long weekend

Well it’s another holiday weekend! I love the idea of only working part of the week and getting paid for the entire week, holidays are better than vacation days too. I tend to horde my vacation days and don’t really get the complete enjoyment out of them that I do on a company holiday, even though I rarely do anything of note on either occasion. Sadly enough the one thing I am truly looking forward to over this week end is sleeping late! I know that we are going to try to get to a movie “the Incredible” because we have small boys (and I am a small boy at heart)and so I do really want to see that, but other things get in the way every time we have tried to go. But I can guarantee bar some catastrophe I will be getting to sleep past nine! I guess that is what they mean by taking pleasure in the little things in life. I can’t promise that I will post this weekend so Happy New Year to you.

Death of a dream

It’s official! I have given up on being cool. It’s not that I don’t want to be Cool I just think that I am too lazy or apathetic to put forth the continual effort that is required. Plus I have began to discover there is a mounting list of personal traits I exhibit that completely contrast the entire ideology of Cool i.e.; I listen to talk radio in my car more than music NPR not even sports talk which could pass for Cool in some male circles, I can’t even recall the last CD that I purchased I don’t even have a CD player in my car let alone an MP3 player, I don’t even know were to buy “hip” clothes, in fact kaki pants dominate my wardrobe. For that matter I don’t even know if “hip” is hip anymore!
I remember as thinking I was never going to be boring like adults were when I was a teenager. But after close examination I think I might just be considered extremely boring! Okay I am funny, I don’t mind admitting that but Ralph Mouth was funny, as were Lenny and Squigie and those guys could not even get in the room with Cool. No I never aspired to be funny but Cool was always the moniker I sought. But maybe that was just a dream. By the way can anyone tell me what cool is? Maybe that is the problem I don’t even know cool really is how could I get there if I had no idea where it is.

Birthday cake and ice cream

I find it very odd how much we as parents desire our children to move on to the next developmental stage when they are young. We watch them with our breath held as they pull themselves up to their knees to crawl for the first time, we cheer for them as they learn to pull themselves up to stand with the aid of the sofa. Then in what seams to be the next moment they are walking on their own, forming sentences with phrases that make us ask “where did he pick that up from, I never say that, do you?” We just can’t seam to wait until the next significant development in our children’s lives. Then one day the parents find themselves standing in their home frozen in disbelief looking around at their lives with that exhausted confused expression that says “where did I lose control!” You wonder why you had ever wished they could walk, because you now spend all your waking hours chasing them in order to keep them out of things that they are determined to get. Like cat food on the kitchen floor or wood chips on the fireplace, things you have never personally felt the desire to sample as a dietary option but they seam drawn like Gollum to the one ring. You begin to wonder why you have wished so fervently for them to be able to speak because now that they can you are not able find that button that makes them stop, and their batteries unlike all the fire truck toys never seam to fade into peaceful quiet where you can fain ignorance in the process of replacement.
I have two such creatures in my home the eldest is three years and for months and at every stage of his development thus far I have sworn that “this is the funniest age”; when he said his first word, crawled, walked without assistance…. Each of these represented a milestone that I was certain at the time could never be eclipsed on my meter of joy. However each time he made a leap forward in his development my elation boiled to a level not reached before making my heart ever happier. Now that we have a second son my seven month old has completely changed my view of how please any one person can be it’s as if every time my pot of boiling love is removed from the stove of parental pride my sons conspire to fire up the cauldron and I am boiling over again. Not just for the fact that I am overjoyed with my young son’s achievements but am vividly reminded of the joy I originally felt with my first born reaching this same goal. And like birthday cake and ice cream these events complement each other perfectly without the slightest detraction.
I have said this many times to younger men I know. Get married to the right woman soon, it will be the best thing that ever happens to you also the hardest but it will be worth it. Then make her some boys they are the best.

Well it's Monday and back to the salt mine!

Okay would it really be as bad as it sounds working in a salt mine? And would it be any less fulfilling than the occupations held my most of my acquaintances? I wonder how many people you know that really love what they do to earn a living. And more importantly have they just made the conscience decision to fall in love with what lay before them for the next what ever number of years or did they carefully plan where they would be and how to get there? I know lots of people who make good money, I know even more that don’t but I can not think of a single person that I have known first hand that loves the means by which they earn a living. I have heard second hand of people like this “ oh my brother in law is in insurance, he made up his mind in college that’s what he wanted to do and has loved it ever since” first off who makes any good and permanent decisions in college? And second why have I never met anyone who loves what they do?

The Morning After

Well I have to say that Christmas is much more fun as a parent than it ever was before. I get to pick what toys we get I get to put them together and I can take them away from everyone because I am the biggest kid!
All joking aside our Christmas was very nice. The boys seam to love most of the toys, although there are a couple of losers. I is good to have Walter up to visit too. I was hoping to go to a movie today but it’s just to difficult to stay up really late, sleep in enough to not feel like the walking dead, keep the kids on a somewhat normal schedule and get out of the house on a rigid time schedule for anything. Well it’s back to work both job the next couple of days do I better get back to enjoying my time off.

Ghost town

I find it rather funny that an office the size of the one I work in can turn into a ghost town so early on a day before a holiday.

If I don't post again before Christmas I will say it now. Merry Christmas may God bless you and yours.

Current Conditions for Raymore, MO
13°F
FairFeels
Like-1°F
What is up with that!

Okay I know that there are lots of places that are colder right now, but I just have to say that I am not digging it man!

My boss was saying he would really like to have an Eskimo elk suit to deal with weather like this. You really would have to know him, but I can believe that he would wear it if he had one. I picture him driving to work with the windows down just so he can justify wearing it. You would see him going out in front of the building to make fun of the smokers who are shivering over their cancer sticks. He would be over heard saying things like “Cold, man this aint cold. Why don’t you learn how to dress you sissy?”

Okay beside the weather the looming holiday is mostly on my mind. Naomi and I still have a few details to take care of before we are done with preparations so I will be out running the consumer gauntlet of holiday last minute panic this evening after work. Which is not very appealing to anyone I am sure. I am a little daunted because I have witnessed the throngs of shopping lemmings at the retail establishments on my commute to and from my places of employment the last few days. I have not been out in any of the "normal" retail hours of operation so I have been spared the exposure to self centered indignant attitudes that develops from over exposure to the materialistic side of the holiday season. But alas very few people are able to escape the madness completely. So with that said off I go, if you don’t hear from soon send out the Marines for help!

Tuesday?

Well today my mind is on a couple of my favorite things other than the Wife and kids. Namely Star Wars and Web comics and here is a great combination of the two.
http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20041116
Here is another one that Eddie will like. http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20040921

This is off subject but if anyone knows of an easy way to learn how to edit HTML could you send me a link?

If you are reading this page send me an email, I would like to know what you think. Next week I am going to try to add some pictures. More later....

Oops

Okay so I did not do so hot on the " I'm going to post something everyday" thing but who cares I have yet to tell anyone that this blog even in existence.

(Note to self; be sure to email friend and family letting them know that this site is up….)

Okay so it’s just a few days before Christmas. We finished getting the few things for the boys that we could on the weekend. We are pretty short on funds this year, probably because we have broken the bank last year. Okay more like the last couple of years. This year will be okay for the boys; Ethan will never know that we gave his gifts to Josh two years ago anyway and Josh loves a good cardboard box so we are all set. Everyone else is pretty much getting a card with a picture of our cute kids on it. This will just help us start our new tradition of taking the materialism out of Christmas because we really do want to teach the boys to focus on the real reason for the season. But it’s hard to escape the “you’re a cheapskate….” self condemnation thoughts.
But on a happier note Naomi and I are really starting to establish some holiday traditions of our own. We split decorating the tree into two different events this was not intentional at first but I think it may stick. We brought the live tree home and put it up and got the lights up and the garland. Then postponed the rest until we could finalize the color scheme, well we ended up going with the ornaments what we had but did not get them up for a couple of weeks. Well at first that sounds kind of odd, but it is a very nice looking tree even with just lights and garland. Then when we put the rest of the decorations on weekend before last it made it fun, more like building up to the event rather that throwing it up and leaving it to die. We decided to put out Luminaries this year too, so that we could tie New Mexico into our festivities. We talked about it a few times trying to plan when would be the best time to set them up and decided on the day before Christmas. I think this ties in nicely to the whole building up of events, who knows maybe in the future we will set up a more specific time line for these events.

As a side note there are no new details on the Sprint Nextel merger just the looming possibilities for the future.

My First posting

Hello everyone and welcome to our first blog. I figured that this would be a good way to keep family and friends posted on what is happening with us because you are all so far away. Please come back often as I will try to make some kind of entry everyday.