Got to do some picking!

About mid-day today, I received a phone call from a guy I know from work. We have been talking about getting together and playing some Bluegrass music for months, but talking about it and doing it never seemed to come together. However, today, when Rusty called, he was ready to jam and he was hoping I could come along and bring my banjo. I checked with Pam to make sure we didn't have any plans and then off I went to do some picking.

I arrived to find the other guys already playing music on the back porch of Rusty's house. Rusty has a nice home in the country with lots of wooded area in the back and no neighbors close by. It is a perfect setting for playing music like this. I had fears that these guys were going to be far ahead of me in experience and ability, but I was able to hold my own fairly well. I started out with the banjo, but then moved over to the new Dobro (resonator guitar) that Pam gave me for Christmas. I have played the Dobro for only 2 days, so I warned the guys I may not be any good at it, but I think they were happy with what I had to offer on it. We all made mistakes, laughed them off and kept on going. Towards the end, I grabbed my guitar and worked through a few songs that I felt confident the guys would know. It was a great experience, I had a lot of fun and I think I have made some new friends today. When I left, they all were inviting me to come to their next jam. I'll be happy to.

What a wonderful Christmas we have had!

From 2008-12 (Dec)

There were so many highlights to this day; it is going to be hard to list them all. Perhaps the best thing to do is go in chronological order.

We woke up before the kids, but David got up soon after. Abby woke up just after Pam and I finished our showers. For the past several years, it has been a Christmas morning tradition that we open one gift each plus our stockings at home, then converge on Pam’s sister’s house for breakfast and the main event. We have a nice meal, then open all the presents and enjoy each other’s fun as the gifts are revealed. Once the excitement is over, we haul the gifts back home, play a while, and then return to Pam’s sister’s house for another meal with even more family members. It is always a wonderful time.

This year, we had an extra special treat. Riley, our nephew who is nearly finished with culinary school, offered to prepare our meals. He made us breakfast and supper. It was the most amazing two meals we have ever had the privilege of consuming. Have a look at the menu:

This was all of Riley’s creation and we were very impressed with his details and organization. He never looked overwhelmed. If anything, he looked like he was really enjoying himself. It was like he was “in a zone” and master of his world. Every single thing he prepared tasted fabulous. Congratulations, Riley. It was perfect! He will be going off to Chicago next month to do his internship with a fancy restaurant up there. Watch out Chicago. Here comes one heck of a Texas cook!

From 2008-12 (Dec)

From 2008-12 (Dec)

The kids really liked their Christmas gifts this year, but David may have gotten overwhelmed by all the excitement. He had trouble focusing on his toys and preferred to get into everything. He was hard to keep up with today, but he was being very sweet. Abby got overwhelmed by all the new exciting things to play with as well. She tried out several of her new toys today and was disappointed when she had to go to bed. There’s always tomorrow, though.

Pam spoiled me rotten. I gave her a list of things as suggested gift ideas and I think she made sure I got everything on the list. I know she let some other family members get a few things from my list as well. Thanks to everyone. Pam got lots of nice things, too. It has been a wonderful Christmas. Too bad I have to return to work tomorrow.

David says "Ho-Ho-Ho!"

Merry Christmas!

David's kidney update

Last night, we took the kids and some friends to an outdoor Christmas light display. It is one of those you drive through and view animated light displays from your car windows. The kids loved it and we all had a nice time. David is finally old enough to begin to appreciate the beauty of this place. He saw all the lights going by our windows and kept saying “pretty” and “more, please.” It was really sweet to hear his little voice commenting on the sights.

David met with his kidney doctor today. The news was not as good as we had hoped. His blood pressure is still not under control and his creatinine level is creeping up. We will be adding a second blood pressure medication to his daily routines. The hard part is he will have to go back to his pediatrician for weekly blood pressure checks. These are distressing for David and he has developed a great fear of going to the doctor’s office. I can relate to this. I was terrified of doctors when I was younger, too. To make matters worse, David will also have to go in for blood tests every month, which is much more frequent than before. The only upside from today is David is still growing and gaining weight and he’s still awfully cute and happy (when he’s not in the doctor’s office any way.)

Abby will be on her holiday break from school after tomorrow. The whole family is ready to be in a Christmas mindset and start enjoying the gifts of the season. We are very thankful and very blessed. Pam has been busy with lots of different projects this week. She’s been baking, running the kids around to places, making gifts for teachers and taking care of all of our domestic needs. She’s been working her tail off. I’m hoping we can give her some time to relax this weekend.

I’m getting excited. I just received my welcome packet from Pete Wernick (a.k.a. “Dr. Banjo”) for the 2009 session of his Bluegrass Jam Camp at Argyle. The camp isn’t until early March, but I’m really excited about going back. The 2008 camp was so much fun and I learned so much about playing music with other Bluegrass musicians and what I am capable of doing. I’m hoping to build on that experience at the next camp.

Busy! Busy! Busy!

We are less than 2 weeks away from Christmas and we are getting very busy around here. Abby has one more week of school before they break for the holidays and David has appointments with doctors plus Pam is doing several things for Abby's school this week. Heap on that some final shopping for Christmas (mostly by me) and getting the gifts wrapped and squeezing in time to get the Christmas cards out; there's an awful lot going on.

Abby has been learning about life in the Colonial days and we are finding that she is having an easy time with mathematics as well. We are pleased at how well she is doing at school. She also got to go to a birthday party this past weekend, so there's a lot of good going on in Abby's life right now.

We had a funny thing happen the other night. Most evenings, Abby will go to bed and then read for a while before she goes to sleep. She calls out to Pam when she begins and again when she stops reading so Pam can account for how long she spends reading. (Something we do for her school. She is rewarded for time spent reading outside of school.) Well, the other night, Abby started reading and fell silent. After a while, Pam and I started looking at each other wondering if Abby had fallen asleep reading. Pam checked on her and discovered that Abby had fallen asleep in bed with a book in her hands. I slipped in and took this picture of her:



David is giving us a lot of joy as well. He is really coming alive with his verbal skills now. He talks a lot when he is around us. He still clams up around other people and strangers, but that's just David. He has a real shy side in public. David is expanding his vocabulary with lots of new words every day. He counts, he fills in words on some simple songs and he loves to demonstrate what he knows and really enjoys getting praised for saying the right thing. He still has an obsession with the word, "vacuum." He uses that word any time he doesn't know what to call something and he occasionally says the word without any obvious reason. We know he is afraid of vacuums and he knows where we keep ours and makes sure we know that he knows. We hope he will grow tired of saying "vacuum" soon.

David had a blood test last week in preparation for a visit with his kidney doctor next week. We still don't have a clear idea of what we may be in for with his kidneys in the future, but he has not been getting worse. We hope next week's visit will continue to show that he is running steady and not slipping backwards on us as he grows. We still give him medication for his blood pressure and he may be on that for the rest of his life. If that is the worst we have to worry about for his future, we will be very grateful. David also has an appointment with his dentist later this week. We're hoping to get some help with some discoloration problems in his teeth due to some of the strong medicines he was on during and following his hospitalization in 2007.

I just finished a week of being on call with my employer. Thankfully, it was an easy week -- which is more than I can say about some of the Christmas decorating I have been trying to do. We put some new Christmas displays out in our front yard and our windy weather has destroyed nearly everything. I blame part of it on the wind, but most of it is just cheaply made stuff. The metal welds have been breaking open and the displays come crashing down. I have been busy trying to rig up fixes for everything and I finally managed to get everything back up by this afternoon, but they are not going to survive much more of this wind, so I hope the weather calms down soon. At least the indoor decorating we have done is holding up very nicely.

Next year, I'm going to have to completely rethink how we decorate the outdoors. I'm not satisfied with how things went this year and vow to do better in 2009.


Merry Christmas!

Christmas is coming soon!

Happy December!

Wow! The weather has changed a lot in the past couple of weeks. We have been trying to get our decorations out for Christmas and I have been trying to get some of the remaining outdoor stuff up since last weekend, but that has not been going very smoothly. First of all, we bought some new outdoor lighted displays for the front yard and we were happy to have purchased a couple of the items at a discount because the store was out of stock and we took the display items. The day we put them up in the yard, it was very cold and windy and within 20-30 minutes, one of the displays was knocked over and ruined. Days later, the other discounted display also gave in to the winds, broke and fell over. I have spent a lot of my time trying to repair these things and get them back out. I finally got one of them going today, but I am still brainstorming about the other one. My first repair attempt on that one failed miserably, so I need to be a little more creative.

Abby and David have been really sweet together lately. Abby has been teaching David lots of new words and a few silly (and noisy) games. It is nice to see them bonding like this and we hope they will always enjoy having fun together. David is learning handfuls of new words every day. Some of those words end up becoming points of obsession, though. For instance, he loves to say the word "vacuum", which comes out of his mouth as "a- bak'-koom." He says it even when there is no vacuum around, but he gets very animated about it when he sees one or goes near where one is stored. If you answer his comment about the vacuum and use that word, he will respond by buzzing his lips -- his way of imitating a motor sound. So, some things just defy explanation.

David is counting to 10 or 11 now and he very sweetly says "Thank you" when he hands something off to you or you give him something. He loves stringed instruments and he is constantly asking to see one of my banjos. The other day, I let David into my music room and showed him the wall where I have my guitar, banjo and bass hanging for easy access (you never know when you just need to pick for a while!) and David pointed to my guitar and said "a-tar" then turned to my banjo and said "a-ban'-jo." (David precedes many nouns with "a-". He figured this out on his own.) David turned to my bass and tried to call it another banjo, so I corrected him and said, "No, this is a bass. Can you say bass?" David responded with "a-boice!" So, we went down the line again and David called off the instruments as I pointed to them: "a-tar...banjo...boice!" Sweet.

We're going to spend the rest of the weekend doing things to continue to get into the full Christmas spirit. I'm looking forward to it.