Mastadon State Park

AFter we left Suson Park today, we head South to check out Kimmswick, which is closed on Monday's. Pretty much it is a little historical town that has been overrun by Ty Beanie Baby shops. They've got some antique stuff though. Cutesy craft stuff too. Oh well.

WE stopped at a farmer's market and Nate insisted on "smelling" the flowers. His way of smelling flowers: bend over, put your face in the flowers, and BLOW! Funny. Maybe we'll teach him sometime right. He did it to me again when we went to the hardware store tonight (picked up some paint for his wagon. I've officially spent more money on trying to repair it then what I paid at the yardsale to acquire it in the first place. Hope the color matches). we then headed across I-55 to Mastadon State park, named because of the Mastadon Fossils that were found there, I think. Lynn and I took a tour 5 years ago, but I'm not sure now what the story is.

We found a cool little park area and had a picnic and Nate got to play on the playground. I'm posting the pics here again. LYnn met a woman whose husband worked for Raytheon. They had just moved back from Australia. Pretty cool. Her kid was a little rough with Nate though. I tried to keep them seperated.

Here's the pics:

You can see Lynn in the background of this one and also there was a front loader that was running that Nate was fascinated by.


Here's Nate crawling through a tunnel. There was a 2 year old behind him that he got along with pretty good.


Nate is getting ready to go down the tube slide. He fell off a the end one time, but was okay. (Mastodon state park)

Later,

More Photos

Following is a montage of pictures of Nate looking at different animals. Thought I might just clog up you all's bandwidth with meaningless pictures. Today, Lynn surprised us with a trip to Suson Park down in S. County. They have a little "summer farm", basically a bunch of barns with animals in it. Nate saw horses, goats, chickens (a rooster tried pecking him through the fence), pigs, ducks (his favorite), cows and sheep. He also got to pet a baby goat....







in this picture, Nate got to pet a baby goat, I guess a kid, it was 4 days old. He was a little scared of it....



I have some more pictures of us at Mastadon Park that I will post later....


Need to go watch Nate while Lynn gets dinner ready.

Later,

Secret Outing

I've taken the day off work and Lynn has a "secret outing" for Nate and me planned. WE'll have to see what it is. In the meantime, I'm heading to the Y to break my weeklong sabbatical...

later,

Fish, Fish & Fish

Fish!

Fish!

Nate and Fish!

Nate and More Fish!!!

Took Nate out to Cabela's so he could see the Fish Tank there. It was prety amazing for him to see all of the fish. It's like the greatest thing on earth for him.

Pretty non-exciting day. we went out to Nick and Elena's tonight for dinner for pizza. We sure like that place. Authentic Italians and such.

Well, it's bedtime for Nate so I better wish him the best.

Later,

Here we go again.

Okay, I don't know how many times I can post pictures of Nate at the Park, but yes, once again today, we went to the park and I took pictures. I put Nate in the bike trailer and we trucked it up to the park next to our subdivision. I let him play on the jungle gym for about 1/2 an hour. We even tried out the swing.

Went a little yard saling this morning. Got Nate a remote control card. It's built for kids and he doesn't quite understand the concept, he still tries to push it around. Also went to some furniture stores and looked at kitchen tables. Just planning for the future. Got the front yard mowed and Lynn finished up with the back today also. Nothing else of real spectacular mentioning. I plan maybe tomorrow to get to the hardware store and pick up some high-gloss outdoor enamel spray paint in Fire Engine or Candy Apple Red to refurbish the inside of Nate's Radio Flyer wagon. I used it to move some yard waste and that seems to have destroyed the interior a bit, so I need to repaint. Don't want him to get rust and flaked red paint on his bottom.

Here's the pictures as promised:





Later,

More pics of Nate

Lynn had taken the following pictures of Nate the other day, so I thought I as well might share them on the blog.


This is Nate in his new sunglasses. He don't much like wearing them though, as you can see.


Here's Nate at the park. He's pretty good about traversing steps.


Here comes Nate!!!

Got home from work today and Nate and I did our weekly run to see Mr. Mike. Afterward, went to Sam's to pick up some men's body wash. Amazingly, got out of there with only that purchase.

Not much else to say. Guess I will talk to you all later,

Later,

Positive post, Negative post

Tonight my friend Ben came over so I took it as an opportune time to have him bring out the battery charger and we put it on my Taurus. The car has been sitting in the garage since Jan 12 or so, when we both the Mazda, and the battery went quite dead. Thankfully, it charged and the motor started right up. Need to get it into some kind of sellable condition or something. Get rid of it. We'll see.

Took Nate over to Vesta's and I got to feed him some Macaroni and Cheese, Green Beans, Corn, Bread and breaded Chicken pieces. He loved them all. Such a good boy.

BTW, we've got some new inhabitants at the Starbuck Household, Jack and Jill. Their Goldfish. Nate took quite well to the fish at the Cabela's tanks so we decided to get a couple of his own. He seems quite enthralled by them.



Also, my sister went out Yard Saling this weekend and got Nate the Little People Barn. He loves that also.



Lynn took both of the above pictures. She's planning on posting some of them so I have restrained myself from posting anymore on my blog ( I just get tasked with uploading them to the internet).

Had a good night with BSF tonight. we had pizza and sat around and talked. Good way to get to know some of the guys.

Well, I need to get ready for tommorrow. I've slept in on Mon. and Tues. instead of going to the Y so I need to get a good night's rest tonight so I don't have an excuse.

Later,

Bathtime Pics.

Thought I would get some quick pictures of Nate tonight to post since I haven't done any in a while...

This was his bathtime tonight. since he was outside most of the afternoon, he was a very dirty boy.







Later,

Nate the prognosticator

Okay, so it's looking kind of cloudy outside right now. And the wind is blowing. Lynn and I asked Nate if the power was going to go out. He nodded "yes".

We had a pretty Good Sunday. WE went to church and then went out to HomeTownBuffet with our friends the Whetsteins, the Silvermans and the Epples. I made a root beer float for dessert.

I played with Nate outside for most of the afternoon. I think I may have exposed him to the sun a little too much. HOpefully he's not sunburned.

Think it is about ready to Rain. Better close up the windows before it starts torrental rains.

Later,

Garage Sale, Finale

Well, we had the garage sale today. And Good results. Lynn and I made about $140 or so on the garage sale. We had another surprise in that my parents came down for the weekend. Nate was excited to see Grandma and Grandpa.

They're out right now at one of Mr. Dave's family functions. HOpefully they'll get back soon so we can clean up the carport.

We'll see.

Later,

Garage Sale Mania

Well, tomorrow is the big day. We have everything sitting out under the car port right now ready for tomorrow. Okay, who am I kidding, we aren't ready. We'll be getting up bright and early on Saturday morning though. Hopefully we get lots of traffic. I'm hoping. I want to move some stuff. We'll have to see how it goes. Good I hope.

Nate was pretty good tonight. He enjoyed being around Aunt Amy and Mr. Dave. He had to have pushed his little car through the lawn at least 20 times. He also enjoys Amy's LBDs (that's Little Black Dogs, NIckie and Lucky).

It's up early at 6:00 tomorrow. Hope that it doesn't rain, but the weatherman says it is most likely not going to happen. That's good.

Later,

Is retirement a competition

Lynn has said sometimes that I can be a little competitive with her about stuff. I guess I can be, and I guess my latest thing I've done could be construed as that.

Prior to Tax day, I made sure to fully fund both of our 2006 Roth IRA's. I had stopped funding them fully due to buying the Mazda van back in January. But lately, I had had beeng getting jittery watching the stocks I own climb and fall again, and had decided it is best just to liquidate all our stock holdings and buy into Mutual Funds. So,

• Goodbye Home Depot,
  
• farewell Walgreens,
  
• auf wiedersehen Cisco Systems
  
• arrivederci Dell Computer
  
• Zijte blaze Citibank (had to throw some Czech in there)
  

Had to keep Starbucks though, you know, cool name and all.

So, back to the competition thing now. I called my Ed Jones broker asking for a good mutual fund and he suggested a couple of international funds. I looked up what S&P had to say about them and both looked good. I thought what the hey, I bought equal amounts of both and put one in my account and one is Lynn's. The lifetime inceptions on the two are %14.09 and %13.85. I gave myself the lower one. Also, ONe of them is a Global fund and the other is International. Must be a difference there somewhere.

Had a good day with Nate today. We went around the block again in the bike trailer. He also got to watch Jackson run after us. Then again, he was in a really fussy mood during dinner. I think he was tired.

I packed him up and took him to the comic shop though. When we got there, he did his usual things (banging on the glass display cases, walking behind the checkout counter, pulling comics off the shelves, climbing on benches, pulling things out of shipping boxes). Thankfully, Mike the Comic Book Guy is pretty cool about the whole thing. I'm sure he has to clean Nate's prints of the glass every week.

Well, I need to go. Lynn went to the Butterfly House with Nate today, so hopefully she'll upload the pics she took for you all to see on her blog soon.

Later,

eBay

I've posted some more things on eBay and one of the things I didn't think would go for more then the starting bid is now up to $3.50. Who knew?

Nate and I had a blast tonight. Lynn left for her Bible study so I packed Nate up in the bike trailer and we rode up to the park up on Parkwood. Had a blast with him walking through the jungle gym. I'm still the protective dad though, I need to hold his hand when he walks across the bridge. It's supported by chains so every step causes the thing to jiggle and move from side to side (that's what jiggling is, isn't it?). He's found the BIG slide also, but I insist that he wait until I can get down to hold his hand when he goes down. Don't trust him on it alone just yet.

Lynn is mostly back to normal after the extraction. She at least didn't have anything to say about taking care of Nate alone today. Although, don't try to go to Sam's Club prior to 10 A.M. Have to be a V.I.P. member to get in. I've been bitten by that also one day when I had Nate.

Well, I need to relax a bit. I've been bad the past week about getting up to go to the Y on time. I sleep in an extra 30 minutes so then I only get 20 to 25 minutes to actually work out. I think it might be my body adjusting to Daylight Savings when it was really SUPPOSED to happen last week, but since they moved it (thanks President Bush), it must have really screwed with my time table? Maybe I'm just lazy too. OH well.

Think I'm going to go downstairs and see if I can defeat the frost dragon on my PS2 game.


Later,

Sunday Morning

Just thought I would post a picture of Nate:

Sitting in a box. He likes to do that.

Lynn had her wisdom teeth out on Friday, so we are all recovering from that. I've been keeping Nate occupied for the past two days. It's a lot of work. He's all blankets and dogs. All the time. Lynn is recovering greatly though. she's going to possibly go to a wedding shower this afternoon.

not much else to write. Nate is acting up so I better go check on him.

Later,

So glad I have a boy.

So, I just saw the newest Barbie doll they've put out there. It's Barbie and Her dog Tanner. Supposedly Barbie feeds Tanner a treat and then you go off and lift up his tail... and yes.... he poops.

Here's pic of the two from the Wal-mart website:


My work week is over. I'm taking a personal day tomorrow. Lynn is having all four of her third molars extracted. That's wisdom teeth for the dentally challenged. I'll get to watch Nate during the procedure. Will have to read lots of books and toys for him. Then I get to entertain him for a couple of days while Lynn recovers.



I had mine extracted when I was 15 or 16. I don't remember much of it. I do remember coming home from the "procedure" and my dad was talking up a storm and I got REALLY mad at him. Cotton in the mouth also. Lots of bleeding the first day also. But no complications thankfully. Hopefully she'll get some great pain medicine.

I've put some more books on eBay. Hopefully they sell, I had them in the yard sale that we had 2 years ago and nobody wanted them. Hopefully someone will like these.

Later,

Handyman

Yesterday, our light in the basement wouldn't come on. I deduced it was the lightswitch, which seemed to become very difficult to turn on and off. So when I got home today, I turned off ALL power in the house (I couldn't figure out where the power line was coming from, it was really odd). Changed it out in about 30 minutes and now it works. Learned a couple of things about the whole ordeal. Replaced it with one of those cool switches which glows. Only about 12 more to replace in the house to my recogning. Actually, no, I don't think so.

LAst night was good at BSF. Met a guy there in my group that went to Rolla and had the same church family adopt them that I did. So in a way, he's my brother. Cool. I didn't know that my fam had participated in the program much after I left. Another cool thing was that Andy Benes was in our group. He's a former pitcher for the cardinals. I stared at him for the longest time thinking I recognized him. He had come to our church for a time as a part of a Men's thing so I knew him from that.

WEnt to Sam's tonight and spent a bunch of money again. We got Nate a seat for my car so we don't have to play musical cars anymore with him. Make it a lot easier to do errands and stuff with two carseats. Lynn got "Mary Poppins" with some pre-B-day money. She's watching it right now.

WEll, need to head to bed. Got one more day of work and Then Friday Lynn will have her Wisdom Teeth Extracted.

Later,

PJL

That's Print Job Language. I've been using it a little at work. IT's a language that HP came up with to control print jobs (imagine that). apparently, you just take your byte stream from the print job and "wrap" it in the PJL, and you can tell the printer what to do with your print job. Well, I got a hold of a task at work where I'm supposed to print a document duplex (a printing press equipped to print both sides of a sheet in one pass.). So, I wrapped my bitstream in the PJL and on the first try, VOILA!, I had a duplex document. I was pretty excited about that. I thought I was going to print out a thousand sheets of paper with control characters on top. Good Thing I didn't.

Well, this weekend was Lynn and I's 4th wedding anniversary. we went to Springfield, IL, to celebrate. Got a hotel room at the Fairfield by Marriott. They had an indoor pool so we enjoyed that along with some kids for a while. Easter day we spent with Lynn's family at her brother's church. I took the picture of Nate in the previous post while there. IT was pretty cool.

Lynn just got home from BSF so I need to go. Gotta get the answers for my own study tomorrow night.

Later,

Easter PIc

Took this picture of Nate today in his Easter Outfit. We plan on more pictures later with him for later.

stpid tig

well, last igt I did a stpid tig ad sliced idex figer, te rigt 1. so I ca't tpe wit te y u h j n m keys w/o effort. I eed to lear ow to apulate a pocket kife better. O well. I ave toda off so i sold ave soe relief for te figer.

Later,

Annivesary 2.

Well, we didn't do much for our anniversary. I guess that is what old couples do? I came home and we had a spaghetti supper and then we went out to Culvers for dessert. That was good. I had a root beer float. Lynn did a hot fudge sundae and Nate had a cookie. Before we left I was able to get the following pictures of Nate. In one of them you see him about ready to throw a piece on the floor.

We stopped off a Kohl's on the way back and I got some much needed new shoes for work. My others were following apart, the sole was ripping off and I had a huge rip in the side of the right one. Kind of emotional about throwing them out cause I've had them so long. That's what we Starbuck's do. Drives Lynn Nuts....

I'm off work tomorrow for GF. We'll see the Parent's as Teachers lady in the morning and Lynn will get her haircut. Somewhere in there we'll get an oil change for the van.





Later,

Anniversary Time

Today is Lynn and I's 4th wedding anniversary. don't have anything special planned for today. This weekend, we'll head out of town and get rid of the kids for a night, that's all.

Looking for a nice restaruant in Springfield, IL to dine at. Looks like everything is Italian. WE'll have to see.

NOt much else for news on the homefront here. WE'll be out of town this weekend, I've got Friday off for GF. Lynn will have all her wisdom teeth extracted next Friday, So will need to learn real quick how to be a nursemaid. I'm not too good at it. Guess I can learn.

HAd a great time with Nate last night. I was hiding and he would come look for me. WE haven't took many pictures of him lately, so I will see about getting some posted up tonight, if I can take a couple.

Marge, the PAT lady, will come tomorrow, so I will get to meet her for the first time. Hopefully she'll find Nate progressing just fine, but every child is different, eh?

Gotta get ready for work. Three day weekend!!!

Later,

An April Miracle.

Got the following over e-mail and thought I would share it with you all. Said I was supposed to share it with 10 Christians but I thought at least 5 people read this drivel so that should could for something right?

If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.
Happy moments, praise God.
Difficult moments, seek God.
Quiet moments, worship God.
Painful moments, trust God.
Every moment, thank God.
This is a Thomas Kinkade painting. It's rumored to carry a miracle!

I had an interesting experience at BSF tonight. I think I just had the epiphany that this is the place that God wants me to be right at this exact moment in time. I've been going through some rough times at work and tonight we went over some of the verses in Roman in the 12th chapter that refer to loving your enemies and perservering through hardships. Romans 12:12 says:

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

It's the patient in affliction part that I'm struggling with right now. I've had some tough times at work, and because of my lack of control, have caused some problems. So now I've got to work some principals from these verses to regain the trust and respect of some of my co-workers. It's going to be tough. Most likely, more work then the affliction that caused it in the first place. But God is faithful and he'll see me through it.

And anyways, I have the miraculous Thomas Kinkade painting to help me through it also. (it's nothing to special, just an animated gif, actually a GIF 89a).

Later,

Argg! Carol Channing

Okay, I don't know why I am posting a picture of Carol Channing on my blog, but with the week I am having, thought I would depart for a while. We had a good Sunday yesterday. Went to Fuddruckers with our friends the Silvermanns and then came back home. Nate took a nap and then me,Nate and Jackson all went to the M.H. Dog Park. It was pretty cool. Jackson loved it. Loved it so much he went and started to roll in the mud puddles. I had to call Lynn to bring the bad van to pick him up to take him home. He got a good bath.

I think Nate was a little hesitant with the dogs. There was one little dog that was too small to play with the other dogs, and decided that Nate was just his size. I had to keep picking Nate up to get him away. He did do his little "Dog" sign that he is so good at doing. Next time we'll need to go as a whole family. One watches Nate, the other Jackson. It was a good time, none the less.

Lynn and I cleaned out the garage tonight. Took out a lot of stuff that had just been sitting there for a while now. Now just need to get rid of my Taurus. I will need to talk to Vesta's fam about borrowing a battery charger to get it started, I hope it will at least.

We're planning a big yard sale to get rid of a lot of our stuff. That is taking up a lot of the space in the garage. It will be nice to get rid of it all, eventually.

Got one bid on my St. Louis Cardinals pins on eBay. E-mailed someone else to see if they might be interested. they had bid one of the pins up to $5 on another auction.

We'll see.

Later,