Remember your Lego Fire Chief Car set?

One of the many Lego sets you've had over the years - and one that you put together Feb. 8-9, 2014 - was the Fire Chief Car from the Lego City rescue set. The set included a fire department car, the fire chief, a tree with a cat atop it, and a woman holding a fish to get the cat to come down!

After you put it together that weekend while visiting, you took the car and two Lego back to your mother's, but we left the tree and cat on the house set I built while you were putting together the Monster truck and semitrailer set!

You've had quite a few of the smaller City Rescue sets, such as a fire truck and police motorcycle after robbers, over the years. I wonder which ones we'll get in the weeks ahead?

Past birthday celebrations

Feb. 1, 2013

With yesterday (Feb. 23, 2014) being your birthday, here are some photos from your past birthdays:
>>2014 (7 years old)
>>2013 (6 years old)
>>2012 (5 years old)
>>2011 (4 years old)
>>2010 (3 years old)
>>2009 (2 years old)
>>2008 (1 year old)

Remember Your Imaginext Bat Copter?

A couple of days ago while in Kmart I saw one of your old toys - the Bat Copter that went with your Imaginext Bat Cave. That brought back lots of memories!

We often used the Bat Copter when playing with the Bat Cave. Sometimes the villains even tried to capture the copter!

You really liked playing with the copter, though, when we got a Imaginext Fire Rescue chopper - it was red with a circled letter R on it, so you said it was Robin's helicopter! We now had a chopper for both Batman and Robin (You typically assigned me the Bat Copter while you got "Robin's chopper") and took them together on lots of adventures!

My books dedicated to you

As you know, I write books (as well as edit them) for a living. Most of the books I've written are dedicated to you! Here's a list of those dedicated to you:
>>Hikes with Tykes (Your picture is on the cover and there are several pics of you in the book.)
>>Hikes with Tykes: Games and Activities (A picture of you at Vasquez Rocks is on the cover.)
>>7 Minutes a Day to Your Bestseller (For this volume and the next two on the list, you share the dedication with your two cousins, Bryan and Rebekah, as I released the three books at one time.)
>>7 Minutes a Day to a Self-Published Book
>>7 Minutes a Day to Promoting Your Book
>>7 Minutes a Day to Mastering the Craft of Writing
>>Headin' to the Cabin: Day Hiking Trails of Northwest Wisconsin
>>Hittin the Trail (So far, there are six books in the series, and each is dedicated to you.)

Three years ago today: SpaceShipTwo

Feb. 19, 2011, with WhiteKnightTwo and
SpaceShipTwo behind you.

Three years ago today you got to see the first non-government spaceship at the Mojave Air and Spaceport's monthly fly-in.

The spaceship was Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo! The WhiteKnight is the mothership that carries SpaceShipTwo high into the atmosphere where the gravity is lower. It then drops the SpaceShip, which fires its rockets and zooms into low Earth orbit!

The day was extremely cold, though - only in the mid 40s - so we stayed there just long enough to walk around the ship and take a few pictures. You told me it was a "pretty cool spaceship"!

Here's a whole bunch of pictures from our adventure!

Memories of your 'Scottish' castle

During the previous weekend with me (Feb. 8-9, 2014), you played a lot with your castle that I gave you for Christmas 2013. You made a couple of great memories - at least in my mind!

One memory revolved about me somehow telling you that at one time England conquered Wales, then Scotland and finally Ireland to form the United Kingdom. After that, the knights in your castle were Scotsmen defending the fort against the invading English!

During this battle, you also started shooting the discs from the cannons on the tip of the castle's turrets. Some of those discs hit me! You were apologetic and shifted the castle's position so that the fired discs would land on your bed, that way they would be easier to find!

Recall your Traffic Jam floor puzzle?

Do you remember your Traffic Jam floor puzzle? It was a huge 2-foot-high by 3-foot-wide puzzle made by the Melissa and Doug company, which specializes in sturdy, educational toys for kids.

The puzzle contained different kinds of transportation vehicles in a cityscape. We got it when you were a preschooler, so often I'd place on the floor where the pieces go, and you'd piece them together. Later, as you grew older, you would look for connecting pieces.

Afterward, I'd always ask you to point out the vehicles on the puzle, such as "Which one is the airplane?" or "Where is the fire truck?"