Road trip pictures

Road Trip!

Road Trip!

Here's a math problem for you...

2551 miles plus 41.5 hours of driving (36 hours travel time there, 39 hours coming back) equals two very hyper kids

We drove to Sarasota, Florida to spend Thanksgiving with Doug's family. The kids were amazingly good, even though we didn't get the DVD player to work until our fourth (and last) travel day, and then the battery gave out after two DVDs. I'll post pictures in a bit, but here are a few things we learned...

Any trip over 1000 miles each way is too long in the car.

New Orleans French Quarter is not a good place to spend a Friday night with young children (not to mention being next to impossible to get to the hotel- half the streets were blocked off, the other half went the wrong way, and God help you if you want to make any left turns). We didn't schedule a wake-up call for Saturday morning, but the hotel took care of that for us... in the form of a very loud announcement at 5:50am that we should ignore the false alarm (which we hadn't even heard). Then they repeated the announcement just in case anyone was still asleep. We did enjoy doing a bit of sight-seeing early Saturday morning: enjoying the scent of freshly washed streets, lots of window shopping (all the stores were still closed), pigeons (Lucas' favorite), parking meters (Timmy's favorite) and vagabonds. I would have loved to go to Mass at St. Louis Minor Cathedral, but the kids were very hyper and we had to get on the road. But we went to Mass at a different St. Louis this morning, and the choir had brass accompaniment to celebrate Christ the King Sunday (the last Sunday in the liturgical year- Advent starts next week) so it worked out.

It's good to be home.

Happy 2nd birthday!

Our godson John Paul just turned two! We enjoyed helping him celebrate.

Camping at Bastrop 11/17

Camping at Bastrop

Language skills

Timmy's language skills seem to have hit the knee of the curve recently - seems like he's learning a new word every other day or so.

Here's a sampling of what he knows now; the bold words I first heard in the past week or two-

• Alleluia ("Aw-day-doo-da"/"Aw-lay-loo-la")
• Jesus (with sign language)
  
• Amen (detecting a pattern here..)
• All gone (with sign language)
• Enough ("nuff")
• Wash (water to play in)
  
• Water ("waff" - water to drink)
  
• School bus ("Skoo bus" - applies to any large vehicle)
• Baby
• Back
  
• Nose
• Eyes
  
• Belly button ("Beddy buddy")
• Batteries
• Match (kid loves fire, what can I say...)
• On/Off
• This/That
• Up/Down
  
• Mommy
• Daddy
• Meemaw ("Mm-maw")
• Grandpa ("Mm-baw")
• Lucas ("Do-do"/"Doo-doo")
• Bye-bye
  

Interestingly, 'Mommy' was a late addition to his vocabulary - he said "mama" or "mamama" before (still does), but that seems to mean "I want that". "Mommy" as a distinct word seems to be new.

I love it when he runs around the house just shouting "Alleluia!" at the top of his voice. It's a joy. :)

His grasp of the spoken word is coming along nicely too. He can follow requests, such as "Please sit down", "Please put this in the trashcan", or "Please put the scoop back in the bag" without clueing gestures - even if the objects in question are in another room. He's also starting to deal with more abstract stuff - yesterday I found him lying on the floor, crying. I asked him, "Timmy, what's wrong? Why are you crying? Can you show me?" He got up, went into the other room where his brother was smiling innocently, pointed at him and said, "Doo-doo!"

Lucas is now going to have to learn to deal with a little brother who can rat him out. :)

My boys

Exploring the creek

Why is the trail all wet?

















Splash!


















No pictures please!

half buried

Dig!

About a week ago, we helped a friend fill in a big hole in his backyard with dirt, many truckloads of dirt. The boys had great fun "helping".

Costumes

For Halloween, Lucas was a fireman and Timmy was a dalmation (he only went to 4 or 5 houses, then spent the rest of the time eating candy in the wagon).