2013 Lionhood Family Reunion - Lake Anna, Virginia...

Once again, just a bit behind schedule with the blog updates, but a couple months ago, we had our 2013 Lionhood Family Reunion. This year, the family settled on Lake Anna in Virginia as the destination, so we rented a very unique property on the lake for the Reunion. The property was roughly a 1/6 of a mile long peninsula that juts out into the lake. On the grounds were an 80 yard football field with goalposts, a basketball court, tennis court, volleyball court, three beaches, a boathouse, play set, and a par 3 golf course with a couple putting greens.

The family all loaded up and drove the roughly equidistant drive to Virginia, with Rick coming from Boston, the folks coming from Chicago, Christine coming from Wisconsin, and us of course coming up from Florida. When we arrived at the property in the middle of the night, it was a back country road that led us up to the front door. The property was outstanding. Three stories with bedrooms mostly on the ground floor, the kitchen and living room areas on the middle floor with the balconies and decks overlooking the lake, and finally the master suite on the top floor with the master bathroom and its only set of balconies.

Within a couple days, everyone had finally arrived and the Reunion could get started. Of course the boys got to see all of their cousins for the first time in nearly a year and they were ecstatic. The kids are all a year older so there was so much more interaction with all of them. The boys had the option of sleeping with their cousins on a different level than Mom and Dad this year (in the kid's bunk room), and they took advantage a couple nights, but never spent a full night down there before typically making their way upstairs.

We had to make good use of the property so this year we decided to hold a family Olympics one of the days we were all together. We setup games of all kinds. Everything from water balloon and Frisbee toss to full out volleyball, football, and basketball. Christine brought a couple kayaks with her and there were three kayaks for kids already at the property and they all got a lot of use throughout the trip. On one of he morning kayak runs, Antoinette and I were able to see a bald eagle about 50 feet in front of us in a tree. Always a pretty cool sight to see. We were even able to squeeze in a little fishing down off the dock on one of the rainy days since the boathouse was covered. Didn't catch anything, but we weren't really trying anyway. Just throwing some casts and talking.

Luckily for us the weather held up for the entire trip and we only had a single day of real heavy rain, but without all of the family there yet, we were really holed up that day in the property anyway, so it didn't really turn out to be much of an issue. There were plenty of minor injuries for the kids and to be honest, Billy is still recovering from whacking his head off a pool table while roughhousing with his cousins (he dove at one of his cousins who quickly sidestepped him leaving Billy to face plant into the hard table.

Anyway, enough about the property for right now. Time to talk about the two excursions we planned on this trip. The first excursion was to the US Marine Corp Museum about 45 minutes outside of Washington DC. This place was incredibly moving and a great experience for anyone that hasn't been there before. The museum is broken into zones and each zone takes you through the history the Marine Corp through various eras and wars. Each exhibit is filled with re-enactments, weapons and uniforms from the eras, and so incredibly filled with history it is hard to take it all in. It has every step of the Marine Corp from the original battles in Tripoli all the way up to a modern 9/11 Memorial.

With everything in that museum, it is really hard to pick out a single exhibit that was better than the rest, so I'll give you three of them. First, there was a re-enactment exhibit. You get into a helicopter that never leaves the ground of course, but you hear the radio and feel the vibrations from the rotors as if you're in it, then they tell you to leave the helicopter and enter the battle and when you walk out of the back of it, you are immersed in a miniature battlefield complete with blue morning skies, explosions going off, sounds of gunfire, and mortars going off all around you. All the while, a man is narrating the experience since this was a real story about something that really happened to a soldier in battle to try and show you what it was like. Outstanding.

Another was of course the 9/11 Memorial, complete with twisted pieces of steel you could touch, timelines you could walk the length of with pictures and story boards, and also included a photo exhibit outside of the museum, as well. Extremely moving and probably the most moving exhibit in the entire place.

And finally, likely the best exhibit there, was the flag from Iwo Jima. The actual flag that was flown in the famous photo at the top of that mountain, which also went on to inspire the shape of the museum itself is mounted in glass with monitors making sure there is no flash photography that might damage the flag. Surrounding that exhibit are the stars from all of the soldiers that died in that fight, again, an extremely moving experience. Overall, an outstanding excursion.

The other trip we took, which was the location of this year's family picture, was Monticello, the original home of Thomas Jefferson, and the building on the back of the Nickel and on some of the $2 bills. Jefferson's home is on the top of a mountain at the center of what used to be a plantation of some 10,000 acres. The home fell into disarray about a hundred years ago, but has since been restored to its former condition, as well as a museum that was also added on the grounds. We were able to take a tour of the grounds and the building itself, and then topped it all off by taking our family photo on the front porch of Jefferson's home and a piece of American history.

Overall, this was another successful Family Reunion. We got the family together from all over the country again, were able to celebrate some birthdays together (including Dad's 65th), got amazing weather, were able to see a little history, and to do it all as a group. The boys had a great time and I know they look forward to the chance to spend time with their cousins every year. Until next year, location YTBD. Stay tuned. Video will be coming soon.

Disney's Dime...

Trying to work these blog updates a little quicker so that I'm not playing catch up on 3 months worth of updates at once, so we'll see how that goes. Could mean shorter videos too. So, the big update this past couple weeks revolves around a visit from Grandma and a related trip to Disney World. With Disney this close to us, you can't help but take advantage and try and get there as much as possible. We have the trip down to a single day visit at this point. Leave the night before, get a reasonably priced hotel room (easily can find something for $35-50 a night) and visit Downtown Disney for dinner, and hit up the park first thing in the morning. We have our timing down perfectly so that when we visit the Magic Kingdom, there's simply nobody there (attendance levels have been 15-25% of normal levels on our last two visits) which equates to unlimited rides. We literally run out of desire to continue getting on the same rides over and over again. That's getting the most value for your dollar.

This time down, we stayed at Disney's All Star Sports Resort. Wow, was that a mistake. This place was a complete and utter dump. Which was crazy considering we were on Disney property. Expected a whole lot more. While the rooms were only about $70 a night, the room was so tiny that you had to turn sideways to walk past another person between the beds, and the bathroom door literally missed clipping the toilet by about 1 cm when it swung open. And if claustrophobia didn't do you in, there was the issue of cleanliness, or lack thereof. This place was filthy. When we checked into the room, there was a half drank Gatorade bottle on the TV, a used soap in the shower, and hair all over the sheets and blanket. I'm not anywhere near the stickler on this stuff that Antoinette is, but this was pretty nasty.

So we get back to the room and notice all of this stuff at about 11 PM at night. The kids are exhausted since it is now 3 hours past their bedtime and we are pretty beat too. We notice this nastiness everywhere and call the front desk. The response is some lady that sounded like she was half asleep who after 10-15 minutes of sitting on hold finally tells us there's another room we can use that's an upgrade over what we're in. Then she tells us to pack our stuff and lug it across the resort to the next room. No help. No cart. No anything. So at about midnight at this point, we are wandering in the dark across the resort looking for another building with half asleep kids in our arms, luggage getting dragged behind us, etc. When we finally enter the room, an upgrade it definitely was not. Same room, same setup, same everything. No Gatorade bottle, no used soap, but still with hairs all over the bed clothes. What a joke. So we sucked it up, dealt with it, and promised ourselves we'd never be coming back to this place again.

In the morning, we packed our stuff up, loaded up in the cars, and headed to the Magic Kingdom. Once at the Park, we got situated, jumped on the tram, and headed to the monorail station. The boys has never been on the monorail before. We'd always taken the Ferryboat over, so for my two train obsessed kids, this was a great experience for them.

The trip to Disney was pretty similar to the last couple trips. Obviously the rides don't change much, but they did open up a new section of the Park called Fantasyland. There's a couple new rides including the Little Mermaid, so we took the boys on that ride which is just a riding clam shell that seems like it goes underwater. Didn't care for it much, but the kids liked it, so perfect.

There were some other highlights of the trip. The boys had a chance to ride on their first roller coaster. The Barnstormer isn't a real roller coaster by adult standards, but for a 2 and 4 year old, that sucker is like the Magnum XL 2000 in Cedar Point. I've never been on the ride before, but I figured if they let 2 year olds on the ride, it must be pretty relaxed. Nope. That thing was flying around some pretty sharp turns and the kids were a little freaked out on that ride. Well, welcome to the world of the roller coaster, boys!!!

We also took the boys into some Beauty and the Beast "ride" because we'd never been on it before. What a mistake. This thing turned out to be a hands on play with the characters of the movie. The whole time Billy is sitting next to me telling me "Dada, can we leave. This ride is a stupid ride." I second that opinion, Billy, but we need to ride it out. Let's just say we won't be going to that one again anytime soon.

A couple other quick notes:

For the first time, I got a chance to get on Space Mountain. Fantastic ride. Antoinette's Mom took the boys so that we could get on and there were basically no lines, so we went straight to the front and it was by far the best ride in the Park.

The boys were just a hair too small to get on a couple of other rides like Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain. Maybe next time.

On a final note, right at the end of the trip, we happened to stumble into some kind of a DJ Party that was going on with a bunch of characters from various shows. Light show, fog machines, and dancing with Goofy, Stitch, and Doug (the dog from Up). The boys had a blast and we practically had to drag them away from the party to head to the exits at the end of the day. It was also an opportunity for Antoinette and I to relax a bit while the boys got out there and danced up a storm.

Overall, it was a great trip and we're glad we had a chance to take it, but I think its safe to say that we are about Disney'd out for awhile.

Anyway, I'll get a video up there in a couple days.

Where Have We Been?...

After all kinds of issues leading to just two blog updates so far this year, we are back. The most recent issue was a laptop crash that led to a series of delays that just kept us down and out for awhile. So, rather than to try and compress all of those months into a single update, we're going to just talk about the past month or so, get a video up here within the week, and then move forward from there. So, without further adieu, here we go:

Once again, we took the boys back to St. Augustine for the 4th of July this year. This year was a little trickier because we were dodging torrential downpours in the area that shut down several fireworks shows all over the northeast Florida area. We basically just made sure that we ate dinner at the Castillo early so that once the rains moved in, we could lock everything up water tight and ride it out. We had a stroller for the boys so they would be covered and as the heavy clouds rolled in, we prepared for the weather to begin. As the skies grew darker, we began to hear rumors that the show would start 15-20 minutes early to try and squeeze it in before the heavy rains began. About 30 minutes later, still heavier and heavier clouds, but still not a drop of rain. The show began and once again, it was fantastic. St. Augustine fireworks for the 4th have never disappointed. Especially with front row seats.

Another big event for the boys was the destruction of the lawn in the backyard. Our lawn care provider (only covering bugs, weeds, and fertilizer) somehow managed to do none of the above and killed our entire healthy backyard. As a result, they had to come out, chemically treat the backyard and officially kill the entire thing to the point where the yard turned orange. Two weeks later, the next lawn guy came out and began tearing the lawn out, which took two days. Then the laying of the new sod began. Once that was over, a period of 4 weeks where nobody could do anything in the yard began while the sod took root in the sweltering Summer heat. In essence, the boys have been cut off from the play set in the back yard for roughly two months and finally, just the last couple weeks, have they finally been able to get out and enjoy the yard again. Another chapter that is hopefully behind us.

Speaking of the yard, a quick story. Part of this year's yard work included the planting of some new trees, a boatload of new flowers and bushes, and our first of seven banana trees finally starting to grow some bananas. Getting back to the new trees we planted, we ordered these things online. No idea what to expect. We're thinking some 3-5 foot tall trees are going to be shipped to us. Instead, we get what basically looks like a stick in a bag. Actually, three different sticks in the bag. Two Weeping Willows and one Cherry Willow. So, I figured "what the hell" and planted these "sticks" where we wanted the trees to grow in the yard. The Weeping Willows are supposed to be growing 7-9 feet a year, so maybe in two years, I'll have a couple 15-20 foot tall trees from these sticks. So anyway, we get these things planted in the backyard and of course, the yard gets opened to the boys at about the same time. Antoinette turns her back for a single moment and what does AJ do? He runs right over to the Cherry Willow "stick" and yanks it right out of the ground, all the while his Mother is in the background yelling at him to stop. Nope. Pulls it right out of the ground. Luckily we got that sucker planted again and it appears to be back growing new leaves. AJ, what a trip.

And of course, there's the minivan. That's right, Antoinette has convinced me that we now need a minivan. My initial reaction was "not a chance in hell we are buying a minivan", but Antoinette literally wrote out a sales pitch with every reason on Earth why it was far more practical to buy a minivan than to buy an SUV. After researching her case, I really couldn't argue with any of the logic. We had always discussed having room if our family grew, the van got about 30-40% better fuel economy, had 25% more cargo space, had more gadgets and gizmos (for me), and was about 25% cheaper than any of the SUV's we were looking at. Also with cheaper insurance rates. It also allows Antoinette to setup a zone for the bathroom for the boys without having to stop every 15 minutes at a rest stop on road trips. A simple stop anywhere would do the trick, plus either one of us can get back to them with ease.

After this discussion, we started looking for minivans and started looking at dealerships and CarMax. After doing a ton of homework on vans, SUV's, dealerships, reliability standards, safety features, and CarMax, we determined that the solution was to test drive the vehicle we were interested in (a 2012 Nissan Quest LE) at the Nissan dealership, get the best deal they could offer on the trade in and the new car (2013), and then compare that down the street at the CarMax (for their 2012 and 2013 models). So, Antoinette and I are talking about how we can go about getting the best deal on the trade in when we drop it off at the dealership for an appraisal and we have a great plan in place to maximize the value. That plan went to hell in a hurry because within 30 seconds of Billy getting introduced to the car salesman, he tells him "we are going to buy a new car because our car is broken and pieces are falling off." I have no idea what is falling off the truck, but he seemed to have saw something that qualified. After that, our cover was blown!!! When all was said and done, CarMax was able to beat the Nissan dealership by $15,000 which is crazy, just because the vehicle was 1 year old and had 8,000 miles on it already (never privately owned). It was a no brainer. So with a new vehicle on the way, we started looking at what the boys' status was as far as car seats were concerned.

Billy is still in the 80th percentile in height and weighs in at around 37 lbs. As a 4 year old in Florida, he is tall enough, weighs enough (approximately 40 lbs), and is old enough to warrant a transition to a booster seat in the van with a seat belt while AJ is getting a little big for his smaller car seat and could move quickly into Billy's oversized car seat. AJ is similarly proportioned to Billy, but their differences are apparent. AJ is longer in the torso and thicker in the legs. Billy seems to be more proportional. Both boys are tall for their age and about average in weight, which makes them appear lanky. Both are extremely active, constantly wrestling around with each other, and balls of energy, although AJ is clearly the more daring of the two while Billy is the more sensitive and more logical in terms of planning and thinking things through. Billy is a thinker and AJ is a doer. That's just in their nature at this point. AJ acts first and deals with the consequences later, while Billy really thinks about everything first, weighs his options and the consequences of his actions, asks questions to reaffirm his thought process, and then decides what to do before doing most things.

Finally, a couple quick funny quotes from the boys that came up in the past couple weeks:

1. While having a conversation with AJ and trying to convince him to act in a particular way, Billy was overheard saying, "AJ, wait. AJ, wait, and listen. Right now I'm having a very good idea in my brain!!!"

2. While watching a UFC fight, the boys were picking who they wanted to win each fight before we'd watch it. They would each pick a particular person and then say why they wanted them to win. I told Billy that I was picking this guy because he was "from the United States" and then pointed at the flag. Billy responded that he wanted the Brazilian fella, after looking at his flag (green square with a blue circle in the middle) because "he is from Mars".

3. Billy has been telling both Mom and I that he is "very proud of you because you don't let the bad guys get me." Thank you, Billy.

4. Billy has also started swearing now. His favorite is "holy shit", which we are correcting to "holy cow" slowly but surely, but that seems to be coming up quite a bit lately.

5. AJ's new thing is when he wakes up from his nap, he has to announce his arrival, by saying "hi, it's me, AJ" and he's been using words that are 3-4 syllables much more frequently.

6. Antoinette: "Billy, did you just call your brother a retard?" Billy, after some serious thought as to his response: "Noooo, I called him a......sweetheart!!!" Good save!!!

7. AJ's memory is also getting much better. He can almost memorize the words in some of his books now. And when Antoinette skips entire lines of the story intentionally, he corrects her and adds back the proper dialogue. Pretty impressive for a 2.5 year old!!!

8. Antoinette asked Billy to think really hard about any animal he could think of that he would want as a pet if Hunter wasn't his pet. He responded, "OK Mom. I thought really hard. I want a rat." She asked why and he responded that he would take him outside and play with him and that he would like to say to the rat, "OK rat, time to come back inside and eat some lunch." OK then. Rat it is. Clear that one with your Mother!!!

9. The boys' room was getting really hot at night, so we decided to leave their room open at night. Apparently Hunter felt this was an open invitation to go bother some other humans other than Mom and Dad and in the middle of the night, we hear AJ screaming. No idea what's going on, we run out of the room to their bedroom and find out what's going on. Apparently, Hunter was poking AJ with his wet nose and AJ really didn't like that while he was sleeping, so he responded by screaming his lungs out!!!

On a final note, football season is right around the corner and the boys have been watching the Bears preseason games and tackling each other after every play as they act them out. I think this could be a very interesting football season. They are also constantly asking if football games coming back means they get to eat pomegranates again!!! What little memories they have.

The next blog update will have a new family photo on there for this year. It's a little bit later this year because the day we were set to go and get our family photo taken, Billy decided to throw a toy at AJ's face and hit him directly in the forehead. Well, picture's out of the question until that thing heals!!! LOL!!!

I'll try and get the video up this week.

Happy 4th Birthday, Billy!!!

Probably the biggest delay in getting a blog update out, but right about the time I'm getting ready to type one of these guys up, we start having all kinds of laptop issues and modem issues simultaneously, so this has been a long time coming. So without further adieu, here is a really long, backed up blog update.

To start us off, let's talk about Billy's 4th birthday. Antoinette put together a nice cake for him made out of candy and cake/cupcakes made into a really long train, complete with Oreo cookies for wheels. She put a lot of hard work and effort into it and I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out based on what she was describing, but at the end of the day, it was pretty cool. Billy loved it and that's what matters most.

For Billy's birthday, we decided to take him to Chuckie Cheese for the first time. We had perfect weather for a day inside (heavy rain), so the timing worked out perfectly. The boys had a blast in there. They were a little reluctant at first, but after a little bit, they were running around and trying every game they could find. Neither Antoinette or I had been to a Chuckie Cheese in about 15-20 years, and it was very different than either of us remembered, but still similar in many ways. The boys got to ride on a bunch of rides, play a bunch of virtual reality games, climb around in ceiling mounted climbing tubes, played a little Skee-Ball (very dangerous putting those heavy wooden Skee-Balls into A.J.'s hands, but we managed), and at the end of the day, the boys got to pick out a couple toys from all the tickets that they won.

For Billy's birthday, his big present was a new bike with training wheels. We've spent so much time learning to swim since he bought the bike that we haven't really pulled it out much, but that's going to have to happen soon now that the boys are getting the hang of swimming (which we'll talk about in a couple weeks in the next update). Billy had a chance to pick from several bikes when we took him to the store, but picked a red one because it was "The Ohio State bike". That's my boy!!! More updates as he continues to learn to ride.

Easter also came and went and in between these blog updates, and with Easter, we have Easter Bunny's and Easter Egg Hunts. We also had a visit from Grandma and Aunt Laura to spend time with the boys. The boys got a chance to do the annual egg coloring with Mom and that's always a fun time for them, although once again, A.J. with unlimited amounts of food coloring in glass dishes is a little concerning. He's still a hundred miles a minute and that's a recipe for disaster. Luckily we dodged a bullet with that and there were not massive disasters.

The boys had a couple Easter Egg hunts, starting with the Easter Bunny's visit to our house, and that meant colored eggs all over the inside and outside of the house for the boys to run around and find. They had a blast, but you never really know if they got every last egg. Hmm... They also had an Easter Egg hunt at a local park and that was a debacle. Antoinette and Grandma were holding the boys as we waited for the whistle to blow so the kids could run into the center of a field with about 18 million other kids and try and find as many eggs as they could. Just before the whistle blows, some idiot lady next to us tells us that only the kids can go in. Right at that moment, the whistle blows and so Antoinette and Grandma turn the boys loose. The problem is, apparently nobody else got the memo about kids only and so 18 million kids and their 18 million parents rush into the center of this field and my two kids disappear into the crowd. I'm freaking out and luckily we found both of them in about a minute or two. But if you want to see out of control parents, go to one of these things. These people were out of control, practically knocking toddlers over to pick up eggs for their kids to fill their baskets. Wow!!! Insanity!!! To top it all off, just when we are getting ready to put the boys on some kind of train that drives around parking lots, the train slams into the back of a car and 10 minutes later there are cops all over the parking lot trying to figure out how a train that drives 5 MPH with kids on it could somehow crash in a parking lot. So we had to take a pass on that one.
Speaking of little trains, we went to our friend's son's birthday party and the boys had a great time there, but they had to the most fun on a little train that was set up. It was pretty impressive. Basically a train engine that had about a dozen cars attached to it that they could drive around the neighborhood. Billy got to ride with the Engineer in the front car and practically refused to get out of the train. A.J. on the other hand, could really have cared less. He took one ride, didn't like being out of view of Mom and Dad for 30 seconds, and wanted nothing to do with it again, preferring instead to run around the field across from the house.

There's a lot of zoo pictures in here, too. The biggest update from the zoo was that A.J. now climbs around in the Jungle Gym with the other kids by himself. That's a big leap for him considering the play set is for kids that are 4-10 years old and he's just 2, but he wanted to play with his brother, so we turned him loose and he had a blast. Antoinette went up with him to make sure he was OK, but he's probably OK from here on out.

On top of getting his first bike and both boys beginning their swimming lessons, we are also starting to teach Billy how to read. He knows the alphabet pretty well, but we are working on the sounds that each letter makes and hope to translate that into simple reading by the end of the Summer. Antoinette has also started some schooling of the boys at home. They won't be home schooled, but we are going to get them used to having designated time for school work. Billy's work is now on display on the fridge. A.J. occasionally helps with some projects and gets his own work on the fridge, but he still has a hard time staying focused enough for that.

A couple other quick items. The boys got a chance to have a couple of unique experiences over the past couple months. The first was we took the boys to The Players Championship PGA Tour Event at Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach. The boys had a chance to see a bunch of professional golfers, but we didn't see Tiger out there. Who we did see though was Michael Phelps, the All Time Olympic Medalist who drove past us in a golf park with a young lady riding shotgun. Beautiful course, beautiful day. The boys also watched the NFL Draft with me this year and the Ohio State Football Spring Game. We sing "We Don't Give a Damn About the Whole State of Michigan" pretty much every night and the boys sing along, which is pretty funny.

As a final note, Dad competed in a strongest arm competition at the Jacksonville Sharks Stadium (Arena Football) and I won, which meant I got to give the boys a Jacksonville Sharks official Championship football from their Arena Bowl Championship, which was pretty cool. A keeper for the boys because they're pretty big in Jacksonville since they keep winning Arena Championships and it's a fun game to go watch. The boys have been to a game before.

The last couple items on here are a couple quick hitters for the boys.

Antoinette got a tub of coconut oil and jokingly told Billy that it smelled so good it was going to become her new perfume. Billy's response after smelling it:

"Ew, Mom. That doesn't smell good. It smells like monkey balls."

OK, then.

Christmas Comes Late This Year...

At least for this blog update, it comes late. We are just a pinch behind in the Blog updates, but that's OK. What's new? This year, Grandma Charlotte was on her way down to spend Christmas with the boys. We prepped for Christmas just like always, spending the Thanksgiving weekend putting up the Christmas Tree while we watched The Game (Ohio State vs. Michigan) and getting our decorations up outside and throughout the house. Part of the decorating process was the boys making snowmen out of cotton balls. Billy's is a nice, neat, and orderly snowman. He then took part of his arms and made him some legs, apparently turning him into Frosty. AJ on the other hand, mangled his snowman into something that looks a bit like a version of ET made out of cotton balls.

Grandma flew in for the holiday and we planned out a whole week of things to do while we waited for St. Nick to show up and deliver a couple things for the boys who had been good all year (ahem, cough, cough)...well, maybe for the last couple months. Weeks? Anyway, Charlotte was more or less elated to just be down to spend some quality time with the boys and see their faces when they opened their Christmas presents in person this year.

Luckily Charlotte made it down just before Santa arrived in Jacksonville and in time to see the boys open their presents from Santa. The boys spent the evening with Grandma making cookies for Santa and preparing everything for his arrival. Once we got the boys tucked in, the rest of us called it a night and waited. Early on Christmas morning, we woke the boys to let them know that Santa had arrived and boys came out of their bedroom excited as ever.

Among their presents from Santa, the boys opened trains and books, buzz lightyear lights, airplanes and space shuttles, some Mickey Mouse presents, and some other stocking stuffers. From Aunt Laura, the boys got a remote control Thomas the Train. From Uncle Rick and Aunt Tina, the boys got a remote control construction set. Aunt Christine and Uncle Mark gave the boys some really nice books and puzzles. Then they got to their presents from their Grandparents. From Grandma, the boys present was a tablet PC with tons of games and education programs on it. An outstanding present that the boys love so much, we have to restrict their access each day. And from Nanny and Grandpa and Mom and Dad, the boys got a pretty big playset for the yard (which we'll get to in a bit). Another present the boys can't get enough of. As the boys are getting older, we are really trying to get more use out of the backyard and this was the culmination of those efforts. Now they are outside playing every single day and in Florida, playset climbing is a year round activity.

The next step on Grandma's visit was a trip to Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island. The island is essentially only separated from the mainland by some narrow waterways, so looking at a map, you wouldn't really think "island". It is a Plantation about 30 minutes away that dates back to the mid 1700's or so. Its not every day you get to see a 300 year old Plantation, the old Plantation houses, barns, church, piers, and slave quarters. The boys just love to run around the grounds and look for tortoises, but it is a great flash back in history.

The last stop was the best stop for Grandma Charlotte. We had a present for her that was yet to be opened. Up until this point, her only gift was a simple picture frame and a note, but after going down to St. Augustine for the night to see the Christmas lights, we walked St. George street and brought Grandma to her real present. A night time carriage ride through St. Augustine at night on Christmas is something everyone should get a chance to do just once. Plenty of great pictures and lifetime memories as Grandma got to sit with her grandsons as we toured the 500 year old town lit up by this year's Christmas lights. The boys also got to see their first magic show in St. Augustine. Just 10 minutes long, but the boys loved it when he began hovering spinning playing cards and making his wallet light on fire.

After a great week and a half visit, Charlotte eventually had to return to Chicago and a week and a half later, the construction of this ridiculous playset began. Now, I'm not a particularly handy guy. Sure, I can hang a ceiling fan, floor out my attic, etc, but this thing was 400 lbs of lumber and about 1000 pieces of hardware. Wow!!! So I stole a couple of my employees to help me build this thing in a day or so. We calculated it would take roughly 5-8 hours to build this thing from scratch.

Boy were we off. 2 hours in and we had only succeeded in moving the boxes to the patio, opening a few beers, collecting a laundry list of tools, and unpacking and sorting the wood around the patio. The next 4 hours were spent building a couple ladders and the extension for the swings and for the monkey bars. We hadn't even started on any of the main structure at all.

Once my help had to leave for the day, I realized this was going to turn into one lengthy project. The next two weeks were spent with every hour I had available before the sun went down and two entire weekends building this thing solo and connecting all of the component pieces together into one massive swingset. Luckily, it is nice and stable now (I had to stand in it to put the roof shingles on, so I feel pretty comfortable about a couple of 30 lbs kids bouncing around in there) and the boys have had a blast pretty much every single day since it went up climbing all over this thing. Monkey bars (with assistance), rock walls, ladders, swing set, slide, sandbox, snack table and bench, etc. A ton of work, but it was all worth it watching how much time the boys are spending playing on it.

One other quick story. Daddy had his birthday this month and the boys decided to surprise me when I got home with a cake that the two of them made. It was pretty funny. There are some pictures of the cake, but they probably won't make it on this week's video. They'll probably creep into next month's blog update, but the whole time, Billy was staring at me while I was eating it asking me if I liked it and continually digging more and more out of the pan for me to eat. Found out the real reason was that he loved the cake and later on, we found him at the table with the entire pan pulled over by him just munching away!!!

Last piece of this update are some special quotes from the week:

Mom: Just so we're on the same page, we are going outside for 15 more minutes to have our juice and then it's time for naps, OK?

Billy: Mom, we are not on a page. We aren't even on a book!!!"



Antoinette accidentally gets a little bug spray in AJ's eyes and he starts crying...

Billy: AJ, take it like a man. Take it like a man, AJ. No whining.



AJ: I don't want no broccoli!!!!!!



Overheard from another part of the house:

Mom: AJ!!! How did you get covered in cheese?