Exponential Acceleration

In case you've been living with your head in the clouds as I have, I'll bring you up to speed...the summer's 1/3 over. So long! Farewell! Auf wiedersehen! Adieu! I swear time goes faster as the years go by. So this evening, in typical math nerd fashion, I'm trying to decide on an equation that accurately models this strange relationship between life and time. Exponential f(x)=b^x? No. Acceleration a=∆v/∆t? Nope. Exponential acceleration? Yes! Hmmm. Wonder what that looks like. As I'm poking around in cyberspace in search of said mathematical model, I come across this...




Now if that doesn't make you giggle I don't know what will.

So, back to:

First Day of Summer...

Jaden complained for 9 months about how much he hated school, how boring 1st grade was, and how he was probably going to die if he had to learn any more phonics. So can you imagine what he chooses to spend the first day of summer doing? Playing school with Grant.

And not 3 days after that we're driving to my mom's house one afternoon which takes us right past his school. In his most dreamy and nostalgic voice he says, "Oh look! It's my school. I just LOVE that place." Oy.

A few days later, my birthday...

Matt has the boys make their own cards for my birthday. My heart swells up when I see Grant's. My baby has written his name on the front! How is he old enough to do this? And then I open it up. And he is so proud. He's drawn a picture of me and written yet another note that says, drum roll please, "more wine".

What does this say about me??

Don't answer that.

And a few more days after that...

Baseball begins! Grant's old enough to play this year so we spend the first 2 weeks of June with both boys practicing at the exact same times on the exact same days in DIFFERENT locations. Yeesh. Now that we're into the season, the boys have 2 games/week and J has one practice. But all on different days. That's baseball 5 times a week. I'm pretty sure there's a b in that equation for exponential acceleration. And it stands for baseball.










Aren't they adorable?!

Video Killed the Radio Star

Remember the mid '80s when those first commercially distributed home video cameras hit the shelves? Hot diggity those were cool...14 pounds of camera and battery precariously balanced on your right shoulder and a 3-pack of VHS tapes each the size of the family bible in the bag on your left shoulder. Those were the days. Cameras are sooooooo much more convenient in the new millennium. Thank you Jesus. Just a month or so ago Matt came home toting a cute little Flip.



It's the size of a smart phone...think Samsung Blackjack. It's all kinds of digital, point and shoot, flip-out-the-USB arm-and-plug-it-in goodness. And so, we have officially become home video nightmare parents once again. In Jaden's early life we shot gadzoodles of hours of extraordinarily exciting and fast paced video. There were movies of him laying on his tummy kicking his feet, and on his back kicking his feet, and best of all, in the SWING kicking his feet!! I'm pretty sure we once captured a priceless shot of him spitting up. And kicking his feet.

But we have evolved people! We now shoot gadzoodles of hours of the kids running up and down the field chasing the soccer ball! And kicking their feet! Get it? Nevermind. The point of all this is to share a couple of videos with you because my boys are super cute and I think you should see them. But don't worry. New camera technology also means new video editing software thus sparing you, the innocent viewer, many hours of utter boredom. Roll tape!

First we have 2 vids of cute boys tearing up the soccer field and scoring goals...







And then we have a short vid of Matt's little bro Justin and the boys on the trampoline. Justin jumps for a living. Literally. He performs in a Cirque du Soleil show and Jaden thinks this is seriously cool so he asked Uncle Justin to come hang out while he was in town. He obliged and spent some time today coaching the boys and showing them a few things. The boys were in heaven and would've kept Uncle Justin here indefinitely if they could've!




Now, our backyard trampoline significantly limited Justin in what he could show the boys, so, if you have a few minutes, click here on Justin's Cool Job and see what he does for real! It's a clip from La Nouba, the show he's in, and is amazing to watch. This specific clip shows at least a couple of the roles he's had...check it out. It's worth it!

Trekking the RHC

I love the Ranching Heritage Center. Yes. I really do. And not so much for it's cultural and educational potential, which is vast and no doubt amazing, but rather for it's wide open outdoorsiness and relative emptiness at 10 a.m. on any given Wednesday. Can you think of better conditions for letting little boys be little boys?? My big kid doesn't need this so much anymore *sniff sniff* but the little one is still very much in that stage. Every once in a while it's so nice to just let him run free and not have to get on to him for every last thing he touches/stomps/kicks/climbs on/licks. Okay. So you'll still find me offering some correction. He is, after all, a 4-year old male..."No you can't go over the gate and touch all the stuff in there. Get down. Now!" and "Don't climb on the hills. The man at the front desk said the snakes will bite your toes." And yes, the man at the front desk really did say that....something about bulls snakes mistaking little feet for ground squirrels and such. It's so nice that the RHC employees put my family's safety first. Or perhaps he was just on to me.















Yep. That's one cute kid. The other one's pretty cute too, but he becomes quite elusive when the camera comes out. I may drag him off to the RHC sometime soon to see if I can catch him unawares...

In other news this week, the boys spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa and so, Matt and I were able to take in a movie! We don't do that very often anymore as it is very nearly financially devastating to buy 2 tickets on a Friday night. Jeez! And don't even THINK about buying popcorn and Cokes. You have to sign over your firstborn child for that luxury. But I digress. My point in bringing this up at all is simply to say that Star Trek ROCKS and you should go see it. And then you should mortgage your house for more tickets, sign over kid #2 for more popcorn, and go see it again!!

Live long and prosper my friends. Live long and prosper.

Handy Angie, Smilin' Boys, and Santoneyo (in no particular order)

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there...especially my own amazing momma and momma-in-law. Love you both! I had a most lovely Mother's Day myself if you don't count the 22 minute Grant meltdown on the way to church this morning. I should've just let him wear his stupid boots with his cute little polo and plaid shorts but no. It was MY day and I wanted him to wear the cute little boat shoes. He was in such a tizzy by the time we reached church that it took 3 of us to get him into his Sunday school room. Just call me mom of the year. On a much happier note, however, part of my Mom's Day gift was a VERY rare framed photo of BOTH my boys. Smiling. I know! I can't believe it either.



And now for a random shift in topic....I fixed the garbage disposer all by myself yesterday ! Thank you. Thank you. A week or so ago I stuffed a couple of lemon peels down it but they never would grind up and go away. I assumed one of them was just stuck and that it would eventually dislodge and my life could go back to normal. But alas, the bumpity bumpity clunk clunk clunk continued and I was forced, FORCED, to stick my hand down there and remedy the situation. Ick uck yeck. But it worked. I managed to remove the offending object...and it was not a lemon peel. It was something akin to this.



How boring would my life be without little boys?!

A couple weeks ago we all loaded up and headed to Santoneyo (that's Grant-speak for San Antonio) to visit my cousin Amy and her family. They were gracious enough to let our circus crash at their house and we had a great time! We spent Saturday at Sea World....holy cow. It would take about 2 weeks to walk from one side of that place to the other. But the boys had a fabulous time.

Here's Jaden and Hunter at the waterpark...I really think they would've played in there all day if we'd have let them.






We took in all the shows. Jaden and Hunter sat as front row as they could get trying to get splashed. Grant was happy to sit well OUT of the splash zone.





Here's all of us...Hunter, Buck, Amy, Matt, Angie, Grant and Jaden



On Sunday, at Jaden's request, we headed downtown to the Alamo. And that afternoon my other cousin Stacy and her boys drove up to hang out and swim for a while. Her boys are the same ages as mine by a matter of days! I don't know how Stacy, Amy, and I managed to acquire all these little boys but they are adorable and they all got along famously.





Here's Simon and Stacy...



and Joel...



and Mr. Throw a Fit Over a Pair of Boots...

Come One, Come All!

In case you can't quite make out that delightful scrawl, the sign says:

The clone and anikin vidio!

Plus it has tooting!

and it is not apopreit for ladeys

Obsession

I am turning over a new leaf. As of today, I will no longer neglect my sweet husband and boys over my dual obsessions of scrapbooking and reading. As of today, I am going to start neglecting them for my NEW obsession!! Photoshop! Woo!

I have been frustrated with my pictures in general for the last couple of years. In 2007 we acquired a smokin' hot new camera that upped the quality of my pics considerably, however, something was still missing. Photoshop! Duh! Most of the photos that I admire by other people have been tweaked to some degree or another. So why not mine? And so...a new obsession is born. This program is a whopper. I can forsee many late nights and sore backs from studying and playing with this baby. But my pictures are gonna look fantastic so it'll all be worth it!! Just look at the difference...

This first pic is of my cutie pie nephew, straight up and unedited.



Now here it is after applying the first action...



And here is an action on top of another action...



After messing around for a bit with these pics and a few others, I realized that my originals were all very blue. So, I warmed them up a little and WOW! What a change...this one is my favorite.










This is so great! Just think how excellent my scrapbook pages are gonna look now!!

Uh, about that whole scrapping thing...I never said I was giving it up all together. Just that I wasn't going to neglect my family for it any longer.

But that was probably a lie.

Woo!

Who is this Child?

This afternoon the boys were sitting at the table snacking on their after-school fare and so, not wanting to be left out, I started rummaging through the fridge. Since I'm in the middle of my bi-annual attempt to be healthy, I broke out the broccoli and ranch dressing and started crunching…yay me! The very next moment Jaden is standing next to me asking if he can have some too. Now, this was not actually the astounding part. The astounding part was the fact he'd left his half-eaten chocolate crème Oreo cookie behind to come eat the broccoli!

Wonders never cease.