Melee' the Ultimate Survivor

Well, he HAS survived 14 grueling years. And since his birthday fell on the premiere of Survivor this year we present to you...



Survivor Jermjau

That's me, Jeff Probst, in the hat. And our contestants for the challenge.

They had four stations in the wilds of the backyard. At each station they preformed a task and were rewarded with a bag of puzzle pieces.

That's Ace holding his front teeth in with his lips and tongue. Survivor can be a brutal game.

Melee' in the lead, with his big brother being a good sport and letting him hold the lead.

All participants, sweaty, fatigued and one might have been upset that when I said "Everybody would win a prize." I didn't say it was only gonna be candy. At least it wasn't chicken gizzards!

First Day of School 2010

Ace had worked himself up into a good set of nerves, so he was MAD at the world. He was mad that I wanted to take a picture. I was dancing to try to make him smile, and he was having NONE, thanks.


Home again after a hard day. See the bus that I love and adore?

Roses and Thorns

A few years ago, I started asking the kids "What's the best part of today?" and no matter what good things they had to tell me, it was equally important to them to tell me the worst thing that happened to them. In fact, my kids seem to like to dwell on the negative. I have no idea where they get that, but to appease them we went with "One bad thing and One good thing." Ace can never just stop with one bad thing, he has to ask "Can I tell you two or three?" and then sometimes we struggle to come up with the opposing two or three good things. I figure, I little person needs to get a few things off their chest from time to time, so what the heck.

One day I was reading through a Family Fun Games book and found that our little night time ritual has a name. "Roses and Thorns" it's called. That tickled me, so I told Ace about it, he doesn't care much for new things so the name never much caught on. Or so I thought.

School being tough as it is in the First Grade, he often blows in the door with as much bad to say as the nightly news. Monday he exploded through the door, threw down his backpack, tossed his lunchbox, and kicked his shoes here and there. I said, "How was your day?" "HORRIBLE!" he replied. "HOR-RI-BLE!" "Oh man!," I said, "what happened?" "Nothing HAPPENED, it's just WORK, WORK, WORK! AND I'M BURNING! It's so hot outside, I'm sweatin' like an ANIMAL!" (He's so funny!)

Yesterday, he slammed through the door, unburdened himself, shimmied out of his shoes, jumped in my lap and said, "I had another terrible day!" "What happened today?" "My best friend won't play with me anymore because he said I act weird." "Well, what did you do?" "I don't want to talk about it." He hopped up, ran for the bathroom and snacks and I didn't much hear from him again until he breezed through the kitchen as I was cooking dinner. "What's for dinner?" he asked. "Breakfast!", I smiled. "NO! I DON'T WANT BREAKFAST FOR DINNER! THIS IS THE BIGGEST THORN OF THE DAY!"

He cuts me. He cuts me deep.