Harrison & Esme

This was last summer in Michigan. Mom was mentioning it so I looked through our videos from the vacation and found Harrison's first couple's dance. Esme was an adorable and precocious little girl that pulled Harrison out to the dance floor during the brass band performance in Pentwater. I think Harrison was basically in shock during the entire routine, as the video shows.

Parade Day in Nashville

Horses, fire trucks, diggers, oh my. Nana and Pop had the parade route scouted so we had a whole corner to ourselves (and the dreary weather probably helped keep the crowds down). Harrison was bombarded with gum, lollipops and other treats because there was nobody else around us to throw it at. Great fun, and a few nice photos of a little boy having a great time at a parade.

I forget what justified the city putting on a parade, but it wasn't "Lincoln Day" as the above title previously stated. We'll just call it parade day.

Mother's Day again

Part of Mother's Day was 1) taking the boys out to see Nana, which was two birds/one stone because 2) it let Danza have some time alone at the house to do Danza things, like rearrange pictures, work on Henry's room, and finish turning the sunroom into a killer playroom. So happy Mother's Day to Doozer, Nana and all the other great mom's in the extended family. I'd name you all, but I've had two beers and what if I forgot someone? I'll play it safe.

I'm going to do my best to keep up with the blog because I know Nana is going to be lonely and missing the fam as she passes the time up in Michigan during the long summer months.

Oh, and Dad/Pop took over the camera and gets credit for some of these shots.

brotherly love

Danza took these photos when Harrison was helping out with Henry and feeling especially loving, and also when the light was right. They turned out quite nice. And I think Harrison is fond of little h, and we know little h is fond of his big bro.

diggerman

Today was perhaps one of Harrison's best days. Right up there with his first trip to the zoo, the day we went to the children's museum in Indy, his first day on the beach in Michigan last summer, and hopefully the day he first met his little brother Henry. There are other great days that I'm forgetting so please do not be offended if I've forgotten your event.

Today was diggerman day.

Harrison is fascinated by all machinery things. But especially big diggers, bulldozers, dump trucks and excavators. Next, we've had a stinky sewer smell in the basement that comes and goes depending on weather, wind and other unknown factors. It's been there since we bought the house. So last week I hired a plumberman who ran a pipe camera down the sewer line and found what looked like a crack or missing coupler...8 feet from the corner that the stinky smell emanates from. We also had a sewer cleanout/old toilet pipe in the corner of our finished basement...not good.

So then I hired a digger and a diggerman to come and dig up the sewer pipe and fix it. Diggerman showed up today and boy was Harrison excited. Diggerman Steve was a really nice guy.

Diggerman Steve's job was to dig 8 or 9 feet down to our sewer pipe, locate the break, fix the sewer pipe, put a new sewer cleanout in the yard, dig new trenches to extend our gutter pipes, build new gutter pipes and extend them 15 feet further from the house, fill in the trenches, and remove and concrete over the the sewer pipe and hole in the concrete basement floor.

Harrison came home from daycare and saw the digger + diggerman in the yard and completely freaked out and we rushed him over to watch. Mostly Harrison just sat in his camp chair in the yard and watched the dirt get moved around but he also asked Steve and his helper son Scott a lot of questions about dirt and holes and diggers and shovels. He loved it.

Best part, Harrison got to drive the digger and is now officially a diggerman. I have never operated a digger, but my oldest now has. He sat on diggerman Steve's lap and got to drive and spin around, and he actually got to operate the joystick for the bucket arm and dig part of the hole. Definitely one of his best days. Ask him about it. He will tell you all about 'holes, big digger, pipes, shovel, trenches, dirt, pipes, diggers, mud, big holes, diggerman, big big big dirt pile' in that order. And then he'll tell you about 'big big holes' and 'diggers' again.

The sewer pipe with crack shown. Yes, that is probably sewer water from our house.



The new cleanout pipe temporarily sticking obnoxiously out of our yard.

Harrison starting to dig the trench for the new extended gutter pipe.

Diggerman Harrison dumping some dirt.

Date night with Frog & Toad

So Nana and Pop offered Harrison a night out on the town including tickets to see A Year with Frog and Toad at a small theater in Bloomington. Harrison could not have been more excited...and he had done his homework by reading his Frog and Toad book repeatedly (thanks Nana!) during the past week.

So last night we started off the evening with dinner at an Italian restaurant, then we headed downtown. We parked in the 4th Street parking garage which Harrison thought was awesome...he really likes parking garages...and we got to the show at 6:30. A full half hour early meant that we got front row seats.

I had no expectations about the show, and it ended up being wonderful. The pole-position seats meant that Harrison was right up in the falling snow and blowing leaves as the seasons changed on stage. Then at intermission I took him up to talk to the drummer in the band, who handed big H a drum stick and let him hit the cymbals and snare. Harrison thought it was beyond cool.

After each scene he kept saying 'MORE!'.

We then stopped for i-sceem on the way home.
We then went to check out some nearby diggers and other machinery...another of Harrison's favorite. By this time it was 9:30 and a full 2 hours past his bedtime (perhaps well past Pop's bedtime as well) and he was starting to unravel a bit (Harrison, not Pop).


Nana and Pop - Harrison says 'tank yew' for a wonderful evening.

Mother's Day / Maxwell's Birthday

Emily and Justin hosted a cookout for Max's birthday and Mother's Day. It was great fun and their deck with the new Ikea wood furniture set worked splendidly. Max received a soccer ball, golf set, and bike helmet among other things. Followed by ice cream cones for all.





Max apparently got into it with a shrubbery over the weekend and was left with some battle scars.

The picnic table from Don worked great on the deck. Can't wait to put ours to use once the patio gets installed this summer.


Harrison fell in love with watermelon yesterday.