Outdoor Fun

2 out of 3 ain't bad.

We took advantage of a relatively nice day this week to get outside and have some fun.  Grif was pretty pumped when I started stacking balls up on top of his tee.  Can anybody spot what is wrong in the above picture (no photo-shopping was done other than stitching the images together)?  

Yes that is a whiffle ball he's kicking.

Look at that form!  Head down, knee and shoulders over the ball, and arms out for balance.  A fantastic, low driving shot.  I can see the net bulging behind the keeper already! 

Strange Conversations

While playing Hide and Seek:

     Grif: Dad, you count with Leyton and I'll go hide on the couch downstairs 

             under the blanket.  Then come find me.

     I think he's missing the point of Hide and Seek....

     Me (lay on a heavy dose of sarcasm):  Wow Grif, I can't believe I found you 

             on your bed under the blanket for the sixth time in a row.

I was playing Hide and Seek with him and was carting Leyton around while we hid and searched for Griffin.

     Me to Steph:  Leyton is killing me.  He's all heavy breathing and making 
             noise and stuff.

     Maybe I'm too competitive about hide and seek with a three year old.

After his arm fell asleep he woke up with "pins and needles"

     Grif: Stop that sound in my hand.

After eating half a bag of Cheetos:

     Grif: Look Mom! Cheeto hand.

After he got in trouble:
     Grif: Daddy, why are you using your big voice?

At Church:
     Grif: Dad, who lives here?
     Me: Jesus.  This is his house.

     Grif: Well, then where is his bed?
     Me: Steph, This one is all you.

Cooking lessons from mom?  Seriously?  

Grif never wants to eat anything but chicken nuggets.  So Steph came up with an idea to get him involved in preparing the meal.  Then maybe he'd be more interested in trying some different things.  So, tonight we decided to give it a try.  I had my doubts, but he is a great helper and always wants to see what we are doing and be involved.

The menu:

Steak

Bread Twists

Parmesan Basil Orzo

Steamed Veggies

Steph isn't much of a cook, so I put her to work on the bread.  Pilsbury twists out of a can.  Not too much she could screw up there.  Grif wanted to eat the dough.  Otherwise this portion went pretty well.  

Dad to the rescue with some real cooking lessons.

Griffin then helped me thaw and season the steaks and put them on the grill.  After that, he helped me get the rice together and then set the table.

The meal started out as usual.  All he wanted to eat was the bread.  As it progressed, he ate all the steak and tried some of his rice.  Still no luck on veggies, but its a step in the right direction.

Ham

Look at those cheekers and teeth!

Wild Turkey

Steph has been a little anxious since we moved "out to the boonies" in Granville.  We have well water now and a septic tank, so she may have a little bit of a point.  We had deer, rabbits, raccoons, a skunk, etc in our backyard in the middle of a residential development in Reynoldsburg.  Today though, we had a wild turkey run thru our backyard.  It couldn't have been more than 20ft away from us.  I've seen them in the farm fields around the area, but it was pretty cool to see one so close to the house.  Grif and I went running outside to see it, but Steph wasn't too wild about being outside with a turkey on the loose.  It could peck her eyes out or something!

Strawberry Shortcake's After Hours Activities

On Mondays and Tuesdays Griffin and Leyton are at the sitter with two girls.  Beans is 4 and Kate is 2.  We got a note yesterday that they were playing Strawberry Shortcake.  I don't necessarily have a problem with this and I'm glad that he is getting a feminine influence.  But, I must say, I was happy when the story continued with, "She was going to a monster truck show".  I'm glad the girls are getting a masculine influence.

I also learned that the girls play "sleep over"  while Griffin plays "fort".

Kite Runner

Sunday morning, Grif and I were outside enjoying the warm weather when he found this kite in his toy bin in the garage.  "Dad!  Lets fly my kite!"  It wasn't very windy and as I opened up the kite, I had my doubts about its construction.  That little sucker worked pretty well though.  

It wasn't quite windy enough to just keep it in the air though, so we had to keep running.  Grif wiped out a number of times and three or four times I had to untangle the kite string from the boy or the dog or both.  We had it going pretty well though.  Almost all of the string was out.  We had a blast!

Sledding

Grif and I had some good times sledding this past winter.  The first time we went out, we had a blast and no troubles.  The second time, it had iced some and he was flying down the hill.  We ran into a tree, then the wood pile at the bottom of the hill, then he disappeared over the edge of the ravine at the back of the lot.  I don't think I have ever moved so fast.  My first thought was I hope he is okay.  Followed swiftly by if he is not, his mother will kill me!
I got to the bottom of the hill and he was still on the sled hanging over the ravine on some debris (pictured below)

Its tough to tell, but the greenish area on the left hand side is about 10' below the branches in the middle just left of the tree.  He was really close to a nasty fall.  I was even more scared when I saw him sitting on the sled supported by these twigs.  We called it a day and went in side for hot chocolate:

While enjoying our hot chocolate after sledding, Griffin said, "Daddy.  I'm a man and you're a man, and we drink chocolate.  And Leyton is a boy!"

Joe Cool

Steph and Griffin claim they saw a camel on the way to the sitter today.  The conversation went something like this:

Steph: Griffin and I saw a camel on the way to the sitter today.
Me:  What!  No way.  It was just a large deer or something.  Maybe an alpaca on the loose.
Steph: No, it was dead.
Grif: Yeah, Kate thought the truck was dead. (Kate is the 2 year old at the sitter).
Me: Dead?  Wait; Truck?  What?
Grif: It was dead on a trailer.
Steph: That is no way to transport a dead camel.
Me: What is the proper method of transporting a dead camel?
Steph: I don't know, you could throw a tarp or something over it.
Me:  How did you know it was a camel?
Steph: I saw its face and it had huge hooves.
Me:  Camels don't have hooves, they have toes.  :)  
Steph: Shut up.

St. Patrick's Day

I'm always excited for St. Patrick's day!  This year was particularly good because it coincided with the start of the NCAA Basketball tournament.   Every year, I tell my self I'm going to take a half day each of the first two days of the tournament to spend the afternoon watching basketball, and I never do.  Maybe someday.  I think I saw about 2 minutes of the BYU game yesterday and that is all. Pretty disappointing.  Grif got to watch Handy Manny though... Yay!  Wow that is sad. Really doesn't make me feel any better about it.  I'm becoming a lame boring parent who's kids take precedent.  Stupid kids.  

At preschool yesterday, Griffin got to drink green milk.  He was pretty stoked about this and relished telling us.  Especially when Steph acted all grossed out about it.  He also made this beautiful artwork of leprechaun foot prints and....um..........droppings.....(I think).

What.... The.....

I can't even begin to describe the shame I'm feeling right now.

Cheeto Place

One of Griffin's favorite places to eat is, "the Cheeto Place".  Better known to most of you as Jersey Mike's.  Bet you can't guess why he likes to go there.  Yeah, he gets Cheeto's.  Thus far, it appears he believes Jersey Mikes is the only place you can go to get Cheeto's.  We'll keep it that way.

I'm a big fan of Jersey Mike's as well.  Uncle Jamie turned us on to the place and its become a staple for us.  I was there just yesterday with the boys (one of Mom's friends had a baby - congrats Emily! - so we had boys night out).  And they had this add for silly bands (pictured above).  They were $5 for a pack of 6, the proceeds go to charity and you get a free drink and chip coupon for your next visit.  Steph tells me these things are all the rage with third graders, and being a person not to be left behind when it comes to third grade fashion (I've got my columbus crew silly bands on as I type this), I felt obliged to participate.  So, go to Jersey Mike's, get a great sub, donate some money, get hip with the latest third grade trends and get a coupon for your next visit.  Its gonna be awesome!

Spider Man!!

Who doesn't love monster trucks.  Especially monster trucks masquerading as super heroes.  From a 3-year old boy's perspective, whats not to like??  

Racing, Awesome.

Giant Trucks, Fantastic.

Smashing Cars, Sweet.

Super hero paint jobs, Fantabulous!

Wait, the trucks crash and flip over and ginormous wheels go flying aflame into the audience???
SIGN ME UP!!!

As a "grown" (I use that term pretty loosely) man, I was pretty stoked when I learned that we could go see one of the trucks up close at the local Anderson's store when Monster Jam was in town.  We met the driver and got an autographed photo of him and the truck.  

Grif and I were watching Monster Jam the other day on TV and some lucky attendees got to take Gravedigger (that’s right, the most bad a$$ grand daddy of them all) for a drive on the test track.  Man-o-man, how sweet would it be to have that puppy to drive around.  I think it would go something like this (the song more-so than the video):

Creature of Habit

Every morning, I get Grif's breakfast together for him to take in the car on the way to the sitter with Mom. It consists of some kind of dry cereal (cinnamon life, lucky charms, raisin bran crunch, etc.) He isn't too picky, probably because it seems that the majority of the cereal ends up on the car floor. He also gets two gummy vitamins and a cup of milk. The other morning, I was feeling a little lazy and I tried to substitute a cereal bar for the cup of cereal. Big mistake. I didn't realize how much he had come to depend on this routine and how much it means to him to have this consistency. Its a little thing, and he needs to become more flexible, but I was surprised at how quickly a simple thing becomes an ingrained habit in his day.

Standin Man

Leyton is standing already! I think we might skip the whole crawling thing... We may go straight to cruising around the furniture.

Big Mouth

Leyton playing with some weird baby toy. Looks like he may follow in his father's footsteps. One of my hidden talents is having a large mouth. I can eat an entire cupcake (frosting and all), chew it up, and swallow all in one bite. Impressive, I know.

5 Miles

Griffin is abig helper right now. He loves getting his tools (or mine), and getting involved in whatever I'm doing. I do my best to let him help too! Its tons of fun. Plus you get gems like the following while he was helping me hang pictures the other day.

_______

me: Grif, how big is that picture?

Grif: um.... about a quarter of a mile!

me: oh, okay.

5 minutes pass and from the other room, I hear:

Grif: Lets measure mommy's bottom.......

5 MILES!

________

I think I need to have a talk with him...

God gives us... muscles???

Grif started preschool this past fall and each month, they have a bible verse. This month's verse is, "God gives us strength." So, Steph was trying to get Griffin to finish the verse and was saying, "God give us....." and then waiting for him to respond. He wasn't into it so much, so Steph flexed her guns (they do the same thing at preschool I'm told), trying to give him a hint. Grif's response to, "God gives us...." was, "MUSCLES!"

Baptism

Big item for this week was Leyton's baptism at St. Edwards in Granville.

We also had a nice weekend visit from "Monster" grandpa and grandma who came down. Griffin and Monster Grandpa like to make up games. Here they are playing the "eyeball" game:

You'll have to ask them how to play. The game involves a lot of yelling, chasing, rolling around on the floor, and most importantly laughing. Grif is very attached to both his Grandpas and was excited to have visits from both on the same day!