Holy Cow! It's been a month since I posted anything on my Garrett's World Blog. The initial thinking behind this blog was to post every day happenings so that family members, back in England, would know how Lisa, Simon, Isabella, and myself are doing. So, either my lack of posts in this blog area are because I am a) bone idle b) am boring and have done nothing exciting of late (not true), or c) have been posting in other areas and keep meaning to come back to posting here. So.. here's me taking a stab at updating this failing area of my site...
FYI, if you're a techie, and posts about my weekend life send you into a deep slumber, then you can access just my software posts directly at
http://robgarrett.com/blogs/software/ the main home page will show all posts. So, on with the weekend...
Simon and I are now attending gym class on Saturday mornings. Since Simon has been enjoying using his bed as a makeshift trampoline of late, and when I lie on the floor in front of the TV Simon sees me as "Mt. Daddy" and begins his ascent, we thought he'd get a kick out of gym. To start with Simon did not enjoy himself at all, in fact, I came out of gym breaking a sweat from carrying his butt around the gym while he complained about it, that is until he found the crash mat. As soon he found out that he could run as fast as he could, jump in the air, and land without hurting himself, Simon became hooked. This Saturday (3rd week I believe) I noticed a marked improvement - no more tears, no more complaints, instead just a stampede towards the crash mat. I even managed to get Simon to crawl through the tunnel and across the balance beam on the gym assault course this week, something he refused a couple of weeks ago.
I happen to mention on Friday that I may pull the tractor out and mow some of the fallen leaves on the property, and the septic field was starting get a little long. Since then Simon wouldn't let it rest - "tractor, Daddy get keys, Daddy, tractor, Dadadddddyyy!!!". So on Saturday afternoon we both went out on the tractor. Simon loved it, especially the part where I let him steer (mind that tree). Apparently, a couple of hours on Saturday weren't enough though, because on Sunday morning Simon asks "Daddy, tractor keys, Daddy mow, Dadddddyyy!" - boy, is he going to love the summer months.
After the ritual Sunday breakfast, and phone calls to the family, all four us decided to take a hike through one of the local parks. I looked for Geocaches on-line, but found none in the park that we wanted to go see. So, instead I started scoping out spots where I could leave my own Geocache. For those of you unfamiliar with Geocaching - it's a treasure hunt like sport using GPS (Global Positioning System), where players look for hidden caches at locations listed on
http://geocaching.com. Up until now, I have only been searching for other people's caches, but now I have a good place to plant my own. During the hike I managed to get some great pictures of Simon and Isabella, including a picture of Simon trying to lift a log twice the size of himself, and of course Bella as Queen Bee in the front of her stroller. Isabella loves nothing better than sitting in the front of our double stroller while Mommy and Daddy take it in turns pushing a combined weight of 50lbs (2 kids) up and down hills on the trails.
Whilst the kids were sleeping Sunday afternoon, I took the opportunity to build one of the two "flat pack" armoires that we'd purchased from Target a few weeks prior. Is it me, or are all construct-it-yourself furniture packs defective? I've put a number of these things together in my time, and I always end up having to work around drill holes that should be present and are not, missing parts, or hiding dings and dents. Has anyone successfully put together prefab furniture without any hitch, and it turns out perfect?
We broke out the video camera at Sunday dinner, wiped off the cobwebs, and filmed Bella and Simon eating. Now you have to understand that we're not sick people who get a kick out of watching our kids eat, it's just that they do and say the funniest things at meal times, so we thought we'd get some of the memories on film. Bella has a passion for food right now, and anything new that comes her way via mouth is an exciting thing. Delivery of food is usually preceded with screeches of delight, the waving of arms, and a huge grin. Simon, on the other hand has moved on from getting excited by the whole food thing, and is instead thrilled by the fact that he can see himself in the viewing LCD of the movie camera as I film him.
Other recent happenings - I just came back from Las Vegas last week (life is hard eh), where I attended a Microsoft conference. I took plenty of pictures whilst I was there, which reminds me that I need to offload some of the pictures and put them on-line. Anyhoo, that's all the news for now, hopefully the next post won't be too far away.