Handful

Gwen has started to become a bit of a handful.

She likes to carry things around the house now.  Shoes often get separated from their mates.  Bath toys wind up in our bed room.

The worst is that we think she has hidden (or maybe thrown away) our DVR remotes (both of them).  I don't think she likes the TV.  Especially when we are watching it instead of her.

Gwen has also started climbing.  We just got bunk beds for Frances' room (in the unlikely event that Gwen leaves our bed).  Gwen can clime the ladder to the top.  She can't get up to the bed from their though, which is good because one of the things she does when she gets up their is throw her legs over the side like she'd getting off a regular bed.  It's better she get stuck than fall from the top bunk.

Basically, we now keep Frances' door closed.

She also can climb onto the dining room table.  And tonight she climbed to the top of the cat tree.  We got the cat tree so the cats could climb up to their food but Gwen wouldn't.  That plan is shot.

As an aside, Gwen seems to really like owls.  We went to the natural history museum and there was a case with about 20 different stuffed owls.  She would point and say "Owa".  She also said "Oo" which could have been a try for "who" (like an owl says) or just regular old ooing.  We had to go back to that case a second time to see them again.

mwz

France's Race Report

The following was written by Frances about our recent trip. I cleaned up the very few spelling and punctuation mistakes. - mwz

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My Trip

We went to a stat park in Wisconsin. We went camping there. We went there because I had a triathlon there. We got to stay up late.

At the triathlon, when I was swimming I was faster than when I ran in the lake and every time I swam I needed to breath. Next I had to bike 3 miles. It was 2 laps around. For the run I was so tired.

I had fun on my trip.

Transformers III

Arial let me sneak out to see the late showing of Transformers 3.

It's been getting pretty bad reviews but I loved it.

It had Transformers fighting other Transformers; People fighting Transformers; Transformers transforming.

There were even scenes where there weren't Transformers, if you are into that sort of thing.

I had to see it in 3D since that was the latest show and I'm kinda glad I did. There were a couple spots where it was incredible but for most of the film, I didn't really care.

Where the 3D did help was during fight scenes. In previous movies, sometimes robots blended into one another during fights making it hard to tell what was going on. But the depth really helped sort out where each robot was. I never felt confused.

The only thing that took me out of the movie was the crazy amount of product placement. It was more than just noticing new guns that attach to Autobots for the express purpose of selling new toys. There were product shots everywhere.

For a little bit, I thought one of the companies in the movie was Lenovo. It wasn't until I saw another Lenovo computer somewhere else that it dawned on me that that was strange.

All in all, I had a great time. I'm glad I didn't take the kids though (it was pretty brutal).

mwz

T-Ball

Frances and Johann are getting so much better at T-ball.

At last nights game, they both hit the ball without using the T.

Johann showed a lot of guts. During his first at bat, he tripped on the plate on his way to first base. His knee got skinned up pretty good. But Johann got right up and ran to first. It wasn't until he got back in the dugout did anyone notice that he was bleeding.

Arial got him a big band-aid and he played the rest of the game (albeit with a slight limp).

I was very proud.

mwz

Walking

So, Gwen took her first steps not too long ago and now she has started toddling all over the place. Crawling is still her long distance travel method but for short journeys it's walking all the way.

mwz

Gwen

For Father's day, Gwen gave me her first "high five for daddy".

Then, today while Frances, Johann and I were getting out team t-ball picture taken, Gwen took her first step. Or so I'm told...

mwz

Weekend

This weekend, Arial and Gwen went up to Wisconsin. This left Frances and Johann with me.

I wanted to make it a fun weekend for the kids (since they would be missing Arial). The following is a recounting of yesterday's events.

Friday, I had shown them these little typing games (TuxType) on our netbooks (which are the perfect size for their small hands). Johann was terribly excited to try them out. (So much so, that he got up at 6am and wanted to play them. I made him wait until I got up at 8:30.)

The default word lists were too difficult for him but the game allowed me to add new lists of my own. So, I made a list consisting of "asdf", "fdsa", "jkl" and "lkj". Johann was able to do these and it emphasized the need to keep your fingers on the home row.

They both had so much fun that it kept them busy most of the morning while I did some work.

For lunch, I had a special "Things on crackers" meal planned. The night before, I had purchased several interesting things to put on crackers. The one rule that we had was that they had to eat one whole cracker with each item on top.

We started with little squares of Spam. Predictably, Johann liked the Spam and Frances didn't.

Next up was kippers. Also unsurprisingly, I was the only one that liked them.

Third was sardines. I figured there was no way that they would like sardines but it's a good thing to be able to say you've tried. Strangely though, they both liked them (I got a slightly upward turned thumb from Frances indicating that she sorta liked them).

Finally, I brought out the Easy Cheese. Actually, it was Hy-Vee brand, which was a mistake because Easy Cheese is better than store brand. They still liked it.

After everyone had eaten one of everything, then we could eat whatever we wanted.

The cheese got a lot of use, of course. Johann ate quite a bit of the Spam and they both ate a fair amount of sardines. I mostly ate kippers.

They liked the meal so much that, when given the choice for today's lunch, they chose it again.

After lunch (and after more work), Frances asked me to play Red Light Green Light on the deck. I agreed. But when she stepped out on the deck, she immediately said, "It's too hot" and came back in.

I decided to have them put on their swimsuits and run through the sprinkler. They did that until they started tearing up the yard. That's when I had an idea.

We have this yellow slide that came from a backyard playground thing. Sometimes we lay it on our hill and the kids slide down it. Yesterday was the perfect time to try it out as a water-slide.

I put the slide on the hill, set a running hose at the top and cleaned it off (it tends to collect dirt and grime). Frances went first.

There was a worry that this wouldn't be any more fun with water than it was without. That fear was alleviated when she hit the water that collected at the bottom of the slide with a big splash.

From then on they had a blast splashing down the slide. At the end of the slide, Frances tended to run right down the hill whereas Johann would slip and slide on the wet grass. Frances was the first to go down on her stomach feet first but Johann didn't like that because it was too scratchy.

While they were doing this, I made a poor attempt at weeding the garden.

They were fairly muddy, so they got rinsed-off in both the bath and the shower.