Tennessee

We we at our second stop. This is a pic of the boys blowin' off a little steam in an outdoor sculpture group.

Wortham's House of Pestilence.

This as from yesterday. We were driving to the pediatrician and the boys were almost completely silent. I looked back to check on them and they were just staring out the windows blankly. I took this video with my phone (sorry for the poor quality) because they just looked so miserable.

For the record, Jacob is doing better. Still has some...symptoms. Geoff is, shall we say, a bit snotty. As I type this he is watching Backyardigans next to me. Check out the photo. Notice the blue box of tissue on the desktop and the waste basket next to him in the floor. This was not staged, I swear.

Beautiful sky

This sky was somewhere over Southern Indiana. It was like those skies you see in those old Romantic era paintings.

Quick note

I will post more later, but this is just a quick note to say that I have put up pictures for June and July I have a lot to catch up on. Weddings and birthdays not the least of it.

Clay sculpture and literal conversations

I would like to apologize. I was preparing to write a fresh post. When I logged in and looked at the previous posts, I noticed that the following post was never published. Sorry.

The above is a really tiny clay sculpture that Jacob did of a couple of ants, a father and son at a cook out. They are cooking a pie on the grill. This was totally Jacob. He got the idea from a picture he saw on the box of clay. After he finished this little clay sculpture, he took it to our new neighbors as a house warming gift. As the second photo shows, it was very tiny.

Kids are very literal. I made a braised chicken dish a week ago. I told the boys that the meat will just fall off of the bones. At one point, Geoffrey grabbed a drum stick and held it up, giving it a shake. He turns to Kelly and says to her, "It won't fall off?!?"

At the zoo

For Field Trip Friday, we went to the zoo today. It was hot and the boys about fell out but there were a few highlights. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera were dead, so the only images I have are from my cell phone. Below is a video of Geoffrey and an orangutan. At one point, I was rooting around in my backpack looking for water and Geoffrey jumped up next to the glass. I looked up just in time to see one of the orangutans climbing toward him. By the time I got ready, they were checking each other out.

Here is a direct link to the video in case you are reading this from your email.

I'll post more about our week later, just thought I would share this while it was still fresh.

Rainbow pt. 2

Getting bigger.

rainbow

Nice rainbow on the indiana/illinois border.

Road trip

We are headed out shortly to drive to Arkansas. My Dad is getting married Saturday. You can follow our progress on Twitter. Have a good weekend and we will see some of you soon.

First week

Well, week one of our stay-at-home experiment is done. I need to get better at timing but over all, not too bad.

Tuesday (library day) we went to the Matthews branch of the Louisville Free Public Library. About six years ago several small suburbs of Louisville and most of Jefferson County merged with the old city to form Louisville Metro. The Matthews branch once served the city of Matthews and is in the former city hall. For the space available, it is a nice branch. I would call it cozy. The boys had a good time and we wound up taking a couple of books on dinosaurs and a Mo Willems book, There is a Bird on Your Head. Mo Willems rocks!

Wednesday it rained. We were supposed to go to a water park (water Wednesdays) but we had lunch with Mom instead.

It was also forecast to rain on Thursday, our day to visit a new park, so we switched it with field trip Friday. Thursday we went to the Frazier History Museum. As per the suggestion of the lady at the ticket desk, we started with the third floor and worked our way down. The museum has a pretty strong martial bent, focusing mostly on arms and armor. The third floor is lots of armor and medieval, European weapons. The lower two floors are pretty much guns (I lost the boys interest soon after about the 25th or 30th gun). The museum also has some interpretive shows. We got to see Arming the Knight: 1460-1480. This was a gentleman who donned, with the aid of his squire, a suit of armor while he explained a bit about each piece. We all enjoyed that a bit although the boys got a bit rattled when our knight whacked himself with a sword to demonstrate the effectiveness of the armor. He looked a good bit like this when he was done.

The picture for this post is the boys playing in the wet grass, in their socks, after nap on Thursday. They did this while I was making dinner. Oi!

Friday we got to see a tiny bit of Cherokee Park. The park is massive but we only went to one of the play grounds. It is a nice park with a lot of semi-wild space.

In other news, Kelly is taking to her new job like a fish to water. She is learning the specialized tools of her new job and is quickly developing a network of colleagues to help her grow in her position.

I check the various library related job sites just about daily. The financial crunch has hurt the sector that would employ someone like myself, governments and universities. Things are improving though and it wont be long. I'll keep you posted.

As always, you can click here for older posts. To go straight to our pics click here and here for videos.

My Kentucky book report

Well, we are nearly completely unpacked and becoming acclimatized to Louisville. Kentucky is, according to the lady at the Louisville tourist center, known for three things: beautiful horses, fast women, and bourbon whiskey. I've been researching the last one. A long and interesting history there. Bourbon has been distilled here since shortly after America won Independence and this area was considered the far western portion of Virginia. Over 95% of the world's bourbon is distilled and aged in Kentucky to this day. By the way, whiskey is any alcohol made from distilled grain mash. Bourbon whiskey is made of 51%+ of corn. Straight whiskey is aged in a new, charred, oak barrel for at least 2 years. You often see these two combined on labels. The photo that I included in this post is actually pretty typical of most of rural Kentucky. It looks like a Microsoft Windows desktop, all green and pristine. Kentucky grows beautiful grass without even trying. In Virginia, the soil is so hostile, that you have to expend a great deal of effort to get a mediocre lawn (it is no wonder that those poor suckers in Jamestown starved). Louisville is the 42 largest metropolitan area with just over 1.2 million people (Richmond was the 43 largest). I learned something new just today. It would seem that there is a deep rivalry between fans of the University of Louisville Cardinals and the University of Kentucky Wildcats.

The boys are out for summer and since I can not seem to get a job it looks like we will have more opportunities to get to know the area. I have put together a schedule that includes a field trip every Friday. This Friday we went to see where Col. Saunders is buried, Cave Hill Cemetery. I expect to upload lots of pictures of those excursions.

I finally finished the video of our trip. It changed from my original idea. Check it out.


Click here for older posts. To go straight to our pics click here and here for videos.

April pics are up

I only wound up uploading about 18 pics for this month but they are great, if I may say so myself. Most of these pictures are still in Richmond. The last picture of Jacob was taken in Louisville. I am working on some video of our trip out (very generally) to upload to the video section. Stay tuned.

The boys are adjusting amazingly well, all things considered. They do miss their friends at Minnieland. If anyone at Minnieland is reading this, please know that you are missed. The boys have asked to send letters to Ms. Andrea, Ms. Gwen, and Ms. Bonnie. Yesterday, Geoffrey and I sat in the front yard and talked about how Jaden Jennings and he used to play. Broke my heart a little.

Louisville is working out pretty nicely. I like the city (great mass transit and curbside recycle pick up). Kelly is enjoying her job. She is really just getting her feet wet, though. We got the boys enrolled in school. They have two public Montessori that include pre-k. Jacob and Geoffrey are in the same class. Next year may be different though.

I am unpacking. I moved all of the boxes into the living room and sorted them into piles by room. I am nearly done with the kitchen pile. My goal is to have the house totally squared away by the end of the month.

As ever, you can click here for all of the pictures and here for video. I didn't post anything about it here but you should really check out the videos of Jacob reading Skippyjon Jones. They're very nice.

We are here! We are here!

Well, we made it. It took us two days and we were packed into the car like sardines but we made it. The boys started their new school this morning. Jacob was a little unsure and Geoffrey actually flopped on the floor crying. Mrs. Hogan, their new teacher, seems to be on the ball. I'm sure it's not her first rodeo. She walked the boys out when I came to pick them up this afternoon and she said that they had a great day (she looked a little surprised, to be honest). In the car Jacob told me about their new playground and Geoff told me that Mrs. Hogan threw away his milk at lunch time. He was obviously still mad about it.

I visited the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library today and started networking. As I was led to believe, they do have a hiring freeze. The one lady that I spoke to the longest informed me that they have several openings and, should the freeze be lifted, they will need to hire people.

I'm sorry there are no pictures with this update. I will try to make amends as soon as I get the Macintosh unpacked and running. I'm also planning a little video about our trip. Should be fun. Stay tuned.

Click here for older posts. To go straight to our pics click here and here for videos.

Odyssey pt I

I spent today with a computer engineer from the University of Boston. He is retired (basically) and has decided to pick up moving jobs to get out of the house and meet people. We packed our house into his truck and a horse trailer. And it just fit.
Thi boys and I are in a hotel in Richmond for tonight. Tomorrow is their last day of school here and I will be cleaning the house and packing the car for the trip. I will try to post updates from the road.

Louisville Weekend

Well, we went to Louisville this weekend. We drove a lot. Saw a lot. We got a house and saw the boys school. Met their teacher and Kelly's boss. Saw a bar built in 1779 that I will have a drink in!

On the whole it was a productive trip. We are still exhausted and probably will be for a few more weeks. Watch this space for updates.

Changes

As most of you know, Kelly was laid off from Circuit City last November. As most of you also know, she has been pounding the pavement looking for a new job ever since. Well, on April 17, she got an offer from Humana out of Louisville, KY. They kinda gave us a short notice--her start date is May 4. In a few short days we worked out the math and decided we would save money by me quitting my job and us moving to Louisville. We would loose my salary but also we wouldn't be paying for childcare (about 1/3 of my income). So, off we go. The house is about more than half packed. We are making a trip this weekend to Louisville to house hunt. We have arrangements for movers and are showing the house to potential renters tomorrow and Friday. In a little less than three weeks we will be Kentuckians (or whatever).

We don't have a whole lot by way of new photos yet. Soon we will put up the Easter pics, so don't despair. In the meantime, we do have some fun new videos.


Click here for older posts. To go straight to our pics click here and here for videos.

Sean, we're thinking about you.

Feb & Mar 2009 updates (snow and silly boys)

We've updated pictures on our Picasa album and some new videos on our YouTube page.

Click on the links above to see the new pictures (Feb & March albums) or the new videos. I just loaded four.

Kelly

A subtle balance

I had to work today, but Kelly relayed a story to me which requires a bit of back story. In Geoffrey's pre-school room, there is a boy named Charlie. Charlie is a bit of a menace and, because we have done such a good job teaching Geoffrey to be nice, Geoff is often a silent victim. Recently, Geoffrey told us about it and we had a long talk about self defense. We tried to teach him that sometimes it is necessary to fight back. It might mean making a scene, it might mean clocking Charlie with a block. If a bully is pushing you around and no authority figure is there to correct it, whack 'em.

Jacob and Geoffrey were out playing in the back yard. At one point, Geoffrey came in the house to tell Kelly that Jacob was fighting and putting "putting leaves in my mouth." Kelly replied, "Well, that's not okay." Geoff then turns to leave announcing, "Okay. I'll go hit him." As Geoff was heading out with Mom in tow to try to prevent the premeditated act, Jacob came in the house. Kelly asked him if he did, in fact, put leaves in Geoffrey's mouth. Jacob, looking a little confused and disgusted, said that he did not. When Kelly recounted Geoff's complaint in more detail Jacob said that he did slide down the slide into the giant leaf pile and that they fell on each other.

As a footnote to this story, the course of action that we have decided to promote regarding Charlie is that we want Geoff to yell, as loud as he can, "No Charlie! No hitting!" We hope that this shames Charlie, gets his teacher's attention, and perhaps teaches his fellow kids to stand up to Charlie as well.

A couple more videos

I just uploaded a couple more videos. One is Jacob doing what I can only guess is some song from school. He gets full marks for enthusiasm. He is a little vague with the lyrics, though.


I am aware that his shirt is a disaster. At both the beginning and the end, he tries to see himself in the camera's viewfinder. That is why he gets so close. The second video is of Geoffrey going nuts with a toy drum. It's quite amusing.

Sand Castle!

I posted some new pics and videos. Just follow the links.

Today is a beautiful day. We are at a park soaking up a bit of this sun.

Happy New Year

Christmas '08 has come and gone (sorta, we are going to Grandma and Grandpa's this weekend). I have some great photos and some even better video (not yet loaded). We did your world wide tour of the mid-west and left something of a bread crumb trail of minor possessions at each stop. A stuffed animal in a hotel room, a razor at Mema's, Kelly's coats at Nana and Papa's, a bottle of shampoo at Granddads, and maybe one of the boys Christmas presents at Mimi and Gramps'.

I wanted to thank everyone for putting us up and for putting up with us. The drive was not too terrible and, maybe next year, it will be much shorter.

We'll get the pics from Grandma and Grandpa's and the videos to-date when we get back next week.

There and back again

Well, Christmas '08 is done and our little family logged very nearly 3000 miles. It was great to see everyone and Kelly may have gotten a job as well. It is late and we are home, safe and sound. I will get pictures up in the next day or two.