Time to collate those Facebook posts again.

Alex: “I got a cut.”
me: “I’m sorry.”
Alex: “Why? It was the notebook, not you.”

me: “What are you doing?”
Alex: “I’m practicing my throws so I get better!”

me: “There’s no monsters here. Monsters live in Oaklahoma.”
Alex: “Dad, can we go to Oaklahoma?”

Me: “Is that a Little Lambs song?”
Alex: “Nope. My brain made me do it.”

Looking at some house decorations:
Alex: “They have a santa and a knucklehead!”
Me: “You mean a nutcracker?”

Overheard: “He’s the world champion of the first round!”

At Home Depot, pushing Alex in those shopping carts with the 2-kid-seater add-ons at the back. Alex: “I wish Nate was here to ride with me. And Cailey can ride up front”

“Dad, did you see that girl sitting next to me? She’s my friend.”
me: “Yea? What’s her name?”
Alex: “I don’t know. The girl with the big teeth.”

Alex describing the new book our small group is studying this quarter: “See daddy? This book has words in it about the Bible.”

Just testing the capabilities of this phone taking pictures, voice texting this post, and uploading it to my blog.

I got a new phone today. Early Christmas present. It’s the newest phone from Google – the Nexus Prime. A super phone. The capabilities of this thing are amazing. Technology is awesome.

But I’m not posting this to brag. I’m hopeful this device will enable me to post things more often. In shorter posts. In fact I’m writing this post on my phone now. I hope to get more pictures and videos shot with this and quickly posted. I’m looking forward to really getting used to this machine and to use it quickly. Should be fun!

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.

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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”

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!

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?

Couple of things I meant to post, but never did. Sorry.

Some videos:

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Over Easter, we went to Minnesota. Sara’s cousin’s husband is an equipment manager for the Twins, so he got us nice seats for the game that weekend. It was cold. The Twins brass can boast all they want about the number of over head heaters they have on the concourse, but unless they add them to the seats, I’ll never understand why they didn’t put a roof on that thing.

That said, it’s a beautiful baseball park. Surprisingly, it’s a few thousand seats smaller than Wrigley. But it’s a excellent example of what a ballpark should be. I’m all for tearing down Wrigley and starting from scratch.

Here’s a couple of photos. I took a couple innings and walked around the park late in the game. I’ll get those up someday.

Picking up our tickets from the Twins Player's will call window

Bundled up in our seats

About 30 rows behind home plate.

Panorama of the exterior on our way out

Uncle Scott bought him a Twins hat, too.

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Monday started T-ball. Calling it that isn’t quite right. It’s 3-4 year olds. Most of them are still learning which direction is first base. It’s actually too basic for Alex, but he can’t play real t-ball until he’s 5. Besides, it gets him out in a more team oriented environment than just playing with Mom and Dad.

Thankfully Coach Josh is still doing it. We talked up T-ball with Coach Josh for several weeks and by the time it came, he was really excited about it. He ran right onto the field and followed Coach Josh and the group around all afternoon. The kids were told to get some water from their parents and then go back out, and he had no issues. No more clinging to our legs this year, which is great.

He’s becoming much more aware of things. He’s interested in learning the different positions around the infield. I’m trying to teach him about outs and innings. But outside of baseball, he’s become interested in knowing about street names and identifying what road we’re traveling on.

Yesterday at school was a bike day, but we discovered that his bike had a flat. I went to Ace at 7:30 in the morning to see if they had any tubes. They do, but not small enough ones. I tried a patch, but the hole was around the air valve, so I couldn’t get the patch to close around that uneven section. He went to school unhappy, but was fine.

That evening, we went to the sporting goods store and got a new tube. After I put the bike back together, Alex was interested in trying to ride the bike without training wheels. So we rode on the sidewalk for a very short while before he was ready to put the training wheels back on. So it was exciting to see him interested in learning how to do that himself. Hopefully as he watches other kids at school without the training wheels it’ll really keep him motivated.

We also signed him up for swimming lessons, although that starts in July. We decided to do the 2 week, 10 lesson class. We felt that going every night would help him retain the things taught better than if we were only going back once a week. That’ll happen just before we go to the Dells on our camping trip, so hopefully he’ll be able to swim in any pools we go in while on vacation.