Fourteen Years Building a Happy Life

Fourteen years ago today I tricked convinced my wife to spend the rest of her life with me. I don't have tremendous ambitions. I want a happy life with a family that loves each other and I married a wonderful woman who wants the same thing. We put our kids in storage Kidz Watch and celebrated our life so far at Biaggi's. She looked gorgeous (as always). Happy Anniversary, Becky!!!

Cupcakes for Cancer

As a fundraiser to benefit the American Cancer Society, the MVPA is sponsoring Cupcakes for Cancer. Becky and the boys made and decorated 39 cupcakes to be sold at school for $1 apiece.
In case you're curious, the purple icing was made from white icing, food coloring, and grape Kool-Aid powder. They were a big hit and they had a lot of fun making them for a good cause.

Master Archer Alex

New Polar Bear Cubs

Three polar bear cubs were born at the Toledo Zoo this winter and this was the first weekend we got a chance to see them. The two moms gave birth without the zoo staff knowing they were pregnant, though they suspected something was up. Ever tried to give a polar bear a pelvic exam? Me neither.

Maumee Valley Campus Rally

Today Alex's school hosted an event that has been a year in the making. Traditionally, the MV Parent's Association has hosted an end of year event. The last couple of years it has been a Carnival on the campus gounds. It was difficult to coordinate and manage so they decided to try something different this year. Becky has been volunteering heavily with the MVPA since Day 1 and wanted to do more. She was convinced that it would be a breeze to chair a new MVPA event that no one had ever done before. She stepped up and showed them what she could do. She may someday write about the trials and tribulations she endured to make this go smoothly, but I've been focusing on the results, because the Maumee Valley Campus Rally was a resounding success.

The event centered around the presentation of Jim "Basketball" Jones, a local performer who intersperses backetball tricks with inspirational messages. He was dyslexic and was put in "special" education classes. His mother read him his textbooks and he ended up as one of the top business students in the country. Along the way, he learned to fit in by spinning basketballs and did basketball halftime shows before realizing that he had a message to share with kids. He taught them "I am important", "I can...I will", and "Never give up!". He got all of the kids involved with ball spins and brought several up for group tricks (Alex is in the white shirt in the middle). He taught kids listening skills with a game of "Simon Says" and ended up the show by spinning eight basketballs at once.

Everyone told Becky what a great job she did coordinating the space, getting Jim to come, providing refreshments, and coordinating several helpful volunteers for this event. She's earned a great weekend off to comtemplate next year's MVPA events.:) She showed her kids what Jim was talking about - that even when things didn't go the way she expected, she never gave up. I'm so proud of her.

Mother's Day 2007

We woke Becky up this AM with breakfast in bed that the boys helped me make. It was garnished by a rose we cut from her Mother's Day bouquet that she got yesterday. We had a lazy morning and just played with the kids. For lunch, I sauteed salmon filets with spices, steamed some asparagus and baked a foccacia beer bread that Becky had bought from a mix. We called and wished Nana Evans and Grammy Hardage a Happy Mother's Day each.
As we've been doing for several Sunday afternoons, we went to Alex's soccer game. Alex had a good game, blocking several shots and passing the ball to his teammates. Whenever the opposing players gets the ball near our half of the field, Alex has been running to a position just in front of the goal to block shots.
We went from there straight to El Camino Real for a Mexican Dia de las Madres celebration.

We had a great time at dinner, especially since that had a strolling mariachi band that played in our section and serenaded our table. We were dancing in our seats (or in the case of a certain 3 year old, on the seat). What a great time to end a wonderful day. Happy Mother's Day!!!

STOMP!

After scooting out of Sauder Village a little sooner than we wanted, we drove back in time to change clothes. At the Stranahan Theater, we took the kids to see Stomp! This is a muscial/dance experience where the music is performed onstage by dancers/performers using household items to tap our percussive musical rhythms. Heavily used are push brooms, trash cans, plastic brooms and Zippo lighters. The latter were used on a dark stage so we could only see the flames from the lighters and hear them opening and closing. The kids had a great time and I think we may be back their next time around.

Tiger Cub Acheivement 1G - Discovering the Past

For Alex's Tiger Cub badge, he needed to visit a historic farm and see how life was different and the same a hundred years ago. We had the perfect spot for this an hour west of us - Sauder Village and today Scouts got in for free. Sauder Village was founded by Erie Sauder, of Sauder Furniture fame. It transports you back over 100 years ago to life in the swamps of Northwestern Ohio. There are a few original buildings and several replicas on the site of old family farmhouses, barns, shopkeepers, doctors, and schools among others. They have animals on the farm and Alex got to crank a device that pulled dried corn off the cob for animal feed. Aaron grabbed the nearly spent cobs and tossed them into a nearby pig sty.
In one of the historic farmhouse, a volunteer showed us how they prepared food in their log cabins. This one had a firepit with a hole in the roof for the smoke and she was using the set up to prepare the fixings for a dandelion green salad with bacon dressing. It was good to know that in desperate times we can turn to dandelion greens for nutrition, though I think we were all happy to wait for desperate times.
They had a little kids area with a replica farmhouse (and butter churn) and a fake cow to milk. They enjoyed the play break, but quickly wanted to get back to seeing more of the village.
We found a replica of a schoolhouse, where a volunteer told us about how school was different back then, but they learned some of the same things that Alex is learning in school now. The "water fountain" was a bucket and ladle by the door and light came in through paper covered windows and little oil lamps.

Alex's favorite part was a relatively new addition to the property that dealt with the original inhabitants of this area. Alex got to help put together a wigwam that the Native Americans would have used for traveling. He also told us about the more durable longhouses that they framed in wood and covered in bark that they had there.

We finished the day with sweet treats from an ice cream parlor and vowed to return to see the parts we missed today.

The School's New Duck Family

This mama duck landed in the little courtyard at Alex's school and hatched her brood. The kids are getting to watch them grow up and loving it.

Tiger Cub Acheivement 2G - Visit With a Police Officer

Today Alex got the opportunity with his class to visit with 2 members of the Toledo Mounted Police and ask them how they help the community. The horses were named Renegade and Rookie. The officers talked about how they select and train the horses, how they care for the horses and the kinds of patrols they do. One of their main jobs is to provide the security of a police presence at Toledo Mud Hens home games. They talked about haw they use the size of the horses, along with special moves like walking sideways, to help with crowd control. The horses manes are kept cut short to prevent someone from grabbing them. After a question and answer period, everyone got to meet and pet the horses.

Happy Birthday Becky!!!

Today we celebrated Becky's anniversary of her entry into the world. As I've mentioned before, our children have renewed the fun of our birthdays, and today was no exception. The boys were so excited. They made her cards and didn't fuss (much) about getting dressed up for a night out on the town - OK dinner at a mall restaurant. We went to the Elephant Bar and they were on their best behavior, not perfect, but their best. They knew that if they were good, then they could share in the dessert. It was our privilege to celebrate her life. Happy Birthday Becky!

Taking Squidget to the Zoo

I took the day off today to spend with Becky on her birthday. Alex had school, but it was such a beautiful day that we decided to take Aaron to the zoo. The Toledo Zoo is divided into two sections by a local highway and we tackled the larger section today. The petting zoo wasn't open yet and the Hippoquarium was drained for maintenance. But we got to see the baby elephant, Louie, now about 4 years old. Aaron has a sticker on his back that has his name and our cell phone numbers in case we ever get separated. We took a break near the ice cream stand and Aaron climbed into a kid-sized oriole nest while he was waiting.
The day was warm enough that the ice cream melted quickly, much of it onto his face and clothes.

He needed to ride the tiger statue near the penguins (yes, tigers are nearby as well.) We checked out the monkeys and the apes. The gorillas and orangutans were in rare form today, happy to be out playing on a Spring day. We finished with a tour of the fishes which are always a favorite, and headed back to get Alex for the rest of the day's festivities.

Tiger Cub Acheivement 2D - Pledge of Allegiance

Alex needs to learn the Pledge of Allegiance and participate in a den flag ceremony. He's done the latter, both in his den meetings after school, and at the Dad & Lad campout weekend. Alex doesn't say this in school like Becky and I did, so I printed him a copy and we went through it line by line. I had to explain "pledge", "allegiance", "United", "Republic", the symbolism of the flag, "indivisible", "liberty", and "justice". In terms that he could understand, it ended up sounding like this: "I promise loyalty to the flag of the United States of America, and to the country for which the flag is a symbol, one nation under God, that can't be broken up, with freedom and fairness for everybody." He learned it the right way though, and repeated it for his mom this morning before breakfast.

Brrrr....Go White!...Brrr

It was 55 degrees on the field today with a 12-18 mph wind to chill us down a little more. Nevertheless Alex's team played hard again today. The team we played was pretty rough - they were pushing a lot and kicking at our legs to get the ball. Alex pushed back against the worst offender and almost got pulled out of the game by me. Their star player scored 3 or 4 of their goals, but he was a one-kid show, pushing his own teammates out of the way and stealing it from them to get the ball. I bet that will get old really fast. They had a good practice this week and it showed. Our next practice is Wednesday and we have a lot to work on. I'm just glad to be typing this out of the wind. Brrrr.

Tiger Cub Acheivement 5F - Watching the Weather

Today we completed another Tiger Cub achievement toward his badge. We took some time after sweeping up to sit and make observations about the weather. Alex noted that it felt warm with the sun out, but it was windy enough to blow blossoms off our tree in the backyard. The day was bright, but he couldn't see the sun because of the clouds. He thought the air smelled fresh and that it might rain later. I had made up a fill-in-the-blank page for him to complete about the weather which is pictured above.

Tiger Cub Acheivement 2F - Exploring Maps

One of Alex's Tiger Cub requirements is to look at a map of our community with a parent and find our home and at least 3 other places of interest. We used our favorite map - Google Maps - to find our house, the closest police station, the nearby Drummond Park where we go to play and practice bike riding, his school, and the hospital Alex was born in. We love Google Maps because we can switch between traditional annotated road views and overhead satellite views of our area, or even a blend of the two. It was interesting to see that the picture of our house was taken in the winter, but pictures of the Scout Camp Miakonda, a few miles to the west, was taken in the summer.

Tiger Cub Acheivement 5D - Leaf Rubbing

Alex made this leaf rubbing using several different leaves and several different colors of crayon. As you can tell he further decorated it by drawing some bees and their hive amongst the leaves.

Home Depot Herb Garden

Today's Home Depot Kids' Workshop craft was about the easiest ever. It took just four nails to hammer the ends onto a 3 pot herb garden holder.
Aaron did a good job with help, but Alex has gotten very good at driving nails (finally).

When we got home we filled the little pot with a soil disk, wet them with water, and topped them with chives, basil, and parsley seeds. We'll see if we can keep them moist enough to germinate.

Mommy Tip - Wall Mounted Hair Dryer

I had grown weary of find a good spot for the hairdryer in our main bathroom. Its neatest incarnation was with the cord wrapped around the handle and then placed in a basket on the counter. That, of course, meant having to unwrap and replug the cord every time we used it. Leaving it plugged in and resting on the counter was ugly and potentially hazardous with 2 young boys in the house. I loved the convenience and safety of the wall mounted dryers that are ubiquitous in hotel rooms nowadays, and I thought we could surely find something similar for our bathroom. It wasn't easy as no local retailers carried such a thing. Eventually I found a dealer online who hooked us up with an Andus wall mounted dryer. Jason installed it and it is always handy, but never in the way. ~Becky

Tiger Cub Acheivement 1F - Sweeping Up

To earn his Tiger Cub badge, Alex needed to come up with a chore that he could do with his family. We discussed several things and decided that cleaning something would be good. He wanted to sweep the driveway, but we decided it might be nicer if we swept the porches and front walk. We cleared off the back porch. Alex used the straw broom and I use the large push broom.

With a little instruction and some practice, he got pretty good at it. Then we did the front porch and walk. We talked about why getting the dirt away from the doors kept our feet cleaner, which in turn kept the floors in our house cleaner.

Mommy Tips - Hand Towel Ring

Our small half-bath doesn't have a towel bar and our plaster walls are notoriously hard to mount things upon, so we've never tried to mount a nice one. We've been using a 3M hook with their Command adhesive strip. It sticks to the walls well, but also comes off easily without leaving a mark or residue. We have several by the front door for coats, keys, umbrellas, etc. However, their slick plastic surface doesn't grab onto hand towels well.

Jason and I can usually balance them on the hook, but the boys struggle which usually leaves the towel crumpled on the floor underneath the hook. To fix this, I sewed a white plastic ring onto the towels. The ring fits on the hook, so the boys can easily hang up the towels. ~Becky

Mommy Tip - Neck Pillow for Headbands

I found that a neck pillow is a great way to keep my headbands together. They don't get tangled. They are easy to view and grab when I'm rushing around in the morning. I can throw the whole thing quickly in a drawer, but it is pretty enough to leave out. ~Becky