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!