Well in just one more week our household will be down to a single income. My wife and I thought long and hard about it, but the cost of daycare is just too much, so we decided to have her stay home with the kids.

Well, that's what we decided, but then our son's daycare had a spot open up in the Pre-School class and moved him up. A year ahead of schedule. Yeah. Now he's learning things at the same pace as the rest of the class. So we've now decided that my wife will still stay home and keep our 5 month old daughter, but we are going to keep paying for our son to stay in day care for as long as we can. If we get to where we can't pay the bills each month then we'll pull him out, but we're going to take advantage of the opportunity as long as we can.

To help offset the costs, though, my wife is now selling Pampered Chef goodies all over Nashville. I thought it was somewhat unbelievable that with all of the Pampered Chef consultants out there that the domain nashvillepamperedchef.com was even available.

And yeah, I need to get some free time available to brew some more beer. I've had empty kegs for the last couple of months, but now that the baby is getting easier to manage, that may actually happen.

We (the family) went back out to Walden Farm in Rutherford County, TN, this year. I got some fun video of my son running through the corn maze, among other things.

This weekend I took 2.0 out to the Adventure Science Museum (formerly known as the Cumberland Science Museum when I was growing up) since we had a boys' day out. They have a lot of neat stuff there and one section is called Bodyquest. You get to explore the different areas of the body and see how many of the organs work. Part of the experience is to follow food from entry to exit, so you first toss some balls at an open mouth to feed it. Next you have to squeeze the food down the esophagus and it makes lot of neat, fun, disgusting and gross noises. If you push the wrong way it makes an upchuck sound, if you push the right way it makes a gulping sound. Anyway, the next part it to churn the food in the stomach and then finally you wind your way through the small intestine. Both 2.0 and I rode down the slide at the exit, which is basically the Poop Chute. There is a sensor at the end that triggers a fart/poop like sound to play when you get to it. It was enough to make any mother have a nightmare and any child or male laugh out loud.

Last weekend we had a fun little outing. We started off at Chick-Fil-A where my son decided that playing in the indoor playground was much more interesting than eating chicken. We did eventually get him to come around and eat something, though.



Later that afternoon I decided that we should go bowling. We had a party at the bowling alley for his birthday back in November and he had a blast, and since the weather wasn't too hospitable, that seemed like a good indoor activity to burn off some of his energy. Here's the score after the first frame. It's amazing how hard it is to bowl your own frame when your son keeps trying to take the ball out of your hand.



He loved using the ramp to bowl with, but the 6 pound ball that they gave him to use was simply too light. He's got the strength to pick up my 16 pounder and the 6 pound one just doesn't have enough weight to build up much momentum. I think next time we'll get him something in the 10 pound range.



All was well until the end of the night when I tried to pick him up and carry him to the car. He wanted my wife to carry him, but she hurt her neck/back and couldn't lift him. When I went to pick him up he jumped right into my chin and made me bite a nice chunk out of my lip. We were both in pain after that, but everything up to that point was a great Saturday.

So my wife, son and I have been up in Gatlinburg since Friday. Knowing how horribly busy everything would be during the holiday weekend (Labor Day), we decided that we may as well milk some money and tickets out of the timeshare sales folks. After all, my wife is the master of saying "no". Especially late at night. *cough*

Anyway, we set up two for Saturday and one for Sunday. The theory was that our son would turn into a terror at about the 75 minute mark and they would get us out of there as quickly as possible to protect their sanity. Oh, no, that's not how it worked at all. Each gig ended up lasting about 3 hours, and we paid the price. However, in exchange, we got:

1 - Crappy meal for 3 at the Holiday Inn
2 - Tickets for me and my wife (our son was free, anyway) to the Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies
3 - $200 cash
4 - A horribly restrictive 2 night getaway to our choice of 30+ destinations (which we won't use since they make it so difficult to use)
5 - A decent offer of 2 nights at a different resort which we probably will use

On Tuesday my in-laws drove up to join us, and while Grandma babysat the rest of us drove over to Cherokee to play at the Harrah's Casino a little bit. I managed to get 4 Aces on the draw in video poker and won $120. Grandpa kept winning, too, and walked away $300 ahead. My wife lost about $45 total, so all in all it wasn't bad, especially since Grandpa paid for dinner last night.

Today we drive back home and tomorrow we'll send our son to daycare while we parents set up his new bedroom with a twin bed and all that jazz. Joy.

This weekend I helped Dad move bulky items from the house by the lake over to the new house. While I was doing that, Mom watched our son and my wife stayed home tending to a batch of home made spaghetti sauce and also got the motivation to tackle the disaster formerly known as our dining room. Now I can happily say that it is the dining room formerly known as part of the disaster.

Given that bit of inspiration, on Sunday morning after fixing breakfast I grabbed my tools out of the basement and started digging in the rock and gravel that is disguised as my back yard so that I could start on the fence. I thought that I'd be doing well to get two holes completely dug out, but I managed to get all four needed for the back side of the house. We took a drive over to Home Depot, got the 4x4 posts and 1x4 header strips and I got all of that set up by my afternoon. Mom and Dad came over for dinner so I hijacked Dad's truck for another run to Home Depot and got the pickets. Shortly after dinner we had all of the back side fence completed except for the gate, which I need to build. I plan on doing that next weekend, along with the fence on the left side of the house, which actually has a few inches of dirt covering up the rock.

The fence is needed because we want to be able to let our son play outside in the back yard without having to follow him every single step of the way. Fortunately for us, we're saving some money because the neighbors on the left side of the house already put up a fence for their dog. Yay for letting them go first. Of course, we're more sophisticated and I plan on actually water sealing and staining my fence. Theirs will turn all nice and green in another year and look like crap. I don't expect them to take the initiative to stain theirs since it's hard enough for them to figure out which end of the lawnmower to push.

The only drawback to all of this? I'm too sore to move.

So a few years ago my parents declared that they were going to sell their house in Sparta, TN (on Center Hill Lake) and move to Florida "full time". Knowing how infrequently my family actually gets together, I knew this meant that I'd probably see them once or twice a year at that point. 10 hour drives are a bit excessive for popping over on Sunday after church.

Then my wife had our baby a year and a half ago. Last February I got a call from my Dad one day asking me to run by a house and look at it. A few pictures later and he had a contract on it to purchase the place. One acre, fenced back yard, extra garage and a barn. Very nice place, but the layout of the house itself wasn't the best, as there was no formal dining room and not really a way to add one on through expansion. Anyway, once that baby arrived it was clear that they wanted to be closer to him, and we like that, because not only does it help us with babysitting, but we want our son to know his family through interaction, rather than just photographs and phone calls.

Now my parents decided that they would sell their house in Florida, buy a bigger house here in Smyrna, and move up here for all but a couple of months a year. They bought a small trailer which is plenty enough for them and even for us when we decide to steal the keys and come down, because it's 30 minutes from Disney World. Yes, they made the mistake of showing me where it is. Muahahaha!

Anyway, last week they got an offer on the original Smyrna house after being on the market for less than a month, and it was a good offer - asking price and taking the house as-is. Last weekend I flew down to Orlando on Friday night and then drove a loaded down pickup truck back to Smyrna for them (that's when I saw the aforementioned trailer). This weekend they'll be driving the van up and a rented U-Haul full of all their furniture. We've then got until June 1 to unload the trucks at the new house, load up another truck at the old house, and move all of that stuff over to the new house. I tell ya, this is too much like work! Now we just need to find someone to buy their house in Florida and all will be well.

In the end, though, we're thrilled to have my parents so close by. Having a child is a wonderful experience, but you also need the ability to hand him off to someone else for the evening so that the parents can enjoy being a couple, rather than a family, for just a few hours.