Light stick fun

The other morning, I came home from PT at around 6:15 AM, and found that my little boy was awake and playing with two chemical glows ticks in bed. He was twirling them around like an emo kid at a rave, so I had to show him how real men twirl a light stick. So... we got some string (parachute riser cord - what's more manly than that?), and tied the lightsticks to it - the rest is history:

Eli's Master Plan

Recently, my sweet wife posted this about Eli:  The Plan

Not to take away from Eli's "Evil Genius" status, but he is emulating his dear old dad.  There were a few nights when I spent hours drawing sketches for my OpOrders - either the concept of the entire operation, or the sketches for the various phases of the operation.

Eli was definitely more interested in my doodles than his mother was.  Most of my sketches were drawn with sharpies on cardboard of the same approximate size as the white board (used for inclement weather in the field, since cardboard has a tendency to disintegrate in the rain) that Eli used with the dry erase markers I gave him last night.  Eli had asked about the white boards previously, and his memory is pretty sharp at 5 years old.

We recorded him briefing his "OpOrder" last night.  I thought Becca caught on to what he was doing, but I wanted you all to know that Eli is on the fast track to become a much better officer than his dad will ever be.

Compare this:

To these that Eli watched me spend time a lot of time on: