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Aiden Loved “Thomas The Tank Engine Live!”
Aiden has been a big fan of Thomas The Tank Engine since his second birthday. We have lots of episodes on DVD for him to watch and we’ll often build train sets together in the living room. When we found out that “Thomas & Friends Live!” was coming to the Sears Centre Arena, we purchased tickets in advance. Aiden had never been to a live show before, so we weren’t certain what to expect from him. It was a long drive to Hoffman Estates, but Aiden was very good the whole way. We ran into some traffic on I90,...
read moreFamily Walks, Dairy Queen and Free Comic Book Day
It was a very nice day outside yesterday, so we decided to take the boys for a walk. We packed them into the double stroller and headed towards the park. We got to the other side of our neighborhood when we figured that we were very close to the local Dairy Queen. So, we extended our walk a little to include an ice cream run. It was almost dinner time by then, but the Dairy Queen by us only serves hotdogs. I remember back when they had a grill and served hamburgers and chicken with fries. No fries anymore, either, just chips. ...
read moreAiden Is Dealing Well With Severe Childhood Apraxia
We noticed that Aiden was not speaking well after his first birthday. We contacted First Steps for speech therapy when he was eighteen months old. It was then brought to our attention that he may have childhood apraxia. Shortly after his second birthday, we enrolled him at the Ludden Speech Clinic at St. Xavier University. The additional therapy paid off: Aiden has since tripled the number of words used. However, he will no longer be eligible for speech therapy through First Steps after his third birthday. Aiden can start pre-school...
read moreZOOM Teeth Whitening Is Not As Much Fun As It Looks
The last time that I went to the dentist, they asked me to draw from a raffle. I pulled out a folded piece of paper from a small box. Unfolding it, I read out loud, “I got zoom”. They were very excited. I wasn’t sure why. It turns out that Zoom is their professional teeth whitening service, and I had just won a free treatment. Chrissy and I had tried Crest teeth whitening strips at home before, but it didn’t work for either of us. Her teeth got really sensitive, and I just wasn’t all that interested. ...
read moreMichael And Chrissy Are Now On Facebook
I might be the most tragically unhip person on Earth. I just don’t jump on the bandwagon with everyone else. I dig the social media, however. I love Twitter and I make Flickr updates almost daily. But it took me a while to warm up to the idea of starting a Facebook account. Too trendy, not very useful, not my thing. So I blame Chrissy for our new Facebook addiction. I thought that I was bad about checking my Twitter updates, but Chrissy has checked her new Facebook eighty-seven times today. She does it on the iPhone while...
read moreWe Had Our Annual Easter Egg Hunt Outside This Year
For the last several years, Chrissy and I have invited my family over to our house for Easter. My mom’s side of the family is growing pretty steadily. For a while there, it seemed like we were having babies every six months or so (Gavin being the last so far). We have plenty of room, so having everyone over for the Easter gathering works out pretty well. It was dry and relatively nice outside, so we decided to have the Easter Egg Hunt outdoors this year. We packed a lot of plastic eggs with candy and goodies, so I hid them all...
read moreTrying To Find The Best FREE Twitter Client For My iPhone
I use Twitter a lot. So, when Chrissy and I got iPhones, one of the first applications that I downloaded was a Twitter client. There are quite a few out there, even though most of them only give the “crippleware” versions for free. I started out with the free version of Twittelator, but it wasn’t satisfying me. I then tried some other free client applications, like Twitterific and Twinkle. Twinkle is not a dedicated Twitter client, but its claim to fame was that it shows local tweets only. It’s an intriguing...
read moreAiden and Gavin’s Easter Holiday Photo Shoot
Chrissy took the boys to the photographer again today for their Easter photos. This was a continuation of last week’s appointment, where Gavin cried the entire time. It was just as well that the last session ended early, since Gavin was in a much better mood today. Luckily, the photographer saved last week’s photos and included them in the total package. The main theme today was Easter, complete with Springtime backdrops and plastic Easter eggs. We also got some cute non-holiday shots of the boys though. I’ll have...
read moreThe Lethargic Easter Bunny
We took the kids to the local high school for an Easter Breakfast last weekend. Every year, the high school hosts an event for the kids in the town and various costumed characters show up. This year, in addition to the Easter Bunny, we saw Spiderman, Spongebob Squarepants, the Railcats mascot, Zesty the Lemon, Barbie and Barney the Dinosaur. Breakfast consisted of donuts, some fruit and raisins, and a cartoon of milk. Nothing fancy, but Aiden was more interested in the characters roaming the room. We could not drag him away from...
read moreRevenge Of The April Fool’s Day Hoax
The internet April Fool’s Day joke has become something of an institution. Every year, internet sites put on some interesting hoaxes. Some of them managed to anger some people, but most of them were very entertaining. Here are some of my favorites from this year. Last year, YouTube purposefully RickRolled its own users. The practice has become as passé as it is annoying, however, so this year YouTube chose to make some pages upside down. I joined in the fun a bit and reversed our video of Aiden playing “laser...
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