Weekend and More

Wow. It has been a while since I had some time to post on my blog. Last week was busy. I won’t go into the details, mostly because it would probably bore you to tears. I have discovered that busy does not always equal interesting. I actually started typing a blog entry at the end of last week to summarize what had happened, but it was boring for me to type it. Now, no one else may find my blog interesting, but I know I am in trouble when I am boring myself. All I will say is that Jennifer had a baby appointment last week and everything was fine. The rest of this post will probably sound scatter brained, because I am just going to cover a few topics real quick.

Sunday afternoon I took the time to wash my car. You know your car is dirty when there is green goo under your spoiler. I don’t neglect my car. I get the oil changed like I should and do the other routine things, but washing it is just one of those things that gets pushed to the back burner. It usually gets pretty dirty before I wash it, but this is probably the worst it has ever been. I really didn’t realize how dirty it was until it was clean. It is (supposed to be) white, so after the wash, I felt like it was going to blind me when I looked at it.

Boy, has it been getting cold at night around here. Over the weekend it dipped into the upper 20’s overnight. Saturday morning our thermometer said it was 26 degrees outside. Bur. The weather this time of year drives me nuts. Indoors it gets to around 80 during the day but then drops down really low at night. Last year this time I think we must have been paranoid about keeping the temperature right from Grace, because I remember us running the heat at night an AC during the day. So far, this fall we are getting away with just keeping the windows opened during the day.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to say for the moment.

Vacation Memories – Part 3

Wow, I have really slacked on getting around to writing this. This will be the last installment and it is pretty long. I almost broke it in two, but decided I would rather finish this up here so I don’t have to sit down and write another post about the vacation. It is getting harder and harder to remember details, but sitting down and doing this has really helped me commit things that happened to memory.

I believe we’re up to Friday. We spent the first part of Friday at Ripley’s Aquarium. We were pretty sure that Grace would love the aquarium because she really likes fish and aquariums in general. We weren’t disappointed. When we first walked in the door, there was a large, round aquarium and Grace was immediately mesmerized by it. After leaving the big aquarium at the entrance, we quickly walked through an exhibit about Mars. Yes, you read that correctly. The aquarium had an exhibit about Mars. It was pretty interesting, but out of place. We moved through it quickly to get to the part we had paid for.

The first REAL exhibit contained fish from the Amazon. Grace did not like the piranhas. Now, for those who have never seen a piranha in person, they are actually quite boring to look at.  They sit eerily still. That is sort of the weird thing. Instead of swimming, they seem to just float around. Still, I don’t think that the near lifeless fish were what Grace did not like. I think it was the creepy, horror movie music that was playing in the exhibit.

Next to the piranha aquarium was another tank with some more fish from the Amazon. There was a sign that explained how one of the fish in the tank was able to jump six feet out of the water and into the air. Jennifer pointed out that there was only about 3 to 4 feet between the surface of the water and the top of the tank, which did not have a cover. We decided it was time to move on.

We moved on to the next exhibit that had tons of reef fish. Grace loved watching the brightly colored fish       . After the reef exhibit we came to one of those long tunnels that you walk or ride through while sharks, string rays and other fish swim over your head. Grace pointed and giggled as we made our way through it. We have also been to the Ripley’s aquarium in Gatlinburg, and I couldn’t help but think there were more sharks swimming around at that one. I never thought I would find myself wishing there were more sharks swimming around me.

In the center of the aquarium was a large touch tank that was surrounded by various things for kids to play with and on. There was a tunnel to crawl through, some large valves that were part of an exhibit about how the aquarium water is maintained, and another area that was setup to look like a pirate ship or something. We started by letting Grace run through the tunnel. She loved it, especially when some other kids started crawling through the tunnel with her. I just knew she was going to run through as fast as she could and smack her head on something, but she was pretty careful about it. She also spent some time playing with the valves at the water exhibit and tried to turn the wheel on the pirate ship.

After all that fun, Grace wasn’t about to hold mommy’s or daddy’s hand anymore. She had tasted freedom and it was too good. It was at this point that angel Grace turned into…um…not so angel Grace. It was sort of funny though. If you grabbed her hand, she would just go limp and lay on the ground. There was no temper tantrum or screaming. She would just lie there. It was an instantaneous response. If you let go of her hand, she would almost immediately get up. If you grabbed her hand again, limp Gracie returned. It was sort of entertaining as she was so methodical about it. It was past her nap time and it had been a big morning, so after a few minutes we decided it was time for us to leave. I picked Grace up and we all headed for the car.

On the way home we stopped by a seafood market to pick up some seafood for us to cook and eat that evening. Grace had fallen asleep on the way to the market, so Jennifer stayed in the car while I went in to get the seafood. While I was standing in the market waiting to be served, Jennifer walked in holding an alert Gracie. “She woke up and said, ‘Where’s Dada?’” Jennifer told me. We bought some fresh scallops and grouper for our dinner and left.

We got back to Ocean Lakes and we decided to make a trip to the pool, knowing full well that Grace probably wouldn’t like it. We first tried going to the large, outdoor kiddie pool they had. It was pretty neat. It had one of those mushrooms that had water running out the top and over the sides. It also had another thing that towered out of the pool with arms extending outward at the top. There were buckets at the end of each arm that filled with water and dumped when they were full. It looked like something you’d find in a water park, but Grace wasn’t impressed. She wouldn’t even let us put her feet in the pool. We decided to retreat to the heated, indoor pool to see if we would have more luck there. We had a little more luck as she was fine sitting on the edge and kicking in the water, but she wouldn’t let either one of us take her out into the pool. She also didn’t like it the first time she saw me go under the water, but eventually it didn’t bother her.

Since Grace didn’t get a very long nap, we decided to get her ready for bed and put her down fairly early so we could make our fresh seafood. Jennifer prepared the meal while I fed Gracie and put her to bed. The meal wound up being fantastic, and we really enjoyed the peace and quiet.

The next day was Saturday, and was our last day to do stuff. We started it by making another trip to the beach. This time, Jennifer said she wanted to leave Grace’s sandals on and see if it made a difference, and did it ever. Jennifer held Gracie’s had as we walked onto the beach. She walked all the way to the beach on her own, which was way more than she did on the first trip. I then sat her down in the sand and she even played with her toys for a little while sitting in the sand. Being the little ball of energy she is, that didn’t last too long. She wanted to run, and run she did. In fact, she ran all over the beach. Jennifer and I sat there and watched her, and one of us would run in grab her if she started to wander too far off. She loved the sea shells, and she would pick them up, look at them, hold them in the air, and then put them in her mouth. It was a much better experience at the beach then the first trip.

That evening went to a Seafood buffet we had a coupon for and had been planning to go to all week. I wasn’t all that impressed with the quality of food, but the selection was fine. Jennifer feasted on Crab Legs while I tried a little bit of everything that looked good to me. The saddest part was the desert buffet. They didn’t have ice cream and most of the stuff they did have didn’t taste all the great. The most interesting part about the restaurant was they had a “live” mermaid. This was essentially a girl in a bathing suit with some sort of fish tail thing strapped around her legs. I took Grace to see the mermaid. I was pretty sure the girl in the pool was the same girl that was on the register where we had paid, so I found that amusing. Guess cashier duty was over. Anyway, when she saw Gracie, the cashier turned mermaid splashed her tail up out of the water and made a wave, which apparently tickled Grace because she laughed about it. Then the mermaid made Grace a necklace and gave it to her.

After we left the restaurant, we headed back to Broadway at the Beach for a final visit to check out the stores on the side didn’t get to on Wednesday. Nothing impressive to talk about there, none of the stores were that memorable. They had a store that sold tee shirts and memorabilia from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. It was mostly stuff from the 80’s, and it was mostly tee shirts. Several of the stores we visited sit along a lake that is in the middle of Broadway at the Beach. There were machines along the docks so you could feed the fish that were in the lake. I am pretty sure they were carp. Jennifer had apparently never done this before and was enthralled with feeding the fish. That’s right, I said Jennifer. She every quarter I had (all two of them) to get handfuls of fish food to sling in the water. Grace found it fun to watch, but she became much more interested in the ducks and the fireball was shooting in the air across the lake. A putt-putt place across the lake had a volcano that seemed to go off every 5 minutes. When it went off, would Grace point and shriek with glee. She must have found it very impressive. Meanwhile, Jennifer fed the fish and ducks, paying no attention to the fire in the sky. Later, as we continued to walk along the lake, the volcano went off and I heard Jennifer say, “What was that?” I couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before or how excited it making our daughter. She said, “I heard you saying something about fire, but I had no idea what you were talking about.” Now, when I hear people talk about fire shooting out of something, I generally take notice, but that’s probably just the pyromaniac in my. Anyway, I picked on her about how mesmerized she had been by those fish.

That night both Jennifer and struggled with stomach issues. We believe that we got food poisoning from the seafood restaurant. So, the last night of our vacation involved many trips to the bathroom. Jennifer still had a touch of nausea in the morning and wound up puking up her breakfast. I was fine by the morning. Jennifer was better by lunch time on Sunday.

Anyway, that concludes a review of our vacation. Hope everyone has enjoyed it. We enjoyed the trip. Check out the pictures we have uploaded to our Flickr account to see pictures of the trip.

Blog Ideas and Documentation

I cannot believe it is already Friday. I have been meaning to post stuff all week and haven’t got around to it. I seem to remember coming up with an idea for a post that would have been halarious, but can’t seem to remember what it was now. You ever been there? You think to yourself, “Oh! I’m gonna blog about that when I get home.” Then, when you get home, you either forget about what it was or don’t have time to do it. I’ve been having that problem a lot lately.

This was a fairly boring week at work. I’ve been writing documentation for a project I just finished. Documenting is never fun. For the most part, you write a bunch of statements that are, at best, childish sounding, and at worst, downright insulting. Stuff like, “To create a new item click the new item button,” or “Press delete to delete the item.” Occationally you might get to type stuff that doesn’t sound like an eleborate guide to the obvious, but rarely. Part of the problem is I am the programmer and I know how it works, so it is somewhat insulting for someone to suggest that I programmed something someone won’t know how to use. Also, I know the reality. Where I work I usually don’t have to handle support calls, but when I do, inevitably I ask the question, “Did you read the manual?” I believe the typical reply is, “What manual?” Not exactly what I would call a motivator, but there you have it. I get to sit around typing obvious statements into a Word document that no one will ever read.

Actually, it must have been a boring week all around because that documentation bit is the only thing I can think to talk about. How sad. I would tell you about what I am doing this weekend but it is a secret. That makes it sound special, but it really isn’t. I have this business idea for a web site that I have been meaning to get started on, and I have made it a priority to get some work done on it this Saturday. I don’t know if the idea will be as good as it seems to me at the moment. I’m sure the biggest pain will be getting the word out about the site once it is ready.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

The Pool of Pain

It has occurred to me that very evil people who wish to make parents miserable and control insects manufacture inflatable pools. Back at the beginning of the summer, we saw this nice large paddling pool and we bought it for Grace. It was only about $20 and was fairly large. It even had a wading pool, slide, and various inflatable toys. We put it on our deck, and Grace used it a few times this summer. For the last few weeks it has simply been sitting on our deck, gathering more and more grime and slime. I kept telling myself I’d get around to moving it, “next weekend”.

Well, “next weekend” finally arrived on Saturday when I figured the mosquitoes had pretty much had all the time they needed time to nest and breed on our deck. The pool and water were gross. Granted, it had nothing on DeWitte’s pool, but it was still a nasty site. Thanks to shows like House, I was pretty paranoid about cleaning the thing out. Seems like they always suspect mold other such things when they are diagnosing the nastiest of diseases. Since what I know about medicine is almost entirely limited to ER, House, and the “if you take this drug it will melt your brain” specials that appear on 20/20 from time to time, I had to assume what was living in my pool was nothing short of the mold that would equal certain doom.

The first order of business was to get the toxic water out. Remember how I said the pool was pretty big? Well, it seemed good at the time, but getting the water out was a pain. I didn’t realize how much water was in the pool until I picked up the one corner and started walking to the opposite corner to push the water out. I didn’t get very far before the weight of the water prevented me from moving forward any further. I stopped and thought for a moment. The best idea I could come up with must have looked ridiculous to an observer, but it was the best way I could think to get the water out to a point I could flip the pool. The plan went something like this: I would pick up my corner and run towards the opposite corner with all the force I could muster. This created a wave that pushed massive amounts of water out of the pool and over the edge of my deck. It must have looked like some schizophrenic wrestling match with the pool. I should have started screaming, “Take this you foul plastic pool of death!” just in case some neighbors were watching.

After using my brilliant water removal method a dozen or so times, I had forced enough water out to flip the pool over. The remainder of the toxic sludge then went all over our deck. I decided it would be best if I cleaned the biohazard up. I considered calling the HAZMAT team, but figured they would not be as concerned as I was and ramble off some bureaucratic nonsense. Anyway, I performed my own clean up using our water hose. I then used the water hose to clear the slime out of the bottom of the pool that had formed due to the months of neglect. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and scrubbing the gunk off the pool.

Sunday afternoon I took the time to deflate the pool, which I assumed would be the easy part. Initially, I sat down in the grass and opened the first air hole (of about 5). I started hugging the pool to get the air out of it. I’m sure the neighbors who watched me get the water out Saturday assumed that the pool and the “special” person were now making up after their fight the day before.

While you are sitting in your yard, you start to notice lots of things. For me, it was the number of bugs that were crawling around. I had never really taken time to observe this before, but it seemed like they were everywhere. This didn’t bother me until the hairy tarantula walked by and winked at me. I’m sure it wasn’t a tarantula, but its size and appearance made me feel less comfortable about sitting on the ground. I decided that if I kept my eyes on the guy, I would be OK. I really wasn’t in the mood to find out if this spider bit and if it was poisonous. Then it occurred to me that if there was one spider, that there could be more and I really didn’t feel like having one of these guys crawl up my pants leg, shirt, butt crack, or…it was then I realized that in my paranoia I had completely lost site of my little eight legged friend. I immediately sprang to my feet and brushed my clothing to make sure it hadn’t snuck in. I then proceeded to hug and squeeze the air out of the pool and continued to observe the many bugs that called my yard home.

To get the air out of the slide, I put the it on the ground and pushed down on the top to push the air out. It was at the point a bee that appeared to have been mutated by cosmic radiation flew by within inches of my face. Its massive wings cooled my face as it flew by. I stood up straight again and saw it was just a large bumblebee as it flew into the distance. I could have swore I heard the thing laughing at me as if flew away.

I finally got sick of letting the air out of the slide, folded the pool up and threw it in our shed. It was then I remembered that Jennifer had a box for me to put in the shed sitting in our bedroom. At the beginning of the summer when we bought the shed, I was pretty sure it would remain fairly empty for months (and years) to come. I was an idealistic, naive fool. After a mere 3 or 4 months, the left side has boxes stacked about halfway up the building and the right side has an exercise machine and the garden tools I rarely use. The middle has 2 bikes we have never ridden and our lawn mower. It is not full, but it is getting cramped. I had to pull out the lawn mower, bikes, and our Christmas tree to get the single box of clothes in the shed and in places. Sheesh, time to start sending messages to that FreeCycle thing.

Rushed by Gracie

Our Saturday morning started with my 19 month old daughter rushing us out the door. Jennifer made the mistake of telling Grace that we were going to go “bye bye” after breakfast. So, Jennifer fed Grace breakfast and then proceeded to make some pancakes for the two of us. In case you were wondering why she didn’t eat pancakes with us, Grace was ready to eat when she woke up, so Jennifer made sure she was taken care of first. Besides, Grace is a creature of habit. She really likes to know what’s coming and really doesn’t like when things change. As a result, she eats cereal pretty much every morning and this morning was no different.

After Grace was taken out of her high chair, she ran back to her bedroom and asked for her diaper to be changed. After that was done, she started grabbing some clothes that were on the bed for Jennifer to put on her. After Jennifer put on the clothes, she said, “Shoes, shoes!” to indicate she was ready to have her shoes on. So, Jennifer obliged and Gracie was pretty much ready to go. Grace then grabbed her blanket and juice and tried to walk out the front door on her own. Jennifer informed her that she couldn’t leave without mommy and daddy. Grace ran and got Jennifer’s shoes and took them to her. As a result, Jennifer went into the bedroom, finished getting ready, came back out and put on her shoes. Then Grace went and got my shoes. I had been reading a book in the bedroom and came out when Jennifer told me the pancakes were ready. Yes, somehow through all this, Jennifer managed to get around to making the pancakes. As I was sitting down to eat, Grace brought my shoes to me. I told her I was till in my pajamas and I needed to get dressed first. I stood up (without eating) and went back into the bedroom to get dressed. I closed the door, and Grace stood there for about 5 minutes knocking on the door and waiting for me, clinging onto my shoes the entire time. About the time I was finished and was getting ready to walk out, Grace started to fuss because I was apparently taking too long.

It sounds like we were letting her run the show, but really we were just letting her feel that way because after we were both ready, we sit down and ate our pancakes, much to Gracie’s distain. The whole episode was quite adorable, and I’m not sure the entry captures it, but it will be a one of those fond memories of Gracie we will laugh about for years to come.

Vacation Memories – Part 2

After leaving the surf shop, we returned to Ocean Lakes and went and parked down by the beach. We got everything out of the car and started walking for the beach. The sand still felt cool, so Jennifer decided to put Grace down and let her walk. Grace was immediately disgusted by the sand and wanted us to carry her. When we got down to the beach, we tried putting Grace down again and this time she curled up her legs so they wouldn’t even touch the ground. We put her in one of our beach chairs and she seemed to be happy there. We tried to get her to play with her beach toys, but she only wanted to play with them if sand was not in them (or on them). I made an effort to get Grace to warm up to the sand. I buried my feet in the sand and played “where’s daddy’s feet. I don’t think I need to explain the premise. When I first buried my feet, I think it terrified the child. She frowned and her lip began to quiver like she was going to scream. I quickly pulled my feet out of the sand and she looked very relieved. I then proceeded to play the game with her some more, and she began to warm up to it and smile. I may have even gotten a giggle. I also played with Gracie’s sand toys and tried to show her how to use them. I filled buckets, dug ditches, made piles, and buried things (I wasn’t enjoying myself at all). It didn’t seem to interest her.

Eventually it occurred to me that I was no longer playing for Gracie and was doing it solely because I was enjoying myself. At that point I decided it was time for a dip in the ocean. The water was fairly warm. I wasn’t in a rush to get wet, so I took my time. I took a few steps forward every now and then. At one point, I took a step forward and my foot went down into a hole or something. The water had barely been up to my knees before, and after stepping in the hole, half my trunks were wet. It didn’t wind up being the slow decent into the ocean I was hoping for.

If you’re wondering about Grace and the ocean, we had a pretty strong suspicion she would be scared of that. She doesn’t like pools, and we assumed she wouldn’t like the ocean either. Still, when we first got to the beach, Jennifer carried Grace down and stood in the surf. That was apparently horrifying to Gracie and she cried. We had always assumed she would be happy sitting on and running around the beach, but on the first day, that didn’t seem like the case.

When I got back from my dip, I put down a Dora the Explorer beach towel, picked up Gracie, and put her on the towel. I waited for the shriek, but it didn’t come. Apparently she wasn’t absolutely terrified of the sand. She just wanted something between her and it. I worked with her some more to try and get her to play in the sand from her beach towel, but she still didn’t want to touch the sand. Eventually, she got up and started running back and forth on her towel. She even picked up the rake that came with her sand toys, squatted, and raked some sand. She then threw the rake so that it was over in the sand out of her reach. She apparently regretted this decision immediately, and began to reach out for it and whine. We tried to encourage her to go over and pick it up, but instead of doing that, she just found something else to do on her towel.

We left the beach after a couple hours so we could eat lunch and Grace could have her nap. When Grace woke up, we all got ready and went to a place called Broadway at the Beach. It is sort of like a huge, outdoor mall. First, we ate dinner at Tony Roma’s. After dinner we took Grace to a store called the Build-a-Bear Workshop. Most of you have probably heard of this place, but for those of you that haven’t, you pick out an animal, stuff it, dress it, and pay for it. Grace loved this. She picked out a monkey, and was hugging and kissing it while we were waiting to get it stuffed. She wasn’t to happy when they we took it away from her to have the clerk stuff it. After stuffing the monkey, we tried to let her pick out an outfit, but Grace just wanted to run around the building.  So, we picked out a shirt and went and paid for it. It was ridiculous how much we COULD have paid for the thing. They had outfits for stuffed animals that cost more than some of the outfits we have bought for Gracie. They had hats, shoes, accessories, and, most distrubanly, underwear. You know, because some teddy bears don’t like going commando.

Man, it is taking a lot of time to tell you about my vacation. I should be able to finish it up in one more post. Then I have to talk about potty training. We started that on Monday.

Vacation Memories – Part 1

We’re back from vacation! This will be a two-part post, because I am tired and want to go to bed.

As you can see from the previous post, we went to Myrtle Beach, SC. For those of you that have never been, it is an extremely commercialized area. We’re talking Las Vegas on the beach (minus the casinos). It really isn’t my cup of tea when it comes to beaches, as I generally like the less commercialized, laid back places. Fortunately, going this time of year makes the trip a lot more pleasant. The beach and other attractions aren’t as busy. We never really had to wait for anything. As I mentioned before, we stayed at my uncle’s place at Ocean Lakes. It was very nice and we would not have been able to take this vacation without his generosity.

First Day, we woke up and wanted to get some breakfast. I suggested Cracker Barrel because I thought I had seen one close by when I looked over the area we were staying on Google Earth. We got ready and left for breakfast around 9AM or so. I headed north, thinking that was the direction of Cracker Barrel, which turned out to be a mistake. After 20 minutes or so, Jennifer began to taunt me and told me she didn’t think that the Cracker Barrel even existed. The main road down there is absolutely littered with local pancake houses, so we probably passed 20 of those and 2 Shoney’s before we finally reached a Cracker Barrel. I think it wound up being a 40-minute drive. When the sign came into view, Jennifer tried to convince me it was mirage. Turns out I’m not the only dork in this family. We spent the rest of the day shopping. We went to an outlet mall and then went and bought the groceries we needed for the rest of our stay. We got home in the late afternoon and took it easy the rest of the day because Grace needed the rest (we did too). So, day one went by without us going to the beach. Not that it was a bad day, but the beach didn’t make it onto the itinerary.

On day two we made a commitment to go to the beach. We woke up and I made us breakfast. We got ready to go to the beach and hopped in the good ole SUV. First, we ran out to a surf shop to see if we could get Grace some sand toys and to pick up a beach umbrella. We also thought we’d grab Grace a bathing suit if they had one. The first place we went to had the toys. They had swimming trunks for baby boys, but nothing for girls. I decided to forgo buying the umbrella, paid for the toys and left. Next-door was another place with a sign saying “Discount Swimwear” or something to that effect. I thought they would surely have swimming suits for baby girls. I walked in the store and it looked exactly like the place I had just left. They had the exact same thing as before and carried only baby boy stuff. Turns out people are sexists in Myrtle Beach. I did pick up a beach umbrella, but the stake for the bottom was missing. The clerk said he would run to the back and get one. I perused the store and looked at the tee shirts and such while the guy went to find the rest of the umbrella. Minutes went buy and it eventually became apparent the clerk was no longer in the store. I was the only person in the building. There was a post that didn’t match the umbrella I had picked out sitting on the front counter, but the clerk was missing and nowhere to be found. I picked up the umbrella and post and ran out the store, along with $300 from the register. OK, OK. That didn’t happen, but it easily could have. The goof left me in the store by myself! I went outside and got in the car to leave when he ran up (apparently returning from the store I had bought the toys from) with several umbrellas in hand. Unfortunately, I decided to go back inside and finish the purchasing the umbrella. The guy said something like, “Did you think I would just forget you?” I should have took a cue from George Allen and said something racially insensitive like, “No, but I want to get to the beach today, Habeeb.” Of course, knowing my luck, Habeeb would turn out to mean “useless, crack addicted sloth” in his native tongue (He was Indian or something).  I paid for the umbrella and left.

I’ll discuss the rest of the week tomorrow and tell you about Grace’s reaction to the beach, and why buying that stupid umbrella was a mistake. Meanwhile, your homework is to look up what “Habeeb” means.

The Weekend

Wow, hard to believe it has been almost a week since my last post. We are in the process of getting ready to go to the beach. We are leaving tomorrow night and will be gone through Sunday. I doubt I will be posting to my blog during this time. I want to avoid computers while I am on this vacation. I thought it would be nice to do a quick post to sort of catch everyone up on the latest happenings. This will be long and there is so much to cover I couldn’t think of a clever title.

Friday night my brothers, Aaron and Joel, came over. We played a game of Catan and then watched the new version of the Shaggy Dog with Tim Allen. It was a good movie and I seem to remember laughing a lot. It put a bit of a sci-fi spin on the original story, which is likely to turn some folks off, but I thought it worked well. Without giving too much a way, I really think they left the movie open for a sequel. I don’t remember how this movie did at the box office, so I guess if it tanked there won’t be a sequel. Actually, I think the movie’s budget must have been pretty low. There was a pretty neat scene with Tim Allen’s tongue, but other then that, I was sort of amazed at what I didn’t see. There was only one scene where you really witness the transformation. The remaining scenes where it occurs were shot so it hides the actual transformation. This sort of surprised me for a movie made in 2006. I didn’t watch it for the effects and would recommend the movie, this was just an observation I made. The filmmakers would probably choke me. The movie is probably chocked full of special affects that I missed and just took for granted.

Saturday we went to see my grandmother and had a good time hanging out and talking with her. She wound up ordering in Mexican and paying for our dinner, so that was a pleasant surprise. On the way home from my grandmother’s we stopped by McDonald’s to get some sundaes. Grace sat at the end of the table turning her head left and right alternating between Jennifer’s sundae and mine as we fed them to her. Of course, I always eat mine faster so I got to eat more of my ice cream. I guess its one of the few benefits to inhaling your food.

Sunday was a big day at our church as we had our Mission Celebration. Terry Hammack, a missionary from our church, was the guest speaker. He’s always a great speaker, but the best parts are always the stories he has. It is pretty enthralling. As you can imagine, Nigeria is not one of the safest places to be missionary, and I can’t imagine living day to day in the situations he does. What’s more amazing is that he and his wife are really hoping to go to the northern part of the country to an area that is 90% Muslim to minister to people there. As you might know, Muslims don’t take to kindly to Christian missionaries, but these two really feel it is where God wants their ministry to be. They’re two incredible people that face things on a regular basis that we can’t even imagine here.

Afterwards was a potluck dinner and Grace was a ball of energy. I got to eat, but barely had time to finish before I had to start chasing her back and forth through the halls of the church. We couldn’t get the girl to sit still for a second! She may have been the most hyper I have seen her. Making matters worse was the crowd. Grace was running and jiving through the legs of people and I had to wait for them to move out of the way. Fortunately, every time she got away from me, someone managed to slow her down and gave me enough time to catch up. The problem was if she got out into the main part of the church building without my supervision, there were only about 10,000 places she could run to and hide. Of course, she only seemed to be interested in running to the nursery, which she knows is full of toys, so it was easy enough to keep track of her.

Tonight we went over to my uncle’s house to pick up the keys and papers we will need to get to his place down at Ocean Lakes at Myrtle Beach. Grace was so shy at first, but the next thing I know she is running around their kitchen and being the ham she usually is. The girl would make the Energizer Bunny cry for mercy. She jumped up and down, ran around, crawled through legs and under tables, picked up copper statues, opened up cabinets, opened and closed doors, and babbled on and on the whole time we were there. I looked like the Coyote chasing the Road Runner most of the time.

Hope it doesn’t sound like I am complaining. Honestly, following her around is often hilarious because the things she does are priceless. Also, following her around has taught me a thing or two. For starters, she usually won’t go where it is dark. I say usually because she proved that the equation is much more complicated than I suspected the other night at my parents. My mom and dad have two entries into their kitchen (well, actually, four, but two of them are irrelevant to the story). One entry from the foyer and one from the dining room. The foyer, living room and dining room are all connected. So, what this means for Gracie is she has an excellent place to run laps. She runs through the foyer, the living room, the dinning room, into the kitchen, and finally back into the foyer. She then repeats this a mind numbing number of times. Oh yeah, and she yells incoherent things the whole time. So, I get the bright idea that if I turn off all the lights in the living room, foyer, and dining room, she’ll stop running her laps. I was wrong. She must have thought daddy was playing a game with her. After squealing for a few minutes and jumping up with absolute glee at the site of the darkened room, she started running again. Only now she ran through the darkened areas more quickly. So much for that idea.

This entry has been pretty long, but it will probably be my last post for at least a week. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to talk about when we get back.

IT’S A BOY!

Yesterday was the baby appointment and we found out we are having a boy! It came as no surprise to Jennifer because she has been saying we’re having a boy all along. The main reason being that she hasn’t been as sick this time. Supposedly, woman are more sick with girls than boys. I doubt there is any scientific research to back that up, but that is what Jennifer has been told.

Honestly, I had gotten to a point where I was ready to skip finding out and be surprised. With Grace, I wanted to know. I also wanted a boy. Of course, once Grace was born, it didn’t matter and I love my daughter to death. I came to the realization a few weeks ago that this time was different and I could care less if we had a boy or girl. I mentioned the idea of being surprised to Jennifer and she was OK with it, but we decided to find out because we’ve been telling people we would for months. After the appointment, we went to TJ Maxx and bought the baby his first 2 outfits. I also bought some books for Gracie because she loves me reading to her.

Below are some pictures we were given of the ultrasound.

Remember 9/11

I didn’t have time to post yesterday, but thought I would take a moment to remember September 11th. As with everyone else, the moment I found out is seared into memory. I was at college and in one of the computer labs. I believe I had gone there to surf the web and take it easy. When I sat down, I heard two guys talking about planes flying into buildings. I thought I heard them say something about the World Trade Center. With a lump in my throat, I went to cnn.com. The page took a very long time to load, and when it did, I was shocked by what I saw. The normal CNN home page wasn’t present. It had been replaced by a bland page with a few images of what was happening and a narrative of how the events had unfolded so far. It seemed unimaginable. From that point on, the bits and pieces of my day are less clear. I remember trying to reach Jennifer on the phone and also trying to reach my mom. I guess it was just natural that I wanted to talk to people about the events. I remember going home and watching the news coverage the rest of the day until my class that evening. I was pretty upset that class had not been canceled, but I set through it. Actually, I seem to remember being surprised by how many people DID show up for that class. I was pretty much glued to talk radio for the next few months. Since I was at the college almost all day, it was the best way to keep informed on what was going on.

Yesterday, on the way to work, I was once again listening to talk radio and they played a montage of audio clips from the day (and days following) September 11th. It was just audio recordings, but I still got choked up listening to what was played. I think it is important that we take time each year on September 11th to remember what happened that day.