Birthday party

Yesterday G went to a birthday party for one of the girls in his preschool class. I'm not certain, but I think this was his first non-family birthday party. Here's a picture of him with the birthday girl (on his left):

Here he is with his girlfriend. He only recently told me that he has a girlfriend, but I'm reliably informed that they've been an item for a long time, and have even had their wedding all planned for months. It's going to be in a castle, and G is going dressed as a ghost.

Here's G on his way to church this morning dressed in his new coat and tie.

After I took a picture of him, he insisted on taking a picture of me. I think he did a pretty good job, other than his choice of subject.

Firetrucks

The Groton Fire Department had a safety fair this weekend, and as part of it they had all of their firetrucks out where the kids could see them. G is a big fan of trucks in general, and firetrucks in particular, so we went to see them. Here is G next to Engine #7.

We got matching Engine #7 tee shirts while we were there. Here is a picture of us later in the day wearing them. The color match seems much better than this is real life, I don't know what happened in this picture.
One more picture for today. This one is courtesy of G. I'm including it mostly so that someday, when he's a famous photographer, I can say I was the first person to publish one of his photos. (No, I don't have any reason to believe that he is likely to choose a career in photography. But you never know!) Anyway, I think this represents his view of the world whenever we go somewhere in the car.

For some reason I always seem to have G on General Conference weekends. If this continues, it will be a good thing when he's older and able to understand it. Right now, though, it makes it hard to catch the conference live. In fact, I don't even try. But even if it were more convenient, I have to admit I might not be too motivated to try to catch all the conference sessions live. Instead, I just download the sessions from lds.org and burn them to CD's so I can listen to them during my hour-long commute to work. It wasn't too long ago that people living in places like this were lucky to get one session of conference broadcast in their area, with no way to get any of the other sessions until the published report came out. I'm very grateful for the flexibility provided by modern technology.

Book fairs and pictures

This evening I got a text message from G's mother saying that she was at a book fair at the middle school and Curious George was there. So G and I hurried over. I got a picture with my new camera phone:

That's G's older brother D on the left. G may end up in the newspaper - a reporter was there and took a picture of him giving Curious George 5. G got his picture in the paper about 2 years ago at a book fair with Clifford. Here are G's big brothers M and D, actually looking at books. In this case its some sort of an encyclopedia of all things Pokemon, which from what I saw was probably the best seller at this book fair. D bought it.

I got the new camera phone in part because one of G's favorite things to do is look at pictures of his cousins on all the other family blogs, and I thought I ought to post more pictures of him in case some of his cousins like to do that, too. So here are a couple more. First, the Incredible Hulk gets ready for Halloween:

Finally, G and D swinging in the back yard:

As you can see, it's not a particularly good camera, but at least I (almost) always have it with me.

I took the day off from work today in order to fulfill an assignment working in the temple laundry in the morning. Because I needed to get to the temple by 8:00, I couldn't take G to preschool as usual. I told him last night that I wouldn't be taking him, and why, so this morning when his mother was explaining it to him he said, "Yes, I know. I want to go to the temple. Do they have rides there?"

GROTONFEST!

Yesterday G and I walked to our town's annual festival. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera. So no pictures of G in the ambulance or riding a horse. But thanks to the town electric utility I have a picture of G in the bucket of a truck used to lift people up to repair the power lines. This was the place where G probably had the most fun of the day, but also the site of his greatest disappointment. They had a drawing for a toy version of this truck, and G was heart-broken when he didn't win.

Arbeit macht frei

I spent much of Labor Day working, appropriately enough I suppose. Not so much on my paying job yet, although the night is no more than middle-aged and I do need to get some things done for that before tomorrow. Mostly it was yard work, attempting to tame the trees and bushes (not to mention some sort of vine) that are trying to overwhelm the house. G was outside at first as well with his mother, grandma and brothers. They were also working on the yard - among other things, they were planting three small trees, one for each boy. G started getting tired just about the time the preparations for planting the trees were finished, so he didn't really participate much in the planting. Turning the water on and using the hose to get the ground wet was interesting enough to hold his attention for a while, but the closest I could get to having him participate in the actual placing of the tree in the ground was to hold him while I did it. After that he came inside at my place and quickly fell asleep. That put an end to my pruning for a while, so I started cleaning the kitchen instead. While G was sleeping his grandma took his brothers to the movie and his mother went shopping, so I got to hang out with him all afternoon and into the evening. After he woke up I decided to fire up the charcoal grill and barbecue some pork for dinner. I asked G if he wanted to come help, but he was interested in a show on TV so he declined. Then as I was on my way to start the fire he asked me, very seriously, "Dad, is the house going to blow up?" It didn't, and the pork turned out great.

Texas - it's a whole other country

My brother Curtis flew in today from Austin, Texas to attend a conference. I picked him up at the airport, took him and his colleague to their hotel, and then brought my brother home to meet G. This all took a little longer than I'd planned for, partly because the airline lost his luggage. Well, they claim it's just on a later flight, and he might even have it by now. In any case, we had to wait at the baggage claim until it was clear that his bag wasn't coming out, and then he had to wait in line for a while in order to fill out a form. By the time we got home G was already in bed (although it was only 8:30 - why doesn't he ever go to bed that early when he's spending the night with me?) He wasn't asleep, though, so we got him up to come over for a short visit. The first thing he said when he got to the door was "I like your brother, Dad." He also said that Curtis looks like a cowboy, I think because of the hat he was wearing. I should have taken a picture of them together, but I didn't think of it. Anyway, we kept the visit short both because G needed to go back to bed and because Curtis was starving. Curtis and I walked over to the restaurant around the corner and had some excellent sandwiches. Curtis was surprised at how hot the peppers that came on the side were - he expected to find only wimpy peppers in Massachusetts. I let Curtis borrow a shirt in case his luggage doesn't show up before his presentation tomorrow. We took pictures of each other, and then I took him back to his hotel. We're going to try to get together again on Tuesday. Here's a picture - can you tell which guy spent the day in airports and on planes?
Neither can I.

Pictures from Utah

I finally found the cable to download pictures from my camera. Here are some pictures from the Utah trip.
This picture was taken literally within a few minutes of the first time G met any of his cousins. It didn't take him any time at all to decide that cousins are a good thing.

G with cousins Jeremy and Micah are about to be eaten.

Cousins Emily and Maddie are next on the menu.
G out for a ride at Lagoon with cousin Micah.
G and cousin Zane sail the Seven Seas.
G with all the Utah cousins.

I may post some more Utah pictures later.

News only a parent could get excited about

Today G wore underpants to school. About 6:00 P.M., as I was in the middle of an experiment, I got a text message from his mother informing me that he came home still wearing the same underpants, still clean. I commented on it, and my boss asks incredulously, "The preschool sends you announcements about this?"
I'm excited about this news, of course, but not half as excited as his mother is. I suspect this is partly because I really don't mind changing diapers much, but mostly it's because of the expense. And I don't just mean the expense of the diapers themselves - the cost of day care will go down significantly once G is potty trained. She's been trying to get him interested for at least a year now. Anyway, apparently the evening hasn't gone quite so well, but it's still a big day for G (or at least for his mother.)

I had no idea!

Vacation aftermath

G and I just got back from a week in Utah visiting family. It was a long trip for a three-year old, both in terms of time spent on planes and time spent away from his mother, but he handled it all pretty well. It was wonderful to see how well he got along with all his cousins, and I know he had a great time. Hopefully he will still remember everyone two years from now when I plan to take him back. I've got lots of pictures and I'll try to figure out how to post some of them as soon as I find the cable I need to get the pictures off of the camera and into the computer. Thanks to everyone who helped to make it such an enjoyable visit, especially Mom and Dad for putting us up and feeding us all week long.

I think we are both still suffering from jet lag. I was smart enough to take Tuesday and Wednesday off from work this week. We got back late enough on Monday night that it was actually Tuesday morning, so G spent the night with me and we both slept in - G didn't get up until after 10:00 that morning. G also spent much of the day with me since his mother had to work, we went to the park and the library. He went to see his mother just before 3:00 and promptly fell asleep. Today he got up only a little behind schedule, so hopefully tomorrow he will be back on track. Anyway, it's back to the regular grind for me tomorrow.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?

While I was in Utah during the past week all of my blogging relatives urged me to start my own blog. I don't know that I'm likely to be very good at this - I've always had a perhaps too keen appreciation for the permanence of the written word, which makes me a very slow and deliberate writer. The idea that just about anyone might find and read what I write here is only likely to exacerbate my trepidation, even though I know that no one outside my family is ever likely to bother. That kind of feeling is entirely at odds with the spirit of blogging, so I'll try to overcome it.

A word about the title. I think my family will mostly get it, but on the off-chance that someday someone else wanders by and takes the time to read this, I'll explain. My grandfather was famous (within the family) for the often pithy, if almost always nonsensical things he would say in his sleep. Family members began to write down his unconscious utterings for the edification of the rest of the family. Many of these have even been compiled into a book, and I know several of them by heart. One of these somnolent aphorisms is, "People are always wondering what snails pick their teeth with." This, then, is my place to write about snail toothpicks and all the other, equally weighty things I ponder about.