My high school school spirit award

One award you'll always see hanging on my office wall, Kieran, is one I received my senior year of high school for "leadership in school spirit"!

From my sophomore (10th grade) through my senior year (12th grade), I announced wrestling meets, basketball games, and track meets at my high school in Menomonie, Wis. In addition, during my senior year my friends and I launched a "sticker" campaign in which the morning of the boys basketball game, we'd hand out stickers, with some slogan on it about beating whatever team we were playing that night, to everyone in school. Sometimes we'd also hang up posters with the slogan.

The stickers and posters helped get fellow students excited about the games, and more people started to attend, which I think got the basketball players more excited, and they started winning more games!

The reason I'm so proud of this award is because it shows what people can accomplish when they work together - and it just takes a few people to get everyone else excited about working together!

Playing Johnny Quest at the air museum

It was a year ago today that we toured the airplane museum at March Air Force Base near San Bernardino, Calif. The day was terribly hot - in the 90s if I recall - but we still had an incredible amount of fun.

You particularly liked the old World War II Army jeep that was there - we sat in it (you in the drivers seat, of course!) and played Johnny Quest together! You were Race Bannon, and I was Dr. Benton Quest!

You also liked one of the airplanes, an old World War II bomber, and made up a story about how it was the plane you flew during the war! You've always been quite imaginative, no doubt from all the creative playing we did together and the books we read while you were a toddler and a preschooler.

While there were lots of planes to look at, we were both a little disappointed that we couldn't go into more of them - I think we got spoiled in San Diego because the planes they had on the aircraft carrier and the Marine base museum allowed us to!

Here are pictures of our big adventure!

Recall going to Brick or Treat?

A year ago today we went to Brick or Treat at Legoland, the theme park's Halloween celebration in Carlsbad, Calif. You went dressed up as a Jedi knight! Tons of other parents pointed out your costume to their kids they were so impressed!

The first highlight of the evening as doing the Brick or Treat, in which all of the kids walk through scary Legoland scenes and get free candy and other goodies at various stations. After that, we went off to play at the huge castle playground.

The night ended with us watching the Halloween fireworks! You always wanted to go the Disneyland fireworks shows, but they were really late and a long drive from where we lived in Encinitas, but Legoland was only four miles from my place!

Here are a whole bunch of pictures from Brick or Treat!

'Hello? The banana is for you'

Had a banana this morning and instantly thought of you. "Why?" you ask.

Whenever we went to the supermarket together, you sat in the grocery cart seat, and as we'd pass the bananas in the produce section, I'd always say, "Why look at all of the yellow telephones they have for sale!"

You'd say, "Those aren't telephones! They're bananas!"

Ignoring you, I'd go "Brrrngg!" and then hold a banana to my head as if it were a telephone. "Hello?" I say into the banana. "Why yes, he's right here." I'd then pass the banana to you and say, "It's for you."

You'd hold the banana to your head as if it were a telephone and go, "Hello?"

Then you'd get this disgusted look on your face, knowing that you'd been tricked, and say, "This is NOT a telephone."

After a few seconds as we moved on, you'd unpeel the banana and eat it!

Surfer boy at SeaWorld's Arctic base camp

Posted a new cover picture of you on my Facebook site. It shows you dressed in your cool surfer clothes while at SeaWorld in San Diego during July 2011. The section is the polar area where we walk through this cool "base camp" in the Arctic and can see all kinds of aquatic animals from the Arctic, such as polar bears and Beluga whales. As going through the camp, we wind around this old 1800s ship that got trapped in the Arctic ice. It definitely was among your favorite sections of SeaWorld! The section the picture was taken is the supply room for the base camp explorers.

Jobs I've held in journalism, teaching

In a previous entry, I mentioned that these days I work as an editor and a writer. That's been my career for most of my life!

When I went to college, I studied journalism so I could work at a newspaper. My very first job was as a newspaper reporter in Red Wing, Minn. I covered Wisconsin news. I met your mother while I worked in Red Wing.

For several years, I also worked as a teacher. I mainly taught English but also journalism to grades 7-12 (and mainly eighth and ninth graders at that) at a school in New Mexico and one in Wisconsin.

But my heart was in writing and editing, so I went back into journalism and worked at several newspapers and magazines for several years in the 2000s. The biggest newspaper I worked for was The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif. I also was the top editor at two newspapers - the Prescott (Wis.) Journal and The Daily Triplicate in Crescent City, Calif. (You were born when your mother and me lived in Crescent City!).

Recall reading Curious George books?

We've read literally hundreds of books together before you started school, and among the most popular of them were the Curious George stories. One that you were particularly fond of that we got at the library was “Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory” (by Margret and H.A. Rey).

In the book, Curuous George discovers how chocolate candies are made while visiting the factory. He decides to help out, though, and of course chaos breaks out! Chocolate candies of all sorts start coming out of the machine superfast!

Ultimately, though, he saves the day because he can use both his hands and feet to catch the chocolates and put them in the box. I don't know if I would want to eat a chocolate touched by a monkey's feet - would you?

Would are some of the Curious George books that you recall reading?