Sad Dad

Kimberly took a couple of pictures of the boys in the bluebonnets near Papa C and Grammy's house. She went up to visit last week and left me here all alone, by myself. But don't be sad for me, I just worked all day and then came home to an empty house where I scrounged for some leftovers to eat. I came up with some green beans and a couple of questionable deviled eggs. And just to rub it in my face, Kimberly comes home with vivid tales of kite-flying and lazing about in the sun-drenched bluebonnet fields of Brenham. (I think it's the actual field where they film those saccharine Blue-Bell commercials with the picturesque families.) Oh, well, you probably aren't reading this anyway. You just skipped right down to the pictures. No matter, I've got some worms to go eat, anyway.

Kimberly kisses tiny giraffe

How's that for a headline? Just when you thought we had run out of weird things to do, we take a picture at the zoo so that it looks like Kimberly is kissing a tiny giraffe. Man, are we cool. Just as a side note, while this picture was being taken, I came to realize just how commonplace our dorkiness has become in our household. Friggs was anxious to move on from the giraffes and see the rhinos, but Kimberly said, "Hold on, Friggs, Dad is going to take a picture of me kissing that giraffe. Then we'll go and see the rhinos." Any other kid would certainly have been puzzled at this, but our kid just said, "Okay," and leaned up against the wall to wait. That made me laugh as much as this ridiculous picture. Look closely, and remember, this is a real giraffe that has been "miniaturized down".

I will become fluent.

In an attempt to solidify my resolve, I am posting my new goal for all the world to see. I am using the Rosetta Stone software through our local library to learn Spanish. It will be useful in my job, and plus, I want to be able to watch half of the tv stations that we get in San Antonio. As devout eschewers of cable, we have a ridiculously outdated "rabbit ears" antenna on our television, and therefore only get the local channels. Sometimes they show really cool movies in Spanish, and I sit there watching and trying to recall my high school Spanish. So, if you know Spanish, next time you see me, maybe we can converse. Just keep it simple and speak in a slow, deliberate, and exaggerated manner.

In other news, Friggs put on quite a show at the Riverwalk this past Saturday. We took the boys downtown to see the Deep Sea Adventure at IMAX. Which, by the way, Friggs loved. He's very much into whales and sharks. Kimberly and I were cracking up because it was a 3D video and Friggs was sitting there in his little yellow 3D glasses, oohing and ahhing at everything. If he reached out and grabbed at the screen once, I bet he did it a thousand times. It truly is a realistic experience; he kept reaching out and saying, "Look, those jellyfish are coming at us!" But, back to the show Friggs himself put on. After the movie, we went for a stroll along the Riverwalk. At the end by the mall, there's a kind of rotunda-thing where the river makes a circle. It's a large gathering area with lots of places to sit, there's a food court there and they have a live band playing. The band was some kind of new-age pan flute/indian group. There was a large area in front of the band with tables for people to sit and enjoy the show. Friggs was literally moved by the tribal rhythms and broke into dancing. He went back and forth, right in front of all these people, who were laughing and clapping and pointing. It was hilarious, mostly because of the spontaneity of it, but also because everyone got such a kick out of it. (He was the only one dancing, mind you.) Kim scrambled to get the camera and it only got a few seconds before the memory was full. But I still think it's worth posting. So, here it is: a tribute to the wonderful lack of inhibition that comes with being three years old.

Mark and Tamra Blankinship

We had the whole Bennett clan in San Antonio a couple of weekends ago for Mark and Tamra's wedding. It entailed a lot of people and a busy schedule, which means we had a blast. Here's a few pics from the weekend.



Me and Scoot just killing time. He was his regular, jolly self.




Grammy, or Marilyn, as she was once known, is happily overrun by grandkids. Here we see her with five of the seven.






Friggs, Claire, and Laura. This is the "Second Wave" of Bennett cousins. There are seven total, all under the age of five. Friggs and Claire were inseperable the whole weekend, as usual.


Papa C and Blake. It won't be long and he will be joining his brother in fishing with Papa. But for now he's content to eat paper in a ridiculous hood that has ears on it.

Angry Grandparents

Kimberly took this picture down so that she could put up a new one of all of us. I just got off the phone with Pa and GloGlo and they seemed a tad outraged. "What happended to the picture of you and Blake?!" they asked with hostility. Well, here you go. Sorry for the egregious error.

Various Friggness

Seth has made huge leaps in his language skills in the last few months. This is a recent picture of him on the back porch, which doubles as an enormous canvas for his creativity. He draws pictures, mostly of whale sharks (his favorite animal), and can now write his name and various other words. It's amazing how suddenly his interest in reading came about. Just a few months ago, Kimberly and I made many futile attempts to generate interest in letters. I would draw pictures with him and then say, "That's a cat." No matter what I drew, he acted amazed and excited. But then I would say, "Okay, now let's spell the word cat!", and he would kinda shrug his shoulders like I had suggested we watch paint dry. But suddenly, within the last month or so, every billboard we see, every shirt he wears, anything with letters on it- he has to spell out the word and wants to know what it spells. It's an amazing thing, as a parent, to watch your child learn and see their excitement over new things.








Friggs got to see his best friend, Logan, a few weeks ago when Kim went back up to Kaufman. These guys have a blast, and Seth talks about Logan incessantly for days afterward. Logan is Jarrod and Sarah's son. They are such a great pair of buddies. I love to watch them play in the yard, which mostly entails rescuing imaginary animals and throwing things about. Seth is quite the instigator when they're together. And Logan is his cautious sidekick. I actually overheard one conversation between them where Friggs was laying out the details of how they were going to jump from the coffee table over some various things and land on a pillow several feet away. Logan listened intently and then said, "I don't know, is this safe?" Friggs reassures him that it is and they proceed on. They can also be overheard saying, "We make a great team!" It does kind of make me wonder what kind of mischief Seth will be dragging Logan into in another ten years or so.

Unknown Uncle

Here's one I'll be telling on Laura for years to come. This past weekend, while at the rehearsal dinner for Mark and Tamra's wedding, I had an interesting conversation with my niece, Laura. She is Roger and Beth's three-year-old daughter. I saw her sitting quietly eating her chocolate cake, so I knelt down and said hello. She greeted me warmly and smiled a fudge-filled grin at me. "What are you eating?" I asked.

"Cake." she said matter-of-factly.

"Oh, I see that now. It looks yummy." I then noticed a small pile of eschewed tomatoes beside her plate and asked, "What about these? Are they yummy, too?"

"No," was her reply, "I don't wike tomatoes, so I picked-ed them off!"

I laughed at her cute little voice and then I tried to convince her to put them on her cake and various other silly suggestions. We had a few laughs and then I decided to quiz her on a few things, hoping to get a funny response. Friggs was sitting across from her, but with all the commotion, he wasn't paying us any attention (he had his own piece of cake, too.) I pointed to him and asked Laura, "Who is that?"

"That's Seth!" she said as if I was stupid.

I asked her about a few other people, which she anwered correctly. Then I asked her, "Who am I?"

She was clearly stumped for a second and then declared, "I don't know," and returned to eating her dessert.

I laughed and said, "I'm your Uncle Kyle. Don't you remember me at Grammy's house last Christmas and again just a few weeks ago?"

"I've never seen you before!" she announced with indignance. Of course, we all got a kick out of that and Beth explained that I was Aunt Kimmie's husband and Seth's dad. I do think she remembered her uncle then. Kimberly took a picture to remember the event and I vowed to make myself more memorable in the future. As a side note, Laura is pretty precocious and is known for such statements. In fact, while we were at Chuck and Marilyn's in February, I had to get on to her for something, I don't remember what now, but whatever it was, she stomped off and said, "Fine! Now I'm not going to be nice!"