James had a great day in school today, both discipline wise and smarts wise. He was allowed to play his Scooby Doo game and he was ecstatic. James did very good on all his work sheets, in fact most were perfect scores. We scanned some of his school work and then james ran off to play more Scooby. In fact, he is playing it while I am doing this, but have no fear, he will see this post shortly, we always review his schoolwork whether we post it on the internet or not, but he enjoys reviewing it online better.

I snapped this picture of James in his glory, good day at school and everyone is happy. Michigan is pretty well dug out from yesterdays snow and the area looks quite picturesque.

Continue reading “James Finishes Week On A High Note 2010” →

We have been dodging the bullet for some time now, but today we finally got hit with an actual snowstorm, 3-6 inches which made driving a little rough today.

James made it home from school fine, and he did well on his schoolwork, however the teacher said he had a “challenging” day which means to us there was a discipline issue so he was banned from playing his video game today. He understood and did not protest, hopefully he will learn his lesson.

James and I went over his schoolwork, he worked on several letters and identified properly the drawings on each. We then took out the staples from the papers and scanned them. James helped by stapling the papers back together. He was a perfect little gentleman and worked the stapler part of the project perfectly. We’ll work on his train track tonight then maybe watch a little television. Hopefully there is school tomorrow, should be, the snow has stopped for now.

Continue reading “The First Big Snowstorm 2010” →

James had a big day today, returning to school after a 2 week layoff. His teacher said he had a great day (in the past, some of James’ return to school after long lay offs were not as good). We checked his schoolwork and everything looked complete so we gave James congrats then let him have some of his candy from the holidays and play Scooby Doo on the video game.

James did a couple of projects over the weekend. He made 2010 robots, his new invention that will replace the calendar some day. He also made a calendar for the whole year, took him a couple hours for a couple days but he did finish it and is using it. We have added pics of these to this post (you have to click read rest of entry to see the pics on any of these posts)

A good day at school for James, Yeah! We are hoping that posting his work on the website will make him strive to do better, only time will tell if it works but we’re going to try it.

Continue reading “James Returns To School After Christmas Break 2010” →

James got invited to a birthday party for one of his classmates, Johnathon, and it was at the Lincoln Park skating center on Southfield. James had a blast and fell down more times than I care to count, but each time he smiled and got right back up. The theme for the party was Spiderman and each child got a goodie bag including a mask.

We will have to remember the skating rink for James birthday instead of Caesars and Applebees, it was really well done.

Mom and Dad also donned the skates but fortunately there was no one around to photograph us, at least we hope.

Continue reading “Johnathons Roller Skating Birthday party 2010” →

Hope that everyone had a safe and happy New Year. Just thought that I should make a few general comments about 2009 while it is still fresh in my head.

It really comes as no surprise to anyone that this has not been a banner year for Detroit and Michigan. High unemployment rate, high foreclosure rate, and low property value. The Red Wings losing a 3-2 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals, and the Tigers blowing a 3 game lead with 4 games left were actually high points in a terrible sports season which saw the Lions become the first 0-16 winless team back in January, and a second losing season for the Michigan Wolverines football team. The Piston Iverson experiment did not fare well either. An attempted terrorist attack Christmas Day on a flight bound for Detroit finished off a year that I am sure many would like to forget or start anew.

However if there is one thing I know about this town and state, it always lands on its feet. I know for a fact that industries are bringing back laid off employees after the holidays because of the work load increase, which should help the economy and bring back the property values. And as for terrorist attacking us, let me say just this… Detroit was known as the “Arsenol of Democracy” during WW2, we took on Hitler, Nazi’s, and Emperors and we are still standing, they aren’t.

Hopefully this will be a banner year for us, we certainly could use one. Here’s a few pics of the Motor City.

Continue reading “Happy New Year 2010” →

Thanks to everyone in the family for all the Christmas gifts for James, believe it or not he played with all of them, took him a couple days to do it, but he did. He has been playing a Scooby Doo video game and is really getting good at it. He has already used most of his tattoos and completed his first 100 piece puzzle. He has been practicing with a plastic harmonica but I don’t think he quite has that down yet, but the dogs in the neighborhood love it. The picture to the right of this is James putting in the final piece of his 100 piece puzzle the day after Christmas.

Thanks again to all for making it such a great time for James. Special thanks to Aunt Peg, Aunt Chris, Uncle Bill, and Grandma for the wonderful gifts that they sent to James.

Continue reading “Christmas 2009” →

Mary found this cereal at the store and immediately bought it so we could have fun with it at another one of our sites, Curse of Bobby Layne. We got James to pose with the box of cereal (we didn’t actually give him any to eat, we were afraid he might start losing things the way the Lions lose games) with a curious look on his face and posted it on the website. We thought some of you might be curious what we do as a family on those cold wintry days in Detroit. We also decorated on of our Halloween skeletons as a vendor at Ford field when the Lions blacked out their game right before Christmas because no one was showing up at the stadium.

James is a big football fan and we play almost every Sunday. If we go outside he likes to kick field goals and if we play inside we use the nerf ball. However the Lions have been so bad that he has no idea of what a winning football team is like and its hard to get him interested in the Lions, but he does like the game of football.

James Dad flew out to Nashville to help Grandma move to Michigan. Grandma hired a company to pack her things and they loaded up a rental truck and drove them up to Michigan. They rented the truck in Nashville but fortunately could return it in Michigan.

It did not take long to unload the truck into Grandma’s new place called the “Garden City Tower” and we helped get Grandma settled into her new home.

There are many activities at Garden City Tower as they have a library and a computer room plus Grandma has an outdoor balcony where she can plant a garden if she wants or fly a flag. She has a great view from the balcony since she is on the tenth floor.

Welcome to Michigan Grandma.

Continue reading “James Grandma Moves To Michigan 2009” →

Peg came over to hand out candy while James went trick or treating with his parents. James was able to help put up some of the decorations this year. This was an extremely windy day so we did not put up all the inflatables, but it was still a respectable display of terror we think.

James Trick of Treated all the way down to Syracuse street so he should have enough candy to last a long long time. I think everyone was chilled to the bone when we got home, thanks go out to Peg for handing out the treats.

There were huge Halloween decorations out, animatronics and everything. We really planned on taking pictures of the homes similar to what we did in 2006 but just never got around to doing it. Many of the homes (including ours) do not put up all the decorations until Halloween day so the time to do it would be during the day when we are putting up decorations as well. Maybe we can work something out for next year.

Continue reading “Halloween 2009” →

The Abbott Magic Get Together has been going on for over 70 years. Located in Colon MI, the Magic Capital of the World, James spent a couple days about town watching the magic. Before we left, James drew us a map of the street complete with addresses so we would know where to come back to.

For the last couple years I have been doing the Abbott Magic website and a string of other magic oriented sites. They are alot of fun and keep me busy during my free time. James helps with some of the picture taking, I’m sure he’ll do more when he gets a little older. Right now he enjoys the beach the most when we visit Colon, AKA “The Magic Capital of the World”. If you would like to see more from this event be sure to visit magicgettogether.com

Continue reading “Abbotts Magic Get Together 2009” →