Hogwarts Castle

Derek's been saving his money for quite a while to buy the Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle and a few weeks ago he had finally saved enough to get it. But we've been so busy that we had not gotten to the store. Thankfully, Derek had been pretty reasonable about pestering us - except for a couple occasions where he didn't have enough other things to do and I had to tell him to quit asking.

This weekend, we finally made the commitment to go to Target after Adam's soccer game on Sunday. Derek was so excited and told us that once he got the castle he was going to be in his room for days and no one was to bother him. As soon as we arrived at the store, Derek excitedly did a walk\run back to the toy section. The store was being turned into a Super Target so everything had been reconfigured and, at first, Derek couldn't find the Lego section and was getting worried that the store had quit carrying Lego's. We finally found the Lego's, but there was no Hogwarts Castle. Once we confirmed with one of the workers that there weren't any in the back either, Derek started getting misty eyed. He had waited patiently for weeks and the day had finally arrived only to be thwarted.

Adam was also caught up in the money madness and couldn't wait to dump his hard earned money on the Matchbox Shark Attack. But that Target did not have any Shark Attacks, either. So I proposed that if they were willing to combine their money then I would chip in the difference and they could get a Nintendo Wii. Derek gave careful consideration to the offer, but Adam wouldn't go for it.

Adam wasn't too upset, but Derek had lost all hope. We were beat from all the weekend activities and still had lots to do to get ready for the week, but we decided, since Derek had been so patient, that we would drive over to another Target to see if they had a Hogwarts Castle. Derek's demeanor quickly changed from mopey and sad to one of eager anticipation.

When we arrived at the store, Derek hustled back to the toy section where he found the last remaining Hogwarts Castle and as we rolled up with the shopping cart, he had the biggest grin on his face and quickly deposited his prize in the shopping cart. Adam also got his Shark Attack.

When we got home, both boys immediately headed up to their rooms with their new toys. It's been a few days and Derek spends any free time he can get up in his room setting up his castle. He gives his friends at school daily updates and pulls us into his room to show us how far he's gotten. Adam has his Shark Attack setup in his room and closes his door so nobody will bother it.

Soccer

Ryan and Adam pushing the ball

Adam does a face plant

A rare shot of Adam under control

Adam loves the slide kick

More ground time

Shaking hands at game's end

Derek moves on the ball

Derek gets in on the action

Derek hustles after the ball

Derek and Adam have started their soccer seasons. Adam is playing on the U-6 Storm and Derek is playing on the U-10 Rovers. They both seem to be really enjoying it. Adam was happy that Ryan, his neighbor friend, is also on his team. Adam hustles the whole time and is in constant motion, although he would be of more use to his team if he would stay on his feet instead of taking every opportunity to fall on the ground. Derek has really had to step it up with this being his first exposure to rec league. He played a couple seasons in a church league, but the field was much smaller and the players were not nearly as good. We joke with him that all the running is finally going to shrink his muffin top belly. He really likes defense - especially goalie. He realizes that he doesn't have the speed or ball skills to be a great offensive player, but he did get a couple shots at the goal in his second game.

Welcome To Moe's

Derek has soccer practice on Friday nights, so we've been going out to eat after practice. After the first practice, we went with Derek's choice of Dairy Queen. Our stomachs are just now recovering. I remember the "Brazier Burger" from my youth as being pretty good. Times have changed. I'm not sure what kind of meat (if it was meat) that was in the burgers.

This past Friday, I decided to go out on a limb and try Moe's. I like Moe's, but Helen's not crazy about it and the kids have never tried it. Derek always complains if it's not hamburgers, pizza, or chicken fingers, so we haven't picked it before. However, he didn't complain too bad when we told him that we were going to Moe's. He was familiar with the "Welcome to Moe's" greeting and I think he was curious to see what it was all about.

It was a rousing success and, in fact, the kids keep asking if they can go back. Helen even agreed that it wasn't too bad. The kids liked the silly names for the menu items and had fun ordering. Normally, we don't let them have soft drinks, but we let them that night and they thought it was big fun to fill their own cups with their soda choice. So it looks like Moe's will be another option for us.

Tallula

We just adopted a new miniature dachshund named, Tallula (or Lula for short). A lady at Helen's school had to give Tallula away and we volunteered to take her. She's 2 and 1/2 years old. Her coloring is called "dapple".

Before we had kids our pets were everything to us. Our 2 labs and our cat often slept with us in our big king bed. But once we had kids, everything changed. The pets were constantly annoying us to the point that there was definitely no more sleeping in the bed. We've been joking for years about looking forward to becoming "pet free". We even coined the phrase "Pet Free in 2003" as a hopeful wish for that year.

Over Christmas we got closer to the "pet free" goal when we had to put our black lab, Bailey, down. Although we made light of becoming "pet free" - when it became apparent that we would have to put Bailey down, we were all heartbroken.

We've always favored big dogs ("real dogs" as opposed to "shit dogs"), but we've always had a soft spot for dachshunds for some reason. We recently met a lady at one of my tennis matches who had the cutest little miniature dachshund and we thought that we could do a little mini dachshund - but later, after the kids had grown and moved out.

Then Helen got the email about Tallula. She forwarded the email to me at work and I replied that I didn't know what was going on, but for some reason I thought we could do it. A couple other people replied before us, but Tallula didn't work out for them, so we got her. Derek and Adam just love her. She's very sweet. Helen and I even agreed that having Tallula around has made us more accepting of our lab, Madison, who's got a lot of irritating quirks.

I Love My New HD TV

We finally purchased a new television. Our primary television had been a 20+ year old Sony 19". Recently, the speakers started rattling after watching some concert videos and the picture has had some permanent lines running through it for a number of years, so I finally decided that it was probably time to get a new one.

Luckily, the prices on TV's have been falling. As usual, I was obsessed with finding just the right "value" TV. Not top of the line, but one that's recognized as a good TV for the money. I finally settled on the Olevia 532H and, so far, I'm very satisfied. A couple nice undocumented surprises were that it came with 2 HDMI connections (the specs said 1) and a QAM tuner (so that it can receive unscrambled digital cable channels without a box from the cable company for when you want to utilize the picture in picture feature). I had read on some message boards that it had a QAM tuner, but that Olevia does not advertise it.

All I can say is wow! High Def television is incredible! I've especially been enjoying the US Open tennis championships and the boys never thought Cartoon Network could look so good. One of the reasons we kept putting off getting a new TV was that we didn't watch much. Now we know why - our TV was so crappy. With the new TV and high def I have a feeling there's going to be a lot more TV watching.

I even bumped up my Comcast service and got a HD\DVR box. I'm usually pretty big on minimizing recurring bills (we've still got $15 a month 25 minute cell phone plans), but the HD channels and the DVR are pretty sweet. We had also recently signed up for the Blockbuster movie plan and were watching quite a few movies over the Summer, but have fallen off lately. It looks like there's plenty of On Demand movies from Comcast, so maybe we'll drop the Blockbuster plan. So many things to watch and so little time.

I spent most of the nights last week staying up way too late playing, tweaking, and configuring, the tv, cable box, etc. - much to Helen's dislike. She especially didn't like when all those late nights led to me getting sick over Labor Day weekend. And then I played golf, which took even more out of me. I'm feeling better now, but sickness for us at this time of year is always scary. We've both ended up in the hospital around this time of year after coming down with what we thought were just colds.

The Rat Race Starts All Over Again

Summer is over and we've hit the ground running. Helen's up before 5 once again, which means no staying up late for her. I tell myself I'm going to get up with her, but even if I go to bed with her I usually stay up too late reading and when her alarm goes off in the morning and I see that it's still dark - getting up with her just doesn't seem that important, so I usually sleep until a little before 6 - as daylight is breaking. I think I could get up with Helen if it was light outside, but it just doesn't seem normal to get up when it's dark.

Both the boys are doing soccer this Fall and Helen and I are doing tennis. On Monday's we have Derek's soccer practice. Tuesday's are Adam's soccer practice and Helen's tennis practice. On Wednesday's the boy's have piano lessons. Thursday is my tennis practice. Friday's are another soccer practice for Derek. On Saturday's the boys have their soccer matches and I have my tennis match.

We joke that once October rolls around the rest of the school year really goes by in a flash: soccer, tennis, football, various Fall festivals, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, skiing, Spring Break, and then it's Summer again.

The boys had been playing soccer in a church league the past couple years, but this Summer Derek decided that he wanted to play in the county league. Adam was not so eager - after some probing we discovered that he thought he would have to play with big boys Derek's age. Adam also has his little friend Ryan who lives next door on his team - so he is happy now.

The first two weeks of school have flown by. Both the boys really like their teachers - we're very glad that Derek seems to have someone he clicks with. Derek was the sweet big brother and walked Adam to his class the first two days. They had also been sitting on the bus together - then Adam got off the bus very sad on Tuesday - Derek wanted to sit with a friend - Adam was crushed.

We keep asking Adam if he has learned the names of anyone in his class - he tells us that all he knows is "Draw". We ask if maybe it is "Drew", but he says no. He's recently added a couple more names to the list - one is of a little boy that we saw at the pool on the second day after school. He knew who Adam was - but it is taking Adam a while to get names down.

Derek is have a great time in 3rd grade - he goes to a 1st grade class and has a book buddy, he is excited to start multiplication (hope he always loves to learn) and he seems to have made some new friends in his class.

The boys have still not gone outside for recess because of the heat. Thankfully, the weather pattern seems to have broken. We've actually had some rain and the temps seem to have receded back to a more acceptable low 90's, so hopefully the school will allow the kids to go outside this week.

We've walked to school a couple times a week and the boys get to bring a dollar and get ice cream one day a week, which is always a big day for them. Derek complained that he was miserably full after eating his lunch and ice cream on Friday.

Adam is also getting his six year molars - he says it doesn't hurt too bad unless he touches it with food. He also lost another front tooth (total of three), but there is only room for the two new teeth that are coming in. He also has two other loose teeth - on the bottom next to the teeth he's already lost. He hasn't lost any teeth on top yet. We're going to have some questions for the dentist at his next appointment, which thankfully is coming soon.

Adam's First Day of Kindergarten

Last night for sleepovers

Adam organizing his backpack

Adam trying on his new backpack

Walking to the bus stop

Ryan, Derek, and Adam (It's Ryan's first day of kindergarten also)

Family Photo Op

The bus stop was hopping with activity

Here comes big yellow

Derek's first in line

The boys started school on Monday. Derek is going into the 3rd grade and Adam is starting kindergarten! Helen made arrangements to go into school late so she could see Adam off on his first day. The bus stop was full of activity with all the kids, parents, and pets. Helen and Sylvia (Ryan's mom) shed some tears, but held it together for the most part. It made it easier that the boys were so excited about starting school.

In general, Helen has a tendency to reminisce about the past or about how quickly the boys will be grown and gone. I try to live in the moment and appreciate that there are so many great experiences (albeit different) still to come. I wasn't really that emotional about Adam going to kindergarten - until Helen and I walked back from the bus stop together and then she left for work. I started gathering my things for work when I stopped, for some reason, and looked over at the counter where the boys eat their breakfast. I could see Adam sitting there waiting for me to get him some more cereal, like we usually did after dropping Derek at the bus stop. Then all the emotions and tears started coming. I could hear Adam's sweet little voice asking, "Dadda, after breakfast can you read me a story?" Or play a game with me, or play catch with me, or push me on the tire swing, etc.

The mornings have always been my alone time with the boys. For a couple years, before Derek started school, it was both boys, but for most of the time it's been one on one time with one of them - first Derek and then Adam. Helen and I have always tried to minimize their time in daycare, so I would keep the boys as long as I could in the morning - making my normal arrival time at work 10:00 (or later). Helen would leave school as soon as she could and pick the boys up by 4:00. Certainly not the hours necessary to be engineer or teacher of the year, but who wants that anyway?

Now, I'm getting into work a little before 9:00. I joked with some of my co-workers that I was in early because I was under the impression that there was a pancake breakfast every morning if you got into work before 9:00.

The boys had a great week and seem to really enjoy school. The only real bummer was that it was so hot all week (with temps over 100) that the school wouldn't let the kids go outside for recess. Today, Adam said he wanted to walk to school, so we did and took Ryan along with us. Hopefully, we'll make that a regular activity and walk a couple times a week.