Skeeball: Still Fun After All These Years

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Nine balls for 25 cents! Where else can you find that kind of fun? It took a dollar for Jackie to get one over the lip and two for daddy to figure out how to eke out 260 points for a "small prize." (The green squirrel Jack won himself by throwing a beach ball into a red bucket for a "large prize.") Thanks Funland!

Funland!

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He had to wait until the rides opened at 1 and he had to leave a scant hour later - not without some serious cajoling - but it was well worth the wait. Jackie went on all the rides he was tall enough for, some of them twice. And he loved every minute of it - even the bomberos ride which ran pretty fast for mommy and daddy, but Jackie was ringing his bell all the way (as you can see, bottom right).

A Clash of Kings

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Chess with a 2-year old can get pretty interesting in a hurry. Openings are non-standard, to say the least. Jack made the Latvian Gambit look like a butterfly kiss soonafter his initial (and somewhat unexpected) opening move (b7 b5). He then decimated his own ranks, and trotted his king out for all to see. Unflanked, he proceeded to challenge my king to some kind of supreme duel, a la Jamie Lannister (after his capture). As you can see, he did not wait for the courtesy of a reply, sweeping white from the board with one swing of his tiny forearm. Then he raised a rook in sweet victory. Not bad for a man wearing pyjama shorts.

Lamarck's Bicycle

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Jackie appears to be taking his new Strider bike, well, in stride. Amateur geneticist Matt Frazier thinks all Jack's traits were derived from Paleolithic DNA, but clearly somewhere along the line someone in Jack's lineage rode a bicyle, b/c he got right on without a moment's instruction and off he went. In the last frame he is saying, "Lamarck was right, Frazier - you orthodox pinhead!"

Bucketheads!

CLICK FOR BIGGER BUCKETSWe're not sure who's idea this actually was, but one moment the kids (Jack and Maddie) were "painting" with water out of these buckets, the next they had dumped them and we're squealing at each other and putting the buckets on their heads.

Fly

Jack got his Fly on again yesterday (this time, in Bruno's sunglasses), but couldn't keep the act up for the camera - or maybe didn't want to. "A man will rise, a man will fall..."

Farmboy

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After strawberries came goats, cherries, and a tractor ride (the main event). Jack looks the seasoned farmhand in the middle photo, doesn't he?