Sticks and Smiley Faces

So my son's school has this system of monitoring behavior that involves sticks, smiley faces, squiggly faces and frowny faces. Trying to keep it short, let's just say, the less you move stick the better and you get a smiley face. Alternatively, the more you move you end up with a frowny. Needless to say, you don't want your child to get a frowny face.

Liam has the tendency to stay in the squiggly face zone. This would be mainly from the seemingly hereditary talking gene. It is not unusual to hear Spencer or I telling Liam in the morning, "Okay, this let's get a smiley face today and move ZERO sticks!" (for the record, you can move one stick and still maintain your smiley for the day)

Spencer and I have resorted to a reward system to keep Liam's behavior in the smiley zone and it has been through some trial and error. Spencer promised that the first time Liam got a whole week of smileys that he would take him to Stone Mountain. Well it took about a month and a half to be able to fulfill that promise.

Since that time we have started rewarding him on a more reasonable basis. He went 3 days with no squigglys and got to go to Stevie B's pizza buffet. Two more days with no squigglys and something else small but equally exciting for him.

Point of this post being, we finally got to Stone Mountain a week ago and had a great time. Liam was convinced that he was going to run up the whole mountain. Ah the joy of youth. Once we got there, it didn't take long for him to realize that even with all of his "stolen" energy, this was an impossible feat.

It also didn't take long for Grandpa and I to relaize that even walking up the mountain was not going to be feasible if we wanted to enjoy the rest of the day (note to self: must go to gym more). In the light of that fact, most of these pictures were, yet again, taken by Spencer. I'm beginning to get jealous for my own camera.
I swear it looks like he is about to fall flat on his face here.SUPERMAN!! Or at least his little brother.Taking a little breather with GrandNettie.{{sigh}} Ain't he cute?The boy was not happy with me at all for making him put on a short sleeve short underneath his long sleeved "alien" shirt but he was glad I did after he realized how quick you get hot when climbing a mountain.Not exactly sure what is going on here...not even sure I want to know. Hmmmm.I love the shadowplay in this one. Not sure what he was doing though.So Grandpa and I were heading to the tram to ride up the mountain and Spencer called me to let me know that halfway up the mountain Liam informed him, "OH! I gotta go poo!!" And when Liam says this he means it right now. There were no restrooms on the way up so the resulting pictures look a bit like this...It really is a beautiful view from up there.Obviously he had already gone to the bathroom by the time I took this crazy picture.For the way back down, Grandpa, Liam and I took the last tram down the mountain and Liam loved it. Grandpa held him so that he could see. I love this picture of the two of them. I can't tell you how many times Steve has been to this mountain but experiencing it with Liam he was grinning just as broadly as if it was his first time.One last dear shot to round this long, photo filled post up. :) Love my two men.