Top 20 Videos

No, I haven’t posted anything in a while. I also haven’t had a free evening all year. I think I’m going to take a long hiatus from freelance web development in 2012. I’m burned out.

Since I haven’t been making videos, I got a little nostalgic and went through all of the existing ones.  I thought about making a top 10 list, but I couldn’t do it. So here’s my Top 20 Alex Videos of the Last 5 Years.

Artsy…

Artsy…, a photo by DoubleM524 on Flickr.

Alexisms

Posting on Facebook is fine for the short term, but I have doubts that the timeline will keep everyting, so I need to start posting here for a longer diary. I got all these bits so far.

“I’m just a little bit 5. When I’m big 5, I’ll be in kindergarten”

There’s a bulletin board at his school where a teacher wrote down the kids’ answers to the question: “What are you thankful for?” Alex was the only one out of 20 who answered: “My dad.”

“When I’m 5, I’ll play kindergarten t-ball. And when I’m 10, I’ll play big t-ball. And when I’m 100, I’ll play big baseball!”

“The question mark holds our spot.” me: “You mean bookmark?”

“Am I 5 already? … Am I going to be in Kindergarten?” me: “Well not on Monday…”

“Daddy, guess what I’m dreaming about? Pianano”

July

Wow, what a couple of weeks that was!

It started on Tuesday, June 28 when Andrew stopped by our house and surprised us. Their family wasn’t due into Chicago until Sunday night for their annual vacation up from Houston, so this was a pleseant surprise. Turns out he just finished his final interview with Willow that day and got offered a job. (which he accepted). The process had been ongoing since May, and it was finalizing this week (he signed the contract on the 8th, so we were asked not to say anything until then).

Saturday, the 2nd, we headed up to Hutchinson Lake to spend family time with my cousins and aunts/uncles at my uncle Van’s cottage. We left later than we expected and got stuck in heavy, heavy holiday traffic. What is normally a 2 hour drive took us 4. We were less than happy with that. We were offered the opportunity to spend the night at their cabin, but we weren’t fully prepared for that, so we did head home later in the evening.

But not before having a couple of hours of fun playing in the lake and playing baseball on the lawn. We got Alex a life vest and that gave him a huge confidence boost. It was tough to get him out of the water. Sara, Alex, and I all climbed on a jet ski for a short excursion around the lake. We went out past the 7:30 “no wake” time cut-off, so I didn’t want to spend too much time out there lest we got Van in trouble. But we had a nice 10 minute trip with short bursts of speed and Alex had a lot of fun doing that. Next time we’ll have to get there much earlier to get some boating time. The plan to try to drive during nap time just sort of backfired on us.

The water was only up to his waist all the way out to the boats.

Sunday was relax day.  Although we did go to the baseball field and that was when kids were shooting off fireworks on the next block over which Alex was sure they were being fired off for his “home runs.”

Monday was the holiday. At noon, the parade came down the side street and turned east (so not technically in front of our house). We walked to the corner and put our chairs in the street for a good view. Alex loved running out to grab all the candy that was being thrown out. We haven’t eaten any of it yet, it was just more fun to chase it all down.

Monday evening, Andrew & Cathi and the kids came over for a BBQ. The kids swam in the pool a little bit too. Alex became a daredevil by jumping off the cube into the pool.

We walked to the park on the praire path to kill some time and energy (and to walk by any houses that may be for sale). Then around 9, we walked down the street to get a seat in the grass at the church for fireworks viewing. It was late and the kids were tired. We wondered why we were doing it. Oh well.

Tuesday was back to work. Tuesday night was the U2 360 concert at Soldier Field. Hmm. I just realized those pictures are on Sara’s phone still. Well, here’s one from Cathi:

It was a great show. It ended late and getting out of there was tough (can’t go East!) We got to bed at 1am on a school night. I’m way too old to be doing that! But it was fun anyway.

Wednesday evening was BBQ at Emily & Dan’s place. Good to hang out with them again, too. Thursday night was my softball night. Friday night: day off! woohoo!

Saturday we drove up to Warren Dunes State Park (90 minutes) to meet up with the whole Bemis gang. This has become an annual tradition as this beach is perfectly between GR and Chicago. Traffic wasn’t near as bad as the week before, thankfully.

So we spent the afternoon playing in the water, getting sunburned and having a good time.

Alex surfing on a boogy board

Burying Andrew

14 Kids from 6 families

The Women

The Men

So that’s how July started. I need a vaction from all that!

Story Time

I was reading this story to Alex last night about a boy who keeps pleading with his mom to let him stay up 5 more minutes. But Alex looked at this picture and asked me “Who’s the grandma?”

I guess that’s the outfit grandmas wear?