Just a quick post this morning as I just wanted to upload a few pictures from Mom and the kids’ trip to the Botanical Gardens in Norfolk yesterday. Unfortunately I had to work and missed the trip but we’re planning another trip for my day off next weekend. We’re going to make a picnic out of it and we’ll make sure the kids wear their bathing suits so they can have even more fun in the fountains. That’s all for now. Check out the photo album here.
I know it’s been a while since posting, but I just uploaded three photo albums tonight covering the last three weeks or so. The latest news is that Maggie Belle is almost walking. She’ll take a few steps if she can hold onto one of our hands, but then she gets tired and plops down to crawl again. We did get her a doll stroller that mainly serves as a walking trainer and she’s been enjoying that. She was so proud this first day of walking behind her little stroller. She hasn’t really figured out which is the front and which is the back, but she’s using it nonetheless.
The next photo album is of our trip last weekend to the County Fair in Franklin, VA. It was pouring rain for most of the drive and for the first hour or so there, but it let up some and Little and I got to go on a few of the rides. I guess “few” being key here as there were only a few rides there. I hadn’t been to this county fair in almost 15 years and somehow I remembered it being much bigger. But we did get to see some blue-ribbon chickens, ducks, rabbits, cows and pigs. And not to mention a humongous watermelon. And while we weren’t quite in the mood for funnel cakes, we did have some deep fried mini donuts.
And the last photo album in this post is of Maggie Belle doing what she loves doing more than anything– eating. This should be a nice way to document how much she’s growing if I can post a few chronological pictures every now and then of her sitting in the high chair. A couple of these are from April, and the rest August. I’ll try to post to this album with a little more regularity going forward.
That’s all for now. As usual, you can check out my store’s best selling toys here.
So, I’m 38 years old today and another great year of my life has passed. I just realized that I’m exactly half way to the average life expectancy of American men. I only feel like I’m about a third done, but for that to be true I’ll have to live to be 124. Probably not very likely. But I’ll give it a shot.
Anyway, nothing too new to report. Maggie Belle is getting pretty mobile with her crawling and Little Matt is doing well with walking. Of course, he’s almost six so he should be pretty good by now. Here are a few pictures from last weekend’s trip to Sandy Bottom Park here in Hampton and of me and Little with my birthday cake last night. And I’ve still got to plug my store selling science kits and educational toys. Check it out here…
Today was a nice, uneventful Sunday here in Virginia. Instead of Little and I making our regular trek to McDonald’s for pancakes, we made our own breakfast with the cool as-seen-on-TV Pancake Puff Pan that I picked up yesterday. If you’ve never seen the infomercial, it’s a cast iron pan with seven round holes in which you put pancake batter. How it’s different from a muffin pan is that it’s made from a heavy iron (in which you use it directly on the stove top) and the holes are truly hemispherical, as opposed to the flat bottoms of muffin pans.
The first batch turned out fine. We made plain ones first and ate them with syrup. They had a standard pancake taste except they were like little balls. We put hot dog chunks in the second batch but we let the pan get too hot so they were a little burnt. That was okay, we ate them anyway. We made a third batch of plain since we had batter left over. We were both full so we gave a couple of these to the dog. He enjoyed them. My overall review of the new Pancake Puff pan: it’s kind of neat, but not nearly as easy as the infomercial makes it look.
After our Pancake Puff breakfast, we drove out to Buckroe Beach for a couple hours of fun time. Nothing too exciting, but you can see the pictures here. Little and I went to Target and Sonic afterwards to give mom a bit of rest time. We picked up presents for everybody! Little got a Lego Bionicle. Mom got a “Goonies” DVD for next week’s family movie night. I got a bargain bin video game (American Conquest), and Maggie Belle got a 92 pack box of diapers. The diapers were our whole reason for going to the store– the others were impulse items. That’s all for today. And as always, if you’re looking for some best selling toys, check out our store: Atomic Elephant Toy.
Today was a nice lazy Sunday here in Virginia. Little Matt and I walked to McDonald’s in the rain for our Sunday morning pancake breakfast. We stopped by Bender’s (our local comic book store) on the walk home and then the whole family drove up to the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News. Little had a mini-fit as he wanted to go to Toys-R-Us instead of some educational museum place but he forgot all about the toys after about two minutes in the museum. Check out the pictures here.
They had a really cool dinosaur exhibit with a Tyrannosaurus Rex, another large sauropod (it wasn’t a brachiosaurus but something similar) and a couple of other theropods. The museum was a really interesting place. Their regular exhibits had all the wildlife indigenous to Virginia including: fish, frogs, snakes, rats and the various river and sea life found in the Chesapeake Bay and James River. And they had a raised wooden walkway that led through several acres with exhibits of wolves, foxes, raccoons, opossums, turkeys, deer, vultures and eagles. It was a very nice setup. If you live in the area and are reading this, it’s well worth the trip.
I also posted some pictures from around the 4th of July here. I had to work all day so we didn’t do anything too exciting like watching a big fireworks show but Little and I watched a few from our balcony off the third floor. And don’t forget, if you’re looking for a list of some best selling toys, check out some of our store’s top sellers here.
A few things have happened since I last posted so I should write a few words to update our baby’s progress. Maggie Belle has a new tooth. She still has her original bottom two and now four on top. I don’t think she’s going to need dental floss any time soon as you can still see a good bit of gums between the top ones. But it seems like she’s enjoying the six teeth she does have.
She also started crawling this week. She’s still not too mobile but she can make her way across the living room floor in a few short minutes. And we think she’s going to be walking any week now. She also discovered a few new sounds this week. She likes to click with her tongue and make hissing sounds. I guess only a parent would think that’s cute. I’m sure the people around us in the movie theater tonight didn’t think it was too cute.
That’s it for now. I also posted some pictures from our trip to Georgia a couple months ago. You can see the photo album here. Oh yeah, anybody who’s reading this who doesn’t know about our educational toy store that sells science toys, please check it out.
I just posted a few pictures Lisa took this week. You can see them here. Little Maggie Belle is almost 9 months old. She still isn’t really crawling yet but she is learning to stand and we think she’ll be walking fairly soon. Nothing much new to report but she did get another tooth this week. The two on bottom came in pretty straight. The first two on top had a David Letterman half inch gap between them, and now she’s got a third one on top.
As far as her verbal skills are coming, well, she is having a hard time enunciating some of the tougher words. She’s getting really good at saying “hmmmmmm” and “baaaaaaaaa.” Only knowing these two words however, hasn’t deterred her from talking all the time. We think she’s going to talk as much as her brother. I guess that means we’re not going to get much peace and quiet around here for the next sixteen or so years. Until she goes off to college (or a good trade school.)
Wow, I didn’t realize it has been a month since I last posted anything on here. I think Maggie Belle can sense that I’ve gotten lazy on her site and she’s showing her displeasure here. A quick recap of the last month… The first weekend in May we drove down to Georgia for a quick weekend visit with Lisa’s sister and my mom, dad and sister. I remember taking a lot of pictures, but I think we were using everyone else’s cameras and we’ve got no photographic evidence of our visit. Oh well, it was still a nice visit- albeit a very short one.
The next weekend back in Virginia we spent a couple of hours at the boardwalk in Virginia Beach. We’ve got a few pictures of that trip here. The following weekend, we spent a couple of hours at our beach here in Hampton. More pictures here. And also, Little Matt and I concluded our Great Tadpole Experiment today and released our frogs back into the lake where we caught them back in April.
Here’s our girl with her favorite Devo hat on. I think I need more pictures of her in this hat.
Nothing major to report this weekend. I worked Saturday and I think Lisa did laundry. Anytime I ask Little Matt what his mom is doing, he says she’s probably doing laundry. It was beautiful weather Saturday so we drove out to Bluebird Gap Farm to feed the ducks and pet the goats. And of course play a little bit on the playground. We did take a lot of pictures and you can see them here. I love this one of Mom and Little in front of the white peacock.
Sunday wasn’t as exciting as a trip to the local farm. Little and I caught a few more tadpoles in the morning then spent the rest of the day cutting up a huge tree that had fallen into our backyard. I think that’s going to be our Sunday afternoon project for the next few weekends. Oh joy.
Well I missed a week for posting so I’ll try to write a couple tonight. My dad drove up from Tennessee last weekend to meet his new granddaughter and spend some quality time with the family. It was a mostly uneventful few days but we had a great time visiting. We cooked out a couple of nights which is always great. On Saturday, Little Matt, Granddad and I cruised the ocean front at Virginia Beach while the girls did girly stuff. We met for lunch and came back for a quiet evening at home.
On Sunday morning I got to take my dad on my and Little Matt’s regular Sunday morning routine… we went tadpole hunting in the rain and then had fast food for lunch! We caught four tadpoles and came back and set up the aquarium. When the rain stopped later in the afternoon, we went out to Buckroe Beach to walk around a bit and see the sights. On Monday my dad drove up to DC to visit the Viet Nam Memorial Wall and we had another uneventful evening at home.
Overall it was a great visit and I’m glad my dad got to meet Maggie Belle and spend some quality time with me and Little Matt. Hopefully we’ll get to drive down to Georgia and Tennessee to visit soon.
See the photo album for Granddad’s Visit and Tadpole Hunting here.