CKZCJ

It’s official, I am the proud owner of a 7 and 8 year old boy. Jiminy Cricket! And yes, technically until they are 18 I own them.*Grin* We ended our birthday week with a trip to a local putt putt/go kart place (we had intended to take them on their actual birthday but the place was closed) after the boys football game. We bought our tickets and went to wait in line. The the clouds in the sky poured forth ALL their condensation and that folks is why they call it a rain check. Knowing it wasn’t going to dry up anytime soon we decided to come back another time and went across town to a laser tag spot. The boys have been begging to go since they attended a birthday party there last year. They decided to play teams, them against us. We kicked their butts! Oh Yeah. I have to give a bunch of credit to my big 8yr old though he let us shoot him more than his brother because if we shot Jelly (our 7yr old) he’d toss a fit. You aren’t supposed to run inside the arena but tell that to a 7 and 8yr old trying to shoot their mom and dad. Most of the time this is all I could see.

Then I’d hear *pew, pew, pew* “I shot you mom!!!” I was afraid the fifteen minutes would go on forever, turns out it wasn’t too bad. The boys played some video games before we headed to grab some BBQ and then called it a day.

With all the rain we’ve had lately (none of it really forecasted by the way) we haven’t made any more progress on painting the house (the outside). We did get all the cabling run for our home DVR system (both coax and networking) along the house this weekend, it’s replacing our satellite cable (which we had turned off last week). I’ll make a big post about it all including what we are saving per year by doing it.

The boys had their first flag football game this weekend and both did a  really good job! You can see a few photos from the game over on flickr.

Well it was both actually. You would think after having 25+ hours of labor I’d give myself a few years to recuperate before I gave it another go. Oh no, not me, I’m a glutton for punishment. So by some great coincidence my second son was born on the same exact day that my first son was, one year later. From the beginning they were not sure about how they felt about one another…

Oh I am sure that they love each other, in fact I’ve heard them tell each other so. They’ve also beat the tar out of each other from time to time. A staff member from their school told me the other day that Z walks his brother to his classroom, gives him a hug and makes sure he puts his back pack away then walks to his own class afterward. So sweet. I spent the day going through pictures of when they were little and oh how they’ve grown. I wish I could make them stop growing, except for the part about being able to wipe their own butts. I really like them being big enough to take care of that themselves. It’s a big milestone here in our house. Moving on.

I didn’t plan well in order for the boys to have a party with their classmates so we started their birthday week with a trip to the Aquarium in Corpus Christ (they had wanted to go in the summer while on our trip but it was a pricey place…). Then yesterday I made four dozen cupcakes some in the shape of a Clone Trooper and some with blue frosting and a white jelly bean on top for the boys to take to school and share with their classmates. Today we took the boys to dinner at their place of choice, the River Pub and Grill, and they opened their gifts there. We had promised to take them to drive go karts in New Braunfels but the place was closed today so that will happen this weekend after their first flag football game.

So guess what I did as soon as we got home??? I hope they had a great birthday, next thing I know they’ll have chest hair and be talking in a low tone like Pavarotti. Someone save me.

A letter in the mailbox from my Popa. I used to love to get them as a kid and my heart still skips a beat when I open my mailbox and see one in it today. He still uses the same letterhead he did 15 years ago.

Last week was a busy one. On Monday, the boys started school -

That night they had their first Cub Scout meeting and our summer Co-Rec softball team played for the championship in our division. We won, the hard way, which made me get home about midnight. I was tired Tuesday morning. 6am came early.

On Tuesday, we had our first date night of the year. I’m pretty sure of that staggering fact. Nine months into the year and we got to go out by ourselves! We had a wonderful meal on the Riverwalk at Texas Land and Cattle (see my Yelp review here) and then had tickets for Prairie Home Companion’s Summer of Love Concert at the Majestic theater. I’ve wanted to see Prairie Home live for a long time and since they were so close I sold a kidney to buy two tickets. Turned out to be really nice seats too. More on that later. And no I didn’t really sell a kidney…

Needless to say we really enjoyed our date night. Even though it was 1am when we got home. I was a zombie on Wednesday and I threw the alarm at the wall at 6am. Thursday came and went, no school on Friday for parent-teacher meetings. We spent the rest of Friday painting our house. We’ve been doing that for two weeks now. We found a seasonal sale on a bird bath and bought one. The poor birds won’t come drink from it. This is why -

On Saturday we meet my Grandparents and my Uncle in town for BBQ and then I rode with them to Long Point, TX where my many great’s grandfather’s cabin was being dedicated. It had been used as a bed and breakfast but was bought by our family and moved back to his original land. He was quite the interesting fellow (more on him soon). It was really a pleasant evening.

See more of the photos from the Gideon Lincecum Cabin dedication on my flickr. We then spent ALL DAY Sunday painting our house. I’m happy to say that the entire front is done. Minus the porch railing and the porch flooring. On Monday we continued our painting with the side and because we started from the bottom up when it decided to pour the white paint ran down onto the darker trim and bottom. I stomped off and threw a fit not wanting to think about having to re-paint all of it again. Thanks for nothing you useless hurricane. Well technically Hermine was only a tropical storm.

Yeah, that’s the whole central part of Texas covered in rain. For two days. Oh and our building has a foundation leak and our offices are nice and stinky from water soaking into the carpets. As we dry out we have a packed weekend ahead of us and two birthdays coming up in only six days!

Our second day of travel had us leaving Vicksburg, MS around 8am. We made a quick stop at the grocery store near our hotel to pick up a few things then were east bound. Because our hotel had a large amount of guests enjoying their coffee we ate some breakfast foods on the road and made good time through Mississippi. Arrived at the Alabama state line and visitor welcome center in time to have another picnic lunch. I had picked up a variety bag of HEB brand chips, bread, sandwich meats, cheese, pb & j, and a supply of fruit so we all had a decent variety to choose from for our picnic lunches. We ended up just shy of Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday and the boys once again enjoyed a nice big outdoor pool at the La Quinta there. We experienced Zaxby’s chicken which is a lot like our Golden Chick or equivalent, it was food that wasn’t a sandwich so everyone was pleased.

The wee one had just gotten in trouble...

Sunday morning started with the hotel’s breakfast (La Quinta has a decent one for free), an uneventful drive to the South Carolina border which again was well timed for our picnic lunch. Surrounded by large moss trees we took a quick lunch break since we still had about four hours to our destination and hit the road again. We made good time until our last 30 miles or so we hit dead stop traffic. UGH. We were all so ready to be out of the car! Turns out an SUV with a camper had crossed the divider and flipped onto it’s side in our lane. Everyone in the SUV was okay so it must have been at a low rate of speed with an over correction. We got past all that and made it to our condo around 5pm and got all checked in. More on what I thought of our hotel on the next post….

Not exactly the view from our condo room...

**Note: I had planned to blog this all while on our trip but we had less than adequate wifi in our hotel. More on that in the review coming soon about our condo – Captain’s Quarters in Myrtle Beach. I’ll post each one in order over the next week**

I had a meeting yesterday for the boys school at our local Chick-fil-a (it was family night and school fundraiser night) so I loaded the boys up and headed into town. Big C worked a bit late and we ended up heading towards home about the same time. I got on the road home a few cars behind him and caught up to him right outside of town. CJ just happened to look up and see his dad’s jeep and blurted out “Hey, that’s our dad!!!” with a fair amount of excitement. That made me laugh and smile, and then smile some more.

These boys love their daddy (plain, simple and to the point). They ask for him to come into their room every night at bedtime, well except for one night last week when he had scared the begeezers out of them by quietly standing in the bathtub all Freddy the 13th like. They didn’t ask for him that night. Mostly because he thought scaring the pants of them was hilarious (a Revenge of the Nerds type of laugh hilarious), a view they obviously did not share. They sit on top next to of him on the couch when we watch tv as a family, follow him like attached little shadows when he wonders out to his shop, and basically think he’s the cooler one. That’s because he lets them try to stay up until midnight, or spend a Friday night playing video games, and takes them to see cool movies. Let’s be clear, I am apparently NOT cool, but their daddy is. He also drives a really cool jeep, and me, well I drive a Mini-Van. We could go on but I’ll spare myself.

Never has anyone looked better wearing the title of daddy, no one could be a better daddy to these two boys, and to quote Judy Garland “I’ve got my man who could ask for anything more?”