Thought I’d use these photos to update the blog with what’s been happening in the first quarter of the new year. I’m also going to add a few 2011 Christmas items for laughs.
The first picture here is from the annual Christmas parade in Bentonville, Arkansas. You can see the very first WalMart in the background (Walton’s 5 & 10). They’ve turned it into a mini-museum, which is on our tour of the area, if you’re interested in coming down to visit.
Here’s a photo from the Beaver Lake Sailing Club Christmas Party. The team I race with won the “King of the Lake” trophy for the 2011 season. The trophy is only awarded if a team wins all three of the major regattas (Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day) in a single season. Winning this trophy is made especially difficult because each regatta is a multiple day event, and if you win on Saturday, they give you a bottle of rum, and expect you to drink it that night. Drinking the rum usually results in a poor performance in the next day’s race. We’ve got skills though, and were able to perform like Vikings, or Kennedys.
In other Christmas news, we drove to MI to celebrate with Jacqui’s family, then drove to Chicago for the next leg of our trip to MA to see my family for a few days, and for Jacqui to eat some lobster and a huge horse carrot. Jacqui barely had enough time to digest that carrot before we had to fly back to Chicago. We did get to spend the night with our friends, the Garretts, and celebrate New Years Eve before the big drive back to AR.
We had a typical mild winter in NWA this year, with very little snow and temps rarely dipping below freezing. We did get a chance to build a snow man (about a foot tall). Jack says we need a "Corm Pop Pup" (that's a corn cob pipe in case you didn't know).
Jack's has had to endure some big changes recently. Namely, moving out of his crib, no more diapers, and getting used to the idea that he's going to have a sibling this summer. Since we moved him out of his crib and into a bed, he's only fallen out once. We've got a safety bar on the bed, but he was restless one night, and he did a forward roll, right over the top of it. After the crying stopped, and he calmed down, I left him on the floor with a blanket and he slept there the rest of the night. Cold comfort.
We've been working on potty training with Jack (nombre uno, y dos), and have had great success. Only a few accidents so far, and we're hopefull there's no backsliding this summer. I recall the process is rarely consistent, and new sibling arrival could de-rail the whole operation.
Here's a photo of his pre-school class. For some reason, a few of his best buddies are missing from the photo.
Jack is in the top row, 2nd from the left between a girl named Nysha, and Mr. Orville Reddenbacher Jr. Jack seems really tall in this photo, despite the majority of kids in this class being 6months older than him. His height and weight are both a bit below the average (he was a 30lb, 3yr old at last weigh-in). Also, missing from this photo, are his two best buddies, Vivianne and Logan. They are the "giants" of the class. Vivianne greets him each morning with a bear hug, and twirls him around in a circle. Logan is teaching him wrestling moves that involve alot of "HiYah" karate noises and "Oy, Oy, Oy" which might be MuiThai or Krav Maga, I'm not sure. I'm teaching him some moves from home, such as, chin-whip, nose-pry, fish-hook, some assorted Indian leg moves, and yelling "arm-bar, arm-bar, arm-bar". I saw him put the leg moves to good use against a much older kid at a birthday party last week.
Jack turned 3 in March, and Jacqui's mom Bonnie came down for a visit.
The black eye in the photo did not come from wrestling. Jacqui says he ran into something in the cafeteria at work when she brought him in one weekend. Also, the single candle is for Bonnie's friend Pat, who was with us also, and celebrating her birthday. Nice of him to share his racecar cake.
The red part of the cake is rasberry frosting I think. The wheels are frosted with chocolate and it is rolling across a "dirt track" made from chocolate cake and crushed nuts.
While Bonnie was in town, Jacqui and I took a quick trip to Tulsa, OK to spend the evening away. While there, we took advantage of the "western" ambiance. Here's Jacqui talking with some cowpoke.
We also went to the famous Cains Ballroom. It was awesome and they happened to be celebrating the birthday of country legend Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. He pioneered Texas Swing music. Here's a link to a video clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmTYJRbUrvI . Bob Wills is dead, but the Texas Playboys are still around, and the guy singing with them in the video was also the the MC at Cains the night we were there. In the video at the 54second mark, you can see people dancing exactly like what we saw. It wasn't a "cowboy night" or "mechanical bull" fake thing. It was the real deal.
We went to the Thomas Gilcrease Museum while we were there. It was impressive (see the link here
http://gilcrease.utulsa.edu/Explore . We had dinner in a place that offers Luchadore Wrestling. That's the Mexican wrestlers with the leather face masks. They had a ring set up right in the middle of the restaurant, but we missed the wrestling.
We had a good time, and a few laughs, and Bonnie got some good alone time with her grandson.
St. Patrick's Day had us on a road trip to Eureka Springs for the annual parade, and wearing of the green.
We saw a this band that played just about every Ozark instrument you could think of. Washboard, spoons, mouth-harp, banjo, fiddle, and a few traditional instruments too. They all sang, and the drummer was chaneling Janis Joplin (au-natural underarms).
Here's our crew (Theresa, Joel, Lindsay, Chad, and either a wookie, or squatch, on the right.
It finally dried out enough for us to set up the inflatable in the back yard. Jack had a blast jumping around in it and sliding out feet first and head first.
I usually end the blog posting with a funny story, but I can't think of a recent one. Back in December though, a WalMart greeter saw that I had purchased Old Spice deoderant, and he told me a funny story. Funny because he was a WalMart greeter, and because he shouldn't be sharing this type of story with customers. He said, he was working on a forestry crew when he got out of the army, and he wanted to get drunk, but had no liquor. The crew did have a bunch of old spice calogne that was given to them for Christmas. They told him, if you strain it through a loaf of bread you could get drunk on the alchohol in it. He said he drank a pint of this bread booze and got sicker than a dog. Since then he can't even look at old spice.
That's about it for now. Next up, we'll probably cover Easter Egg hunts, maybe a hike and a video tour of the area. Until then, we hope you enjoyed the photos and our View of Life in the South.
