.

Both boys are counting down the days to their birthday parties. Roy's is this coming Friday night and Joey's is Saturday afternoon. We figured we'd just get them both out of the way in one shot. Ask me on Sunday whether that was a good idea or not...

Camp Cosby 2009

With big brother away at camp, Joey took over as the official bug and other yuckies catcher. Here he is with his latest fascination Roly Polies.

**due to a web server malfunction, I'm attempting to recreate this post as best as I can

Roy's last day of school was Thursday and today we packed him off to Camp Cosby for his second year. It was a pretty sad week to be there, they were down to about 100 campers out of 400 beds. And Roy's cabin was only expecting 4 campers to watch the 5 counselors and I guess only three of the boys showed up.

The good thing about that was they got to mingle with the older campers a little more to prevent complete and utter boredom. That made Roy happy because his buddy from last year was in the older group.

We followed along with his week through the nightly picture uploads and just like last year there were 2 pictures of counselors for every 1 picture of a camper. The biggest difference this year was they actually caught Roy smiling!

He had a blast and is all pumped about doing it again next year. Let's hope the economy has improved by then so they have a few more campers.

Thursday Ride

After I picked Joey up from school we took his bike to the trail by our house and rode for about 2 miles. He didn't know it, but one of his training wheels was loose and not providing him any real support. Who knows, he might almost be ready to remove them entirely.

I brought my camera with me on the ride and took some great shots, including the one above.

Candy, Catch Up, and Candy

Our Easter Bunny threw us for a loop this morning!

Our Easter Bunny setup an elaborate egg/ scavenger hunt at our house this year. It was 7am when Roy woke up and couldn't find his basket. He quickly noticed the small pile of eggs in the middle of the livingroom with a half eaten carrot next to them... Tearing into the eggs, he found a note suggesting that he check the laundry room but we made him go get his brother before he continued.

In the laundry room they found a similar pile of eggs which contained candy and another note suggesting they look in the dishwasher. The hunt took them through the entire house a couple of times. And the bunny was very devious, sending them from the upstairs to the downstairs and back upstairs, outside, etc. About halfway through Roy thought he might like to hurt the bunny if he ever found him. Joey had given up by this point and was digging into the candy filled eggs from the piles Roy had already moved away from.

After the 10th note they located the loot cleverly hidden in each of their closets. Roy got a basketball hoop that hangs on his door and sasses him when he misses and throws the ball back to him if he makes it. Joey got a gigantic bubble wand which took us some practice to get the hang of. The bunny was forgiven at this point.

To help the boys burn off sugar rush #1 we went to the tennis courts and the park. We've been playing tennis against the house or across the street so being enclosed and on a level surface rocked.

Back at home we all had a light snack to tide us over until our 2pm Easter dinner invitation from down the street. The boys were pretty tired but unable to nap so we had a little Wii time while Daddies closed their eyes.

Dinner was a trip... our friends down the street are from Italy and all of their friends were either Italian or Mexican so we were the minority in speaking only English. I feel like I'll be dreaming in Italian tonight...

We ate our pasta course, an amazing leg of lamb, had a break for another egg hunt, and finished with espresso and dessert. There were 7 kids there totally hyped up on sugar rushes #2 & #3 so when it came time to leave there were tears aplenty but everyone had a great time. We always have a great time with them and their friends and a little adult conversation (even if I do not understand all of it...) makes for a nice weekend.

Next weekend we have tickets to see Wicked - I cannot wait!!!

Roy's baseball team is rocking along. This passed week they played the only undefeated team in the league and scared the crap out of them by tying it up in the 4th inning. We ended up losing but it was a great game and Roy loves machine pitch, and Joey just loves running around with the other little brothers...

Spring Break 2009

We decided to end Spring Break week with a bang and spent the weekend in Atlanta. We booked the hotel and Georgia Aquarium tickets well in advance and were ready to go Friday after work.

We'd planned the hotel with an indoor pool so the boys could have some playtime on either side of the daily activities we planned. However, when we arrived at the hotel Friday night the pool was in a courtyard only, not covered and not heated. BRRRR We quickly jumped on hotels.com and customer care to get out of this hotel and into one with an actual indoor pool.

It was almost 11pm when we finally made it to the new hotel and got the boys into bed. We'd found a suite so Daddies could crack open a bottle of wine while the boys crashed in front of some cartoons.

Saturday morning after breakfast the boys and I jumped into the pool. We didn't have to be anywhere until after lunch so it was a very laid back morning of swimming and cartoons. We had lunch at the world-famous The Varsity restaurant and ate at the old school house seats staring at the TV. You can guess who was in charge of seat selection...

From there it was off to the aquarium, what a freaking madhouse!!! We had 1:00 tickets and stood in line from about 12:45 until 1:15 just to get inside. Once we were inside we forgot all about that of course because the place in amazing!

The ocean exhibit was breath taking, as you can tell from Joey's face above. Sitting at the large "window" at the end of the exhibit and watching the creatures was simply peaceful and exhilarating.

After almost 4 hours we'd all had enough and headed back to the hotel for some rest/cartoons. We'd scoped out a local pizza joint for dinner and were not disappointed. Johnny's New York Style Pizza served pizza by the slice so the boys were able to get their sausage and cheese pizza and Daddies got the Greek pizza. YUMMY!!!

Back at the hotel we had more excitement... the city had blown a water main so we had zero water pressure. That means no showers, no toilets, no running water of any kind. We melted some ice in the microwave and coffee pot to brush teeth. It didn't seem to affect the boys' ability to watch cartoons and sleep with their new stuffed animals from the aquarium however

Sunday morning was a repeat of Saturday morning; breakfast, pool, etc. We met a friend at Legal Sea Foods for lunch, let the boys run free in the Centennial Olympic Park, and then wrapped up our weekend at the World of Coke museum.

I think everyone's favorite was the 4-D movie, complete with splashes of water and a seat that poked us in the back. The tasting room was much anticipated but after tasting maybe half of the 70ish flavors, ones tummy starts to complain. We headed for the door, picking up our souvenir bottle bottled on site and hit the road.

Both boys were asleep before we were out of Atlanta and didn't wake up, even for a rest stop, until we hit Birmingham.