Mummy is trying to catch up with the huge back log of Sean photographs that have been sitting waiting to be uploaded. There are a year and a half’s worth of photographs in the queue! It’s a holiday weekend and finally there’s a bit of time.

Fireworks After Dark Event - July 3rd, 2009

Sean’s 6th Birthday Party at Merk’s Place, December 17th, 2008

Breakfast With Santa, December 13th, 2008

http://twitpic.com/35jub The hunt is on

http://twitpic.com/35jkf Checking out his goodies

Hesding to the Easter egg hunt at Fuqua School.

http://twitpic.com/35ggi First pic post using Twitter and Mummy’s Blackberry

This Halloween Sean was determined he wanted to be Optimus Prime from Transformers. There was never any other options. We did give in and buy the helmet but the rest was home made. As of two weeks ago his costume consisted of a pile of broken down boxes in the computer work room. The pile had been there for several weeks but I had been unable to figure out how to turn it into Optimus Prime despite Googling the subject to death.

Finally I gave in and made the first cut. After two weeks of cutting, gluing, painting, and a brief encounter with a needle, some fishing line and some elastic the costume to your left was produced. (Click on the photograph for whole gallery.) It had a lot of things I wished were better but Sean loved it. For one afternoon and evening he WAS Optimus Prime!
First we went to the Farmville Downtown Parade where the kids walk up and down Main Street and the retailers and organizations give out candy. Sean got lots and lots of kudos for his costume. There were many exclamations of “It’s Optimus Prime!” “Great Costume!” and “Best Costume of the day!” Sean seemed to get more of a buzz from the attention than the candy.

After the parade we headed home for a while and Sean handed out candy in costume from our front porch. Then we headed out to go trick-or-treating. A quick stop in at Barnes and Noble for some Starbucks sustenance for Mommy and Daddy and we found they were handing out candy so Sean came in with his costume. Then we headed up to High Street.

Last year High Street was teeming with trick-or-treaters and a large number of the residents seemed to be participating. Many of the residents had gone to a lot of trouble decorating their houses and some even provided haunted areas to walk through before a candy reward was distributed. We figured that would be a good place for Sean since it was difficult for him moving around in the costume so we needed a decent size concentration of houses to visit. We started at Leigh and Marcus’ house and then headed down the hill and ended up a good way down before we hit another house taking part in the festivities. Then we walked almost all the way back up before hitting any further houses. Thankfully several houses at that point where accepting trick-or-treaters but by this point the poor wee boy was tired out and the curfew for trick-or-treating was upon us. We offered Sean the idea of removing the leggings so he could walk faster but he was determined to keep the whole thing on.

Thankfully Sean was still getting more fun out of the reaction to his costume than the actual candy collected. He got a lot of attention from the other trick-or-treaters so the lack of houses to visit wasn’t such an issue. The houses we did visit really seemed to enjoy his costume and appreciated seeing a home made effort.

I’m not sure why there was so much less participation this year. There were even yards decorated for Halloween but the occupants of the house were not participating. I know it can get annoying with the attitude of some of the trick-or-treaters** but the majority taking part are well in the spirit and the kids just love Halloween. Lon and I both agreed that we would actually put it in our plus column of a potential residence if it got good trick-or-treat traffic. We fully intend to go all out for the trick-or-treaters who come to us when Sean gets too old to go trick-or-treating.

Anyway, we had an AWESOME Halloween and we had one very happy wee Optimus Prime.

Happy Halloween!!

** To illustrate our understanding of the negative behavior from the trick-or-treaters we had one older girl who came with her family to our house this year. First of all she wasn’t in costume although the younger kids in the family were and second she tried to grab a huge handful of candy from the bowl seriously depleting our stock. Eventually her Mom told her to not be greedy. She walked away with the handful she had managed to grab and looked it over then started muttering about about how she didn’t “… like no lollipops and no fruit-flavor candies.” Then when we took Sean out we left a bowl full of candy for anyone who came by. When we got back we expected the candy to be gone but not the bowl too!

To the relief of Grannies everywhere we got Sean’s haircut. I would ask him occasionally if he wanted a haircut but the answer was always no. Last week we were walking home from the ice cream shop and he was having a hard time eating his ice cream and keeping his hair out of the way. He turned to me and said “I think I want a haircut.” Here are a before and after. The afters were actually taken the next morning before school. Click on either one to see a few more photographs.

Just added a new Gallery from this month’s “First Fridays” event and wanted to share. You may notice Sean’s mouth/face looks swollen on one side. We were playing “Tag” the day before and he took a tumble. His face contacted with the skirting board corner and his tooth must have gone into his cheek a bit. I know it had to hurt because he wanted to take Tylenol (paracetemol brand for the Brits). Usually Sean refuses to touch the stuff even when he feels bad. It’s still a bit swollen but getting better.

I’m sorry it seems like the time between these posts and the Gallery updates are getting longer and longer but life is so full and busy. We are slap bang in the middle of the sweltering Virginia summertime and Sean is enjoying the season of playdates, vacation bible schools, and skint knees.

Since we last met there has been the Heart of Virginia Festival which saw Sean fall in love with “Bouncy Castles.” Any of those big inflatable doo-dads that kids can bounce around on and slide down he absolutely adores.

There have been lots of playdates over the summer with the Mops group which doesn’t meet over the summer. We haven’t been able to attend all but we have been to a few. There was a trip to a new park on May 9th, a trip to Amazement Square in Lynchburg on June 6th and today (July 18th) we went out to someone’s house and the kids all played together mostly in the pool and on the slip and slide. There photos from the first two you can get to by clicking on either of the photographs that follow:

On May 19th we attended a “Camp Out” at Cumberland Presbyterian Church which is a signifcant site on Lee’s Retreat. The Camp Out was held as part of the Jamestown 400 celebrations going on in Virginia. It was of special significance because Sean’s Great, Great, Great Grandfather Frank Penick, who fought in the Civil War, was honored.

On June 9th was the annual Penick Family Reunion - Lon’s Mom’s family. Once again Sean had a great time in the pool but we have a lot of work to do getting him comfortable in the water and ultimately swimming.

That brings us up to 4th of July and we attended the Town’s annual Fireworks After Dark event on the evening of July 3rd. There were more bouncy doo-dads so that combined with fireworks and lots of his friends made for a spectacularly fabulous night for Sean.

In other news there have been several cinema visits to see Shrek, Spiderman III and after a long wait on Sean’s part he finally got to see Transformers. It was so good Sean went back to see it a second time with Daddy and Marcus. The wee boy has been waiting with great anticipation for the Transformers movie since he saw the first trailer! In fact, everyone who visited us had to go into Daddy’s office and be shown the trailer on Daddy’s computer. There was our usually yearly party for Lon’s birthday. It was a more subdued affair than usual this year but still lots of fun. Sean has attended two Bible Schools at local churches to be duly indoctrinated He had a lot of fun but Daddy is kind of perturbed at the science lesson which involved discussing Abraham and Sarah having binoculars just under 3 Millennia before they were invented! We have had one family reunion so far and another is coming up at the beginning of August.

Hopefully that will do for now and below a few more links to galleries of random photographs taken in this time frame. Particularly funny is the most recent of Sean playing Spider Solitaire. If we were to take a picture of Granny Pat on a Sunday talking to Mummy on the phone it would be a very similar photograph

Added a few more galleries… Of particular note is the gallery accessed if you click on the pic of Sean holding up his foot for the camera. Sean LOVES Gorillaz and in particular he loves the song “Dare.” The videos are clips of Sean dancing along while watching the Gorillaz concert on tv. He particularly likes the part where Shaun Ryder yells “It’s Dare!”

There is a set of photographs from the church Easter Egg Hunt we went to last Saturday, March 7th. Funnier was the Hunt we went to the following Tuesday. It was put on by the local radio station with lots prizes for the kids. Sean only got 4 eggs and there were 1000s. After they gave out the prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd largest number of eggs found it was asked who picked up the least. They actually started the “bidding” at 5 so I held up 4 fingers. The person on the mike knew us so he asked me if Sean only got 4 which I confirmed. Turns out there was a prize for the least number of eggs found. It was $50 savings bond. It didn’t mean much to Sean but we thought that was pretty cool!

Sean had a lot of fun the week before Easter as Jennifer was off school and came to work with her Mom each day. I don’t think it was so much fun for Jennifer running around after Sean all week. Sherry said she would treat Jennifer with a trip to the cinema. We had intended to take Sean to see “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” so I asked if Jenn had indicated wanting to see it. She did so Lon and I took her and Sean to see it Easter Sunday night. It wasn’t too painful to sit through as an adult although I wouldn’t have gone to see it if not for Sean. There will probably be a few cinema trips over the next few months with Spiderman 3, Transformers and Shrek 3 all scheduled for release. Shrek 2 was Sean’s first cinema trip outside the womb. Funnily enough, if you count in-utero, Spiderman 1 was his first. I guess we’ll have to skip Grindhouse for a few years yet … although it would interesting just to see the furore we could spread in town if we were to be seen taking him to it

That’s all for now!

MJx