Backtrack then on to Endor and the Greek Islands

Marc's mother provided us with other photos of our trip to the pumpkin patch. These have some great shots of him feeding a goat at the petting zoo as well as other ones from when he was an Ewok at his daycare harvest fair.

We also got some great photos of a fun time spent at Kansas City's best Greek restaurant Tasso's celebrating Kim's "29th" birthday.

This post won't be too long on text. We'll let the photos of the most amazing boy ever tell the story. Also, tonight we'll make the attempt to take him to a few houses to trick or treat. Since he's wearing a head piece, we'll see how that goes over coupled with the fact that he hates getting in and out of the car repeated times. Hopefully, that will change next year. . .

More pumpkin patch fun:

Kim's birthday at Tasso's:

Jakob's Harvest Fair at daycare, part 2:

A mouse in the pumpkin patch

Last week, Marc was in Orlando for a business meeting and got to enjoy the warm Florida sun. Meanwhile, Kim and the little boy were back in Kansas City enjoying the erratic temperature changes that only the Midwest can bring. By the way, if you haven't seen the video of him walking, check out www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1IlVLaoL4I.

Marc did make sure to reward their suffering when he came back. While Jakob is still a little young for a visit to the world's most popular mouse, it doesn't mean we shouldn't get him started now. It's inevitable, right?

As long as we divert his attention, he forgets he's wearing his first pair of mouse ears and devotes his efforts to his first Mickey doll. If that's not enough, he's now got an official Orlando House of Blues hoodie to sport this spring (it's quite large on him right now).

Kim enjoyed parent/teacher conferences last week but this time around got to work in her room during the evening so it was a win-win. She met with some of her students' parents and got some much needed work done. She claims she's still buried, but at least the top of Everest can be seen again.

Last weekend, we went with Marc's mom to the local pumpkin patch. It's a full scale operation. Marc's mom got some great photos of Jakob feeding some very pregnant goats at the petting zoo, but we don't have those yet. He did also brave the big black tunnel successfully and the pumpkin pile his parents made him sit on for gratuitous photos. All in all a great day.

Sunday, we went to Marc's parents' house to see the grand unveiling of Jakob's Halloween costume. It rocks and hats off to Marc's mom Delene for some amazing work. We're not sure Jakob completely enjoys the part that goes on his head, but as long as we can get a few photos out of it, it should make for one heck of a second Halloween. We don't want to blow the surprise, but we'll have plenty of photos from his Harvest Event this Thursday evening along with Halloween next Friday.

This weekend is also Kim's 29th birthday (again)! We're very excited and Jakob has done his best to read his mom's mind in order to give her exactly what she wants. We'll have photos of the festivities next week as well.

It's cold again. Seems we skipped fall all together. Could the Chiefs BE any worse this year? :)

More soon.

The wait is over!

Like most newscasts, we thought we'd open with a few things that we reported on in the past before we get to the juicy stuff that happened last night.



Here are more photos of Marc and Jakob at Kearney's Homecoming two weekends ago where Jakob officially learned how to drink from a straw. He's totally got it down pat now:






Also, over time he has developed this habit of taking whatever he has in his hands or has been given and puts it behind his head. This includes, burp rags, blankets, toys, food, etc. Nice. We caught evidence of this in the car a few nights ago. Hadji, as he is now known as, did the following:

This is just a random photo of Jakob's girlfriend, Bella, and her father Ryan who really is a good guy. Really. Seriously. He just looks upset in photos. Not sure why, but funny nonetheless:

Kim is trying to get Jakob to read. Yuck. Marc works on making sure his outer image is right, not that it's a hard job. The kid is a model/athlete/scholar in the making already. Kim takes care of his intellectual side. We're pretty sure he's going to be humming "Hail to the Chief" soon. We've started referring to him as Governor Jakob around the house. See below the natural progression of chewing, behind the head check, reading, getting disinterested and coming for the camera as it unfolds:

Now, the big news you've all been waiting for. . . as a result of the coolness of my parents' cat Boots, Jakob walked around like he'd been doing it for years. He wanted so desperately to get a handful of the top of the cat's tail that he broke free form the safety of our fingers to go after it.

Sadly, we did not have our camera with us. . .

Because of this revelation, we're going to head to Toy's R Us and find something remote controlled for him to chase. Less to clean up and Marc is allergic to cats and dogs.

Tonight we have dinner with friends at Cafe Italia, tomorrow small group and Friday Marc will attend the PRSA PRISM Awards hoping the project he worked on won an award. This weekend, we're heading to the Renaissance Festival with some friends and Kim will be taking part in Special Olympics bowling with her kids on Saturday. Next week Marc heads to Orlando for a business trip. Good but busy times ahead!!

More soon.

Holy smokes, it's fall!

So, it's been quite a while since we last met and a lot has happened. Here's the agenda for this blog entry:

- Chiefs/Raiders Game

- Walking

- Bath time Update
- Sick/Cutting teeth

- Jesse James Days

- Kearney Homecoming weekend

- Bella's Party

- Renaissance Festival

You can click on one of the above links and it will take you directly to that article on here. Pretty cool. Have you tried it? Okay, just kidding. You can't really do that. But it would be neat if you could, right?

First, in Week 2 of the regular NFL season, Jakob and daddy got to watch their first Chiefs/Raiders rivalry game together. Jakob was decked out in his red Chiefs jersey and daddy had on his silver and black sweatshirt and pants. As they sat in the basement and the Raiders ran up the score, Jakob did what he does best, fell asleep. Marc said, "Lazy Sunday afternoon, sitting in the basement watching the Raiders winning over the Chiefs, holding my son who is sacked out in my arms. What's better than this?"

Jakob continues to attempt to walk, but his feelings about it change from time to time. Some days he's really excited about walking and is very upset when we try to hold him. Other days, he doesn't want to walk at all and feels crawling, like air travel, gets him there faster. We'll keep hoping he takes more than five steps very soon.

We are pleased to report that after some home therapy of sponge baths and bathing in the tub with him for a couple of days, Jakob is back and again loving to be in the tub on his own. As a matter of fact, now he can't wait to get in and almost jumps out of our arms! Good news all around.

For the past week and a half to two weeks Jakob has been sick. He's gone from having a diaper rash to coughing and sneezing to being tired and cranky and everything in between. We know he's cutting two more molars as our fingers can report when trying to get something out of his mouth! He's taken all the anxiety of bath time and it now comes out when we try to change his diaper. That's exciting. Bathing can be changed up a bit, but we can't go without changing him.

A few weekends ago we went to Jesse James Days in Kearney and watched the parade with Nana. First we had pancake breakfast at the VFW followed by a fun time of loud music and sirens, marching bands walking through horse poop, election coverage of candidates and lots of candy thrown our way.

Last Friday, Marc walked in the Kearney Homecoming parade with the alumni float. Jakob got to see it with Nana and Pape then afterward they all went to the local great Mexican restaurant La Fuente. When news of this lunch outing reached Kim she was not happy as it's one of her favorite places to eat. :)

Last Saturday and Sunday we had two party invites for Jakob's friends. On Saturday, we went with him to visit his friend Teagan who turned one and then Sunday we went with him to see his friend Bella who also turned one. For more on the Sunday party, check out www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHFqYNRFf4A and see below:

This week Marc was able to finally get our new laptop hooked up to the wireless router at home so now we have a network our laptop and Kim's work laptop can use at the same time anywhere in the house!! Today our new extended server/mass storage device should arrive so we won't have to house any of our movie, music or photo files on the laptop hard drive. Yeah!

This weekend we will be visiting one of Marc's coworkers whose son is turning three on Saturday. We got him a plasma car and it rocks. We're definitely getting one for us one of these days. Do a Google search for it and you'll want one too. On Sunday, Marc will lead the Venue service with his friend Tanya at Vineyard Church.

Next weekend, we're going with some friends to the final weekend of the Renaissance Festival which should be interesting and we look forward to see Jakob's reaction.

More soon.