Making my Case....

So recently my sisters have been engaging in some friendly blog posts regarding who had the biggest pain in the butt backyard. Both of them have been putting in a lot of hard work trying to get things under control, and they should be commended on their efforts. However, I would like to now make my case as to why my yard sucks more than any other in history...

I give you Exhibit A:

 July 25th - A tree limb smashes Owen's Swingset...

I give you Exhibit B:

 August 13th - Our neighbors tree dropped a giant limb on our power-line and front walk...

I give you Exhibit C:

April 24th - A giant swirling wind-gust knocked over three of our neighbor's trees into our yard...

That is 3 major incidents in 3 months. So ladies and gentlemen of the jury, while my sister's yards may require so much work that they think they might die from exertion, simply being in my yard might actually kill you....

The Defense Rests.

Mae unrhyw beth sy'n werth ei wneud yn werth ei wneud wych!

(Anything worth doing is worth doing Fabulously!!!)

Presenting the 

2nd Annual Renberg Family Easter Egg Hunt!!!

To truly understand my obsession with the Easter Egg Hunt I must take you back in time to the days of my youth. I can't place exactly when my first memory of Easter Egg hunting happened - I have pretty much blocked out most memories from my childhood, so everything is a little fuzzy - but what I do remember is that Easter Egg Hunts were epic adventures. My father, who has a tinge of the CDO (It's like OCD, except alphabetical like it should be) was a ruthless Easter Bunny, and if you wanted your candy, you were going to have to work for it. Each child had their own color of Eggs - Todd was Blue, Kevin was Green, I was Yellow, Karen was Pink, and Carisa was Purple - and we would tear through the house trying to find them. (You will notice that I said through the house, our father found that there are a lot more difficult places to hide eggs inside instead of outside, so we always did our Egg Hunts inside.) 

As I said, my father was ruthless. He would put the egg in a plastic bag and float it in the toilet tank. He would bury it in the flour. In the couch cushions. In the bag of cat food. Anywhere that you could ever think of, he probably put an egg there, as well as places you would never think to look. One year Todd did not find all of his eggs, and my father could not remember where it was - mom found it two months later when she got to the bottom of the laundry detergent - which led to the formation of "The List," a pad of paper that my father carried around with all of the locations of the hidden eggs.

My first experience in being the Easter Bunny was at my Grandparents house in Oregon. I can't remember why we were there for Easter, but with my mom, any reason to go visit her family was a good reason, so we were there. My mom has 9 brothers and sisters, which means that I have approximately 15,000 cousins, all of whom wanted to find eggs. I can't remember who was supposed to be in charge, but I overheard them say that they were just going to put all the eggs out on the lawn and just let the kids go and get them. I remember being appalled by the idea of big kids getting to get Easter Eggs without having to work for them, and I informed everyone that I was taking over. (Of course they didn't fight me on this, they all wanted to sit around eating warm bread and jam and talking into all hours of the night, don't try to pretend otherwise!)

Here I must interject for a moment and tell you about Easter in England. Easter Eggs in England used to be big chocolate eggs filled with little candies. Then the candy companies started to put full size candy bars outside the egg, giving you a box with a big chocolate egg and a couple of candy bars. While I do like the chocolate egg thing, the thing that boggles my mind is that there is no hiding and finding of the eggs, the fat little English kids just expect you to give the box to them. When we would tell them about hunting for Easter Eggs they would react with abject horror and exclaim, "You have to work and find your eggs?!?!" Fat little bastards....


Anyway, I separated the cousins by age and egg finding ability and hid the eggs in different locations throughout the yard. The toddlers were just out in the grass, the next older kids had theirs throughout the swingset, the rambunctious boy cousins had all of their eggs hid up in the climbing tree - Which has since been cut down...it doesn't matter that I have only been to Grandma and Grandpa's house once in the last 15 years...I know that the tree is gone, and I am still not ok with that - and my poor sister Karen, as the oldest egg hunter, had her eggs hidden so ridiculously hard that I had to help her find them! (I had them inside irrigation pipes, on top of outdoor light fixtures that were only visible if you were standing on the other side of the yard...it was epic win.)

Anyway, a few years later my sister was getting married over the Easter Weekend, and so there was lots of family in town, and because of the stress of trying to get things done, someone had suggested that we skip the Easter Egg Hunt. I think they just knew that if they made such a ridiculous suggesting that I would volunteer to do it, which of course I did, but this time I had a wife to help. I don't think Beki truly grasped my obsession for Easter Egg Hunts, in fact I think she is just now figuring out that they must be epic, but as relatively newlyweds it was fun hiding eggs for the 15,000 cousins together. My favorite part about this one is that some of the eggs had dollar bills in them, and   my cousin Angela, who was 21 at the time I think, was running around finding eggs, shaking them and putting them back if they made sound, only keeping them if they made no sound!!

Which brings us to this year's 2nd Annual Renberg Family Easter Egg Hunt. By the title you can probably guess that we did one of these last year, which we did, you can find it here: http://therenbergband.blogspot.com/2010/04/spring-break-and-great-easter-egg-hunt.html
This year we originally started with 5 kids, then we invited 2 more, then one wanted to bring a friend, then we invited 2 more, then we invited another one, so in the end we had 11 Easter Egg Hunter's and 11 Parental units all in my little house!! (Mostly we were outside.) We had it set up so that when they got there the kids had eggs to dye, cookies to frost and pictures to color until everyone arrived. Once they were all there I explained the rules - things like how they should avoid the giant trash piles that I have in my yard and not to look in the shed flower box because there is a bird nest and mommy bird will attack you (Trust me on that one) - as well as assigning everyone their colors.

Parents with kids 4 and older got a "list" of the egg locations in case they needed some hints (and in the case of the poor 10 year olds, lots of hints were needed!) but if you had a 3 year old or younger I was expecting you to be able to help them find all their eggs. (Apparently my expectations are a little high...) After the eggs we had hot dogs, hamburgers, and sausages and the children chased each other around for the next hour and a half. It was a lot of fun, totaly fabulous, and all our friends who are stuck in town homes with no backyards got to go on a real Easter Egg Hunt. (And the real reason I do it - I get to be the one in control of the social situation!) Anyway, enough talking, here are the pictures!

 This is the night before as I am filling another 30 eggs - notice the high quality candy, I don't mess around - Starburst Jelly Beans are the one beans worth your money, Reeces Pieces Eggs are to die for, Peanut Butter Cups speak for themselves, Robin Eggs cause my wife likes them, and M&M's because I think they deport you if you don't use them. 

 Owen has become a pretty awesome helper, if you give him a task, he'll usually do it!

 Yes, that is two layers of Puffed Rice Eggs...so delicious!!!

 Owen was not a good Egg Hunter last year...luckily he has improved!

 Besides the 10 year olds - to whom I was pretty merciless - Owen's eggs were the next hardest to find. Sorry Buddy, that is what you get, I have high expectations!

 This one was tricky because it was above eye level - for some reason we don't look up for Easter Eggs...

 I did give him a couple easy ones...no really I think there were only 2 that were easy.

 This one he could only see by standing at the back fence, he found it eventually with some help from Mom.

 Funny Face!!!

 Just so you can get an idea of people hunting for eggs all over the yard, and me helping one of the 10 year olds...

 This was Owen's last egg...he thought it was the funniest place for an egg to be. (That is inside the outdoor walkway light)

 While everyone was finishing up their egg hunting, I fired up the grill, and then got some grilling tips from Lumi, I always appreciate grilling tips!

 Half of the children ate at the table...

 While the others lounged in lawn chairs of sat on the bricks!

And after a long day of being Fabulous...I was out cold...thanks for taking this picture honey...

Yes I am aware that this is overdue and as a result will be really long....

I could sit here and try to think of all of the reasons why I have been neglecting my blogging duties, but that would just delay this even longer, so instead you are going to get the rapid fire picture update! I need to get up to date so that I can devote an entire post to the awesomeness that was our Easter Egg hunt, but before we get there, lets go back to:

Chuck-E-Cheese
     Owen earned all smiley faces at school for two consecutive weeks, and so that seemed like a good reason to expose our entire family to the disease infested confines of our local Chuck-E-Cheese. This may have been the greatest moment of Owen's life to this point.

 We hadn't told him where we were going, but once we were in the parking lot he was very hopeful...

 If he knew how many germs and gross stuff were floating around in here he might not be so excited.

 This was the first "game" that caught his attention, can't say I am surprised.

 Some of the games were challenging, but he got the hang of it.

 What would a trip to Chuck-E-Cheese be without skiball?

 He ended up with a pretty good score, I almost didn't beat him!

 These two player games were fun...

 A chance for me to instruct the boy in Video Game tactics!

 Then there was a break for some climbing...

 After a dinner of discustingly cheap pizza, this little machine drew a picture of Owen and Mommy

 Ta-da!

 Not too bad for only one token.

 This game was tough, you had to try to keep the ball in the green zone...

 But the green zone  kept shrinking and moving!

 Air Hockey was a big hit...

 As was a shooting game with Papa...

 But this side by side racing game was the best thing of the night!

 There was some serious racing going on here...no really, I barely managed to come from behind to win!

 At the end of the night it was time to count the tickets!!!

 Is their a greater machine in the world than the ticket counting machine?

Of course you can't get anything good for 85 tickets, so we are saving them for the next time we go.

A Secret Surprise

My darling wife has gotten sneaky as of late. 2 months before my birthday she saw a deal for a River Cruise along the river in DC, and so she started making plans for a birthday surprise. We went on the Saturday before my birthday, and while I am usually pretty good at figuring out her surprises, I was clueless until I saw the docks. (She picked a great weekend to go because it was the last weekend of the Cherry Blossom festival and the day of the parade, so that is where I thought we were going.) As excited as I was about going out on the river, Owen was beside himself with excitement.

 We got to the docks a little early, so there was some time for exploring

 Owen and Papa were both pretty excited about going out on the river

 While walking along the dock we saw the rescue boat. Owen started waving and got the firefighters on board to wave back!

 Finally our Buoyancy Operated Aquatic Transport, or BO-AT for short pulled in and it was our turn!

(If you don't watch Phineas and Ferb, you don't get that...if you do watch, "Don't open the Metropolitan Oval Aquatic Trench!!!!"

 We have so many pictures that look just like this one - he could not get over the fact that we were on the water.

 This moment caught in time doesn't quite capture the entire essence of the boy jumping up and down squealing with delight about being on a boat.

 Look how pleased she is with herself...and how pleased I am to be on a boat!!

 Serious picture with Papa...

 Serious picture with Mommy...

 And that is enough....

 no more serious!

 This is a picture of us taken by the boy...he is getting pretty good.

 He got this great idea to climb up the incline and then jump off, at first holding on to the railing...

 Then one hand...

 Then no hands!!

 Lucky reflexes...he was about to eat it here...

 Does this make you think,  "I'm King of the World?" Well, this is the Titanic Memorial erected in the 1930's by the citizens of DC, and it was the inspiration for that scene in the movie. 

 

 Owen trying his hand at the "King of the World" bit.

 Owen was very curious about the design of the boat, it was not like any other he had seen before.

 So I got to explain to him the benefits of a Catamaran...which I pretty much made up on the spot, but he'll never know...

 There were so many things to see, and Owen wanted to know what everything was...

 Washington and Jefferson Monument (It was a cold and nasty weekend, so most of the blossoms were gone, oh well...I was on a boat.)

 Super Cute!!

 Family Picture!!

 The Washington Monument is above Owen's head.

 This is a look of what was left of the blossoms along the Tidal Basin

Not as impressive as years past, but it is still nice to be downtown!

My Birthday

This April 12th marked the 150th Anniversary of the Confedracy opening fire on Fort Sumter, starting the Civil War, the 56th Anniversary of FDR's death, the 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, and my 32nd Birthday. We had done most of our celebrating on the weekend, but you should never have to cook on your birthday, so we went out to eat.

 Here I am checking out the menu...

 While the boy is perusing through the wine list...what good taste!

 I know that it isn't cake, but a giant Oreo ice cream sandwich is just plain good.

 Yup...that's my son

 Owen is very interested in Birthday Cards, he would prefer if they were for him, but this is close enough.

 And you have to read all the words, including the note that is written, and he knows if you try to skip any.

 Squishy Face!!!

 I did get some presents, some t-shirts that the boy picked out for me, an ankle brace and a new popcorn popper.

Oh, and the book that my wife alluded to. If you like fantasy books, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Bryan Sanderson (Jordan died before he finished, so Sanderson is finishing the story for him) is a great series.

T-Ball

Yes I did forget the camera on the first day of T-ball. The boy was excited, and I was trying to be sure that we had everything that he would need. It turns out that my son is "That Kid," you know, the one that every coach rolls their eyes when they see him on their team. (Okay, it really isn't that bad, it is just that Owen is the youngest kid, and has never played, while some of the other kids have.) I did remember the camera for the second practice.

 Doing some stretching...he's got this down, he can practically bend himself in half.

 Jumping Jacks are the funniest thing in the world to watch little kids do...

 So the Boy can make it to first base...

 But only sometimes. They were supposed to run to first, and then second. Owen took about six steps toward first and then turned to second...yup, "That Kid"

 Coach is very patient and ran around with Owen.

 

 While his base running may have issues, he really likes the bat. (Who doesn't?)

 He won't listen to me when I try to help him, but he listens to Coach, isn't that how it always is?

 Good Job Buddy!

 We worked for weeks at home on his throwing and got nowhere, but two practices and he is doing fine.

 He likes to take any moment he can find to be silly!

Randomness

And what would any good post be without some random pictures of the boy being random?