The Boys of Simiskeyville: June 2009

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Papa's Day 2009

Father's Day - June 21, 2009. Thankfully, it was my weekend with the kiddos, so I got to celebrate the day doing what I love best - being a daddy. Highlights included hearing Beeju and the rest of the Primary kids sing a pair of Father's Day songs during Church and getting some fun presents from the boys (a couple of items are pictured below...not pictured are the otter pop, colored pictures, card, etc). Happy Papa's Day to me!

Three hot guys. No, literally, we were sweating. For those of you non-Texans, it has been b-l-a-z-i-n-g here the last month or so. This was around 7:30p, and it was still hotter than a horse. But that was secondary to spending a fun evening at the park with Champ and Nutty. And Beeju's monkey. And Nut's "Bob Cutlass" and "Darrel Cartrip" (for you Cars fans).

Nut's handiwork from school. That dude owns me with his ridiculous cuteness.

Beeju originals. For those of you uncultured saps with an untrained eye, the creation on the right is a "ferocious cactus." Duh.

This is an oldie but a goodie. It's from our President's Day (aka "Stanford D-Day Eve") Chuck E Cheese outing back in February. Outrageous fun! Which helped me through the next day or two or fifty of total chaos.

Finger Exercises

Lately, the boys have been into learning and dialing my phone number. A lot. Yesterday, I was away from the house for 2-3 hours running some errands. When I got back, I had a voicemail. Er, rather, 11 voicemails. All from Beeju. And every one of them was fun to listen to. Sometimes he would be genuinely surprised ("Huh?!? Dad...is that you?"). Other times he was frustrated ("Daddy says he'll call me back. Again! Why does he keep saying that?"). I guess I need to teach him my cell phone number.

Of course, before I had even listened to all the messages, he called again. We chatted and chatted and chatted. Then, as is usual, he passed the phone to Peanut. And, in standard little brother protocol, Sammy says, "I want to dial your phone number too." So he hangs up and dials my number so we can talk. About 30 minutes later, the phone rang again. And so the day went.

By late afternoon, Noah was insisting that I come over. Of course I would be all over that. But one cannot invite one's self over. In the end, we met up at the boys' favorite place - Jamba Juice. We had our usual Orange Dream Machines and then the boys talked Amy into letting them come over and spend the night at my place. I felt bad for her, because it's her weekend. But it's hard to tell a puppy-dog-eyed little boy that he can't spend the night with his daddy.

I love that my boys want to talk to me so much. I hope that never changes. I know there will likely be lean years when they're teenagers. But I hope they always know how important they are to me and how much I love our chats. Whether something good happens or something bad happens or nothing much at all happens, I hope they'll always want to dial Papa's number and tell him all about it.

In parting, here are two random shots of the boys....

Nutty doing his favorite thing these days...a puzzle.

Beeju pretending to have fallen asleep while getting in his jammies. Of course, Mr. Silly can't keep a straight face for long. You can already see his pursed lips trying to keep the laughs in. 2 seconds later, he was busting up. P.S. Nice swimmer's tan going on, Little Man.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Beach Rule #1

Monday, May 25. Memorial Day. Several weeks prior, without thinking of the ramifications, Papa made an exuberant, spur-of-the-moment promise to take the boys to the beach. The next available opportunity: Memorial Day. When Daddy has a day off from work, the boys call it "Special Monday" or "Special Friday" or whatever. And we were determined to make this a really "special Monday." Along with tens of thousands of other residents of the greater Gulf Coast area. Yeah, I didn't think this one through very well. The beach on Memorial Day? That's almost a cardinal sin. Should've picked a non-descript Saturday. But I wasn't about to break a promise to my towheads.

So we packed up and headed down to Surfside for the day, along with two of my brothers - Stan and James - and their families, and Grandpa. James' wife, Shelley, took a bunch more pics, but she's been distracted with other things (oldest daughter graduating, etc) and hasn't sent them to me. And inexplicably, she is STILL without a Facebook profile or blog to post them on.

All packed up and ready to roll. Special Monday, here we come!

The initial reaction was one of uncertainty. After all, this was their first beach trip ever. "Uh, so what do we do now, Dad?"

And whenever there's a moment of uncertainty, the default reaction is: silliness from boy #1 and a look of "what the heck are you doin" from the more subdued boy #2.

Here's Beeju building an entire "sand city" just like his favourite British duo - Charlie and Lola - from the Disney Playhouse series. Working hard...

...or hardly working? Nut opted for more of the "chill" beach adventure. Though by the end, he warmed up to the water thing and had fun "splashing" in the waves (as long as he could cling tightly to Daddy and not actually touch the water).

Taking a breather to enjoy some Gatorade and shade.

Not sure which was more tiring for Peanut...our crazy fun day at the beach or the hours of sitting in traffic there and back. Thank goodness for built-in car DVD players. What a cute Nut. Both boys did amazing all day. Traffic or not, it really was a "Special Monday."

Water Follies, El Tercero

Saturday, May 23, 2009. The community pool finally opened for the summer. Phew! Not many pictures to show here, though. I was too busy enjoying the water. After all, Papa couldn't fit in the "womb" or in the "crib" from the prior two weeks, so this was week one for me and I couldn't be bothered with manning the camera. Suffice it to say, we had a good time. And bonus: the HOA provided free ice cream, which we gladly enjoyed. Maybe a couple of times.

The HOA also handed out water guns to all the kids. Here are the boys loading up for their next assault on Pappy. Another reason for not having the camera out much.

Inexplicably, Sammy turned his back on his ice cream. In a moment of weakness, the photog made quick work of the scraps. Thankfully, there's no photo evidence of that hasty pummeling. Poor cones...never saw what was coming.

Water Follies, Part Deux

Papa wasn't about to let summer get jump-started with such a whimper (see the previous post). So the following week, when the community pool still wasn't open yet, we stepped 'er up with a "massive" new pool. Still not big enough for Old Man Sausage, but the purple "crib" sure beat the "womb" from last week. Let the water follies continue!

Excited to finally have a little room to stretch out and get wet.

They opted to supplement their pool time with some old-fashioned sprinkler fun. That Nutty sure is fleet-footed for a two year old.

Beeju quickly developed a routine. Step one: soak the front.

Step two: soak the back.

Step three: run like the wind.

Step four: prepare for takeoff.

Step five: airborne!

Step six: the descent. Wheels down.

Step seven: touchdown!

A near miss during today's follies. Phew. I was going to say that it looks closer than it really was, but no, it really was that close. Air Beeju was almost grounded from future flights.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Water Follies, Part 1

I'm still catching up on the last month or so. This entry goes back to May 9.

This was exactly two weeks before our community pool opened for the summer. And yet, if you know southeast Texas at all, that's about 2 months later than we would like. So by May 9, we were craving some water. Any water. Unfortunately, Papa only had the mini (mini!) blow-up Froggie pool from when the boys were much smaller. But at the boys' insistance, I blew 'er up. Following is the pitiful scene. The next couple of posts will build on the water theme.

The initial excitement lasted for about 30 seconds. Until they realized the "pool" was the size of a large womb.

Upon that realization, they required additional things to keep them interested. Hence the bath toys from inside.

Noah requested that later that day we go to Target to buy a pool "this big." Which, ironically, was about the size of the Froggie. But I knew what he meant.

Since there wasn't much room to play inside the womb, they opted to help Papa water the lawn. If only I had about 60 of these little guys, I wouldn't have to deal with the dreaded sprinkler every other day.

Short blurb of the wild and crazy pool party. This is how desperate we were for some water.

Mother's Day 2009

Amy was working parts of Saturday and Sunday that weekend, so the boys were at my place. Fortunately, she agreed to come over Sunday evening so that we could celebrate her with a party. The three of us boys spent quite a lot of time planning it out and shopping for a week or two ahead of time. Then there were a couple of hours of set up after church that Sunday. I loved watching how excited Noah and Sam were to surprise Mama.

The festivities began with Beeju, Nutty and me hiding in various spots in the kitchen when she arrived, then jumping out and yelling "surprise!" and spraying her with silly string. (Sure, silly string isn't the typical "happy mother's day" gift, but it was all Noah's idea and he really wanted it to enhance the surprise, which I'm pretty sure it did.) Then we sat down for a dinner I put together - lasagna, salad, french bread, etc.

After dinner, it was on to the good stuff - cards, candy and the main attraction: a scavenger hunt for her presents. The boys had picked out a number of hiding spots, for which I wrote clues. Her first clue was hidden in one of the balloons we had blown up. Then she had to go from one hidden clue to the next to eventually find her hidden gifts. It was a lot of fun to plan out and even more fun to watch the boys get increasingly excited as she went through everything. We wrapped up the festivities with cupcakes that the boys helped me make.

Unfortunately, the party wound down by having to say goodbye to my family and watching them drive off. The worst part of every week. But it sure was fun while it lasted. Happy Mother's Day, Ames! I'm glad you came over. Wish you would've stayed.