Larry Adams - Bacon and Fromage

Saturday, November 24, 2007

What we're thankful for

Nolan gave the quote of the evening on our way out of George and Jimi Jo's place Thursday night.

Susan: "Nolan, what are you thankful for?"
Nolan: "Everyone in the whole world."

Well put.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Dolphins, Stingrays and Komodo, oh my!


Today I took Caleb and Nolan to the aquarium. It is the day before Thanksgiving; we are staying in town but I took the day off anyway so that their mom could put in some hours on her dissertation. She is getting close to being done even though she won’t say as much. Quite an accomplishment for a woman with a 6 month old and a 3 year old; but Caleb helps by being such a good baby.

The aquarium was a lot of fun. We went straight down to the underwater viewing of the dolphins so that Nolan could eat his sandwich and share a bag of popcorn with me. Caleb were a good sport and played on the ground and watched the dolphins swim by now and then. When he managed to catch sight of one, he was pretty excited about them. We spent some time with the lizards next…Caleb liked the Komodo Dragon but a lot of the time I think he was just looking at the interesting plants and other scenery in the exhibits. We finished up in the rivers exhibit, almost three hours in total.

Getting back to the car was a bit of an ordeal. It was raining and very windy by the lake. I had Caleb in the stroller with a cover strapped around him but it didn’t provide enough coverage. A school bus driver yelled at me that Caleb was getting too wet; I think I was just toughening him up. Nolan was on my shoulders in a lightweight shell. We were all getting pelted with sideways rain and a 35 mph wind. When crossing the road to get to our car, a driver ignored a stop sign and nearly ran us over. I used some choice words that are OK to say in front of a 6 month old, but not an almost 4 year old…hopefully Nolan was too distracted by the wind. By the time we got to the car, both boys were cold, wet, and crying. But they calmed down quickly in the car. This was a good warm up (HA!) to get used to this kind of weather since its going to get a hell of a lot colder yet this winter. On the ride home, both boys fell asleep and I turned the radio off and enjoyed a blissfully silent drive home through the rain on Lake Shore Drive.