In Search of Myself

Birthday party, May 31st

Yeah, so it takes me a while sometimes.  But mostly 'cause my camera's battery died after my 2nd picture at the party, so I had to wait until I was able to get together with birthday girl's mom and get the pics.  :)

anwyay.

Priscilla and the girls and Jake and I went to a birthday party for one of Jake's classmates.  It was HOT that day, but we had fun.

Yes, that is UT carpet you see on the floor behind him.  *blink blink*

Jake REALLY likes playing with water balloons!!!

He also loves jumping on a trampoline and dragging his friends around in a wagon.  :)

Counting by 6's

On the drive home from his first day at a Montessori summer day-camp thing (he did SO good!  yay Jake!) we got to talking about numbers.  I would tell him which exit we were passing, and then ask him how many miles it was to our exit -- a number that he knows well.  He was able to do the math pretty well and figure it out.  Then he asks: "Mom, can you count by 6's?"

Uhhh.

So I started.  I got to 60 and stopped a bit.  He wanted me to go on.

I got to 120.  I told him I was DONE.  It's hard to fight rush hour traffic and do math in your head.  Ok, just hard for me.

So then we were figuring out what 56 plus 10 was.  Then we kept adding 10 and adding 10.  And can you believe that when we got to 96, he knew that 106 came next?  Where did this kid get his brain?!!!  (Hint: not me.)

In the garden

Mom and I are sitting here talking, and she said that the other day she was letting Jake pick tomatoes from the garden.

She says he came inside carrying ONE tomato and said "Nana, make me some marinara sauce!"

Zoo funny

While we were at the ring-tailed lemur exhibit (the one that last time, upon walking up to the exhibit, Jake said "Look! Ring-tailed lemurs!" and I said "Whaaaaa?" -- amazing what Zaboomafoom can teach a kid), I asked Jake where lemurs live. He said "Mad-a-ca-gar." He was TRYING to say Madagascar, which was correct.

At another exhibit, our friend Amy asked Jake where those animals live.  It might have been meerkats.  He looked at her like she was stupid, and said "In the wild."  Duh.  LOL.

Best of both worlds breakfast

For the grown-up in me: Starbucks Caramel frapp.

For the child of the 80s: strawberry pop-tarts.

Yummy.

What did YOU do today?

. . . 'cause here's what we were doing:

There's also a pretty hilarious picture (which I won't be sharing) of me and Jake on some swings.  (See?  Fat people can still have fun.)

So if you haven't guessed the location, this is the Nashville Zoo.  One of the people in my deacon group (which is mostly my "Young Adult" Sunday School class plus some others) planned for us all to go to the zoo after church for our 4th Sunday activity, but everyone else was busy.  So it was me, Jake, and Amy.  But we had fun!

(And this was after an 8:30 a.m. Cracker Barrell breakfast with 3 great-aunts and a great-uncle on my mom's side, 'cause they were passing through on their way to Florida, then driving all the way into town [Nashville] for church -- during which I basically wrestled with and yelled in a whisper at Jake.)

I am going to take a nap now.

More math

(completely out of the blue)

Mom, is 3 four times 13?

No, buddy, it's 12.

Awww, man!  I counted wrong!

But you were really close.

I WAS really close!

P.S. Lou and I had a talk about the million times a million question the other day, and we think that possibly it's a trillion.  Any math geniuses out there who can confirm this?

Random questions

Jake: mom, what's 1,000 times 1,000?

me: (counting zeros on fingers) umm . . . a million?

Jake: what's a million times a million?

me: uh . . .  I have no idea.

Monkeys

So I answer my cell phone just now and hear:

Hey mama.

What's up?

There's 133 kinds of monkeys in the world.

There are?

Yeah.

Did you learn that on TV?

Yeah.

(silence)

(my mom picks up the phone)

Your son just came into the kitchen and said he had to call you and tell you about the 133 kinds of monkeys.

nice.

oh, and pick me up some Diet Coke on the way home.

gotcha.

Picture catch-up

These are a bunch of pictures from my mom's computer that I finally got.  :)

How cool is Jake's new pool?!  I haven't tried it yet, but even *I* will fit in there!!!

I call these my "don't mind me, I'm a giant" photos.

Good pic of the 3 of us at Jake's graduation.

Jake and Zoe eating lunch in the little picnic table part of the new swing set.

Jake and Zoe at the playset at our house.  Gotta love how happy they look!