Flat Tire

OK friends and neighbors, it's time for updates updates updates!!!! I can sense your joy through my monitor. It's almost overwhelming. Almost.

First off, the rest of the Disneyland trip was wonderful. Little E felt much better the last couple days and as such was much more inclined to go on the rides, and she rode Matterhorn a total of four times. Four!! She loves it, which is great because you never know how an almost 3 year old is going to react to something like that. She even put her hands up in the air for the drops on Pirates. If you're not so familiar, there is an initial drop of around 20 feet or so down the waterfall, like a very mini Splash Mountain. So that was awesome. Big T throws his hands up on Matterhorn and Big Thunder and was even willing to ride Space Mountain with his mom, which is a huge step since previously he would only ride with me. And I swear I'll put up a few pics. We, mostly I, took a little over 2000 for that week. It takes a while to sift through them.

We left a lot of stuff in the hotel room and it was quite an ordeal just to get someone to go and get it for us, not to mention the fun of trying to get a hold of the only person who is allowed to ship things back to their owners. We left T's new didj Leapfrog game thing which he'd just got for Easter and loved to no end. We also left all the movies we'd taken down that the kids would be able to watch on the long drive home. Thank God I had Wall-E on the laptop hard drive. That saved us a couple hours. We finally got it all back yesterday. All is well again. And my faith in that hotel is restored, as the last time we stayed there a couple years ago, I left my pillows and they just disappeared.

I also managed to get sick on the way home and am still just getting over the cold which I acquired. And no, it's not the swine flu. But thanks for asking. Everyone else is back in near top form again.

I got my first flat tire on the van Saturday night. So that was fun. Then of course, the tire place we use was closed on Sunday and with E's b-day and me forgetting my wallet yesterday and practice after work today, I hope to get it fixed tomorrow. But things I plan rarely work out, which is why I don't plan things much anymore.

Little E turned 3 on Monday. Happy B-Day to E!!!!!!! She was loving all the attention and her cake as well. My wife's making two ice-cream cakes for the kids for the Super Party coming up on Sunday. It's still easy for us to have one party for two kids with their birthdays being five days apart and all. I'm sure that as they grow this will become more complicated as having to have two separate parties so close together may be less fun for us.

And to wrap up this brief wrap up. I have planted a tomato plant. Hopefully it will bear tomatoes. I am getting more confident in my ability to keep plants alive and it seems that the onions in the front are doing well overall. If all this succeeds, there may be a veggie planter coming. With multiple plants and spices and such. We shall see.

Minnie's Yoo-Hoo

Hello there friends and neighbors. I write to you from a location across the street from The Happiest Place on Earth. Our vacay (short for vacation) has been going well overall. The first day we got here with my in-laws they were sick with the colds my family had been fighting. My whole family, except for Little E who waited to get down here to really get a hold of it. She's been pretty sick with said head cold for the first few days but now seems to be getting over it. This morning she felt well enough to go give Handy Manny a big ol' hug and pose for a couple pics. She has also met Winnie-the-Pooh, Goofy, Tigger, Mickey, and rode the Matterhorn twice. She loves it.

Big T has been rushing us between the Matterhorn and Big Thunder for most of the trip, but we as a family have managed to ride Small World twice, Pirates twice, Space Mountain (me and T), Buzz Lightyear multiple times, Toy Story Mania, Soarin', Casey Jr., the carousel, Snow White, Alice ('cept me), the Teacups, Jungle Cruise twice (once at night with the fireworks which was really cool), Pooh a lot (hehehehehehe), saw Billy Hill, saw Playhouse Disney twice, Tower of Terror (just me so far), and I can't remember the rest right now. But first a few pics from the first few days (except for today and yesterday which I haven't got off the camera yet.)

Well, due to techincal difficulties, pics will have to come later. Sorry. But now it's naptime, we've been staying in the park until 10 or 11 each night, which might not seem that late to some of you, but the kids usually go to bed at around 7:30 and, because we have nothing else to do, we stay home. Walking around and riding isn't part of our usual routine and it can really take it out of you.

See you real soon!

Nostalgic

I helped in my sons Kindergarten class today. It was a fun experience, and good to see that he actually does seem to pay attention and listen to the teacher. And that he's just like all the other kids. Now, I am used to seeing him with other kids his age at T-ball, but it's different being his coach. At T-ball, I know he knows what he's doing and I don't have to spend as much time with him on certain drills because he already knows them. (And not to sound like a bragging parent, but he is one of the better kids on the team.) But I've helped him with his homework and he seems to rush through it. But today at school I helped with what they call 'Stations' which is where the kids break up into three smaller groups and each do a different project. The project for the table I was helping at was making a bunny bag and a bunny ear hat for Easter, even though we don't celebrate religious holidays. They're having a 'Spring Egg Hunt' tomorrow. Why not just call it an Easter Egg hunt? That's what it is. But you gotta be politically correct, thank you very much liberals.

Anyhoo, I remembered how fun Kindergarten was. My job was to read them a story first about the Easter Bunny. His name was Wilbur and he wasn't feeling very good and didn't think that he'd be able to deliver all the Easter baskets. He had a fever and a cough and a runny nose, which prompted two of the four kids at my table to launch into descriptions of their recent illnesses which were very similar to what poor Wilbur was suffering through. Luckily for Wilbur, though, he had a few very helpful friends who were going to deliver the baskets for him. Unfortunatley, they soon discovered that carrying all those baskets was much harder than they thought it would be so they had to go get Wilbur out of bed. Wilbur sacked up and started taking the baskets around but it was almost dawn now and people were out! He had to hide behind trees, and under beds and in laundry while his friends distracted the people of the neighborhood. In the end all the baskets were delivered and Wilbur was able to get back to bed to recover. The End.

After this lovely story the kids were going to make bunny bags with my help. They are paper bags with handles at the top that the kids make a bunny face on with ears, eyes, a nose and whiskers that they had to cut out and then glue onto the bag. Of course before they could glue the eyes and nose on, they had to color eyeballs for their bunny and color the nose. Thus were created the bunny bags. After the bunny bags there was more, now we had to cut out bunny hats. This was accomplished by the kids cutting only along the lines drawn on a giant piece of paper, then having me fold the paper in a very particular way, stapling, taping, hole punching, and stringing yarn through the holes to make was were essentially bonnets with bunny ears on the top. But wait, there's more! After making these hats, and having the kids color some pink in the ears to make them more bunnyish, they got to sort, count, and graph bags of jelly beans. So the kids get their papers, and a bag of beans, and begin to sort out the beans by color. After they're sorted, they color in boxes to show how many of each color, then after this they get to eat the jelly beans. And during this whole hour long process the topics of conversation were just wonderful. We discussed the finer points of such things as Dora the Explorer, Spiderman, Diego, Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Spongebob and whether dentists were overall good or bad. And we discovered that one of the little girls grandma actually has no teeth at all. But can put some in if she needs to eat or chew things.

It's almost cruel as the kids get to start out with classes like this, having so much fun and talking and making bunny hats, and then in just 7 or 8 short years, they're algebra, difficult english classes where you'll need to find the adjective, predicate, proper nouns, and subject of sentences.

So drift back and remember the wonders of Kindergarten for yourself today. Enjoy the thoughts and memories of a simpler time, where your biggest concern was making sure you colored in the lines.

And I'm going back in a few weeks to help with the computer lab. That's going to be lots of fun.

Just the Goin'

Since the list making has been happening at my house lately with the preparations for the trip down to Disneyland with my in-laws, I thought I'd run a few things by you. Yes, I'm going to Disneyland with the in-laws. No, I'm not crazy. Why yes, I am staying in the same room with them for the first four nights. I do know that there will be horrible snoring from my father-in-law. I have plans for that. Some of them are legal.

Anyway, all has been pretty well. We're all getting over our horrible colds, with all the juicy mucus and lovely coughs. The ear infection for me, sore throats for myself and my wife, now big T's got himself the cough and had a fever this past weekend. So yeah, health is improving in time for the trip.

He had a field trip, his first real field trip, to the Oakland Zoo today. It rained on them a bit but I guess he was pretty dry. I dropped him off this morning since he had to be there at 8 instead of the usual 9:50. In a stroke of genius, they scheduled the Kindergarten field trip on the same day as the 5th graders are leaving for their week long camp. So as the little 5-year-olds are being led to their classroom with a promise of a wonderful trip to the zoo, they are passing lots of suitcases and sleeping bags surrounded by worrying parents. Now, T knows that suitcases are for packing for long trips as he's done this before. And I just pulled down our luggage this past weekend and he's been trying to get a head start on his packing since Sunday. So he's seeing other peoples luggage and I could see the worry starting to form, as his minds probably wondering just how long this trip to the zoo will be. But I took him into his class and gave him a hug and said good-bye and he ran out to play so I figured all was well. I got into work and had to fix someone's computer problem, because I'm the only one who knows how to make laptops connect to LCD projectors, and a call came in that I couldn't get. I didn't recognize the number and thought nothing of it until my wife called to say that she just talked to the boy and his teacher and poor little T was freaking out. He was crying and said he didn't want to leave because he forgot to give me a hug, but my wife, the Supermom gave him a great pep talk and he was OK enough to go on the trip. I don't know how it went yet as he got home about an hour ago, but my mom said he fell asleep on the 5 minute drive from his school to her house. So I'll find out later. But my little guy is growing up and branching out. Maybe the next field trip, I'll chaparone.

I've ordered my functioning contacts and they should be arriving shortly, which will be great as I'd love to have them for the trip instead of switching glasses all the time. This presents another problem, however, as I only have sunglasses that are prescriptionized. I went into Sunglass Hut yesterday and discovered that the sunglasses that I currently own, you know, those ones with the interchangable lenses? Well, those sunglasses, probably because they're Oakley's, those lenses for those shades? $80. For the black iridium polarized lenses. $80. I asked how much for the whole set including the plastic frames. $160. So this means that the people of the Sunglass Hut feel that the lenses and the frames are both worth the same amount of cash. This is incredible to me. So I'm looking for a more economical pair of shades for the trip. I'm hopeful but not very optomisitic.

I'm listening to the new album by Sara Watkins, it's awesome. Not much to do with anything else, but I thought I'd mention it.

T-ball is still going well, I see a couple kids who someday when they go pro will look back on this time with me as their coach and think, "He was awesome. I'm in the big leagues because of him." And then they'll give me money. Which by then I won't need as much because I have big plans to hit the lotto. I'm putting a lot of eggs into the 'Win the Lotto' basket.

I found a couple games for the old Gamecube system I'd forgotten I had. I never had a Gamecube, but I did work for a period of my life at Best Buy, and that job afforded certain perks, like the ability to get free samples of games that you would otherwise only get by pre-ordering games. So I found out that I have Zelda Ocarina of Time with Master something or other and a Star Wars demo disc with the full original Atari arcade game. Remember that one, where you stood there and did the Death Star trench run over and over with the spectacular linear graphics? Well I have it and went out and got myself a controller so I could play them and the Star Wars game is as fun as ever. I did learn that in order to save games I need a Gamecube memory card, so anyone out there with one of those you don't want anymore, send it on over. We'll be pals forever. Or if you prefer we can be palz 4eva!

I guess that's enough for now, though I'm almost completed with another site team-will.org. And one my brother designed for a construction company in Petaluma buckhornconstruction.net. And I'm still working on the districts new site, which is taking a lot longer that I'd like because you can't do simple things like find and replace, nope, I've got to go through all 300 plus pages, and 1000 plus documents and fix things one at a time. Very tedious.

Also Kooni, the cat is almost fully an outside cat now, which is very exciting. And the onions from my uncle appear to be growing well, if they end up coming out tasty, be prepared for a great barbecue this summer.

Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday.