New Year's Resolution Recap

Last years revolutions were that I could swim without a noodle and a kickboard in a pool, without my mom and my dad holding me, and the other one was I could ride my bike with two wheels. The first one came true and the second one did not. So, I’m going to try this year to get the second one to be done. It’s going to be hard work but I know that I can do it. – Owen

My resolutions last year I really wanted to swim with a kickboard and it came true. And, we both had our last year resolutions came true. They both did. And, my other one was me having healthy body and I did. That’s it. – Rion S.

Florida

So when we were in Florida, we were at Grandpa’s house. It’s a little house in Sun City Center. We usually went to the pool there and never ever got to eat dinner at his house because he watches TV a lot. So, I wish I lived in Florida because we met this lady. She had a bad eye and they didn’t find out until she was 19 but she was too old and so she only could see out of one eye. That’s sad for her. She lives in Florida and she actually gets to drive a car and she only has one eye. Isn’t that crazy? So crazy! And, she learned how to drive a car when she was 55! That’s old isn’t it?

One day in Florida we went to Strawberry Patch. We had a strawberry shortcake that was two feet or twenty four inches. So, me and my brother splitted it. That huge strawberry shortcake, my brother and me ate the whole thing and then we went back to grandpa’s house. If you read this part first, then you’ll see what we did at Grandpa’s house. The end. – Owen
No. After I said no, we went to the Strawberry Patch. We ate a strawrberry shorkcake at the strawberry patch and I loved it. We went to the manatees. Then when we got there we sawed a lots of manatees. They were so big we saw the one head up out in the water and then they were so big after that we got to go in the museum there. And, I went to see the coal again. And then I went to see the Earth. – Rion

Busch Gardens

So, this is about Busch Gardens. At Busch Gardens I went on roller coasters and I went on a train that took one hour to get back to where we wanted to go. So, talking about the first place that we went. The first place that we were at was … I don’t remember. Was it Stanleyville? When we went to Stanleyville I went on the Cheetah Chase and it took like, maybe an hour to get up the whole line and to get up to the roller coaster. I almost flew out of the roller coaster because that ride was so crazy. Isn’t that fast? Five hundred miles per hour! Wow! The next place we went to was, I think it was, Congo. Congo we only got to go on one ride. It was called … maybe, hmmm, maybe Cheetah Chase was in Stanleyville. I don’t remember. I remember when we went to Junglia. When we went to Sesame Street and there was barely any rides I could go on except the climbing thing. It was awesome. It was maybe fifty feet up in the air and thirty feet long. Isn’t that huge? Actually, I mean enormous. – Owen

We went to Busch Gardens and there was a lot of, we went on the, the, the, the, Rhino Rally. It’s so fun. On the Rhino Rally we tried to find Scooter, but we didn’t find him anywhere. Owen went on this thing I wasn’t old enough to do. We were both old enough to do it, it was the Grover ride and it was so fun. So, I’m going to tell you about the Grover ride. The Grover ride was so fast me and my brother was like “Ahhhh!”. My brother’s name is Owen Michael Stufflebeam. At Busch Gardens me and my brother went in something and it was a maze. It was so hard. The animals were so fun when one of them we got to see. We got to see a lot of them. Did you know there was a car we could go in. There’s a back one and a front one and there was another one but one door was opened. We couldn’t open the other door. It was crashed. It used to be real but it broke down and that made it not real any more. The end. – Rion Stufflebeam

Owen's 7th Birthday

My 7th Birthday. My birthday was yesterday. It’s Owen, me. I got presents from mom. One present from mom was this football thing and Captain Underpants books. Rion gave me U-build Sorry and Grandpa gave me a new DS game. We went to the Oyster Bar for dinner that night. It was good. I got Key Lime pie because it was my birthday. It was even better. And then, we had chocolate cake. It was totally good. In the morning we went bowling. That’s my birthday. - Owen

Merry Christmas

On Christmas today Santa brought me and Owen a present in Florida when there wasn’t no snow. We already had presents, he gave us more. We love stuff! Today we went to Grandpa Florida’s beach and Grandpa’s pool we went to. We swam and I did a rocket ship. It is so fun. We have to sit down and we have to put our hands together and then we push off a water wall. That’s a rocket ship. We made a sand castle at the beach and then we made the Great Wall of China. I went in the water and I got wet. I got so, so, so soaking wet wet wet wet wet wet! And then it was time to go. Done. – Rion

Today is Christmas Day. It is December 25, 2010. Right now I am not watching TV, Daddy is, and there is mud in this house and it is so cool. And, Rion is doing his sticker book, mommy is doing the blog, Grandpa is watching TV, and I’m just sitting here telling mommy what to write on the blog. And I got for Christmas a Kinex thing and Rion got Geo Trax. I got Bionicles and Rion got one more thing but I can’t remember what it was. Today I went to the swimming pool, the beach, and I ate at the beach. At the pool I learned how to swim with a noodle from one side to the other side. From the south side to the north side. It was cool! Now I’m going to talk about the beach. At the beach we made four castles. Rion broke one of them. And two of the castles had guns. Boom! Boom! It was cool! I love Christmas! Done. Done. Done. – Owen

 

Road Trip - Day 2

Day 2 of our road trip was from Macon, GA to Sun City Center, FL. It was a “short” drive, just six and a half hours. The kids got to experience Waffle House for the first time and Owen continue to work on his map reading skills. I have to say that overall the trip was so much easier than I ever guessed it would be. They even watched TV and played video games much less than I expected. The bag of books and the etch of sketches actually got lots of use. If the trip home goes just as smooth, we will definitely consider doing it again. - N

On the second day of Christmas we went to Florida. And it was a fun ride cuz we went to Georgia and then we went to Waffle House. We drived to Florida after Waffle House. My brother ate a lot of food. He ate two waffles. - Rion

The second day in the car was awesome. So, when we were done for breakfast we ate Waffle House. I ate one and a half waffles at the Waffle House. It was awesome. And then we got here at 2 o’clock. It was a short drive. We drove from Macon to Tampa in eight hours. So, this is how we started. We started going down 75 and then we were still going down 75. And then we stopped in Tampa. In the beginning, we started at Illinois. We started in Chicago. We took 294 to 80 and then we got to Indiana. And then we started taking down 65 until we got to Kentucky. And then we took 65 kept on going down, and then we got to Tennessee. And then we started taking 24. It runs into 75 and then we took 75 to Florida. Kept on taking 75 until we got to Tampa. And then we were at Grandpa’s house. That’s the long trip. - Owen

Road Trip - Day 1 Continued

It was a fun day in the car ride. We got to watch tv and it was awesome day in the car ride. We loved to look at our books and we got to watch tv. - Rion

Today was an awesome day in the car. We made it! It was an awesome car ride. We got to watch tv, play video games, and we got to read books and draw, and put stickers on pages where they are supposed to. It was awesome!!! - Owen

Road Trip - Day 1

Today I'm going on a trip it is December 23, 2010. And today we are going to try to make it to Georgia. No we are making it to Georgia. And if we don't make it to Georgia, mom is going to be pretty angry with dad. And the next 8 hours we will be driving to Florida. - Owen

If I sleep the whole ride in the car, after that I get a candy bar, a big one. That's my dad’s deal with me and I'm going to do that. We are going to go to a hotel. - Rion

Our Christmas

Our Christmas before we came to Florida, we didn’t know what we got because me and Owen didn’t know what presents were ours. Our Christmas tree lights were on out in our playroom. And we had our Christmas tree lights on. Only four people in our house and one dog. Our dog sleeped, but I know Parker sawed what Santa put in her stocking. She did. Santa Claus sawed Parker. Santa gave me a big thing. It is a Clone Tanker and he gave my brother the Ewokville. And, my brother got another big ship. I forget what it is. Actually, my brother got the Plo Koon ship. It is small and it’s blue. And my presents that I got were, one was big. That is the Clone Tanker. Maybe two days it will take cuz I don’t know how much pieces there is in it. Maybe 104 pieces. Done. - Rion

Our Christmas at home was fun. We got lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of presents. I got what I wanted. I got Ewokville. And, I got Creationary. We have it right here and it’s a really fun game. I got more presents too, but I don’t want to tell you all of them because I had maybe 50 presents. 45 presents, maybe 30 presents from Santa and 20 from mommy and daddy. It was an amazing Christmas. I love Christmas. The end. - Owen

Getting Ready for Christmas

We made plates for Santa at Pick-A-Pot and then we were getting ready to put them back home and ours were awesome. Ours were cool and my brother’s had a smiley face on his and mine was a cool color. I putted all of my ornaments by myself but not that much. I wanted to put one up on the top right next to our Indianapolis race car one. We made pumpkin muffins, pumpkin chocolate muffins actually, then we made raspberry muffins, banana chocolate muffins, blueberry muffins, and then we made donut muffins. The end. – Rion Stufflebeam

Getting ready for Christmas was fun. We got to wrap presents. I got to wrap Daddy and Rion’s presents, but the better one was Daddy’s presents. Rion’s present was harder to wrap. Daddy’s present was the littler one. Rion’s was huge. Do you want to know what I got Rion for Christmas? I got him Star Wars guys and we have them here in Florida. I love Florida. I put one carrot and one apple on my plate and it was gone when I woke up. Maybe 5:18 I woke up, but it was absolutely gone when I woke up. And, we cooked muffins before Christmas. And our ornaments we put on our trees. It was so fun! Can you imagine how fun it would be to live at our house on Christmas? Done. - Owen

Gingerbread Houses

We made a Gingerbread house and ours was better than last time. Last time was not cool. They haded to have more gum. Why? I wanted to have more gum to get on mine. Then I did put some dots on it and we putted on some of the things that go on the top, we putted some keys on ours, we putted a Christmas tree with an angel on ours, and that’s it. Some of my uncle’s were with me and one aunt was with me, and some of my cousins were with me. And, my brother was with me. We made them on the same day. We both made them. The end. – Rion

The gingerbread houses we have in our upstairs on the shelf, actually where our stockings where, and we went with Uncle Nick, Hannah, Ayla, Bethany, Uncle Ben, and Uncle Zack, and Aunt Nicki, and Katie. It was a fun gingerbread house. I took candy after candy and put it on. It was so long. It almost took an hour. It was amazing! I wish I was a gingerbread and I lived in a gingerbread house. And then the gingerbread said, “Run, run as fast as I can. You can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread Man.” Done. - Owen

20-20

Owen went to the eye doctor tonight. Wearing the patch is working! His bad eye is almost at 20-20 with glasses. I can't remember where we started a year and a half ago, but it was really bad. Getting to 20-20 has been his goal, and he's done it!

Santa Claus

We love our daycare! They invite Santa to visit each year so we can avoid the long lines at the mall, and so the kids can have more time talking to him in an environment they are comfortable in. Rion had a million questions for Santa this year. He wanted to know everything from “Do you have a phone on your sleigh?” to “Who wraps the presents for you?”. On a separate topic, I’m not a Star Wars fan, but all of the boys in my family are. Because I can’t remember any of the planet’s names I made up my own like Ewokville, Wookie World, etc. They stuck with the boys, in case you are wondering about Owen’s gift of choice. - N

At our school we saw Santa Claus who came to town (singing to the tune). He brought his bag and there was presents out. I thought one was the Death Star. It was big. I wanted a Clone Tanker. - Rion

Santa Claus at Kindercare, we just talked about him and took our pictures with him. I got to go in Rion’s class, I don’t know, but I just got to. I wanted Ewokville. It’s this lego thing with three Ewoks, Han Solo, Chewbaka, Princess Leia, two rebel alliance guys. - Owen

2010 Family Christmas Pictures

Christmas Carols

The trees are up, not decorated but up. The decorations are out, not put in the proper spots but out of the containers. And, Christmas carols fill the air. Rion's favorite is "Deck the halls with balls of jolly, la la la la, la la la la". Owen and I have tried to teach him the words, but he just doesn't care. I guess I shouldn't complain, his prior favorite was Jingle Bells "And, the Joker's in the bathroom, peeing on the wall". Boys!

Our 1st Snow

Navy Pier's Winter Wonder Fest

In an effort to avoid our annual Polar Express train ride, we let Rion decide if he’d rather ride the Polar Express with Santa or he could take the train downtown and then pick what we did. He decided that we’d go to the Children’s museum at Navy Pier. Once we arrived at Navy Pier, he decided to go the Winter Wonder Fest instead, after we promised another trip to the museum. We’d never been before, but really enjoyed the festival. There was plenty for the kids to do, the trees were beautiful, and the lines were fairly short. The boys even got to go ice skating for the first time. - N

On Sunday we went to Navy Pier in Chicago. In Navy Pier we went to the Winter Wonder Fest. It was so cool! The second thing that we did at the Winter Wonder Fest was ice skating. I beat Rion around the whole track, like Rion beat me at roller skating, I beat him at ice skating. It was so cool! On the train, when we were going to Chicago, me, Rion, and Daddy ate donuts and drank water. It was so cool! I love going on trains to Chicago. I love going to Chicago! Also, we went on three slides and there was this huge Christmas tree there. It was three times bigger than our Christmas tree. There were 400 ornaments on it, I guess. Have you been to the Winter Wonder Fest? - Owen
We ice skated at the Winter Wonder Fest and it was so much fun we keep on slipping. And then we went around the ice rink one time and then we made cookies and then we got to put some stuff on it and then we ate them. Mine was good. I went on a bouncy thing. It was so bouncy. And after that we went on a virtual reality ride. Then we went on a ferris wheel inside! I was in a tent where there was balls white and I threw them at Santa and his elf. They were trying to get us, but I jumped over all of theirs. And, we were having so fun we threw one snowball on Santa’s elf’s hat and we threw one ball on top of Santa’s hat. That’s it. The end. – Rion Stufflebeam

Winter Soccer

The boys are back at Chicago Sports Zone for indoor soccer. Rion wanted to practice prior to starting outdoor soccer in the spring, but he wanted Owen to play too.

Owen's 1st Student Teacher

Ms. Kjellstrand was our teacher for about 64 or 65 days. She was a really nice teacher. She taught us how to do science. She taught us how to do math. She taught us how to do social studies. She taught us how to read our books. She taught us how to do guided reading. And, she taught us how to do our centers. She taught us how to do tons of stuff. On the first day I did not know her. She’s not at Ardmore school anymore in our class. She might still be at Ardmore school, but she’s not in our class. On her last day we got tons of treats from her and other moms and dads. Done. - Owen

They may look similar...

… but their interests are completely different. Rion loves to fix things and help his Dad around the house.

Owen would prefer to read his books and build with Legos.

Indianapolis

In an effort to knock another state off of Rion’s list, we headed to Indianapolis Thanksgiving day weekend. We visited the Children’s Museum and did the Indianapolis Motor Speedway tour. What’s more “boy” than that? Well, they were both a little mad that we didn’t have tickets to the Colts game that night. I guess that in our house football is more “boy” than race cars. Rion’s even starting to talk about football and trying to learn about the game. I’m not sure if it’s because he really cares, or if it’s just to join the big boy’s conversations. - N

In Indianapolis we went to the museum and the race track. At the museum we did lots of stuff. Stuff on the upstairs floors and on the downstairs floor. One thing was looking at dinosaurs. Another thing was we looked at stuff at Egypt. Another thing was we saw trains. There was lots of stuff at the museum. I love Indianapolis! At the race track we had a tour. Our tour showed us the bricks right in front of the finish line. It showed us where people sit to watch the race and watch tv. One night at a restaurant we ordered some stuff, but it didn’t come with our food and the food was pretty good. We stayed at a hotel and when we went to restaurants there were tons of people with Colts shirts on. I couldn’t believe it. There were so many people with Colt shirts and they all had Peyton Manning on it. Done. - Owen
I want to go see the Indianapolis Colts play. I really want to. I went to Indianapolis and we drove there. It was one day but we got to play at the museum part of the time. Then we were in the museum and we played with lots of stuff. It’s so fun. We are going to go there again. I really want to go to the baseball team play there. I went to a racetrack and we got to go on the bus. My dad and Rion went next to each other on the ride first and on the ride back me and my mom went together to sit down. We didn’t see any cars. They only had motorcycles. We saw motorcycles in the building. And there was lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of race cars. - Rion