Collin's Wild and Crazy Holiday Weekend

A weekend can't start without a fashion statement jacket. Thanks Nana for sending Collin a 'pace Ranger Jacket. No, we 'till can't say the letter "s" at the beginning of words with any real consistency. Buzz Light Year forgives him though. And, once Mommy removed ALL visible tags, he was pretty convinced that the jacket was no longer painful to wear. Why do kids insist that tags are like acid?


Since Collin wakes up EVERY stinking morning and says "I want to go to the karim" or "I want to go to the dinosaur museum," we figured it would be fun to take him to the aquarium. What? You didn't know that's what karim meant? We also thought it would be fun to attempt to push him into the shark petting tank. Unfortunately, he's awfully strong for a kid his size and despite the slipperiness of the edge, he managed to stay on dry land.


Logically enough, there is a large bird enclosure at the aquarium (insert sarcasm here). Collin seems perplexed by this as well. See.


Despite the friendliness (read: hunger) of the birds, Collin was largely suspicious of the fact that the birds were more interested in pecking everything in their vicinity than in being friends and decided that he did not really want a bird to perch on any part of his body for fear that a bird, as we learned later, might bite his face off. Note his expression of "nu-uh," vs. Mommy's expression of, "oh, but it would make such a cute picture," or, "don't you want to hold a birdie? it won't hurt you."


I think he might have had the right idea. Don't you? This is sweet little birdie eating my face. Well, my ear. He didn't like my ear. Nor did he like my necklace, my hair, my sunglasses or any other bit of me he sampled. I think he was pissed we didn't spend the three dollars on nectar.


After the aquarium, we went for a walk at White Point nature preserve where Grandpa told Collin what Collin believes to be lies about swallows burrowing in the ground. Collin has never heard of birds making nests in the ground before so he's pretty sure that Grandpa is a damn liar.


Collin's wild obsession with weaponry has taken a turn for the worse lately. It's a little upsetting but Mommy is ignoring it. Notice the double fisting it here. Light saber and Blaster. If I'd let him, he'd take that blaster to the bathroom with him. But I digress. Grandpa and Collin engaged in an epic, and I do mean epic blaster, light saber, and sword battle while I made dinner. Grandpa is still recovering.
There was tickling involved, of course, but that was the least of it. I think the tickling breaks were just to give Grandpa a break from the real action.

I mean, look at the sweat on this kid. He's not messing around. He had to break Grandpa in early. He's here for over a week. He had to make sure he knew what "playtime" means. Right?

Bring it Grandpa! You are Rachel's Father! Tee hee.

Excuse the red eye. Mommy is too lazy to correct it properly. I actually did correct it but lost the version I saved it to. Anyway. This is the result of the epic battle. Can you tell he had fun?

So, the next morning...I'm not saying Collin has any reason to call Grandpa a liar or anything but Collin's got strawberry plants in our backyard and bugs ate all his strawberries. It's sad and terrible. He was bummed. Grandpa went out and bought strawberries last night and dumped a handful on the plant and took the boy out there this morning and told him the plant produced a bumper crop. Of course the boy was fooled and overjoyed. Damn liar, I tell you. A good Grandpa, and a good trick though.

Today we went on a torture excursion. It wasn't meant to be though. This morning they were going to ring the Korean Friendship Bell. I guess they only ring it twice a year. Apparently, what was supposed to be twenty minutes of speeches turned into over an hour of boring dignitaries dragging on into endless droning. It was not something Collin wanted to sit though. Let's be honest. It was not something ANYONE wanted to sit through. We thought they'd NEVER ring the bell. But, I got a kiss.

Thankfully, it was before the snail got a kiss.

Yep, this snail. Collin played with (tortured) this snail for a good ten minutes. The snail? He is quite possibly the dumbest snail on the planet. He never once retracted his squishy little head. He kept sticking it out further and further and further to see who this adorable little kid was that was playing with him. Stupid snail. Curious, do snails have brains?

Oh, and I got a flower. What a morning. The snail kissing and the flower? STILL waiting for the bell to ring. It was actually amazing how long people kept talking about how they were going to ring the bell and actually not ringing it. When they rang it, it was loud. That was kind of it. We're taking Collin to his first fireworks show tonight. We'll see how he likes it. Or, if he can make it. He's not a real night owl.