A Windy Day (J.Marathon Episode 10)

It was a gusty day....almost perfect to fly a kite. We hiked up through the woods and bluff behind our house to the park. We flew kites for 2 hours! It was a good thing that Jonas stopped to pee on the way to the park so we didn't have to worry about that interrupting the kite flying.

Local FunTimes (J.Marathon Episode 9)

Slideshow of some recent memories

It was a crazy couple of hours this Saturday Morning. After our normal Saturday morning routine we headed downtown for the "Food for Thought" festival. We ended up having an amazing sampling of Madison's kid friendly offerings. I wish we would have got snapshots of everything, but we don't so here is a list of a couple of hours of a Saturday morning in Madison.

1. Bucky Bash: A giant 50 foot high Bucky Badger and the UW marching band performing for thousands of fans at the UW engineering courtyard before the Badger game.
2. Fire Station #1: The firefighters were maintaining and practicing with their ladder truck. Jonas got a chance to see the ladder up 100+ feet and talk to the firefighters.
3. The Overture Center was celebrating its 5th anniversary. We stopped there on the way to the Capitol Square and on the way back from the Capitol Square. At the Overture center we enjoyed cake, a violin concerto, a kids karaoke band, a dance contest for kids, full costume for kids dress-up courtesy of the Madison Children's Theater, and many other little things.
4. We stopped to grab some 7-hour old cheese curds at the Farmer's Market on the Capitol Square.
5. We toured the Capitol Grounds running around, observing, climbing steps, smiling, and getting drinks from the funky water fountains.
6. Stopped at the "Food for Thought" festival. We received some free roasted peppers from a local chef. Checked out tons of info all about food. Jonas made a food-necklace, fed some chickens, ate some organic popcorn, cheese-curds, tomatoes, and apples while seeing things such as giant grapes on stilts and peas climbing stoplights. We stopped by many booths and stopped briefly to listen to Michael Pollen speak.
7. On the way back Jonas played horseee on the marble rails of the Capitol and ran around on the Capitol lawn with a bunch of other kids doing the same thing.
8. We listened and watched all sorts of musical performers: Scottish bagpippers, three different guitar acts, banjo players, drumming groups, and flute players.
9. We stopped by an outdoor concert on State Street by a New Orleans Style Dixie Land Band.
10. Of course there were balloon animals and face painting and lots of window shopping.

We laughed a bunch that we were able to do so many amazing things in just a few hours. We are always amazed at all the stuff that Jonas gets a chance to experience. The total pricetag for all this: $4 for the cheese-curds. Thats it!

Football Coma (J.Marathon Episode 8)

The Packers season opener gave Jonas a chance to get reacquainted with the TV. Go Pack Go.

Unusual Animals (J.Marathon Episode 7)

Unusual Animals: (In no particular order)

Bat: During the clean up from Jonas's family birthday party we had an unexpected visitor. It seems as though the open door to the backyard was an invitation for more mammals to attend the after-party. The bat flew in through the open screen door and created a bit of post party havoc. Jonas, Ma, and the pets were able to sequester themselves in a bedroom while Pa gently escorted the bat back outside using sonar interference techniques. It was a great way to end the day. Jonas now wears his Dominic chef hat whenever he is inside to protect himself from bats while he is preparing meals or riding his bike indoors. (Not really)

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Mouse: Ernie the cat caught a mouse from somewhere. He likes to display his prey and show it off a little. Ernie chose to drop off his prey mouse right next to some of Jonas's toys. Lo and behold, 2 seconds later the mouse had disappeared. After some time trying to figure out where the heck it had gone Ernie gave up. Pa was left to inspect the toys and there seemed to be one culprit that showed the most promise for housing the mouse fugitive, Jonas's garbage truck. Pa searched the garbage truck interior cabin, the wench apparatus, the grinder, the gas tanks, and the bins to no avail. Pa couldn't figure out how the mouse could have escaped. Oscar the cat came along and showed particular interest in Jonas's garbage truck as well. Pa rechecked the garbage truck for the 5th time and got a peek at the ultimate hiding space, inside the well of the tire. The garbage truck must have some special run-flat tires without internal walls thus allowing the mouse to nestle in and wait out a ride to the garbage dump for an easy escape. (Thinks Star Wars Trash Dump Millennium Falcon Han Solo) The mouse took a few revolutions and was dismissed.

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Dog: Chew, Chew, Chew.....Jonas's dog Rocky has been chewing on his hip. Pa said, "How about some reverse chaps for the dog?" Ten minutes later Rocky had a custom fit reverse-chaps-hip-chew-chew protector. It worked pretty well considering all the delicate anatomy in the area, but Ma was worrying about things getting squished so Rocky eventually had to take the reverse chaps off.

New RIzzee (J. Marathon Episode 6)

I want to ride my bicycle.

Scary One-Leg (J.Marathon Episode 5)

Scary and one-legged...'nough said.

New Breakfast routine (J.Marathon Episode 4)

Breakfast has been transformed to a Jonas controlled event. He selects his breakfast guests and what he is going to eat. Frequent guests at the "little table" include: the parrot, the princess, the 2 giraffes, Curious George, various train-cars, and the gorilla. The guests often have a healthy breakfast of fruit and cheese. Jonas handles almost all the prep work and now can easily get right out of his seat and start the clean-up process. The biggest breakfast event so far involved more than 14 guests, but Jonas was able to handle the food and the clean-up without a hitch.

Birthday Party (J.Marathon Episode 3)

Jonas's family birthday party went well. The only snafu was that the DJ did not show up. Jonas was partially responsible for the United State's economic recovery with all the goods that were bestowed upon him. He has been having a blast with all the new things, discovery new ideas of what works and how it works. He was a little perplexed by all the focus being on him all the time, and did a pretty good job of hosting his party. The birthday extravaganza VIDEO is rather long, but it is quite condensed from the hours of footage to under 4 minutes. So if you really need a quick fix of Jonas I would suggest looking elsewhere than a 4 minute video of him promoting capitalism, but it's your life.

A party at the chicken's house (J.Marathon Episode 2)

Jonas had a great time at Bryn and Henry's house a couple of weekends ago. He got a chance to share in some party food, play some games with the kids, check out the chickens, and watch some adults play their version of pong while he fixed the lawnmower. Notice the kids in the background carefully watching their dad "play a game". Lucky Jonas is more into "doing work" than recreation.
Jonas and Max did not want to sit together at first when they were offered to share a chair and plate. Oooops......a little rephrasing later...."Do you and Max want to sit together on the same chair and use only one plate for all that food?" Of course the answer was an enthusiastic yes from both of them.

2nd Birthday Day (J.Marathon Episode 1)

Jonas has handled being 2 pretty well so far. There have been really no "terrible" moments at all. In celebration of this, "JJ's Adventures in Life....so far" is presenting a marathon posting session. Every 36 hours for the next 14 days there will be a new post. Some of the planned excitement includes goofey animals, pants down, new rizzees, a new breakfast routine, and other events from the past couple of weeks. Hopefully Jonas will be able to compete favorably with his marathon blog stunt at this time when the focus is on the TV season premieres.

You can see some pictures of Jonas's birthday day. We had to call it this because of several other events that also celebrated his birthday. He was quite excited to make pancakes, but did not eat too much to save room for cake so he would not get a full tummy. He requested to dine "alfresco" for lunch and we had a good time eating and singing songs that echoed off of the cliff-side. Got some books from his neighbors and played a bit with Cory. He got a chance to play with a few trains from his new train set. It actually took him over 3 days to open all the train cars and parts because he was more than satisfied with having "just the one train car" and did not need more to play with. He enjoyed his time at Ella's Deli and was pretty into all the flying objects whizzing around. He had to share a peanut-butter cookie dough chocolate malt for an appetizer before his meal and his birthday sundae and carousal ride. Coincidentally enough we were seated at a table with a train built into the table. Mom was in charge of pushing the button to get the train moving, and she made it all night without coming down with carpal tunnel syndrome.

Zoo Time

The summer of 2009 brought many exciting pit-stops at the zoo. Most of the time the animals are the stars of the show, but on this one rare occasion in the the jungle children demanded attention. The children's zoo suspension bridge provided Cory and Jonas a running-dancing-bouncing platform to perform stunts.

Corn at the Farm

Jonas had another opportunity to chow on some corn on the cob and he did pretty well. He seems to like the raw corn on the cob better than the cooked variety and who could find fault in that? It is delicious. He had a great time feeding the farm goat, riding the tractor, playing with the kids, and just hanging out at the farm.

Pontoon Mama

Link to Fullscreen Pontoon Slideshow