Chase Catches His First Fish

We went camping two weeks ago to WI. We met my mom and nieces at Governor Dodge State Park. It is a 4 1/2 hour drive from Des Moines. We had a beautiful Indian Summer weekend.

Sunday morning we had breakfast and then headed to the lake for some fishing. This is only the second time Chase has had an opportunity to fish. On Saturday we saw a guy fishing and he was catching them left and right. We found our spot and I baited Chase's hook. We told him to spit on the worm for good luck. Well, it was good luck for the fish. The fish were biting, but somehow missing the hook. We fed them at least 12 worms!

We had been there almost an hour. Madilyn and tried a few times and Anthony held the pole a couple of times. We told Chase to cast a few more times and then we would call it quits. He said this would be the last time. He casted it out and my mom was helping him. I was taping Tony and the girls talking. All of sudden I hear my mom say, "Chase you have a fish on the line, reel it in!" I believe I got it on film. I haven't used up the disc yet, so we haven't been able to look at it yet. Chase caught a Bluegill.

He was so excited. He wanted to keep it and fry it up. Mom and I told him we should let him go back to his family. Chase said he already had enough time with his family. Chase hooked the fish really well. It went through the mouth and up to the side of his eye. It took my mom awhile, but she got the hook out and the fish swam away. Chase was very proud of his fist catch.

Go, Diego, Go

Yesterday morning I received an email from the civic center. They were offering discounted tickets to the 7pm show last night. I called Eric and we decided it would be a fun surprise for the boys. I ordered the tickets and we ended up with pretty good seats. We were only 15 rows from the stage.

They boys were really excited when I told them the news. We ate dinner quick, got changed and headed downtown. The boys were on their best behavior, which was so nice. We found our seats and patiently waited. The scenery on stage was very elaborate. The story line was about baby jaguar losing his growl. In order for the animal carnavale to begin, he has to growl. The "bobo's" which are baboons steal baby jaguar's voice. Diego, his sister Alisa and cousin Dora must help baby jaguar get it back. There was lots of singing and audience participation. They wanted everyone to growl, clap, jump, sing and dance. I discovered that Chase has a real rhythm. They wanted everyone to do the Cha-Cha. He was grooving. The guy next to Chase was laughing and smiling. They gave everyone jaguar masks to put on during parts of the show too. Chase really got into it. Tony enjoyed it, but didn't want to jump and dance. He did bounce on his seat and he would lean over and hug me, so I know he was having a good time.

A lot of kids around us had souvenirs, which I was not planning on getting for the boys. However, at intermission I gave in and bought the boys "Rescue Packs." Diego wears a rescue pack and it turns into whatever he needs, whether it be a raft, bike or wing glider. It was so fun to see how excited they were about getting them, I was able to get over the hefty price tag of $15 bucks a piece! The whole show lasted about an hour and 20 minutes.

The boys were giddy the whole way home singing and laughing. They both had to sleep with their rescue packs last night. It was a great night out.

Labor Day Weekend

Okay, so I have not made the time to blog for almost a month. I have a lot to catch up on. I took on a new role at work. I am the IT Lead for CHI Connect initiative. Mercy is part of Catholic Health Initiatives. They own 72 hospitals, clinics and care facilities through out the country. We are their 2nd largest hospital, and they are attempting to get all 72 places using the same timekeeping and payroll systems. We happen to use both already, but of course what we are going to is going to be very different. Unfortunately, we are having to dumb down in order to get us all uniformed. Which really hurts our staff. We are taking tools away that make their jobs easier. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But hey, it will save CHI 20 million dollars by 2009. This new role has me busier than ever. Yesterday I had 4 meetings and 2 of them were almost 2 hours long. So I don't have a lot down time anymore to sluff off.

So I am going back to Labor day weekend to start off. The day before we were leaving for WI, Eric convinced me I deserved a new car. Stew Hansen's were having great deals with the life time power tran warranty on the Dodge mini-vans. The only reason I was willing to at least look, is because we no longer pay daycare for Chase, since he is in school. We checked out the '07 Dodge Grand Caravan. I took it for a test drive. I liked it, but I didn't feel really comfortable behind the wheel. It seemed off. I told Eric if we are going to buy a new and have a payment for 5 years, I need to love it, not just like it.

So the sales guy says, "A few '08's have just come in, you can check those out if you like. " I looked at it and liked it immediately. It is more boxy and tougher looking. At first I didn't realize it was a mini-van, plus it was black. I took it for a ride and loved it. It has the stow n' go, it has the shifter on the dash, the pedals can move forward or back, so I don't have to move the seat if I don't want too. The windows on the sliding doors roll down and a power lift gate. I kept saying, we don't need this. Eric said you have never had a brand new car in your life. You deserve to have one. Plus the warranty on the motor and tranny were too good to pass up. So this is going to be our family car for the next 10 years. We want to get our money's worth.

Friday night we headed to Lake Winnebago, and it was the fastest 7 hours. We said it must be the new car! My mom and my nieces came up on Saturday. The kids rode bikes and played. I set up the swimming pool. They played in that for a long time. Grandma cooked an awesome steak dinner Saturday night. The meat was so tender and the onions and mushrooms were delicious.

Sunday afternoon we packed up and headed to Milwaukee. My brother bought a house and they were just moving in. I bought them a Bocci Ball set to play in their backyard. So we played that for a long time. Chase and Anthony thought it was great to play with a bunch of new toys they hadn't seen.

Sunday night we went my aunt's house. Cheryl had knee replacement surgery at the beginning of August. She was able to walk around, but still had a lot of pain. She had my mom and I help her with one of her exercises. We would have to push down on her knee to make it go straight. It felt really strange and I kept worrying about pushing to hard. I could see how much pain she was in when we would do it. But she was diligent about doing it every hour. Since we had to lay low, we decided to play Trivial Pursuit. We started the game at 9pm and quit at 1am. No one had won yet. It was myself, Eric, my mom and Cheryl playing. Even though there wasn't a winner, we had a lot of fun.

Monday was Labor Day. We headed over to the local CBS TV station to see my friend Sara and say hi to her brother. Michael her brother, has had Muscular Dystrophy for 27 of his 29 years of life. He was being honored on the telethon and Sara was there volunteering for the day. After visiting Sara, we went to my dad's work to say hi. I didn't expect him to work Labor Day, so this too was a short visit. We got on road around 1pm. Traffic was bad most of the way home, which I hadn't thought about. So it took us an extra hour in travel time. We were just glad to be back. It is always such a whirl wind tour when we go back home to WI.