Liam's First Swimming Lesson

On July 21st Liam had his first official swim lesson over at the YMCA, and after starting out a little nervous with out his mommy or daddy in the water he did a great job. He is in a kiddy pool so he can actually touch the bottom, which he likes and doesn’t need to where his float suit. I do feel a little bad for him because he got stuck in a group with all girls, but hey nothing like a group of girls at the pool to help find a few prospects.

During the part of the lesson where she was having the kids go under water Liam answered the question wrong and got a little surprise. The teacher asked him if he had been under water before, and he answer yes which was true. What he failed to mention was that he didn’t want to go under water and the next thing he knew after grabbing his nose was being submerged and coming up coughing. After getting over the initial shock and cleaning the water out of his eyes I gave him a thumbs up which seemed to pacify him for the moment.

They played a game where she would get them to jump in the water however none of them would just jump in, instead they all had to take her hands. I do have to say that we need to work on his jumping ability, because all the little girls seems to be able to get a bigger splash then he did. He seemed to do better at the second lesson, especially with going under the water which was good to see, but he still needs work on that jump.


Saturday we got him some goggles and took him over to the Y on Sunday while Mary Ellen worked out. With the goggles he actually decided he wanted to go under water and kept doing it the whole time we were there. After her workout was over Mary got in with us and we worked on his jumping, and now he will actually jump in without taking a hold of our hands. It does look like he is having fun and it is good to see him doing some organized activity with others his age.

Moon Beams

All the way through grade school to college I have always followed the space program, not as much of late but I still keep a keen eye to news coming out of NASA. As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of humans walking on the moon I can’t help to think, what the hell happened? We have been spinning our wheels in space ever since and I just don’t like it.

I know it is hard to justify the big expense especially when we are in hard economic times, but look at the excitement and technological advances we made during that push to the moon. Humans are built for adventure and exploration and something has got in our way. Greed, wars, politics and a general lack of a common purpose has been staring us in the face and we have been so busy listing to our iPods, surfing the Internet or just caught up in our own financial struggles we have ignored the obstacle. I say it is time to break out it is time for us as a human race to find that inner adventurous spirit and do something that is positive.

Let us dream to explore once more. Let us sore to new adventures. Let us do what we need to do in order to advance our race, and put our petty differences aside and strive for a common goal. It could start with space and spread into other areas; environment, religious understanding, peace, who knows but we have to start somewhere and space/science is a good common ground.

Vacation & Father's Day

I was lucky enough to get a whole weeks vacation from June 15th thought the 19th which was badly needed. The best part was taking Liam to King's Island and the Great Wolf Lodge over in Cincinnati, Ohio for the first time. He wouldn’t get on the bumper cars after talking about them for the whole week before, so I got worried at first that this might not have been a good idea. He did get on this helicopter ride with Charles and then he rode the guided cars and had fun on those.



Before he could really see the Fairy Odd coaster (that used to be the Beastie for us older King’s Island people) we got him in line. As we took off he started holding his ears because he thought it was too loud, and then we got to the hill. Liam eyes got big when we started going up, and I though for a moment that he was going to freak out, but then we went down the hill and up the next I looked down and he was smiling while still holding his ears. He then turned to me and said, “Daddy this is awesome”! He then rode it three or four more times that day.

Great Wolf Lodge was pretty cool, we got a room with that had bunk beds set up to look like a little cabin. The indoor water park was really fund as well with lots of slides and a wave pool. We tried taking Liam down some of the slides, but he wasn’t really into it, but after we got back home he told us that he liked it. He defiantly wants to go back to both places epically King’s Island.

Father’s day was a good time because we made Liam wear his Tony Hawk shirt and put product in his hair. This all started at our last barber trip well he keep trying to push my hair down, so I told him if he did it one more time I would make him wear product with his hair up. For all those who don’t know Liam says he hates product and absolutely hates for his hair to be up, he likes it straight down. Needless to say we were able to get a picture before he rubbed it all out of his hair, and he looks really good with it done. We’ll see maybe we can get him to start doing it more, but I doubt it.