taking a drive to the playground

We spent about a hour and a half driving around the neighborhood today. We were hesitant at first to buy one of these cars -- for many reasons -- but it has been worth every penny. He loves it. And I get to get some exercise.

painting

We get these little kits from the craft store for $1.00 that you can paint and then glue together. They have little cars and boats and tractors and planes. Jack loves them. He is so serious when he paints.

freezing on the swing

I wanted to post these just because I think they are cute. We went out a few days ago when it was really cold, but we were suffering from some serious cabin fever. We bundled him up and played on the swing for a while.

fun in the snow

A few weeks ago it snowed and we got a few inches on the ground that stuck around for a day or two. Guess what Jack and his Gramps did that day . . .





Yes, ladies and gentlemen, those last two pictures are of Jackson pushing around the LAWNMOWER. Even in the freeze of winter, my kid still wants to mow the lawn.

Jack's first painting

It started when I showed him a small painting I had done years ago. It was a painting of the beach at sunset. I asked him if he wanted to paint something. I got out all of my paints and found a very small unused canvas and gave it to him.
He painted the blue first and told me it was the sky -- just like mine. Then he put in the sun. I helped him by moving the canvas around so that all the lines would go outward. Then he put in the grass. Then I asked him what he usually sees when he goes outside, and he put in the tree (that's the brown thing.) He asked me to give the tree a swing, so I did. You can't see it very well, but he also put in some small purple dots for flowers on the grass.

Christmas Morning

Christmas comes at our house in several parts. On Christmas Eve, we go to the grandparents' house to open presents to and from them. Then we go back home and Jackson goes to sleep, and Jill and I open our presents to each other. Then on Christmas morning, Jackson opens all of his presents -- both from us, and from "Santa." I think Jack wasn't really sold on the idea of "Santa" until he started opening his "santa" presents and saw that he got all of the things that he asked for in the letter that we "sent." In case you are wondering, he asked for a "good-smelling red candle," a new car from the movie "Cars," a Disney Princess Vanity and the "big, driving, Lightning McQueen Car." The big car wasn't given to him until later in the day when we went back over to the grandparents' house, but when Jackson opened the vanity he said "Santa got me everything I asked for!" He was SO thrilled. When we got to the house later and we opened the garage and showed him the car, he didn't know what to do. He said later that he thought "Santa forgot. But he didn't!"

The bike was given to him by his grandparents on Christmas Eve. He has finally learned to pedal! He rode it all around the house that night.

Christmas

A little pre-Christmas posing in front of the tree.
Go Bucs!

long overdue posts

Our desktop computer is out of order right now and since that is where we usually put all of our pictures, I haven't been able to do much lately. I finally gave up on hoping that will ever be fixed and started putting pictures on the laptop.
Our camera also ate shit a few weeks ago and we have been taking pictures with Jill's folks' camera and then waiting for the opportunity to get onto their computer to get the pictures.
While I am at it talking about broken things, our refrigerator sounds like a locomotive and is about to give out any day now, and I had the septic tank cleaned last week and it turns out that it was WAY overfull. Luckily we have two drain fields, one of which hasn't been in use for three years, so we switched the lines and are just keeping our fingers crossed that this fixes the problem.
I think it's awesome when we spend all our money on non-essential Christmas items and then all of our very-essential home shit breaks.

pardon my language

but all you assholes who keep sending comments with links to your "diet" websites -- fuck off. I am not going to post or publish or link to any of your porn or whatever-the-fuck-they-are site, so knock it off.
go to hell.

thanks