Archive for the 'Holidays' Category
Here I sit, listening to George Winston’s December and Linus and Lucy albums as they stream through the aether to my computer, countless bits of paper and packaging and wire twisty ties and whatnot strewn all over the front room, browsing through the couple hundred Christmas season photos I’ve taken thus far.
I’d say it’s about time to share some, wouldn’t you?
Cameron’s a real ham for the camera and Seth is just a dang good looking kid with big blue eyes.
Kristina and I both stayed up fairly late, but still didn’t manage to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus when he visited our house. Next time I’ll rig up some motion detectors to my camera and catch him in the act.
David got his first real bicycle and Isabella got her very own MP3 player, complete with about ten different Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson albums (amongst others) courtesy of her dear old dad.
All that remains now is our epic journey to Oklahoma to spend some time with some of Kristina’s family, and our Christmas season for this year will come to an end.
More photos are available in the photo albums.
It also happens to be the time of year when some of us are just a little more likely to go on a murderous rampage at any given moment, due to the fact that for some reason, it also happens to be the time of year when most of the population seems to lose any last vestiges of common sense that they may have been clinging to since the post-Thanksgiving shopping season began*.
* Note to self: For the next month, stay as far away from Walmart as humanly possible, so as to avoid an otherwise imminent murderous rampage.
Not that I’m obsessive-compulsive or anything, but if a big event isn’t documented here, then it just didn’t happen. Just think: What if some advanced alien race finds this website sometime in the far, distant future, long after we’ve all succumbed to global warming global cooling old age? What evidence will there be that we even celebrated Thanksgiving? None. Then the aliens will assume that we were a bunch of good-for-nothing, thankless layabouts with nothing better to do than documenting children as they grow up.
That simply won’t do, so here we go.
First we went to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving Dinner proper, and really had a good time. Everyone was in good spirits, and I took lots of pictures. We gorged ourselves on turkey, stuffing, gravy, green beans, salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, olives (green and black), sweet pickles, and carrots. Then we had dessert, consisting of pecan pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and coffee.
Photos are in the photo album, which is a good place for them to be, I think.
The reason is as follows, in a round-about way:
Before Claire was born, we knew that she was developing normally and appeared to be quite healthy. And she was. We were expecting to stay in the hospital for one or two nights and come on home, as we did when David was born. Then of course, that plan went right out the window.
So. I am fortunate in my work that I am able to take off as needed for family emergencies and whatnot. That’s one of the benefits of having a family business. We can all sort of pull together to cover for someone when they need it, without rocking the ship too much. So when Claire ended up having to stay in NICU for a week, Kristina and I of course ended up staying in the hospital for that week as well. Then we still had that little period of time when you come home with a new baby where you just sort of have to get back into your rhythm and figure out how to take care of another whole person while making sure your other kiddos aren’t lost in the shuffle.
All in all, I missed about ten days of work. So I have had a lot of stuff to catch up on. The bulk of that has been paperwork: paying bills, getting the books up to date, entering rent payments in the computer and whatnot. The rest of it has been some maintenance issues at the apartments, one of which I had to get finished today.
I was hoping to get home early enough in the afternoon to finish carving our other two pumpkins, run by the store to pick up some candy and some tea-light candles, and perhaps even build a height-restrictive barrier to keep taller kids (i.e. adults) from advancing all the way to our door for candy.
That was my downfall. (Mental note: Never go to a Sooper Dooper X-Mart on the day of, or the day before, a holiday.) I grabbed a bag full of tea-light candles, about eight or so bags of candy, and hurried up to wait in line at one of the two functional cash registers.
So that passed. Kids are in bed. Hopefully by morning David will be feeling better and Isabella will have reestablished a healthy insulin level in her bloodstream.
I’ve never really enjoyed carving pumpkins before, but this year is different. I read about this guy that carves up creepy looking pumpkins that really bring the scare-factor back to Halloween, but he does it in a way that I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of before: He uses power tools.
Yep. His tools of choice include a reciprocating saw or Sawzall, a jig saw, and believe it or not, a router.
Those of you who know me will know why I say I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of doing it that way. I’ve got a garage and truck full of power tools. Chop saws, circular saws, routers, one big ole table saw, nail guns out the veritable wazoo, different welders and torches and whatnot; and I’ve never once thought of unleashing all that electric fury on a pumpkin. Every year I get out a couple of kitchen knives and basically just stab the bejeesus out of a pumpkin or two until I have something that vaguely resembles a jack o’ lantern.
Not this year. So far I’ve used a combination of a jig saw, a long crosscut hand saw, an el cheapo set of wood carving chisels, an eight-inch cast iron C-clamp and an extra circular saw blade to crank out three pretty good looking gourds. One is getting his head slowly crushed with the C-clamp, another has apparently had a few circular saw blades hurled at him, and the third is just your basic cannibalistic pumpkin, munching away on an unfortunate little guy.
I’ll try to finish the other two tomorrow afternoon before the trick-or-treaters come around. I really didn’t expect to make so many this year.
We’ll get some photos of them all lit up tomorrow.
Those of you in the know, and perhaps Motown aficionados in particular, may think you know all there is to know about the Supremes. You may pride yourself on your knowledge of every little bit of trivia known to mankind about Diana Ross and company.
You’ll be surprised to learn then that there was in fact a member of the Supremes that never participated in a single tour. In fact, she never played one concert or even hummed a little ditty backstage with the popular trio.
This heretofore unknown Supreme was a member of the group for a mere hour-and-a-half, long enough to have her hair appropriately coiffed and sprayed, before ditching the satin gloves for a satin sash and tiara:
