In this picture, Eric, Will and their cousin Wes go off for an adventure.  Since the tube is round, and each kid had a paddle, they ended up going around and around in circles.  Then, they paddled to my Aunt and Uncle’s house and made a mess, causing a crisis. 

The family reunion continues apace, the kids are having a ball.  Last night, we went to my Uncle Bob’s for a dinner of ribs and corn on the cob.  Today, we plan on playing around all day and then my dad is in charge of dinner.

Here’s the kids playing “head, shoulders, knees and toes” yesterday evening.  It was funny.

and a closeup of my kids (I’m sure you could tell which ones they were in the above picture because they are the best looking kids there, but it’s hard since ALL of the kids were so good looking) – Izzy is in the back looking away, we couldn't get everyone to look the same way all the time.

From what I hear, my team at work can hardly function, because it’s so sad and boring without me around.  Don’t worry guys, I’ll be back Monday!

We’re still at the lake, and I’m connected via my mobile phone and two pieces of string and a couple of tin cans…very SLOW.  We’re still having fun though:

I’m on vacation, at the Lake.  Today, all of my cousins are coming, and we’re going to have family togetherness for a couple of days.  The good thing about living close is that I can leave whenever I want to!  I’ve only taken 100 pictures so far, I figure I’ll take a thousand or so over the next few days.

I’m sure they’re having no fun at all at work since I’m out.

It’s been a strange week so far: Jenny is out of town (which isn't unusual), but this time she took Eric and Izzy to her sister’s babyshower in Florida (I opted to stay out of it).  She left yesterday morning, so Jake and Alex and I have been men-about-town. Yesterday we had a picnic lunch at the pool and then went back to the pool after work for a few hours. We spent about 3 hours there after work today too, before we went out to dinner.   My plan is to get both of them exhausted from running around so they’ll go to sleep early and leave me some alone time!

Tomorrow’s also the last day of work for a while, I’m taking the next week off.  Of course, there are a few things coming up that I’ll need to push to get done before I leave – it’s never calm right before vacation.

I hope everyone has a great week; I haven't been posting much because going to the pool for 3 hours a day is wearing me out more than the kids.

Today was the most perfect father’s day I’ve ever had.  It started out kind of rough, because Jake made a big old nasty mess in his room, and then woke me up at 6:00 AM to tell me about it.  I’m an early riser anyway, so I was about to get up, I just hate having to deal with messes first thing.

Anyway, after Jenny got up, I got to take a nice nap, then I goofed around on my computer for a bit.  Then, we went to the pool and hung out, doing nothing. (I went down the water slide because Eric and Alex didn’t think I would do it).  We came home, and Jenny made my favorite dinner, chicken and sausage jambalaya.  I think there are brownies and ice cream down there too (for later).  Now, she’s down there dealing with the kids, while I have some special alone time with the pictures I took earlier.

I tried to get a good picture of all the kids in the pool at the same time, but it didn’t work out, and all I got was this one:

I’m starting to get excited about vacation, which is a week from tomorrow.  All of the cousins I grew up with are meeting at the lake, there are about 7 cousins, each has a couple (or more) kids, so it will be a great time.  The even BETTER part will be that I can drive home when I’ve had my fill of family togetherness.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from some lady who asked if they could include one of my pictures in their web guide of London.  They don’t pay, but they do credit the photographer.  Their choice was kind of weird, and I don’t think it’s a very good picture, but at least now I can say that someone wanted to use one of my pictures in real life.

I asked around at work, and made sure that schmap was on the up and up before I gave my permission.  The advice I got was interesting; generally, the more talent and experience the photographer had, the less likely they were to give permission.  So I guess it’s a testament to my lack of talent and inexperience that I said yes :-D

The picture is here (it takes a while to load), and they linked back to my flickr page for the photo too)

We’re in the midst of a heat wave:  it was 97 yesterday, and its 96 already today.  After the kids finish cleaning their rooms, we’re going back to the pool.  It’s so nice to have a pool in the neighborhood.

Izzy and I had a great time swimming yesterday, and Jenny took a picture of me that isn't completely awful, mainly because Izzy’s cuteness rubbed off on me a little bit.

The only thing that concerns me is that they hired a bunch of teenage girls to be the lifeguards.  I’m so old that they all look 12, and I’ll be in BIG trouble if I start to drown, because there’s no way one of those little girls is going to drag my big old butt out of the deep end.  It’s a good thing I can swim OK.

I now have 100 friends on facebook.  That’s only about 99 more than in real life.

Jim has 167, but that’s because he’s just a lot nicer than me or something.  I have a cousin who goes to the University of Georgia who has about 700, but she’s a) a lot nicer than me b) a pretty girl and c) a college kid.

When Jenny isn’t here, meals are kind of different.  Last night, I made hamburgers on the grill, with grapes and milk.  mmmmm, nutritious!

The hamburgers are burnt, because I had to interrupt cooking to go and find Eric, who wasn’t home on time.  Now, he’s grounded for two weeks.  I’m probably going to show him some mercy tomorrow, when school lets out for the year, but he doesn’t know that yet.  He thinks that it’s “totally unfair” that he gets grounded a day for every minute late he is.  I used one of the “dad sayings” that my dad taught me “who said anything about fair?”.  He loves it when I say stuff like that.

In other news, Alex has had homework every night this week.  That’s pretty mean of the teacher, but I make him do it anyway.

(Shameless parental bragging below.  Skip if you don’t want to read about how great my kids are)

As I was driving home this afternoon, having slid out of work early because I had to get groceries before I relieved the babysitter, I got a phone call. Of course, THIS is the day my manager goes looking for me in the afternoon.  So I talked to him, then I had to talk to the regular babysitter, who is STILL out with a broken arm.  It’s a mess.  So after I dealt with that, the phone rang AGAIN, and it was the school.  That’s NEVER a good sign.

Instead of telling me about how one of the boys tried to foment a revolution over homework (“If NONE of us did our homework, they couldn’t do anything to us”) or got in a fight with the kid down the street for calling him a “buttcrack” (both of which have happened), it was Eric’s teacher telling me that I needed to come in to discuss how they were going to put Eric in the “Academically Gifted” program next year.  I about drove off the road, because I didn’t expect THAT.  It turns out he scored really really well on the EOG tests, so they want to put him in with the smart kids.

I made a minor fuss about it, but I didn’t want to give him a big head, so I didn’t throw a parade or anything.  I’m so proud of him I could bust.