Really need to start exercising

“Daddy, why do you have a big tummy?”

“Cause I love food.”

“I love food too! See my big tummy!?”

**Sigh**

I also don’t exercise like you do, kid… Plus your metabolism… And then there’s all that beer….

Pure Heart

It’s been my privilege recently to watch Alex interact with other children. I’d seen him play before, but I only recently have I noticed how inclusive he is to other kids.

There have been many times when Sara, Alex and I will play baseball together and Alex will say things like “Now it’s your turn to…” but he also does that to everyone.

Alex and I went to the park one day to play baseball on the open diamond next to all the other little league games that were going on. 2 other young boys who’s older brothers were playing in other games were wandering and hovering around our little game. I invited them to play, but it was Alex who made sure everyone got a fair turn batting and pitching. Alex would even go sit in the dugout and wait for his turn to come up again.

Yesterday we went to the Dykstra’s house for dinner, and again while playing baseball in their backyard, Alex wanted to make sure Morgan got turns batting and pitching.

It’s really a delight to see him play so well with others and I hope that’s a trait he never loses.

My Famous Friends

2011 is shaping up to be an amazing year. I’m having a good one, and so are my friends.

My cousin, Stefan, is a producer on the Gayle King Show in NY.

A friend of a friend was one of 4 finalists to be the Good Morning America Advice Guru (okay, this one is a stretch, but it’s still cool)

My church friend, Kyle, and his band won a Battle of the Bands concert and opened a Bon Jovi concert this week.

And now I just found out that our work friend, Brian, is one of 3 finalist to be the Cubs PA announcer. He’s flying in for an interview on Monday.

Pretty cool first 3 months of the year.

More Updates

You can see over on the right there are some new pictures in my Flickr gallery, too. Sara’s parents were in town for a week while I was in Nashville at NRB.

We’re on concert patrol this month. We hosted a Gungor and Seabird concert while in Nashville on Feb 27. This past Saturday Alex and his grandparents went to a Randall Goodgame Slugs’n'Bugs kids concert. This past Sunday night was an Andrew Peterson, Andy Gullahorn, Ben Shive concert. Both were at our church. Randall Goodgame is playing for my office on Tuesday. Sheryl and I are going to the Bon Jovi concert on Wednesday, but mainly to see the opening act, which is the drummer for our church, Kyle and his band, the West Side Winders. They won a battle of the bands competition and beat our 20 other bands to get to open for Bon Jovi. I’m real excited to see that.

It’s also now official that we’re part-owners of Cubs season tickets. My co-worker, Dave’s brother Ryan had his number get called (only took him 3 years). So we’re splitting it. The plan is to sell 90% of the games (yes, we have tickets to all 81 games). Dave and Ryan have been buying and selling tickets for nearly 10 years. They’re very confident we’ll make a profit. I think in the end I’ll end up with 6 games to go to – mostly afternoon or evening games that would be hard to sell anyway. Pirates in April anyone?

The seats are mediocre – deep in the right field corner, 20o level. But we’re in as season ticket holders and figure every year we’ll be offered a little bit better of an option. And of course, if the Cubs ever do go to the World Series, well then we’ll sell those and have Alex’s college tuition all saved for.

That’s pretty much it for now. I’m swamped right now. I have 11 open freelance projects right now. Some new clients, some existing, but way more work than I should be doing at one time. I should probably get back to some of them now.

Forgotten Videos

I know, I’m slacking. Life is getting in the way. Here’s some videos from our Houston trip I forgot about.

One of N’s favorite games is grocery shopping. So is Alex’s. It was perfect. The best is C’s line: “What are you people doing?” “We’re beeping stuff.”

One night we were out a little late, it had rained all day, and we gave the kids ice cream. I know, we’re awesome parents. So to burn off all that energy to get them to sleep, we let them bounce on the trampoline. It had stopped raining, although the trampoline itself was really wet.

Here’s a little video of that train ride in Herman Park.

Out for a run

When Alex woke up from his nap this afternoon, Sara was still out on a run. He asked where she was and I told him, so he spent some time looking out the front window, hoping she’d run by. It didn’t happen, so I told him we could go outside and look for her.

As we were getting ready, she came home and he saw that she had her iPod with her. By the time I got my shoes on and was ready to go outside, Sara helped Alex put the earbuds in his ear and his shoes, hat and coat (it was only 40 degrees). He told me he wanted to go on a run, but I wasn’t quite sure what he meant or that he knew what that meant.

We walked to the end of the alley to the sidewalk and I again said I didn’t know what he wanted to do, so he’d have to go first. He took off and I jogged after him. We ran the WHOLE WAY around the block, stopping briefly only twice.

I was quite shocked (and proud) at his stamina and commitment.

Me? I’m dying and aching from a ten minute jog. Ugh.

Monster Jam

Well, we did it. We went to a Monster Jam show. I’ve been hesitant to do it because I knew that the Allstate Arena is a tiny place (it’s a hockey/basketball stadium) and the trucks can’t get moving as fast as when they perform in football stadiums. But I looked at the 2011 schedule and there isn’t another show near Chicago all year. I was hoping they’d do a show in Minnesota this year, but I guess with the problems in the Metrodome, they’re skipping that state this year. Besides, the tickets for Friday night’s show were only $10 each, so it seemed like a good deal, just to see one show at least. Maybe next year we’ll go back to Houston if they go back to Reliant Stadium.

So a show is 2 hours broken down like this. First they parade all the trucks out around the track. Then they do little jumps – 2 each. We didn’t catch it on tape, but Digger was the first one to do this and flipped his truck. I didn’t film it because I figured there would be more wrecks later during freestyle, but unfortunately not. That was the only wreck of the night.

After the quick jumps, some of the trucks parked in the middle and they do some Quad racing, I guess just to fill the time. We didn’t film that either because that’s not what we came for.

Then there are the monster truck races, 2 trucks at a time in a little tournament until 1 truck is the winner. In between rounds, more quad racing. By the way, those quads, even though tiny, are almost as loud as the monster trucks.

Then there is an intermission. After the break, we watched two transformer cars do battle. Mildly entertaining. Their “canons” sure were loud. The bad guy lost one of his arms as he was transforming, too. They moved really, really slow. Definitely not like the movie transformers. I think I would have preferred Truckasaurus, but I guess they need to demonstrate other oddities, too.

Finally, it was time for freestyle: the main event. This is when 1 truck at a time tries for the biggest and most specactular jumps. There were judges, but not sure what they were grading on – their scores seemed pretty random.

There were 8 trucks total there. A few were Alex’s favorite. Batman, Digger, Max D. We were told this was the first time in 5 years that Max D was back in Chicago. Monster Jam puts on 5 shows in Chicago over the weekend, but they also put on shows in 4 other states the same weekend. So there must be a lot of trucks (and duplicates) and drivers. When Alex saw the driver of Max D, he told us that wasn’t the real Max D driver – and he was absolutely right. We didn’t get the star drivers that you see on the tv show. He’s just that observant.

All in all, it was a fun night and Alex had fun. He was pretty tired, but still had a lot of fun and didn’t want to stop playing with his own trucks at home for an hour after we got back. He had to have a checkered flag, too, which he really loves waving and doing races with. Seeing these trucks live is really impressive. We didn’t get close, but just seeing them on tv really doesn’t do them justice.

Here’s a bit of a compilation of our night:

All the Monster trucks at the show

Alex and his flag

Digger was still on the field as we were leaving, so we grabbed a shot