The Reynolds

Happy New Year!

2012-01-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

I realized after my last post that I left off a couple of pictures that I meant to include so I'll start with those. Go with me back to October.

I like this one. Too bad Cameron has his slightly frowny face on.

And I really like this one. Looks like a gang of white boy bullies. "Whatchoo say? Me and my posse gonna shut yo mouf!" Ok, I know that doesn't fit with the whitey appearance but they look like bruisers nonetheless.

And I have to include a picture of their Halloween costumes. Except, a day or two later, Dana and I realized we didn't even take a picture of Cameron or Kevin. We're terrible parents! This was Cade before heading off to school. Apparently, he didn't think it was scary enough so he fell off a scooter in PE and split his chin open. We took him to the ER where he got 4 stitches. Then it was right back to school because he didn't want to miss his party. Dude never shed a tear through the entire ordeal.

Cameron was a reaper this year (comlete with black mask and flashing eyes!) and Kevin insisted on buying a new scary mask that he refused to believe looked almost exactly like the one we bought for him last year. Kevin took off with some friends so we never saw him that night and Cam hit a few houses then came back home to help me scare more kids. We had a blast! The best one was a girl trying to figure out if I was real (I also have a reaper costume). She didn't see mini-me walk up behind her. Screamed when I moved, turned around to run and screamed as she met Cameron face-to-face. Ah! Fun times. Lots of other terrified people too that I could go on and on about. If you don't make the kids coming to your house work for the candy, I highly recommend you start.

I don't remember much about November. Kevin's soccer team narrowly missed qualifying for the state cup as the #1 team. When tournament time rolled around, they floundered and just couldn't get it together and lost their first (and only) 3 games. Just like that, our soccer season was over.

We spent Thanksgiving home alone again this year. That sounds sad when I write that but it's really ok. We had a great day together. Dana made a fabulous meal and we played a family game of soccer in our neighbor's yard (it's flatter than ours) before watching the Dallas Cowboys stomp their way to another victory.

And then, the big news for the month... Kevin got his first girlfriend. She'd been strongly hinting and came just short of telling him to ask her out but he resisted for reasons known only to him. And then, like women always do to us poor, susceptible men, she got her way. She's a really sweet girl and hit around our house.

See? This is Madison and Cade at Kevin's band concert. Notice Cade's right arm. I said "a hit" not "hit on", Cade.

All 3 boys had a Christmas performance of some kind in December. Kevin's band concert was first.

See that eye in the center of the picture? This was the best view I got of Kevin playing his sax. Good lookin' kid, he is.

Cameron's school had a Christmas play. Here's Cameron and his buddy Ally after they finished singing.

Cade was an elf and a darn cute one at that!

At the North Pole. Cade really liked his costume so he wore it for pajamas and around the house for several days after the play. We had to pay for it so why not?

We went on a limb this year (get it? ha ha ha!) and bought a live tree. Dana has always wanted to buy one so we can plant it after Christmas and watch it grow. Turns out, it's pretty darn expensive and quite the pain to put in the house. We emptied out a toybox and stuck it in that to hold it. We used a Christmasy tablecloth to cover the whole thing. After getting it home, I read on the internet that you shouldn't have a live tree in your home for more than a week because the roots will start to grow. Oops! We bought it the day after Thanksgiving. I'm gonna be upset if it dies on us.

Our best Christmas present this year is one we got a week early. Mom had a company meeting to attend in TN the weekend before Christmas. We drove up to spend the weekend with them, then brought them to our house to visit for a couple of days. While we were in TN, they treated us to a day at Dollywood. It's like a mini-Disneyland except a lot colder. We'll be sure to dress warmer next time.

I didn't take many pictures since it got dark shortly after we got there. I wasn't trying to be fancy with this shot, it just turned out that way. The place was decked out in Christmas lights. Absolutely beautiful.

For the record, Dana, Kevin and Cameron tried to kill me on a roller coaster. Twice.

The next day, before leaving Pigeon Forge, we stopped at a go kart track to scratch that full throttle itch.

Trash talking before the big race.

Cade and I were handicapped with the only 2 seater car (read - slowest). Kevin and Cameron drove like wrecking balls. Pa hung out with us for a couple of laps then split to chase the others. It was so fun, we turned around and did it again.

Reynolds Family

October-ish

2011-12-07T17:24:00.000-08:00

In early October, Cade went on his first field trip (not counting the field trip he took to the same place last year when he was in pre-school. We'll call that a pre-field trip.) to a pumpkin patch. Dana and I both went with along. It's supposed to be educational but I'd say it's more like 2% education and 98% running wild and playing. Those are the best kind of trips. Cade jumped in the pit full of corn, bounced on a huge trampoline thing, played on the slides, pet the animals and basically didn't stop running and jumping until we left. He slept well after that.

Dana and Cade on the hayride to pick out a pumpkin

Cade and me showing off his pumpkin. Poor little pumpkin had no idea what we were going to do to it.

I scored a good deal for admission to this place on a couponing site (Hey! It's not just for women!) so a few days later, I went back with all the boys. Just like last year, Dana wasn't able to go with us because she had worked the night before. The good news is that was her last weekend! No more night shifts for her and us boys got our mom/wifey back on the weekends! Woo hoo!

They look a little bigger than the "How Tall this Fall 2007" pictures I have. Especially that one in the middle.

Take a picture quick! They're touching each other and not fighting!

Can you believe Mr. Cade turned 6 in October? We gave him his gifts on his birthday then took him out to eat. He chose Applebee's because they sing to people for their birthdays. Not very shy, that boy. His big gift from us was a new bicycle. He simply outgrew his other one and after having gone through the other two boys, it's ready to be retired anyway.

Cade's new wheels.

That weekend, we had a proper birthday party for him at the bowling alley. Kevin was too cool to be in a picture with all the little kids.

A couple of weeks later, Cade lost his first tooth. Dana noticed it was barely hanging on so I yanked it out for him. The very next day, he showed me how loose the tooth next to it was so I pulled that one out too. I told him two teeth in two days was plenty. Didn't want him to get addicted to that Tooth Fairy money.

Soccer season finally came to an end. Almost unbelievably, Kevin went non-stop from January until mid-November. As much as he enjoyed playing and we enjoyed watching, we're all glad for a break.

Yes, Cade was that much bigger than the other kids. Little dude turned into a pretty darn good defender and saved countless goals.

Cameron had a terrific season and surprised a lot of people - including us. For someone who "quit" soccer in the spring to wrestle, he not only looked like he hadn't missed a beat but like he'd actually been secretly practicing. He didn't score but he had many assists throughout the season including 2 to two kids who had never scored before (and will likely never score again). That's saying something!

Kevin on his most recent team. They played great all season, barely missed qualifying for the state cup in first place and promptly bombed in the tournament. We had a lot of fun being on this team and traveling to other cities to play and Kevin improved his skills immensely by playing with these bigger, faster kids. I can't wait to see him play for his school next spring where he'll get more play time.

I should add here that getting a good action shot in soccer is very hard. All season long, I only managed to frame one really good shot of Kevin. He was jumping up to head the ball right in front of me and for once I had the camera ready. Unfortunately, one kid behind him and one in front of him had the same idea. All I got was a picture of a Kevin sandwich. You can see one of his legs and maybe one arm. I think a lock of his hair is visible too. It's difficult, I say!

This is Carly and she chews on things.

Outtakes from our family pictures in our back yard.

Haven't taken a boyhead picture in awhile.

Dumb format

2011-10-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

I seem to be the only one having issues with the formatting on this blog. I fix the spacing but it comes back even worse when I publish it. If anyone has any tips please holler.

Blame It on the Ipad

2011-10-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

So Dana bought an iPad for me for my birthday and I am officially blaming that darned thing for neglecting this blog. It's too darn easy to surf the web and check Facebook from the comfort of the living room couch. As far as I'm concerned, our office has become obsolete because I rarely use the computer anymore. Dana still uses it but that's only because I laid down the law and threaten to bite anyone that touches the iPad.

As for the blog, I'm so far behind I don't remember what happened so I grabbed a few pictures from the last few months and I'll call it like I see it. I have more on the camera that I'll probably download some day and it includes Cade's birthday yesterday. He's the big oh-six!

First up, Kevin turned 13 in July! Big, bad teenager! Breaks my heart to think of my not-so-little-anymore buddy getting so old. He had a simple birthday party and invited some friends over for the night. At least that's all I remember happening.

Spoiled kid got his own flatscreen TV for his room. I never had a TV in MY room. I'm starting to realize just how mistreated I was. Kevin did pay for 1/2 of it but that's irrelevant to my whining.

Kevin and buddies playing soccer. Anytime big kids are around, Cade thinks he needs to be involved. Here's our 5 year old going toe-to-toe with the teenagers. Later, I noticed they were all playing Duck, Duck, Goose. I wonder whose idea that was. It made my heart smile to see the big kids not being too cool to play with Cade. Good boys, they are.

Shortly after Kevin's birthday, we packed up the Expedition and made our annual-and-a-halfy trip to NM to visit our beloved family. We spent a few days in Las Cruces first. We started the week off by holding a private memorial service for my grandparents and buried their ashes. Dad wrote a very nice and very touching memorial. The rest of us (namely, me) just blubbered when we tried to talk about them.

While we were spending time with my parents, we also went to the lake but I didn't include any pictures of that. And we went mini-fourwheeling and drove to the top of Timber Mountain by Caballo Lake.

Cade participates in the time honored tradition of throwing a rock down the side of a mountain.

I really like this shot I got of Eric.

I don't think we're in Bama anymore.

Panoramic view from the top. Definitely not in Alabama.

After saying our goodbyes, we left LC and drove up to Inlow to attend the Harmon family reunion which seemed a little like a misnomer since there were only 2 Harmons there but lots of descendants and their spouses and that's what counts. We all had a great time and I'm always amazed at how well all the cousins get along even though they rarely see each other.

Cameron and Dana modeling our tie-dyed shirts.

We played lots of four square, or rather, 9 square. Dana's in Square 1 here. If you're not familiar with the game, that's the place to be.

Cade took to the climbing wall like a fish to water. He even did it in his flip-flops!

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and it was time for us to leave NM. Fortunately, Dana is the master planner of vacations and had a trip to Frontier City amusement park in Oklahoma City all planned out. Despite being 110 degrees and having several rides closed because the seats were burning people, we had a great time there.

Kevin and Cameron on the water log ride. This was one of our favorites.

The bumper cars were probably THE favorite for the whole family. We rode these many times. Dana, Cameron and Cade ham it up for the camera when they should be watching where they're going.

Immediately after returning from our vacation, another school year began. Kevin is in 8th, Cameron in 5th and Cade in Kindergarten. This year the boys started riding the bus as well so between not having anyone home during the day and not getting to take them and pick them up from school, it's been a bit of an adjustment. Dana and I took Cade on his first day but it was more for us than it was for him. The second day he was having none of that and wanted to ride the bus. Usually, it's the kindergartener that cries but this time it was Dana and me.

In a moment of weakness, or maybe I was sick and in a drug-induced fog, I said something about Cade needing another dog because he still misses and talks about Abby (our dog in Las Cruces 3 years ago). Dana heard, "Let's get a dog!" There was no stopping her at that point and the result is Carly although I call her Dummy.

See? Dumb dog just flops down when someone tries to pet her. Useless, I say. But the boys seem to like her and Dana enjoys having her around during the day so I guess that counts for something. I'd still rather have a cat though.

Mid-Summer Update

2011-07-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

Mid-summer update, take two.

I actually created this blog last night and was quite proud of it. I laughed. I cried. It moved me. It was chock full of funny, witty comments that would have entertained you for hours but it was all wiped out when I published it despite my frequent saves. Then I yelled, threw things, pouted and finally cried again. I doubt I can create that greatness again but I'll try.

Last month, Dana and I celebrated our 16th anniversary! Sometimes it seems like time has flown by and other times it seems like a looong time - in a good way, of course. Unbeknownst to each other, we both decided to splurge a little on our anniversary gifts and as a result we now have a balance on our dang credit card again. She bought a new camera for me (that I LOVE) since our old one broke. I bought her a new TV. I thought the old one was fine but she insisted TV pictures are supposed to have colors other than green. Little did I know that with a new TV, one must also acquire a whole new set of furniture to go with it. Funny how women work like that. For me: new camera = use old camera bag. For her: new TV = new TV stand, bookcases on either side, repaint living room, new rug, new drapes, reposition wall hanging 3-7/8" to the right, new pillows for the couch, etc. Good thing I love her.

The Slugas also came to visit for a week in June. We had a great time visiting with them and were sad to see them go. I know Dana especially enjoys time with her sisters. We're still trying to convince everyone to move out here but no one is buying it.

We took the Slugas to our favorite state park. Here's Ronney & Karen checking out the waterfall. I'm still amazed at how green everything is around here.

Playing with the camera in this one. Check out the defocused background. Pretty trick, huh? I horsed around with the settings on the camera so much I failed to get a decent picture of all the kids together. I'll have to try again when we're in NM.

We've gone riding a whopping two times this summer. Poor Kevin missed both times because he was out galavanting around the country with his friends. So nevermind, not poor Kevin.

My awesome zoom allows cool close up shots without endangering myself. I like these where you can see their eyes.

The helmet hides Cade's always-present smile.

Even the most hardcore MXers need a water break. Crossed eyes and puffy cheeks are optional.

Cameron is getting the hang of his 65. He and Cade both ask to go riding quite often. Too bad it isn't free like the good ol' days in NM.

Pit tootsie. She's hubba hubba in color and hubba hubba in black and white.

We finally made our way down to Destin, FL for a weekend at the beach. I was there for a conference several years ago and really wished I could bring the family to show them how pretty it is. Never thought we'd make it. Now it's half a day's drive away. And, my personal goal of dipping the Expedition's toes in both oceans and the gulf is now complete! Time to sell it.

This was my view when not in the water. Poor me.

What's a day at the beach w/o burying someone in the sand?

I was playing with the camera (notice a theme here?) and took this panorama. What I really like about it is Kevin's head sticking out of the sand in the lower left corner.

Cameron on the run looking cool as always. I wish I had that cool, David Hasselhoff run like he does.

I just love the smiles on their faces in this picture. And they're not fighting!!!

Look how clear the water is. If you ever get the chance to visit the Emerald Coast, do it!

Cade was either playing in the sand or in the water but he was playing nonetheless.

That's one good lookin' kid!

There's another studmuffin. I didn't get a good picture of Cade on the boardwalk so don't think I don't think he's good looking. He is.

Kevin is growing fast but I still have a few inches on him. For now.

This picture reminds me, did you know you can submerse an old style Ford key fob in salt water for over 2 hours w/o harming anything? I do now. But next time I'll be sure to empty my pockets before playing in the water just in case.

Our neighborhood had a golf cart parade for the 4th of July. The local golf pro is the leader of our Sunday School class so he let us borrow a golf cart. I think we did alright considering our nearly last minute dash to the dollar store for some decorations. We didn't win any prizes but I still think we had one of the best carts. No one else had Uncle Sam on the back of their cart! But we had fun and that's what matters, right?

The boys ready to roll in their first sort of parade.

We invited our neighbors and friends over to watch us set off our fireworks then have some of Dana's awesome flag cake. I had a blast setting off roman candles and rockets and all the things that were banned years ago in NM.

Getting ready for the Reynolds festivities.
Have I ever mentioned that we LOVE our neighbors and the street we're on?

No summer would be complete without a slip-n-slide. Unfortunately, ours broke the first time we were using it but that didn't stop the kids from having a good time.

Kevin getting a face full.

Oh, look! Cade is smiling. Imagine that.

This picture speaks for itself.

Trying to Keep Up!

2011-07-07T17:30:00.000-07:00

Geez, Louise! Can you believe summer vacation is half over? We've been having a great time here in Athens so maybe that's why it's going so fast.

Since the last update, Kevin finished 7th grade, Cameron finished 4th grade and Cade completed pre-school. Kevin & Cam both made the A honor roll and were recognized in their school's awards ceremony. Dana and I are awfully proud of our boys.

Cade looked so darn cute in his cap and gown!

Soccer season finally ended. Kevin's coach didn't want to quit and kept scheduling more games. When that did end, Kevin joined a club team here in Hunstville. He'd better really, and I mean REALLY, enjoy soccer because he'll go straight through from Jan/Feb (whenever it was that the school team started) all the way through November. And then he'll start again with school next year.

We didn't get any good action shots of either of the boys in soccer this year and Kevin skipped his year-end party so no pictures of him there either. At least we got this one of Cade.

Cameron's wrestling group had a year end party at the ice skating rink. Dana was the only one of us who has ever tried ice skating before. While we wobbled around and tried not to bruise our tailbones too badly, Dana leapt on the ice with all the gracefulness of a, um, well something that's pretty graceful. Especially when you compare her to the rest of us with backs hunched over and arms wildly flapping back and forth with a look of sheer terror on our face. Dumb ice. Cade actually had it made. He got a "walker" to help him skate so he cruised around like a little old man - except he moved a lot faster.

Here's Dana showing off by not flapping both arms, Cade with his walker, and Cameron trying to balance. Actually, Cameron picked it up very quick and looked right at home after just a few minutes. Kevin and I are the ones who really had trouble.

Jacobs had an employee event at the Botanical Gardens again this year. Dana was sleeping so I took the boys with me for some fun in the su, er, rain. And it was a bit cold.

We spent a long time in the butterfly house. Here's Cameron showing off his new hair accessory.

All 3 boys jockeying for position to get the butterfly to crawl on their hand. Each of them got a turn. I like how Cade is holding his left hand out as he concentrates on his other hand.

Honey, I shrunk the kids!

Dana and I celebrated our 16 anniversary in June! And we actually celebrated it this year, unlike last year when we did nothing and bought no gifts. Not sure what we were thinking. Anyway, Dana gave me a new camera!!! (Our old nice one broke a couple of years ago) I LOVE this one. 32X optical zoom! So if you think I had a lot of pictures before, just wait!

Here's a cool shot I took while messing around with the camera. If you squint really hard and turn your head you can sort of make out the Apollo landing sites. Ok, I made that up.

Cam's B-day and Easter

2011-06-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

If you haven't been keeping track, Cameron's birthday on April 21 was a special milestone. Yep, it was the big one-oh. He's now in the double digits. And I hope he makes it to triple digits. Dana took cupcakes and balloons to him at school and I think it's safe to say he enjoyed the extra attention. At home, he requested a scavenger hunt type search for his presents like we've done in the past.

Cameron and his "helpers" trying to find the next clue.

Can't have a birthday w/o a birthday cake. That's getting to be a lot of candles and I don't like it.

This year we had the pleasure of spending Easter with the Samps. I'm always amazed at how all the cousins pick up right where they left off despite not having seen each other for 1-1/2 years. Included in our typical tour of the area, was a trip to Monte Sano State Park and Wheeler National Park.

I like this shot I took of all the boys at Monte Sano.

On a short hike, we came across this little waterfall.

Cool shot of Tyler

At Wheeler, we found this psycho squirrel. It was slightly skittish at first, but Ryan was eventually able to pet it. Mr. Squirrel must have liked that because he started following us around. Like, all the way down the walking path and to the car. I don't think anyone would have been surprised if he had tried to get in one of the cars. The boys had some good laughs over this little guy.

What would Easter be without colored eggs? Unfortunately, 4 days after this photo was taken we lost power for several days and most of the eggs were lost. Sigh. Anyway, did you know if you leave an egg in the dye overnight, it doesn't really get much darker but the shell starts to look kind of weird and bubbly? I do now.

The Easter Bunny came! Please disregard my boys in their various states of undress.

All decked out for church.

The start of the easter egg hunt.

A bunch of good lookin' people. And me.

All too soon, Easter was over and our visit with the Samps was over. We all had a great time and I know Dana enjoyed the time with her big sis. Dana and I are still trying to figure out how to convince everyone to move out here to Alabama so we can see everyone more often. Unfortunately, I don't think the tornado outbreak in April helped our cause any.

Somehow, Cade figured out how to climb up the doorframe. Once again, please disregard underwear boy's choice of attire. He really does wear clothes around the house. I promise.

Wrestling, Soccer, Art. It's All Here!

2011-05-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

Lots of stories to tell so try to keep up!

Gosh, where to start? I found my MIA camera in my coat pocket from our last snow day. We've added a few pictures since then but I obviously hadn't gotten around to doing anything with them.

Cameron quit soccer this season (boo! He was really good!) and decided to take up wrestling, of all sports. Hunter, Kevin's BFF and our neighbor's son, started last fall and they suggested Cameron try it. I took him to a practice to see what it was like and was surprised at how hard those kids work. They did some serious cardio exercises! Cam thought it looked fun so we forked over the dough and signed on the dotted line. On the way home from his very first practice, he was literally singing songs about how much he hated it and swore he wasn't going back. Sorry, buddy. We paid, you play. Like it or not. By the next practice, his attitude had improved again (kind of like labor, I assume, where people forget how bad it was and remember the good parts). The coaches really took a liking to Cameron mostly because he truly worked very hard and never quit. Cam was warned most kids don't win any matches in their first season but that didn't stop him from getting more and more discouraged as the season progressed and he remained winless. He led at times and came really close to winning a couple of times but just couldn't finish the deal. Finally, late in the season, he not only won a match but he did it by pinning his opponent (as we learned, you can win by a pin (best way = bragging rights) or on points). He followed that up with another win in the next tournament. We all learned a lot about a sport we initially knew nothing about and got to where we were really enjoying watching the matches. We even learned to shout something more profound than "Go!" by the end of the season. As fun as it was though, it was always very tough to see my son get twisted into a pretzel and out-muscled despite his very best efforts. It took all I had not to go out on the mat and kick some of those kids off him. That probably wouldn't be a very good display of sportsmanship.

One of Cam's first matches (he's on top). He wanted to look tough but he really looked cute in his singlet.

This has nothing to do with wrestling other than the fact that we were at a match but I just love the expression on Kevin's face.

We also bought a new, used dirt bike for Cameron. He didn't know it was coming so when I brought it home and asked him to help me get something out of the pickup, he was overjoyed when he saw it.

He's only ridden it a couple of times so far but he figured out the clutch and shifting pretty quickly. Hopefully we'll get more time to ride it now that summer is here.

It took us several weeks but we (with the boys help) finally got around to putting our new outdoor fireplace together. Dana bought some huge marshmallows to roast. I'm talking Texas-sized. These things were monsters! We'll enjoy us some nice fires with this thing.

Look at the size of those marshmallows! Eat one and you don't want any more.

Pretty much as soon as we found the camera, Cade got back to taking self portraits again. Dana bought him some kind of detective kit at the dollar store one day so he took these pictures. I just love them.

Agent C is on the scene.

And he's packing heat.

"Don't make me call for backup. I'm the good cop."

Kevin's middle school soccer team had a great season. They almost went undefeated losing only one, close game. When the regional tournament rolled around they were the number 1 seed. The first game was easy, the second was a little harder and the third and final game was against the team they lost to. They jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first half and hung on for a nailbiting 2-1 win. Regional champs for 2 years in a row (Kevin's first year, of course)!

Champs

(Kevin 4th from L on top row)

Cade is playing soccer again this season. He's really enjoying it. He's constantly kicking a ball around the house and out in the yard (Imagine that! Someone who actually practices!) He has improved tremendously this year and it's a good thing because he's the only one on the team who has played before. He's always very proud when I ask him to show his teammates how to do something.

Good or not, he' still pretty darn white.

Three little monkeys sitting in a tree. One fell off and bumped his... knee? This was obviously taken a few months ago before everything bloomed and my sinuses rebelled.

Sometimes I hook a strap to the skateboard and drag Cade around the driveway. The boys took that idea a step further and tow each other around the cul-de-sac.

Yet another self portrait. He figured out that he can put the camera on the table, push the button and immediately jump back to get a picture like this. Some day I'll show him how to use the timer but in the meantime this is more fun to watch.

My littlest buddy and me.

Spring time means chalk time. Yet another driveway masterpiece under construction.

Dana let me build a train track around the wall in our office! I've always wanted to do that. With that done, I'm trying to convince her to let me tunnel through the wall and go into another room or three.

More pictures to come. Cameron had a big day and we had some guests for Easter.

Returning to Normal

2011-05-03T14:26:00.001-07:00

We've had quite the interesting week to say the least! As you all probably know, we had what's called a generational storm system, in that something like this only happens about once a generation. I've heard the worst storm on record in 1974 spawned 149 tornadoes but this one spawned 150 tornadoes - in Alabama. I don't know what the total count for all the states turned out to be. It started on Wednesday when the storms started rolling in. After getting stuck in the basement at work for an hour, I took the opportunity to go home early in between storm fronts. I'm so glad I did too because I got home just minutes before another storm hit and several of them passed through my route home. Dana and Cade had already taken shelter once under the stairs when it got nasty but it was just a strong wind at that time. One of our neighbor's trees fell but nothing was damaged. The rest of the afternoon and early evening seemed to be one tornado warning after another with several passing just a few miles south of us. We lost power around 5:00. At one point, Dana noticed debris falling from the sky even though it was calm outside (indicator of a tornado nearby). Pieces of insulation, tin, shingles, paper and other items littered the area. We found a church bulletin from Phil Campbell and registration form from Hamilton AL (both about 100 miles away and very hard hit by the tornadoes).

The next day, power was out across the area. We heard 1 million people were w/o power. Most of Athens had power (we did not) so all the neighboring cities were coming here for gas and groceries and causing all kinds of headaches with traffic. Reports were that getting gas could take anywhere from 45 minutes to over 2 hours depending on what time you went. The grocery stores that were open were quickly wiped out of bread, milk, ice and the like. Being from the southwest, Dana bought some of the many available tortillas and we made meals with those. Ha! These Southerners apparently didn't know what to do with them. It also started to become more clear how lucky we were. An F-4 tornado passed just 2 miles south of us and destroyed several homes. One brick home was completely wiped off it's foundation. We had nothing more than some broken twigs in our yard while those nearby people lost everything.

Some good came out of the bad. Our lives slowed down and we spent more time visiting with neighbors and each other. Dana volunteered to work an extra day at the hospital since they were short on staffing and I grabbed my chainsaw and headed out with a group from our church to help with cleanup efforts. The chainsaws ran all day as we cut and others hauled off the debris. I won't post any pictures but it looked like a bomb went off in the hardest hit areas. Houses gone, cars pulverized, huge trees uprooted... After seeing this, I couldn't help but feel like I had a little survivor's guilt. We didn't have so much as a shingle torn from our roof. We also started hearing some terrible and heart breaking stories from EMTs and first responders that I won't repeat here.

Almost all of our friends were unaffected by the storms other than not having power but some did have some damage to their homes. One group was watching the big tornado as it approached and said the water in the field across the road suddenly rose and shot straight towards the approaching wall cloud then went straight up in the air. At that point, they ran inside and down to the basement. Just about every tree on their property was knocked over (and they had a lot!) and several hit the house. No one was injured though. Another friend had some damage to the home they were renting and ruined a lot of nice furniture. But literally, just across the street, several homes were destroyed and the second stories on each of them were gone. I'm pretty sure they consider themselves lucky.

As the days dragged on with no power, we used our little generator to charge all the neighbor's cell phones and the kids' portable games. Dana also used it to power her blow dryer. She was the only lady in the whole neighborhood with perfect hair every day! Everyone else wore a cap or a ponytail. We grilled some of the food in our freezer before it went bad and shared dinner with our neighbors. And I must say, we LOVE our neighbors. Everyone has been so good about helping and watching out for each other.

We never felt like we were all that affected by the storm, only minorly inconvenienced by the power loss but others felt differently. I stopped at AutoZone and when I asked the cashier how he was doing he griped that he could be a lot better because he didn't have any power at home. Really? Your place of employment is still there and open, your family is well, your house and property are fine and you're complaining? Seriously?

The power came back on at our house late Sunday night and cable and internet followed on Monday. After being cut off from everything for several days, we were finally able to see the images and videos from the storms. Yikes!

The other day Cade and Cameron found a big box from a generator and dragged it home. They taped it back together and call it their "emergency box". It appears the storms had an effect on them as well.

As I type this, the Redstone Arsenal where I work still hasn't reopened so I've been off work for almost a week. I could definitely get used to this as long as the paycheck keeps coming!

Things are slowly returning to normal and it appears the rest of the country has moved on to the next big news story. It'll be awhile before it feels normal here because I have to drive by some of those devastated houses to get to work. Every time I see one of those, I thank God my family wasn't injured.

I started working on a blog early last week with some updates over the last month or so. I'll get around to it again soon and post some pictures of the kids' happenings.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and prayers and for checking in on us. It was exciting but not the kind of exciting like a Space Shuttle launch where you immediately want to do it again. I'm good with going through that just once!

Mental Image Post

2011-02-27T15:53:00.001-08:00

We seem to have misplaced our camera so we don't have anything to show for the last few weeks. You'll have to use your good ol' imagnation for this post.

Most of you probably know Kevin made the no-cut soccer team at school. We joke about it but in reality, he made the "A" team and gets to play in the games. Some kids are stuck on the practice squad and don't get to play or travel. I'd say he's part of the "B" team of the "A" team if that makes sense. He's done well and played in all but one of the games and he was even the first 7th grader to score this season. So far, his team is 6-0 and looks like they have a pretty good shot at going undefeated but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. So here's the mental image part: Picture Kevin in a gold jersey with black shorts and a big #10 on his back. In that picture, imagine him doing a super cool bicycle kick to score the winning goal against the #1 team in Alabama. Ok, it didn't happen like that but if you pretend it did then 20 years from now that's what we'll all remember.

Cameron quit soccer to take up wrestling. After his first practice he was singing songs about how much he hated it. If you're like us, you probably had no idea how hard wrestlers have to work and how good of shape they have to be in. Anyway, after swearing he would never go back he changed his tune after a day or two (we would have changed it for him anyway since we already paid the $70) and kept at it. So far, he's really enjoyed it and his coaches have been very impressed with how hard he works and how quickly he's learning. Why is it that when I was coaching him, getting on to him only made him mad but for these guys he works harder? What the heck? Oh well, whatever works for him. He had his first tournament yesterday and wrestled his heart out. He lost both matches on points but he led after the first round both times and avoided getting pinned. Most kids never win a match their entire first year of wrestling so for him to have been close on his first try was like a win to me. He was caught a little off-guard in his first match because the intensity was noticeably higher than what he was used to in practice. For Cameron, just picture him pinning a guy the size of the Incredible Hulk. Again, convince yourself it happened and eventually it did happen. As a side note, another kid joined Cameron's team on Thursday. Never wrestled before and in really good shape (shape = round). On Saturday, he had to wrestle in the tournament. Poor guy had no clue what to do. He lives right by us so he and Cam may become buddies.

Cade is ready to start soccer and frequently talks about how many goals he's going to score this season. Practice should start next month. He also had a blast at the wrestling tournament yesterday and was climbing all over the bigger kids between matches so he might decide to pick that sport up later. They start at 5 but that just seems too young to me. For Cade's picture, just imagine him happy with a big smile on his face as he's running somewhere. That's perfectly normal for him.

Dana and I are well and are excited to see what our landscaping looks like when everything blooms and turns green again. Not so excited about the allergies though and Kevin is absolutely dreading having to mow. It's gonna take him a week with all this grass! We'll be sure to post some pictures of everything - if we can ever find that darn camera.

Snowpocalypse

2011-01-23T15:27:00.000-08:00

Recently, we had our second snow this winter and according to the locals it was one of those once-in-a-decade-or-more events. Actually, they say snow at all is one of those rare events let alone snow on Christmas followed a couple of weeks later by ~7 inches. As the weathermen made the predictions, schools shut down before the storm even arrived and everyone made a mad dash to the grocery store to get their milk and bread. A friend of ours took a picture at Publix and the bread shelves are literally empty. Every one of them! (But there were still some tortillas) The best part, to us anyway, was the fact that the snow stayed around for several days. School was cancelled for 3 days and I got 2 days off from work! Woo hoo!

We took a lot of good pictures so that's what this post is mostly about. But first, here's a shot we took shortly before the world tried to end.

I like this picture because it was taken on one of those nice evenings when we were enjoying being outdoors and the neighbor kids were all playing together. That kind of thing never happened in Las Cruces. Maybe it's because everyone's house is surrounded by a rock wall. We all had a lot of fun that night. But I don't know why Hunter is kissing the Titan. I like it too, but that's a little extreme.

And then it snowed!

Dana broke out here not-used-since-the-80's snow gear and I provided the musical accompaniment by singing the Flashdance song every chance I got. I tried to get her to do the fast foot shuffle dance thing but she refused.

Kids + snow = snow angels, every time

Cameron and Cade do the deed here. Dana made one too.

Cade couldn't wait to go sledding so while we waited for his brothers to get their act together. He would run and jump on the sled to slide across our yard. I just love this action shot.

The neighbors on both sides of us joined us for sledding on a hill near our house. The dads were acting like kids and the kids were having a ball. If you remember Dana's last sledding adventure (see our December 31, 2007 post) you'll know why she vowed to never touch a sled again. Fortunately, I was able to talk her into it one more time. Can you tell she's a little apprehensive here? This hill is NOTHING like Ron's Suicide Run at Inlow.

Cameron charging down the hill. Surprisingly, he was the first one to get cold and quit despite the fact that he was the only one with snow pants and boots on.

Kevin and Hunter tried to build an igloo. They managed to build the walls about a foot high before realizing how much work it is. They called it good at that.

After a full day of sledding, snowball fights and eating snow ice cream, we were treated to this spectacular sunset.

Day Two dawned bright and early and with it came the news that there would be no school or work for the second day in a row. Not surprisingly, Cade was begging to go out before the sun was fully up. Eventually, we made it outside and Dana laid down the law and told the kids everyone had to build a snowman of their own. And that's where things took a turn for the weird. You see, Kevin and Cameron had been reading my old Calvin & Hobbes comic books. Remember Calvin's snowgoons? They sure did.

It's a little hard to see but Kevin's snowman's head is lying on the ground while the arms are reaching up where the head should be. I have to give Kevin credit for taking the time to trim the branches to make the arms look right. And yes, the red paint is the snowman's blood.

Cameron built this grotesque scene. The snowman with the lopping shears stuck in his chest has an "x" for each eye as you'd expect. The other snowman's evil look leads me to assume he's the culprit.

Good ol' Cade made a regular snowman but he really liked the idea of using paint to make the snowman look better. He started with eyes, a mouth and a couple of buttons. Then he added some more buttons. Then some more. And then hair. And then more facial features...

Here's our complete snowfamily. Kevin and Cameron are hard at work on their creation in the background. How do you like Dana's stick snowwoman?

Remember the snowman lean from my last post? These snowmen were doing "the lean" just hours after being made. I'm telling you, there's a hit song and dance here if I can just figure it out.

Dana also made this caterpillar by the curb. Pretty cute.

More sledding. Kevin and Hunter on a small hill behind our house.

Cade catching maximum air off a 4" jump.

No joke, this boy would stay outside all day and night if we'd let him.

Later in the week, I got home from work just as the sun was setting. Dana told me Cade had been waiting outside for me because I had told him I'd try to come home early so we could play some more. Feeling a little guilty, I quickly changed and we hurried out the door to get a few sledding runs in before it got too dark. Fortunately, the sky was clear and the moon was out so we had plenty of light to continue playing even after the sun set. We had a great time and neither of us wanted to come in from our sledding in the moonlight adventure. That's a memory that will last a lifetime.

And finally, Cade bought some handcuffs (which he calls "cubbies" for some reason) at the store yesterday. I cuffed him to the oven handle. He thought it was pretty funny until I told him they broke and I couldn't get him out. He asked me to get some tools to get them off and I told him he'd have to wait until I finished fixing lunch because I couldn't leave the microwave unattended (chicken nuggets - that's about the best I can do so no comments!). He looked so sad and pitiful that I had to take a picture before telling him I was just kidding.

I thought it was funny.

Christmas 2011

2011-01-11T16:26:00.000-08:00

This year, for the first time, we spent Christmas at home alone. Although we certainly missed seeing everyone and spending time with our families, we still had a great time.

On Christmas Eve, we went out to an early dinner before the church service and the boys chose to eat some fine cuisine from McDonalds. Oh well. After enjoying our meal together, we went to a beautiful service before driving around to look at lights. Our favorite house didn't decorate this year so it was slim pickin's. Then we went home and started our new Christmas tradition of opening one gift each - and that gift is a new pair of pajamas. After putting them on, lighting the fake fire (we have a gas fireplace), and watching a movie together, we sent the kids to bed.

As usual, the kids weren't allowed to see what Santa brought until they woke us up. Much to their dismay, Dana laid down the law and set a "no one bother us before 6:00" rule. Since the stairs to their rooms are right beside the living room, Dana and I slept upstairs in the bonus room to make sure they didn't peek.

At 5:58 am, we were awakened by 3 rowdy boys bursting at the seams with anticipation and excitement. Remember that feeling?

Here's what the boys found when they came downstairs. Cade got a Green Machine, Cameron got an iPod Touch and Kevin got a wicked-cool, electric Airsoft rifle. As their dad, I automatically called priority on all 3 Santa gifts when I want to play with them.

And then the paper shredding began.

Laser Tag with night vision! We've, I mean, the boys have had a blast with these.

You can tell Cameron didn't have any interest in this Metroid game for his Wii. He's been dying to get this since it came out in September.

Shortly after we got up, we noticed it was snowing! Before long, we had 3" of snow on the ground and it continued snowing all day and most of the next but we didn't have any more accumulation. Later in the morning, we went sledding on the hill by our house and were joined by our neighbors on both sides of us. We all had a great time together and it was quite different than our experiences in Las Cruces where everyone is confined to their own, walled-in yard. I tell you, we had a wonderful Christmas! However, Cade was a little bummed about the snow because he couldn't ride his Green Machine for a few days.

First snow tasting of the year.

I don't know why we took a picture of our table but I like this shot for the trees and houses in the background.

Out here, they have these things called trees that the snow collects on and they look really pretty.

The view across the road toward our old back yard.

Cade will spend all day, every day outdoors if we'd let him. Here he's getting ready for our second trip out in the snow. I found my old ski mask and gave it to him to keep his face warm. Doesn't he look awfully stinkin' cute?

I built a snowman on Cade's head.

Our neighbor built the big snowman in the background. He quickly developed a lean before losing his head. Then I noticed the little one I built on the Titan was doing the same thing. The Snowman Lean. Sounds like a new dance craze!

Cade and I had a contest to see who could throw a snowball the highest against the house. Here's his jumpshot.

This is on the 3rd day of the snow hanging around. We didn't have much left but that didn't stop Cade from taking advantage of what was there.

It took a couple of days but he was finally able to take his new wheels out for a spin. And he crashed right off the bat. For some reason, this thing doesn't spin so well on the concrete. The kids have a little trouble with it on the asphalt as well (I don't!).

Cade's first ride and his first crash.

He was hesitant to try it again but I talked him into it. Here's his first successful spin. (Special thanks to Cameron for letting me use his iPod to record this. Dang that thing is neat!)

December

2011-01-09T14:31:00.001-08:00

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and as much fun as we had. As usual, we stayed plenty busy in the weeks leading up to Christmas with parties and other activities.

One of the best things to happen was the spelling bee at Cameron's school. Cameron was in it and was competing against 2 kids from each of the 3rd and 4th grade classes. Guess who won? We were (are) so proud of that little dude! When the second to last student missed her word, Cameron realized he could win it if he spelled his word right and that look was written all over his face. When they asked him to spell "unify", he actually paused and thought about it (unlike when we were practicing) before spelling it correctly. Now he has a big ol' honkin' trophy and gets to compete against the kids from the other schools in town. All of them. From 3rd grade through 10th grade! Isn't that nuts?

Here's the Cowart Elementary Spelling Bee Champion and the runner-up (which we suspect Cameron has a crush on). She doesn't look too happy.

Speaking of Cameron, any of you that have spent much time around him know he's the most curious of the 3 boys. If there's a button, he'll push it. If it comes apart, he'll disassemble it (and never put it together). I think this next photo is a great example of his curiosity.

We recently got a new front-load washer and dryer. Dana took this picture of Cameron watching the washer to see how it works.

As we got closer to Christmas, the boys and I started our vacations and had plenty of time to hang out around the house with Dana. We filled our time with play and a lot of fun activities.

Making Janet's famous orange ball cookies is one of our favorite Christmas traditions (and yummiest!)

We also made gingerbread houses. The kit contained 5 houses but we really couldn't figure out which pieces went where so we pretty much decided to wing it. One of the very cool buildings I made was accused of looking like an outhouse.

Not the outhouse but a fine example of my handiwork. Hey, we started to get desperate when the icing started drying so quickly and just grabbed whatever piece was closest to make the house.

Cameron and I built a music box that plays "Here Comes Santa Claus" from scratch. OK, maybe not completely from scratch but we did assemble it from the completely disassembled kit. That's pretty much the same as building it from scratch, right?

Christmas time also means Christmas pictures of the family. When I look at other people's pictures, the family always looks so nice and everyone looks so happy. When I look at ours, I remember the arguing and griping and effort it took to produce one or two half-way acceptable shots. We probably took 500 pictures and after deleting those with tears, mad faces, sad faces, weird faces, and closed eyes, we didn't have any left. So the following shots are the best we could do.

This wasn't actually planned but Cameron really wanted to take a picture of us. He did alright.

I realized later, I didn't get a nice picture of Dana with the boys. They all wanted to make funny faces in all the shots she's in. That's OK because this represents our family better than the fake poses.

Dana took a nice picture of the boys and me.

I had a special request to get a picture of the boys with the sled this year. Mom and Dad had a picture of all the grandkids in the sleigh except for Cade. We almost waited too long. Little dude isn't so little anymore.

We also drug out our Twister game for the first time in years. The boys had a blast playing it and of course roped Dana and me into several games with them. I'm not sure about Dana, but it sure made me realize just how little flexibility I have anymore.

Cade's struggling to stay up in this solo game. Notice his tongue!

Kevin's friends Hunter and Nic even got into it. This game appears to have broken down into some alternate version.

We also spent a lot of playing time outside. Cade, more than the other two, loves being outdoors. He drags his scooter and bike and anything else he can get his hands on out every day if we let him. Even in the cold. Recently, he came up with a new way to keep his face, and nose, warm.

Ever since Cade was little, he has loved wearing gloves (and weird outfits). Of course, we can never keep a pair of gloves together so when he finds one he'll wear it Michael Jackson style for a few days until he either loses it or finds another one. Here, he found one black glove and one Spiderman glove. I think they pair nicely with the desperado look he has going. Just the other day he went into the store with me to return a movie dressed just like this except with two Spiderman gloves. If it didn't bother him, I guess it doesn't bother me. (

I'll post our Christmas pictures soon.

Busy Time of Year

2010-12-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened over the last month. We finally, officially, completely and no jokely, sold our house in NM. Then we turned around a couple of days later and bought a house here. We were supposed to have closed on this house the weekend before Thanksgiving which would have worked out nicely since Dana was off from work. However, it didn't quite work out that way. Instead, the closing was pushed back a week so, with the owner's permission, we started moving in the day before Thanksgiving. One pickup and Expedition load at a time. We took most of the day off on Thursday to spend quality time getting on each other's nerves and eating the wonderful meal Dana prepared. Then we jumped back into it on Friday with the help of a couple of our friends. Good ol' U-haul apparently lost my reservation for a trailer because I was never able to get one. That would have saved at least a lot of trips back and forth if not a fair amount of time. And, living in football country, our help was only good until about 1:00 because the Auburn vs. Alabama game was coming on. But with their help, we managed to get all the heavy stuff moved. All that was left was the little stuff. And that took another 2 days. Dana slept all day so I worked Kevin and Cameron to the bone.

Having moved in and no longer owning a washing machine or dryer (our rental house had one and we sold our old stuff when we left NM), we decided to head to Sears in the wee hours of the morning on Black Friday to snag the good deal on a new washer and dryer. Actually, Dana decided that I would head to Sears in the wee hours of the morning. So I talked Kevin into heading out with me at 2:00 in the morning. As one would expect, we were the 5th person in line for the 4 sets available. To make matters worse, it was cold and rainy. I waited anyway to get a different set while Kevin wimped out after about 1/2 an hour and sat in the pickup with the heater on.

Now we're into the part of the year where it seems like hardly a day goes by without some sort of activity to keep us busy.

I really like this picture. It was a windy day and Cameron and Cade were picking up piles of leaves and throwing them in the air. Can you be any more carefree than that?

Cade had a little Thanksgiving skit with his pre-school class. He looks like a man among boys (and girls) in his class. And yes, that tiny little girl is 4 and in his class.

A couple of weeks later, they had their Christmas performance. Cade is lip-synching his heart out...

While we watch and entertain ourselves from the pews.

We forgot to take the camera with us when we went to the tree farm to get our tree so I'll describe the scene. Picture freezing weather and wind. Now imagine us shivering while we wander among all these trees trying to find one with a fairly straight trunk that isn't too tall or short or wide or butchered. Out of desperation, someone says, "How about this one," and without even looking everyone readily agrees just so we can get the heck out of there and back into the pickup with the heater on full blast. Oh yeah, and Dana had been up all night and was really tired. That's the stuff memories are made of right there.

Kevin had his 7th grade band concert a few days ago. He looked mighty handsome in his tux (which is missing the jacket in this photo but he wore it later). The band sounded pretty darn good, especially after listening to the 5th and 6th graders right before them. Kevin even said he wondered if they sounded that bad last year. Yes.

The majority of the houses on our street have made at least a minimal effort to decorate for Christmas so we couldn't go without either. This is the extent of our decorations for this year, except I'll add two little trees that we'd forgotten about to the display this weekend. It doesn't look like much here but it is voice activated. I say, "Cameron, plug in the lights," and Cameron does it.

MSFC didn't decorate their usual Christmas tree this year. Instead they created a megatree using the Saturn I. How cool is that?

We had some freezing rain yesterday. These little birds, and several others, were all over the ice that formed on the patio table. We still get a kick out of seeing the cardinals and other birds that actually have some color.

That's all for now. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Halloween/Fall

2010-11-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

Trying to catch up on the last month's worth of pictures...

In the Spring, when everything is blooming, we say Spring has sprung. So now that all the colors are changing do we say Fall fell or Fall has fallen? These are the things that keep me up at night.

Speaking of Fall, it sure has been purty around here lately.

This is the entrance to our neighborhood. The colors never come out right, especially with a cheapo cameral ike ours. You'll have to take my word for it. It's even more pretty in person.

We don't know what these bright red bushes are but we sure like 'em.

I took Cameron and Cade to the pumpkin farm one day in October to play for a few hours while Dana slept. We had a great time there but it wasn't the same w/o the whole family. I think Kevin was a birthday party at the local paintball place.

Cameron's getting up there.

And so is Cade. The dude barely turned 5 and he's over 4 feet tall!

The pumpkin patch had a petting zoo and the best part for my boys (and a lot of other kids) were these tiny little kittens. Cameron would have been happy to have just stayed there and played with them all day. They were pretty darn cute.

Photo op before when we got there.

For once, we didn't wait until the last minute to carve our pumpkins so it was actually enjoyable this year. Notice Batman on the left side of the picture. Cade wore his costume every day, all day for what seemed like weeks.

Dana collected the seeds for roasting. She had two recipes to try this year. Sweet and salty.

Kevin working on his masterpiece.

Cameron designed and carved his own pumpkin but was pretty ticked with the way it came out. I really liked it. Kevin used a pattern for his and I used one for mine and Cade's as well.

Cade had a Halloween party in his pre-school class. I just realized that I don't think the poor kid has ever had a new costume of his own. He always uses hand-me-downs from his brothers. Oh well. He doesn't know and doesn't seem to care. He was pretty excited to have a choice of costumes to choose from when we got them out this year.

Why doesn't anyone want to be a vampire anymore?

Cade also got to go to Cameron's school for another party. The kids couldn't wear a mask so a lady that was there to paint the kids' faces took care of Cam.

Halloween 2010

Kevin took off with his friends so I took the boys around our neighborhood. Surprisingly, Cameron only made it to the end of our street before wanting to go home so he could hand out candy. Cade and I covered another couple of streets before it got too late. I enjoyed following Batman down the sidewalk. He looked as cute as a bees knees! (I think that's the proper Suthern term)

Speaking of cute. Now that it's getting colder, Cade's been wearing his dog feet slippers around the house.

Hopefully our next update will be coming from our new house - as in our own house not a rental house. We're supposed to be closing on our NM house next week (after a little over 2 years on the market!!!) and we've made an offer on a house here. Despite looking all over town and around the area, we picked a house that's only a stone's throw from where we live now. Go figure. But we already know, and like, both neighbors and the house just seemed to fit us. So we're obviously very excited to finally get feel settled down and we're looking forward to finally putting some pictures on the walls. Now if I can just hold onto my job... But that's another story.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Disney Part II

2010-11-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

Still catching up on pictures. You've probably seen some, or most, of these on Dana's Facebook page. She just can't wait to post all the good shots. Darn her. Oh well, I consider this blog to be a family diary of sorts anyway.

These are mostly in random order.

Day 1. The Reynolds ready to tear it up at Magic Kingdom!

At this point in our vacation, Cade was still freaked out by the characters. That changed later in the week but by then we had trouble finding any of them. Nice face, Cameron!

As much as Cade loves Lightning McQueen and Mater, I thought he'd love to have his picture with them. Nope. Lightning McQueen was loud and his moving eyes creeped Cade out a little. Kevin and Cameron had no such issues.

Waiting for our lunch reservation at a 50's style diner.

There are a couple of good stories here. The waiters weren't afraid to remind people to use their manners. Apparently, Kevin has lousy table manners. When our waiter came to pick up our plates, he asked Kevin why he hadn't eaten his corn. Kevin made some excuse so the waiter picked up a fork, scooped up some corn and "flew" it into Kevin's mouth - complete with airplane noises. He then told Kevin to eat his corn, picked up all the other plates and walked off. Kevin ate his corn! A few minutes later, the waiter told Kevin to get his elbows off the table. He walked into the next room behind Kevin, stuck his head back through the window between the two rooms (and right behind Kevin) and said, "I told you to get your elbows off the table!" If I hadn't been so afraid of being rude I would have laughed pretty hard at the whole thing. Unfortunately, he didn't say anything to the old dude sitting next to us. He was constantly picking his teeth with a credit card, scratching facial parts, etc. Dana and I had to consciously make an effort not to look that direction.

The boys and some beautiful woman.

Kevin, Cade, Dana and Tootie on yet another roller coaster.

Almost every day, the cleaning ladies did something neat in our room. Towels arranged like Mickey Mouse, our stuffed animals propped up on the bed, and this day, neatly arranged in the window with the blinds drawn just enough to see them. Nice little touches.

A great shot of us on the GM test track ride. This ride was a blast! At least Cameron and I thought so. Judging by everyone else's reaction (I'm looking at you, Dana!) it had some scary moments. I think we were about to crash into a wall right here. Mom and Dad were in a car behind us.

This was taken when we traveled back in time to catch a dinosaur. Apparently, riding in the front seat was more scary than in the back because all 3 of them look like scaredy cats. Pa is the only one of us in the back seat showing any signs of life.

We took a brief trip to San Francisco while we were on vacation in Florida.

Cameron spent almost all of his time at Blizzard Beach in this area. He especially enjoyed the zip line. He just let go of the handle in this shot.

We didn't buy any hats like this but we had to get at least one picture of someone with Mickey Mouse ears.

My first ride with Cameron at the wheel. I tried not to show my panic but I don't think I did a very good job of it.

Cade looking cute on the slide.

Waiting for the bus to take us to a park. We did a lot of this. Seems like we always got to the bus stop right after they left.

We got our picture with Sue the famous T-Rex!

And last,but not least, here's the Summit Plummet. Kevin, Dana and I all rode this. Before we got there, Cameron talked about "manning up" and riding it but once he saw it in person he changed his mind. I wish I had. That thing is so darn steep it feels like you're in a free fall for a moment. When I dropped over the edge, it just kept getting steeper and steeper. I'm not too proud to admit it scared me! Dad pointed out that no one screams on that ride. I don't think you can because the fear of impending death causes you to clench every muscle so tight a scream becomes impossible. From start to finish, you drop 120 feet (feels like 720), reach speeds of 55 mph (feels like 255!), do 47 hail marys, say 78 prayers, see your life flash before your eyes twice, drink 14 gallons of water and wonder if your heart will ever get back down below 300 bpm. All in 7 seconds!

Disney World!

2010-10-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

The big news over the last month or so is that we sold our house! Well, it's under contract so it isn't official yet but everything looks good and we're on track to close on November 3! That will make it 24 months and 2 days from putting it on the market to closing. I probably just jinxed the whole thing by talking about it.

The last month we've been keeping busy with soccer. It hasn't been the most successful of seasons for any of the 3 teams but the boys are still having fun and that's what really counts. After coming so close several times, Cade finally scored his first goal earlier this season then he turned around and scored another one in the same game. He was so cute because he was so proud of himself but he tried to play it off like no big deal at first. He finally gave in and gave a round of high-fives to everyone.

We don't really have any good action pictures of soccer so I'll post this recent picture of the 3 boys instead.

It's been awhile since I've taken one of these.

By some huge stroke of luck, none of the three teams had any games scheduled during the week of Fall Break. I say stroke of luck, because that's when we scheduled our vacation to Disney World and no one missed a game or had to reschedule.

We pulled the kids out of school for 3 days (Fall Break is 2 days), loaded up the Expedition, pointed it south and put the pedal to the metal. Dana, who worked all night before we left, slept most of the day while I drove then had the nerve to comment to me how the 10 hour trip down there seemed to go by pretty quickly.

I'm too lazy to put all the pictures in order since they didn't load that way. Like you'll know the difference anyway.

Cade was lucky enough to celebrate his 5th birthday at Disney World! How cool is that? Dana made a special birthday shirt for him and he was given a button to wear telling everyone about his birthday. Every where we went all day, people wished him a happy birthday. I think he liked all the attention.

We had lunch that day with the Disney characters. He really liked that and was so excited when Pooh, Tigger, Eyore and Piglet came around to visit with him.

Birthday boy and his brothers with Pooh.

Cade and Tigger

Opening presents back at the hotel room. His eyes sure lit up when he saw this Lightning McQueen car.

Dana and the boys on Expedition Everest.

Cade was a roller coaster riding machine! I think he rode all the roller coasters at Disney World. Even though he looks scared in the picture, it didn't stop him from riding it again. I think Kevin's favorite ride was the Tower of Terror. He rode it 8 times! Cameron's was Rock 'n Roller Coaster. He "only" rode it 5 times. All the boys definitely got the carnival ride gene from Dana.

Waiting for Blizzard Beach to open on our second visit.

Cade loves to play with dominoes so I took a picture of him hugging this giant one.

Cade and me on some random ride that I can't remember the name of.

Cade picked this Yeti from the Expedition Everest roller coaster as one of his souvenirs. At first, his name was Whitey (because Cade is so original). Then it was Whitey Bluey because "he has cute, little, pointy blue feet."

We spent part of one day at Animal Kingdom where we all rode a ride on the rapid river. The boat we were in held 12 or 14 people. Of the 10 of us that were in it (another family was with us), I was the ONLY one that didn't get wet. And I mean WET. I did, however, have the perfect view as we splashed into the waves and they crashed over the top of the boat and drenched everyone and everything in sight - except me. Our camera was put away for obvious reasons, so with the help of Google search, I made an attempt at illustrating the ride from my point of view. Because, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Here's what I saw. I forgot to draw a text box of everyone screaming.

This is what everyone else saw.

How I felt.

Apparently, everyone else had a different opinion. Here's Dana wringing out her shirt.

These are all the pictures I have for now. Needless to say, we had a fantastic time at Disney World. Cade summed it all up when he said, "Mom, I love Disney World so much I think my head is going to blow up!"

August and Labor Day

2010-09-10T19:32:00.000-07:00

Summer vacation is but a distant memory. We ended our fun in the sun with our annual trip to the water park with our church. We all had a great time. I even managed to talk Cade into going down one of the big water slides with me on a 2-person inner tube. It was a little scary even for me but he enjoyed it.

Dana getting all kissy-face in front of the camera.

The next day, the kids started school (Aug 9!). Kevin into 7th grade, Cameron in 4th and Cade started pre-school.

Technically, this is the 3rd day for Kevin and Cameron but it is Cade's first day. He didn't actually start until Wednesday. And Dana forgot to get Kevin's and Cameron's picture on Day 1. Shame on that girl.

Monthly random picture of Cade being cute.

Now that Dana works on Friday and Saturday nights, I have to keep the kids quiet during the day so I'm always looking for new or fun things to do to get everyone out of the house. The Space and Rocket Center had a traveling Star Wars exhibit. It was quite pricey, but boy, was it cool! At least I thought so. The boys liked it too but not as much as I did. It was full of props from all 6 movies.

While we were waiting for our exhibit time to start, we killed time in the rest of the museum. Cameron and Cade even took a trip to explore Mars.

The famous Star Destroyer that filled the screen at the beginning of Star Wars. It's probably between 5 and 6 feet long and super detailed. Cool stuff! The funny thing is that the ship it "captures" in that first scene is actually bigger than this one.

Kevin Solo and Cadebacca (or is it ChewCader?)

Those humongous AT-AT walkers are the size of a small/medium dog. I guess that means Luke was only and inch or so tall.

Darth Vader! And he's not short.

We celebrated Labor Day weekend by revisiting Tim's Ford State Park in TN. We rode our bikes around the park again and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Cade always impresses me with how well he kept up with the rest of us on the hills even though he was on that little bike.

And finally, it dawned on me that we hadn't treated ourselves to any Drumsticks (ice cream) in a long time. What better way to wrap up summer than sitting on the back porch, eating ice cream with the family and enjoying a beautiful evening together?

Cade prefers to wear half of his ice cream. Reminds me of some pictures we have of Cameron when he was younger.

Soccer season is also upon us. Kevin hasn't had any games yet but the other two have. We haven't taken any pictures yet but we'll post some soon.

Heat Wave and a Birthday

2010-07-26T18:47:00.000-07:00

What's a kid to do when it gets hot outside? Play in the water, of course! Cade would spend all day, every day outside if we'd let him (unfortunate that the kid that likes outdoors the most is the whitest and most prone to sunburns of the three) but the heat just gives him another excuse to go outside - to play in the water!

Cade and Cameron like to fill this bucket with water and stick their heads in it. Can't say I ever thought of doing that as a kid but it must be fun.

Cameron's unavailability (or refusal to go outside) doesn't stop Cade. He calls this his shower.

No idea what he's doing here but he looks cute and he has his swimsuit on so it fits the theme.

It's hard to believe but Kevin recently turned 12! This is the same little guy that only wanted to turn 4 so he could ride a dirt bike and then he only wanted to turn 5 so he could go to school. Despite our best efforts and bribes, he just keeps getting older.

We celebrated his birthday this year by taking a couple of his friends to the local water park and having them stay the night. We spent over 6 hours at the park so we all got a little too much sun even though we kept reapplying sunscreen every couple of hours.

Here's the birthday boy with his brothers and best friends Hunter, on the left, and Nic on the right. 12! Geez.

A couple of weekends ago, while Dana was sleeping during the day (she worked the night before), I took the boys to a roller derby. I had no idea what to expect but I sure didn't expect women with mullets and gnarly tattoos on their biceps. It was sort of fun to watch but we really didn't have any idea what was going on. We all rooted for one girl in particular because her appearance was so striking. Her picture is below. It's one of those things where I'm glad I went but don't think I'll go back.

I told you the women were gnarly!

We're down to less than 2 weeks until school starts and the boys are not exactly thrilled about it. It's hard to believe the summer is almost over already. I have a lot of things to I wanted to do with the boys this year that I'll have to cram into the next 2 weeks.

Summer's Cross Flags

2010-07-11T18:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know about other forms of racing but in motocross the cross flags signal the midpoint of the race. Such as it is with the boys' summer vacation. They're just a shade past halfway through their carefree summer days and staying-up-late-at-night-to-play-video-games nights. It's a cruel reality that time flies when you're having fun but drags when you're not. Should the kids intentionally stay bored and do as little as possible to drag out their summer vacation or should they go full throttle and cram as much as they can into their 9 or so weeks of freedom to make good memories?

I prefer memories.

We had a pretty good scare with my job situation a couple of weeks ago when several hundred of my coworkers were laid off thanks to the White House's misguided and poorly planned space policy (but that's for another blog). Technically, I did lose my job but my bosses (bless them!) got me transferred to another department. So I'm doing the same type of job I was doing before but instead of working on the Ares rocket I'm now working on a lunar lander. Still pretty cool!

Right before all the lay-offs, MSFC had a family day. Car show, bingo (with REALLY nice prizes - flat screen TVs, blueray DVD players, bicycles, etc.), inflatables, games, etc. We spent a few hours there, almost exclusively watching the boys on the inflatables, and had a great time.

Cameron about to rocket down the big slide.

Kevin just couldn't slide straight like a normal person.

They even had joust!

Cade was sporting this NASA tattoo all day.

The following weekend, our Sunday School class got together at someone's lake house to play in the sun and water all day.

Cade loved the slide!

The little stinker also liked doing the dead man's float. Every time I turned around he looked like this and every time I had a little heart attack.

Kevin and Cameron both took their first rides on a tube behind the boat and spent most of the day swimming and jumping in the water.

By the end of the day, the boys were tuckered out. I think Cade fell asleep before the Expedition's starter quit turning. Kevin is actually faking it in this picture but Cade isn't.

And then it was 4th of July weekend and my mom and dad came to visit for a few days! We ran them ragged by taking them to all our favorite spots.

De Soto State Park is always a nice place to go. Unfortunately, there wasn't much water this year.

At the water falls.

Madison (city) had a nice 4th of July celebration so we took the boys there for a couple of hours.

As usual, the boys had a blast on the inflatables.

Cade found an obstacle course he really liked. He would enter one end, climb through to the other side and literally run back to the start and do it again. I don't know how many consecutive times he did this but it was enough for me to notice and get a few pictures as he ran by.

Gotta get a patriotic picture of the boys on the 4th of July!

Cade was on the run as usual. If his mouth isn't running, his body is.

I like this picture of Cameron playing with the flag.

Playing with sparklers as it gets dark.

Now that Dana is working weekend nights, the boys and I have to stay deathly quiet during the day (which is basically impossible with these 3) so I just try to get out of the house so she can sleep.

Yesterday, I took them to a car show in Decatur. Lots of really nice cars but I especially liked this Corvette ZR1. The sticker price on this beauty was just under $122k!

And finally, a couple of bonus pictures of Cade:

This picture reminds me of one I took a few years ago when he was tippy toeing to look in the middle drawer. He's a little taller now.

Cade LOVES his tiger. He sleeps with it and carries it around all the time. But it isn't all that white anymore. Here he and the tiger are playing a video game.

Spring Sprang But Summer's Funner

2010-06-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

It's officially summer! And apparently we're in for a doozy of a summer this year. I guess Alabama broke us in nice and easy last year and is going to make up for it with a vengeance this year. But so far we still prefer the lower (less than 100 deg) temperature with higher humidity over the skin boiling sun Las Cruces has.

As most of you probably know, we're on pins and needles around here as we wait for news on the status of my job. I do know my position has been eliminated but my bosses (NASA and contractor) are trying hard to get me transferred to another branch so I don't get laid off. I won't even be working for them but they're trying to help nonetheless. We'll know if they're successful by Tuesday. I can't tell you how much I've appreciated all the help people have given me over the last couple of weeks.

Back in happier and less stressful times, we were having fun and keeping busy. Jacobs had an employee appreciation day at a state park in early June.

We liked the view and fog driving up the mountain.

After our free breakfast, we toured the grounds. They have a lot of old buildings and demonstrations of how things were done in the late 1800's. Here, the boys just finished helping churn a bucket of ice cream and are enjoying the fruits, er, milk and ice of their labor.

The museum had a lot of interesting things to see and read about. These two clocks are over 350 years old. That's not a typo. 350. And they still work. To be fair, they were upgraded somewhere along the line to display minutes since they originally only told time in 15 minute intervals (at least that's what I remember). Neat stuff!

We took a walk down a walking trail and had to take a break because the boys were getting hot. Good opportunity to take a picture.

They also had a lot of old farm equipment. Here's an old John Deere something-or-other.

I never realized how big the blooms are on magnolia trees.

After we got home, Kevin and Cade went with me to a car show in downtown Athens. They had about 150 cars that ranged from rat rods to $100k+ cars.

Kevin and Cade posing in front of a car that's just like Pa's! Mostly.

This Viper was one of their favorites.

They were terrified when they realized they were standing next to a Decepticon! (Bad guys from the Transformers movie. This guy had several Decepticon logos on his car and embroidered into the headrests.)

Memorial Day Weekend & School's Out!

2010-06-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a happy Memorial Day weekend and celebrated this wonderful country of ours and the veterans who made it happen.

So the kids are out of school for the summer. They were supposed to go Monday and Tuesday last week but the schools encouraged the kids not to come to school those two days. So Kevin and Cameron stayed home and started their vacation two days early. Kevin is now officially "7th grade material" and Cameron is moving on to the 4th grade. 7th grade and 4th grade! Where has the time gone?

Our Sunday school class kicked things off with a "School's Out" party. We had a nice time visiting with our friends and the kids had a blast playing on the inflatable slide. Does Cameron look like a happy kid or what?

Of course, it wouldn't be summer without some trips to the swimming pool. We don't have access to the neighborhood pool because we're not members (but can be for a mere $3k) but we have friends who are. Muahahahaha! Take that, you evil HOA! These are our friends the Williams. They're the Alabama version of us. Mike and Nora. Same age as Dana and me. 3 kids. Same ages as our boys. Really nice and wonderful people who are adored and loved by all. See? Just like us.

We celebrated Memorial Day weekend by renting a "cabin" at The Ridge where we like to go riding. I use the term cabin loosely because it's really just a single room with beds and a TV with no cable or antenna or VCR or anything to actually watch. The bathroom and showers are across the road. But it was cheap and nice enough and we got to hang out as a family and enjoy the time together. And we had plenty of time together because it rained. A lot. The tracks were closed all weekend so the riding was very limited too. But, it was good enough to get Cade out and get him actually riding the PW! Yep, he's officially a little dirt bike rider now and proud of it.

From Friday evening when we arrived through most of Saturday, this is pretty much what it looked like. See those rivers forming by the Titan? We didn't even bother unloading the bikes until Sunday. But the best part of the rain was listening to it on the tin roof of our cabin. Ahhhhh! I love that. With all the rain, the firewood was soaked so no campfires for us. We improvised and made Smores over a charcoal fire.

Here he goes! I used the training wheels for about 10 minutes (at Cade's request). It was just enough time to let him figure out the throttle and to decide that the bike is very hard to ride with them on. So training wheels are off and throttle is limited. That makes boy #3 that the PW has now taught to ride.

Cute picture.

Sitting on top of the tabletop on the pee wee track.

Riding wears a kid out! Look at his sweaty, spiky hair!

I love this shot.

Cameron getting ready to take off.

Finally! I now have 3 riding buddies!

The rest of us got to ride for about an hour on Sunday. It wasn't long but Kevin, Cameron and I rode the trails and had a good time. Then it rained again. Did I ever mention that it rains a lot in Alabama?

Boy#1 and me.

On the way home, we detoured down a side road to see this covered bridge. Unfortunately, it's in pretty bad shape. We'd never seen one in person before.

Cool bridge.

Looking down the creek. I'll never get tired of scenery like this.

Late Spring and Space Shuttle Launch!!!

2010-05-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

Just like the title says, here's the last month plus worth of updates and it's long but I have good reason for it.

Since it's spring, Dana grew tired of spring cleaning so she's trained Cade to take over some of her chores. Poor little guy.

Hard at work mopping the floor.

Don't feel too bad for him though. He's still young enough to enjoy it. In his downtime, Cade figured out how to use the camera and take self portraits. Imagine our delight when we turn the camera on to review our latest pictures and see pictures like this:

And this:

Last time, I had a photo of Cade exercising to Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. Dana kept telling me how good of a workout it is and "suggested" I try it. How hard can it be, right? I get up early and exercise most days so I'm in decent shape. Well, after doing Level 1 (of 3) for a couple of weeks, I grew to be not very fond of ol 'Jillian. The only hand weights we have are 5 lbs. Doesn't seem like much, right? WRONG! They say they're 5 lbs, but I think they're more like 50. I wobbled through some of those exercises and thought my arms were going to fall off. I had to use both hands to pick my spoon full of oatmeal up when I ate breakfast. Once I was able to eat mostly normally again, I figured I'd step it up to Level 2. OMG! I'm now convinced Jillian is the Devil's spawn. That wicked little troll is trying to kill me and she does it with an evil sneer the entire time. I'm scared to death to ever try Level 3. Dana just laughs at me. I think housework is much more gnarly than I ever thought. Or perhaps Dana is one bad dude. Probably both.

Cameron celebrated his 9th birthday last month! Holy moly! Where has the time gone?

We made him work for his presents by giving him clues that eventually led him to them.

9 candles!

The birthday boy! Dana surprised him at school with those balloons and some cupcakes. I think my boy had a pretty special day.

Recently, the science museum had a free day. Kevin was at a birthday party so I took Cade and Cameron. We had a great time and I think the kids accidentally learned a couple of things. They liked this funhouse style mirror.

I have some mad skills with self portraits! I couldn't have framed that any better if I was looking through the camera.

Two weeks ago, I managed to snag a last minute causeway pass to see the launch of Atlantis on STS-132. (Did I ever mention I was on the flight deck of Atlantis? ☺ Ok, ok, ok. ) Since it came about so late, Dana had commitments so she stayed home with Cade. Kevin, Cameron and I made a fast trip down to FL to watch the launch. We drove down on Thursday, watched the launch Friday afternoon and started driving back that evening. It was a quick trip but well worth it.

The boys wanted to play in the ocean but settled for the hotel pool. What good is a pool without a cannonball? Or a Cameronball, in this case.

Kevin lounging by the pool. It was a gorgeous evening!

The next morning we fought through traffic to get to the Kennedy Space Center gate 4 hours before launch. Once on site, traffic was suddenly stopped and helicopters started hovering around. I had no idea what was going on until we saw the convoy drive right by us with the Astrovan right in the middle of it. The astronauts were on their way to the pad!

While we were stopped, this big ol' birds meandered through. I don't know if these are herons or what they are but they were neat to watch.

That's the Vehicle Assembly Building in the background. That's where they mate the orbiter to the external tank and boosters.

4 hour wait in the sun. The boys complained a little but not too bad considering.

While they're waiting I'll show you some pictures a coworker took. She had access to KSC the day before and got a good tour of the area. She also took much better pictures of the launch than I did so I'll use hers.

This is Pad 39-B. This is where Ares I would have launched from. There are some rumors/efforts that it may live on in one form or another but I'm not holding my breath. I think it'll be a while before the dust settles and we know what's going to happen.

This is the launch tower added to one of the mobile launch platforms for Ares I. It's huge!

Lisa (the photographer) also took these gorgeous shots the night before the launch. How cool are these? The shuttle looks SO neat lit up at night like that.

Postcard worthy, I tell you.

Ok, enough time has passed, the countdown has progressed very nicely, all systems are go and we're getting giddy because it looks like we'll actually get to see one launch!

Main engine start!!! I can't tell you how excited I was right about now.

Booster ignition and lift off!!! The view we had was different than this. We were further to the right looking directly at Atlantis. It disappeared from our view shortly after the main engines started but it looked so cool rising above that cloud.

Right about this point, it became so bright it was like looking at the sun. As Darth Vader would say, "Impressive." Actually, I was so giddy I think I was hopping around and squealing like a 2nd grade girl doing the pee pee dance.

Rolling over and heading NE.

Honestly, words can't describe how impressive it is to see that thing rocket away like that. After the solid rocket motors separated, we were able to see the main engines for about 4 more minutes before they disappeared behind a light cloud. So in all, we saw about 6 minutes of the 8 minute ride to orbit. Had it been at night, we would have been able to see them the whole time.

I took this photo of the aftermath. The breezes were dissipating the plume pretty quickly.

So after waiting 29 years and suffering through 2 aborts last summer, I FINALLY got to see a launch and it was even better than I expected it to be. Both boys really enjoyed it and excitedly proclaimed it was worth the wait and the long drive.

I know, this is a looooong post. But thanks for reading this far.

Our soccer season ended today. Cade's team didn't fare so well but they all had fun. After every game, they would ask if they won and I would answer with either, "I think so," or "I'm not sure but it was close." (I lied) They were happy with that.

Frenzy - 5 & 6 year olds (and one 4 yr old Cade)

Kevin and Cameron's team turned out to be a pretty darn good team. They finished 4-1-1 and outscored their opponents 25-7 in 6 games with Kevin accounting for 16 of those goals and Cameron (who wanted to stay in his age bracket and not move up) scored 1. If I may brag briefly, my favorite goal of the year was when Kevin took a penalty kick from about 20 yards out. The opposing team lined up in front of the goal to block his kick. Kevin kicked it over the team and goalie and hit the net in the upper right corner! That just doesn't happen at this level! Both boys played great this season and Cameron became fearless playing against kids considerably bigger than him. I couldn't be more proud.

And lastly, since our house in NM still hasn't sold, Dana has rejoined the working world. She got a job at the hospital here in Athens working Friday and Saturday nights. She starts in June. The hours stink but it's what she wanted because it's what works best for our family. Darn it.

Easterish

2010-04-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'd start out by wishing everyone a happy Easter but I'm so ridiculously late posting our pictures I won't bother. I'll just say that I hope everyone had a nice Easter.

The weekend before Easter, our Sunday school class had a big egg hunt/get-together at a couple's house. They have a BEAUTIFUL place! It's an older house on a few acres but it has a pond in their backyard (rumor has it fish were in there but as usual the Reynolds boys didn't see or catch squat)! We all had a great time.

Kevin was initially too cool to hunt for eggs but once they got underway he couldn't resist. The lack of a basket didn't bother him one bit. His coolness went out the window as he carried the eggs he found in his shirt.

This shot of Cameron is blurry not for lack of focus but because he was a blur running around the yard looking for eggs. That and maybe the camera was a little bit out of focus but mostly because he's fast.

Cade must be pokey because he's in good focus. But he still managed to get a lot of eggs.

The day after the egg hunt, we drove to Kansas to attend Dana's grandmother's funeral. Hopefully, the next time we go that way it'll be for happier reasons. With that said, it was nice to see everyone again.

Ok, so we left Kansas on Monday afternoon and drove 1/2 way home (6 hours) and finished the drive on Tuesday. The reason for the rush wasn't that I was anxious to get back to work but because Larry and Galena were driving in the opposite direction to NM and had a head start on us. Make sense? It will when I explain that they had an early morning flight out of Albuquerque on Tuesday morning to fly to AL to visit us. We had to hurry to get back so they wouldn't beat us to our house. We beat 'em but only by about 3 hours. They got into Albuquerque at something like 2 a.m. and had ~4 hours of sleep before they had to get to the airport. I didn't dare complain about being tired in front of them.

So Dana and her master planning and entertaining skills had the week all planned out to show them around our new stomping grounds. She was even kind enough to schedule a mostly-do-nothing day to give them a chance to rest. Nice girl, that Dana.

One of the things they did was go to the zoo in Nashville. I can't tell for sure in this picture, but it looks to me like Cade is trying to stretch his neck like the giraffe.

Cade, Larry and Galena

Cade appears to be brushing the goat's chin. Goats like that, you know, I guess.

They also went to the Rainforest Cafe while they were in Nashville. Everytime we go somewhere new, we look to see if they have one of these restaurants. Someday we'll make it to all of them. Oh, and I have no idea what Cade's doing here but he's in the Rainforest so the picture works.

And then it was Easter! Well, first it was the day before Easter. That's when we dyed our eggs.

Most of our pictures were backlit too bad to bother sharing. I took this picture of Cade on Easter morning putting the finishing touches (stickers) on our eggs. Look at the concentration on that cute little face!

And then it was really Easter!

The Easter Bunny must have been feeling a little violent this year as he brought Kevin and Cameron Airsoft guns - basically BB guns that shoot plastic bbs. You'd think a bunny of all things would stay away from those things! Cade got a new game for his handheld video game. Of course chocolate and sugary things filled the empty spaces in their baskets.

Target practice for Boy 1 and Boy 2 .

Our own Easter Egg hunt was fun. Dana and hid eggs all over the place. When this was taken they had found all the easy ones and were walking around together trying to find the rest.

And between the camouflage eggs and weeds in the yard, it was no surprise they had a hard time finding some of them. Can you spot the egg in this picture?

What good is an Easter Sunday without a family picture while everyone looks presentable? Too bad the backyard was hadn't greened up yet.

With Easter over, it meant our Saturdays will now be consumed by soccer. Kevin and Cameron are on the same team while Cade is playing with the 5-6 year olds.

Kevin and Cameron's team name is "Predators". Cade's team's name is "Frenzy".

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. Cade appears to be trying to boss his teammate around and she appears to be having none of that. You'd never guess he's a year younger than most of his teammates, would you? He's a big little dude! Actually, at 4-1/2 he's the same height as Kevin was at 5 and Kevin wasn't lacking in height at that age either. We won't mention Cameron's height here.

If you couldn't find the egg, here it is.

2010-04-09T15:42:00.000-07:00

Still behind on pictures so this post will almost get us caught up.

I'll start with one picture I meant to include last time. The intermission at the Supercross race consisted of a freestyle show. If you've never seen people backflipping a motorcycle in person, it's pretty neat. This guy is doing a nac-nac (kicks one leg over to the other side of the motorcycle) backflip.

On to slightly more current news. The boys decided at nearly the last minute to participate in our church's AWANA Grand Prix (pinewood derby). They designed their cars and I helped with the power tools. Then I showed them how to sand the wheels and polish the axles and let them have at it.

Before the race.

Kevin built a tank and named it, appropriately enough, "Tank". I refused to be one of those pee wee dads and let/made him do almost all the work himself. Um, the only problem is that Tank didn't quite look the same come race time but more on that in a minute.

Cameron named his car "Kar". Geez, my boys are original.

Kevin got 3rd place in his age group! Cameron's car was quick out of the gate but didn't quite make the top 3. I think he would have done better if we had brought his car up in weight. See that bandage on my hand? Funny story on that. I'll start with a disclaimer. The following images are graphic so proceed at your own queasiness if that's even a word.

Here's my re-enactment of the incident leading up to the bandaged hand. Kevin's car was overweight so we needed to drill some holes in it. I was in a bit of a hurry and complained to Kevin that I couldn't put the car down because I'd either screw up the wheels or break the barrel. So I drilled it like any good ol' Alabamian would do and held it in my hand. See where this is going?

"See boys, this is not the way you'd normally do this but since I'm aware of how stupid this is I couldn't possibly drill a hole in my hand. It's all about awareness and I have it in spades."

At the precise moment I decided not to go any deeper because I was afraid I'd poke a 3/8" hole in the top of Tank, I poked a 3/8" hole in the top of Tank. And in my hand. I show it going all the way through my hand in this reenactment because it's more dramatic and makes for better ratings.

This actually happened in the parking lot at church. So we drove home to get Dana and with one hand, I popped the turret off Tank and sent the boys back to church with Dana while I went to the ER. The people at the race helped Kevin ADD weight to Tank since it was now underweight. How insulting. The nurse in the ER made it hurt a million times worse when she scrubbed it and darn near made me pass out. I'm tough like that. She told me she can't stitch hamburger meat so she wrapped it up and sent me on my way with a warning not to be stupid anymore like the guy that was in a day before with a nail stuck in his thigh.

Then I discovered the joys of living in a small town. Despite my telling Dana to keep it on the DL, almost everyone at church already knew what happened by the time she arrived. Part of the reason was that someone in the ER overheard me talking about it and called someone at the race and that person blabbed and so on. My ego hurt a lot worse than my hand. For the record, I stuck my hand right between my index and middle finger. No damage to anything but skin and fat.

Moving on.

Dana has taken up an exercise routine led by some hottie in a little black outfit. Now that I noticed her on the TV, I think I might start this routine too. It's no wonder why Cade likes to do it too. I think he's running in place here. Dana says he's actually pretty good at doing several of the exercises without stopping.

Soccer season is upon us. This was right before Cade's first practice. He's wearing the cleats Cameron wore when he started at 6 yrs. old. I'm proud to report that Cade is NOT the worst player on the team even though he is the youngest. We thought the minimum age was 4 so he got excited about getting to play. On signup day, we found out the minimum age is 5. When they saw how sad he was, they said he can play if we just acknowledge he's underage and we think it's ok. So we signed him up and now I'm "coaching" a pack of 5 and 6 year olds in addition to the 9-12 year olds. That's what you call a glutton for punishment.

I'll post some pictures of the boys with their uniforms when I get around to getting them downloaded. Cade's team got whooped in their first game but Kevin and Cameron's team cruised to a 7-0 win in theirs. Kevin scored 4 and 3 of those were BEAUTIFUL shots from fairly far back. Boy, they were pretty. We celebrated the boys' efforts by overdosing on sugar and ruining our lunch with a cookie/ice cream sandwich at Nestle Toll House after the games.

Late Winter/Early Spring

2010-03-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

Life never seems to slow down around here, not that I'm complaining but I'll use that as my excuse for taking so long to update our blog.

Let's see, since our last adventure was published we took a mini-vacation and headed over to Atlanta to see a Supercross race in the Georgia Dome! We splurged and bought pit passes so the kids could see the bikes and riders. Unfortunately, as the sport has become more popular the pits have become much more crowded making it nearly impossible to get see the riders up close and personal, let alone get any autographs. We still managed to catch a couple of riders though.

Just by chance, we caught Ryan Villopoto. After we watched him crash in Atlanta, he dropped to second place in the 450 class (top dogs) and is unarguably one of the very fastest riders in the world.

All 3 boys got tattoos! Kevin and Cade got a dirt bike and Cam got a helmet. Cade got his and said he wanted to save it to show Mr. Mike (his favorite Sunday school teacher) so we were careful not to wash it off ALL week. Come Sunday, he wore long sleeves and forgot all about it.

Self-portrait with my littlest buddy.

Self-portrait with my honey.

Introducing the 2020 Supercross Champion, Cameron Reynolds!

And on my right is the 2017 Supercross Champ, Kevin! I can't wait until they're rich and can support me! And I'll get to go to all the races for free!

The company I work for had our annual bowling day a few weeks ago. Free bowling and lunch for the family! Cameron was getting frustrated because Cade kept beating him but at least he has good form!

How can you not love this shot?

I played hooky on a beautiful Friday recently and took Kevin and Cameron riding down by Birmingham. It was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day. Perfect! We had a great time and closed the place down. Of course, the boys sacked out on the drive home leaving me to entertain myself for 2 hours.

I don't know the entire story here, but Cameron said he looked up and saw me taking this picture. When he looked back at the track, he realized he was in trouble. I also realized the moment that I took it he was going over the berm. He quickly disappeared from sight. When I jogged over there, I found him crawling up the backside of the berm with goggles in hand. His motorcycle was upside down, literally on the handlebars, and tangled in a mess of thorny vines. Cameron said he was fine and told me, "It even knocked my goggles off!" After I wrestled the bike back up on the track I realized I still had the camera in my hand and missed a great photo opportunity. Darn it.

Artistic shot of Kevin. This was on "creative mode". It's kind of cool.

No story. Just a cute picture.

Karen came to visit us for a long weekend so we took her to Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN. It's a really neat site of a Civil War battle. Unfortunately, our camera batteries died and we forgot to get copies of Karen's pictures so you'll have to use your imagination. So picture a big hill with cannons perched on ledges at the top. Now picture a bunch of other cool, civil war-y stuff and you get the idea.

This place is a museum in Chattanooga. We didn't go in but like the looks of the outside. I don't remember any details of the place except that it's old.

We walked across the Tennessee River on a bridge built in the late 1800s. It's interesting to see how they built things like that back then as opposed to more modern bridges.

Still lots of pictures to go. I'll post more soon.

I hope everyone had a happy Easter!

2010-02-22T16:13:00.000-08:00

Not a whole lot going on in the Southern division of the Reynolds family lately. We're in the last few weeks of our soccer off-season lull. It's been cold so the boys have been mostly cooped up in the house driving Dana and me nuts.

Lately, Kevin and a couple friends of his started making a "clubhouse" near here. They're still in the early stages where they're clearing out the brush and making plans for how cool it's going to be. Eventually, they'll have a 20 foot high wall surrounding the place, with turrets every 20 feet and a moat on the outside. Well, they didn't say that exactly, but you know that's what they're thinking. In reality, it's in a neat place behind the golf course with a creek running through it. It's going to be pretty this summer! I don't want to intrude when they're over there but I'll have to get some pictures of it to share with everyone.

Speaking of pictures, here's our monthly-or-so dose:

I have no idea what Cade's doing but I like how happy he looks.

I also have no idea why Dana was taking self portraits while talking on the phone but I like this picture too.

A couple of weeks ago, it snowed out of the blue. It started after I left for work and the kids went to school. Cade had the whole yard to himself. Then, just like in Las Cruces, the sun came out and it was gone about 2 hours later. I might have accused Dana of telling a fib if I hadn't seen these pictures (we got nuthin' at work).

Since Dana keeps the house at a bone-chilling 42 degrees or whatever it is, I often curl up on the couch with my heated blanket. (If they ever come out with an electric Snuggie, I'm all over it!) Cade is often my little snuggle buddy. Bad days at work are no match for this.

Cameron's school had a 50s day recently. Cam was decked out and ready to go. All he was lacking was a pack of cigarette candy to roll up in his sleeve.

Dana took this during their sock hop, party event. The girl next to Cameron apparently has a crush on him and jumped at the chance to sit next to him for a picture. I just love the look on his face. "Why won't these women just leave me alone so I can eat my ice cream in peace?"

We finally got to go riding again this weekend! The clouds disappeared and we had an incredible stretch of about 3 days with nothing but sunshine, believe it or not. And it was beautiful weather!

Kevin's feet finally got too big to cram in his boots so he suckered us into buying new ones. And, let me tell you, those boots are Fly! Seriously, they're Fly. I mean, they're cool and all, but that's the brand name. Fly. Obviously, I'm not hip enough to talk like that. Let's see how long they stay white.

Cameron catching some air on his KTM.

Who says white men can't jump?

Cameron meant to do this. The girl next to him thought he fell out of the swing. Silly girls. Danger is for boys. :)

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Dana and I had a date night on Valentine's Day Eve. It's our first one since we moved here over a year ago so it was long overdue. We wimped out and went a day early so we wouldn't have to fight the rush at the restaurants. Don't tell anyone, but we left Kevin in charge here at home while Dana and I went to dinner a whole 2 miles away. Hey, it wasn't much of a date, but it was a date nonetheless. And the dinner was good. For V-day, I bought her (and myself) a new TV for our bedroom. We're finding ourselves retreating to our room to watch TV more and more often since the boys are taking over the TV in the living room (it has the DVR). So, I thought we should have something nicer than her old 1985 12" screen that we were using. Maybe it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't much better. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she claimed her old vacuum cleaner died (and made sounds like RURRR-Rurrr-rrrr like it's dying - and that's a quote from her e-mail!) so we had to get a new one. I think I'm the only man who bought a vacuum cleaner for his wife the day before Valentine's Day and stayed married! Yay me!

Too Much Sun

2010-02-07T11:22:00.000-08:00

These pictures were taken late last year when the dermatologist gave me some nasty cream to apply to my face to take care of any pre-cancerous skin damage. I had to put it on twice a day for about 3 weeks. Legend has it, the cream only attacks damaged skin and doesn't do anything to healthy skin. I think that's a bunch of bologna and you'll see why in a moment. The doctor warned me it would look bad but it would be worth it in the end.

1 week in and I'm feeling pretty confident. Just a little redness on myforehead but nothing too bad. No way am I going to look as bad as she warned me. "Piece of cake," I said.

About a week later. "Ow. Ow. Ow." Felt like a bad sunburn. Not shaving on this particular day didn't help my appearance but I can live with that. By this time I was getting a lot of weird looks but not many people said anything because they were trying to be polite. It was rather refreshing when my NASA boss returned from vacation in the middle of this and asked, point blank, "What happened to you?" I think this was also about the time that Larry told me when he was going through this a coworker told him he looked like he'd been bobbing for french fries. That's funny, but don't make me laugh. It hurts to move my skin.

Ewwww! It's starting to peel!!! By far the worst part. I'll save you the details and just leave it at that. A couple of other people very carefully asked about my skin by this point. People suspected rosacia, poison ivy and road rash from crashing on the dirt bike.

So, about the time I finished applying that stuff to my forehead and left cheek, I had a follow-up appt. with my dermatologist. I stupidly made the comment that with the amount of damage I had on those parts of my face, I should probably have done the other cheek as well (and two spots on my lower lip). She agreed and told me to get on it. Doh!

Fortunately, I think, Halloween came during the middle of my treatment. Who needs a costume with a face like that? Actually, I had the perfect costume in mind. Phantom of the Opera! Unfortunately, the mask I found covered the wrong cheek.

Now you can see my nose and my other cheek starting to light up like a Christmas tree. Cameron, wanting to be just like me, went face first off the swings at school and came home with this look. When he whined that people were calling him Rudolph, I asked him how he thought I felt!

One side is fading as the other starts to get to the yucky, peeling stage. I really don't need any help highlighting my nose.

Now, a few months later, my face is STILL a little red. I'm not sure it will ever go away.

So let this be a lesson to you all. Wear plenty of sunscreen and a hat!!!

Christmas Vacation Part Two

2010-01-27T17:07:00.000-08:00

Ok, when so after our visit with the Wiles side of the family was over, we climbed back into our beloved Expedition (stuffed so far past the gills that we had to buy a hitch carrier to get it all home) and hit the road or the second Saturday in a row. Just like our last trip home, we enjoyed the scenery as we drove down I-25 toward Las Cruces to spend a week with the Reynolds half of the family.

Stacey, Adam, Acey (our newest niece and Cameron's buddy) and Courtney came over that evening to open gifts with us. The only person missing was Eric but he showed up with his girlfriend on New Year's Day.

The next day we ate lunch and spent the afternoon with our old Life Group. It was great to see everyone again.

The whole family.

In addition to remote control cars, Kevin and Cameron got an R/C flying thingamajigger. I think it's called a Switchblade. It takes off like a helicopter then transforms and flies like a plane. Those required a trip to the park to play with. Acey also got an R/C car just like the boys so they played with those in the house seemingly non-stop.

A few days later, we got our second snow of our vacation!!! This picture isn't what you picture when you think of Las Cruces, is it?

Believe it or not, the boys didn't want to go play in the snow at first until I put the guilt trip on them. I finally got them outside with me and it's a good thing because the snow was PERFECT for snowballs and snowmen.

Cameron is pondering the consequences of targeting the camera with his next snowball.

We made our biggest snowman yet!

Can't have snow without dragging heads through it.

Kevin threw some snowballs at the tree and it looked a little like eyes and a nose so I did a little rearranging and added a mouth. I like it.

Of course, the next day the weather was back to normal and you'd never know it snowed. Well, the snow did hang around in the shade for a couple of days.

Taking advantage of the mostly nice weather by playing at the park.

The boys took the scooters and had a great time.

I like this side shot of Cade.

No idea what Kevin's doing.

Told you they were buddies.

On New Year's Eve, we drove off into the sunset, literally, to meet our friends in Deming for dinner and some glow golf. Beautiful sunset, beautiful full moon rising over the Organs (and a blue moon at that!), super clear sky. Nice drive but too bad we were driving.

The Hughes' have 3 kids about the same age as the boys. Despite rarely seeing each other they all get along great.

Dana probably would have done better if she had tried putting the right way and not backwards. That's Rick in the background. My best friend since 2nd grade!

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and our vacation flew by.

I believe this was taken on our last night. Pa and his little buddy playing trouble.

And then we somehow crammed everything, which was quite a bit more than we left AL with, into and on the back of the Expedition, pointed it East and stepped on the gas to begin our 3rd Saturday in a row on the road. Dana let us sleep in the day we left so we didn't leave until right at 5 am.

And dang Texas! We drove 12 hours, re-read that, 12 hours(!) and made it to Texarkana which is still in Texas! It's reason to celebrate when you get to a new state. Fortunately, just like our trip out, we had good weather on the way back and no problems to speak of. Well, except for Dana getting pulled over and almost arrested for suspected drunk driving. When I explained to the cop that's how she always drives and promised to drive the rest of the way myself, he let us go. Or maybe she got pulled over because the hitch carrier was blocking the license plate (just like the hundreds of other vehicles that had one). I can't remember which it was. Either way, she got off with just a warning.

It was a little harder to leave NM this time because we don't know when we'll be back. So I guess that means it's everyone else's turn to come visit us!

Christmas Vacation Part 1

2010-01-21T18:52:00.000-08:00

As usual, we have a truckload of pictures we'd like to share from our Christmas vacation so I'll break it up into more than one post. We'll cover the first week for now.

The day before we left for NM was a fun day for all of us. I left work before lunch (yay!) so I could watch Cameron's class perform their Christmas play. I think what happened was that a group of reality TV producing penguins invaded Santa's place and insisted they would take over for the elves and reindeer. They quickly learned the work was a lot harder than they expected so they gave the jobs back and Santa and everyone lived happily ever after. Cameron was a penguin and had a few speaking parts. He wowed and dazzled the audience with his stunning performance!

Here's my little penguin buddy. Cute costumes, huh?

After the show we went back to his classroom for a Christmas party. NOT a "holiday" party because that's stupid. That was it for school so we brought Cam home and we both started our Christmas vacations a little early.

Here are our decorations for the year. With only ONE dumb plug on the entire front side of the house, I had to get creative with the cords so we weren't able to put up too many lights. I also gave up on putting lights on the house mostly because of the ridiculously steep pitch of the roof. Regardless, the lights you see here probably outnumber the rest of our entire neighborhood combined. That's too bad. By the way, remind me not to bother with the tree next year. I was hating myself when I was trying to get those darn lights unwrapped from all the branches - and we were in the middle of the cold spell so the temperature was, like, 20 below or something. Felt like it anyway.

Dana said we were leaving the house at 4 am on Saturday to get started on our trip to NM. I laughed because that's pretty cute. But I wasn't laughing when I backed the Expedition out of the driveway at 4:01 am with my eyes out of focus and a serious case of bedhead (not really but that's how we all felt). She's a drill sergeant, that Dana. So then we drove and drove and drove and all the while we were packed in like sardines. Have you ever tried to pack for 5 for 2 weeks with Christmas gifts and still allow enough room for the kids not to be touching each other? Not easy. Finally, 14-1/2 hours later we arrived in Amarillo where we spent the night with Dana's aunt Pat. (Thanks!) Dana's cousins came over while we were there too so we had a great time visiting with everyone. Then the next day we got in the Expedition and drove again. (You'll start seeing a recurring theme here.) After a quick 5 hour jaunt we arrived at Inlow. Shoot, we were just getting the car warmed up at that point.

As usual, we had a great time visiting with everyone while we were there. I'm always amazed at how well all the kids really do get along when we're all together. They pick up right where they left off like they saw each other just a day earlier.

It snowed a couple of days before Christmas so the kids had to break out the sleds. This is Kevin collapsing from exhaustion after pulling the sled about 20 feet up the hill. Poor kid has acclimated to the Alabama elevation and can't breathe in the mountains anymore.

Cameron and Jeremy riding double.

I love this shot of Cameron!

Cade still didn't want anything to do with the sled. Maybe I can get him on one next year.

If you ever want to go 4-wheeling with Ron, my advice to you is this: Don't. Dana and I followed him in the Suburban (with chains) and Ronney in the Tacoma (with chains) in our Expedition (w/o chains) just to see where they were headed. About the time we were ready to turn around, Ron tells us if I can make it up the first hill it will be easy from there. Dana says, "Let's try it." So we tried and we chugged and churned our way right up. Cool! We continued on back down the other side and across this meadow and then we got to another hill. It's longer and steeper and narrower and we didn't make it. The rear end stepped out right next to a tree and we were done. They came back around and pulled us back on track but the damage was done. My ego deflated, we backed down and headed back to the house with our tail between our legs. Not really, it was fun and more importantly nothing was damaged.

And then it was Christmas!!!

As the presents kept piling up (and I mean PILING up), the kids had carefully placed them all around the tree and behind the tree. I don't think they thought about someone having to get them. Look closely and you'll see Kevin back there trying to get those in the back corner.

Santa gave Kevin the Halo 3 ODST game he's been wanting.

He also got a robe in hopes that he'll quit dragging his comforter around with him when he gets up in the mornings.

Cameron got a camera from Santa Claus. He loves taking pictures and making videos of himself goofing off and of his action figures.

Cameron's robe. Same comment about Kevin applies here.

Cade got a Leapster game from Santa. He loves it so far.

And another robe.

No idea what Ryan is doing here but he sure did like his footie PJs.

I told you there were a lot of presents.

Tyler, Galena and Papa.

Unfortunately, we never did take a family photo. But we do appreciate everyone taking the time and making the trip to Inlow to see us (and Ron & Sandy for having us).

A couple more pictures of Cade before I call it good.

We're cleaning up all the magnets Cade stuck on the refrigerator. Funny how he was able to reach high enough to put them there but had to climb on me to get them down.

What's a trip to Inlow w/o playing in the gym. The pictures of Cameron and Kevin were too blurry so here's a decent one of Cade near the top of the climbing wall.

Anticipation, excitement, a little of everything as he awaits the "go" to start opening those presents.

Pre-Christmas Pictures

2010-01-06T15:52:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas too. We sure did. But we'll discuss that later. Right now we're way behind on pictures and obviously have a lot of new ones to share from the Reynolds' Christmas Vacation but I haven't even downloaded those from the camera yet.

These first few were taken the weekend after Thanksgiving when we drove out to a tree farm to get our Christmas tree (NOT holiday tree!).

It isn't quite the same as driving up in the mountains and gasping for air as we hike up and down the hillsides. Instead, we could have driven a Civic out to this place. When I refused their offer to cut the tree for me, we were given a saw and a measuring stick and told to have at it. This is the tree we picked.

After cutting the tree, Cade wanted to help me drag it back to the truck. Apparently, this behavior is exceedingly rare around here as they all acted surprised that I didn't have them get it for me. They even insisted on helping me load it! Sheesh. You'd think we picked out Griswold-size tree. Anyway, the people were super friendly, they offered free hot apple cider and Santa Claus was even on hand to talk to the kids. Cade like Santa because he kept his distance and didn't invade Cade's personal space.

On the way home, we stopped at a city park that advertised a huge light display and a train ride around the park. Well, it sounded really cool. It was actually pretty neat but half of the lights weren't turned on and the train wasn't running. In this shot, we're waiting for the sun to set so the kids passed time by quacking at the ducks and playing on the playground.

I know this blurry but I was trying to get a quick picture of Cameron and Cade holding hands.

We hung around after dark because the city also advertised a light show with the water fountains. We waited and waited and when it did start we were more than a little disappointed. It wasn't much of a show at all and was hard to distinguish from the normal operation of the fountains. Oh well. We had a nice evening together.

Dana and the boys decorating our tree the following evening. Cameron may be shirtless but at least he's not running around in his underwear.

They're all smiling and not making funny faces!!! If you look at our tree, you'll notice the top half is heavy on ornaments because all 3 boys wanted to use the step stool as much as possible. Quite the change from a few years ago when they were short and all the ornaments were within 3 feet of the bottom.

Christmas cookies!!!

I like this picture of me and my littlest buddy.

And finally, we had a snow day here in Athens! Not much snow and it wouldn't pack but it was still fun to play in.

Cameron

And Cade. No pictures of Kevin because he took off to play with some friends that live near here.

Marshall Space Flight Center had a tree lighting ceremony in early December so I took Dana and the boys to see it (and to get free cookies and hot chocolate). Santa showed up on a (Kawasaki) mule instead of a reindeer and the kids from the on-site daycare were on hand to sing some Christmas songs. Cameron and Cade even got their pictures with Santa for free! That's what I'm talking about! Kevin thought he was too old to get a picture with ol' St. Nick.

We took the boys to see Santa at the mall too. After waiting in a relatively short line, Cameron got up on Santa's lap and turned into Ralphie from "A Christmas Story". He went completely blank and couldn't remember what to tell Santa to bring him for Christmas. Cade sat on Santa's lap too. He later told us that he didn't think that was the real Santa because his hair was too short (it was real) and the Santa we saw where I work was also not the real one but he thought the one at the tree farm was the real deal because he was nice and didn't bother Cade.

And finally, I'll leave with this shot we took on the way back from the tree farm. Safety is obviously very important to this guy. Notice he took the extra precaution of tying the front end to the tree in case it falls off the 2x4s. Alabama engineering at its best!

Elf Yourself

2009-12-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

We posted this on Facebook too but here it is for those of you who don't have a FB account. We've been elfed!

Before clicking the link, scroll down on our blog to the black music player on the right side of the screen and press "Pause" to stop the music.

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/3fRDsox7YLaDZ7dHgKtV

Fall Pictures

2009-11-20T18:59:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we drove to our favorite state park to take some pictures of the boys with the Fall colors. Unfortunately, it looks like the weekend before was the best time to go as most of the leaves had already fallen. But we still got some good pictures and had a good time.

These first few pictures were taken on the way over there. Not bad considering Dana took these while I was driving. She didn't even roll the window down!

Postcard #1 - This is the Tennessee River down by Guntersville

Postcard #2 - Cool shot, huh?

We still can't get used to seeing the vines and undergrowth covering EVERYTHING like it is in this picture.

Playing around with the camera.

Again.

Kevin & Cameron completely unaware of Nature's beauty.

My good lookin' Boy #1.

My beautiful family. I love the background in this shot.

Candid shot of Cameron. These types of shots are my favorite.

The handsome Boy #2.

And the stunningly cute Boy #3.

He's NOT HAPPY but it sure made a cute picture. Too bad it blurred. I was having a hard time with the lighting (and dying batteries).

This photo speaks for itself.

My boys headed back down the boardwalk.

Another one where the light got me. Darn it. I like the shot.

Just chillin'.

We're wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving!

The Expedition's Expeditions and Soccer Finale

2009-11-14T06:51:00.001-08:00

Our Expedition hit 100,000 miles last weekend on the way home from Cameron's soccer tournament so it got me thinking about where we've taken it over the 9 years that we've owned it (as of this month).

Hey, I have motor oil running through my veins. What do you expect?

My intention was to pull over to take a good photo instead we found ourselves in an area with no where safe to get off the road. I took this quick shot without looking at the camera so excuse the dust and reflection.

The Expedition has been to the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean and from Montana all the way down to Florida. It's been camping at 10,000 feet and we've slept in it at the lake. It's been stuck in the snow (don't ask) and played in the mud. It's lived at 4 different houses and brought 2 new babies home from the hospital.

So far, it's been to at least 19 states and we plan on going to the Gulf of Mexico next year so that will complete it's tour of major bodies of water.

We love this thing!

Here are a couple of pictures that pre-date our blog.

Leaving Montana and heading towards Yellowstone. Cade was only 7 months old!

Playing in the snow at Cloudcroft. I just like this picture because Cade is so cute. Again.

Camping at Grassy Lookout. Again, Cade makes the picture. I think any pictures we have of Kevin and Cameron when they were little are on film.

As I mentioned, Cameron had a regional soccer tournament in Albertvl last weekend. His team was the unofficial Athens champions as they tied their first game and went undefeated from there on out. They finished their season by handily beating the team they tied.

They saved their best soccer for the tournament! On Saturday, they played 2 games and had to win to advance to top 4 and play on Sunday. They beat the first team 5-2 and Cameron played a great game at goalie. The second game was against the best team they had played to date. Actually, the team was ok, but they had one really good player. We were able to mostly shut that kid down by putting our best player on him but he still got some good shots at our goal. And that's where Cameron really started to shine as goalie. He blocked a couple of shots that were the difference between winning 3-2 and losing. The refs came over after the game and commented on how our goalie won that game for us and how good he is. Funny thing, he really wasn't all that good the rest of the season but he was outstanding on Saturday.

On Sunday, we played another team with one player that was incredible! Our team played hard and were tied at 2-2 at halftime but we had a mental breakdown or something because they scored 3 goals in about 5 minutes. On those shots, Cameron just had no chance of stopping the balls. They were either too high to reach or perfectly placed on the other side of the goal. Cameron didn't give up though and late in the game he singlehandedly stopped the kid TWICE by charging out of the goal at him. I know I sound like a typical pee wee parent saying this, but that game was so horribly refereed that I honestly believe it cost us a good chance at winning that game. I had several conversations with the officials after the game was over about it. Either way, I was really proud of Cameron's team.

The Goalie of the Year (as far as I'm concerned) diving for the ball.

And here are the champions!

We found an old pre-Civil War cemetary in Albertville. This guy was the person that the town was named after. Born March 31, 1796!

Some really old, weathered headstones. Couldn't read them.

Dana's getting Cade started on what will likely become a new chore every Fall.

Fall

2009-11-05T18:39:00.000-08:00

Ok. You asked for an update and you're gonna get one or three. We've taken a lot of pictures and several things have been going on lately so I'll have to break it up into more than one post.

We'll start with a picture taken from our backyard. It's actually the area directly behind our (recently deceased) neighbor's house as seen from our house. Beautiful fall colors around here!

When I first saw this picture that Dana took I immediately thought of...

this one.

Cade's ready for soccer!

Here's a shot of Speedy Reynolds. This dude consistently outran bigger kids all season long. He's running so fast here he's warping the space-time continuum. Or, maybe that's another kid behind him, but still, he's fast. He also took after his big brother and played goalie in just about every game.

Air Cade! Hard to tell, but he's shooting a basket here.

As usual, we waited until the last minute to get our pumpkins and carved them on Halloween. Kevin is starting on his masterpiece.

Cameron gutting his pumpkin. He and Kevin designed and carved their own pumpkins.

Even Cade got in on the action. Last year he wanted nothing to do with the slimy insides. This year he wanted to help "get the junk out".

And here they are along with the extent of our last minute decorating (6 plastic ghosts for $2 at Walgreens!). Cameron's alien pumpkin is on the left and Kevin's is on the right.

Even Dana dressed up or make-uped up, I guess. It might be hard to tell here but she painted a butterfly on her face. When I first saw her I was kind of like "hubba hubba" but I was also scared at the same time. I'm not sure what that means.

We spent the late afternoon of Halloween helping with a mini-carnival of sorts that our church does every year. From there we came back home to go trick-or-treating with the Williams (the family that went to Cade's b-day party with us). We all had a great time.

Kevin's first concert - and I missed it! I had to fill in for Cameron's soccer coach because he couldn't be at the game.

Speaking of soccer - Kevin's team started off well and fell apart at the end. Blame it on his dumb coach. But we made some new friends and I learned several things while taking the mandatory coaching classes. We even improved Kevin's place kicking technique. Cameron's team on the other hand, had a coach that didn't know the first thing about soccer and killed as much time as possible during "practice" because he didn't know what to do. They tied their first game and won all the others - and even beat the team they tied! What the heck? I guess I took the wrong approach with Kevin's team. Anyway, Cameron's team will be playing in a regional tournament this weekend. Wish us luck!

Slow Month?

2009-10-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

It seems like things have slowed down since our last post but on second thought we're as busy as ever. The soccer season is in full swing and that occupies most of our weekdays. Weekends aren't too bad because they cancel more games than they play. At this rate this season will be overlapping with the Spring season.

I just like this shot of Kevin because you can see how (not) hard he was playing against this poor team. To give you an idea of how it went, our team was up 5-0 in the first 6 minutes.

Another thing causing a disruption in our lives was my travel this month. I went to WSTF (where I used to work) one week and then to Huntington Beach the next week. I took the opportunity to leave a day early on the WSTF trip and took Cade with me to get some extra visiting time with my parents. When we first arrived, Cade was quiet and shy. When Mom and Dad kept trying to get him to talk, I reminded them once he starts he wouldn't stop. Four days later of non-stop jabbering, I'm sure they were ready for some peace and quiet.

Here's my little jet setting buddy getting ready to "blast off" from the Huntsville airport.

It only took Cade about 15 minutes, if that, to get comfortable around them again. He and Pa had a good time hanging out while I was at work.

Homemade cookie night! The idea was to make some Halloween cookies but they came out much more pastel colored and looked more like Easter cookies. You'd think poor Kevin and Cameron don't own any clothes by all the pictures you see of them without shirts on. Dana hates that.

And the big event for the month - Cade's 4th birthday is tomorrow!!!
We had a birthday party for him at Chuck E. Cheese today with some sort-of-friends of ours. They have 3 kids (2 girls and a boy) the same age as our boys so Dana and their mom carpool the kids to school. Fortunately, all the kids get along very well. They're all very nice.

The birthday celebration bunch. Hagen is only 2 months younger than Cade and considerably shorter. I'm starting to realize Cade is a monster! Ally (on the left) and Mikayla are the two girls.

The best part of any birthday - opening presents!

King Cade and his inflatable crown (and birthday medal).

My wonderful family

Cade picked out a dinosaur theme for his party. Nothing says "Don't mess with me!" like a triceratops tattoo on a 4 year old's cheek. Look at those cute little freckles on his nose!

DON'T SMASH THE BREAD!!!

2009-09-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

The title for this blog comes from Dana's repeated demand on our trip to Florida. It was first uttered the night before we left while we were packing and continued for the duration of our mini-vacation. We heard it so many times even Cade was saying it. "Hey Mommy! Don't smash the bread!"

Guess what. The bread got smashed.

So as everyone probably knows by now, we drove 273 hours to Florida to watch Discovery launch on what will probably be the last night launch of a Space Shuttle. We arrived at our hotel on the beach just as the sun was setting so we made a quick trip down the water to let the kids play for a few minutes. It only took a minute or two for the boys to "accidentally" get soaked.

Fresh out of the car. Haven't even unpacked the Expedition yet.

We were officially in Florida as an award honoree and were supposed to go to a nice banquet dinner and bus tour of KSC followed by half a day at the KSC visitor center. Unfortunately, the rules changed for the previous flight and kids under 12 were no longer allowed on the bus. They still gave us free passes to the visitor center so we took advantage of that. I also had the pleasure of seeing a couple of my former coworkers from WSTF who were also there for the award. It was nice to chat with them again.

Bruce, the roving photographer, took this photo for us. It's nice to drive 700 miles from home and still know someone who will take photos of your family.

Cade was a little freaked out about the spaceman. He liked him from a distance but not so much up close.

They had all these cool rockets and space artifacts and the kids' favorite thing was the play area.

Me and my boys.

We had a great time at the visitor's center. I could have easily spent a few more hours there looking at all the neat displays. Two of the more memorable things we saw/did was ride the Shuttle Launch Experience and watch "Magnificent Desolation" in 3-D. The SLE was really cool. You get strapped into your seat in the cargo bay of the orbiter and then it rotates you 90 degrees so you're lying on your back looking out the "windows". The whole thing rocks when the main engines fire and then you start shaking as the solid rocket boosters ignite. When they burn out the shaking immediately stops. A moment later, when the main engines cut off, you pitch forward and hang weightless in your seat. I just couldn't stop grinning the whole time. Everyone else came out with a smile on their face so I know they enjoyed it too.

The movie was absolutely incredible! It was somewhat of a documentary of the Apollo missions and had some awesome views of the moon. It was so realistic you feel like you're really on the moon in several scenes. When Dana walked out of there she made the remark that all the NASA critics should go watch that movie. Absolutely wonderful movie.

We played on the beach a little more that afternoon before taking a nap and getting ready to go watch the launch at 1:30 or so in the morning. We were also supposed to get a ride on the bus out to the Banana River Causeway to watch the launch but again, kids were not allowed. Fortunately, I had the connections to get a personal vehicle pass to the causeway.

It was really exciting to drive out and see the Space Shuttle lit up under all the lights. We had an excellent view of the launch pad. We were about 3-1/2 miles away and looking right at Discovery. Our camera just couldn't focus on it so I wasn't able to get any decent pictures. Poor Kevin was sick so he slept in the Expedition the whole evening. We arrived 4 hours before launch and got comfortable on a blanket on the grass. They had vendors set up and speakers so we could all hear the chatter between Discovery and Mission Control. I really enjoyed listening to all that. Dana and the boys all slept so I guess it wasn't that exciting to everyone else.

Here it is! A picture that I didn't take of the launch of STS-128 that we didn't see! Photo courtesy of NASA.

All that chatter included a lot of weather talk and the countdown never came out of the T-9 minute hold. If they'd had another 1/2 hour the weather likely would have improved enough to launch. So it was a scrub and they decided to try again the next night. I'll save the suspense and tell you they scrubbed that launch too due to a suspected valve leak. We took a nap the next afternoon and missed the announcement so we didn't find out about it until we drove the 40 miles out there and had the guard at the gate look at us like we were idiots. The next attempt was going to be at least 2 days later and we just couldn't stay that long. Darn it darn it darn it!!!

Anyway, we spent that second day playing in the water again. I was afraid the boys were going to grow gills and webbed feet.

I think this is a neat picture. I like the reflections in the sand.

Cameron looks cool no matter what he does. Here's his Baywatch run up the beach. Cade doesn't quite have the cool gene. At least not in this picture.

Another nice picture.

Dana's self portrait with little Mr. Talksalot.

We also drove to Orlando to eat at Rainforest Cafe. We had a little drama on the way in the form of a separating tire. I heard a thump and felt some vibration so I pulled over and found a patch of about 6" x 6" missing out of the rear tire. One worn out spare later, we were on our way. Cade absolutely loved the restaurant. He was in awe and spent the entire time there with his mouth agape and eyes wide open as his head whipped side to side trying to take in all the animals and action. I wish we'd had the camera with us.

Four new tires and no launch later, we were on our way home. We still enjoyed our mini-vacation though.

It occurred to us during our trip that we have now driven the Expedition all the way across the country. It's been to the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean and as far north as Montana and all the way down to Florida. All we have left is to take it to the Gulf of Mexico and we plan on doing that next summer. I love that vehicle. It's a great road trip cruiser.

On Labor Day weekend we took the boys to the something-or-other state fair in Huntsville. It was about the same size as the Southern NM State Fair, not huge but not dinky either. Cameron wanted go in the haunted house but couldn't talk Kevin into going with him (Kevin wanted to go on a different ride). Cameron marched right in and disappeared behind the door while Dana and I discussed the whole thing. We decided it was more scary on the outside that it was on the inside. A few minutes later, Cameron came charging out the door with his eyes as big as saucers and his mouth wide open and a horrified look on his face. Yet another moment I REALLY wish I'd had the camera ready. We all cracked up at the look on his face.

Cade chilling out while he waits for one his brothers to finish a ride.

Before we left we watched 2 riders enter the Sphere of Death (say it in a deep, booming voice) on motorcycles. It was actually pretty neat and the kids got a kick out of it.

My wonderful family.

In another instance of "I'd better watch what I say", Cade asked me to take him to a Halloween store that was near another store we were in. So we walked over there and as soon as we walk in we see a scary display and hear the creepy music. He immediately got stiff. I explained to him it was all fake and showed him a rubber snake like the ones at Wal-Mart. After a minute or two he asked if we could leave. I told him we should go look at the kids costumes first. Well, it turns out it was all the way across the store in the back corner so we had to walk by all the scary things to get to it. Cade saw a zombie thing that looked like it had pulled it's head off and had one eye hanging out of its socket. Cade told me he wanted to go again and pointed at the zombie and said, "Dad, he's a jerk!" We left and as soon as we met up with Dana again, he told me to tell Dana about the jerk. Dana and I both thought it was funny (especially when you hear him say it with all seriousness) but I think perhaps I'd better be more careful what I say. Unless, maybe it's Dana that says that. Well, there are certainly worse things I've heard kids repeat.

And to wrap this up, on the way to soccer practice tonight, Cade told Dana out of the blue, "Don't smash the bread!"

Odds 'n Ends

2009-08-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Lots of little happenings lately but not many pictures.

I'll start with something I meant to post 2 months ago. Kevin was baptized on June 7. I was waiting for the pictures to be available to post them and when I finally did get them I forgot about it. Anyway, better late than never.

The photographer caught a great shared moment between Kevin and me (Kevin is looking right at me in this picture). As the pastor was talking, Kevin kept thinking he was about to get dunked and would hold his breath and reach for his nose only to realize the preacher wasn't done talking. After about the 3rd time, Kevin and I giggled at all the false starts.

Eventually, the pastor finished talking and dunked my boy. And just to be clear, he isn't wearing "tighty orangeys" under his robe. Those are his old soccer shorts.

A couple of weeks ago our church had a family night at the water park in Decatur (about 20 minutes from here). We all had a great time. Here's Cade playing in the kiddie pool.

The first ride I went on was with Kevin and Cameron. It was a big slide that had several drops followed by short, somewhat level parts. Know what I mean? Kevin was getting nervous as we got near the top and I assured him it would be fun and nothing to be scared of. The boys went down together on their innertube and I was left alone on mine. All was fine with my world until I hit the very first drop, plummeted seemingly straight down only to hit the "level" part and bounce off the surface of the slide just in time to drop over the next dropoff. This continued a couple more times before I turned around backwards and hit the pool at the bottom at about Mach 3. I would have screamed like a little girl but I think every muscle in my body had gone absolutely rigid with fear. The psycho boys of mine made me do it again and this time the darn lifeguard held me with the edge of my tube dangling over the first drop for what must have been half an hour before letting me go. I know she wanted me to think long and hard about what was coming. I accused her of being some sadistic evil-doer who was trying to give me a heart attack but she laughed at me and mumbled something about waiting for the area below to clear. Give me a break! If anyone had been in the water below me for that long they would have looked like a big, pink raisin. It took that long, I tell you!

The 4 of us (not Cade) also rode the "Space Bowl" or toilet bowl as most people call it. And I believe each one of us fell out the bottom head first despite all the flapping, flopping and squawking we did while trying to right ourselves.

Cade playing in the rain with our new umbrella. I love the look on his face. Speaking of Cade, the other day he was talking back to Dana and got a quick swat without the normal warning. With a shocked look on his face he said, "I didn't see that coming." Just another one of those times where it's nearly impossible to keep a straight face while you're disciplining your children.

Speaking of Cade, part 2. Last weekend he finally got to ride his beloved "loud loud dirt bike."

As soon as he got out of the pickup he told us he changed his mind he wasn't going to ride after all. Poor little guy got nervous. After a little encouragement, he decided to give it a try. He picked it up right away but had a little trouble turning. He didn't have as good of an area to learn in as the other two boys did but he did alright. He did get a little whiskey throttle (gas it and can't let off) and crashed once. Surprisingly, he didn't really ride very much that day.

Getting ready for the big moment!

Dang, he looks cute!

Ready to rock-n-roll!

Like last time, Cameron was a riding machine but this time he did it on the big track. There weren't as many people (and almost everyone was fairly slow) so he never even bothered with the pee wee track. Kevin also took a liking to the big track and showed some improvement as the day wore on. And for all of you who are familiar with my normal choice of moto weapon (Mom & Dad), I left it at home and rode my ol' 2 stroke for the first time in 6 years! It was fun, but not as fun as I remembered (and more squirrely). I think I'll stick to the fo-fiddy.

Kevin and Cameron started school on the 10th. Kevin is in 6th (!) and Cam is in 3rd. Geez!

Friday night we went to the Kiddie Carnival. It's a little area here in downtown Athens that has several OLD carnival rides for little kids. Kevin was almost too old to enjoy it much but he found one ride he liked. Cade thought he died and had gone to Disneyland. Cameron was somewhere in between. It was a fun time and cost little money. The rides were $0.50, cotton candy was only $1 and drinks were $0.50. When was the last time you saw prices like that?

Yesterday, we went to the first annual "Fun Days" or something like that here in Athens. It was a hodge podge of crafts vendors and kiddie games. Not overwhelmingly fun but they did have free Bingo. Only a couple of games in, Kevin won! That dude wins everything! His prize was this beautiful... (see picture)

CURLING IRON!!!

Later, a gift certificate for a manicure came up and Dana was threatening us with our lives if we didn't win it for her. Well, she and I both won! Keep in mind, I never win anything at anything and when I finally won something it's a dang manicure. To be fair, since we both won, the Bingo ladies told me I could have another gift but I declined. We tried a few more times and on the last game before they were quitting I won again! This time I won a ladies' t-shirt! Needless to say, Dana made out like a bandit mostly at my expense.

It's Magic

2009-08-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

Our new disappearing trick.

Summer Activities

2009-07-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure everyone knows, because like me you were probably following it with intense interest and spent all your available time scouring all the news articles you could find to get every last detail, last week was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. It was obviously a big deal for NASA and they celebrated here by inviting current and former employees and their families to attend a celebration at the Space and Rocket Center that afternoon. Over 7000 people attended! Needless to say, it was cool! I could easily spend a full day there by myself just looking at stuff. Here are some of the things they have on display.

I think this is the capsule from Apollo 16. Maybe 14. I can't remember which, darn it. Not much room in there for 3 people but it dwarfs the Gemini and especially Mercury capsules.

A mockup of a lunar lander. WSTF, where I used to work, has a mockup of both stages of the lander that we used to be able to climb in and on. Again, for 2 guys to live in one of these for several days, with spacesuits and other stuff in the way, they had to be pretty comfortable with each other.

Not the best picture of Cameron or me but we had to take it quick because people kept getting in the way.

From the left, Ares V, Saturn V and Ares I (yay! woo hoo! clap clap clap) The way things sound coming out of the Augustine Commission and with the slashed NASA budget, I'm not confident any of the Ares vehicles will ever fly and I'm also not too confident I'll have a job much longer. I'll be sure to send a letter to Obama thanking him for the "change". But that's a rant for a different forum.

How cool would it have been to see one of these things lift off?

Here's Cade trying out a sleeping back like they use on the Space Station.

Here's a mockup of Orion, the new crew capsule. It absolutely dwarfs the Apollo capsule. It's huge!

Looking inside and at the 6 seats. Not a great picture, but you get the idea.

The boys are in a mockup of a capsule. Ready for liftoff!

The very next day, Kevin celebrated his 11th birthday! Eleven already? Doggone, where has the time gone? Given his choice of where/what to eat on his special day, he chose to stay home and eat fried chicken. His birthday "cake" was Aunt Sandy's special treat with ice cream sandwiches covered with whipped cream and smashed Butterfingers.

Birthday boy opening his presents. I took the next day off and planned on taking everyone to the local waterpark but the weather ruined that. Instead, Kevin, Cam and I went to watch Transformers 2 at the IMAX theater. Not such a good idea. The screen was too big if you can believe it.

Last weekend, Dana, in all her wonderful planningness, found a bicycle trail in Tennessee that looked/sounded pretty neat so we loaded up the bikes and headed north. It was beautiful up there and the trails were paved and easy enough for Cade. I'm still shocked at how well he can ride his bike at only 3!

I tried a couple of shots like this and some were better but I like how Dana's waving in this one. Immediately after taking this shot I overshot a turn and crashed down a cliff into the lake. Not really, but I risked my life taking pictures from a unique angle just for your viewing pleasure. You'd better enjoy them.

We got to ride across a wooden bridge! The water looks super green here but it was actually very pretty.

At the end of one of the trails.

Dana! The woman, the myth, the master weekend planner! Is she purty, or what? Hubba hubba.

Cade even volunteered to wear the Camelback after Kevin started complaining about it. (It's Kevin's) In all, we rode over 8 miles and Cade pedaled and pedaled and pedaled the whole time like the little trooper he is. He had a couple of "moments" where we unexpectedly hit some rough patches of pavement hidden in the shade and his feet came flying off but he held it together and never crashed. Unfortunately, after all that pedaling, about 1/4 mile from the truck he hit the wall and had a meltdown. We just wore the poor little guy out.

After an exciting summer, our posts will probably be slowing down now. School starts in 2 weeks and soccer starts about the same time so our weekend adventures will be much more limited. The good thing is that it won't be too much longer before we can start posting Fall pictures!!!

NM Vacation Part 2

2009-07-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

On to part 2 of our vacation to the Land of Enchantment.

When we left off, the Fourth of July had come to a close and Cade was plum tuckered out. We pick up again the day following those last events...

Our Life Group planned a nice get-together/lunch for us at the Viera's house. The kids played in the pool and tore around the house while us adults hollered at each other over the noise. It was really nice to see everyone again. Good friends, those people are.

We spent our last full day at the lake with my mom and dad (or Pa and Tootie). This was also Mom's birthday! Happy Birthday again!!!

Cade and Pa playing catch. Looks innocent enough.

Until Cade got the idea to really get Pa wet. He's "soaking" the ball to get it extra wet in an attempt to make a bigger splash when he throws it to Pa. Unfortunately for him, this ball doesn't absorb any water. But good try anyway.

Just playing around and looking cute.

Cameron took to the water like a fish. We practically had to drag him out of the lake to apply more sunscreen.

Enjoying the good life. It's rare for Elephant Butte to be this smooth after 8 am. Being a weekday helped.

I took advantage of the smooth water, and my last chance to get on a boat until who-knows-when, to ski. I can still slalom! For a few minutes. Then my knee and ankle and lower back start feeling like they're going to fall off.

Kevin tried to ski too but didn't have much luck. He got pretty close a couple of times but he was fighting a losing battle with the skis. On his first attempt I floated out with him and told him what to expect and what to do and everything I could think of. The only very minor detail I forgot was to let go if he falls down. Minor detail. When he was almost ready I hollered to take the slack up and that got interpreted as "go". The boat took off, Kevin wasn't ready, I was holding onto his life jacket to steady him... poor kiddo didn't have a chance. He plowed through the water for about 3 feet (at which time I lost my grip), popped out of both skis and disappeared under a spray of water for about 30 feet. He came up coughing and sputtering and on the verge of tears because the water shot up his nose the whole way. I think it's hilarious. He hated it at the time and still only sees very little humor in it.

Getting ready to load up and call it a day.

And Cade is tuckered out again. Mom is having to hold his head up on the way back to the marina.

After returning home, we did some riding at a local track. We rode and rode until we couldn't ride no mo. Except Cameron. He was a riding machine and was the only one who wasn't ready to go home. I think for the first time in my life, I was just too tired to go do any more laps. Besides, I'd had a good day with no crashes so why tempt fate? In this shot, Cameron is in the front and Kevin is giving chase.

The Machine!

Dana bought a summer pass to the pool and takes the boys swimming two or three times a week. Not sure what to say about this picture other than the 3 Stooges comes to mind when I look at it.

Every night when it's Cade's bedtime, we play hide and seek one time before he gets in bed. His favorite hiding place lately is in this corner. You can't really see him here because he has his eyes covered. You can only see him when he peeks out.

I took the boys fishing in the creek that runs through town last weekend. It's really nice to leave the house and in less than 5 minutes be parked and ready to catch some dinner.

Kevin started out with my pole. Some little fish were really hitting our worms. Kevin must have used 10 worms because he kept losing them.

Cameron caught his first fish (ever) after about 2 minutes of fishing. He hollered and before I could take 3 steps he popped the fish up on the rocks.

Cameron's fish. It landed in this little puddle and played dead until I tried to pick it up. Then it suddenly became very much alive. We threw it back but we should have kept it.

Cade never got a bite but had a lot of nibbles as well.

After Kevin and Cade had given up, I gave him Kevin the pole Cade was using and told him to try that one since the hook was a different size. Minutes later, Kevin hollered that he got one. I figured it was another little one. As I got closer I could see that for all the reeling he was doing, the fish wasn't getting any closer. The pole he had doesn't have any tension adjustment and the fish was overwhelming the reel. I really wanted Kevin to feel the fight but I ended up pulling the fish in by hand while Kevin continued to madly reel the line in. He was so proud to have finally caught something (catfish) worth keeping. He's only caught one other fish in his lifetime and it was a little, tiny catfish 5 or 6 years ago. It was so small I threw it back without a second thought. A moment later, he caught it again. The fish must have had a death wish. The second time I chucked it as hard as I could and never saw it again.

Now we just need to catch a few more so we can have a fishfry!

Did I mention I had never cleaned a catfish? Geez Louise! What a pain. I'll have to work on my catfish filleting skills.

I almost forgot to mention. Kevin first named his catfish Jerry. A few minutes later he changed it to JTD - for Jerry the Dinner. I don't recall ever thinking about naming my fish but then again this is the same kid that named his Angel Fish after himself - Kevin the Fish.

NM Vacation Part 1

2009-07-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

We recently returned from our 1-1/2 week vacation to NM and have all kinds of pictures to share so I'm going to break it up into 2 posts. Here's the first half.

Waiting for the shuttle at the airport. It was hot and humid and even hotter and humider inside this waiting area. I tried to warn them.

Out of the way. Reynolds clan coming through! Don't you just love Cade's little backpack on wheels?

Just about the time our flight was scheduled to leave, they announced there was a mechanical problem with the plane but a mechanic who was a "miracle worker" was going to fix it quickly. Then a line started forming at the desk and word leaked out that the flight would be delayed by 3 hours. So I got in line and quickly learned it would actually be 5 hours. After standing in line for about 2 hours, I got us on another flight that took us to Chicago and then to Albuquerque. That flight was scheduled to leave at the same time as our delayed flight. All other options, including our delayed flight, included an overnight stay somewhere. So after hanging around the airport ALL day we finally left for The Windy City. When we arrived, we found we had a zero minute layover for our next flight. We hustled and Cade ran through the airport and were the last ones on the plane but not before we were told "something happened to our tickets and we had to be reseated." Don't you just love how it wasn't anyone's fault but instead something out of everyone's control happened? So Kevin sat alone and the remaining 4 of us were in the very back of the plane between the two big, loud, dumb, vibrating, humming engines for 3+ hours with no snack or dinner or anything for us to eat to quench the hunger pains that were forming because none of us had eaten since our early lunch when we thought we were flying out several hours earlier. Fortunately, our sob story moved the stewardess enough to give us a couple of meal packs (that you can purchase for a mere $4) for the kids to eat. Dana and I were on our own. By the time we landed in Albuquerque with splitting headaches from those obnoxious engines I was starting to wonder just how filling a Sky Mall magazine would be. The paper has some nutritional value, doesn't it? Ron picked us up at the airport (after trying to cause a minor disturbance with the guards) and got us to Inlow just before midnight. Long day but we got there safely and our luggage arrived with us.

The next 3-1/2 days were spent visiting with everyone from Dana's side of the family and playing and having a really good time.

Jeremy, Cameron and Zack-Attack in the tree house.

Kevin on the climbing wall.

Cameron stretching to touch the top handhold ball holder without a ball thing.

And even Cade made the climb.

Cameron and Zack were attached at the hip.

While big brother Kevin was connected at both hips to Ryan and Tyler. These 3 spent a lot of their time in Tyler's Man Cave playing video games. Nice hair, Ryan!

We all went for a nice walk and rode mountain bikes and even played dodge ball several times. That dang Kevin won most of the time. The twerp is good!

After leaving Inlow we headed down to Las Cruces (thanks to Ronney and Karen for letting us use their Excursion!!!) to spend some time visiting my family and several of our friends. But first we spent a day painting our dumb bathroom to make our house look better. Did you know blue is taboo? That's what a realtor told us - about 50 times in 10 minutes. So now it's brown.

Here we are at (my sister) Stacey's wedding on July 4th. I've said it before. Usually Cameron is the one making the faces but lately Kevin seems to be filling in for him. This shot cracks me up.

Cade looking cute as always.

Mr. and Mrs. Hokit and us. Whew! No funny faces this time.

I like this picture.

The chicken dance!!! Kevin's gettin' down back there.

And then it's on the fireworks! Cade loved throwing and stomping on the Pop-its.

Watching the action.

We wore Cade out.

I'll post the rest of our vacation whenever I get around to it.

I GOT A NEW CAMARO!!!

2009-06-21T13:17:00.001-07:00

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there.

For my special day, my loving wife bought a new Camaro for me! Check it out.

Ok, so it's a wireless mouse shaped like the new Camaro but it's still pretty cool. That's as close as I'm going to get to the Camaro anytime soon so I'll take it.

I bet your mouse isn't as intimidating as this one.

The headlights even light up when you click the buttons.

And while we're posting, here's Cameron's new haircut. Well, his old new haircut. He really wanted a mohawk so Dana gave him a semi-mohawk by buzzing the sides and leaving the top long for the better part of the week. She cut the rest of it off before he had to go out in public.

We had a little trouble getting it to stay up straight for this picture.

Next weekend we're flying back to NM to visit family and friends! We're looking forward to seeing everyone again.

Gone Riding!!! and Kevin Wins Big

2009-06-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I played hooky from work on a Friday and we all headed south to a place near Birmingham to go riding. This is a pay to play area but they have 500 acres, many trails of varying difficulty levels and several motocross tracks for little kids all the way up to a Supercross (difficult) track. I was in heaven!

Dana took this picture looking out across the motocross track where I spent most of my time. It's a little different than what I'm used to.

Here's my first artistic shot. The boys and Dana all say my two pictures are weird but I like them. The bike is wondering what in the heck those green things are in front of it.

And that's a brand new knobby, chain and sprockets and the bike is in the dirt for the first time in 8 months! How can that not excite you? Ok, fine. I still like it.

You can't tell in this picture, but there's a tree branch that hangs down and was smacking me across the face every time I came over this jump. That's something else I can chalk up as never happening to me before. This track was SO much fun. I can't wait to go back.

Cameron is on the kids' motocross track and about to catch some air. Big bikes like mine aren't allowed on it so I couldn't ride with them. Both boys really enjoyed this track as well.

Here's Kevin on the same jump. This double jump is immediately followed by two more doubles. This was the first real jump that Kevin has doubled on his 85 and he followed that up by jumping the next two as well. The first time he did it I honestly thought his throttle was stuck. It scared me!

Cade watching and learning. He's just biding his time until he can get out there.

Last week was "Bring Your Child to Work Day" and I took Kevin and Cameron to work with me. The center had some really nice activities and things to do for the kids. At lunch time we had just finished a free ice cream bar and were sitting down to eat some free pizza when Cameron asked me, "So do you eat pizza every day?" That's the bad thing about activities like that. The kids grow up thinking work is awesome and we all sit around and do fun stuff all day.

One of the things we went to was a bicycle safety presentation. Honestly, the only reason I took the kids to that was because they were giving away a free bike. The presentation was ok but not great and the lady didn't appreciate me suggesting she not drop her helmet on the floor in front of everyone next time (I talked to her after the class was over). Taking care of your helmet is something I harp on the kids about and they both noticed she did that so I felt obligated to say something. :) Anyway, the next day, I got a call from the head of Security and he told me Kevin won the bike! His story was that we could either have the bike that was on display or we could pick one out from Wal-Mart for $100 or less. Wal-Mart had a different story and said we get that bike and only that bike. As it turns out, it was worth more than $100 and is a pretty darn nice bike! Kevin loves it. Look at that thing. 21 speed, full suspension, DISC BRAKE in the front! When I called Kevin at home to tell him he was obviously super excited. He called me back a couple of hours later and told me it was his best day ever because he had just seen a new Camaro drive by (I'm so proud!). His day couldn't get any better than that.

Well, with all the excitement of getting a new bike, Cade wanted one too. Dana told him we had one for him in the attic so the minute we got home he wanted me up there to get that new bike for him. I wasn't sure he was big enough but he fits just fine if not a little tippy toe. I gave him a push to get started once and that was it. Moments later he told me he was done with his "special bike" (his name for his old, small bike) and that I could put it away. He goes trucking around everywhere on his new bike now and rides like a pro! Through the rocks, over the ruts, doesn't matter. And he won't even be 4 until October!

There he goes! No more little bike for him.

Here's one of the flower things that we have out behind our house. The flower is made up of a whole bunch of tiny little flowers. Each one of these had that little purple thing in the middle. My hand helps show how big it is. Pretty cool. It's probably poisonous.

With the slope in our backyard the kids don't have to try too hard to make it all the way down the slip-n-slide.

Last weekend we went back to De Soto State Park. And this time it was green! Here, Kevin and Cade stop to cool their feet. And I'm happy to report, Cade did NOT fall in the water.

Isn't this dragonflly pretty? I've never seen one like that before.

This waterfall looks a lot different than it did last time we were there.

I love this boardwalk.

This is looking down from the waterfall and watching Cameron get soaked.

All that walking wore someone out!

Dana is in charge of crafts for the VBC next week. She volunteered to make 2317 boomerangs for all the kids to decorate. Ok, maybe more like 70 but we've been spending plenty of time cutting these things out and still have quite a few more to go. Why is it that every time she volunteers for something it means work for me?

Still with me after all that? Good. Thanks for reading!