Here are some pictures of the boys cooking out with dad on the back deck. They don't sit for long...so ...I gave them some coke.
"If you guys will stay away from the grill, I'll give you a few sips of coke with ice!"......plop...down they went.
Look at those mugs. Good lookin little suckers.
COKE IS IT!
Jonathan wants me to turn the burgers.
Another perfect hamburger...YES!!!
Polly mentioned to me that I had no picture in the "Corn Maze" posting of popcorn night. Y'see my sons eat popcorn like nobody's business. Anyway, here are some pictures of them eating popcorn and watc
hing tv.
Aftarwards I gave em a bath, and I'm putting them on here as well.
Jonathan was on the right for all the pictures, which puts Jacob .....on the .....THE LEFT VALERIE..CRIPES!!!
Us southerners are all about a MAZE MAN! We have mazes for everything! Tonight we went to the Fantasy Maze. It was a maze mad out of hay bails that was put on by one of the schools in downtown Chattanooga. On the drive over Polly and I explained to the boys what they were supposed to do with their plastic pumkin candy holders..."say trick or treat and hold out the basket"...."then say thank you, ok?"...they complied on the condition of maximum profits in the form of candy and suckers. So we were all set.
HERE THEY COME!!!
This is actually a picture at the end where they are both comparing who made out better. Jacob has decided he is 4 starbursts, 3 suckers and a tootsie roll ahead of Jonathan and he is adamantly explaining. Jonathan however..slurp...could care less.
The line to the maze was about one football field long. As we passed all the people, they were all talking about my sons. I was very proud of them, as usual. Then once we got inside everyone would say..."look here they come....it's the elephants!"
Each corner you turned had a different theme. This one is sleeping beuty. People were saying that you had to give her a kiss to wake her up and get candy from her....in goes Jake for the kill!!!
Actually, both of them gave her a hug and....dad....aparently fell asleep at the wheel because this picture was almost unsalvagable. Polly fixed it up so you can at least see a glimpse...of Jacobs magic at work...
So the trip around the maze takes about 30 minutes, and it was well worth it. They loved it. And as far as 2 year olds go, they did really well....for about 25 minutes. The last five minutes....well, here's two kids walking around in a maze of hay...with Walt Disney himself throwing candy into their buckets....hang on let me back up...when we first went in, we ran accross Scooby Doo and his buddy Shaggy. They had just gotten a piece of candy from Shaggy when they saw Scoobie. So, what do they do.....they offered Scoobie their sucker! HA! They are so awesome. Anyway, they did have their buckets in hand and Scoobie managed to get a sucker in there.. and soon they kind of got into the swing of things.....walk up ...hold out bucket....PLAMMO!....candy. 25 minutes later....the buckets were in the green wagon dad was toting around and they were frantically ripping into a sucker. No more rules..no more trick or treat..and don't even THINK about putting that freaking orange basket in my face!
So, my point here is that 30 minutes was a perfect amount of time. Just enough time for them to get to see a few people in costumes and control their appetite. If we had been in there any longer, we may have had an incedent.
On the ride home they decided that Elmo was there favorite. So, I may as well slam a picture of him in here, too.
All in all, those "artsy fartsy" kids put on a heck of a show for the kids and we will definitely go back again next year.
you have no idea what it took to get these four to take this picture. So, here they are and aren't they cute.
I wish we had a picture of the 4 parents that were pleading for them to smile...sit next to Jacob....wait..stop crying...come here...wipe the slobber off his lip...and promising them trips to the playground and ice cream for the rest of their life if they would just please take the $#^%#@# picture!
At some point Polly got upset and her siter Chris proclaimed the whole thing a disaster, but somehow we came out with this.
From the left we have Jonathan, Jacob, Carston (cousin), and Calen (cousin). After the picture debacle we took them...as promised...to the mall play area and they had a ball!
Polly was telling me about a park near our house. She said it was the "the best park she had ever been to in her life!". What with her being about 29 years old and the amount of parks she MUST have seen in all that time..I knew this was going to be cool. We stopped by Burger King to load the boys up with nutrition prior to unleashing all hell and playfull fury on this place.
Here they are ...bulking up prior to the days events.
Let it be known that Valerie was invited and declined to RSVP on account that this was "for children". Valerie is very, very mature for 13 and this is not something she is in to.
We first hit the old train. 
They have a boxcar accross from the caboose that is choc full of meaningful text and profound writ all over the walls. However, because of the nature of some of the writings and the posibilities of copyright enfringement..here is a picture of the caboose end with the boys looking down as it zooms through the mountains at 500 miles per hour!!
The park itself is actually ...awesome. It was built with a 2 to 7 year old mentality. The steps are smaller than usual and all the cubbies that they can climb into are miniature...I know this because I got stuck a few times following after them as they proceeded to shout for me to hurry up.
"Get out of my picture KID, I'm on an adventure with my sons PUNK"..... I almost had to take him down, I mean ...WHO RUNS LIKE THAT, anyway!?!?!? 
Here's the boys carefully navigating the obsticle course.
....gloom....and.....doom....
Here is Jonathan looking up the tire hole. My sons are awesome, if for no reason other than that they are curious little suckers....3 seconds later a 3 year old girl popped out of the 
hole....Jonathan contemplated using a line on her and instead decided go have a slide. Jacob on the other hand is quite the ladies man. We can't go anywhere without him striking up a conversation with some dame. It never lasts though. He doesn't have transportation.
That's if for the park. Tonght were going to the "Enchanted Maze", only this time with hay...not corn.
For as many signs as I have seen about ROCK CITY, I have still never actually seen Rock City. For those family members in the north that have never been to the south...it appears that Rock City is a popular place down here. There are signs everywhere....mostly it is advertised on every big red barn along the country roads. In Tennessee we have no shortage of big red barns. That should be enough..but no. Southerners also have to have little bird houses made to look like red barns that they put up for display outside their house in the hopes of someday..upgrading to an actuall big red barn.
Last week we went to the Haunted Corn Maze....near....Rock City, but not actually in Rock City. And guess what...right in the middle of the whole spectacle...a big .....fat....red....barn. Guess what it said on the side of it...
The kids had a pretty good time. Valerie immediately proclaimed the place as a "just for kids" event. 15 minutes in...after she saw a few other 13 year olds having a good time and.....
"DAD CAN I GO ON THE SLIDE!??!..CAN I HAVE A POPCICLE!?!?!?!?"....yep...my bi-polar little girl. 
Here she is on the slide..obviously depressed...
The boys on the other hand thought the guy cooking the popcorn in a kettle, was Superman reincarnated. There is actually a reason for this. On the nights that we watch movies, dad marches them off to the pantry to pick out a bag of microwavable popcorn and they of course scream...as to who is to actually place this "said bag of popcorn" in the mocrowave, so that we may watch it explode slowly for about 3 minutes through the viewable door. So, for about 3 minutes during the beginning of the movie...complete interest....then it's on to their favorite game of "Who can climb on the back of the couch the fastest and kick me in the back while pulling mom's hair for leverege", by Milton Bradley. MOVIE NIGHT IS AWESOME! ((polly asked me to put a picture in here of their popcorn addiction. Just click on the link above.))
So, after "popcorn man" told us of the 46 
million BTU output of his kettle corn contraption and the fact that Orville Reddenbacher was in fact a wus with his whimpy little microwavable bags ...we walked the 100 yards to the maze. Here are the boys at the entrance. Jonathan is asking jacob to "move foot damnit"...
At this point Jonathan led the way. 
He would just venture in to the other groups of people and lead them as well. We have an expression in the south..."never greet a stranger". It basically means that you walk up to people and just start talking to them as if you have known them your whole life, with no need for the usual introduction. That's how he was acting that day. Mostly, he won't talk to anyone else and he scowls alot. Here is one of his gloom and doom moments... After turning the corner here... him and Jacob screamed obscenities at each other while fighting for the rights to push the green wagon. I basically won...because I'm alot taller than either of them, and let's face it neither of them can even pop a good wheelie with the thing so it was obvious that I should have control. I have footage of the scuffle and I'll be posting the whole event on YOUTUBE very soon.
After some walking and a freak load of corn later we were at a dead end..and there were these two middle aged guys actually throwing corn over to the next lane and trying to hit people..I'm not sure if they actually knew these people, or if they were just over the hill, juvenille dellinquents...I do know that Jacob was having none of it and tried to walk right through one of the men, incidentally ramming his head in to the mans backside and nearly pushing him forward into the corn while the man was in full throwing mode. I didn't actually know what was going on until Polly explained....I just saw a lot of commotion and two rednecks with corn husks in their hands saying "sorry" and seeing if they were ok...before they went back to pelting complete strangers with rock hard bricks of corn! That's another thing we are in no shortage of. Big Red Necks.
