“That sign means ‘No Coyotes’,” declares Finn. “And ‘No Fries’!” adds G-Man. 🙂
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Category: Photos
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Farm boys, giant toys
What–if this is even possible–is better than playing with a fleet of toy farm vehicles? How about playing with the real vehicles?
On Sunday Uncle Ted escorted us to visit his friend Tommy Moser’s farm. Our guys were delighted to explore a couple of big tractors (turns out Finn’s an Allis-Chalmers man) plus a truly massive combine. Our visit to the chicken coop yielded a bucket of eggs we’ve been enjoying every day since, and Henry got a little freaked out regarding “mad cows” (as in “angry,” not as in “Bovine spongiform encephalopathy”!).
Here’s a gallery of photos, plus a video showing the egg-grabbing good times:
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18-Wheelin’ with Uncle Ted!
Breaker breaker 1-9, this here’s Rubber Duck and… well, I’ve already exhausted about 90% of my CB/trucker lingo. In any case, we really put the “N” in “TNT” (Ted Nack Trucking) yesterday: the boys & I spent the day on Uncle Ted’s big rig, traveling through Iowa to collect a trailer & then heading on to “The World’s Largest Truck Stop.” Here’s a little gallery of photos. I’ve also boiled our 7-hour adventure down to two minutes:
As a little bonus, here’s how Henry & I passed a few miles on Uncle Ted’s sleeper. I’d apologize for the jiggly camera work, but even this doesn’t capture quite how loud & shaky it is inside a truck!
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Farm toys, delighted boys
Greetings from “Big G”! We arrived in Galena on Saturday after a journey on which the boys did great. (Well, check that: on the plane I pretended to call Grandpa Nack and tell him that the boys hadn’t fussed at all, but Henry interrupted: “I did some fussing!” Not much, though.)
We’ve had a ball so far, meeting baby cousin Jenna, visiting Tommy Moser’s farm (much more on that soon), and especially playing with Uncle Ted’s old farm toys. The lads are in seventh heaven learning about hay balers, manure spreaders, and more. (Parental bonus: I’ve never seen them so self-entertaining! They keep making a beeline to the sun porch–er, “crop area”–and barely note whether we’re there.) Here’s a brief glimpse of the action:
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Fun with Smocks n’ Crocs
Let us hereby turn our basement rec room into a wreck room! 🙂
Margot kitted out the guys with a full assortment of paints, glue, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, and other goodies this past weekend, and they’ve been doing some messy “basementing” ever since. Check out a few portraits of the artists as very young men.
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The ‘Stache is a Smash!
Thanks to our buddy Matthew for supplying some stick-on mayhem! (Henry was napping but got into the spirit later via some forks.)
Know many dentists where your child would be greeted with a family bear hug from the dentist and his wife? Me neither–but I’m happy to know one. 🙂
Yesterday Finn accompanied me to Dr. Vandi’s office for his first official checkup & cleaning. You might remember that the Doc has been a figure of some intrigue for ages: at 18 months Finn liked to pretend to visit Dr. Vandi, and a year ago he got big mileage from playing with dentist’s masks sent by the Vandis. The boys are equally famous around the office, with Mrs. Vandi following their adventures via the blog & Facebook.
Long story short, Finn nailed the visit! He was a champ about getting his teeth X-rayed, biting down as the camera whirled past. He was even a little annoyed with my explanations: “I know it’s an X-ray, Dad-O. It’s like the Curious George story, where George swallowed a puzzle piece…” Finn (and Leo) particularly liked getting a tour of dental implements from hygienist Charles (who, it turns out, hails from a country where real lions live in the forest; hat tip to Ghana!)
Check out our little gallery, plus a couple of clips of our boy in action. Now, here’s hoping Henry stays cool & calm (sans chocolate raisin) during his visit tomorrow!
Another year, another successful candy haul! Swashbuckling Blackbeard & Bob the Builder looked great in their duds, and of course they’re really gotten into craving the sweets. In this little gallery, you can see Henry even (jokingly) trying to eat a candy wrapper!
Following trick-or-treating, and while Margot dispensed candy to 400+ (!) kids, I took the job of winding down our two sugar-addled amigos. After they caught me humming Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” they demanded to hear the real song, after which I hipped them to a video of 1500 Filipino prisoners doing the Thriller dance. I think it’s safe to say they enjoyed it:
(Apparently I went as Scooby Doo for Halloween, given my goofy giggling during this clip. ;-))
Another Halloween has come and gone, so before it’s too far gone, here are a couple of pics of the guys from preschool yesterday. They got to wear their costumes and have a little parade. John and I took them out for trick-or-treating in the evening, and they both absolutely loved it! Finny asked if he could put his costume back on today because it would be Halloween again, and the first words out of Henry’s mouth upon waking this morning were “I want candy!” Uh oh!
“Goonie, I’m a bridge! Walk under me!” Showing admirable judgement for a 2-year-old, the little guy declines. 🙂 (Soon enough he was begging to be lifted up to match his big bro’s moves.)
As Beldar Conehead would say, “We will honor your Halloween ritual by paying homage to the symbolic vegetable orb!” 🙂
We’ve had fun taking the lads to the pumpkin patch with their Pasitos amigos, and then over to Casa de Wiggin for their first pumpkin carving. Check it out!
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Think Pink
Q. What do twelve bucks & an idle Friday night get you at Goodwill?
A. Pinktastic threads!
Today we helped little friend Charlotte celebrate her third birthday at a pink-themed party, so last night we did a quick run to the store and got a few fun accessories. Henry kept disappearing in his lid, and I felt like cutting holes in the top so that he could look through it (a la that kid from Fat Albert ;-)).
Yesterday we took the lads to an apple orchard for some apple picking with a few of our (and their) friends.
We drove over towards Watsonville, and as we arrived, the sun broke through the clouds and set us up for a perfect day. Everyone had a blast. Finny was excitedly counting the apples in his special green apple bag, and at the bottom of the (very steep) hill, there were cute horsey tire swings for the kids to ride, and a shady spot for the parents to rest. Here’s a little gallery of the proceedings.
After our orchard adventure, we drove over to Moss Landing and picnicked on tacos and burritos in a cute little park. The park was next to a terrific little art gallery, where the artist had built all sorts of fantastic play houses for kids, including a submarine turret, caboose, and lighthouse. Needless to say, the kids loved clambering around and acting as lookouts from the top of the sub.
We took a bunch of our small apples to preschool today to share with the class, and we made apple crisp out of some of the bigger apples. Finny and Henry enjoyed sampling the goods as they transferred them into the cooking pot! It was a terrific way to wrap up the weekend.
Update: Here’s a little video from the outing, wherein Finn makes a special beverage suggestion. 😉
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Settling in for some “Mater the Greater”
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Young Men & The Sea
Dad-o and I work pretty hard to come up with new, exciting experiences for the guys. The world’s a big place and there’s lots to see and do, so we’re trying to take advantage of as much of it as we can (and as is age-appropriate)! This past Sunday, we headed north to San Francisco for a boat tour of the SF Bay. They guys were pretty excited about the idea of a boat ride, having read about all kinds of ships in various books, and having seen a ton of them at lake Tahoe last month. Turns our our good friend Reen, a San Francisco resident of many years, had never taken a boat tour of the bay either! So we picked her up on our way to pier, and off we went to embark on our mini-adventure.
We totally lucked out on the weather. It was a gorgeous, sunny day without a cloud in the sky. As we left the pier, we spied the big floppy sea lions sunning themselves on the docks. As we motored past Alcatraz we told the boys that’s where “bad dudes” get sent to jail. “I’m not a bad dude!” exclaimed Henry. The most exciting part of the tour was when we cruised underneath the majestic Golden Gate Bridge – a new perspective on such an impressive landmark! Finny was fascinated by all the small sailboats that were practically tipped completely over in the stiff winds coming off the ocean.
Now, I won’t claim it was a photographically brilliant outing: trying to corral the constantly running G-Man as he swerved across the gently pitching deck, always eager to do a header down some staircase or other, kept Dad-O largely off the camera. Still, here’s a little gallery. Everyone had a ball, and our little sailors can’t wait to do it again! (The strangers in one of the photos were some kids doing a photo scavenger hunt on Fisherman’s Wharf.)
Despite our clear wishes, Finn loves shoving bits of fuzz up his nose–or should I say, he loves having Leo do it. For months now Finn’s claimed to be our ally, advising us, “I keep telling that crazy Looen not to keep shoving stuff up there, but he just really likes to do it!”
Meanwhile Leo has become fast friends with Menace (short for “Bushy-Tailed Menace”), Finn’s little chipmunk from Colorado. Leo drives Finn’s “Massive Crane” while Menace sits in the operator’s cab. As they’re a really professional crew, Finn tells us “They even have little [company] jackets.” (I’ve gotta get to work in Photoshop making those happen!)
Anyway, long ago we used to have big fun passing little objects through a knothole in Finn’s floor, sending them down to the basement & then back up. Finn’s big-guy bed ended up over the hole, so it’s been long forgotten. During a bedtime story the other night, I said that Menace had flown up in the air, gone down a crack, and ended up in a mysterious area: Under the bed! In the story Leo & Finn headed to the rescue and discovered (cue dramatic music) the hole!
“Raarh,” said Leo. “That looks like a great hole for stuffing things into! It’s like a nostril in the floor!!”
And do you think it was “game on”? Because oh yes, it was on. 🙂 Ever since then Finn (or rather, Team Leo) has been enthusiastically driving the crane under the bed, then lowering its hook down into the basement. I came home yesterday to discover that Finn had arranged a step stool to facilitate hooking on cargo, and that now a fuzzy toy chicken was swinging freely around the basement! “Mom-O asked if this was a chicken-swinging factory,” he reports, “and it is!!”
When I went to capture the action on video, I told the guys that Grandma & Grandpa would love to see it. As you can hear in the clip, Henry was sure we’d see G&G on the camera itself, so afterwards we fired up the iPad for some quick video chatting with my folks. What a neat way to show them a little slice of the guys’ lives!
PS–As the story continues, Leo & Menace stuff tons of popcorn down the hole. When they go to the basement to see the resulting “corn cone,” the neighbor cats scratch at the window, then *burst* through and spray corn everywhere. The boys then each grab a gato (Finn taking the fatty, Hen the smaller one), flip them upside down, and sweep with them like feather dusters. They kickstart the cats’ “motors” via their tails, then use them to suck up all the corn. Vrooooom!!
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SprayFace!!
And now may we present The Sheer Joy of a Very Young Boy Blasting Himself in the Face with a Hose. 🙂 Here’s the gallery.
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Wolfman Hen
G-Man tries on some warm-looking headwear at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk yesterday. (We had a blast playing in the sand & sea, but boy it can be unexpectedly chilly over there.)
Oh, Henry: Might you ever get a haircut *without* becoming a hysterical bucking bronco? The little guy keeps flipping out (almost literally) in the barber’s chair: “I don’t like the bee!” (buzzing clippers). Ah well: at least he finally wore himself out yesterday, making his post-chop sucker all the sweeter.
On Saturday the lads & I got down & (very) dirty at Rancho San Antonio, checking out old vehicles (“Not zooming,” notes Henry; “Non-zooming,” corrects Finn), trails, and animals. Having learned where bacon comes from, Finn dubbed a pair of hogs “Makin'” and “Fakin’.”
A wiser, more discreet father would’ve probably edited out the middle section of the clip above; unfortunately you’re stuck with The Nack Daddy & his inner 3-year-old. ;-p