February Fun

We have to keep reminding ourselves we live in the south, which is not easy when you get this kind of snow. The first storm of 2011 gave us about 6 inches, shut down all of northwest Arkansas, and got Jacqui working from home for two days. We made a snowman (he's a Cub fan and a Bud man). Spent time coloring ( http://www.youtube.com/user/eyevid101?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/FEakx9Tf2ag  ) playing with trucks, and reading lots of books (latest favorites are: Curious George, The Mitten, Sea Creatures, Flotsam, and Colors). The list changes from week to week but there's always a few favorites. The snow melted in a few days when we got back up to 65 degrees and Jack realized that you can play in the melted snow and run through puddles if your dad says it's ok (it's always ok) http://www.youtube.com/user/eyevid101?feature=mhum#p/u/1/dx-JugSf5ec .

Then, about a week later, we got another storm which set a record for the state and had Jacqui working from home for another few days. A total of 22 inches in 24 hours. Now, I may have mentioned before on this blog, Fayetteville gets an annual snowfall of 10 inches, which usually comes in storms of 1 or 2inches at a time over a 5 month period. This deeper kind of snow is unheard of here. Removing it is not in the plans for most of these people. They just wait for it to melt. No snowblowers, no plows on your neighbors pickup, no shovels. Jacqui saw a farm tractor with a plow on the front plowing the main highway.

In fact, I called the kid who cuts our grass, asking if he had a snowblower, and he said "Snowblower? I got a leafblower. It's gas powered, I could try that". So, for your viewing pleasure, I have posted a southern-style snow remover for your enjoyment at http://www.youtube.com/user/eyevid101?feature=mhum#p/u/5/kvAmt_hqjk8

Jack saw the kid working on the snow and said "Robot?". You always answer yes when there is a question about robots. We took the wagon out and wheeled around in it. Jack learned about blowing snow, cold snow, snowballs and icicles.

Jack has been working on his singing skills. He likes to sing the words to the ABC song, the Hot Potato song, the Frer Jacque song, and the BINGO song. Though with that one, he says "BINGO, no bingo, LOGAN!" and you substitute the name of someone in the song and spell their name. Good for a 45 minute drive if you don't have a headache.

I've been using my experience and training provided by Chicago's great Arts And Business Council B.V.A. program to benefit a local charity called Havenwood House.  I did some grant research and found sources for over $125,000 (a huge amount down here), which I provided to the board of directors and voluteered to do the grant writing.  Thanks, can you help us stuff some envelopes and run a silent auction for our fundraising event? Whatever it takes, I guess.  The event was a great success and we met some new people.  We determined that somebody put us at the event table together because we're all from the East (Jersey, PA and MA), AND we're all Catholics in Baptist land!!!

We had our first Chicago visitors of 2011, Scott and Kristin, and some decent weather.  Here they are posing with a GIANT statue of Jesus on the hill in the background.

We took them for a drive to Eureka Springs, with a slight detour up an old dirt road, which the GPS assured us was the correct way to the historic Crescent Hotel. 

Around here you want to be very careful about taking those wrong turns as you may run up on a back woods meth lab or someone's moonshine operation or pot farm.  We backed down the hill and made it to Eureka to walk around, take some photos and have a few adult beverages.
 

Hope you like the pics and videos.  Next up: Jack's birthday (March 6th), Bon visits, Razorback baseball, Jacqui's dad visits, and anything else we can think of.

Ozark Christmas, etc.

Merry Christmas

We celebrated Christmas four separate times this year. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think when January rolled around, we were happy to start thinking of something else. Jack will be turning 2 in March, and he's still not quite sure what to make of the holiday. He liked the tree, with its star on top ("ishtarr"), liked the songs (yelling" "jingle-all-a-way - HEY"), and likes all his new toys, he's just not getting what the rest of it is about.

Jacqui's Mom visited us in early December to celebrate here. We got to exchange gifts, and she got some quality TuTu time with Jack. As you can see in the photo above, she got him his first red wagon. He's begun to figure out that you can ride in it AND stuff it full of things. His uncle Jimmy got him a jet ski which he's scooting around on. For some unknown reason, it plays the theme song from T.J. Hooker. He won't let go of that football though, so his steering isn't too good.

We also did some traveling to visit relatives, making stops in Mesa, Arizona to visit Jan and Curt (Jacqui's dad), and to New England to visit the Lyons clan. While in Mesa we went for a hike in the Superstition Mountains along the Lost Dutchman trail. A great hike with lots of cactus and rock formations to look at. As you can see here, Jack has decided his nap is over and he's ready to get out of that back pack. While he's asleep he's 27lbs of heat, which in Arizona, makes for a bit of a challenge. When he's awake, he might swat me on the top of the head, throw his hat, or yell for some attention. No worries, they promised some cold beer when we return.

Once back in Arkansas we celebrated Christmas day with some light flurries, and showed Jack what Santa and his Nana and Pa had for him (no coal this year). Among his favorites: a tricycle, a firetruck, a dump truck. Also currently obsessed with a basketball hoop that his godmother Michelle Callahan got for him. If any scouts are listening, JT can dunk!

After opening gifts we quickly dressed and threw the bags in the car for a quick ride to XNA (Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Fayettville) and the flight to New England (via Chicago). Had just enough time for a good lunch at Tuscany in Chicago's Terminal A, and to change Jack, before boarding the next flight. The northeast was preparing for a blizzard (the snowpocalypse of 2010) when we arrived. Made a quick stop to load up on liquor and food, but sister Chris and Ed had planned well in advance with lots of fire wood and great food and drink. Chris shows us she's still got the toddler skills by playing this made-up game with Jack for about an hour. Jack did get to go out and play in the snow a bit, but blizzard means high winds, and he wasn't much of a fan of that. The snow was fun to throw in the air, but he really didn't like it pelting him in the face on its way back down.

We celebrated with Nana and Pa and the grandkids and had some laughs with the annual theatrical show. I can't tell if the kids plays are getting shorter, or if all the yelling and sugar high makes it go faster. Jack seemed to like the attention of the stage, and got his first experience to run from behind the curtain to see "the audience". Just like Spiderman on Broadway though, the show was cut short due to injury and hurt feelings. Better luck next year.

Jack got to spend some good quality time with Uncle Tommy who agree to sit while we went out for dinner (Persian food - awesome). Nana and Pa took alot of sitting duty too, though Jack may have worn-out that welcome when he took the sacred statue of Mary out of the Manger and threw her accross the room. Sacrilage!

All the snow had us thinking we'd like to go skiing and we decided a nordic experience would be good, due to the wind. Jacqui picked an inn in the woods up in NH (see photo below) that had a trail system leading up to a mountain overlook near Mt. Sunape. We packed some gear and headed out, and with the exception of a few deep snow face plants, we had a great afternoon on the trails.

Back home, Jack was developing a bad cold which turned into sleepless nights, fever, coughing and lots of snot. By the time NYE rolled-around, our plans for celebrating were shot (though I did get a chance to step out and have dinner with my friends from home, thanks Jacqui).

Dinner was at a local favorite, "The Olympia" and its famed Zorba Room. The restaurant is featured in the Oscar nominated movie "The Fighter" which tells the story of a couple of local boxers, (Micky Ward and Dicky Ecklund). We saw the movie while we were in town, and though it doesn't paint a pretty picture of the area and its inhabitants, I'd say Christian Bale's performance was pretty close to a spot-on impersonation of Dicky, who I once had the displeasure of meeting.

Dinner turned to drinks and dancing back at

Pete and Kathy's home. In the photo below

I think Kim is showing us some karate moves but I can't explain the antlers on Kathy. Had some good laughs and still got back home to kiss Jacqui to begin a happy New Year.

Ozark Thanksgiving and other happenings

This episode of our View Of Life In The South, covers a few activities we had around Thanksgiving. We'll cover our family tradition of seasonal apple picking, the local past-time of "brush hogging", Thanksgiving 2010, and a trip to see a reenactment of the 148 anniversary of the Civil War battle at Prarie Grove, Arkansas.

There are no photos of apple picking because, apparently self-pickin is not something people do down here. Maybe we're spoiled by places like Apple Holler in Wisconsin where your kids can pet a goat (watch your fingers Nora), see bees in a hive exhibit, take a hayride, pick 30 varieties of apples, eat a pie or bring out a few beers and have a picinic. The apples down here are not much to write home about. With the exception of one variety, the Arkansas Black, most could only be considered no better than a horse-apple. It's got a tough skin, and as a result, is considered a peeling apple, and has an old-timey spicy taste. The only story to come out of the trip was that we drove for about 1 1/2 hrs to get to the orchard near the border of Missouri, but the GPS directed us to the address of the apple picker's ratty meth trailer in the middle of a cow pasture. I'm not kidding. Jacqui insisted that we continue to follow the GPS off the main road, down a dirt trail past 20 mamma cows and their calfs. I finally decided to turn around in a field so we wouldn't get shot as cow poachers, or meth-lab trespassers. If you have seen the movie Winter's Bone ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0khRUfTfPM ), which featured life in the area, you probably know what I'm talking about.

I don't have much to say about brush hoggin, aka bush hoggin. In the south, it seems that you can add the term "hoggin" to almost anything to give the impression of it being more intense. Like, "catfish hoggin" where you go fishing for ... catfish...with your bare hands...by thrusting your hand into an underwater hole in a riverbank and hopefully don't get bit by a croc, or a snake, or snapping turtle. Brush hoggin is driving a type of tractor into heavy brush that probably may contain bees, snakes, birds, deer or some combination of all of that. It makes a racket, all that stuff comes flying out, and you'd better have a few beers "cause this job's gotta git done".

We took a road trip to St. Louis to visit Jacqui's cousins and celebrate Thanksgiving ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujt7n64NkRg ). Had a good time, Jack got to go in a "bouncy house" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voHw1QFhQ7c) , and we ate some great food. Everybody's got their own holiday cooking mishap story, and this year we did too. Somehow, the oven got shut off, leaving the Turkey pretty raw when we took it out to carve. Put it back in for about 2hrs at around 400 and it came out great.

The fall season of sailing is over, frostbite sailing season starts next week. Here's a link to a video of our last race on the J24 named Jaded with Captain Jimmie ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI9vHrn-TQc ) and our crew. We won, and as a result took first place over-all for the fall season.

Then, there's Prarie Grove Battlefield. I went to the 148th anniversary reenactment of the Civil War battle. In a word - Awesome! The first thing you see when you pull into the parking area is a huge tent city holding a few thousand guys. These guys camped out in old-time white cotton tents, in December! The first guy I came across was too hungover to participate in the battle.

He said there were some hijinks in the night after they passed around the moonshine (real shine in a jug). He said the yankees snuck into camp and stole some wood, so they went over and knocked down some tents.

Then I saw some guys from the 12th Texas regiment doing drills. Some of these guys take it very seriously, staying in character, talking in old-timey accents, but then there are some other guys that seem to be having some fun with it see my video( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtJqoPXBoY4) . So when I asked a group of them "where do we go to get the yankee costumes" I was surprised that they took some offense. I learned the gear is called a "kit", "you gotta bring it with you", and most of these guys lost a some family members in the war. So, no surprise I guess, that they sent me on a 1hour walk in the wrong direction, through the woods, to find the Yankee camp. After I figured that out, I changed direction, and came across this "old sawbones" guy .

He was portraying a field medic. There were a couple of people there talking to him and he was telling a story about how they treated venereal disease among the troops. He said they heated this very thin silver wire then threaded it up the ureathra wiggling it and rotating it around and yanking it out to "pull out the mucus and pustuals". It got very quiet and uncomfortable at the edge of the forest there. He started to rearrange his leech boxes and horsehair sutures and a few people walked away, and I'm struggling so I said "so, did you ahh, .... is there a, ahhh, ummm, Was it any better to be on the other side?"

So I kept walking through the field behind him where I could see the other camp (and porta potties - not authentic).

These guys were from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. I was hoping for New Englanders or maybe even New Yorkers or some guys from Jersey (Ed Hardy shirts under the kit). Makes sense though as many of these guys had relatives that fought in this battle too. The guys from the northeast fought in Virginia, SoCarolina, Alabama, and then burned Atlanta - twice (sorry Nan).

I saw two very official looking guys, one was the bugler, so I interviewed them next ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um_vqWZ7ggk ) and got the story on the battle. Good history lesson.

Hope you enjoy these photos and videos. More can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/user/eyevid101?feature=mhsn#p/u

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving, and we look forward to sharing our view of Christmas and our latest adventures next time.

Getting Back To Basics

As you may know, when fall comes around, Jacqui is all about football, Octoberfest and tailgating. She has also added a few other activities to her loves:, hiking, leaf peeping, donkey jump and Halloween parties (for children).

We’ve been closely following the MI State Spartans, while keeping an eye on The Irish, but have been trying to watch a lot of SEC games this year, with special attention placed on the Arkansas Razorbacks – Pig Soooie!! I got a chance to

tailgate with Chad and some fratboys at a

recent game. We put the feedbag on - Big Time!

They have some fun sayings like

“When the Crown goes around,

someone’s going down”.




The leaves began to turn colors in our area a few weeks ago, but the heat and drought in August put a lot of stress on the trees, so they’ve been dropping leaves early in some areas. A few weeks ago we headed out to see some foliage and hiked to an area along the famous Trail Of Tears and saw the beginning of the southern foliage season. The Trail Of Tears was the forced march of native Americans out of this area, and took place during the decade after the passage of the federal Indian Removal Act in 1830. Approximately 60,000 people crossed through the area, headed for resettlement in nearby Oklahoma. Many didn't make it.

Here's a photo of Jacqui and Jack on a recent hike near the most photographed site in Arkansas, called Hawksbill Crag, or Whitaker Point, depending on who you ask.

There are quite a few great hikes in the area. We recently drove 2 ½ hours to hike along the bluff leading to the highest point in the Ozarks, Mount Magazine. Along the way there we stopped for directions at an old folks home. Jacqui made me go in and I have to say, it was bizzah. I thought I was in a horror movie. It seems there’s truth to the saying “it sucks to get old”. It sucks even worse to get old out in the boonies.

The hike we wanted to do at Mount Magazine takes you up to an elevation of about 2,700 feet above sea level. Not very high, but all the area around it is lowland and valley, so the entire elevation is a vertical climb. About 15 minutes into our hike up the trail, Jack started to flip out. We had to turn around and begin the 2 ½ hour drive back home. Note for future hikes: remember to bring an extra pacifier on the hike.

We went to Pea Ridge with Jacqui's friends Lindsey and Joel for some fall fun (apple crisp, bouncy house, donkey jump). What can you say about The Donkey Jump? It's

good fun for the family, and the donkeys don't complain that much. I've got some literature around somewhere, but as I understand, area donkeys were trained to jump fences and rock piles in preparation for coon hunting season.

We got some great shots of Jack in his first Halloween costume. He was a lion - ROAR! He got some good use out of it as Jacqui took him to a block party, then a fundraiser / party at the place he goes for daycare, and then to a party at one of our neighbors homes. He didn't mind the suit, but the furry mane made him look like Abe Lincoln, and when people laughed, he got self conscious.

Here he is with some of the neighbor kids being a ball-hog. Earlier he had been trying to pick up three at once, and when he realized he couldn't hold them all at once, he just sat on them, so no one else could get to them. I think the clinical term is only-child syndrome.







Looking forward to catching you up with more of Our View Of Life In The South. Next up: apple pickin', brush-hoggin', and the Prairie Grove Civil War battle reenactment (I'm proudly joining the Yankee side).

H-billies go to Chicago

After an apparently exhausting trip to Michigan, Jack slept through a quick sightseeing excursion in Chicago's Grant Park. Here is Jack sleeping in front of the amazing Geary Pavillion

Snoozing in front of the spectacular spouting fountains, next to where he slumbered beneath the sculpture known as The Bean.

A brief nap by the art decco masterpiece Wrigley building on Michigan Avenue was interupted by some big city shopping. No camo, no problem.

Jack also had a great time with family friends the Whal's (Ty, Marie and Juleen) where he hopefully got a few lessons in sharing and taking turns.

So much done is such a short time. New favorite words: acorn, shells, gulls, robot.

Well, that's all for now as we bring a close to the summer season. Fall is right around the corner, and we're sure to keep you updated on the comings and goings and a view of our life in the south. And, as Jacqui likes to say, "fall is all about getting back to basics", so whatever that means, you'll be seeing some of it.

TuTu is Hawaiian for Grandma

After Maine, we spent a few weeks back in Arkansas with the heat (90 days above 90 degrees) and humidity and decided that our trip to Maine went so well, we should spend another week away. This time we headed north to Michigan, to see Jack's other grandmother, Bonnie, who now goes by TuTu (which, I'm told, is Hawaiian for grandmother).

Bonnie lives in picturesque Grand Haven, and her home, which she calls Waikiki East, has a great view of Lake Michigan. Bonnie has an amazing collection of shells and coral (illegal?) from her travels to Hawaii. Jack got to learn a new word "shells" and how some are to be touched, and some not touched (unless TuTu breaks down and says "ok, just once").

Bonnie's friend Jim B. hosted a birthday party for TuTu on his boat with a few of her close friends, and later took us up the Grand River, and for a quick run into Lake Michigan. Jack says "safety first" and sports a great life jacket provided by his uncle Jimmy C.

Jack got to sit on the bridge, blow the horn, and wave to the tourists on the Grand Haven pier.

Da drove the boat, and after being relieved by Captain Jim, had a few relaxation beverages.

TuTu had a very active schedule planned for Jack that included, among other things, a trip to the Myer Sculpture Garden, where Jack ignored the sculptures and gardens and focused on the boats and moats exhibit, and concentrated on pouring water all over himself. No worries, TuTu saw that coming, and brought extra clothes.

Another stop on TuTu Tour 2010 was the John Ball Zoo where Jack learned the difference between the two ends of a goat, how long to chase a chicken, and that a turkey poop takes a while to get off your fingers. The zoo was fun and Jack got to see "gwen-gwins" (penguines) swimming in an underwater tank, and a "robot" (guy in a scuba suit cleaning the tank).

When Jack's handlers at daycare ask him about his summer vacation he can tell them all this:

I went to visit my cousins who had all gathered in Maine. At first I wasn't sure we were related, because they are the darkest Irish people I've ever seen. But after a while we had a blast. I had big laughs with my cousin Catrina in the mornings (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKzaur_a5E&feature=search , learned how to answer a phone from my best big cousin Drew (he can ride a bike), and was serenaded by Mia and Hannah. Me likey attention.

I went to the beach every day, collected clam shells, snails, rocks, sand and seawater. It smells awesome, especially when you mix it, let it bake in the sun and pour it out on Aunt Chris' porch.

My mom let me touch hermit crabs and turtles, and my dad let me ride on the big tractor with Uncle Buck. We dug a really deep hole and those gasoline containers didn't even explode. Dad said none of that is really safe but we have insurance.

I got lots of time for hugs and books with my Nana and Pa, learned new words (fish, rububba-ball), and entertained everyone with ability to just sit there and smile.