Hayden has devised a new rating system for how he feels about us as parents; by awarding us “awesomes”. I’m still trying to work out the exact mechanism but it seems that at any time we can have somewhere between zero and two awesomes. The happier he is with us the more awesomes we are awarded.

Currently I stand at one awesome with no modifiers. The modifiers seem to come into play when he’s recently become favorable but may still be mad from something earlier. For example last weekend I had one awesome and one thumbs down.

We’ve been a bit negligent with posting here of late, so I understand if I’ve earned a thumbs down or two, hopefully some pictures of what we’ve missed will earn an awesome.

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As of today Brie and I have been together for 10 years (not married, but together)

It’s been a great decade (a decade!), and I have no idea what to expect for the next one, but I’m excited to find out. Personally, I’m hoping we get back to Spain sometime in the next 10 years, so it would be nice if I can expect that.

For everyone else, how about some pictures from the last month?

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The past month is a bit of a blur. One child turning 4, one turning 1. It’s enough to drive a man to drink, which is probably why the past month is a blur. But who needs memories when you’ve got pictures!

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We held Hayden’s first real child oriented birthday party at a park the day before Ike moved through. It was a smashing success. His dearest friends showed and everyone was well behaved and we didn’t have to awkwardly try to get people to leave because it wasn’t at our house.

The next day Ike showed up and took our power lines with him when he left, leaving us in the dark without hot water or refrigeration. We persevered and burned about 10% of the votives we still have left over from our wedding reception 7 years ago (down to less than 2 baskets full now!).

Funny thing about candlelight; after 5 days of not showering it becomes startlingly unromantic.

Hayden and I went on several adventures in pursuit of D batteries and ice. We returned home with harrowing tales of daring, but never anything else. Things were so bad that on day five Hayden (McNugget) begged to cook dinner at home. I’ll let that sink in. Finally after six days and multiple phone calls, the power was restored.

Gabe turned 1 and we more or less ignored it on the party side electing to just give a small handful of gifts in our living room. He didn’t seem to mind. We did keep the time honored tradition of letting him shove a chocolate cupcake in/around his face. Honestly the boy is so pleased to be walking steadily I don’t know what else we could do to improve his demeanor.

As Brie mentioned Hayden started soccer, which means we’re now spending the next 7 Saturday mornings in fold-out chairs watching 4 year old’s be given instructions by other adults. It brings back warm memories of my own childhood, except this time I don’t have to run laps.

So, win-win.

Work is better than previous described, but there’s still miles to go to the finish line.

We have managed a few outings in the past few weeks despite Brie’s new job and the vast time sink of mine, including a trip to my parent’s to celebrate my nephew’s 7th birthday and a trip to our local zoo today.

I realized today that I’m not young anymore as I somehow injured (sprained?) one of my big toes while pushing my children in a stroller up a hill. This is by far the lamest injury I have ever received; and if you know me, that’s saying a lot.

Question of the day from Hayden: Mommy, what’s Urgent Care?

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It’s been a long couple of weeks and late nights at work for us lately, so we took full advantage of the unseasonably reasonable weather this weekend to spend time with our boys. We hit the zoo, played volleyball, ate outside, got ice cream, more or less lived at the park, Gabe got another tooth and climbed some stairs, and we took pictures.

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Here are some of the highlights so far from spring including Gabe’s first trip to the zoo and Hayden’s newfound love of soccer. See if you can notice some themes in Hayden’s wardrobe choices.

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This weekend I turned 29, which was mostly a low-key affair. Presents, cake, Rock Band party, etc…
Brie got me a Scrabble dictionary so I can stop losing online to the ridiculously educated and literate people who keep kicking my ass.

It turns out we don’t have any regular cake candles that aren’t the number 3 so I lit a scented candle in the general vicinity of the cake and made my wish on that.

We also managed to hit up a local kite festival. The weather was gorgeous and we saw choreographed kite performances, which looked a lot cooler than they sound.

I didn’t particularly notice anything about turning 29 until Brie asked me if I was freaking out about it yet. Why should I freak out? Then it dawned on me, I’ve only got one more year until I’m 30…

(no offense 30 year olds!)

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