Category Archives: Friends & Family

In his own words:

I went to Rotary with Daddy today. It was fun. I met new people and new friends. And I had a great time. So, I had lunch at Rotary and also I got to listen to speeches and Daddy bought an Army pack of cards for free since he got an answer right.

I did buy a deck of cards at a charity auction, and they sure weren’t free, but other than that everything is as he describes it.

So, here’s a breakdown of yesterday:

In the morning, Thomas and I dug up a bunch of, well, crap from the front beds. I then dug up a couple of dead bushes in the back yard, then watched Thomas cut down a tree that had grown into the fence. We went to Lowe’s to buy lumber, concrete, swingset parts, and other essentials; when we came home, I took down about 20 feet of old side-yard fencing, with lots of help from Tim. Tim and I reset two fenceposts and fixed a sagging section of fence, then I dug up some more crap while Tim made a custom fencepost to replace one that had rotted. We reset that too (so much for the rest of the concrete), then made a huge run to the dump. Then gumo, after which came the Great TV Adventure, about which more later.

I downloaded a nifty little package called ChangeDesktop that does pretty much what its name implies. Every hour, it changes the background of my two desktop monitors by randomly choosing an image for each monitor from the 1900+ photos I have filed away. Not coincidentally, most of these photos are of family members. It’s wonderful to see the progression of our sons over the years, but at the same time it’s bittersweet to see (e.g.) a photo of David at age three: I can clearly see how that little proto-David had the seeds of the David I see now, and it’s hard to be reminded of how fast they’re growing and how little real time we have with them. Excuse me while I go snivel for a bit.

me is glad dat there’s a way to turn ordinary text into da wicked way dat ali natters. now i too can be wicked, just dig im. (courtesy of the Ali G translator) Betty and Julie, please use your new powers responsibly.

So, this morning I was thinking about my sister. She and I are about as different as two people in the same family can be. She is socially and politically liberal, and I’m not. I am religious, and she’s not. I tend to be more technical, and she’s twice the people person I’ll ever be, not to mention that she unfairly got all the artistic and creative talent. (OTOH Tim and I can use power tools, so I suppose it evens out.) Despite our differences, and despite the fact that I unmercifully teased and persecuted her when we were younger, I love her, and I just wanted to make that fact widely known among the seven or eight people who read this blog. So, props to you, younger sister.

Faithful readers may have been wondering what happened… one minute, I was on vacation; the next, dead air. We finished our vacation (summary: the Naval Aviation Museum is still great, the New Orleans sun felt terrific, and there’s a wonderful po-boy place called Radosta’s that will be a touchstone of every future NO trip I take). Then we came home, celebrated Easter, and packed Arlene off (with the usual suspects) to the American Quilting Society annual convention. In the meantime, I’m taking the boys to fun places (the eye doctor, the grocery store) and their usual events (baseball, primary activity, school, and so on). That’s cut into my blog time pretty severely, since I now work when the baby’s asleep.
I did manage to snag a new home theater system, which has greatly improved the feel of the Xbox and the few movies I’ve had time to watch. It’s not nearly as fancy as the system I wanted, but it’s a good starter, and the price was right. It’s really hard not to crank up the volume on Halo when the kids are asleep, though.

We had a great day yesterday! We began with a walk on the beach (pictures to follow once I get to Betty’s high-speed connection– this modem bidness is the pits). Matthew didn’t care for the sensation of the surf on his feet (which he calls “tickle tickle”), but he liked the sand, and he thought the seagulls were quite all right.
After our beach foray, we loaded up the truck and took the ferry over to Dauphin Island. We visited the Estuarium, a terrific hands-on marine museum. All three of the boys were enthralled, particularly with the jellyfish and the petting zoo tank of fish. On the return ride, we saw several pods of dolphins. Matt didn’t seem to care, and Tom had trouble spotting them, but David was delighted (and told everyone about it, loudly). After a tasty hot dog lunch, everyone took naps, except for me: I slaved away over my laptop. We made a foray to the pool, which was too cold for Matt’s liking. Are you sensing a pattern here? We made an emergency grocery store run, after which Arlene baked some chicken and made a salad and fixins’ while I took the boys for another beach walk. After dinner, the boys played for a while and hit the sack. So did we (but not until we watched the tail end of Married By America— after all, what’s a beach vacation without guilty pleasures?)

Saturday dawned, well, early. That was OK, since Arlene and I both had separate breakfast dates. She got together with Pauline and Susan at Cracker Barrel, and the boys and I headed for Waffle House, followed by the Space and Rocket Center. Coincidentally, the day we were there was the 10th annual running of the Great Moon Buggy Race. We saw a couple of buggies plus lots of rockets and stuff; our friends Jonathan and Daniel joined us, then Daniel left and we had a delicious lunch at an old favorite. Later we joined the Wagners for dinner at their (really lovely) new home, followed by a visit to the local go-kart park. Then to bed.
Sunday morning, everyone got up, packed, and showered, then we headed off to the good old Athens ward for church. We had a wonderful time seeing our friends, but it was only a brief visit because we had a looooong drive in front of us. The drive was torturous painful well, it was seven hours in a car with three little kids. Thank goodness for Hank the Cow Dog, the one audiobook that would actually play on our CD player. We arrived at our condo, unpacked, drove back to Gulf Shores for dinner, and went to bed. Tomorrow, the beach!

Day 1 was pretty uneventful. We loaded up all of our considerable arsenal of crap, then Mom drove us to the airport. Our flight from Toledo to Cincinnati was perfectly uneventful. We had a delicious lunch of airport-kiosk soft pretzels in Cincy, then flew to Huntsville. Matthew was fussy on the airplane but a nap soon cured that. Afte rour arrival, we picked up our rental, a Chevy TrailBlazer. It’s a bit smaller than what we were originally promised, but it seems pretty nice so far– especially since we can drive it from here to New Orleans and drop it off at no extra cost.
We had a backyard barbecue with our friends the Huffords. I’m not sure whether the boys or I were happier to be outside in the sunshine, but we had a delightful time and some very nice steaks. Afterwards, we went to the Athens ward building to see one of our friends’ sons receive his Eagle Scout award. It was well-attended, so we got to see a goodly number of our friends from Athens. The ceremony went on for a while, though, so it was easily 9:30 by the time we got the three wise guys in bed. They all slept well and woke up this morning full of beans. More tomorrow.

Ahhh, family vacation. Right now everyone’s still asleep, but I expect that to change shortly. We’re off for a week: to Huntsville today, where we’ll get to see a number of our friends. On Sunday, we drive down to Gulf Shores to spend a few days at the beach, then to New Orleans for a short visit, then home again next Friday. The boys don’t know where we’re going yet; they’ve been told it’s someplace with electricity and good food, and that it’s possible that we might see penguins (at the NO aquarium). Updates here will be more sporadic than usual. I have a number of things to write about, including some comments on Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer-winning Army at Dawn, a sharply drawn and very readable history of the WWII campaign in North Africa) and a review of my earlier posts on where the military comes from. However, I have a nagging feeling I will be too busy eating shrimp, going to my favorite museum, and keeping the boys from scaring other vacationers. Maybe I’ll get to find out which truck stops really have WiFi– that guy from T/A never called me back.
Two quick notes: thanks to Anders for the cool blockquote style, and brother-in-law Paul has a new blog.

Update: Anders asks if I can attribute this. No, not exactly; my pal Kim Cameron-Webb sent it to me, but she got it in email. If anyone knows the original source, let us know.

Jeremy seems to have broken TrackBacks somehow. This post is solely to add a TrackBack to see whether it works. Move along; nothing to see here.

Could be that I know some people who are getting these for Christmas…

My friends Tyler and Rima have a daughter with sensory integration dysfunction. I’d never heard of it, but they’ve launched a pretty comprehensive website that explains it and provides a wealth of educational and teaching resources. Check it out.

It’s hard to adequately describe how good the boys were yesterday. Everyone got up and ate breakfast without major incident; the boys got dressed without complaint and watched the cartoon version of “Elijah” while Matt and I showered, then it was off to church. Unfortunately, Matt had a bad case of the wiggles, so he and I spent most of sacrament meeting out in the hall. To make things worse, I had the effrontery to try sneaking out of the nursery, and he didn’t like that one little bit.
Once we got home, it was time for lunch. When Arlene’s out of town, I try to eat as much stuff that she doesn’t like as possible, so for lunch we had fresh-made (bread machine, alas) sourdough bread and Seabear salmon chowder. The boys fell upon it like they hadn’t eaten in weeks; everyone had seconds. Matt napped while the boys watched a video and I made ice cream (cookies and cream, another Arlene not-favorite.)

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