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Christmas certainly pulled a ninja on me this year. It’s here and I’m so far behind and unprepared. Luckily the boys have been reminding me of the daily progress towards the day marked 25 on our calendar. They asked to “camp out” on the living room floor tomorrow night to wait for Santa. I had to remind them he’ll only come if they are sleeping in their own beds. I rushed to send out a few Christmas Cards this year but we have something we’d like to share digitally with all of our family and friends. Each month at school the boys memorize a Bible verse, a poem, and sometimes a song. We’d like to share their verses for this month with you. When it comes to CaseyJ I think he gives Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special a serious run for his money! Just click on the play button below each picture to start the audio…

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From our family to yours we wish you a very Blessed and Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year!!

He goes by many names but to me it’s dad. Today is his birthday. I’m sure he could care less if I told you how old he was but I won’t. He’s a nice even number this year and was just shy of 26 years old when I was born. He lives “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime” and made sure to pass it on to all of us. I remember thinking if the world did get all messed up we’d be okay because we could feed ourselves, or if the world flooded we had a boat to float in. I had a wandering mind even as a child. The one time the boat almost sank because someone forgot to put the plugs in I knew things would be okay because my dad was there and he could fix it. Turns out HE was the one who forgot the plugs and I didn’t panic too much because it was only 3 feet deep…. After that he bought a boat that didn’t need plugs….

My dad taught me to make friends with strangers, not to be afraid to try new things, to help everyone even if it’s not exactly convenient for you, and to work hard then play hard. I try each day to pass along the important things that he has taught me to my boys. Yes, even how to hold the football right or how to hook their bait (girls can do that stuff too). I know that sometimes he secretly watches episodes of Spongebob on his phone. Maybe it makes him think of his grandkids but I think he finds it so stupid it’s funny. He can sit and look up at the stars for hours, mix a mean Bloody Mary (too much *sneeze* pepper), and cook a mean rack of ribs. When I was in high school he never missed a single sporting event (as to which I am sure he did a lot of speeding to catch up with the bus sometimes) and was my biggest supporter. I never thought then that as I got older we’d become such good friends. Buddies who like to hang out together, but he will always be my daddy. Happy Birthday Easy Dad!

The boys and I had a ripper of a weekend! Since daddy was away camping the boys and I headed south on I35 as soon as school was out on Friday. We had some plans to chill at a hotel and hit up the Dave and Buster’s arcade for a bit but we have an issue with the Jeep that after it get’s hot it won’t start for about 30-45 minutes. It has to be something to do with electronics but…. The folks at the hotel we had planned to stay at were really cool and let us cancel without being charged and we crashed my aunt’s floor instead. The boys were seriously excited about Dave and Busters and I loaded up their cards with credits and they went a little crazy trying to decide which games to play! The earned massive amounts of tickets and had a blast.

Saturday morning after breakfast with some family we headed to Lackland Air Force Base to see the Air Show. I followed advice and parked off base and we hopped on a bus which dropped us off right at the gate, the line was long but moved pretty quickly. No problems with the inhaler and the metal detector. More on why we have an inhaler later… As soon as we walked in the boys and I spotted the B-29 Super Fortress and then we were doubly surprised to see a B-17G. We took some pictures and hung around there until after they fired it up then walked around some more. The planes were awesome but my youngest guy is not a fan of unexpected loud sounds and as soon as the first jet flew by at low altitude his hands shot up to his ears and stayed there. We were off to find ear plugs, which helped a little. Big ear plugs and small ears….

I did get to take some photos and had a few come out nice. The boys did a little shopping (talk about theme park prices) and found their favorite thing was a bullet necklace we bought from a crew in a gun ship from Kansas (they sold the stuff as a fundraiser). Because I bought two necklaces they let the boys and I tour the plane for free (it was $2 per person or $5 for a family). Zach got a kick out of sitting in a seat near the front of the plane. We lasted a little longer than I thought we would and I know they liked it (they are still talking about it).

We headed home after that for a movie night with pizza and popcorn. We started watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure which after about 30 minutes we all decided it was lame (lamer than I remember) and switched to the new “Alice in Wonderland” with Johnny Depp. We camped out in the living room and watched TV until we all fell asleep. The boys were so well behaved and I love getting to hang out with them and doing fun stuff!

First of all I spend WAY to much time in my local grocery store, it’s like I have two growing boys to feed or something.

I enjoy (so does the Big C) a nice glass of wine occasionally and while I certainly don’t spend high double or triple figures on a bottle I don’t necessarily look on the bottom shelf for the $5 bottle either. I had to laugh at the college age girls speeding down the wine isle “Let’s just get something cheap”, “Yeah, just a cheap bottle will be good”. They aren’t going for flavor are they? I suppose that the wine doesn’t really need to have any flavor to it if you are just going to chug it for the buzz. At least the college co-ed’s were looking at the reds. As I continued to browse for a specific red wine (and not finding it) moved onto the decision I would buy one with a fun name. I settled on Red Rock (a California wine) with a mid line pricing and proceeded to the checkout.The older gentleman behind me began to unload his basket (how I dread the cash register when my items fill the entire belt from end to end) and I couldn’t help but notice he had less than 20 things in his cart. Six of those items were identical bottles of white wine. At our local grocery if you buy six bottle you get a nifty carrying box and 15% off. He was either having a party or really liked that wine. After unloading his wine, he added his single bottle of water and select veggies. I couldn’t help but speculate as to what he was cooking.

Then I remembered the time I ran to the store to buy toilet paper (and only toilet paper) only to have Big C call and say “buy some more beans, we don’t have enough for everyone at home”. So I stood in line with a 6 pack of toilet paper and an economy sized can of baked beans. I immediately felt the need to defend my purchases to the clerk. She just shrugged her shoulders like she was at the end of a 12 hour shift and could care less about the irony of my two items.

I used to see the former owner of a business right next door to ours make a daily pilgrimage four doors down to the liquor store empty handed only to return a few moments later with his box of rose wine. I really hope he wasn’t drinking one a day. Maybe that’s how he kept the doctor away, well except the one time he had an ambulance called for him because he passed out. Too much of a good thing.

I’ll let you know how that experimental bottle of wine turns out.

Every now and then I get a little OCD and feel a bit like Tony Shalub’s character Monk, at other times I feel a lot like him. In this particular instance I find myself picky about pens, yes the type you write with. Although I do much of my work on the computer I still write a lot. I have little notebooks that I’ll fill up, move the important stuff to digital notes then file or trash the notebook. Everything from phone messages to lists, drawings for designs and more.

I like felt tip pens but was always hesitant to splurge on any at the local office supply store. Then by some chance I stumbled upon a link from another blog I read to Tokyo Pen Shop. Then I spent the next hour looking at all the lovely pens! In that hour I managed to add a few select choices to my shopping cart like this and a few of these and nabbed a few extras for an upcoming friends birthday gift. I waited just a short time until I received my order -

Let me just say that I absolutely love these pens! They write effortlessly and the gift recipient is quite happy with theirs as well. Tokyo Pen Shop also has a selection of notebooks, pencils, and tons of other pens and they offer free shipping on orders over $25. So why are you still here? Go get to Tokyo Pen Shop!

Note: This is not a paid for review I just really like these pens!!!

It’s official, I am the proud owner of a 7 and 8 year old boy. Jiminy Cricket! And yes, technically until they are 18 I own them.*Grin* We ended our birthday week with a trip to a local putt putt/go kart place (we had intended to take them on their actual birthday but the place was closed) after the boys football game. We bought our tickets and went to wait in line. The the clouds in the sky poured forth ALL their condensation and that folks is why they call it a rain check. Knowing it wasn’t going to dry up anytime soon we decided to come back another time and went across town to a laser tag spot. The boys have been begging to go since they attended a birthday party there last year. They decided to play teams, them against us. We kicked their butts! Oh Yeah. I have to give a bunch of credit to my big 8yr old though he let us shoot him more than his brother because if we shot Jelly (our 7yr old) he’d toss a fit. You aren’t supposed to run inside the arena but tell that to a 7 and 8yr old trying to shoot their mom and dad. Most of the time this is all I could see.

Then I’d hear *pew, pew, pew* “I shot you mom!!!” I was afraid the fifteen minutes would go on forever, turns out it wasn’t too bad. The boys played some video games before we headed to grab some BBQ and then called it a day.

With all the rain we’ve had lately (none of it really forecasted by the way) we haven’t made any more progress on painting the house (the outside). We did get all the cabling run for our home DVR system (both coax and networking) along the house this weekend, it’s replacing our satellite cable (which we had turned off last week). I’ll make a big post about it all including what we are saving per year by doing it.

The boys had their first flag football game this weekend and both did a  really good job! You can see a few photos from the game over on flickr.