My brother is married!

My sibs and I have not been in the same place, at the same time in a looooong time. 

Grandma says we need to get together again sooner. 

I agree. 

We got our boys are gussied up, but I think Joe was the only one who liked the fancy clothes. 

Rae thought they were itchy, and could only be appeased with lots of electronics. 

Caleb had to be woken up from his nap, and so was less than impressed. 

This picture makes me giggle. 

Tish and I went to get our hair done. It was nice spending time with her. 

And here's my crew: 

Grandpa loved talking to the boys. 

And I dared Jim to order a virgin Sex on the Beach. He did, and it was pretty good. 

Grandpa gave Joe his flower, and Joe loved it. 

I feel bad, but I don't have any pictures of Cassie! Ah! 

We're happy to have her in our family and excited for the two of them to start their life together! 

Congratulations, Will and Cassie! 

Guest Post by Jim!

Guest post today by Jim! Jim told me about his day, I laughed and told him he should write a blog post about it. I got to go to church solo (and listen!) and teach. It was awesome. Anyway, back to Jim's day...

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Today, all of our boys were had runny noses, scratchy throats, and mild temperatures, so they didn't go to church. After enough time trashing the house and obviously having nothing to do with their extra energy, I took them to the park.

Yeah, the park instead of church. Because they're sick.

Anyway, I think most people take their kids to the park for the playground. Ours get bored of the playground equipment very quickly and start running off to do other things. Today, we walked right past the playground and kept going to the racquetball court. It has a wall for them to throw tennis balls at and then chase down. It's pretty cool.

It took a while to get them all in the same picture.

After we played there for a while, we went and got some water, then played at the playground until Rae made friends with someone who had a bike. They raced up and down the sidewalk a few times, and then Rae convinced the boy to let him ride the bike, without much in the way of experience or shoes. It did have training wheels, and I did get him to wear the helmet that was swinging on the handlebars. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of that. You'll be glad to know that Rae did not injure himself riding down the hill, though.

Calebinius the Dog Whisperer practicing his arts

More water, running in circles, and petting random dogs that happened to be in the area, all the boys went back to the racquetball court. Rae's new friend Reuben went with them, and playing ball meant that Reuben would throw all three of the tennis balls, and my boys would go chase them down and bring them back to Reuben.

After a setback or two. You see, by this point Rae and Caleb had both taken off their shoes. (Not Joe. Good for him.) Caleb ran about six feet onto the racquetball court, then stopped and wailed, "Daaaad!"

"What is it, Caleb?"

"Feeeeet!" I was halfway to where he was by that point, and could see him trying to stand on his heels and keep all the rest of his feet up off the ground.

"Is the ground really hot?"

"Yes."

I picked him up and explained to him that we wear shoes to protect our feet. After splashing water on the soles of his feet, we put his shoes on his feet and he ran back to the game like nothing had happened.

Rae, of course, was still barefoot, and the pavement was still hot. He just stuck to the ledge on one side of the court and the twelve inches of shade on another. After a few minutes of watching and laughing, I suggested he put his shoes on, too.

"Oh, yeah..."

Because I'm short on pictures for this post, here's the younger two getting some water. They don't want any help at all using the water fountain, thank you very much. Rae gets his water this way, too.

Caleb came home soaked. That was half the fun, I'm sure.

We came home and had some water and cookies, and then Joe put himself to bed. Caleb No-More-Naps also went down pretty easy, and is in fact still asleep as I type this. I guess that was a good trip to the park.

Bean bag chairs for the win.

That, or they're still sick...

Chattanooga

When we went out to Atlanta, my Dad was super excited to take us to one of his favorite places:

Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

We rode the Incline Railroad, walked around Lookout Mountain, 

and ate genuine Tennessee BBQ. 

The railcar is made at a 18 degree angle. If I hadn't been worried about tripping and killing myself, I would have taken a picture of the wonky stairs walking into it. It's trippy, and trippy. 

When you sit down (at the bottom of the mountain) your seat is like a lounge chair because you are leaning back and extra 18 degrees. The stairs in the car are shallow and wide, but again, 18 degrees off of normal stairs. My kids were in heaven. They raced down the stairs and plastered their noses on the window looking out. 

The Incline Railroad is billed as the "steepest"  incline in the world. In the winter, when the roads at the top of the mountain are impassable, but the schools are still open, the Incline Railroad works like a school bus, taking kids down the mountain to school. Some people really do still use it to commute. It's also been used to transport medicine and mail. 

When you are riding on it, you pass houses on either side, 

and the locals pleasantly wave at you. 

While we were waiting to go back down the Incline Railroad, Joe desperately wanted to plaster his face against the plate glass door which showed the giant, red wheels and cables used to pull the railcar up the mountain. But, there was a gate, and Mom said no. So he threw Dog over the gate and looked right at me as if to say, "Well, you won't let me go over there, but surely you would let me get my dog back!" No such luck, Joe. I retrieved Dog and everyone stayed on the right side of the gate. 

The boys loved Aunt Tish, with good reason. 

She helped us corral them (bless her!) 

and helped them squish pennies into flat souvenir pennies.  

Ode to joy. 

When we got back to the base of the mountain, I tried to get a picture of how high up the railcar had taken us, but it doesn't really stand out in these two pictures. If you look at the top of the tree line in the middle, you will see a square-ish tree. It's not a tree, it is the visitor's center and the white speck below it is a railcar making it's way up the mountain. It's is slightly to the right of my sister.  

You don't see the white speck railcar in this picture, and the Visitor's Center is in between Tish and Dad in this picture. 

After the Incline, we had some really awesome Tennessee BBQ. There were half a dozen different BBQ sauces on the table, we had fun experimenting with them. 

The wait staff even brought hot damp towels to help us wipe up after eating. 

That's how you know it's good. 

On the side of the restaurant there were a few goats. You know, just right off the highway exit. 

When we headed back south, a section of the northbound lanes of the same highway collapsed. Apparently, someone had set fire to construction materials that had been stored underneath the highway overpass. Forty-five minutes of intense heat later, it fell.

 We lead the exciting life. 

(That's watching tv at the hotel. Can you say jet-lag???)

Calebinius the Dog Whisperer

Caleb can find a friendly canine anywhere. 

He loves dogs. 

We've taught Rae to ask permission before touching a dog, but with Caleb we have to beat him to it and hurry and ask the owner before he gets there. The black dog here played fetch with Caleb for a long while. Caleb was sad to leave. The dog might've been, too. 

One day, he met five dogs in half an hour at the park. He was busy. 

We saw Caleb walking away from the playground and Jim ran to catch him (it was a huge playground and there was a Persian festival going on, so lots and lots of people, dogs, and children were around), only to find him petting another friendly, shaggy pooch, almost as big as him. 

That's my baby! The dog whisperer.  

And, no, I am not getting a dog for a long time. 

I have boys.