A Face to Drink to

My mom called me today to let me know that my Uncle Hugh (Dad's stepbrother) called her to say that his son Nathan Roberson had just called him with news that he just had to share. Nathan is in Jacksonville and was in a store walking around and noticed a picture on a soda bottle that caught his eye. He looked at it and said, "Hey, that looks just like Conner Teague." Well, he got to looking closer and sure enough, the picture on the front of the Jones Co. Soda bottle was of Conner.



The picture seen here is of what the label looks like. I pulled the label from their website after extensive searching of their archive of labels they release several times a month. Conner's label came out in Sep. '04. So, I find it wild that Nathan found a bottle of something just this week with one of those labels on it. I think I might steer away from drinking that bottle of soda! I wonder how often Jones reuses/reprints past labels for printing? Anyway, the most remarkable thing we thought was that not onl was he on a label, it was on a bottle in Jacksonville, FL that one of our family members found unwittingly in a store! So cool!


Anyway, about the photo...well, it was actually one of MY photos of Conner, and not one Ashley took. She submitted it, obviously back in 2004 sometime and they did indeed put it on a bottle and she just never knew. The picture is one of my best photos I've ever taken and by far one of the best pictures of Conner ever taken. It has such a great mood and lighting and of course, subject! In color it actually looks better I think, but in black and white, the textures of the image seem to come through quite remarkably. See the original picture below.

Like this?

I meant to post this a few days back, but I'm finally getting around to it at least before I forget.

I wanted to share something that Zach has done a few times lately. This has come up twice so far. I can remember what it was he was doing the first time it happened, so I'll share that incident.

I walked back to Conner's room to find Zach standing on top of the Resuce Heroes "Command Center" and flipping the light switch on and off. I scolded him just a little and lifted him off the toy and told him we don't stand on toys and that we DON'T play with the lights. So, you know what he did? He looked up at me, and sort of turned to the side and started smacking himself on the bottom while looking at me as if to say, "So? you going to spank me or what?" I couldn't believe it. I just had to shake my head and say, "No, I'm not going to spank you silly. Just don't do that, it's bad for the lights."

What's so funny about it is that Anita and I rarely spank either boy. Conner gets any kind of swat on the bottom considerably more than Zach does because he's older and tends to do things that are more deserving of one. Zach on the other hand has probably only gotten a bottom swat less than a handful of times ever.

Anyway, he's such a stinker. I never know what to expect with him.

Fevers, Planes, and Monster Tiles

This past weekend seemed to go by in a blur. I arrived home on Friday (6/2) from Memphis and after a few minutes hanging out here with the family, we all got in the car and went over to Dave and Jenny's to check on kitty and allow me some time to print out some print sheets for Monster Tiles. We were over there about an hour and a half and by the time we got home it was bedtime. After we put the boys to bed, I came out and setup all the tile printing equipment out in the den. I then proceeded to prep, organize, and print tiles till 2am.

Saturday was to be another big day of printing tiles and I had planned to get an early start, but alas, I was up till 3am (had more stuff to do after I ran out of print sheets) and I didn't wake up as early as I would have liked. I ended up getting up about 8:30 or 9 I think. We all got ready for the day and Anita and the boys went to Murfreesboro while I went over to Dave's house to print print up a bunch of transfer sheets. I printed as many as I could up till about 11:45 and then ran back home to eat lunch and get ready for the soccer game.

I worked on printing tiles till about 6pm and then Anita left to go to a going away party for some friends from our church. We were all going to go, but Zach's fever still hadn't come down (that's about 5 days of fever at that point). As I was printing Saturday afternoon, Anita and Zach ran out for awhile and Conner stayed with me and was helping by stacking tiles for me and counting them out and taking out broken tiles for me. He was having a great time helping and looking at the tiles that I had already printed and tossed out for blemishes.

Saturday night, Zach's fever spiked to about 104.7 (rectal) and of course that gave Anita and I cause for concern. She called the doctor though and they told us we didn't necessarily need to worry too much. We went back to cross-dosing Motrin and Tylenol every four hours at the doctor's request and he made it through the night miserably. I ended up holding him while we both slept on the couch from about midnight till 3am. He was sleeping on my chest and when I woke up, the front of my shirt was SOAKING wet. Poor little guy :(.

Sunday morning, Anita took Zach to the pediatrician's office and Conner and I headed off for a morning of printing tile transfer sheets over at Dave's.

As I was back in my room getting dressed, I heard Conner running around saying something and then when I listened I could tell he was saying, "Here comes a proPELLer plane! ProPELLer plane! ProPELLer plane!" He was running around with a plastic handle from a toy golf club set (club head missing). He had it in his hand with his arm extended in front of him and he was holding it perpendicularly in front of him by holding the middle of the handle and he was spinning it back and forth to look like....well, a propeller. He just kept running around saying that and I thought it was very funny. Clever too. But definitely funny.


Conner was really excited to be going with me to help out some more and just to have some "Daddy and Conner" time. We stopped at Hardee's on the way over and picked up some breakfast. All was going very well till we got to Dave and Jenny's subdivision and I realized the key to their house was in the console in Anita's van....with her in Murfreesboro. D'oh! grrrrrrrr. I was NOT happy. Conner and I came back home and I worked on the computer on something else Monster Tiles related that I needed to get done anyway and while I did so, Conner sat out here and colored and cut papers and watched tv.

At lunch time, I took off and went over to Dave's to do what I had intended to get done that morning. I printed up Monster Tiles sheets till about 3pm and then finally came home to start printing for the day. Conner spent most of the day out here with me with his papers, pencils and markers, and scissors making all kinds of stuff. The best part is that he set up his own "system" over on the landing in the den and he said he was making Monster Tiles too. He would come over and pick one out of the box of blemished tiles and he'd show it to me and ask, "What's this guy called daddy?" I'd tell him and he'd say, "I'm going to make this Monster Tile now." He'd then take it over to the landing and draw a picture of it, color it all up and 'lay it out to dry' (as he told me). The pictures were very cute and very creative. At one point, I asked him to draw a horse during the day and he drew 2 legs, a head, and a body. I told him, "A horse has four legs." and he said, "Not on this side it doesn't. The other legs are on the other side." I just about teared up I was so proud of him. I mean, WOW! Anyway, so he kind of put me in my place on that one.

At one point during the day, he was drawing some picture and asks me to look over at what he's drawn. I do, and see that he has drawn this really neat guy that he has just added what looks like... well, a propeller to the top of his head. At this point, Conner says, "He's a robot-PROPELLER-head-guy!" I just had to look and say, "You know, he sure is."

Last Soccer Game

Well, we had our last soccer game of Conner's first season of soccer. We won too. That we means we had only 1 loss all season. We lost last week when it was about 95 degrees outside. The kids were miserable and I didn't blame them. None of them wanted to run to the ball and it seemed as if the heat had sucked out every bit of energy along with desire to play. The sad part was that the other team only had 3 players, played the whole game without subs, and ran circles around us. I was quite impressed with them. Had our boys been running to the ball and playing like they usually do, it would probably have been much closer.

After the game, we all went out to McDonald's for ice cream and to let the boys play in the play land area. We passed out "participation" trophies to each of the boys and Conner just LOVED his very first trophy. On another note, the parents (through Anita) went together and bought appreciation plaques for Jose and I for being coaches. That was nice as well.

Conner on the way home said, "I love my trophy. I'm going to put my trophy in my room when we get home!" He was very excited about the whole thing. As I was tucking him into bed that night he looked over and saw it on his dresser and had to say it again even, "Daddy, I love my trophy." hehe. All in all, I think he had a great time and when we asked if he wanted to play again next season (in the fall) he said that he really wanted to so I guess that means we'll playing again in a few months.

Low on updates

My sister (Jennifer) has told me today that I need to get in gear and put some posts on the blog site! Well, I know I've been falling behind. There's been good stuff going on, I just haven't been taking the time to post on the blog in the mornings when I get to my desk. Hopefully I can get back in a rhythm again and get some good stuff up here.