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.

Thomas and Friends

Ummm, blarg.....use pictures tell story....share on internets with computers.........fingers type words....{think positive Matt....you can do this}....

It's been so long I almost forgot how to blog, actually I did forget how to blog. So here is our adventure to see Thomas and Friends at the IU Auditorium. We called it a 'date night' for Harrison and he really hooked into that concept. He wants more dates with mom and dad. "no Henry. Mom, Dad, Heesison DEET."

Warming up before the show.


Song, dance, trains, smoke, adventure!

That Thomas is a Really Useful Engine.

Selfie in the seats.


Date night always ends with i-sceem at Jiffy Treat. Look at the excitement!