The Life And Times Of James M. Wisler

May is full of so many birthdays and occasions for the family that it always seems so very busy. This year, we have booked every single weekend either throwing or attending an event.

Ada has her birthday on May 4th, she turned 4 years old this year. Her school had another picture day last month. It seems as if they do pictures about three times a year and considering the copious amount of quality photos that Melissa takes of our children, that you think we wouldn’t need to pay other photographers to do so as well. However, once they send us the prints of our adorable little children we always just have to order a copy. Another very good friend of ours had a child on May 4th of last year, so we were fortunate enough to get to see someone else’s baby mess their face with a first birthday cake as well.

My father also has a birthday in May, as well as my aunt, and my brother. Oh, and my father is now engaged and his fiancée also shares the same birthday as him. So, when we are not hosting the parties, we are attending them.

Of course, we usually do something big for Mothers Day to show Melissa how much we appreciate all that she has done for the family. This can usually turn into a whole weekend of activities, depending on Melissa’s wishes and how much energy the kids are draining from us at that time. Our Mothers Day thanks can also be a little self serving as this year Melissa received a new meat grinder and pasta maker attachment for the mixer so we’ll be looking forward to new menu items.

This coming weekend will be a Memorial Day celebration on my fathers house boat. The forecast is calling for rain, which could put a real bummer on the festivities. And the following weekend will be a wedding for friend and co-worker of Melissa’s. It took us a while to decide if it would be good to bring the kids to the wedding or not. The kids behaviors are always a little unpredictable. Knowing that good manners always have a limited time span, our final decision was to bring them to the wedding, but to skip the reception.

With all this busy going on, I’m sure we’ll be hitting the halfway mark of 2009 before we know it.

Amongst the other things we did for Mother’s Day, Ada talked the family into going to the zoo. We received a FOZ (Friends Of The Zoo) flyer in the mail last week and Ada picked it up off the kitchen table and said “Let’s go to the zoo”. So, FOZ should know that their advertising is working.

We decided to go to the Topeka Zoo this year as our trip to the Kansas City Zoo on Ada’s birthday last year left a little to be desired. The grounds at the KC Zoo were so large, but so many of the exhibits were closed that it seemed almost deserted. Melissa tried hyping it up by advocating the benefits of walking, of course then I would think she would like my favorite zoo which is the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, since the whole zoo is on the side of a mountain and so a lot of the walking is uphill.

The zoo trip was a success though, lots of animals seen with much less walking time and its closer and cheaper ticket cost as well. So, win-win-win.

This is a picture of Mac Jr. and Ada riding the wooden bear outside the black bear exhibit. The zoo has a black bear cam that allows you to see the bears live on the web.

It can be a little corny, but I’m a bit of a finance geek as well as a computer geek., so every year I get my free credit reports and like to remind others to do the same.  Deep down I think the credit racket is a scam, but its a game that we are forced to play.

Also, I suggest using https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ which is a site operated as a service by the three major credit reporting agencies, and not freecreditreport.com which is operated only by Experian and which will attempt to enroll you in the Experian credit monitoring service for $14.95/month (as I said, “scam”).  Its just that jingle is so catchy….

It has been a pretty long week here in the Wisler houshold.  Melissa took off for a week long business trip to South Dakota on Monday, but our plans for me to drive her to the airport didn’t work out because Mac Jr. was having coughing fits that were so bad they caused him to vomit.  The doctor said it is asthma and prescribed medication which he takes through a nebulizer, which is like a vaporizer.  The little guy doesn’t like to use the breathing mask that comes with it though so I have to hold him in my lap and keep the mouthpeice next to his face so that he gets his full dosage.  I feel so sad when my kids get sick, although I don’t mind the extra time I get to spend with them making them feel comfortable.  This also makes 2 for 2 on the kids puking on daddy.  That was kind of one of my worst fears of parenting, but, after it happened, it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.  Now I just fear for the times when we catch them playing in their own diapers.  Ok, enough of the gross parenting talk.

So, yeah, I have been playing the solo parenting routine while Melissa has been gone and also planning Mac Jr’s birthday party for Saturday, he will be a whole 2 years old!  Of course I have to make the obligatory comment about WOW, they are growing up so fast!  2 YEARS OLD!  And this is our second child!  It really seems like he was born last week.  Of course, he has grown so much.  Below is a short video of the day we brought little Mac home from the hospital and introduced Ada to him.

The holidays were very fun and very busy for the Wisler household, which is why I haven’t written any notes here for a while.  We spent Thanksgiving at a family gathering in Fort Scott, KS, then a small at-home celebration for Melissa’s birthday (a.k.a. Stu Day), followed by a trip to Hutchinson for Christmas and then hosting a small family-friendly event with a few other parents and kids at our home for New Years Eve.  Glancing over at the http://mac.wisler.org/ I see that I didn’t make a post regarding Melissa and mine 4th wedding anniversary either, which we celebrated in early Nov.  As I said, its been a fun and busy couple of months.

This first pic of the kids that was taken on picture day at Googols Of Learning.  We usually get pictures taken of the kids every year to send out with holiday cards, but since these pictures were taken so close to the holidays, we just decided to use them instead.  I had been planning on getting a full family photo taken, but Melissa  is a little camera shy and since we were able to use this picture instead of going to a portrait studio again then she was able to weasel her way out of getting her picture taken.  Foiled again!

The other two pictures are of Ada and James decorating the Christmas tree.  They were very well behaved with the ornaments during the tree trimming, but we later had to move all of the glass bulbs up out of reach or else James would be pulling them off the tree.