Perpatratin' Subject: The Cubbies

If you haven't noticed by now, I'm a Cubs fan. As the saying goes: any family that roots for the Cubs together, stays together. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure if Kari is on board yet. And I'm not sure why. I mean, she is into the Colts now (she's come a long way since thinking Manning's first name was Pete). She respects IU basketball, or at least the NCAA tournament (check past blog entries for evidence of this). She has a similar distaste for the bad boy Pacers at this point. Even the Indy 500...she's down for the get down. But my beloved Cubs! They gets no love from the boo. And I'm such a joy to watch Cubs games with during the playoffs (if joy means yelling, screaming, and long stares into space).

The Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908. This is the 100th year of failure. 100 YEARS!! I can't think of a better underdog story than the Cubs. Year after year of misery, with agonizing inconsistency. Another famous saying: if you don't know your past, you don't know your future. But what if...what if this is the year? (On the 100th anniversary year at that!)

So now the question is, do I try to get Kari excited? Do I get her emotionally involved? Do I let her experience the typical Cubs postseason heartbreak? It's almost like allowing a loved one to seriously injure himself/herself (one last famous saying: if you willingly allow a loved one to get hurt, then you deserve a punch in the balls). So, what do you think?

Rainbow Camp

This last week we were at Rainbow Camp. For those that don't know what this is all about... there is background info on our post from last year http://kueblerfamilyfun.blogspot.com/2007/07/rainbow-at-rainbow-camp.html

So it was our 5th year together... my 13th if you count my 5 years as a camper. We had an amazing time. We came back tired physically but spiritually refreshed!!!!

Eli had a blast. He showed off his new head-butting skills to everyone. (He has started to head-butt when he is mad, something we are real proud of!)

Eli's favorite part of camp was hands down the BARN. Although I enjoy watching him enjoy things I was over the barn about a hour into our first visit... but Eli was not. I would say we averaged about 2-3 hours a day in the barn. And, although I am sure God created flies for a reason, I do not enjoy them swarming around my head while I smell poop for hours at a time (yes Mike, I said POOP). At one point the mini-horse bit Eli. After I knew he was OK I thought "Yes... he will be afraid of the animals and we can get out of here." (Does that make me a bad mother?) Oh how wrong I was, while he was crying, he got more corn and once again stuck his fingers in the horse's mouth. (I think his logic reasoning skills are developing slow due to the fact he beats his head on hard surfaces when he is mad.) At one point I tried to get him away by taking a golf cart to the other side of camp and having us dropped off. But, Eli found it again. He cried for the entire 20 minutes he spent finding his way back to the barn. Did I mention how much I love the barn?!?

Here are some clips from the BARN.

Feeding the animals hay... again and again and again!

What did we do when the animals got full you ask? Eli did what was natural... he tickled them. The second video is a little dark, but those are little chicks.
BIG thank you to Joel for enduring this and taking one for the team... He got pooped on by a few of these cute little guys.

One night he has the opportunity to bottle feed a baby raccoon with his friend Sammy. Odd I know! Sammy's mommy and I tag team the nurse role at camp. Sammy and Eli are exactly one year apart and had a blast together this year!
Memaw and Pepaw came up to visit for a few hours one day. Thanks for coming to see us!!!

I will let them comment on what they thought of the barn.

Pinball master

Eli is at the stage in which he HAS to do everything we do. You can tell by this video he has been watching us closely as we play pinball. About once a day we think he wants to go outside, but then be begins to bang on the door to our finished attic above the garage... he wants to play pinball. What is really sad is he has topped my lowest score.

Why not to leave your 19 month old upstairs alone

Eli mastered the stairs a long time ago and we let him wander the house being checked on every so often and when we don't hear him... this is what I found last time I knew it was too quite upstairs.