Day 1,344 - Captain America Goes to the Hardware Store

I am not above bribery.

There, I said it. I know that many a parent has claimed to have a code that they will not break...ever. I know that early on, it feels like one can keep that promise to themselves. That they will never give in. I'm here to tell you that eventually that moment will come when you are willing to bribe your kid to make your own life easier. Actually, on second thought, I prefer the term "incentivize". Sounds less harsh than bribery.

Recently, Bethany and I reached the point where we had to incentivize Ethan in order to finally get him to poop in the toilet instead of waiting for naptime when he could just go in his pull-up. The rule was that when he received ten stickers on his poop chart, then we would take him shopping for a toy of his choosing. Oddly enough, once that first successful bowel movement occurred, it didn't take him any time at all to fill out his chart.

When the time came for Ethan to pick out his reward, he and I headed to Five Below to begin our search for the perfect reward. While I figured we would eventually have to go to Target or something of that ilk, it didn't take Ethan long to decide on the perfect reward: a Captain America costume. Luckily for us, this costume was even one that he could put on all by himself.

Decision, decision, decision.

Over the past few weeks, Ethan has spent many an hour cosplaying as Captain America and fighting evil all over our house. Of course, there was one slight thing missing from his ensemble: Captain America's iconic red, white, and blue shield. Therefore, this morning, I set out to rectify that. Armed with a plastic Spider-Man ring, the lid from our animal cracker jug, and a print-out of Captain America's shield, I got to work. By the time I was done, Ethan now had a shield of his very own to proudly brandish when fighting imaginary Nazis.

Ethan loves pretending to be Captain America so much that it's been pretty much impossible to just keep the costume at home. For example, it hasn't been out of the ordinary for him to wear it to school when dropping Ellie off or picking her up. However, he has recently decided to up the ante of where he wears the costume. Over the past couple of weeks, he now is a firm believer that he needs to wear his costume to the hardware store.

It started simply enough last week when we made a quick trip to Ace Hardware to get, you guessed it, hardware. Since we couldn't find exactly what we wanted there, we had to make our way to Lowe's. In both stores, Ethan paraded around, proudly sporting his Captain America costume. My favorite moment of our Lowe's trip had to be when an employee thought she heard me telling Ethan that we needed to find the bathroom. In reality, we were looking for bathroom hardware. Her response was that "Even Superheroes have to stop fighting crime and use the potty from time-to-time!"

While I assumed wearing the Captain America costume to the hardware store was a one-time thing, Ethan certainly proved me wrong today. First, Ethan again wore his costume to school to drop Ellie off. From there, we were going to go to Smithville for storytime. However, we had about an hour to kill before storytime began. Therefore, we made our way to Menards so that I could price some things for a proposed home project of mine. Ethan asked innocently if he could go into the hardware store dressed as Captain America. My proposal was that he could as long as his shield stayed in the car. Therefore, I once again found myself wandering the aisles of a hardware store with a superhero by my side.

It actually is pretty fun to go to the hardware store with a superhero. For one thing, everyone is sure to smile when they see Ethan traversing the aisles.  More importantly, he'll only be a kid once. If he wants to go to the hardware store dressed as a superhero, it's not like it hurts anyone. In fact, I'd bet that he brings joy to pretty much anyone he meets. That's a pretty cool thing if I say so myself.

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Day 1,338 - The One Where Ellie Goes to First Grade

Happy Fall Y'all!

Actually, I realize that it's not fall yet but it kind of feels like it could be. That probably has something to do with the fact that Ellie is now back in school. If I'm being honest, that makes me a little sad to know that my summer with my buddy is over. While I didn't cry like last year, I still struggled with leaving Ellie there just since I wasn't really ready for her to go back. That being said, I did receive a nice little surprise this year that I didn't get last year.

On the first day of school, students have the opportunity to have their parents accompany them into the building for their first day. When I first asked Ellie on Sunday night and again on Monday morning, she was "much too cool" to have her dad and brother escort her to her classroom. By the way, those are my words, not hers. Of course, as everyone knows, the words of a six-year-old are made to be broken. As we drove past the building and saw the legion of parents accompanying their kids into Fox Hill Elementary, Ellie began to have a little remorse about her decision to not have Ethan and me take her into the building. Finally, she spoke up and asked if we could take her in. So, that's exactly what we did.

As we made our way from our parking spot one block over, it was fun to watch Ellie skip down the sidewalk in pure excitement to be heading back to school. Of course, she was still dealing with a little trepidation over going back to school. That wasn't going to stop her from still having fun though! Finally, we made our way inside the building where Ellie told us that she was "going to lead the way to the classroom". She did exactly that and before we knew it, she was giving both her brother and me massive hugs before sending us on our way. On my last glance back, I was pleased to see her gleefully hugging long-lost friends and saying "Hi" to the new people she didn't yet know.

As Ethan and I made our way out of Fox Hill Elementary, there was only one thing left for us to do with our day: head to Chick-Fil-A for our yearly first day of school breakfast. This has actually been something that we have done consistently since Ellie started preschool. On her first day, we go to CFA and share a breakfast sandwich and then follow that up with a milk shake for dessert. Yes, I know that it's probably extremely unhealthy and unnecessary but it's tradition. Actually, I'm not sure how this tradition will work when Ethan starts kindergarten. I guess I'll just be that lonely guy sitting in Chick-Fil-A at 9:30 in the morning eating a breakfast sandwich and milk shake. Wow, that's just kind of sad to think about, right?

A sad little Ethan thinking about the chicken that awaits him.

The good thing though is that we don't have to sit around and ruminate on missing Ellie. I mean, don't get me wrong; we both miss her. However, between house projects and enjoying the warm, sunny days, we have so much to keep us busy that 4:00 comes before we know it. In fact, come to think of it, I've got some grocery shopping to do right now. That will certainly fill some time!

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Day 1,332 - Training Camp(ing) with the Chiefs

Like any young lad, Ethan has one great dream in life. More than anything, he wants to sing "Pat Mahomes, Take Me Home" to Patrick Mahomes. It's a relatively simple request. Probably completely unobtainable, but still simple. Like any good father though, I want to do everything I can to help my kids achieve their dreams. With that in mind, on Monday morning, we made our way to St. Joseph to check out Chiefs Training Camp at Missouri Western State University. 

While I have been to Training Camp before, Ellie and Ethan have never been. With the two of them getting older, I decided this was finally the year to try taking them. With Camp starting each morning at 9:15, we left home around 8:15 to head towards St. Joseph. My assumption was that would give us more than enough time to get parked and into the Training Camp area to watch events unfold.

Upon our arrival at Mo West, we parked the car and headed inside the Stadium area to watch practice unfold. I mostly let Ellie lead the way as she had grand dreams for what she wanted her experience to be like. First of all, she wanted to sit in an actual seat instead of having to stand. Second of all, she wanted that seat to be up as high as the bleachers go. Finally, after walking past approximately five other sets of bleachers, Ellie found the exact place she had been looking for. With that, we climbed the bleachers and took our seats. 

Almost immediately, Ethan began asking where Pat Mahomes was. Once I told him that Pat would be wearing a yellow no-contact jersey, it didn't take Ethan long at all to spot him leading stretches in the middle of the field. While Ethan was preoccupied with starting at Pat Mahomes, I entertained myself by watching the wide receivers practice fielding punts. Ellie, for her part, was intrigued less by the wide receivers and more by the punter. She had never actually seen a football go so high in the air before so she was loving watching it.

After about 30 minutes of watching various aspects of practice, Ethan was in need of a bathroom break. After fulfilling that urge, we headed over to the Kids Play Zone so that Ellie and Ethan could enjoy some play time. The first thing they wanted to tackle was a large Chiefs-themed bounce house complete with slide. After that, Ellie wanted to run through an inflatable sprint course so she and Ethan took turns following each other through that course. 

After checking out the inflatables, the kids got serious about fine-tuning their football prowess at various drill stations. The first was the Scoop and Score drill where a kid would hop over a series of obstacles, pick up a football about halfway through, and then sprint the rest of the way to the endzone. After a couple of times each of doing that, they moved on to a simple Obstacle course consisting of "hurdles" and a slalom-style course. After that though, Ellie decided to tackle her own personal Everest in the form of the rock wall. She strapped into a climbing apparatus and tackled a portable climbing wall. She successfully scaled the Easy and Medium-level walls before deciding she was done even though there was still a "Hard" wall to go. For the record, I'm convinced she would have gotten up that one with no problems at all.

 

After wrapping things up at the Kids Play Zone, we wandered back to the practice fields to watch the tail end of practice. While I'm not an autograph guy, we wandered over into the autograph section just so that we could see some of the players up close. Ethan definitely enjoyed trying to pick out some of his favorites while asking me the names of anyone he didn't know. He also loved watching Pat Mahomes do a series of TV interviews. Even though Mahomes never got close enough for Ethan to serenade him, he was still more than happy to see all his favorites up close.

While I would consider our time at Chiefs Training Camp to be a rousing success, there was one disappointment for Ellie and Ethan. One of their goals had been to meet KC Wolf and unfortunately he was nowhere in sight on this occasion. As I told them, "It's ok because there's always next year."

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Day 1,328 - $TEXAS

"...And you wagered...Texas with a dollar sign in front of it."

I know for a fact that classic "Celebrity Jeopardy" bit from Saturday Night Live has absolutely nothing to do with anything. However, just thinking about it made me laugh. As a result, I decided it was the perfect way to introduce a blog post about our family trip to Texas. Hopefully it made someone else chuckle at least a little bit.

On Saturday the 30th, the four of us piled into the Traverse, hopped on I-35, and headed south towards Texas. The reason for said visit? We wanted to visit our friends, the Lindholts, who moved to Fort Hood earlier this year for Allen's new job as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. Of course, Ellie has spent most of 2022 pining to see her friend, Lydia, so that played a big part in us arranging this trip. On Day 1 though, we wouldn't be going to Fort Hood. Instead, we had plans to stop for the night in Runaway Bay, Texas to spend the night with Aaron and Eileen, Bethany's cousins, at their picturesque lake house.

By the time we reached Runaway Bay, we were all definitely ready to burn off some energy and stretch our legs. Ellie and Ethan spent their time leading up to dinner basically sprinting back and forth across the backyard with Aaron's and Eileen's grandchildren. After dinner was served, Aaron had a surprise for the kids as he was taking them out on a boat ride around the lake. For the record, Bethany and I had been privy to the surprise so we had made certain to pack the kids' life jackets for the occasion. 

While out on the lake, Ellie became enthralled by watching her cousin, Levi, tubing behind the boat. Once Aaron stopped the boat and Ellie if she was interested in tubing, she wasted no time in joining Levi on the tube for a trip around the pond. While Aaron kept the boat at a pretty slow pace to begin with, it didn't take Ellie long to get to the point where she was consistently encouraging him to go faster and faster. Interestingly enough, at one point, Levi went tumbling off the tube but Ellie continued to cling tight. By the time she was done, Ellie had a smile plastered across her face from her trip across the lake.

 

The next day, we left Runaway Bay around 9:00 am to continue on our trek towards Fort Hood. With only three hours ahead of us, we took the opportunity to enjoy listening to some audio books. Before we knew it, we had arrived at Fort Hood and pulled into the Visitors' Welcome Center where we found Allen and Lydia patiently waiting for us. The reunion between Ellie and Lydia was honestly the stuff of legends. It's basically how you would expect two five-year-old best friends who have been separated for half a year to react upon their reunion. Before long, Bethany and I received our security clearance and we were on our way to the Lindholt home to see the rest of the family.

After reconnecting over lunch with plenty of time for playing, we all set out for the town of Salado for the afternoon. When we arrived, we immediately wandered into a creek that runs alongside the town. In some parts, the water was so crystal clear that we could watch baby fish and/or tadpoles swimming with the current. Once we wrapped up our time playing in the creek, we changed out of our swimsuits and headed to Rio Salado Cocina for some awesome Mexican cuisine. Allow me to take this opportunity to brag about the fact that at a table with five children and four adults, we only had one spilled drink the entire meal. I think that's rather impressive myself. After heading back to "Casa de Lindholt", we proceeded to get the kids ready for bed. For our trip, Ellie would be sharing a full-sized bed with her friend, Lydia, while Ethan would be sleeping on a bunk bed in the boys room with his friend Miles and his older brother, Jackson.

The next morning, our merry little group set out relatively early for Waco, TX and the Magnolia Silos. Of course, there was one very important stop that we had to make along the way: the famous Buc-ee's gas station chain. We have heard plenty of stories about Buc-ee's over the years but truly didn't know what we were in for. I'll be the first to say that the scale of the store totally shocked me. Imagine your local Target as a gas station and you have a fairly apt comparison for the size of this establishment. After a short sojourn inside the store where Ellie and Ethan pretty much begged for every piece of merch with a beaver emblazoned on it, we all loaded up and continued on our way to Waco.

Once we arrived at the Magnolia Silos, we immediately made our way inside the Magnolia Home store for a rousing game of "Guess That Price". For the record, we lost the game in resounding fashion. From there we made our way outside to a wiffleball field sitting in the middle of the complex. There, Allen and Kayla entertained the five kids for a little bit while Bethany and I explored the rest of the Magnolia complex. Once we met back up with our friends, we headed toward a courtyard where food trucks were parked so that we could eat lunch. Of course, no trip to Magnolia is possible without a mason jar full of sweet tea. Actually, I don't know if that's true or not but I couldn't resist. While we waited for our meals, the kids made themselves right at home in some super comfortable bean bag chairs. Once we finished our lunches, the kids spent a little time playing soccer in the courtyard until we all decided it was time to make our way back to Fort Hood.

The next day, Tuesday, would mark our last full day in Texas. Unfortunately it started with a bit of a shocker as we learned that our hosts were both COVID positive. However, after a little deliberation, we decided that there was really no reason to change our plans especially since we'd already spent two full days together. Our plans for the day did change slightly though as we were no longer comfortable going to a local pool. No worries though as we had plenty of fun around the Lindholts' house. Allen spent most of the day smoking a delicious brisket that we had brought all the way from Missouri to share together so it was just as well that we were around the house. The kids spent plenty of time playing on a swingset and an inflatable water slide in Allen's and Kayla's backyard. As for me, I spent a fair amount of time hanging out with Jackson and learning the intricacies of Fortnite and Minecraft. For the record, I'm not really good at either but it was still fun!  

 

Wednesday came quicker than any of us really wanted. However, Bethany had to be back at work (from home) bright and early on Thursday morning. Therefore, we bid adieu to our friends around 8 am and hit the road for a marathon trip back to Missouri. Of course, we did have the audiobook of Wonder to keep us entertained for approximately eight and a half hours. By the time we made it home, Bethany and I would both attest that the drive went much better than we ever could have expected. In fact, we now are confident that we can take the kids on long road trips!

That  being said, I don't think we're ready to take on another long road trip any time soon. Let's stretch those bad boys out at least a little bit.

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