Ski Trip - Interlude

OK, I hope this goes away like almost all other things, because if it comes back and is something serious, I will look like a schmuck. But Ethan had his little spell with sickness yesterday, during which he thought he was going to throw up. He is a fan of the drama! Today, he has a low grade headache as far as I can tell, because he's running around, tubing, and being a general 9 year old menace, but after sitting on the couch for 30 minutes drinking water and eating popcorn he started complaining of a headache again. He stood in the kitchen, looked at me, and said, "I hope this isn't something serious. It probably is, though. I've had a headache for 2 days now - that's not normal, dad!"

He HATES the drama!!!

Ski Trip - Part I

As I sit here in our rented condo, Ethan and Jenny are sitting on the couch studying social studies (Jenny struggles, so they need to study), Quin is watching Monsters, Inc. on the iPad, it is brisk and snowing outside while the gas fire burns warmly in the fireplace. Our first ski vacation in 7 years is in full swing!

This vacation finds us in the beautiful US Rocky Mountains outside of Denver, CO. Though we're already settled and active in our vacation activities, the trip started many days ago. Last Wednesday to be exact. We had settled down for a typical evening at home - Quin and Ethan were sleeping soundly in their beds while Jenny and I attempted to get some last minute television in before our whirlwind trip to Colorado. All seemed normal, that is until 10:30 when Quin called out from upstairs. It's not atypical for him to wake up from time to time, particularly early in the evening. I slowly made my way upstairs to check on him. As I started walking down the hall, the door to his room opened and he walked out, covered in vomit. Awesome! Here we were, less than 48 hours from leaving for our trip, and Quin had come down with the flu! He was up the better part of the night, mostly dry heaving as he had done a pretty good job of emptying his stomach on round 1.

By the time morning rolled around, Quin was feeling fine. Too fine, actually. We had to keep him home, but he was up and bouncing off the walls by 6:30 the next morning already! The good news is that, should any of the rest of us come down with whatever he had, it should be pretty fast moving...

Friday morning came without further incident. Our flight was at 10:30 in the morning, so we wanted to make sure we got out of the house by 7:30 to make time for getting gas and travelling to the airport. The commute couldn't have gone better - chalk one up in our favor! The roads were clear and traffic was light, so we were able to get to the ticket counter by 8:30 - no problem. Travel through the airport was fairly uneventful as well, which was a surprise. Quin has a tendency to run away. To give us peace of mind, we purchased him a "leash" disguised as a little backpack with a tether (yeah, it's a leash). Turns out we probably didn't need it, at least in the Milwaukee Airport, as Quin was so impressed by the whole experience that he stayed close the whole time.

After some breakfast, a trip through the security line (regular metal detectors, no full body scans today), and a short wait at the gate, we were finally aboard the plane awaiting takeoff. This was both Ethan and Quin's second time on an airplane. It was the first time Quin was able to comprehend what was going on, though, as the last time was when he was only 5 weeks old. He was excited and a little scared, but he did great. He and I sat on one side of the aisle while Jenny and Ethan sat across from us. The boys bided their time on the airplane by utilizing many pieces of tech that are worth their weight in gold on a trip like this! Of course, at some point, a three year old's attention span is still a three year old's attention span, and Quin decided he had enough of sitting in one place. He had done so well for almost 2 hours, who could fault him for 30 minutes of ants in his pants?! After bouncing between our seats for awhile, he ultimately ended up in Jenny's lap for a nap for the last 15 minutes of the flight.

After the nice flight and uneventful landing, we started trekking through Denver International Airport. The tentative plans were to land at 12:30, be in Denver for lunch by 2:00, check into the hotel, maybe swim for 30 minutes, then head up to Boulder for the beer festival. Ha, funny!!! By 2:00 we had finally gotten our luggage and made it to the rental car outpost. Things just take longer when you have kids along. At one point, I changed Quin's pants after him having sat in them for 6 hours - he was wet. No more than 10 minutes later he had filled them again... By 3:00 we had finally gotten to the restaurant for lunch (note that is 4:00 our time, lupper anyone?), we did check into the hotel by around 4:00, but there was no time for swimming. I had purchased a ticket to the Avery Brewing Company's 9th annual Strong Ale Festival, which started at 5:00 in Boulder, a 45 minute trip in good traffic.

So, immediately after checkin at the Holiday Inn Select at Cherry Creek, we got into our red Toyota Corolla rental car and headed out for Boulder. The 1.5 mile trip down Colorado Blvd. took a little longer than expected. We were on that road for 30 minutes! We did manage to get to Boulder by 5:30 and I attended a wonderful beer festival! So many beers that I had never tried, and true to the title, they were all strong. In fact, the prerequisite to have a beer at the festival was that the alcohol content was 8% or better. My company has an office in Denver, so I was able to meet up with one of the guys from that office along with his family which made for a less lonely beer festival overall. Surprisingly I saw many people from Wisconsin with whom I started up some casual conversations. All in all, it was a lovely 2 hours spent.

The original plan for the beer festival was to drop me off, have Jenny drive the kids back to Denver for some swimming, then come back to pick me up for the 9:00 closing time. After the hectic, traffic heavy drive, however, Jenny didn't feel too comfortable that she would be successful in this venture, and I agreed. So we compromised - I shortened my night to 7:30 (more than enough time) and she took the kids shopping for the consumables we would be charged through the nose for on the mountain. That worked better...

When we finally got back to the hotel, it was around 9:00 Mountain time. Quin still hadn't had much for a nap, Ethan was tired, I was tipsy, so we got in bed and went to sleep. Unfortunately, that is not where the adventure ended for me that evening. I'm not 100% sure that I didn't drink "too much," but I've had some experience judging this in the past, and I felt I stayed well within my limits on this particular occasion. Rewind two days to when Quin was up puking all night before the vacation - I'm pretty sure that's what I caught. After an hour spent on the bathroom floor, I felt marginally better - well enough to sleep. Jenny woke up with the kids the next morning, took them swimming, got them breakfast, and by 8:00 I was feeling like I belonged among the living again. Again, I'm pretty sure it was just the flu!!!

We checked out of the hotel fairly early on Saturday and went over to Maylee's apartment to await the caravan up the mountainside to our condo. Checkin time wasn't until 4:00, so we had a fair amount of time to wait. Quin and Ethan bided their time climbing on the dog fence outside Maylee's apartment while Jenny joined Maylee, her sister, and her mom to get some groceries.

By 2:00 we were ready to drive. After spending over 3 hours at Maylee's apartment, we were happy to get moving again. However, we weren't gone for more than 5 minutes before Ethan claimed he had to go to the bathroom! As we drove down Colorado Blvd passing gas station after gas station, Ethan was wondering loudly why we wouldn't stop to let him go to the bathroom. So I took a page out of my vacation past and handed him an empty water bottle and told him to fill it up, explaining that we were in a caravan and couldn't just stop and go to the bathroom. To my delight, he managed to tackle the task with vigor, filling it 1/3 of the way to the top, even though it took him quite a while to overcome his "stage fright."

The drive up was uneventful. It was snowing lightly once we passed through the Eisenhower tunnel. Our luck seemed to continue as the weather called for a winter weather advisory for later in the evening, a prediction that partially came true.

We arrived at the condo a little after 4:00 and settled in. The condo is very nice. Two stories with a kitchen, spacious living room with a fireplace, and a bathroom on the first floor, and a master bedroom, loft bedroom, and bathroom on the second floor. More than enough room for the 4 of us!

After unpacking and laying claim to sleeping arrangements, we headed out to check out the town. The Winters had purposely booked this time of year for vacation due to the "En Fuego" party that they were having. En Fuego, according to the signs, is Spanish for "Good Times at Copper Mountain," or something to that degree. The village was lit by bon fires. At 6:30, they had fire dancing courtesy of "Cosmic Fire," which was a troupe of three young people that apparently had no fear of close proximity to flaming objects. After about a 30 minute show, they started a 15 minute firework display to finish off the evening.

After that we basically went back to the condo, had a beer, and Quin and I went to bed. Not sure what other fun happened after 8:00 because I was out for the count. The nice thing is that when Quin woke up at 6:00 the next morning, I had 10 hours of sleep already!

As Sunday morning dawned, we were looking forward to getting Quinton into something more structured. Daycare opened at 8:30 sharp, and apparently they mean 8:30, because we were there at 8:27 and we were unable to check him in. Too desperate? After dropping him off, getting Ethan's rental skis, and obtaining our lift tickets, we were out on the slopes. It felt great to be on an honest to goodness hill for the first time in a long time. I had no idea how long it had been until Jenny and I took an assessment on the way up the hill one time. The last time we had been on a "mountain" run was at Copper Mountain 7 years ago! That's too long...

The skiing was great. There was several inches of powder snow from the previous night, which I'm told is great. For us flat landers, it was challenging getting our legs used to skiing on anything other than ice, and on something that took more than 45 seconds to ski down! By the second run, all three of us (Jenny, Ethan, and I) were feeling very comfortable and excited about what we were doing. I will admit, I felt more than a little nervous on several occasions as Ethan caromed down the hill with what looked like absolutely no control whatsoever. When later challenged, he admitted he had absolutely no control! By lunch time, however, we were all looking like the solid intermediate skiers that we knew we were!

We took in a nice lunch at Endo's Adrenaline Vault in Center Village. Ethan had maybe the largest peanut butter and jelly sandwich ever made! After lunch, we took on a couple more runs before panic struck. Ethan started getting a headache. It wasn't long before he was diagnosed, by both Jenny and himself, as being dehydrated. Much like the previous day, we were no more than 20 minutes from lunch and Ethan needed to stop because he didn't have enough water in him!!! We finally convinced him to do 2 more runs and then we'd head back to the condo for some rest. The first run went fine, but the second was maybe the most tragic skiing incident I've ever been a part of. There was plenty of sobbing and threats to throw up. The poor woman that rode the lift with us offerred to give him a stick of gum and some sage advice to drink water, but nothing was making him feel better.

We finally made it back to the condo around 2:00, which turned out to be plenty of time skiing the first time in so long! We left Ethan to rest on the couch while Jenny and I took in some hot tubbing with the Winters.

After picking up Quin from daycare, we settled into the condo lifestyle for a couple of hours - Ethan recovering, Quin playing, and Jenny and I trying to hold all of it together while planning dinner, baths, and whatever else adults have to do. At one point we were invited to the Winters for a drink, though Maylee was in the village at Endos again. I offered to let Jenny go there to spend some time with her, which she "reluctantly" took me up on. While she was gone, Ethan convalesced from his sickness so the three of us had some dinner, gave Quinny a bath, and hunkered down to watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine. As the movie was winding down around 7:30, Quin sat on my lap and fell asleep. Vacation's hard!

Jenny finally made her way back, hungry and a little tipsy, by around 8:30. She dug through some of our leftovers of mac and cheese and hotdogs from supper while Ethan and I prepared our evening's entertainment. The owners of the condo have a collection of old movies on DVD. One of the movies looked interesting. It was called "Copper Mountain" and starred Alan Thicke and Jim Carrey. The description looked promising, so we decided to give it a try. Wow. I can now say I have viewed the worst movie ever made. At 60 minutes, it was about 55 minutes too long! It makes most porno movies I've seen look like Oscar candidates! There was nothing we could do to top that experience, so we decided to head off to bed after that...

Monday morning rolled around. It was our planned day off from skiing, so we decided instead to do some sightseeing instead. After breakfast we headed into the village to get Jenny and I some caffeine and the kids some doughnuts. It was a little brisk, so we headed back to the condo and enjoyed some relaxing downtime through lunch.

After lunch, Ethan and I went tubing in the East Village. I wasn't convinced going into it, but it turned out to be a blast. We took a video which I intend to link to here once I get it uploaded. That takes us to now - as I sit here "blogging," Quin is enjoying a nap, Ethan is relaxing while watching "The Rookie" on TV, and Jenny is enjoying some more hot tubbing. Tonight looks to be relaxing and low key before tomorrow's adventures - Quin is going back to day care, Ethan is enrolled in "Woodward," a school that teaches kids how to do tricks on skis and snowboards, and Jenny and I have the slopes in our sights, this time without kids. For now, though, I have to concentrate on getting rid of the enormous amount of food and beer that we bought for this trip so I don't feel bad about leaving so much of it behind.

Dancing Quin

This video is hilarious, I think. Obviously there must be some degree of nature going on here as nobody of the non-adopted persuasion in our family can dance like this...

6 Feet of Air

Ethan belongs to the ski club at school. Last week we went skiing for the first time this year. Since Alpine is close to some friends of ours, we were able to meet up with them and their two kids, one of which, Justin, is Ethan's age.

Justin and Ethan were having a blast! Justin snow boards, but Ethan skied. Of course, as soon as he saw Justin snow boarding, he immediately wanted to try that. Jenny tried to convince him that he would want to do that prior to us going, but he didn't want to until he saw Justin doing it...

They spent most of the day in the terrain park. Jenny, Jeff, and I hung out with them when they would allow us, but we were by far the oldest people in the terrain park by double or more! Jeff said he likes to get the kids in the terrain park because it enhances their vocabulary. Indeed... I'll give Ethan credit - even though he lacks in style or skill, he has no fear on the hill. He was taking every jump he could take. Him and Justin would brag to each other about how much air they got and if they "landed it." Ethan proclaimed that he "must have had 6 feet of air" at one point. Below is video proof of the feat.

As I said before, we're re-doing the kids' rooms. Quin's is slowly morphing from a baby's room to a boy's room. The first step was a new bed, but first we had to get rid of the old one. After taking the crib up to Grandpa and Grandma Grady's house, and not yet having a replacement, we opted to put the mattress that was destined for the room on the floor. Quin slept great on it! One small quirk, though. When he goes to bed, he likes to have the ceiling fan on as high as it goes and he likes to put the covers over his head. In the interest of time, I oblige him each time. Hey, it's an easy way to get him to bed.

One of the more interesting Quin tendencies lately that forces us to pay attention to him pretty much every second of the day is his desire to climb on the railing surrounding the staircase. I'm not talking about the inside of it, but the outside, the side that hovers precariously 10 feet above the bottom step below. The first time I caught him doing it we were painting. He called out to me to "look at me," and I calmly crapped myself as I extricated him from the wrong side of the stair railing. This one is a challenge!

Like another time, over Thanksgiving, Quin was playing with my keys. Jenny and I both said, "that's probably a bad idea. We should get those away from him." Well, good intentions being what they are, we spent the next day and a half trying to find the now lost keys. We had to call Brett in Janesville to make a special trip to Oconomowoc to get the spare so we could get home. I even replaced the keys to the tune of $100+!!! My mom spent the better part of the last two weeks looking for them... Should have listened to my own advice.

To follow up, the keys were finally located - last night! They turned up in the snack tray which was safely tucked away in the cupboard for the last several weeks. Apparently the gigantic feast we had for Thanksgiving obviated the need for snacks the remainder of the weekend.

Christmastime

Wow, it's been a long time again! I hope to post multiple times this week to get caught up. So much to talk about!

Well, it started a few weeks ago with Quin getting sick. The sickness eventually spread throughout the house but Quin got it first. The poor guy was just listless, throwing up, no fever, but sick. Every time he threw up over the course of several hours he just did it over the bucket, no crying or anything. He was fine the next day, but now he constantly tells us that he's going to go "throw up."

Several days earlier (or later, I can't remember), we were repainting Ethan's room. We're actually redoing both boys' rooms with new beds and the lot. One night when Jenny had finished painting, she put Quin to bed, left one of the roller trays to dry, then went downstairs to clean up the brushes. Apparently little sweety decided to help out as when I got home from my cub scout meeting I found a little treat on the wall, trim, and carpet. He had gotten out of bed, taken one of the clean brushes and used it to apply some of the drying paint in the roller try to the "wall."

More to come...

Pre-puberty...

My relationship with my oldest son seems to be changing quite rapidly of late. This morning after getting out of the shower I noticed a can of Axe body spray sitting on the sink intended for me.

Let me rewind a little bit - over the past couple of months it has become evident to us that we had "the stinky kid" in school. Ethan would get into the car, or just walk near us, and you could certainly tell he was there! Not wanting to be the parents with the stinky kid in school, we racked our brains to fix the problem. We tried buying him deodorant, we tried making him scrub extra hard on his every other day shower, but nothing seemed to really be working. Finally, fed up, Jenny laid down the law and mandated daily showers along with a strict regiment of male fragrances. He was resistent at first, but eventually he came around, so now he is a daily showerer.

Fast forward to the Tuesday, Jenny went out and purchased Ethan a bottle of Axe body spray, Dark Temptation variety. For some reason unknown to me (perhaps I am the stinky guy at work), she also purchased a bottle for me, but got me the Fever scent. Over dinner last night, Ethan and I were discussing the finer points of wearing our different scents. He really enjoys his, as do all the guys in his class (the girls are less impressed, apparently) while I was not a big fan of "The Fever." So Ethan agreed to let me try his Dark Temptation the next day, which is today. He made sure he gave me detailed instructions of where to spray it and in what quantities. "No more than a second or a second and a half. Like this." At which time he mimed spraying the fragrance on his chest and stomach...

Ah, puberty is going to be fun. Where did my little baby go?

Monsters

Quinny and I played "monsters" tonight. That little boy has quite an imagination. First he pestered me until I came to "play me." So I followed him upstairs where he declared that he saw a monster. For the next 30 minutes we were hiding, kicking, and even kissing the poor monster until his daddy put him to bed (both monsters). Good times...

St. Germain - Summary

All good things must come to an end. We pretty much just got up and left first thing on Sunday morning. It was looking like a very hot day, and the time we did spend outside packing the cars found us swatting at a lot of mosquitoes which had been very sparse the rest of the week.

Lots of interesting things happened during the week, but here is a quick summary of some of the more memorable things:

- I lost my wedding ring (still haven't found it)

- Quin learned to swim with a life jacket

- We vacation with a very good mix of kids that get along with each other very well

- Matt's boat started on fire on Saturday

- We learned that an unopened bottle can explode when introduced to heat

- Chantrelle mushrooms are quite delicious

- Ethan learned to filet a fish (not filet-o-fish)

I'll be publishing the vacation photos in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Prairie Dr,Oconomowoc,United States

St. Germain - Day 7

It was my morning to get up with Quin. He didn't go to bed until 10:00 last night, so it was a bit of a surprise when he got up at 6:00 like normal. Luckily I just convinced him to lay down and within about 10 seconds he fell back to sleep until 8:00. By that time his diaper was a wreck! I was changing the mess that had accumulated saying something about "stinky poop" or something, and Quin said "I poop potty." I asked him, "really?" Quoting a perfect Donkey from Shrek he said, "Really, really." Chalk another one up to nurture.

It was looking to be windy and warm today, so we decided to go take in a game of mini golf before it got too hot. We played at a nice course called the 19th hole, or something equally as cleverly named. Ethan had a blast and Quin even tried to join in much to Jenny's and my chagrin. He played my ball for the first 7 holes and Jenny's for the remaining 11.

After golf and some lunch, Quin took a nap and the rest of the kids went swimming. I was actually afforded some time to read my book which I had ignored to this point in the trip. It's not a bad book if you are able to read more than like 2 pages at a time! After about 90 minutes of reading, though, Quin woke up and I was taxed with taking him swimming. This time, however, we just kind of let him go himself. He had no problem just getting into the water with his life jacket on and swimming out to the raft where he joined the rest of the kids and swam for almost 2 hours! I can't imagine Ethan ever doing that at that age, but then again, we were pretty guarded parents with him.

At some point, just jumping off the raft and swimming got boring for the bigger kids - one of them had the bright idea that they would sink the paddle boat! It was pretty hilarious! They worked on sinking that thing for over an hour and had a blast doing it. I think Ethan said at one point, "we should have been doing this all week!"

When swimming was complete we gathered around and did a little fishing. Quin put a pole in and actually caught a decent size perch! He told me he wanted to kiss it before I put him in with the rest of the fish we were going to eat, but got scared at the last minute and decided not to go through with it. He did make friends with some dead minnows, however. While I was cooking the meat on the grill, Quin took a dead minnow over to the canoe, gently set him in the front seat, then walked to the middle of the canoe and said, "ready fishy?" I'm pretty sure he was going to take the minnow for a ride.

Dinner, and pretty much the whole afternoon was dedicated to mass consumption of all the stuff we hadn't yet eaten or drank from the week. Matt fried up all the week's fish, we put some ribs on the grill, Tim and Laura sauteed some mushrooms that they had found in the woods, and we had a big, delicious meal. After the kids went to bed, we continued on the same theme but with the remaining beer. Matt, Tim Z., and I all managed to complete all of our beer before we left the fire that evening. I'm pretty sure Tim A. would have as well had we not almost blown ourselves up. Tim Z. was digging through his cooler to bring out the dregs of his drinks and came upon an O'Dools. Nobody really wanted to drink it, so he placed it, unopened in the fire. After a couple of minutes it started to whine. After a few more, it started to whine louder, which prompted all of us to get up and vacate the immediate area around the fire. It couldn't have been 10 seconds too soon because as soon as we cleared about a 10 foot radius the bottle blew! It was quite impressive - a large crater had formed at the center of the fire, firewood had been thrown in all directions (luckily it was a small fire), and burning embers surrounded the fire-ring for around 10 feet. There was no sign of the bottle that I could see, though the color-sighted people said they did find shards of it in the ground around the fire. After that episode, Tim A. wisely decided it was time for bed. The rest of the guys made a huge fire and talked smartly about how we should do that again - we didn't...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St. Germain, WI

St. Germain - Day 6

Last night was an early one - we were all pretty beat from 5 days of vacation, so by 10:00 pretty much everybody was in bed already.

Today started warmer, but still windy. After Jenny and I each had a run we ran into town to get some chai tea and a smoothie. We then ventured into Eagle River to hit the liquor store. All that took a surprisingly long time. By the time we got back it was lunch time!

After a quick lunch of leftovers, we got our swimming suits on and hit the water. Today Quin proved himself to be quite the brave kid once again. Early in the week he proved he could jump off the swimming raft by himself with no problem, but I was still in the water with him. Today he proved that he could do even that by himself. He learned to propel himself through the water by himself and hung out with the other kids without Jenny or I being in the water at all with him! It was weird with Ethan when we could leave him alone and he would play either by himself or with some other kids, but he was a bit older than Quin was today when we were able to let him do the same. Second kids...

A little later on, Jenny and I decided to take the kayaks out with the kids and do a little kayak adventure. Unfortunately Ethan wasn't quite up to the adventure. It was a little warm, and he was wearing a black swim shirt, so after we kayaked for a little while, he claimed he was overheating and had to stop. At one point he stopped and the waterworks started up because he was too hot to go on. Quin and I drove by him and splashed him to try to cool him off a bit. I think he was really just a little over-vacationed by this point and needed to hang out by himself for a little while.

After we dropped Ethan off to recover from his heat exhaustion, Quin found himself a kayak and decided he would pilot it himself. It was beached on shore, so he shoved it out into the water by himself, then climbed in it, procured the paddle, and tried to take off. Luckily the wind was blowing in pretty hard so he couldn't get very far, but it wasn't for lack of trying. I think he actually kept at it for over 45 minutes before he turned his attention elsewhere.

As the night wore on, the Ziegler's and us decided that preparing dinner yet another night was more than we were prepared to do, so we trekked into Minoqua to try out some local pizza. Neither Quin nor Tim's kids had napped that day to speak of, so within about 10 seconds of the 20 minute commute they were all sleeping. Normally that would be OK, but we didn't leave until about 5:30 so the 7:30 bedtime was looking precarious at best. We got some delicious pizza for the adults and spaghetti for the kids before coming home and commencing the long process of fighting Quin into bed - it was 10:00 before he finally went down for good. We will need some time to re-acquaint ourselves with a schedule when we get back home!!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St. Germain, WI

St. Germain - Day 5

Still a little cool to start the day, so Quin and I made bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast before we headed out fishing with Tim and Logan Ziegler. The fishing wasn't all that great, but we did have a close encounter with an eagle. It was pretty awesome, actually. We heard something heavy in the trees, then the eagle flew just above the water not more than about 20 feet from the boat. He skimmed the water across the lake, picked something up, then reversed his path and came right back past us again. He perched up in a tree and ate whatever he picked up in the lake. Thinking back on it I couldn't help but think about the double rainbow guy on YouTube. I had thoughts of me saying, "An eagle! What does it mean?"

After some lunch, Ethan and I went out on the boat with Matt, Jacob, and Devan on his ski boat and did some tubing. Ethan really enjoyed tubing. We weren't able to get him outside the wake, unfortunately, but he had a good time anyway.

The rest of the afternoon sort of passed. We did some kayaking, some canoeing, tried to find the eagle again. In all it was pretty uneventful. Right after supper, Quin and the rest of the "gang" started playing in some round tub that somebody had brought up. That was pretty funny watching them get in and roll each other in the bucket. It's amazing what kids will do when left to explore.

Just remembered the funny quote of the week - I think it was by Jenny last night. She was trying to convince Ethan to take a shower. He was claiming that he was on vacation and didn't need to take a shower. Jenny told him, "You don't get a vacation from personal hygiene."


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St. Germain, WI

St. Germain - Day 4

It was windy and cool today, and I am training for a 1/2 marathon, so I picked today to do my long run of the week. I mapped out a route before we left that took me around the entire lake. While I was supposed to run only 10 miles, the prospect and symmetry of running around the entire lake was too good to pass up, so Tim Z. and I ended up running a little over 11.5 miles. It took us a long time, and it was hilly, but we did it. I now feel I'm ready for the 1/2 in a little over a week.

Because it was so windy, we started a fire early. We also decided to roast hot dogs on the fire for lunch, which are always more delicious than hot dogs on the grill or in the microwave. Ethan even went so far as to say they tasted as good as Uncle Brett's hot dogs, which is not faint praise.

After lunch, it was time for a shower and to dress warmer. After my shower, I went to put my wedding ring back on which I had taken off for my run, only to find that I could not find it. I'm still not sure what happened to it - I think Quin must have taken it off the table and thrown it on the floor. Hopefully it turns up somewhere.

On the topic of naughty Quin, he has developed a new, interesting routine while up here. He has been doing things that he knows are naughty, which really isn't all that different. Where his behavior is changing is that he will look at us after the deed is done and say "Sorry daddy, hug!" followed by a nice hug and kiss on the cheek. Hard to be mad at him when he does that, but if thinks we don't see through him, he's crazy!

It was too cold to hang out outside, and our cabin a little too small to hang out there for too long, so we took a journey into Minoqua for some shopping and to make our daily pilgrimage to the grocery store. It was largely uneventful, though the weather did seem to improve a lot while we were there.

When we got back, the weather had, indeed improved, so we quickly ate some supper and hung out by the water while we waited for rest of the families to eat. The kids started playing with the sand toys and being generally loud and annoying, as they tend to do. Somewhere in the mix, Ethan went back to the cabin, put a towel in his shirt and a sweatshirt on his head and paraded around telling everybody that he was a woman...

We finished the day on a nice pontoon boat ride, courtesy of Micky's parents who came up for a few days and were nice enough to bring their boat. Tim A. drove the boat and was nice enough to let several of the kids to drive. Ethan was one of them, and it was the highlight of his day!

Now it's time to head out to the fire to enjoy some beers and quiet as the kids go to bed. This is my personal favorite part of the day.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St. Germain, WI

St. Germain - Day 3

Jenny's parents stayed with us last night, so Ethan went to sleep at Jacob's cabin with the Abholds. That didn't last too long, unfortunately. At about 1:30 we heard somebody talking to us through our window - it was Micky telling us that Jacob had gotten sick and that Ethan was now feeling sick, so she was returning him to us for the night. So much for that idea...

By morning, Ethan was feeling fine. It was rainy and a little cold today, so we went up to the U.P. to check out a waterfall up there. It was pretty awesome. Bond Falls, it was called (I think). One really neat thing about it was all the trails around the falls. They had some permanent, wood trails built that gave you very good access to the entirety of the bottom of the falls. They then had some "off road" trails you could take up the side of the falls on one side, and a paved set of stairs on the other side. Ethan found his way up the non-paved side and made us all follow him, but it was worth it. What views!

We quickly ate some lunch then headed into town for some go-karting and mini-golf. Ethan had been looking forward to this all year. Last year we tried to go go-karting but Ethan was foiled by the fact that he was about an inch or two too short to drive the cars himself. He was sure that he would be tall enough this year. Sure enough, he stood next to the measuring line and was clearly tall enough to pilot the go-kart himself. He was smiling from ear to ear! He couldn't wait another minute to go on the go-karts, but this place was a little bit of a strange establishment. They had plenty of different go-karts, bumper boats, mini-golf, and other assorted kid's stuff, but nobody was really on anything, and there wasn't anybody manning all of the different appliances. So we first took Quin over to a kiddie track that offered 12-volt 4-wheelers and gators for the smaller kids to drive. Ethan was starting to get impatient, but it wasn't long before somebody finally came over to the "big-kid go-kart track." He was first in line and managed to get onto the track with Tim and Jacob in one car and Micky and Allison in another, just the three cars on the track. Ethan did very well - I was both proud and surprised. After getting off the track he immediately took another ticket and did it again, this time Quin and I also rode with him. Our car was pretty slow, and Ethan took full advantage and passed us at his first opportunity.

After the second bout of go-karting on the regular go-karts, Tim A. asked if anybody wanted to try the "slick track" with him. Ethan immediately volunteered. After somebody finally came over to that station, he took a look at Ethan and said, "he's not tall enough." We simply looked at him and said, "of course he is." Well, that didn't convince him, so he made him stand next to the measuring line. Apparently the minimum height on this ride was 54" rather than 52", but Ethan backed up to the scientifically measured line and very slyly stood on his tip-toes, just a little bit. Apparently the kid running the ride wasn't all that bright because he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "OK." The slick track was pretty cool and Ethan immediately picked up on how to turn the opposite way of the turn when you started to spin. Pretty cool.

The night finished out like all nights up here - put the kids to bed then went to the fire for some beers before hitting the hay ourselves. Tonight, however, Jacob decided he wanted to sleep over at our cabin. That worked out just fine for awhile. While at the fire, around 10:00 or so, we saw the lights go out in the cabin signaling that the kids had finally decided to turn off the movie and try to sleep. It wasn't 5 minutes before Jacob exited the cabin and headed towards his own cabin. He claimed that his mom would miss him too much if he slept in our cabin, and he didn't have a sleeping bag with him and he couldn't sleep without one. Oh well, 0-2 on the sleeping over attempts.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St. Germain, WI

St. Germain - Day 2

Day 2 was a lazy day. The weather was beautiful and sunny, so we did a lot of swimming and hanging out at the campsite. Along with your usual swimming, running, eating drinking, and sunshine activities, the following things stuck out:

- Quin introduced the world to his "booty-butt." Somewhere along the line he picked up the term "booty" as a word for his bottom, but he never really dropped the "butt" part. Now he just says them both.

- Quin and I did a bit of kayaking. At one point I started singing "Row your boat," and Quin finished the song for me. He is a wonderful singer!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St. Germain, WI

St. Germain - Day 1

The trip started out somewhat inauspiciously. I had neglected to pack anything - Jenny packed all the kids' stuff as well as mine, but there was still a pile of things that I needed to take care of the morning of our departure. My parents, Blaine, and Brett along with respective lady friends of each of theirs joined us the day prior to celebrate mom and dad's 39th wedding anniversary by going to IrishFest in Milwaukee. It was a good time, but afforded us a little less "last minute" packing time than normal. I thought we would be fine as long as we just packed in the morning... It seemed Karma didn't want us to leave, for some reason.

First, I had about 4 ounces of root beer extract in the refrigerator waiting to make another batch of root beer. This stuff must be the messiest stuff known to man - I think it was probably easier to clean up Chernobyl than it was to clean up the 1/2 ounce of this stuff that is still smudging up our refrigerator. I put about 40 minutes into cleaning it while Jenny tended to some other things, but by the time I was ready to quit, there was still a bit of the stuff left coating the fridge.

After packing the car and putting away the lawn mower, I went into take a shower, feet covered with grass clippings from the freshly mowed lawn (another thing we had to scramble to do). As I was showering I noticed the water steadily climbing in the tub - looks like we had a clog. Thankfully it was just a slow leak, so we decided to leave it and address it when we got home. Hopefully we remember.

We finally got out the door, but the trip's string of bad starting luck wasn't done yet. We were traveling with one of the Johnson's kids because they were borrowing a boat to bring up for our entertainment for the week. About 20 miles from home, their luck took a turn for the worse when the wheel on the trailer blew. They were able to put the spare on, but had to spend the next 3.5 hours in Madison getting new tires for the boat trailer they borrowed!

Thankfully we finally made it to our destination in time to enjoy a wonderful first day. Thoughts of our earlier misfortunes evaporated quickly as we soaked in the sunshine and beautiful lake views we were able to enjoy for the remainder of the day.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St. Germain, WI

Last weekend, our friends Micky and Tim, who live on a lake and have a boat, invited us over to their house to go for a boat ride. Ethan has wanted to try skiing all summer - so now was his chance. Thanks to a lot of help from Micky and Tim's instruction, he was able to lift himself from the water on his third try! Not only that, he was able to do so two more times after that as well! Way to go E!

Ethan and I share a lot of personality traits. One of the most pronounced, and perhaps annoying traits (according to his mother) is our love of Weird Al Yankovic. Ever since I introduced Ethan to Al's spoof on Lola by The Kinks he has been hooked. How could we resist when we found out that Al would be playing Summerfest in Milwaukee. Forget that it was a "school night," and that he didn't start playing until 9:00 PM, we were going! We all had a great time - Quin slept from the start of it all the way through. Ethan watched a lot of it on my shoulders, until my shoulders gave out and he had to settle to look at people's backs for a little while.

Lastly, Quin had a milestone of his own the other day. He was taking a bath - before the bath he said he had to go potty, so I put him on there and he peed - he generally does. After being in the bath for a couple of minutes, though, he told me he had to poopy. So I dried him off and put him back on the toilet. I'm used to this game, he generally sits there, does nothing, wipes his butt, and flushes the toilet. This time, though, he grunted and pushed and birthed a small little Mr. Hanky into the toilet. He was so proud, but immediately had to get up and flush it down because it was "ucky." After he flushed, though, he got back on and pinched another one off, again following that with another flush. I think about 6 or 7 flushes later I convinced him he was done. He's followed this up on 2 other occasions, though Jenny and I have really not yet started to "potty train" him...

Quick Hitters

The other day we were at a party where we stayed pretty late. On the way home, Ethan engaged us in interesting conversation, as always. I can't remember the exact context, but he asked something about somebody and if they were "a black." We told him that it was not appropriate to refer to somebody as "a black," it could be insulting. Instead he should use "black person," or better yet, "African American." He took this in stride and continued on with his conversation. After we got home, I was upstairs putting him to bed, when he asked me, "Dad, is it OK to call myself 'a white?' If I do that, am I insulting myself?" I had to tell him that I honestly didn't know...

After Quin's driving incident, one would think we would no longer let him behind the wheel of a car. Tonight he fetched me, took me by the hand, and brought me to Jenny's car, where he instructed me to get in the passenger's seat and buckle my "beatbel (seatbelt)." I asked him where we were going, and he said "work." He is quite obsessed with going to work, apparently.

One thing I find amazing about Quin lately is his memory. Jenny is a bit of a Chai Tea Latte addict. When she has Quin on Fridays, there is a better than good chance that they will go to Starbucks and she will get a latte while Quinny will get a donut. On Monday we were driving in Delafield, a place we don't go very often, and Quin saw a Starbucks, which prompted him to shout, "Donut, yeah!!!" I'm not sure if he was remembering a time when Jenny took him there, or if he has learned to recognize the sign - normally they go to the Oconomowoc Starbucks... Either way, I'm pretty impressed.

Baby Driver

"They call him baby driver." My dad used to sing that song to us when we were young. I don't know if I ever heard the real version, but I remember it almost as well as him saying "wake up and piss, the world's on fire." Anyway, I digress...

It's been a busy spring here at the Grady house. So busy, in fact, that we really haven't had time to do any yard work besides the required lawn cutting so far. This past weekend, that was about to change. The weather was nice, we were going to be home for a whole day after ditching on our original plans to be in Neillsville for the whole weekend, (we opted for an up and back on a single day trip instead), so the stage was set. Jenny went out and bought some annual flowers to plant in the various places throughout the yard. Ethan's and my job was to obtain some mulch and fill in our weedy, mulch-bare flower beds.

My plan was sound. In year's past we have had mulch delivered and dumped in our driveway. We would then spend the next couple of weeks shoveling it into a trailer behind the yard tractor, driving it to a flower bed, then shoveling it out of the trailer. Why waste all that time? This year I was planning to just get as much as would fit in my pickup and drive that on the lawn to the beds - the ground is dry and compact anyway...

Step 1 almost failed miserably. Ethan and I got in the truck, buckled in, and I turned the key to find the battery was once again dead. Something wrong with the truck... No matter, I will give it a jump and we'll be on our way. And indeed, that minor setback proved to be just as minor as I would have thought. In order to let the battery charge a bit, though, I decided to leave it run while we had the load operator load up our 3 yards of mulch and while I went into the office to pay.

Back at home, the plan continued to work just fine - I drove the truck to the various beds around our front yard (the goal for the day) and unloaded mulch directly from the truck to the bed - 1/2 the work of the normal method!

After my first three beds, the truck seemed to be losing some steam again. I don't know cars very well, but I figured that I should probably let it run and let the alternator do its job and charge the battery. So I figured I would do just that as I finished the 4th and final bed of the day. Prior to moving to that bed, however, Jenny informed me that she was going for a run and that Quin would be working with me for the next hour. No problem. Quin climbed into the truck cab with me and sat on the bench seat beside me as I maneuvered the truck onto the street and back onto the yard near the fourth bed. Quin loves the truck, so I decided it would be easiest to just let him play in there while I prepped and filled the bed. What's the worst thing that could happen?

I started to edge and weed the bed, every so often looking back to see what Quin was doing. Remember, though, that I was leaving the truck run so it could charge the battery. Well, at one point I looked behind me to find the truck slowly moving towards my neighbor's house! The truck being a 1990 model, it was not yet equipped with the safety feature of requiring the brake to be depressed before putting it into gear! I remember being quite annoyed by that "feature" on more than one occasion, but now I see the logic! Anyway, I rushed to catch the truck, flung the door open, knocked Quin out from behind the wheel where he was grinning and doing his best truck driver impression, and finally engaged the brake just as we were about to hit the trunk of Harry's pine tree! Honestly, I was pretty lucky Quin decided to steer in a slight arc to the right, because if he would have kept the wheel straight, he would have almost certainly hit the side of Harry's house right where the gas main comes in!

Moral of this story - always engage the parking break if you are letting your 2 year old play in a running vehicle... Of course, on a 1990 truck, I'm guessing that wouldn't have prevented a damn thing...

Lots of new words, and the Amish

Quin's been quite the learner the last few months. I think since our vacation in April he's been picking up an average of a couple new words a day. He has his favorites, though. My latest favorites are "nan" which means "dance," and "nonut," which means "donut."

Quin has a definite love of dancing. He has figured out how to turn on various CD players and radios throughout the house, and once they are on, he will come and grab one of us to come and "nan." Today he figured out how to turn on Jenny's iPod and was "nan"ing to that. Not surprisingly, he's the best dancer in the house.

He's also a sucker for "nonuts." The other day Jenny started the bribery phase of parenthood with Quin by telling him that if he was good for the YMCA daycare people, she would buy him a donut. He was good, so she kept her promise and bought him a "nonut" at Starbucks. The next day, we were on our way to Neillsville and swung through Starbucks to fuel up. Even before we got into the parking lot, Quin started chanting for a "nonut."

Some of his advances have come in the form of sentence formation. The other day Ethan asked for a bowl of cereal as a snack (his favorite). Quin, of course, needs to have pretty much anything Ethan does, so he wanted some cereal as well. I got him a bowl and put some Cookie Crisp in it for him. He looked at it, looked at me, then pointed at the cereal and said, "cereal toostie," which of course means that the cereal is thirsty. I poured some milk on it and he was happy. Of course, he didn't really want milk on his cereal - he just saw Ethan had milk on his. Instead of eating it, he poured it on the floor...

Quin is a very helpful person to have a round almost all the time. He always wants to help regardless of what I'm doing. It's pretty rare, though, to have Ethan interested in helping. Last week I was tending to some yard work, planting, raking, watering, etc. Ethan was outside, and apparently had gotten in some trouble with Jenny earlier in the day, so he decided he was going to help to try to get back in her good graces. I happily obliged him, putting him to work. After about 30 minutes of straight work, he said to me, "Dad, we're working so hard, people are going to think we're Amish!" To give just a little background, we recently purchased some woodwork from an Amish businessman in the Augusta area (no, they don't have a website). While we were there we pointed out to Ethan that there was an Amish boy about his age, and that he didn't have a DS or all the toys he had, and that they worked really hard. Apparently working really hard to Ethan means spending 30 minutes holding a hose and rake one night a year!!!

Vacation 2010 - April 9 - 10, Driving

We drove... A lot...

We left mom and dad's place by 7:15. After a Starbucks run to keep the monster in the passenger's seat happy, and a stop at the gas station for some gas and an energy drink (to keep the van and the monster in the driver's seat happy), we got out of town by 7:45.

Not much to talk about here - we lunched at a Dairy Queen in Gallup New Mexico after passing through our first timezone. There were many, many Native Americans there - the only non Native Americans were us and some old bitty behind the counter who took all her orders on a waitress pad then punched them into the register...

We stopped for dinner in Tucumcari at a truck stop. They were announcing shower customers over the intercom which kind of confused Ethan until I explained that they were in their trucks more than we were in our car for this week! While we were there, a crazy looking old guy with fatigues and a long gray beard walked in, sat next to us for a few minutes, then packed his stuff up and started to leave. That was before Quin started up a conversation with him, that is. As scary as he looked, he was tickled pink to talk with Quin and started telling us about his grandchildren...

After Tucumcari we went off the Interstate and headed north. It was dark when we went through, but we were warned about the cattle fields by my parents. I could see a big dust cloud ahead, and once we reached it, we could smell what it really was. I can only imagine what it looked like, but I thought I was going to die from the smell... All in the name of cheap burgers, I suppose.

We finally arrived in Dodge City, KS at 1:00 AM Central time - we had passed through 2 time changes and touched 5 states on that day's drive... We stayed at a Best Western on Wyatt Earp Drive which was a very nice hotel... Sleep came quickly.

In the morning we let the boys swim and got a little breakfast before hitting the road by about 10:00 Central. The drive was pretty boring today. Lunch in Wichita, which contrary to what you might think, is not actually a state, even though there is a college named Wichita State University... At that point we got back on the Interstate, a tollway as it turned out, which cost us $8.25 to travel on for about 2 hours... We quickly went through Topeka, Kansas City, and finally stopped in Des Moines for the last time. We ate at a familiar restaurant, Culvers, and we felt like we were pretty much home.

5 hours later, we were finally home. It was 1:00 AM Central - we were on the road 30 hours and 20 minutes including breaks the previous two days and had traveled almost 1800 miles.

It was a great trip, much better than I expected it to be - it usually is. I suppose I am a cynic when it comes to traveling with my kids, but they were, overall, fantastic and fun to travel with. To sum up, here are some parting statistics and random thoughts.

• In all, we traveled 4063.7 Miles over the course of 64 hours 37 minutes
• We traveled in 11 different states of these United States, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri.
  
• Not all states are created equal - Arizona is beautiful, Texas and Oklahoma, not so much.
  
• Iowa has very nice rest stops and roads
• There's no place like home!!!
  

Vacation 2010 - April 8, Apache Junction

We started the day off again with a run through the Usery Recreational Area. This time we knew where we were going, but that didn't make it any less exciting. We saw three hares (I believe that's what they were) and a roadrunner. Jenny was attacked by a cactus which waylaid us for a few minutes, but overall it was a nice run.

After spending several days with Quin, he seems to be getting smarter all the time! No doubt it's because of the extra exposure to me!!! Anyway, I thought it would be a nice aside to go through some of Quin's latest quotes.

• When Quin wants something to drink, he says "My toostie," which loosely translates to "My Thirsty." Anything can be his thirsty, including something that you though was your drink...
• When Quin does something, anything, he may look at you and say, "I did it." No doubt about what he's saying here. On the ride home we were treated to a variation of that. He would take off his shoes and socks while riding in his car seat and say, "I did it (pause) mommy." He would keep saying that until Jenny would look at him and tell him he did a good job. He would then move on and say, "I did it (pause) daddy." Same drill. Finally he would end with, "I did it (pause) E." E is how he says "Ethan."
• If Quin wants something open, he hands it to you and says. "Ope."
• If Quin wants to put something in his pocket. he hands it to you, grabs his pocket, and says, "Pock."
• However, if Quin is stuck or something he wants is stuck, he says, "uck." There seems no rhyme or reason to why some words are truncated at the end while others at the beginning...
• Sometimes Quin just sings or talks to be talking. Often it will be some variation of
  
• "Daddy... Helloowww."
  

We were able to get into the pool on this particular morning after Jenny and I did our run/Starbucks ritual. The Superstition Butte (that's the park mom and dad live in) pool has some odd rules, most constricting is that kids can use it only from 10AM to 1PM. No biggie, we went at 10:00. However, some of the other rules are a bit concerning. For one, you aren't supposed to use the pool under the following conditions:

• You are incontinent
• You have a skin disease
• You have diarrhea
  
• You may be contagious
• You have leprosy...

OK, I made the last one up, but they didn't give you a lot of good reasons to want to use the pool...

After lunch we went out in search of some outdoor activity. We ended up at a mini-golf course in Mesa called Golfland. Quin started out sleeping, but was awake enough by the time we started golfing and decided that he was going to play as well! Grandma won the round with the lowest score, so we made her buy us ice cream at Baskin Robins before heading back to the park to prepare for our big night.

The evening brought us to the Arizona Opry, a dinner show not too far from my parent's place. The place was filled with Arizona types, and by that I mean oldies!!! Dinner wasn't my family's cup of tea, roast beef with gravy, mashed potatoes (also with gravy), vegetables (gravy optional), a roll, apples, and chocolate cake (no gravy on this one). I liked it... The dinner really isn't what it's all about, though - it's only a reason for them to charge you as much as they do for the show. The show is where the real fun starts.

The "music master" is a guy named George Staerkel. This guy could do it all! I couldn't figure out what his main instrument was since he played so many. He played keyboard on many songs, but wailed on the trumpet and various other brasswind instruments, was solid at many different varieties of saxophone and other reed instruments, and also played a respectable Swiss Horn while circular breathing. None of that was really quite as impressive as how well the guy could sing, though. He actually toured with a group called "The Tokens" in the 80's when they were doing a revival tour. They were the band that had the hit "In the Jungle" back in the 60's or 70's (I can't remember which - maybe the 50's). Anyway, he was pretty good.

The rest of the band was almost as impressive. Few played only a single instrument and they all sang. It reminded me a bit of some of the shows in Branson when we went there a couple of years ago. Ethan had a blast, Quin was a very good boy, only needing to be removed from the performance one time, and it was a 2 hour performance!

Vacation 2010 - April 7, Apache Junction

It was nice to be somewhere that we didn't have to be running all the time! To celebrate, Jenny and I went for a run!!! I had made it out in Denver for a quick 3 miler, but Jenny wanted to get out, so we went to the map and found somewhere that "looked like it had trails." After driving for about 10 minutes, we found a trailhead at the Usery Recreation Area and parked. We didn't have the $2 entrance fee for the self service registration, so we took all my dad's change (we took his car), $1.45, put it in the envelope, and hoped for the best. It was a nice run, but a word to the wise when running in the desert - if a trail has the word "wash" in it, don't run on it! We ran almost a mile on a trail called the Amigo Wash, which turns out to be a dried creek bed. It was like running on a beach!!!

After consulting the iPhone for the nearest Starbucks, we went back, got some breakfast, and relaxed a bit. My dad and I went out to run some errands and to get my tire fixed, Jenny, my mom, and the boys hung out at mom and dad's place and took a walk. After lunch, we finally got motivated to go somewhere, a shopping center south of Apache Junction called San Tan Shopping Center (or something like that). The main attraction was a little store called "Total Wine and More." It is basically a toy store for alcohol enthusiasts. They have something like 4000 wines, 2000 spirits, and 1000 beers. It was like sensory overload!!! I ended up spending just south of $20 on bombers and bottles of things I can't get in Milwaukee.

We then stopped quickly at Best Buy in the same shopping center where I was able to fondle an iPad for the first time. It took all my will power, well, all of Jenny's insistence for me to walk out of there without one! I will have one, some day...

We finally ended up at a ghost town outside of Apache Junction called Goldfield (I think) to do a bit of touristy stuff. We first rode the "choo choo," followed by some ice cream, and finally Ehan and I did a horse ride. It was pretty cool, actually. It was the first time I was allowed to control a horse while on a ride rather than just getting on a "horse train." Ethan was also able to ride his own. He rode Bear and I rode Captain. The 30 minute tour took us through national forest and desert land. Our guide was full of interesting information, like the fact that Arizona had one of the lowest percentages of privately held land in the nation, only 18%. In fact, he said that you could ride all the way from where we did our tour up to Utah without hitting a town or leaving public land. Interesting... Bear and Captain were great, too. Ethan had his hands full with Bear who liked to stop and munch on desert grass he found, while Captain seemed to like nothing better than to smell Bear's butt!

For future study, we learned just a little bit about the "Lost Dutchman," who was apparently some guy that buried a bunch of gold, up to 9 pounds or something, in the Superstition Mountains, which is the mountain range outside of Apache Junction. I didn't catch the whole story exactly but put it here so you can do your own research and to remind me to look into it later.

After taking supper in (my parents were leaving the same day we were for Wisconsin in the offseason and had a lot of food to get through in their refrigerator/freezer), Jenny and I got dressed up and went out on our own! As usual with vacation, we were too tired to do anything all that exciting by the time we actually got out. We ended up going back to San Tan, browsed through Barnes and Noble, groped an iPad at the Apple store, then had a brownie and beers at Gordon Biersch.

Man, even the "off days" are packed full of activities!!!

Talks with Ethan.

It sometimes frightens me to think what Ethan tells people about us. He and I are sitting in the car waiting for Jenny and mom to come out of a store and he's telling me about how he and a girl from school have made up new words to a song that I had made up when I was a kid. Or was a parody to the tune of "this is it" by Huey Louis and the News called "Smell my Pits.". I probably shouldn't be telling him some of te things I tell him…


-- Post From My iPhone

Location:S Signal Butte Rd,Mesa,United States

Vacation 2010 - April 6, Sedona and Apache Junction

I'm writing this three days later, so there is a serious possibility that these memories will be stale... Oh well, maybe I'll get some comments from my wife and parents to help fill in the blanks.

Qunny got up early this morning! 5:00 AM. A 5PM afternoon nap of 90 minutes didn't help us out here at all. We tried to push him over to Grandpa and Grandma's room right away, but he didn't want to have much to do with that. At one point Jenny and I were so mad at him that I took him out to the van to let him cry it out. Eventually Jenny was able to take him over to breakfast and let Ethan and I sleep for a little while longer.

The continental breakfast at the hotel was pretty good. After some food, we headed back up to the canyon to check out how it would look in full sunlight. The day was cold, but it was sunny, which was nice. Predictably, the canyon looks completely different in full sunshine.

We didn't stay long, though. By 10:00 we were heading down 64 to 180 towards Flagstaff with Sedona our interim destination of the day. The trip from Tusayan to Flagstaff was quite breathtaking. One thing that's nice is that all speed limits are 10 miles per hour greater than Wisconsin, so even though we were on 2 lane highways, the speed limits were 65 miles per hour. But the trip - now that was something else. Up and down, windy roads, but we traveled between two mountains, so we saw lots of different terrain.

After getting some gas and directions, we continued south to Sedona. Now that is a drive! Sedona is only about 25 miles south of Flagstaff, but the terrain couldn't be different than that of Flagstaff and locales north. The rocks turn red and you descend several thousand feet almost instantly. The road is so windy and steep that it takes about 45 minutes to make the trip.

We stopped in Sedona quickly for lunch. The place has grown quite a bit since we were there in 1994. There were shops there then, but the shops seem to have multiplied. It was difficult to get around with all the tourists walking around. It looked like Wisconsin Dells in peak season! Now maybe I'm being romantic, or maybe the fact that we were there in the middle of January made it seem more quaint in 1994, but I have to admit it was a little disappointing. The landscape was still just as impressive, though.

On the way out of town we stopped at a roadside trailhead to attempt an assault on Chicken Point, a 1.5 mile hike from the road. The rocks were breathtaking, but the terrain seemed more difficult than the NGS employee lead us to believe. The trail was very rocky and had a lot of up and downhill traverses. Ethan found a lot of rocks that he enjoyed climbing on, and Jenny and I enjoyed getting back to something close to the hiking we used to do back when we lived in Washington back in the late 90's. Quin enjoyed his backpack that we purchased in Denver for him... When we finally got back to the parking lot, we realized that we took the wrong trail! I'm kind of glad we did, though, as this trail was much more interesting than the one we eventually discovered was the correct trail.

We finally left the Sedona area and headed towards Phoenix around 4:00. Directly after getting into the car, I asked Jenny, nervously, where my phone was. For some reason I had a feeling that I had left it on the van roof before we left. I located the phone quickly, however, and we continued on. About 10 miles later, I got a call on said phone from my parents who were driving behind me. My mom asked if my wallet had somehow fallen out of the car. She thought Quin had thrown it out of the window. I looked down to where I had been storing my wallet and noticed that it was gone, and my mind immediately went back to when we pulled out of the parking lot. I had set my wallet on top of the van and forgot to retrieve it before we left! Somehow it stayed there for 10 miles while we drove!!! We pulled off the road, did a U-turn, and traveled back about a mile where my dad somehow located my wallet in the middle of the road. After retrieving it from highway traffic and returning it to me, I discovered that a credit card and another card were missing from one of the compartments. We walked up the road a ways where I caught a glimpse of something on the road which I quickly identified as my credit card. After two cars passed by, it was blown to the side of the road where I was able to retrieve it, slightly damaged. The other card was an XBox Live recharge card which I paid $35 for and inexplicably haven't activated yet, so I was half ready to leave it. For some reason, however, I decided to look the other direction from the car to see if I could somehow find it. Sure enough, I caught it out of the corner of my eye on the other side of the road. I crossed, two more cars passed, and the card was blown to the side of the road again. So as far as I can tell, all of the contents of my wallet are accounted for after I had left it on the roof of my van while driving down the highway! How's that for luck!

The remainder of the trip to Apache Junction was blessedly uneventful. We arrived at mom and dad's place around 6:30. It's a very nice and surprisingly big place in a retirement park in Apache Junction. There seem to be hundreds of these retirement parks down here!!! After unpacking our car I realized that the left-front tire looked a bit low. I measured the pressure which was at 15 pounds... Have to check that out in the morning.

We were quick to bed this evening after the day's activities. Not much to do the following two days which is just fine!!!

Vacation 2010 - April 5, The Grand Canyon

Busy day, this one. We woke up after "sleeping in" until 6:00 at the Hampton Inn in Flagstaff, AZ. Very nice hotel, reasonably priced, with a nice rooms, decent continental breakfast, and most importantly, a POOL!!! After Quin woke up, he and I went downstairs for some fruit, cereal, and juice. Jenny and Ethan joined us shortly afterwards. After we were sufficiently fed, we got into our swimming suits and took in some much deserved swimming. We had the place to ourselves, which was nice since the kids are extremely loud! I'd say we swam for at least an hour this way. Ethan has become a very good swimmer and really enjoys the water. He particularly likes when I launch him into flips, but we can only do that when nobody else is in the water. Quin thinks that he can do anything that Ethan can do, but still can't swim. He really enjoys jumping from the edge of the pool into the water - not really jumping to me, but into the water. I still catch him, though... He hates that!

By 10:00 we were wheels up and on our way to the Grand Canyon. The first order of business was to feed the Starbucks need, though. Using my trusty iPhone we located a Starbucks no more than 1 mile away. During that short drive, we could already see that today was going to be interesting. That pervasive wind from the day before hadn't subsided. In fact, it seemed to be gaining in strength! I really hate wind, even more so when I'm trying to work out. With that in mind, my mind was completely blown when I saw a biker huffing his backside up the mountain we were driving up. It was 40 degrees (a generous exaggeration) with wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour!!! Some people are cut from a different cloth, I guess.

With caffeine desired satiated, we headed up Highway 89 towards the Grand Canyon. About 75 minutes later we crossed Highway 64 and headed west towards Grand Canyon National Park. I've been to the park 2 times in the past. Once with my family on a vacation in the early 90s, and once with a school trip in the late 90s. Both times I visited probably added up to 30 minutes of looking at the park, so I was looking forward to this opportunity to spend some real time here. We were optimistic that the weather forecast was all wrong, too, as the car thermometer read 65 degrees, though it was still windy as hell!

Our first stop along 64 was prior to getting into the park, a little place called Little Colorado River Gorge. We parked there and were immediately blown away, literally, by the wind. We hadn't really been out of the car to experience the full force of the wind yet, and it was brutal. It was so bad that two of the port-a-potties actually fell over. Here's the picture to prove it!

Anyway, this viewpoint, along with most others east of the canyon, was lined with Indian craft salesmen. We wound our way through the sales tents to find our first glimpse of the canyon, and man was it spectacular. This particular vista was of a far east locale but had a great view of the Colorado River. Well, it could have been the Little Colorado River, I'm not sure, but it was awesome. Unfortunately, I started to feel guilty and a little nervous that we had left Quin in the van, which by now was over 500 meters away, because he was taking a nap. So I took what I refer to as the "Glen Grady tour of the Canyon, 35 seconds and out" and headed back to the car. Luckily he was still sleeping peacefully in the van.

We continued west towards the park proper. At regular intervals we would pass views that exceeded the last ones we saw, all from the car. We did the same things that we remember our parents doing to us on trips like this, we kept urging Ethan to look out the window at how beautiful that was!!! He was happily playing his Nintendo DS, though, in what I'm sure he'll remember when he's 37 years old!!! It's refreshing and frightening at the same time to realize that we're turning into our parents!

As we continued to drive, we noticed that the weatherman was getting more and more accurate. The temperature, a respectable 65 degrees at our first stop, had dropped to 50 over the course of about 7 miles. We eventually entered Grand Canyon National Park's east entrance and stopped at the first vista, the Desert View. We all got out of the car this time, Quin in his new riding backpack, and the rest of us on foot, to take in our first real look at the Canyon.

I'll spare the gory details, but to sum it up, Jenny and I took around 400 pictures of the canyon. It seems that every time you move 10 feet, it completely changes. We tried feebly to capture the awe we felt by snapping all of those pictures, but I'm sure they won't quite translate. If you've never visited, visit.

Our stay at Desert View lasted about 1 hour, already doubling my previous two trips to the canyon. We were able to walk up the Observation Tower, an 80 foot high structure that was undergoing some repairs. At the top, the view of the canyon looked much the same, since it is so damn far down there in the first place!!! It was a bit nerve wracking going up there as I realized they were tracking the width of the cracks in the wall, no doubt hoping that the structure wouldn't fall down. One thing we noticed immediately were all the foreign visitors to the canyon. Many people from Asia and Europe were populating the park. Man, that makes our little driving excursion seem small by comparison!

We stopped at a couple more vistas and eventually wound our way around to Tusayan, AZ just south of the park where we were to meet my parents who have recently relocated their winter headquarters to the Phoenix area. This was the first time the kids have seen them since Christmas, and the reunion was precious. I was a little worried about how Quin would react to them, but he did not disappoint, giving big hugs and kisses to both of them, especially Grandpa! Boy does he have a thing for his "bompas."

After an overpriced cafe lunch, we went back to the park with mom and dad for some quick glimpses of the big crack before we finally returned for our pre-planned tour of the canyon, a sunset jeep tour. Our guide was Mike, a foreign (I say British, my dad says Australian) guy of advanced middle age who knew lots of interesting information about the canyon and its surrounding forests. The tour would take us through the Kaibab National Forest and back into the park. Along the way, Mike filled us with little known facts about the park and surrounding forests. Some of bits I remember include:

• In order to control overgrowth, the forestry department allows anybody to come into the Kaibab National Forest and, for a $20 permit, take 4 chords of wood.
• A chord of wood is 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet, a volumetric measurement.
• There are trees in the national forest that are 350 years old and older!
• The Hopi and Navajo people both held residence in the Grand Canyon in the past, and at the same time. One was a subset of the other, but I don't recall which.
• They use mules to trek to the bottom of the canyon because horses are too skittish (though mustangs might be able to make the trip) and donkey's are just too stubborn.
• Last year, 22 people died in the canyon. 3 from dehydration, 3 from suicide, and 16 from tragic accidents near the edge.
• If you lose your footing near the edge, the next time you are likely to touch something is 300 feet later. That fall is rarely survived.

After 2 hours and several stops, Mike, who incidentally looked a lot like my uncle Al, brought us to where we were to watch the sunset. We were 30 minutes early, but the weather was already starting to roll in. He kept saying that the weather can change in a heartbeat there, but eventually conceded that it was not going to this evening. We were able to leave early just as the snow started coming down! All in all it was a great tour despite the fact that we did not get to see the sunset.

After our "early" departure from the tour, we were finally admitted to the hotel (long story, I'll post it later if I feel bored, or just ask me over a beer sometime - let's just say the cleaning crew must be very sparse at this hotel). While the kids enjoyed their grandparents for awhile, Jenny and I ventured out to get an overpriced pizza from the Pizza Hut Express in town. We then scarfed that and various sundries we had brought along for the trip while watching Duke eek out a victory over Butler in the NCAA basketball championship game. After that, Quin hung out with Grandma and Grandpa while Ethan, Jenny, and I went to the main lodge to take in some video games and some bowling - yes, they have bowling at this hotel.

Traveler's Tips

• If going to the Grand Canyon and you don't plan on doing spending more than a day, stay in Flagstaff or elsewhere. Tusayan and the GC Village are just too expensive - the lodging, the food, the fuel. We would have probably have been much better off just staying at the Hampton Inn another night and driving back after our tour.
• The Grand Canyon can be cold!!! Pack for all occasions.
• If you can, spend a couple of days at the Canyon and do one of the hikes, not just around the rim, but into the canyon itself.
• The "Canyon Walk" that you've likely seen on TV with the horseshoe glass walkway out over the canyon is NOT at the Grand Canyon National Park. That structure is somewhere 250 miles west of the park and was built by a Native American Group.
• Gas in Flagstaff is actually more expensive than the smaller surrounding communities!!! Who knew?

I think there's a ton I've missed, but I think I've been writing long enough. Today's journey to Sedona will have to wait until tomorrow for details. As a preview, though, we're happy today to be in the Phoenix area where we hope to relax a bit, finally...

Vacation 2010 - April 4, Driving...

OK, I'm a little out of order. Bear with me. April 4, Easter Sunday, was a day of driving. I was actually able to get out of bed and get out for a 3.4 mile run in the crisp Denver morning (41 degrees but sunny). Running in Denver is nice and not so nice. Nice because they have so many running trails and there are so many cute girls that are generally out exercising as well (even when it is cold). Not so nice because it is the "Mile High City" and that seems to play tricks on either my mind or my lungs or both. The first 10 minutes of this run was brutal! After that, though, I settled into a nice, slow trod and was able to complete the run. A couple of "interesting" things I saw on the run - there were a bunch of old men out walking their equally old looking toy dogs, there was a guy that lived in the city that had outfitted his little postage sized lot of land into looking like a farm, complete with 3 classic tractors that he appeared to enjoy working on, and there was this one spot on the trail where somebody had spread out a bunch of bird seed, no doubt meant for birds, but was being hoarded by a group of wayward squirrels that were afraid of nothing!

We managed to get out of town at 10:00 AM and met little traffic immediately. The travel south of Denver was quite nice through Pueblo. We made a quick stop in Pueblo to let Ethan go to the bathroom. I had initially intended to stop there, but we were a bit early and Quin was sleeping, so we called an audible and decided to move on.

We finally stopped for our Easter lunch in Weisenburg, CO, which looked like the next largish town on our way. We saw a sign for Subway and decided to get subs and have a picnic in a town park. Not much went right with that plan. When we got to Subway, it was closed for Easter, so we settled for roller dogs and chips from the Loaf 'n Jug. We still attempted a picnic, but after about 10 minutes had to leave because the wind was blowing so hard! So much for Easter lunch!

The remaining travel south to New Mexico went without incident. We hit one major milestone, the car passed 100,000 miles!

Another 5 hours of driving and we made it to Albuquerque, NM, our intended supper destination. The plan this time was to get something decent to make up for the roller dogs. However, a bid to hit a Best Buy to get Ethan a new DS game took us WAY off course - there was no Best Buy, and we ended up settling for KFC and a much nicer park than lunch for supper.

The remainder of the trip was uneventful. We finished the trip at 10:30 local time, 12.5 hours after we left. Mileage was close to 800 miles, but I don't remember for sure. A couple of brief observations:

- Driving through New Mexico is like watching Cars. I kept wondering when I would see Radiator Springs.

- I wonder why they would build Route 66 right along the I40 interstate. I mean, why take that meandering route if you could go straight through!

- I saw a sign that said "Indian Tacos" on the way through western New Mexico. I wonder if that is code for a reservation bound brothel...

I'm a day late on today's post now, but am tired and need sleep. I will hopefully be able to post two tomorrow, but will likely get lazy and just do two lame posts or one longer posts that cover our two days in the Grand Canyon area. Time will tell.

Grand canyon

Holy crap it's windy!!! Short post for now. Jenny and Ethan are out looking at the little Colorado river gorge about 15 miles east of the south rim park of the grand canyon. It's not too cold out but I bet the wind is gusting up to 50 mph. It's so bad that it tipped over 2 portapotties.

Quinny is napping. We left him in the car to start with but then felt guilty so now I'm hanging out with him. We are heading over to the main park in a couple of minutes and will post a full recount along with pictures later.


-- Post From My iPhone

Location:Unnamed Rd,Cameron,United States

Vacation 2010 - April 3, Denver

OK, back to the standard keyboard. Too much to write to try to do it on my little iPhone.

The day started out pretty early this morning. Quin woke up around 5:00 local time, but that was OK with me since I had fallen asleep last night at 8:30 local. Of course, in a single bedroom apartment, once anybody is up, everybody is pretty much up. By 6:30, everybody was done pretending to be asleep anymore and we got up and ready for the day.

Ethan started his waking day by playing Wii Fit with the balance board. It was pretty fun. He ended up the hoola-hoop champion even though I showed him how to do it! Once we were all ready, though, we left the apartment and were off to meet Jason for some breakfast, but not before going first to the mall to check out the line for the Apple iPad launch!

OK, I fall for these things time and time again. I convince myself that I need one of these things as soon as they come out, then I get there and realize that I have no interest in standing in line for a couple of hours while I wait for the privilege of paying them to give me one!!! I did the same thing with the XBox 360 before realizing how dumb I was and waiting a whole week before I got one... Anyway, we were able to manage a Starbucks run out of the whole ordeal. There were many people in line at the Apple Store.

We left the mall and headed out to our breakfast destination, the Village Inn, which is right next to Best Buy. I happened to know that each Best Buy was allotted 15 iPads for launch and I saw only 4 people in line, so I am pretty sure I could have gotten one there, but breakfast beckoned, and I ultimately decided I could wait (again).

Today's big destination was the Denver Zoo. It's a pretty nice zoo and will be getting nicer as they complete a huge new project called the Asian Exchange (or something like that). It appears to be a very large project, taking up an entire border of the zoo. Quin and Ethan enjoyed themselves, Quin especially loved the "choo-choo." Ethan was interested in getting through the Zoo in time to see the movie I had promised him, "How to Train your Dragon."

After several hours of zoo tourism, we retreated for an afternoon snack at the Bull & Bush Pub and Brewery. This, I believe, marked my first vacation experience of this trip. This is an awesome little English inspired pub that makes their own English style ales and serves them for inexpensive prices. The kids didn't really go for it, but I really, REALLY enjoyed it. I probably would have stayed there all day if not coaxed out of there by my family.

After a few beers and some appetizers, Jenny, Maylee, and Quin dropped Ethan and I off at the movie theater where we saw "How to Train your Dragon," while they went shopping somewhere. When done, we went back to Maylee's apartment for a little dinner and bed.

Tomorrow promises a long day of travel through Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Should be a hoot. Hopefully I'll have a chance to post again tomorrow night before I crash. The day following should be fun - we'll get to see my parents for the first time in 4 months and will get to see the Grand Canyon for the first time (for some).

By the way, pictures for this trip can be seen at the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/grady.mke/SpringBreak2010?feat=directlink

Vacaton 2010 Leg 1

Vacation 2010 Leg 1

So I'm trying a couple of new things this time around. I've recently identified that I require an ipad in order to survive. In order to prepare myself I've decided to post my vacation blog entirely from my iPhone. We'll see how long this lasts. I think I may be too old to learn to thumb type and ignore basic punctuation and spelling rules, but I suppose time will tell.

Our 2010 "trip" started last night around 4:30 central time. Our destinations this year inlude Denver, the grand canyon, then finally Phoenix where my parents have recently "relocated" for their winters. We opted to drive since the thought of flying with Quin makes even a brave man cringe.

The original plan was to leave after Ethans tennis lesson at 5:30, but we found out later that tennis had been canceled, so I had designs on leaving by 3:00. Well, things rarely work out he way you think. Jenny has to run reports once a month at the beginning of the month. On this run, everything that could go wrong with those reports did. When all was sai and done we didn't get out of the house until 4:30. Even then, as we were trying to leave, Ethan fell while rinning to the car and had a boo boo that had to be tended to before we could go.

We managed to make it to Rockford by 6:00 in time to het so e dinner at some ghetto mall in the greater Rockford area. Ethan was treated to some typical suburban teenage language with m-er f-er this and that… I guess they are going to bear that eventually. Ethan heard it from me and my family years ago…

The plan was to drive all night and we accomplished that goal. We used a tested method of listening to a book on tape while we drove which really made the time go fast. I also employed a new technique of drinking a 5 hour energy drink which has kept me up through now. Everything seemed to work out well. We made it to Denver with two stops by 9:00 mountain time this morning.

A couple of observations from the road. Iowa is much more interesting than Illinois or Nebraska. They also have very nice rest areas with wifi and everything. At their least frequent they are spaced at 40 miles and most of the time they are at 20. Nebraska is just damn big and seems even moreso when you don't even get into the state until 11:30. Lastly, as tempting as it might seem at the time, Sterling, Colorado is not a great place to stop for gas or food even though it is the first town of any size in Colorado. Gas is expensive, the water has nitrates, an the fii doesn't taste all that good. Other than that it's nice.

Today has been a bit if a blur. We went to Dave and busters, I tried to take a nap and failed. All in all it was a pretty good first day of vacation. It finally turned into a vacation at 5:00 tonight when I cracked my first Colorado beer.

Tomrrow should be nice regardless of what we do since Jenny and I will be able to amass more than two hours of sleep between us.

As an aside, this posting method is kind of painful. I can't get as much on the page as I want to because this is so slow…. I'll keep trying.

-- Post From My iPhone

Location:Fairmount Dr,Denver,United States

March Musings

On this eve of "the closest thing the Irish have to Christmas," I'm sitting on my couch musing about my hopelessly silly kids. Nature dictates that the oldest is silly like his dad, but nurture appears to have a strong influence on the youngest. Too bad - we thought he had a chance!!!

We were out and about gathering materials for our latest home improvement project, built-in cabinets and a desk in our office (the wood floor was finished up two weeks ago). After we finished getting some things at WalMart we came across some girl scouts selling cookies. I have a soft spot for kids selling things, especially sweets, so I bought a box of Thanks-A-Lots (I think that makes 10 boxes this year). Quin has a highly developed sweet tooth and immediately started saying one of his favorite words, "Cookie." We we opened up the box and all had one. Not more than a minute later, Quin was again repeating "Cookie, cookie, cookie!" Jenny thought he was palming it, or had just put it in his lap since very little time had passed and said to him, "no, you just had one. Where is your cookie?" Without missing a beat he leaned forward and opened his mouth and pointed to it.

His vocabulary is progressing well beyond cookie, though many of his sentences are just negative versions of things we want him to do. "No nigh-nigh" is one I hear each night before bed. He has started to branch out, though. He is very polite and frequently says things like "Thank you daddy." One I particularly liked recently was when I was trying to give him some juice. He took one drink and said "Ucki duece."

Not to be outdone, the older one continues to be goofy in many ways. If you've met Ethan, you know he is quite the talker. We're taking a trip to Arizona next month and I'm pretty sure he will likely talk at least 20 hours of the 30 it takes to get out there... One of our recent conversations was that he hoped he would never be homeless because he didn't want to have to bath in the lake. He said he had heard about these fish that would swim into your penis and eat your testicles. 8 year old boys are apparently fascinated with testicles... At one point he referred to the fish as "nasty little nut eaters!"

Just today we were watching Chowder on Cartoon Network. Not a particularly good show, nor would I recommend it for your children that aren't so demented, but Ethan seems to like it. In this episode, for some reason, Chowder had to prove that he was not a baby or something (I was barely paying attention), so he took off a towel he was wearing. Ethan started giggling and said, "he's showing him the goods. You know... his privates." During the same episode, some fairy things were about to kiss when Ethan announced, "Look dad, they're going to have sex." Well, I'm not proud to say that I was intrigued immediately, but quickly realized that Ethan thought that kissing was "having sex." I can't imagine what he talks about in school... For those that are worried, I did explain to him that it was not, indeed, having sex, it was just kissing. I assured him that I would tell him all about "having sex" when he was a little older and that he would think it is really gross right now... He agreed. Whew - that talk was averted for a little while longer...

That's it for now. I wish you all a Happy Irish Christmas, as Michael Scott would say, and I hope your kids give you as many laughs as mine give me!