Go Irish! Beat Eagles!

Good friends, the Durands came over to watch the ND vs BC game with us..





The Irish lost, 17-0. I don't think we'll be watching any more games with the Durands.

Clone Wars!

The kids were full of pizza and got their popcorn and were all ready to see Clone Wars, the new Star Wars movie!



As a sidenote: our grownup review of the movie-- pretty good! In fact, we're impressed that the computer animated groupings of pixels on the screen were able to make us care more about those characters than the actual flesh and blood actors (namely Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman) in the prequels..

Party all the time..

Aidan turned 7 this week, and the parties seemed to be never ending.. it was more a birthday festival than a singular event. We had a little gathering on the 31st to commemorate his actual birthday.. but the real celebration didn't kick off until the weekend.. first with a visit to Chuck E. Cheese with his good friend Jake and Uncle Ross on Friday..

Playing some skee-ball..
Playing the Firefighter videogame...
Then the big Superman Pool Party bash with all the neighbor and school friends on Saturday..

Followed with a sleepover.. (which mostly just translated to a late night staying up watching Star Wars and eating popcorn)...
Meanwhile... yours truly set to work on the Lego City Police Station.. all 1000 pieces of it..

Happy 4th!

We celebrated the 4th on the 5th, actually, with our friends John and Christie and their kids. The evening was capped off with sparklers and firecrackers in the driveway. The kids were nervous about the loud bangs and sparks at first, so they hid out in the back of John's car.

"Washing Dishes"

For the first leg of our trip, we're spending a couple of days in Knoxville with our good friends, Miki and Tom and their little boy James. Today, Bryce and James had a big time washing the dishes.. which, as you can imagine, didn't really involve making many dishes any cleaner-- though the sink area got a whole lot wetter.

Camping in...

This is what happens when you try to take the boys on their first backyard campout.. you come inside and watch Scooby-Doo videos..
We wound up spending last night at our friend Jack's house-- but we only spent about 15 minutes in the tent we'd setup out in the backyard.. we had a great time.. but it wasn't what you'd call "camping out"..

blur..

At our neighbor's birthday party this morning...
add a little sugar and the kids become a blur...

More pictures from Louisville

For a few more pictures from Louisville-- and some just generally beautiful photography-- click over here to Creighton's Flickr page.. he's got a really amazing eye. And having that incredible (and gigantic!) camera probably doesn't hurt either :)

September Road Trip

We went on a short trip last weekend to Louisville-- so my wife could do a little Stamping business while the boys and I visited with some old college friends: Trace, Ben, and Creighton.

Ben and Jan have two boys almost exactly our boys' ages, and Trace and Whitney have a 1-year old little girl, and Creighton-- well, Creighton is nothing if he's not young at heart and a lot of fun for us all to spend time with-- so there were plenty of objects for the boys' interest, attention, and affection.

It was a wonderful visit-- I'd forgotten what a beautiful city Louisville is-- and a good chance, apart from the event-gatherings-- homecomings, weddings, etc-- to catch up and share a little bit about how far we've all come the last few years.

Many thanks to everyone up there for the kind hospitality.
Let's do it again sometime soon-- perhaps in Nashville!

The boys goofing around in the hotel room

Aidan takes a swing at ping-pong in Trace's basement

Aidan discovers Nintendo (uh-oh)...
this was TOTALLY not my fault!

Aidan and Sam wait for their breakfasts
at Lynns Paradise Cafe

Trace and Baby Charlotte

Bryce finds the blue cow (with the eerie green eyes) irresistable

Sam and Charlotte (wow, and she really is that tall!)

The Usual Suspects

Never a dull moment...

Still catching up on a small backlog of pictures.
The boys playing with the neighbor kids back on 8/22.

Really, and truly, this kind of cuteness is pretty common around here... but every now and then, we manage to capture it on camera! :)

Picture of the day

but the fun didn't end there.. when we got home from Carnival, a few hours later, we had our friend Maddy over to eat some dinner and watch some Bear & The Big Blue House...

They look miserable, don't they?

Carnival!

A few quick pictures from today's Spring Carnival at Aidan's school:

Bryce has his face painted

Bryce lets McKenna take him down the big slide

Aidan gets ready to fly on the Bungie...

...and he really likes it!

Aidan with his classmate and partner-in-crime
thru much of the Carnival

Painting Party!

Our neighbor friend, Blaine, celebrated his third birthday yesterday with a huge painting party in his back yard!

Bryce gets started

Aidan (and Bryce in the background) making masterpieces

Aidan decided to paint a rainbow

The most critical element of this masterful party plan: the clean-up pool!

Oh Olivia!

Friends from Paducah, Dudley and Gail, came for a visit today with their kids, Olivia and Connor. The kids had a great time playing all afternoon.. in fact, they hardly stopped playing long enough for me to snap this picture of them!