Archive for the ‘Animals’ Category

Take my picture

Monday, February 7th, 2011

For whatever reason Megan (and even Christopher this week) were in the “take my picture” phase. Megan either gets her stuffed animals together or grabs Orca and wants her picture taken (and then immediately wants to see it on the camera). Christopher does the same thing but only with Orca. I’m sure this won’t last long so I’ll keep snapping photos.

Another Pinewood Derby has come and gone. This year I added graphite to our toolkit – it really made a difference. I bought it after I had put the wheels on the car – next year I’ll make sure to lube the car up before I assemble the wheels. We were fast in the first few races but slowed down a bit every race until we were just so-so at the end. Christopher did a lot of the work so I was glad it was as fast as it was. One of his friends had a really fast car so I asked him if he had fun making it. He said “no”. I asked what part of the car he built or worked on and he said “none, my dad did it”. I asked if he got to paint it or do anything else and he said “I got to touch it when it was done.” What fun! Here are some looks of anticipation waiting for Christopher’s car to go zooming by…

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Kung Fu Panda…how about the Kung Fu Orca??? Here she is wearing her white belt…watch out…you never know what leg is going to kick ya…

Colleen did another performance at the Timberwolves game. Their shows get more elaborate every time…here is how they started with girls everywhere on the court. Good luck finding Colleen! She’s towards the left somwhere in gold 🙂

Here’s what Megan and Christopher thought of the performance 🙂 The game started at 7:30 p.m. so it’s probably after 9:00 p.m. by now and we’re waiting to pick up Colleen. They were handing out Diet Mountain Dew to everyone as they left the arena. Perfect – Mountain Dew to my kids at 9:00 p.m. – great idea! You need something to wash down the cotton candy!

What? You didn’t know Megan was a Brownie already? The things some parents will do to guilt people into buying Girl Scout cookies!!!

Beth wasn’t feeling well so I took the kids to church this week. It was a special day for the 5 year olds so I got to go exploring with Megan. We decorated a backpack, put on a safari hat, and then had to go all over the church on a scavenger hunt. One stop was the church’s library. Megan looked at the covers of a few books and then settled on a children’s book with two guys on the front called “My dad’s new roommate”. Life in a reconciling congregation…I’d better get prepared for all of the fun questions this may spawn.

Here’s my new Christmas gift in action…can you tell what it is? One of the tiny squares from my racquetball racquet…as seen through my new macro lens. Sweet. Can’t wait to see all of the bugs and flowers through this lens this summer.

Christopher’s joke of the day: “Doctor, I need a new butt…because this one has a crack in it.” I love it. Keep ’em coming.

So I made it an entire year without eating a single Girl Scout cookie. Yep. It’s true. I only made it about 10 minutes this year but I proved that I could resist them long enough. Thursday I fly out to Vail for my annual ski trip. It sounds like they just got 1′ – 2′ of snow between yesterday and today – sweet. Last weekend I ran up 50 flights of stairs (1280 steps) in 10 minutes 22 seconds. I think that shaved over a minute off of my time from last year. P90-X is doing it’s trick! Next year I break the 10 minute barrier!!!

The kids all made cards for Great Grandma T tonight so I’ll get those in the mail tomorrow. 99. Wow! It’s too bad I scheduled my ski trip on the same weekend as her party. We’re trying to figure out when we can get down there this year. Or maybe we’ll just wait for her 100th!!! Happy Birthday Great Grandma T!!!

Fluffy & Spot

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

It feels like I shovel snow every morning and night lately. And I love it. And they’re saying plenty more is on the way – we have a TON of snow on the ground and stacking up along the driveway and road and patio and pretty much everywhere. I still want to get a copy of that photo from Duluth when I was a kid and the snow drift was over our heads and the dog was way up high (hint, hint, if you can find it). I feel sorry for the people who don’t get to spend as much time really enjoying snow and real winters.

The kids are still in the backyard all the time. Today we had 4 different sets of friends over to sled on our hill. Colleen had two friends over and Christopher had two friends over but despite calling several people we couldn’t find anyone home or available for Megan to bring over – she’s struggling with being the youngest today and missing out on what the other two have. Get used to it kid 🙂

Christopher is still really enjoying his big (well…not so big) Christmas gift…Fluffy. When he was naming Fluffy, Colleen said to him “Are you sure you want to name him Fluffy? What if your friends come over and find out you gave him that name?”. Made me laugh. He was undeterred and stuck with what he wanted to name him. Beth still wanted to name him Speedy after her first night with him when he chewed through the cardboard box from thet pet store while in our bathroom and Beth caught him just in time as he was headed towards the door to our bedroom. Yikes – Christopher almost never even got to see him!

Megan got to do a Build-a-Bear and chose to make a dog named Spot. Spot travels everywhere around the house with her and she’s proud to tell visitors how she built him and everything that she got to choose including the heart on the inside. Fun.

She still loves getting all of her stuffed animals together, here they are going for a ride in a multi-car train that she built. Seems like a fun ride until she decides to go up and down the stairs with them!

Colleen has very proudly mastered the splits. I know who she doesn’t get this flexibility from (although P90-X is helping in that department too). She’s getting to be quite the dancer.

And don’t worry, with all of the new additions to our house Orca still manages to get a bit of attention too.

Dream Manager

Monday, October 25th, 2010

It’s been a busy few weeks. In one weekend alone I drove to West Lafayette, saw a Purdue football game, got to hang out with my old roommates, went to Rochester and saw Grandma T, and stopped in Chicago for an all-day Dream Manager conference before heading home. While I was gone that weekend somebody lost her first tooth. This tooth took a long time to come out from when she first excitedly told us she had a loose tooth. Christopher on the hand has literally punched out his own tooth with his own fist on the same day he discovered that it was loose (that kid will do just about anything for money!).

I also missed choir while I was out of town…Beth got to get the kids ready and sit through singing in two services without me – lucky Beth 🙂

This is what fall is all about (well…this and apple pies and roasted pumpkin seeds)…lovin’ the GUBMFP…

It was really cool hanging out with a few of the old roomies before going to the dream manager conference. I had a list of about 100 dreams with me and they wanted to see…but I wouldn’t share until they started creating their own lists. We had some really good conversations that just started with us talking about our dreams and where we are at in life. If anyone else wants to see my list I suggest you pick up a copy of the Dream Manager book (by Matthew Kelly) and create your list of 100 dreams and then get back to me! Mom and Dad – what are your dreams? What are the biggest ones that you’ve achieved and what are the biggest ones you’re still aiming for? I’ve been thinking about dreams all week – and how they relate to all aspects of my life. It was fitting that at church this week the sermon was “Enough: When Dreams Become Nightmares” and that this was the centering prayer:

“O God, our world really belongs to you. Help us live with a sense of trust that you continue to care for all that you have created. When our dreams of the good life become nightmares of misplaced priorities, re-center our values. Remind us that in the process you do not forsake us. Calm our anxious hearts and assure us that we find enough in you.”

I had a great 45 minutes with Grandma T. She was doing very well (especially for 98). We looked at pictures and talked about all sorts of things…and then just to prove that she’s still with it, as I said goodbye and headed for the door she said something like “When you came in, didn’t you have a pair of glasses?” Sure enough, I brought sunglasses with me and left them on her table…her memory at 98 is still better than mine!!!

This past weekend we went to Sever’s Corn Maze (America’s Largest Corn Maze). His son lives on our street so we have an in for getting a few free tickets 🙂 That place is great – it has everything for a fun day…huge corn maze, huge pit of corn kernels to bury yourself in, smaller maze of bales of hay, pig races, magic show, juggling show, all sorts of animals and animal rides, pumpkin catapult and corn shooter, giant slides, cheese curds, band. You name it, it’s there. We met some friends there and had a grand time (right up until it was time to go and we realized that someone with smaller feet than Christopher must have accidentally taken Christopher’s bigger shoes…luckily we weren’t going anywhere afterwards so Christopher just walked around in his socks until we drove home).

And, here’s a preview of our Christmas card this year…what do you think?

Megan is 5

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Our little baby just turned 5 years old. Thanks everybody for the calls and cards and gifts. She’s having a blast and loving the attention! We had several kids over last Sunday for her SpongeBob party and tonight on her “real” birthday we had Culver’s at home (her choice). Christopher chose McDonald’s at home for his big birthday meal – glad birthdays only happen once a year 🙂 Here’s what’s on Megan’s mind this year:

My favorite food is…Mommy’s mac-n-cheese and Daddy’s egg sandwiches.

When I grow up I want to be a…firefighter, doctor, dentist, and a grown-up.

My favorite restaurant is…Santorini’s (in her words “that one where you draw a picture and they give you money” – if you color in the picture on the back of their children’s menu and bring it up to the hostesses they will give you a dollar – pure genius on their part).

My favorite stuffed animal is…zu zu pet

My favorite color is…blue and green

My favorite song is…Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Going to the Garden to Eat Worms.

My favorite holiday is…St. Patrick’s Day (because the leprechauns give you yummy lollipops) and Fourth of July (because you see really cool fireworks) and Christmas (because you get a lot of toys).

My favorite season is…winter (because you can go sledding)

My favorite thing to do is…go to the beach in the summer and go to Pump-It-Up

If I could do anything tomorrow I would…go to the beach

Our yard is looking great this year – color everywhere. The kids at the party had a blast as usual running through the yard and up and down paths and getting “lost” and finding treasures everywhere. We had a new visitor this weekend…a hummingbird moth. I guess a lot of people get confused and think they are real hummingbirds. I could get right up close to him (he was busy and moved around a lot but wasn’t bothered by me at all). Super cool to watch him go from flower to flower.

We also all did the Relay for Life last weekend. The whole family came out. Colleen and I made it the latest – I took her home around 11:30 p.m. She was having a lot of fun walking around the track with me and she wants to camp out in the infield next year. Colleen made it over 5 miles – not bad. I slept a few hours at home and then got up before 4:00 a.m. and went back to the track. I ended up with 50 laps (12.5 miles). Not the 60 laps I was hoping for this year but far enough. We raised a lot of money for a good cause. There was a silent auction at 10:30 p.m. All three kids bid on $5 mystery bags from SuperValue. Only Colleen and I were still there at 10:30 – every lap before that time we’d check on the baskets and for some reason no one was bidding on those three (all of the other 50 baskets had a ton of activity). I told Colleen that the only thing worse for daddy than none of the three kids winning a basket would be for ALL three of the kids to win these mystery baskets. As it turns out Colleen and Megan won (Christopher got outbid by 50 cents). And…the value was a lot more than $5 but not necessarily useful – we got Hershey’s syrup (malt flavored and dulce de leche flavored), bags of candy, socks, socks, socks, sprinkles for ice cream, and some other food products. The fire department takes donations and pushes people around the track with flashing lights going – wwwhhheeeeeeee.

#1

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

I spy with my little eye…a strawberry pie!

For the first time ever we truly played a board game as a family. And I loved it. A lot of fun – for all of us. Yes, we’ve played some of my favorites for years but those games either have no strategy (e.g., Pretty, Pretty Princess) or they are stacked in favor of the parents (e.g., Blokus). But this time we played monopoly (the Chicago edition). It took us about a week, but we finished the game. Colleen and Christopher played – and Megan was the banker and official dice grabber/distributor. Christopher started the game off by just going around the board – I don’t think he bought a single property after the first one or two times around the board. He would pause to consider properties but then decided he liked his money too much to spend any of it. Needless to say, I was the first one out, followed shortly by Beth, and then Christopher had no problem trouncing Colleen too. He raked it in. Somehow everything seemed to go his way. He had both get-of-jail cards. He had a hotel on the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) which was the most expensive property on the board. On each of our final turns we thought we were safe because we ended up stopping just before his properties…but then I rolled a 3 to land on the Sears tower, Beth rolled a 4 to do the same, and Colleen (several turns later) also rolled a 4 to do the same. Stinker. And…he could have cleaned up a day or two ago but he didn’t want to spend much money on houses and hotels. That’s the last time we play with him!!!

Let me ask everyone who lives in Nashua this question? Is being ranked #1 in the country by CNN’s Money magazine a blessing or a curse? Is it the kiss of death? Eden Prairie is #1. We’re #1. We’re #1. We’re #1.

We watched a deer eat whole heads of flowers off of plants in our yard in single chomps…and then we sent Orca after it. Lucky for her it ran off – I’m not sure what she would have done if it had just stayed there.

Another firefighter gave us his old 15′ pool for free. So I found a somewhat level spot in the yard and set it up real quick when Beth’s parents were out here last month. The instructions just say find a “level” spot -they don’t say how level is level. After a few days it became apparent that my definition of level and their definition of level were a bit different. To further complicate my leaning pool situation the side that was downhill is of course where I had positioned the drain plug which ended up being about 1′ underneath the pool and impossible to get to due to the weight of the water. We tried this pool out to see if we would use it but it also had a leak in the air ring that kind of supports the pool…so here’s the picture of me draining the pool. I don’t know why they give you a drain valve – my method seemed to work just fine and was a lot more exciting. Just like watching the huge bucket dump tons of water at the Great Wolf Lodge! We then went out and bought a brand new 15′ pool, I moved just a bit of dirt to give a pool a better chance of surviving the summer, and the kids have loved it ever since. Every night they go out there. And during the day with sitters they are in it all the time. Fun fun fun. I love Christopher’s happy dance – he just needs some country music and a cowboy hat and he’d be all set.

Breakfast in bed

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Nothing beats having your kids bring you breakfast in bed. The kids and I got up early today and decided to make waffles, pancakes and crepes – so we measured and poured and cracked and mixed and got everything ready. While we were doing that I plugged in the waffle iron and turned on the skillet. The waffle iron starts heating up and we got a few wiffs of waffles cooking – smelled so good and we hadn’t done anything yet. So we keep measuring and pouring and stirring, and the smell from the waffle iron starts to smell more burnt that good – but we haven’t even opened it up yet – haven’t even poured anything on to it. A few minutes pass…and the smell is getting worse…so I decide to open the waffle iron (sometimes it overheats – that could be it, right?). But no…it wasn’t just overheating…it was completely burning a waffle that was in there (yes, we stored the waffle iron for probably 3 or 4 weeks with a waffle in it – oh sure, like you’ve never done that???). It took a while but someone (not me) now remembers cooking that last waffle (doesn’t remember what happened to it after that, but remembers cooking it)…and I’m sure I saw the closed, cooled-down waffle iron on the counter and figured it was ready to be put away…so that’s what I did…a month ago 🙂

Makes my mouth water just watching the steam rise off of it:

Other than the sacrificial waffle we had a pretty good mother’s day. Church was amazing today (Mozart’s Requiem with guest soloists and 19-piece orchestra to accompany our chancel choir and organ), followed by burgers and shakes at Convention Grill, planting a ton of stuff in our yard (which may be a bit risky since we had FROST this morning), and some Vietnamese take-out for dinner (whatever mommy wants, mommy gets). The best news of the day though was reading the sports section and seeing that E’Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson withdrew their names from the NBA draft and will both return to Purdue for the senior seasons!!! Boiler up!

Thank you mom, dad, Katherine and Sarah for coming out to visit us a few weeks ago. We had a great time. It went so fast but it was great to see everybody, and catch up on things, and to hold and play with Sarah so much. She’s so cute and at a fun age (I kid you not – enjoy it – time goes way too fast). Thanks for letting me win in dominos too. Glad Christopher didn’t share his strep with anyone…

Sarah – here you are at the Children’s Musem. Someday you’ll have to ask mommy to show you how baby possums are made. Your mommy horrified children and parents all around her at the museum by turning an innocent hand puppy into a birthing exhibit. We started out innocently talking about ‘opossum’ versus ‘possum’ (BTW, both are acceptable) and then your mommy got out of control playing teacher for all the kids.

Here’s my bid for National Geographic’s sentimental animal photo of the year…mommy duck staring at the broken egg behind her…no new eggs yet but daddy duck is sure trying to make up for lost ground…easy big guy.

And here’s the graduating class of 2010…I’ve only seen two fish since their deployment several weeks ago…once it warms up I’m sure I’ll see them all again (either that or I’ll find another big snake living in the pond).

Megan has started saying “big ol'” – as in “that’s a big ol’ rock” or “big ol’ weed” or “big ol’ flower”…where does she pick this stuff up? Here she is with a big ol’ rat from preschool.

Snow go bye-bye

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

It’s crazy how fast all of the snow disappeared. We just have a few piles here and there but this last week or two of above-average temps melted most everything. We hit the 60’s today…the sidewalks were packed with kids going back and forth and around the block.

I’m not going to post any pictures today…just a bunch of randomness. Yesterday (March 13th) is the first day I noticed Mr. Mallard back in our pond. He visited a few times yesterday, and visited even more today. Orca isn’t convinced he’s a friend of ours yet…I think I’ll have to put up some chicken wire to keep her out.

Before the snow melted I noticed deer prints in our backyard…I didn’t see any deer this year (part of my annual checklist: see a deer in our yard; pick-up a turtle in the neighborhood; watch ducks hatch in our pond; find a cocoon in our yard), but now I know they’ve been around recently. And we finally found our sled that was lost in January. It was in the spot that I first checked way back when…guess it was too far below the snow already or maybe I didn’t quite step on it. Kind of like a big game of battleship in the yard.

I remember mom saying that when I was a little kid she found folded underwear in the hamper (i.e., I thought I was fooling her by saying I changed my clothes and then would throw in the clean stuff). Apparently Christopher has a different problem. I was doing laundry and the kids often take off their pants and underwear together…so I was pulling a pair of underwear off of his inside-out pants legs…and then I pulled another pair of underwear off of those same pants legs. He’s going to run out of clothes if he starts wearing two pair of underwear all the time!

Christopher and I were talking about punishments the other day and I told him that mom used to chase me with a wooden spoon. His dumbfounded response was “Seriously?”. I’m not sure which part of that scenario was the hardest for him to believe but it made me laugh.

Aunt B – are there no mailboxes in Florida? are you afraid to put that much $ in a regular envelope???? let’s go – my kids gotta eat. 🙂

Eyes in the back of my head

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Megan has asked a few times lately “Do you really have eyes in the back of your head?”. She’s very serious about this and convinced parent’s can see behind them and that somehow we really do have eyes back there. We need to use this to our advantage with her – yes, we definitely can always see what you are up to – so stop doing whatever it is you either are doing are were thinking about doing!

Last week Megan was very excited to celebrate her 1/2 birthday in preschool. Beth’s parents were up from St. Louis so Megan conned them into baking a cake for her at home too. They came up to help out (thank you thank you thank you) while I went on my annual ski trip to Vail. It was a great few days out there as always – we even found 1 1/2 feet of powder in the back bowls. Skiing out there in that much powder is awesome. I was strong this year – my legs and lungs felt great the whole trip which isn’t always the case when you’re sleeping and skiing between 9,000′ – 11,500′.

Mother Earth is angry this year, huh? Another huge earthquake, another 3′ of snow out east, what’s next? Hopefully New Hampshire and B-water weren’t hit too bad and electricity is still on for everyone. We are having 35F days now but still have enough snow on the ground that we haven’t found the few sleds that got burried well over a month ago…they’ll turn up one of these days/weeks/months. Yesterday I climbed 30 flights of stairs in fire gear. That felt good too. I may not look as young as I used to in these photos but I get in better shape each year!

Tilikum is giving our puppy a bad name – I’ll be careful not to dangle my ponytail in front of Orca, who knows what she’s capable of. And how about those Boilermakers. Life is going to get tougher (starting this afternoon against michigan state) without Hummel (tore his ACL last week) but we’ve had a great run. Yesterday the #1 & #2 teams both got beat which would have been interesting to see where Purdue (#3 in the country) would have ended up after they beat michigan state today. Not having Hummel will make a difference. He should just suck it up and play!!! Keep your fingers crossed – Boiler Up! Christopher and I are going ice fishing today during game time…and during the Olympic hockey final game…not the best timing 🙁

Kids being silly outside – their socks came of next and then they ran in the snow – brrrrr.

I took the kids out on the lake two weekends ago. I was surprised to have the beach, lake, parking lot, and playground all to ourselves. Who would have thought?

Can you read what Colleen is writing?

This is after I tried to wipe the snow off her face…poor puppy…

Golden Goofers

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Remember that women’s basketball game I was so excited to go to??? It finally came!!! All I have to say is – “wow”. Non-stop excitement. How do you know it’s a slow game? When your kids can take as many pictures as they want with Goldy. I think he knew all the kids by name when the game was finally over.

Colleen was the star of the show once again – all eyes were on her (although it’s hard to tell looking at this crowd – did they really come to watch a women’s preseason exhibition college basketball game???).

Here the kids are making their scariest faces – whoa Christopher – dial it back.

Here’s our annual leaf picture. The kids had a blast as usual running down the hill and jumping into the leaves. We had a bunch of neighbors over one night for a bonfire while the kids ran around in the dark and played in the massive leaf pile. One of Christopher’s friends came over and asked if I had a flashlight. He found out the hard way that playing “let’s hide my black hat in the 20′ pile of leaves at 10 p.m. at night” wasn’t such a good idea.

And finally, this feels like such “dad humor”, but here’s the “big rock” I got Beth for our anniversary – yucka yucka yucka. Megan had a blast running from the front yard to the back yard following this dude. When he would pick up the rocks in his bucket she would sit on the rock and raise her arms over her head and cheer for him – and then race through the garage to the backyard to beat him back there. Nope – I’m not telling what we’re doing. You’ve got to come visit to see.

Are you ready for the excitement of the week??? Are you sitting down? Here it is. I made my second cat rescue on the fire department. I’m 2 for 2 on rescuing cats. Beat that. Last night we’re driving home from training and we hear radio traffic that a cat is in a tree. The call wasn’t paged out but since we were driving back to the station and this was practically on the way we decided to stop by. We get there and we hear that there are 5 cats in a tree in this lady’s backyard. They aren’t even her cats. At this point I think each one of us was thinking how can we sneak out of here 🙂 So…I got one cat down, and the other guys chased two of the cats way up higher in the tree near wires. Oops. All in a day’s work.

Quack quack

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Congratulations are in order! I didn’t even realize we were expecting but suddenly we have 7 or 8 new mouths to feed. Momma duck hid another nest from me, right behind the pond…and this time was successful! I went out to the pond to take a picture of the water lily that was opening and I was surprised to see a bunch of little duckies floating around. Made my day.

Here they are: hack, yack, smack, snack (I hope he doesn’t live up to his name), thumbtack, 8-track, paddy-whack, and tic-tac.

Randomness…

Megan went around the yard tonight and kissed all the opened day lilies good-bye after I told her they each only stay open for a day.

We had a very successful first car wash to raise money for cancer. I helped organize it and must admit I was skeptical at first that we could pull it off. We ended up raising over $2000 – and it was a very cloudy day. Next year there’s no stopping us! Thank you to those that have pledged me!!! And for everyone else there’s still time – click here: Dave’s Relay for Life link. Our sign at the car wash that was 100′ in the air attached to our ladder got people’s attention – who needs high school girls in bikinis on every corner???

Beth and the kids had a good trip to St. Louis. They were down and back in under 3-days (whew!). They saw cousin Ava in the play Annie at the Muny. Here the kids are on stage before the show. Quite an impressive place.

Our chief posted a recent “save” on his fire blog – credit goes to a few guys from my station who performed CPR for an hour and shocked this guy 6 or 7 times. Gives me chills just knowing that when they first got back to the station they weren’t feeling like this was going to have a happy ending. This is why we do it: A Stunning Result