hee b gee b's

why me? why oh why do they always choose me?

i just found this nasty little sucker in the bathroom. well not this exact dude, but his little brother (only by a little). i found this picture online at whatsthatbug.com. i wanted to make sure i wouldn't have to rush someone to the hospital if they got stung or bit or whatever these things do.

i couldn't work up enough courage to step on him, so i just set the garbage can on top of him, made sure he couldn't get out and then i left a posty note on the door warning who ever was going to go in there next either to not move the garbage can or bring a frying pan or something in there with you.

ew! ew! ew! ew! ew! i am soooo creeped out!


oh this is reassuring...

First off, Centipedes are not insects as they have more than 6 legs. That is just the most obvious difference. Your centipede is a Giant Red Headed Centipede, Scolopendra heros. Though your photo shows the classic color variation of this species, there are many other color forms depicted on BugGuide. Like other centipedes, the Giant Red Headed Centipede does have a venomous bite, and the bite is reported to be quite painful. That said, it is not an aggressive species, unless you are small enough to be food. Food can consist of small vertibrates including reptiles, amphibians and rodents. We do not consider this to be a harmful species, but it is a formidible predator that will bite a person who disturbs it. (from http://www.whatsthatbug.com/cent_2.html)

jonah's 1st baseball game :: the round rock express

we went to jonah's 1st baseball game on july 2nd to see the round rock express at the dell diamond. for you illinois folks, it's just like the kane county cougars.

it was pretty sweet because they were having a special deal where they "paid for your gas", so if you brought in this coupon from their website you got $4 off per ticket. which made lawn seats only $2! who could pass that up! so we only paid $4 to get in (jonah was free)...

but then we paid $20 for two hotdogs, a large lemonade and a chicken finger kids meal. does this seem like highway robbery or is it just me?

at least jonah enjoyed his curly fries. and he shared nicely with mommy and dada.

after grabbing some dinner we headed in to find our friends. here's a picture of where we sat. we were in the grassy area behind the blue sign.

and here's the view from our seats

here are the friends we met up with. i originally met kimberly and her boys through my wednesday morning bible study at church. we had a lunch play date earlier in the day, and that's when she told me about the great deal on the tickets. luckily dave was in town, so we decided we'd be spontaneous and take jonah to his first game. hmmm... i wonder what was so interesting on the ground?

here's mason with a mouthful of crackers...

and here's jonah with a mouthful of crackers. hmmm... i'm seeing a theme here.

must have been some good crackers.

oh, here's what mason looks like without a mouthful. cute, huh?

ah... here we are. jonah just needed a good tickle.

jonah was his usual self and didn't really want to sit still much. when we first got there he was really into sitting on the blanket, but once he got a little more accustomed to his surroundings he got the explorer bug. i managed to capture this rare moment where he was sitting down for a water break with one of our free handout water bottles. we must have been one of the first 2,500 through the door. thanks allstate.

on our way out we stopped by the big inflatable slide. here's tucker showing jonah how it's done.

we all waited anxiously, not knowing if jonah would actually make it to the top. luckily the line wasn't too long when he started.
and then we wondered if he'd ever come down.

phew! daddy talked him into it. weeeeeee!

what! we have to go?! nooooooooooo!!! sooooo sad...

despite the sad face at the end there (it was past our bedtime) we really did have a great time at jonah's 1st ballgame! go rr express! choo-choo!

jonah's 2nd haircut

i took jonah over to KAOS (kids are our specialty) in austin yesterday for his 2nd haircut. daddy's out of town so we're surprising him. think he needs a trim much?

jonah got to pick what animal or vehicle he wanted to sit on for his haircut and he chose the brown horsey! and he got to watch the jungle book during his trim. can you tell how much he's concentrating on the movie?

good job holding still, little buddy!

i think he's making a horsey noise here...

very concerned about mowgli

very concerned about the buzzing trimmer. it took him about 2 whole minutes to trust grace to put it on his head. he had to look at it and inspect it carefully. finally grace gave the horsey a buzz so then jonah let her buzz him too. very smart grace! i can tell you've done this before. ;-)

and voila! he's a boy again! grace, you did an awesome job! thanks! and thanks brenda for the recommendation!

jonah's first movie theater movie!

jonah saw his first movie in a theater today. we found out that the regal theaters have a free family film festival all summer long. so i figured this would be a great (and cheap) way to find out how jonah would do going to a movie.

i wish i would have had my camera to capture his wide-eyed wonder as we walked into the theater. they were playing some cartoons before the show started as we were walking in. it was all i could do to get him to follow me to our seats. he just stood there staring at the huge screen.

we saw the rugrats movie. i didn't care for it, but overall the whole theater going experience was a lot of fun. jonah watched pretty much the whole movie either from his very own big boy booster seat or from my lap. he decided he needed to do a little exploring for a few minutes, but he stayed right by me when i asked him to. a good kid that one is. (thanks God!)

i didn't have my mammah-jamma camera with me for this monumental occasion, but luckily my handy dandy new phone has a camera (with picture mail included) so here we are... practically in the dark. the pre-movie house lights were on, but it was still pretty dark, especially for a camera phone.

when we got home jonah had another first...

his first whole banana in the peel! just like a real monkey!

lucas miller at the cedar park library

we went to a kids program at the cedar park library to see lucas miller, the singing zoologist. yes, you heard me right. a singing zoologist. i don't actually know his credentials. he didn't show us his diploma or anything, but he sings and he knows a lot about animals, so there you go.

the show was really great! lucas was the perfect entertainer for small kids. he was wacky and crazy and made the kids do silly hand motions, so pretty much a huge hit in my circle. yeah, that's how we roll.

here he is singing a variation of the wheels on the bus... "the cow on the bus" reggae style.

here he is showing the kids how to be a turtle...

and when you get scared, you hide in your shell!

hide in your shell, jonah!

now be a snake. don't forget to stick out your tongue because you smell with it.

we love you, miss jane! (miss jane does the regular story time during the week. she's the most awesome librarian we know!)

i think our favorite song was called "send them back to brazil (the fire ant song)". did you know that fire ants came over here to texas on a boat from brazil in the 1930's? anyway, the song was fun because we got to pretend the ants were crawling up our pants and biting us... eye chee wah-wah!

lucas has an educational website called funkyskunkies.com and if you sign up for his email list you get a free download of his song stinkle, stinkle, little skunky. it's super cute!

...tell me why you smell so funky?

zilker zephyr train ride with jonah's lil' buddies

choo chooooooo! all aboard!

zilker park in austin, tx has the coolest little train ride: the zilker zephyr. i mean how could it not be cool with a name like that!? i overheard the conductor/man selling the tickets say that they were worried they might go out of business, but the day we were there, there wasn't an open seat on the whole train. so hopefully it'll be around for a while.

the ride is about 25 minutes through the park. about 15 minutes into it jonah decided he was ready to get off and play. i talked him into staying on board until we got back to the station, but for the entire second half he decided he needed to stand and/or pull things out of the diaper bag. fortunately he managed to hang onto that sippy cup of his for the whole trip.

here's a shot of the engine so you can get a feel for the size of this cute little train

after the train ride we found some shade and sat down for a snack (and lots of cold water) with our friends.

don'cha just wanna scoop all four of these little cuties up into one big giant hug!? oh! i could just squish 'em! these are jonah's friends from our mom's group from church.

don't worry. he's ok. sometimes jonah just needs to take a (literally) 1 second break by laying down very very slowly and carefully so as not to bump his head. then he's off! i managed to catch the half a second where he actually stopped moving. oh, and very conveniently he needed to lay down at the beginning of the ramp of the playground. luckily he did not get stampeded by any of the other hooligans.

CAPITAL!!!

we used to have this saying with our friend rachael. here's the evolution...

1) gross!

2) capital "G"-ross (there was a song that went along with it, but i just can't do it justice in print)

3) then it just shortened to "capital"

what's my point, you ask? well we had a VERY unwelcome house guest this morning. thankfully i was not the one to spot it otherwise i'm fairly certain i'd still be shaking and possibly on my way to the hospital for heart-attack related issues.

this sucker was texas sized...

doesn't this just make you want to move here?

from the academy at austin's website:

Austin is the coolest town in America. Austin is home to 7 area universities, including the University of Texas Longhorns. Austin enjoys 300 days of sunshine a year as well as 175 parks, 23 green belts, and 30 miles of hike and bike trails. It is surrounded by many lakes and rivers that offer everything from lounging waterside in a great restaurant to tubing, boating, or water skiing. Austin is an innovative, trendy, exciting city with a young and creative population. You will find many outdoor and indoor music venues, South by Southwest festival, art festivals, plus a great nightlife that creates our casual and playful nature! This is living life “Austin Style.”