First Snow of 2009

From Snow 12-4-2009

This weekend was supposed to be a nice escape for Pam and me. We had arranged to let the kids spend time with Pam’s sister and my folks while we slipped out of town for some very overdue alone time. (It has been a terribly long time since we last went out of town overnight without the responsibility of dealing with the kids.) We had reservations at a hotel in Fredericksburg, TX and planned to really have a fun time. Then, the weather changed and we had to make a tough decision. The forecast for the Texas Hill Country predicted up to 2” of snowfall and sub-freezing temperatures. That is not exactly ideal conditions for enjoying Fredericksburg. Considering we would be traveling while the snow was falling, the roadway may not be the safest place for us at this time. So, we called off the trip. Unfortunately, we made this decision too late not to be charged for the cancellation, so we’re paying for a hotel room we won’t be using. That stinks.

On the upside, we got a nice snow storm right here at home and the kids got to spend a little time out in it while it was falling. I took a few photos of them and sent them to our photo albums on the web. You can link to those from this site.

The family is all doing well. We had a very nice Thanksgiving here at our house. This was the first Thanksgiving for us in the new house and the weather was absolutely perfect. Pam was amazingly organized and calm. Planning a big meal like that and making it all come out the way you planned can be very stressful. This year didn’t seem stressful and everybody had a nice time.

The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the day we decorate for Christmas and this year was no exception. We got the tree up and strung lights around outside and inside. It looks really nice. We would like to put out some more stuff, but with all these cold nights we're having lately, we might need to save the electric bill for the heater!

We finally have an offer on our old house! It has been a long time since we first listed it and Pam and I have both been wondering why we haven’t received any offers – even ridiculously low offers. Many people have viewed it and it has been on TV and in the papers. We finally got an offer and after a few counter-offers back and forth, we have settled on a price. It is less than I was hoping to get, but considering the circumstances, we’re happy with the agreed upon amount. Having two houses has been a bit of a hardship on us as we have been dipping into our rainy day funds to keep the bills paid. We hope nothing happens to cause us any further delays in getting the old house sold. We want very much to get back to normal! At least this experience is helping us see places in our lives where we can be more frugal and still enjoy ourselves.

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to have some music fun. Earlier this year, I joined The Southwest Bluegrass Club - which is an organization of Bluegrass enthusiasts in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Many people I met at Pete Wernick’s jam camp are members of this club and I figured joining the club would be a good way to stay connected with them outside of camp. I had never attended any of their meetings before, but decided I was going to make the trek up to Irving, TX and attend their November meeting. I was glad I did. I saw a few of my jam camp friends and met a lot of new people there. Most of the time at the meeting is spent jamming with the other members. People form small impromptu groups and head off to various rooms to play Bluegrass songs together. The group of musicians I played with was mostly all strangers to me, but that doesn’t matter. The fun is playing the music together and improvising. It was a really fun time for me and I hope to get to do that again soon.

That’s about it for this time. Please add us as a friend on facebook if you haven’t already. Pam and I both have pages on there and we post current news and photos almost daily. This blog is more of a highlights and summary post compared to what you see on facebook. Plus, Pam frequently posts some hilarious stuff that David says and does. Those are a scream!

Until next time, have a Merry Christmas!

Rob

As time goes along, I find it more difficult to come up with worthwhile posts for this blog. Pam and I both make regular updates and post lots of pictures to our facebook pages, but I realize not all of the people who might read our blog are on facebook or have us as friends on there if they do. If you are on facebook and have not added us as a friend, please try to do so. You will get much more current information and have the added benefit of some of our friends’ spontaneous humor. I happen to think we both are quite funny.

We survived Halloween and the kids were adorable. Abby dressed up as a beauty queen and David was a tornado. I think Pam did a great job on his costume. She took a regular kids’ t-shirt and decorated it herself and included letters on the back that said, “Lil Tornado.”

From Halloween 2009

From Halloween 2009

Halloween started a little early for us with the fall festival at our church the Wednesday before. Both Abby and David got plenty of candy from that event alone. Then, Halloween came along on Saturday and both kids were chomping at the bit to get out and start ringing doorbells. It bothered me that we did not see any other people out escorting their kids from one door to the next and I felt weird about being the first ones, but by 6:30 we had to get out there or the kids were going to explode.

Pam took the kids up and down our street and they got to meet several of our neighbors. That’s something we have needed to do since we moved in a few months back. I have met a few of our neighbors, but not nearly enough of them. Perhaps Halloween will be the ice-breaker we need to start building some more new friendships at our new home.

We have no new medical developments lately. We’re just happy to keep our family out of hospitals and clinics while all this H1N1 scare is going on. Because of David’s epilepsy, he is in a higher risk group than most people. We all have been vaccinated against the seasonal flu already, but we’re still awaiting our chance to get the H1N1 vaccine.

I’ll try to post more family news later. Thanks for checking in.

Rob

Back to a new state of normal

We have come through the Labor Day weekend without any trips to the hospital and everything seems to be running fairly smoothly for a change. David is back to being his usual, cheerful and mischievous self. I am beginning to think that David's new seizure medication may actually be taking some of the edge off of his personality. He doesn't seem to get as angry as often as he did before. Oh, Pam will be the first to confirm that he still has his little 2-year-old fits from time to time, but I believe they are less severe than they were before.

I did some internet research on the medication his neurologist put him on for the prevention of seizures and it appears that it is also used in patients who have other types of mood disorders. I honestly don't know if there is a connection here, but it sure seems coincidental that David's moods got a little more pleasant after we started his new medication. I'm not complaining; just curious.

This coming week, we will be integrating David back into some of the other activities he was doing prior to his seizure. He will resume "Mother's Day Out" at our church and Pam has already gone by and given a few of his teachers some instruction on how to administer his emergency seizure stopping medication. It is a simple process, but needs explaining for the ininitiated. His teachers seemed cool with it, so we're happy to get back to normal there.

Pam and I got some serious straightening done in the back of our house. We bought a storage shed and moved many items from the temporary holding area on our back porch into that shed, plus some other things that were taking up some much-needed floor space in the house got sent out there. Sadly, the shed is nearly full now and I'm wishing it was twice as big. Perhaps what I need to do is purge some more things we aren't using, but deciding what stays and what goes and why is time consuming and depressing to me. The happy news is we have our back porch about 90% cleared off of things that didn't belong on it and we can start using it the way we had intended when we decided to move to this house.

I'm still working on the music room. I got some junk moved out of there, but I still have a lot to put away, sort, organize and in some cases, toss. I had hoped to have more time to work on that this weekend, but for the past four days, David has decided to skip his naps, so that makes afternoon plans take a back seat to whatever thing he is seeking to destroy at the moment.

My Harley had a dead battery and was preventing me from riding it. I finally got that taken care of this weekend, so next on my agenda is finding time to actually ride it. I'm planning on driving it to work if the weather cooperates. We'll see how that goes.

We are beginning to feel some stress over still having two houses to pay for. We have not yet received any offers on our old house and not very many people have looked at it. We try to go by there at least once a week to see if it needs any attention. Each time I go in there, I think to myself, "This is a beautiful house. Why wouldn't anybody want to buy it?" We just hope and pray the right family comes along and buys the house soon. It will go a long way to help our collective peace of mind.

Thanks for checking in on us. We'll post more family news, soon.

Rob

David is back home from the hospital. His diagnosis is epilepsy. The damage in his brain from birth is believed to be what caused his seizure. He now has a new medication for the prevention of seizures and a new emergency medication to give him if he has another one. Apart from feeling a little wobbly, he seems fine. We're all wrung out from our weekend, but glad to have it behind us.

Thanks to all who sent up prayers for David and us. We are grateful to be surrounded by so many caring people.

There's a new album called "David's Seizure 8/29/09" in our online photo albums, if you want to see what you were praying for.

Rob

Here's the latest: David had a huge seizure at around 5 this morning that lasted for the better part of an hour. He was airlifted (along with Pam) to Scott & White PICU in Temple. He woke up and has been fighting everyone over his tubes and wires. Pam helped him back to sleep, but now they're waking him back up to hook him up to a 24 hour EEG monitor. Still no test results.
Rob

Post-move stress disorder

We’re slowly getting settled in our new house. We still have lots to sort, put away, give away or throw away. It is depressing to think about all the junk and clutter we have accumulated over the years. The growth of that accumulation has been greatly accelerated with the addition of Abby and David. I will give Pam credit, though. She has become a master at whisking away unused and abandoned toys from the kids. I hardly know where to begin with that stuff. I would always have a fear of getting hit with the question, “Where is my _________? …I used to play with it all the time and now I can’t find it anywhere…” But, I have a disadvantage in that I am away from home and at work most days and I don’t know what the kids play with during the day (apart from what they leave out for me to trip over when I get home). But, Pam seems to know what won’t be missed and can dispatch it with the speed and craftiness of a ferret.

The old house is still on the market and as of this writing we have not received any offers. People have been looking at it and it is being advertised on a local cable channel along with a handful of other homes listed through our realtor. Having two homes is adding a layer of stress to our lives at the moment as we wait for the old one to sell. That stress has been magnified recently as the bills roll in for both homes. We just got the electric bill for both houses and that was pretty shocking (no pun intended) by itself. It gave me one more reason to pray harder for the early arrival of fall weather!

The next monkey-wrench to get thrown our way was a dead laptop computer. My laptop, the one I use for everything I do online (e-mail, blogging, photos, videos, music, etc.) crashed and burned on me a little over a week ago. It could turn it on, but the screen stayed blank and it would not boot up. The hard drive did not spin. I think my problem stemmed from something stupid I did in the days following our move to the new house. Pam and I were both operating on practically no sleep because of the move and because David was refusing to stay in bed and waking us up all hours of the night. Well, in a moment of sleep-deprived haze, I took my laptop’s power cord and crammed it into a USB slot while it was booting up. That put 19 volts DC into the data line of the USB slot and needless to say, fried my USB controller. It gave off that bad, burned electric component smell. The computer worked fine apart from not having any USB functionality. So, I purchased an add-on PCMCIA to USB adapter and used that as my work-around to my problem. Well, the initial damage must have administered a slow poison to the system and my laptop eventually surrendered. The laptop is out of warranty, so I priced replacement parts online. That is when I discovered I could have a newer and faster laptop for what I would spend to fix my slow, old one.

Armed with that information, I went shopping for and purchased a new laptop for about half the price I spent on the one I just killed. So far, I’m happy with it. I have been busy this evening trying to get some of my old data transferred back into the new machine. Thankfully, I have a fairly recent backup of my important files and I have a device I can use to salvage the hard drive from the old laptop and use it to help me restore some of the data.

I mentioned before about David having trouble sleeping. I’m happy to say we finally have that under control. The problem was when bedtime came around; David would refuse to stay in his bed. As soon as Pam shut his door, he would open it back up and call out for her. She and I would take turns going back up and making him go back to bed, but as soon as we closed the door, he was back at it and calling out again. This would go on for a really long time. Then, I fixed David’s door so he could not open it so easily. That led to massive screaming fits and we would go back up and have to settle him down again. This was not working and people were telling us to let him cry it out, but we were afraid his noise would also keep Abby from sleeping. But, we finally bit the bullet and let him cry it out. After about three nights of tortured screaming, he gave up and now he stays in his bed at night when we put him in.

The other thing David would do is wake up sometime between 2 and 4 in the morning and call out for Pam. This was happening during the same time that he was having trouble going to bed. We discovered that after breaking him of the getting back up habit when we put him to bed, he also stopped getting up in the middle of the night. That has been a pleasant change for Pam and me. We still don’t get enough sleep most nights, but that is entirely our own fault now. We stay up too late playing on our computers and watching TV shows most nights. We’re working on fixing our own bad habits, now!

Well, Abby’s summer is nearly over. She goes back to school next week. I think that will be a welcome break for Pam. I still remember the look of dread on Pam’s face when she was faced with an entire summer of Abby not being away at school for most of the day. I think Pam is looking forward to the return of a normal schedule for her – not to mention a much shorter drive to and from the school now, thanks to the move!

I haven’t been taking many pictures since we moved. I don’t feel like a room full of stuff that needs to be put away is all that picturesque any way. But, it is getting better and I hope to soon be taking pictures from inside our house and posting them to our web albums and this blog.

David met with his kidney doctor this week. All is about the same for him. His numbers from his blood test are practically unchanged. Actually, they were just slightly better, but the difference can easily be written off as testing variances, so nobody needs to be dancing in the streets. We’re glad he is no worse right now on the kidney concerns. But, we remain ever-watchful for clouds on his horizon.

In other news, I’m still liking wearing contacts instead of glasses. I’m discovering that 12 to 14 hours per day is about all the contacts can take of my eyes, though. Even though they are still comfortable to wear after being in that long, they begin to look smoky or hazy to my vision and I have to take them out, soak them for the night and switch back to the bi-focals. It is still really nice to not wear glasses for most of the day now. They used to bug me terribly. Now, they’re just a necessary evil when my contacts need to spend time in the solution.

My music hobby has been on the back-burner for a good long while thanks to all the activity associated with the move. I am grateful to have a new, much larger room to use for my music hobby, but it is so full of boxes and junk that I don’t have a place to set down an instrument case and open it. Needless to say, I’m not getting any practice in and that frustrates me greatly. I was invited to jam with some local friends a few weekends ago and even though I had not been practicing, I jumped at the chance to play – even if it meant I wasn’t going to be entirely on the ball. We had a fun time and I’m glad I went. I just hope I can do some practicing before I get my next invitation to play.

That’s about it for this time.

Update on the move

It is Saturday, July 25, and we have been in our new house since July 13. We are slowly getting things put in their places, but there still are a lot of boxes to go through and stuff to sort, store, throw, etc. We have generated a lot of trash at both houses over the past few weeks.

The good news is, we finally got our old house on the market and should show up in the MLS starting on Monday. We hope it will sell quickly so we don't have to stress over having to make these large house payment for an undetermined amount of time. Pam and I spent some time at the old house this afternoon giving it a few finishing touches and I must say it looks really good. So, I hope the right family comes along and falls in love with it.

The new house is going to remain a work in progress for weeks and perhaps months to come. The kids' rooms are about as finished as they can be, but since we bought an older home, there are lots of other things we have to deal with that would not have been an issue for us had we stayed in the old house. The kids's bath tub has a large crack in it and we we don't think it is safe to fill it with water for a bath. So, we're having it redone. That will happen next week. We have added a lot of stuff to personalize this home already, but there are more things we want to do. That may take some time.

We have had a few frustrations with this home already. First, the electrical wiring has been modified a lot by the previous owners and from what I can see, they had no business tinkering with things they don't understand. The previous owners seemed to have an obsession with light dimmers. The trouble is, they put dimmers on things that shouldn't have dimmers (like ceiling fans), so I have been going around the house removing dimmers and installing standard light switches. We have a few lights in the house that don't work at all and that concerns me. I'm not looking forward to chasing wires in walls to figure out those mysteries.

Another frustration could have been disasterous for one of our children. The former garage of this house (they converted the garage into an extra room) still has the old attic access pull-down folding stairs in it. I went up to see if the attic had a floor in it and was pleased to see that about half of the attic floor over the former garage was covered with plywood. As I started back down the steps of the ladder, David decided he was going to come up and join me. I tried my best to discourage him from climbing as I was coming down. I got down to the last couple of steps and that is when the ladder cracked and separated; sending me to the floor and narrowly missing David as I fell. I was OK and so was David, but the attic could not be used until we fixed the ladder. We now have a nice, sturdy, aluminum folding attic access ladder in place of the old wooden one. The new ladder is rated for 350 pounds and feels really sturdy when I use it.

Pam has worked really hard at putting lots of things away in our house so far. I have tried to help in the evenings and on weekends, but most of my help has been to assemble new furniture and shelving from kits, repair door openings and latches, carry heavy things and hang stuff on walls. I also have carried out lots of trash and declared war on the insects that have been attempting to share our living space.

Pam and I both think we will like this new house a lot. We have more space than before and we live in a neighborhood that is super-quiet. The street is a dead end with a cul-de-sac and the only cars we see down here are of people who live here. There is no noisy traffic noise and the loudest sound we hear outside seems to be the locusts in the trees.

My music hobby seems to be on hold while we get the house stuff done. I don't feel right doing any practicing while we still have boxes to open and put away, so the instruments will stay put away until we get the piles dealt with.

I have been wearing my contact lenses for about a month now. I'm doing really well with them and what few shortcomings I do have from them are easily remedied. So, I'm happy with my decision to get off the glasses.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to post this time. I hope to have some soon.

More news later. Thanks for checking in on us.

New Playset!

The move to our new home has been underway all this week. It has been long, hot and very stressful at times. We have dealt with many people and most have been great, but we have nothing nice to say about our experiences with Lowes Home Improvement Center this week. They caused us a lot of grief at a moment when we were exceedingly tired and too busy to be wasting time over a mistake they made. To make a very long story short, they had some sort of problem with their computer system that their cash registers run on and ended up charging us three times (actually taking the money from our checking account three times) for the items we were purchasing. The total was a little over $500 for one transaction, but they took over $1500 out of our bank account. I caught it the night after we went to Lowes when I was checking our online balance and found the extra charges. I spent a long time the next day getting them to fix the problem and they never apologized for the mistake.

Another source of stress has been trying to keep up with the kids while we shuttle our belongings from one house to the other and set up the new place. Abby hasn't been much trouble, but David has been very busy, needy and whiny. He wants to get into everything we're doing, or keep us from doing those things altogether. He wants to go outside, but it has been terribly hot and we don't want to spend any more time out there than is absolutely necessary. We're also working on potty training David and that is really hard to stay up on with all the other things going on. David will not tell us when he needs to go and we don't always pick up on those subtle clues he gives us. So, we have to anticipate and run him to the bathroom in advance of an accident. Unfortunately, there have been many accidents.

We have been under heat advisories all week long and I have spent most of this week drenched from top to bottom in sweat. At the end of each day, nearly everything aches. Pam is just as exhausted. The bulk of our belongings will be moved this Monday by some people we have hired. But, for the past week we have been focusing on transporting things that will fit into our cars.

The new house is starting to take shape, but there are still more things to fix and set up than I can count. I hope to knock out a lot of the important things this weekend. We'll be putting things away for weeks, though.

 

One of our major accomplishments this week has been adding a new playset for the back yard. The playset I built at our old house will not be moving with us. This new set was assembled by a professional and he did a wonderful job. The kids have already tried it out and they seem very happy with it. We will enjoy watching them play on this new set for years to come.

I have transitioned from wearing glasses to wearing contact lenses with very little problem at all. I have a little trouble getting them in, but they are very comfortable to wear and easy to clean. I still wear glasses from time to time, but most of the day I'm using contacts and it is so nice not to have to worry about the specks, smears and glares from my glasses. What I got was the Bausch & Lomb multi-focal soft contacts. They are much better than bi-focals in my opinion. There are a few shortcomings, but it is like getting 20 years back on my vision. Now I wonder why I waited so long.

More updates after the move is complete. Thanks for checking in.

The house deal is progressing as planned. We will close on the new house on Friday, June 26, and take possession of it by July 1. We’re giving the sellers a little extra time to get their things out and have the house professionally cleaned. Abby is finally getting excited about moving. She and David went over to the house with Pam this past week to look at a few things and they had a ball running and screaming back and forth between what will eventually become their bedrooms. It is nice to see them enjoying the new digs.

Once we have the new house available to us, we’ll begin moving some stuff over and making some of the little changes we wanted to make to the house and back yard. We’ll continue to live in our current house until it is sold.

Pam found a good solution for our carport need at the new house, so we’ll be looking for a builder to help us with that. E-mail us if you have any recommendations.

Abby just finished a week at an “American Girl” camp where every day they had a different doll from a different time period and they learned about life in different times. They made butter, made clothes for their dolls, necklaces, made yarn dolls and they learned about manners and table etiquette. We were amazed at how well behaved Abby has been at the table since camp. She knows more things about manners than I do! Next week, Abby starts horseback riding lessons. She's going to have fun.

David is turning into a real chatterbox. He is stringing together more and more sentences and says some really cute things. The other day, after supper, Abby was eating a Popsicle and David decided he wanted one. So he said, “Want a pop goes the weasel?” How cute! He is so full of energy and likes to hop and skip everywhere he goes. He does not like being held back, so we have a few fits over that every now and then, but most of the time he is really sweet.

Pam plans to start “officially” potty training David in about one more week. We hope he takes to it quickly. We have tried to familiarize him with using the toilet for quite a while, but we have not been consistent enough to make it stick. He just thinks it is a game and not a necessity at this point. The other day, I caught him emptying an entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet. That was not much fun for me, but David had a blast.

We have been purging and cleaning out cabinets and drawers over here. We have gotten rid of a lot of surplus coffee mugs, cups and countless sippie cups that nobody wants or uses here any more. We still have a lot of things to go through, but it is nice to have removed some of the clutter in our lives already. It seems to reduce some of the everyday stresses to have things you need neatly put away in the same place and easy to find. I hope we will continue to do this at the new house. Clutter is like weeds in your lawn. Sometimes you don’t notice how bad it is getting until they have almost taken over.

I keep hoping to set some time aside for playing some music, but it gets harder and harder to find the time to do it. I did sneak some guitar time in while the kids were playing in the back yard. I grabbed a guitar and sat on the back porch while the kids played. That went OK until the kids started mauling me. I hope some day the kids will want to join me when I try to play music instead of interfere. They’re just too young to understand that right now.

I made an appointment with an ophthalmologist for this coming Friday afternoon. I’m so sick of wearing glasses and I want to be rid of them. I have previously consulted a local vision clinic about laser vision correction options and I was not impressed with their solution. I have always been far-sighted, but now that I am dealing with the “over 40” vision issues, I am finding that both my near and far vision is getting worse. I currently wear bifocals and they do the trick for most things I have to see, but the more I wear them, the more I need to wear them. It is like my eyes can’t see anything clearly without help and that bothers me a lot. I can’t read the alarm panel for our house alarm, or the caller ID on the phone, or even the buttons on my phone without the glasses. I dread the next vision check when I go to renew my driver’s license in 2011.

So, I am hoping for a better solution after meeting with the ophthalmologist. I’m willing to do something as simple as contacts or even do laser correction, if they can convince me they have a better plan than the last time I looked into it. The first time, the clinic wanted to give me “mono-vision” which essentially took one eye and made it my “far-vision” eye and the other would be my “near-vision” eye. My brain was supposed to sort out the images. They simulated it with contacts and I HATED IT! I will not allow that to be done to me. I saw that Bausch and Lomb has a new contact lens that is supposed to help my kind of vision problems. If they are right for me, that’s what I want to do. Stay tuned to see how this all works out.

Dad is home!

Dad was released from the hospital today. He has more medications to take and he sounds pretty tired. We're glad he is home and we thank all those who have prayed for him.

Stressful time

This week has been full of stress. As I mentioned before, we're moving soon. We have a contract on a house that is located much closer to my parents, Abby's school, the grocery, etc. The projected closing date is toward the end of this month, but we remain hopeful the sellers will want to move the date up. So, Pam and I are starting to sift through our stuff, purge junk and donate unneeded things to charity. I've already lost my parking space in the garage to our "piles." I guess I better get used to parking outside since the new house has no garage.

The big stressful item of the week has nothing to do with our move, however. Dad has been in the hospital since last Monday. Last weekend, he did a lot of physical stuff and got so wore out he could barely stand, so he went to bed. By morning, his condition was worse. He could not stand on his left leg, so he had Mom take him to the hospital to get checked out. He was admitted and they ran countless tests on him. To make a long story short, he appears to have had a mild stroke and because he did not get to the hospital as soon as it started, he may have some kind of permanent brain damage. They keep checking him for signs of stroke-related problems, but so far he seems fine. He can walk, talk and he doesn't seem to have any memory problems. He is not getting quality sleep in the hospital and he has some problems with headaches and his body chemistry seems to be on a roller-coaster ride. The latest word is he will have more tests and stay in the hospital for at least a couple more days while they watch to see if he has any more stroke-related problems.

That's all I have at the moment. You can e-mail me if you have questions. Thanks for checking in.

Moving soon

This has been a week of a lot of exciting happenings. Abby just finished second grade and was awarded for her attendance, getting all “A’s” and for being a top speller. She also spent more time reading books outside of school than any of her classmates. We’re very proud of our little girl and her accomplishments. Abby has been to lots of parties with her friends in the past weeks. It seems like every weekend has something for her to do. Now, we’re getting ready to get into summer vacation mode and Pam has lots of activities lined up for Abby for the summer. She will be taking swimming lessons; going to a horseback riding camp; attending an “American Girl” doll camp; Vacation Bible School and other church-related activities, plus lots of playdates with her friends.

From Abby

David had a follow-up appointment with his kidney specialist this week and we are happy to report that he is doing well. His blood pressure was the best it has ever been and his blood chemistry is not doing bad. His creatinine and potassium did creep up a tiny bit this time, but the amount of movement was small enough to be dismissed as testing variances.

From David

David keeps getting more cute and sweet and he has been showing us how smart he is. Pam got him some soft letters and numbers to play with in his tub during bath time. He has been learning the names of them and he likes to hold them up and call them out to us. He goes through his numbers and several letters. He enjoys interacting with people and he loves his teachers at our church. David loves music and dances around when he hears tunes he likes. He is still obsessed with watching “Barney” and he seems to have a love/fear relationship with all vacuum cleaners. He likes pointing them out to us, but he doesn’t want to be near when they are running. He also calls anything he does not know the name of a “vacuum.”

Last Tuesday, David performed with his class from our church’s “Mothers Day Out” program. The kids sat in front of us and sang songs to us while making gestures with their hands that also told about the songs. I took video of this and it has been posted to our channel on YouTube for you to view if you like. In the video, most of the children need help getting seated at the start, but David climbs right up into a chair and sits like a good boy. There were many distractions during their performance (they’re two years old, what do you expect?) but David was able to stick with the performance and did a very nice job.

The biggest news of all this week is we are going to be moving soon. We bought a house closer to my parents’ house and much closer to Abby’s school. So, Pam will have much shorter drives to get our family to and from the places they go most often. We’ll also be closer to my folks so we can be helpful to them and vice-versa. It will be good for the kids to have easier access to them. I timed the drive from work to the new house and found it is about the same distance and time as it was to our current house, so my daily routines will have little impact at all.

The house we’re buying is larger than our current house and seems to be laid out better with more storage. The downside is we will no longer have a garage, but Pam and I are working on solving that problem. The big bonus for me is I will have a larger room to dedicate to my music interests. The current space I use for music is just too small to be practical, so I’ll enjoy the upgrade.
What Pam likes about the new house is the kitchen – it has lots of character and three ovens! She also likes having an upstairs for the kids. She likes 2 story homes. There are a lot of neat built-ins in this house. The neighborhood is nice and quiet and there are no houses directly behind us, just open fields and woods. The back porch and back yard look really nice for sitting around in the evenings or entertaining guests.

We had the new house inspected today and that’s always a sobering occasion. There are some things we’ll have to fix up and some things we’re going to expect the seller to fix for us. But, we’re not going to be difficult about it. I’m pretty handy when the need arises. Since this is an older home, I’m sure the need will arise – often.

Well, that’s about all the news for now. Stay tuned for more updates on the kids and the move!

Finally got to jam!

From Jam at West EMS

It has been more than two months since I went to Pete Wernick's Bluegrass Jam Camp in Argyle, TX and that was the last time I got to jam with other musicians until yesterday evening. My friend, Dave Blevins, who is a helicopter pilot for West EMS also happens to love to play music. He invited me to come play music with his friends, most of whom are associated with West EMS. We had a wonderful time. I met with another helicopter pilot, Matt Ashcraft (pictured next to me in the above photo) and we spent some quality time working on some very old fiddle tunes together. I was flatpicking a song called "Soldier's Joy." Matt heard me playing it and took an interest, so I showed him the notes from my guitar and within about 15 minutes, he had it and we were playing it together. Then, I moved on to another fiddle tune called "Eighth of January." Matt wanted to learn that one, too. It helped me a bunch as well since I have only begun playing these tunes a few weeks ago. The rest of the guys in the group had a wide variety of musical backgrounds, so there was plenty of work for me just to keep up. One of the players has played professionally with Earnest Tubbs and even went to high school with Willie Nelson. He has lots of stories to tell. I had a great time, but I also know I have a lot more to learn.

From Jam at West EMS

I sure appreciate Pam for taking care of the evening duties with the kids and house and let me have a chance to have some music fun. I have a sweet wife!

Abby's first attempt at making cookies

 

Abby has been a busy girl today. She planned out most of Pam's day after church with all sorts of activities. Then, Abby went off to the kitchen to "create a new recipe." A short while later, Abby called out to Pam, "How much baking soda do I need for cookies?" Abby got her answer and continued to work. Later, she came and showed me that she was mixing up some batter for some cookies. I could tell she was proud of herself, so I gave her an encouraging comment and sent her back to the kitchen. Later on, she came back and showed me one of her finished cookies. I tried it and it was really good! Abby made this from scratch, without following a recipe in a book. She did ask Pam several times about what ingredients she needed, but Abby did the majority of the physical work. This is quite an accomplishment for our little girl! So, I thought we would share the moment with our friends.

Wildlife encounters

If you have been following our posts on Facebook, then you already know we have been encountering more and more wild creatures outside over the past few weeks. We all enjoyed watching the baby bunnies grow up and go their independent ways. We still have rabbits in our yard and around our neighborhood, but I don't see the babies any more. They must have moved on to other yards or got so big that I can't tell them apart from the adults any more.

From Wildlife

The biggest excitement this past week has been from snakes. Early this past week, I was leaving one of the microwave tower sites I maintain at work and saw what I thought was a stick in the road. A closer look revealed that the stick was actually a snake. I couldn't tell if it was alive or not, so I stopped the van and got out. The snake did not move. I began thinking it must have been hit by another car on the road and was dead. Not totally trusting my assessment, I kicked some dust at it. That's when I realized the snake was very much alive as it coiled up and prepared to strike at me. I was a safe distance away (out of the strike zone, any way) and I was trying to capture a photo of the snake with my phone while it was still coiled up, but it uncoiled and slithered off into the grass next to the road. The photo above was taken as the snake was fleeing. Examining the photo later, I determined that it was a diamondback rattlesnake. The rattles were missing from the tail, but all the markings were correct. I guess I should be glad I didn't get closer and risked getting bitten. I was pretty far from a hospital at the time.

Today, I was in the back yard of our house and decided to move a pile of wood panels that had fallen over in our grass. I expected to find some wildlife in or under the pile as I lifted it, so I picked up each panel slowly and observed for movement each step of the way. About halfway through the panels, I found three large toads hiding under there. They were so cute, I had to take pictures of them for Pam. Here are some of the better shots:

From Wildlife

From Wildlife

Then, I lifted the final panels to reveal one small brown garden snake. It tried to hide, but I was able to pick it up and move it before it went to hide with the toads. I was able to capture this photo with my phone before he disappeared:

From Wildlife

It is fun to see what kind of wildlife lives all around you. It is a little creepy, too. I always worry about the kids discovering something before I do. Especially if it is something harmful, like a poisonous snake. So far, those have not been found around the house, but I have found and killed a large rat snake in the back yard before.

In family news: We're all doing fine. Pam has a birthday coming up this Monday. I got her something special and she won't let me give it to her early. She wants to wait for her actual birthday. I can admire that, but I sure would like to give her this gift early!

Abby is still doing very well in school. Her social calendar is filling up and Pam has loads of activities lined up for her this summer. It sure is nice being a kid.

David is still being a two year old in every way. He can be very cute and really turn on the charm, then he can turn right around and be very difficult. Pam occasionally tells me via text messages to my phone whenever David draws attention to himself by throwing fits in public places, like Abby's school. David has a couple of obsessions at the moment. He won't stop talking about "vacuums" and he is addicted to "Barney the Dinosaur." He wants to watch Barney all the time. We limit TV viewing on both the kids on most days. Abby is used to the restriction and is usually pretty cheerful about finding something else to do. David on the other hand will get really sad if you tell him he can't watch Barney when he wants to. We remain firm and hope he finally gets the message.

Both kids are looking taller and older now. Pam and I have both noticed how much they both have changed since the start of the year. They both look taller and their faces look more mature than before. It is scary and fun all at the same time.

I haven't done as much with the music lately. We always seem to have a lot of stuff going on and since we got on Facebook, I'm always finding reasons to spend more time on the laptop in the evenings. I need to get back into a regular practice routine. I picked up the banjo today to see if I could play a Gospel song that Abby said her music teacher would like me to play. I think I can learn it, but I need to spend time practicing or I'll never be confident enough to play it in front of anyone. I have been playing the guitar a lot more when I do sit down to practice. I'm trying to learn to "flatpick" Bluegrass style. I've always been a strummer and only dabbled at picking tunes. Now, I'm trying to focus more energy on the flatpicking side so I can start doing more lead work and be more effective when jamming with strangers. Speaking of that, I have been invited to jam with a bunch of guys up in a town 20 miles north of here next Saturday. I'm not sure if I'm going, yet. I may not make up my mind until that day.

More news later. Thanks for checking in!

Bunny at the window!

 

Here's your bunny update for April 22, 2009: The baby rabbits have vacated their hole in the back yard and are freely wandering all around the exterior of our house. When you go outside, the bushes rustle with the movement of tiny creatures. Last night, I went outside just before bed and found 3 of the babies loose in the back yard. So, I think they're ready to be on their own. My main concern is they don't become hawk food if I can prevent it.

In the picture above, Pam was alerted to something going on outside by our dog barking. She came to investigate and saw our cat staring at one of the baby bunnies through the window. She took several pictures and I have posted all of them to our web album up on Picasa. Enjoy!

Bunny Escape!

From Easter 2009

For the past couple of weeks, we have been watching a hole in our back yard. In it have been five baby bunnies. For those of you who have been following our posts here and on our web albums and occasionally on facebook, we know you have been enjoying the photos and stories as much as we have in posting them. In our almost daily checks, we have noticed the baby rabbits getting bigger and bigger. Today, they were so big, the hole could barely contain them. When I first approached the hole, the grass and fur that covered it was moving - a lot! The grassy surface was rolling around like it was sitting on water. I poked my finger in and pulled back a small amount so I could look in and immediately one of the babies jumped out and started running around. I captured it and put it back in the hole.

From Easter 2009

A short while later, three bunnies popped out of the hole, one after the other and began running around. The first one ran so fast and so far, we couldn't keep up with it. The other two ran a short distance and stopped. I was able to capture both of them and put them back in the hole.

From Easter 2009

As for the one that got away, I followed the path it took and found the mother rabbit just beyond our fence. It is my hope that the baby ran to its mother and is safe with her.

From Easter 2009

The remaining four bunnies are safe in their hole, but considering how easily they got around this afternoon, I expect the hole to be empty by tomorrow morning. So, this may be our last bunny post for a while. Enjoy the photos! Thanks for following along.

Bunnies are still fine!

 

I checked on the baby bunnies in our back yard today and they're looking really good. There are five in all. Four are about the same size and then there is one that is about half the size of the others. They now have their eyes open, so I am guessing we are going to be seeing little bunnies hopping around in our back yard any day now. They are so cute to see, but we are limiting our visits to once per day and we always put the nest back the way we found it so the mother rabbit doesn't abandon it. The best I can tell, she must be coming around only during the middle of the night and hides elsewhere during the day. We have never seen her with the babies, but from the way they are developing it is obvious that they are being taken care of. My main concern is about predators. We have snakes and lots of hawks out here. I sure would like to protect the rabbits from becoming dinner for another wild animal, but that is how nature works. What else can you do?

More news soon.

Bunny update

Here is a video I took of the baby rabbits in our back yard on Easter Sunday.

Happy Easter!

 

 

After a night of thunderstorms, we weren't sure we would get to do our traditional Easter egg hunt outdoors today. But, while we were at church, the skies cleared and the yard dried out enough to send the kids out for some fun. David hasn't quite figured out what is going on just yet, but he enjoyed the excitement. Abby is an old pro at finding eggs, so hers might have been hidden with a slightly higher level of craftiness.

My parents came by to join in the festivities and bring some treats for the kids as well. It has been a Good News day with plenty of happy moments.

Just in time for Easter: BABY BUNNIES!

From Blogger Pictures

We had a sweet surprise in our back yard today. I saw some fuzz poking out of our grass and went over to pick it up and toss it. Underneath was a hole in the yard with at least four baby rabbits in it! I carefully covered it back up after taking a few photos of them. I hope they make it. We love having rabbits running free in our back yard. They're sweet to watch and the dog enjoys chasing them. She can't catch them and I think the rabbits must enjoy the chase, too, because they always come back for more. However, this is the first time they have ever had babies in our yard. What a cool thing to see!

And now we're on Facebook, too!

Well, Pam and I finally did it. We joined the countless others who are now up on facebook.com. Pam had commented to me that more and more of the people she knows are using FB to keep in touch and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to do that or not. I really did not have much desire to get on the FB bandwagon, but that was mostly because I didn’t know much about it. I already have about a half-dozen sites I use to keep in touch with my music friends and I didn’t see the need to add one more place for me to write blogs and post pictures of my interests. But, this past week, one of the discussion groups I follow was going to migrate some of its operations over to FB and from what they had to say about it, I started to change my mind.

I discussed it with Pam and then decided to take the plunge. Pam followed me about a day later. So, now we can keep up with everyone through our FB pages as well. Pam has been enjoying how quickly her friends list is populating over there. She still has more friends than me, however I don’t see this as a contest to see who can amass the most friends, but rather just another tool to keep up with people we care about. So, if you’re on FB feel free to pile on, if you are so inclined.

From Bluebonnets 2009

We took the kids out for photos in the Bluebonnets today. The crop is disappointingly small this year. We drove around for a long time before we could find a patch of them that was worthy of pictures. A place we have used in the past was too overgrown with tall, dry weeds and the other places that had good concentrations of the flowers were on fenced, private property and we didn’t have the gall to invite ourselves in for a quick photo shoot. So, we ended up at a patch where we had photographed Abby back when she was a toddler. There were fewer flowers, but they looked pretty good for our purposes. David enjoyed his time in the wildflowers, too. He got sad when we had to go back to the car. I put the best of the photos up in a new album on our Picasa Web Album page, called “Bluebonnets 2009.”

Hope you enjoy the photos. Thanks for checking in.

A busy week

From Allison&Allyn's Visit - March 2009

We have had a very busy week around here. My sister, Allison and our nephew, Allyn, flew down from Chicago to visit. They were staying with my folks, but spent every evening with us. The kids were very active and made lots of use of the toys in the back yard. One day during the past week, we had a rain storm keep us from playing outside, so the kids did all their playing indoors. Before sunset, I noticed a beautiful double-rainbow forming behind our house and took several photos of it. You can see all of the photos in the web albums.

From Allison&Allyn's Visit - March 2009

David had a wonderful time getting to know his aunt, Allison and it looked like she was having a great time watching David being David. Abby and Allyn played a lot together and I know they had a lot of fun. I know my folks took both Allison and Allyn around to several local tourist attractions, so I believe they had a nice visit.

We're happy to have shared our home and time with them while they were here, but we are really tired and ready to get back to our normal routines.

Our trip to The Woodlands

We decided to take the kids on an excursion down between Conroe and Houston and do some shopping and sight-seeing at and around The Woodlands Mall. The trip went well in spite of David's occasional reminders that he is only 2 years old and Abby's disappointment in not being able to swim at the hotel. But the Woodlands Mall is a wonderful place with lots of things to do for children. They have large play areas, a giant carousel, a children's museum and much more there. The mall has many fine restaurants inside and surrounding it, so it is easy to spend an entire day there.

It was a good experience over all and I think we'll return some time in the future and perhaps let Abby swim next time. We had a nice hotel room just blocks away from the mall and the drive seemed fairly easy in spite of how far away it was. I have a new photo album up on our Picasa Web Album page, called "The Woodlands". I have embedded a slide show in this post, but if you want to see larger photos, go to the album.

Abby's spring break is about over and so is my vacation time off from work. It has been a busy time for us and we have packed a lot of memories into the last two weeks. It is going to be hard to go back to the old routines, but I suppose it will also be a welcome change of pace. We have lost a lot of sleep over the past two weeks. If we can get our daytime back to normal, perhaps our nighttime will follow.

Abby's trip to "American Girl" Store

 

Last week, Abby's friend, Molly and her mother, invited Abby and Pam to go to the American Girl Store in Dallas with them. The girls had a wonderful time. They got to make some special memories and have a nice lunch. We owe a special thank you to Abby's aunt Jane for watching David while the girls were out of town for the day.

Argyle Bluegrass Jam Camp & Festival

I have just returned from the most exciting four days I have spent so far this year. I took part in Pete Wernick’s Bluegrass Jam Camp in Argyle, TX. The camp preceeded the Argyle Bluegrass Festival, which I also attended. Pete Wernick (aka: “Dr. Banjo” www.drbanjo.com) is a famous banjo player from the band, “Hot Rize” and has worked with the industry’s best performers over his nearly 40 year music career. He now teaches music to novice musicians and experienced amateurs alike plus he continues to perform with other bands all over the world. Pete and his wife, Joan, plus a local instructor from Hutchins, Dennis Bailey, taught us how to be effective “jammers” at the camp. On the last day of the camp, we all got to get up and perform for each other. It was a great experience. This was my second year at the camp and it was just as much fun this time as it was last time.

(Left to right: Dennis Bailey, Joan and Pete Wernick and me) From Argyle 2009

(Our jam group performs at camp) From Argyle 2009

This year, I brought along my banjo, guitar, bass and my new resonator guitar. People joked with me that I needed a “roadie” to help me bring all my stuff in and out each day. Several of my fellow campers helped me and I appreciate that. I had hoped to work more with the banjo and guitar this time around, but we were lacking in bass players for the small group jams, so I ended up playing bass most of the time, but that’s OK. I have played bass since I was a teenager, so I didn’t have to struggle too much. I did get plenty of guitar and resonator guitar time when all the campers were together in the same room. My banjo didn’t see much action except during a couple of coffee breaks. I guess I’ll have to work on the banjo stuff more on my own time.

From Argyle 2009

When I was not at camp, some of my fellow campers and I could be found back at the hotel jamming in the lobby. On the first night, it was just us campers playing and singing. The second night, many of the professional performers who were booked to play at the Argyle Bluegrass Festival were arriving at the hotel. Some of them came down and joined in our jam. That added a whole new level of energy and excitement to the experience. By the third night, the hotel lobby was filled with performers, both amateur and professional.

(I take a turn on the string bass while jamming at the hotel) From Argyle 2009

(I'm playing the resophonic guitar and singing along) From Argyle 2009

One of the groups to come down and play along with us was the “Carolina Chocolate Drops.” They are an African-American group of three who are multi-instrumentalists and amazingly talented. Prior to coming to Argyle, I had researched them to see what I might expect of their performances. My initial discoveries led me to believe they didn’t play much that sounded like Bluegrass, so I was prepared to give them a pass and find something else to do at the festival when they took the stage. However, when they came down and jammed with us at the hotel, my whole opinion of them turned completely around. The first of the CCD to show up was “Dom” and he is an unpredictable ball of energy. You never know what he’s going to do next, but you can be sure it will sound really good. Dom started by playing “the bones” to one of our songs. Next, he pulled out a harmonica and took some solos and sang along with us. Dom also plays banjo, many types of guitars and other noise-making instruments. He also plays one mean jug! Next to join us was “Rhiannon” who is the only female member of the group. She is an experienced opera singer who plays fiddle, banjo, kazoo plus many things, but my goodness can that lady sing! Rhiannon was pregnant and showing a bit and we could see that she was tired, but she spent a lot of quality time with us and enhanced our whole jamming experience far beyond my expectations. She sang and played many traditional Bluegrass and Gospel tunes with us and on the tunes she didn’t seem to know, she still offered up some very nice fiddle solos.

("Rhiannon" from the Carolina Chocolate Drops joins our jam) From Argyle 2009

The next day, I got to see them perform live at the Argyle Bluegrass Festival and their performance was absolutely amazing. I encourage anyone who is willing to take the time to “Google” or search “YouTube” for anything about the “Carolina Chocolate Drops” and see what this group of really nice and talented musicians can do. If you get a chance to see them in person like I did, I think you will be just as amazed as I was by their energy and style.

(The Carolina Chocolate Drops performing at Argyle) From Argyle 2009

The remainder of my time at Argyle was spent visiting with my fellow campers and some of the famous people staying at the hotel and watching all the wonderful performances at the festival. I did manage to spend about an hour in one of the “jamming rooms” at the festival and got to play some songs with total strangers. Many of the guys in the room were much more talented than me, but that only helps me to discover what else I am capable of doing as I try to keep up with them. I hope to have more experiences like these in the future.

I owe a HUGE THANK YOU to my wife, Pam, for keeping things rolling on an even keel at home while I was off having all this fun. She has given me a wonderful gift and I appreciate her for it. I really have a terrific wife. She’s the best! In the future, I want to get the whole family involved with going to music festivals like these. The people I encountered were all so nice and friendly. I saw many families there with kids – even some which appeared to be preschoolers toting instrument cases and looking for places to jam. We figure David has a couple more years before we can drag him around to things like this. I look forward to that time.

Heading off to camp

Ahhh! How do I spell "RELIEF?" I spell it: "V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N !" I just began two solid weeks off from work. It is so nice to not have to think about that for a while. Now I can focus on things that I have been missing. One of those things is my music hobby. Beginning Wednesday, I'm heading off to music camp. Pete Wernick, a professional banjo player from the band "Hot Rize", along with his wife, Joan and another instructor or two will be conducting a Bluegrass Jam Camp up at Argyle this week. This is my second year to attend and I am very excited about going. The camp runs from Wednesday through Friday and ends just as the Argyle Bluegrass Festival begins - which I will also be attending.

Pam has been playfully reminding me that I will be gone for four solid days and leaving her to deal with our very busy children. I do feel bad about that and that is partly why I'm taking that second week off from work. I hope to use that second week to give Pam a break and some extra freedom to come and go without worrying about what she is going to do with the kids. I also hope we can have some quality time together as a family during that week.

From 2009-02 (Feb)

The kids are doing great. Abby is still doing a fantastic job at school and David is still being a two year old. Abby had to do a presentation to her class on former president Woodrow Wilson. Pam helped her research him and they both put together the presentation. To help the effectiveness, we put Abby in a suit coat, tie, top had and some antique glasses frames. We hear that Abby's teacher took a video of the presentation. We hope we get to see it some time.

From 2009-02 (Feb)

David had some more doctor checkups recently. His blood pressure is still under control and his blood chemistry appears to be about right for now. His height is still below average for his age. David continues to add to his vocabulary and says lots of cute and sweet things. He still needs to work on his temper, but it is getting better all the time. He can communicate his needs better now and that is helping with the frustrations.

We will have some more updates after I get back from camp, so stay tuned!

Birthday fun for Abby

From Abby's birthday 2009

Abby's birthday has been a success. She had a wonderful time at "Bath Junkie" with her classmates and then she got to have a second party with the local family at "Chuck E Cheeses." We had cake and presents back at our house. The cake was tasty and Abby enjoyed all the gifts she received.

Both kids are worn out after this day of celebrating and are sleeping soundly as I write this. Pam and I are enjoying the peace and quiet.

Thanks to all who helped Pam make this day special for Abby. I have created a separate photo album called "Abby's birthday 2009" for a sampling of the photos taken at her parties today. Here's a slide show:

Make way for the birthday girl!

From 2009-02 (Feb)

I don't think anyone else in our family could possibly be as excited as Abby about turning eight tomorrow (Feb 16). Her birthday also conveniently falls on a school holiday (Presidents' Day), so not only does she get to have a day long birthday celebration, she also gets the day off from school. I wasn't that lucky when my birthday came around a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I spent most of my birthday at work helping haul over 3500 pounds of batteries in and out of a building. I should have taken that day off!

Pam has big plans for Abby. She is having a party with her school friends early in the day, then in the evening she is having a party with family. Pam has been baking her birthday cake and the house smells heavenly right now.

We hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day. Pam arranged for a sitter for us at least a week in advance, so we were able to slip away for a pleasant dinner - just the two of us. We call that "table for two time." It is always nice when we get a chance to do that. I got Pam some flowers which have been filling our house with a wonderful fragrance and she got me some delicious chocolate covered strawberries. (They were really good!)

Today was a bit frustrating for me. It was my turn to run the audio equipment during our church service and it was malfunctioning the minute I fired it up. I had to think fast and improvise to get things sounding OK, but I still got requests for adjustments. Our recording equipment has been malfunctioning occasionally and I was worried I would not be able to capture the sermon this time. However, I managed to get it working well enough to record, but I was never totally happy with how things ran. That was the beginning of my stressful day.

My day got much worse when I decided to take the car Pam typically drives in for some much needed service. The tires were worn out, the shocks were bad and the brakes were questionable. I didn't want to burden Pam with taking the car in for service - especially while dealing with kids and their intricate schedules, so I chose to give up part of my Sunday afternoon to make the car safe for her. I spent over four hours sitting and pacing around as they slowly replaced four tires, four shocks and two brakes. I was told the work would only take about an hour and a half. After years of dealing with this place I have learned that when they give you an estimate on how long your car will take, you better double that figure and plan on camping out and bothering them regularly so you don't get forgotten. Today was the longest I have ever waited and they were not even busy. Two of their guys were clowning around and at least twice, other workers stopped working to come in and watch the TV in the customers' lounge!

When I finally got free from the automotive torture chamber and paid them a king's ransom for their slow service, it was already supper time and Pam had been stuck at home with the kids. I ended up dashing through the store to pick up some things Pam had ordered for Abby's party and bringing home take-out fast food for supper. Then it was time to shift into the night time routines of getting the kids bathed and into bed. This is not how I had imagined my day going. I was hoping to spend some quality time getting ready for my music camp which is coming up in a little over two weeks. That didn't happen today and most likely won't happen tomorrow since we'll be busy celebrating Abby's birthday. Maybe I'll get some time on Tuesday evening...

David is still doing fine. He's showing us just how much of a two year old he can be, but he can also behave like a complete sweetheart a short time later. We've noticed that he is starting to compete with Abby for Pam's affection. We're correcting him where he needs it, but most of this should play out as he grows older. We try to be as even-handed as possible with the kids' attention. So, this is probably just some plain old sibling rivalry.

We'll try to get some good pictures of Abby's birthday fun tomorrow. I'll post the best ones to our web albums, so stay tuned...

Goodbye karate, hello Girl Scouts

From 2009-02 (Feb)

Abby has officially given up karate and has joined a local Girl Scout troop as a "Brownie." Her first task is to sell Girl Scout cookies and she has hit the ground running. She wants very much to earn her first patch and she can get it by selling 24 boxes before the deadline. That deadline is looming very close (we got in at the tail end of the cookie drive) but as of this writing, I believe she has almost made it to that 24. (I'm sure we'll help push her over the line with purchases of our own if for some reason she ends up without the number she needs.)

This morning as we were entering church, Abby proudly proclaimed that she was in the Girl Scouts and she was selling cookies. She instantly sold four boxes. Pam sent out an e-mail on Abby's behalf to several people we know and so far the response has been very good, so I think Abby will have that patch earned in a very short amount of time. It is nice to see her get excited about this and we hope she makes some really good friends while in the Scouts.

From 2009-01 (Jan)

David is doing well. He is becoming quite a chatterbox these days. He talks so much more and is stringing together lots of short sentences. One funny thing he does is he tries to make the sentences longer by adding a few extra syllables to the end of the last word he used. He is identifying more things by name and we can tell he is listening intently to every word we say because of the comments he makes after we say something.

David had his weekly blood pressure check and that is still under control thanks to the two medicines he is taking. He is still giving us some grief on his sleep habits, but we're working through it.

All things considered, we're doing pretty good these days. So, we're grateful.

Bluegrass music

From 2009-02 (Feb)

I have been very fortunate to have been invited to more local jams in the past month. The latest jams have given me more opportunities to hone my skills on the guitar and to do some singing. The general rule at the jams has been that we pass around the responsibility of picking the next song and generally whoever picks the song also sings. That doesn't always hold true, so I always come prepared with more music than I will have time to get to.

Yesterday, I was invited to help a friend celebrate his father's 70th birthday. My friend, Steve, plays banjo in our local jam group and his father, Doyle, plays mandolin. Doyle's wife thought it would be neat to have several of us from the local group surprise him by showing up at his birthday party and playing music with him. Doyle was pleasantly surprised and gladly jumped right in and played with us. It was tremendous fun and I could tell Doyle was ready to play all night if given the chance. But, all fun things had to come to a close as some of us had to get back to our families and such. Still, I had a great time and I'm glad I went.

Happy Birthday

 

Most of you know that February 2 is the day we celebrate "Groundhog Day" and while most of the nation's attention will be focused on Punxsutawney, PA as they pull that overgrown rat from a log and ask it how long winter will last; our family will be focused on something else: my birthday. Not that I intend to toot my own horn here, but it is an excuse to have a party, so I'm happy about that. So, the heck with the rodent, let's just have a party!

The weather has been so strange lately. We had some really warm days this past week. It felt like summer, but we started the week much colder and now this weekend, we're back to the frigid air. Of course, it is nothing like what people up north are experiencing. I guess we should be thankful for that.

The kids are doing fine. Abby has been busy with school and playing at home. Pam had a heart-to-heart discussion with Abby about karate and they may be about to give it up. Abby doesn't seem too fond of the idea of other people throwing her around in karate class. Unfortunately, that goes with the territory. So, Pam is going to see if we can get her into a local Girl Scout troop. That may be more her speed any way. Abby seems excited about it.

David has been challenging us on his naps and sleeping at night. We had about a week and a half where he would wake up between 3 and 5 in the morning. Sometimes we could get him to stay in bed, other times, we had to keep him contained in our room. It got to be too much when he kept jumping out of bed, running to his door and calling out "Mom?" or crying. I had to put my foot down and get stern with him. He is doing better now, but still gives us some grief when he initially goes down to sleep. On the upside, he is talking more and more and starting to put together more phrases. It is fun to watch his little mind at work.

Pam has been helping her sister deliver meals on wheels lately. She tells me it is a very humbling experience. You really appreciate how well life is going for you when you see the troubles other people are having to endure.

I got to play music at two different jams last weekend. One Saturday afternoon and the other on Sunday afternoon. I had fun, met some new and very talented musicians, but I also realized how much I still don't know how to do on my instruments. Now I'm feeling more incentive to practice and expand my abilities. I hope to push myself up a notch or two before I go to Pete Wernick's Bluegrass Jam Camp in March.