King for a day . . . or at least an hour

I can't let 2 months pass without posting. I've been a slacker lately.
Blake was in the Christmas play at church and played Wise Man #3. Everywhere we've went this season, he wants to see the wise men. Then he wants to know, "which one is number 3?"
He had a 3 lines, and did a very good job delivering them. He even had to say "frankincense and myrrh." The only problem came at the end when everyone was singing "Joy to the World." He was dancing around, which I thought maybe he was getting into the spirit. But then he mouthed to us, "I have to go to the bathroom!" I think we have him mouthing it on videotape. He did make it to the end of the performance.
Future torture for later years in his life to remind him that before any big moment, he must go to the bathroom! We can show it to his prom date, before his wedding . . .

Go Cards!

Blake sings "Take me out to the ballgame"


Photo Sharing -

Now this is scary! Maybe?

A vampire with pink teeth. Scary? No.




A "Blair Witch" vampire with pink teeth. Scary? Sort of.




An out of focus Drew giving his best scary vampire look. Well . . . It's as scary as Drew's going to look.


Photo Sharing -

'I'll get you Captain Hook!'

And here's some of Drew doing his best Peter Pan.

A scary dinosaur and a scary? Peter Pan

A sneak peak at Blake and Drew's Halloween costumes. As soon as we decorated our yard, they wanted to put them on. Blake is an iguanodon.




Blake does his best dinosaur roar, and Drew thinks he's scary, too.

Shiver me timbers!

My Dad's family (the Wilkes) had a pirate hayride this weekend. We get together on various holidays, and this was one of our get togethers. Blake especially enjoyed calling everyone a "bunch of scalliwags."

'where's my bus?'

Drew started school today. He's in the toddler class at the YMCA two mornings a week. He has Mrs. Burns just like Blake. It's hard to believe I was pregnant with Drew when Blake started Mrs. Burns' class.
When we brought Blake out to the bus stop this morning, Drew wanted to know where his bus was. I told him, "See that van in the drive-way." I'm not ready for him to get on a bus yet!
It was a great first day. None of the kids in his class cried until the end of class. I did capture that kid on film as you can see from the picture of Drew walking out of the door to his classroom. Just glad it's not my child this time. Blake screamed and cried every day when I left for the first three weeks of class.
Drew told me Mrs. Burns called him "Andrew" and he said "I'm not Andrew. I'm just regular Drew!" He giggled when he told me about it.


Wednesday, September 6, 2006

He might be contrary, but he's not stupid

I visited Blake's school on Tuesday and spoke with his teacher for the first time since school has started. She said Blake was doing really good in school. I said, "Yeah, he told me he got in trouble a few times for talking and had to move to the yellow light." She kind of laughed and told me he got really upset the first time he had to move his clip to the yellow light.
Blake yelled, "I'm not moving my clip to the yellow light!"
She said, "Yes, you are."
Blake yelled, "I'm not moving my clip to the yellow light!"
She said, "Then I'll get get up and put it there. And if Mrs. VanVooris has to get up and move your clip, it's going to the red light."
Blake yelled, "I'm not moving my clip to the yellow light!"
Mrs. VanVooris got up to move his clip. Blake jumped up quickly and moved it the yellow light.
Yes, our kid has attitude.

'Look mom, no training wheels'

The site finally has video. Watch Blake ride his bike for the first time. And also Drew show off that he can pedal!





We took Blake out to a parking lot at SIUE, so there wouldn't be many cars around. He stalled leaving the house and just getting into the truck to go over to the parking lot. He looked terrified on the drive over. It took us about 10 minutes of stalling when we got there to get him on the bike, and then he really didn't want to pedal, and certainly did not want Scott to let go of the bike. We didn't think we would get anywhere. But Scott finally was able to let him go, and Blake was OK with it. He rode a pretty good distance as you can see from the video. It's amazing how proud you can be of your kid -- even when it's something people do every day. Drew just learned to pedal his tricycle on his own this week, so he had to show off, too. Lance Armstrong look out!

A girlfriend at age 5

Last night Blake told me in the car that he "made a girl friend" at school.
Me "Really what's her name?"
Him: "I don't know. I liked her shirt."
Me: "What did her shirt look like?"
Him: "It was pink with black stripes on the sleeves and had a big white word on it."
Me: "What did it say?"
Him: "I don't know. I couldn't read it."
Me: "Did you talk to her."
Him: "No, but we played near each other a few times."
Me: "Ahh, that's nice."

When I relayed the story to Scott, he told me to tell Blake that's stalking! Not a girlfriend.

I thought it was cute.

'Everybody stayed on the green light!'

Blake went off to kindergarten for the first time today - a half day. And thought it was great. "I love school!" he told me later while we were eating lunch. His first comment to Dad when he got off the bus was, "Everybody stayed on the green light!" They have a stoplight system for discipline. The students get one warning, and if they get another, they have to move their name to the yellow light. If they get in trouble again, they have to move to the red light, and then a "red light note" gets sent home to the parents. If they stay on green the entire week, they get to pick out of the treasure box on Friday. "3 more days until the treasure box," Blake says. Maybe this will actually keep him out of trouble. He's already made a bus buddy, another kindergarten student who lives around the corner from us. And they sit in the back. Isn't that where the troublemakers usually sit? Anyway, at least he has a friend on the bus. He didn't really remember anyone's name from his class yet, but said he played with several kids.
And just in case you're wondering, I did manage to keep my tears in check. Though it was kind of a sad but happy day.

Mrs. Sippi?

One of our babysitters asked Drew who is teacher was going to be at school this year, and he looked a little confused. So I said, "You know who it is. It's Mrs. . . ." Drew pipes up "Mississippi." He did eventually come up with the right answer.

Our first visit to the new Busch

Thank to the man in front of us for taking this great picture.

Finally, a post not about our trip to Michigan! We made our first visit to Busch Stadium, and the Cardinals did not disappoint, beating the Brewers. Albert Pujols even hit a home run, so we got to see fireworks.
The new stadium has a much better view than the old ones as you can see from some of my pics.


Saturday, August 5, 2006

A dinosaur named Sue

We left Michigan on Saturday really early, so we could hit the Field Museum in Chicago later that day. We were making good time until we got a flat tire somewhere in the middle of Michigan about 3 hours into the trip. I'm pretty sure the spare tire has never been used on my minivan because Scott had to coax it, pry it and kick it REALLY HARD just to get it detached from the bottom of the van. We even dusted off the owner's manual to make sure we weren't doing something wrong. It did finally come off (looking a bit rusty), and we got it on the car. There must have been something on the road because we saw at least 4 others changing their tire alongside of the road.
We didn't make it the Field Museum that day because we didn't get to Chicago until about 3 p.m. Luckily, there was a tire store right next to the crappy hotel I had booked us in. At least the hotel had that going for it. We did head into Chicago that night to hit Giordano's pizza for some awesome pizza. One reason we really miss Chicago. Blake was not impressed. "It has sauce on top! Yuck!"
We got up early on Sunday and did finally get to see all the dinosaurs at the Field Museum, including the infamous Sue. And with that, Blake was indeed impressed.


Sunday, July 30, 2006
The Field Museum

Michigan has a Mighty Mac of its own

For $2.50 (that's $5 if you want to return to your hotel) you can cross the 5-mile Mackinac Bridge. It connects the upper and lower parts of Michigan. If you're a resident it only costs 50 cents. We learned all about the bridge on a "sunset" cruise. At least we got to see the bridge because considering it was an overcast evening, we didn't get much of a sunset. Here's what we learned about the bridge. It's nickname is the Mighty Mac. It rises 55 stories above the straits of Mackinac where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. It is 5 miles long and at one time it was the world's longest suspension bridge. It surpassed the Golden Gate Bridge when it was built in the 1950s. It is now the 3rd longest suspension bridge. Don't ask which 2 are longer because I don't remember.
Before the bridge was built, travelers took an hour-long ferry ride from upper to lower Michigan sometimes waiting 24 hours during busy seasons. Can you imagine waiting that long? Apparently, if you fell asleep in your car or you ran out of gas, other people would just cut past you.
Five men lost their lives during the bridge construction: one fell from a tower, one diver surfaced too quickly and did not recover, and 3 iron workers fell from a catwalk collapse.

DREW AND UNCLE RIC ENJOY THE VIEW

X marks the Mystery Spot

We visited one of "Michigan's No. 1 unusual attraction" on one day. So what was the Mystery Spot? I'm not going to tell you. Ha. Ha. It's basically a place of optical illusions -- where a tall person looks shorter; where you can stand at a precarious angle and where you can sit on a chair balanced on a wall. Blake enjoyed the maze, which was also part of the attraction.
We also visited a deer farm that day where we fed carrots to an albino deer. He was really ticked when we off to go feed some other deer. And also a very shy doe.
Later that night we drove up to Sault St. Marie which is on the border of Canada and took a dinner tour.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The Mystery Spot and other adventures

Outtakes from David

While downloading pictures from our vacation I noticed that 1 particular day had a lot of pictures in the folder. I thought, "wow, we must of done a lot of things that day." Actually, no. David got a hold of our camera that day. So if you have a camera with film, don't let David get a hold of it. If it's a digital like ours, it doesn't matter unless you have space constraints of course.
You just end up with pictures like these.

SOME GOOD




SOME NOT SO