Order Horizon

After a not very restful night, we headed back home. We had a bit of a problem with the sleeping arrangements. The first night, because Charles was sick, he slept on a couch. Alice and Corwin were allocated the fold out bed but Corwin was afraid of Alice cooties so he slept on some piled up cushions. Last night we had planned for Charles and Corwin to have the fold out bed while Alice slept on the cushions but she refused because that’s how she is. Corwin decided to sleep on the couch while Charles was willing to tolerate an Alice infected bed so the two of them slept in the fold out.

The trip home was mostly uneventful except for Charles throwing up some chocolate milk and cookie. It was quite disgusting and we had to stop to get the car and Charles cleaned up enough to proceed. Other than that it was a pleasant drive. Afterwards, though, Mom made everyone take a shower (except for Alice who got a bath).

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We had to leave Alice at Grandma’s because she was such a Princess Grumpy-Pants about going to ski. Charles wasn’t very happy about it either but he was easier to suppress and was feeling better. The four of us got to the ski place around 10 and were out on the slopes by 10:30 (I think — it was already blurring for me by then).

Mom decided, based on her experience with Corwin, to take Charles to the bunny slope first before trying him on a real slope. Unfortunately we did not realize at the time that the place had two bunny slopes, one for beginning skiers and one for begining stunts. Naturally we ended up at the second one, which had a tow rope which Charles found very frustrating. I am not sure what his problem was, although reaching out forward while leaning forward to grab the rope was not a good technique. Eventually Charles managed to get most of the way up the slope after several attempts, at which point, having lost a ski, he popped the other one and trudged the rest of the way up. After a few crashes on the down, while heading directly for the bunny stunt features, Mom sent me off to locate a better practice area, which I did, complete with the “magic carpet” return. I stayed there with Charles for until lunch, helping him practice.

While we were there a cute red headed seven year old girl latched on to Charles and tried to chat him up. I found out later by overhearing that her name was “Maisy” because Charles couldn’t be bothered to find it out. She said that she would like to do some runs on the bunny slope with Charles. She turned out to have been going to the ski place since she was four, so I had her try to help Charles. This despite the fact that we she first started talking to Charles, she asked if I was his father or his grand-father. Poor Maisy tried to hard to get Charles to interact but I think she only managed to get three or four complete sentences out of him. Sadly Mom came to take us away for lunch and then the big slopes before Maisy had penetrated his aloofness. I did like when she asked “can he carve?”. Sadly, due to various constraints, I was unable to get a picture of this little snow bunny that was so attracted to Charles.

After lunch Charles was introduced to the big slopes. It went non-disastrously but not smoothly. Charles was actually doing reasonably well until he ended up behind a young woman. I was expecting him to turn as he had done so on the bunny slope to avoid a collision. But he plowed right in to the back of her in what one onlooker called “an excellent tackle”. Fortunately the young woman was understanding and not seriously injured. Charles, however, was psyched out by the collision and barely made it down to the bottom, where he faced the terror of the ski lift. Getting on wasn’t much of a problem but dismounting was too much.

As a result Mom took him back to the bunny slope while Corwin and I terrorized the main slopes. Mom resorted to monetary bribes to get Charles to continue practicing. After a long while Charles came back to the main slopes and had some good runs, eventually starting to master the “small child plunge” technique of blasting down the slope without turning with just a little bit of snow plowing to keep under control. I tried chasing him with the action camera and had a hard time keeping up. Sadly he had a couple of wipe outs on the slope and then dismonting from the lift which, along with his getting tired, that caused Mom to decide to pull him off the slopes for some hot chocolate and nachos. Charles actually considered going back out later which is a hopeful sign.

Mom had the big wipeout of the day, trying to go over one of the ramps and not landing well. I tried it myself later and went fast enough to just get an inch or two of air, which was all I could handle landing (like flying, getting in to the air was simple and easy — landing was the challenge). I caught an edge once but somehow I managed to get the ski up before that dumped me. Corwin dumped me a couple of times with his skis, once in the lift line by running over my ski so I couldn’t move it leading to my other ski slipping until I couldn’t stay upright. I got dumped a couple of times coming off the ski lift, one of which wasn’t Corwin’s fault.

After a hard day, we headed out. I had been told that we were going to home right after skiing but Mom decided we’d spend the night at Grandma’s because everyone but me had left things there. And apparently Mom wanted to pick up Alice as well.

Posted by Dad about Family at 11:26 PM | Comments (2) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

We had extra kids this morning while we were trying to get ready for Mom’s ski getaway on Saturday. The plan was to drive up to Grandma’s house today then hit the slopes in the morning at place about 90 minutes from Grandma’s. Despite the time not being critical we did manage to get on the road less than an hour after our scheduled departure time. Mom’s big goal was to get Charles and Alice on the slopes for the first time, presumably to build family pressure for a bigger ski vacation later.

The drive up was uneventful, I had downloaded a few mini-games to my iPod Touch, primarily for Alice because the boys have their Nintendo DS systems. Except, of cource, Charles couldn’t find his, not that he mentioned this before we left despite Dad having mentioned that it would be good to take along. Charles claimed he had has asked us specifically about it but neither Mom nor I had any memory of that and I find it a rather implausible claim. In any case, Alice enjoyed a couple of the games which made it worthwhile (since they’re only $1 - $2 each).

The only downside was that Charles got sick shortly after we arrived at Grandma’s and crashed out early. We just had to hope that he would be feeling enough better to ski the next day.

Posted by Dad about Family at 10:33 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

Normally on Fridays Charles goes over to Josie’s house but there is no school tomorrow. Either Mom or Charles decided that instead Josie should come over Thursday night for a sleep over. This lead to Mom deciding that Corwin should have a friend over as well. She bugged Corwin all week until we threatened to invite Josie’s sister over instead. That got Corwin on the phone to Jack who generously agreed to save Corwin from that fate.

The two extra boys arrived and everyone got involved in eating pizza and having fun. Oddly the kids spent quite a bit of time playing as a group, although they did spend some time in solitary side by side computer gaming. Mom phased out early in the evening despite it being her plan to have extra boyen. I was left to prepare sleeping places for them all. I offered to let Charles and Josie sleep on the couches in the basement but they preferred to use the fold out in the living room which came with a free dog. They crashed out around 11. I didn’t go to sleep for an hour or two after that and I left Jack and Corwin running hot. I don’t know when things ended for them.

A concept picture of Corwin and Charles playing foosball

Posted by Dad about Boys at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

This is the 4,000^th post on this kidlog. I bet you never thought you’d read that many posts about our wonderful children. But I can hear you now (and you sound just like the voices in my head) that it’s kind of cheating to just write about the weblog and not the actual kids because you can hardly have had enough after only 3,999 posts.

So our little Charles story is that Mom reports that he does very well at chess club and sometimes makes the other kids cry when he crushes them. He would be higher ranked except he spends too much time toying with his soon to be crushed opponent in a cruel and heartless display rather than dispatching them in an inhumanly efficient manner. I can’t decide which approach I should encourage.

I have nothing about Corwin except that Mom had to pester him for several days to get him to invite a friend for a sleep over on Thursday in honor of no school on Friday. He’s also way behind on his weekly writing.

For Alice we have this lovely picture of her. Or is it just a cut out Alice doll made by Alice? See if you can guess which.

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Alice: [farts] I like the sound of farting. That’s why I like to fart all the time.

Thanks for sharing! Despite this, she objected to being nicknamed “gassy girl”.

Alice spent the day watching more “Hello Kitty” cartoons. There’s a limited set and I swear I saw bits of all them at least three times just from wondering out to get coffee and lunch. Alice still cried when Mom shut the marathon down.

Posted by Dad about Alice at 9:47 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

Charles stumped me on a word the other day. He was reading his Battleship Yamamoto book and came upon the word “paravane” describing part of the ship. It was not a word and I knew and the drawings were inconclusive. Charles and I argued about it and a day or two later I remembered to look it up. It turns out we were both half right and I was able to explain it to Charles. Charles denied having ever asked about it at first but eventually had a dramatic memory recovery triggered by the magic phrase “I think you were right”.

Posted by Dad about Charles at 9:24 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

Alice stayed home today. She’s not been failing well for a day or so. Mom made Alice go to her room on Satuday afternoon and she ended up falling asleep until 7 the next morning. She was still kind of tired and a bit cranky on Sunday. She ended up napping a bit after our exciting church outing (in which the youth directory was ordained as an associate minister). More concerningly Alice had a bloody poop. At least she mentioned this to me. Of course, she ended up mentioning it to the rest of the family at dinner. She seemed quite excited about it. Alice didn’t report any soreness or aches so I didn’t think a single incident was too serious but we told her to report any recurrence. She fell asleep early and we put her to bed. During the night she threw up. Mom was impressed that she just barfed a little bit on her bed and finished up in the bathroom sink. “The boys would get barf everywhere!” Mom noted.

In the morning Alice was still tired and a bit feverish in the morning so we kept her home from school and then Mom took her in to the doctor. The doctor said to just keep her off spicy foods and keep and eye on her. Alice has spent most of the day watching Hello Kitty, various movies, and sleeping. We check her breathing every now and then — she doesn’t wheeze like Charles used to so it’s harder to tell from a distance. We’ll see how she feels in the morning.

Meanwhile Charles has been waxing eloquent about how much he likes being sick because he can stay home from school, watching all the TV he wants, and a better choice of food. He said the perfect disease would be one that made him sick only during school hours.

Posted by Dad about Alice at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

I can’t remember how exactly it got started but Corwin brought up the subject of innappropriate words at the dinner table last week. He used the cirumlocution of “the ‘D’ word” and “the ‘H’ word” but I think Charles knew what he meant. Unfortunately Corwin kept getting more specific until Alice figured out the ‘H’ word based on it being part of “Hello Kitty”. She managed to skate the edges of propriety by inserting a strategic pause. We tried to discourage her from demonstrating this new knowledge in school.

One of the places Charles learned his words

Posted by Dad about The Kids at 9:23 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

Mom and I were sitting in the media room watching some TV¹ when Corwin reached in to his mouth and announced “I lost a tooth!”. I warned him to not bleed on Mom’s nice new couch as he stuffed facial tissues in to stem the bleeding. He actually bled like a stuck pig and had to resort to using cotton balls stuff in to the gap to hold back the red tide. Corwin did examine the lost tooth which was really just the crown with a hole worn through it. I figured it was a cavity but Mom claimed it could be just part of the general tooth decay as it was lost.

¹ Truthfully Mom was watching her video streaming over wireless while I was typing away on this kidlog.

Posted by Dad about Corwin at 8:49 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

I had to leave on a business trip on Wednesday evening. Mom ran solo with the spawn that evening until this evening when I managed to return. One of the goodies from the trip were little containers of jelly beans. I picked up three because I couldn’t bring back just one. I handed them out after supper for which I was rewarded with shouts of “give me! give me!”. At least Polynomial was happy to see me.

Posted by Dad about Parents at 9:03 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

Alice got an award for being a good student today and she was very proud of it. She showed it off to me and Mom. Alledgedly it was because she was a hard worker which is difficult for us to credit. But there it was.

One thing we wondered about is that here at home, Alice rarely flushes the toilet, rarely closes the door, and frequently comes out with her underwear and pants down at her ankles. How often does she do that at school? Or is that another thing she does better at schooll?

Posted by Dad about Alice at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

On Friday, my church and I went to the Wisconsin Dells to ski. Unlike my last church trip, my mom came skiing with us, and there wasn’t be extreme amounts of loud singing! It took us about five hours to get there. I watched Monty Python most of the way, and I also watched the Simpsons Movie. When we got there, it was around 10:00 PM.

The cabins were pretty good, almost exactly like the ones in Carlinville. Our youth leaders had a talk about not having purple. (If you need a hint, red=girls, blue=boys) So we have a boys bathroom and room, and a girls bathroom and two girls rooms. After that the camp director talked to our group. Then I went to bed.

The next day I woke up and went to get breakfast. I got cold pancakes and syrup. It was surprisingly good. After that, we got into a car for half an hour. When we got out, we were at Devil’s Head Ski Resort. When we got our boots and skis, my mom and I went down a green hill. Big mistake. I couldn’t go ten feet without falling. We got down eventually, and I got to go down the bunny hill a couple times. After that, I could get down the green slope without falling. The next slope I went down was a blue. The first time I went down was fine, but the second time I wiped out and hit my head hard. I was able to get up and and go down the rest of the way. The resorts food wasn’t the best, but there was a lot of it. After lunch, we went on some more hills then went back to camp. I was so tired I could barley listen to the lesson. After the lesson I went to bed.

The next day was pretty much the same, except most of us went to an indoor water park. I went skiing. The next day was pretty much the same as the previous day except my mom talked me down a black diamond. Other than that it was the same as yesterday. When we got back to camp I went to sleep. We went home the next day and it took us about five hours to get home. On the way back, Dominick really liked to watch Young Einstein. When my mom and I got back to the church we had to go to my sister’s dance practice. Then we went home.

Posted by Corwin about Corwin, Parents at 6:17 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

Another project Mom has in the works in building a dance floor for Alice in the basement. She bought some flooring a few weeks back and installed it a week or so ago. It was at the point that she realized that she didn’t have a proper border for it to keep it together. The project has been left in abeyance until Mom figures out a good mechanism. Normally one would use a stopper that is screwed in to the underflooring, but in our case the under flooring isn’t plywood but linoleum on top of concrete which is somewhat less accepting of screws. She doesn’t it to be complete permanent so epoxy is out. Mom is considering some double sided carpet tape but I don’t think a final decision has been made.

Posted by Dad about Parents at 8:36 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

This is the beaver dam in the park. There’s been a lot of local debate about it as people don’t want to attack the beavers but the beavers are stripping the local woods. I could see lots of stumps myself all up and down the banks. I don’t know what will be done eventually.

Posted by Dad about Stuff at 8:26 PM | Comments (2) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

Mom and Corwin went off to cook big vats of chile. They had the help of someone who does industrial cooking in his job. They made 14 gallons of chile. Mom noted that Corwin was marginally useful but sufficiently to get credit for some service hours.

In the afternoon everyone except Corwin went to a Cub Scout fun event. Charles didn’t want to go but he ended up having fun running around and building a paper stomp rocket. Then it was back home for supper and watching some more Netflix DVDs (original Star Trek episodes). Mom and I thought about catching an 11 PM showing of Zombieland but the kids were up until instead of going to sleep so we could make our escape. I spent the evening writing posts like this on the kidlog.

Posted by Dad about Corwin at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

One side effect of Mom’s new Netflix addiction is that we can also access streaming video. This motivated Mom to take the computer we had been using for Charles’ animation which she had been keeping in her updated office and put it next to the TV. Fortunately she had already equipped it for wireless networking so it was ready to serve as a media server for our big screen TV.

The video streaming actually works reasonably well. Mom and the kids watched a movie or two but mostly old TV programs. Charles figured out that it was really a computer with a web browser and decided that it would be much cooler to play his web games on the big screen than watch boring old shows. Mom was not enthused about that so Charles has been trying to sneak in some game playing since she got it hooked up. Mom figures that her HGTV is better than Charles’ gaming.

Charles gets his chance when Mom goes on errands

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Tuesday was the big day when Mom’s life long dream of having a nice couch was fufilled. Our old couch was one that we got at Sears 15 or so years ago and it was a low end model. Given the abuse it has taken over the years it’s clear that we got our money’s worth out of it. Like me, the couch is getting old and starting to break down (clearly a decade or so of kids jumping on it couldn’t have anything thing to do with it — hmmm, maybe it’s more similar than I thought).

We decided to get a leather couch because everyone tells us it is much more durable. We’ll see how that works out. Mom picked the less processed style (“semi-analine”) because it feels less like plastic. Charles doesn’t like any style of leather because it’s too cold. He wanted fabric. But Mom and I figured it’s time to start living large. We have had to institute a new rule that the guinea pigs require a towel to be on the couch. I don’t expect that rule to last the week but we do what we can.

The delivery guys were very happy that the target couch location was about 10 feet from our double opening front door. It was a lot easier than the fun Mom and I had moving the old couch down to the basement. It seems like we had just moved it up to replace the green couch but it’s been several months apparently. At some point we must have moved the green couch down the basement but I don’t remember when, exactly. I think it was right after Mom’s big re-arrangement of the basement.

Alice was the first to try it out although we didn’t let her jump on it. I verified that it will be properly sized for Dad naps although I havern’t had a chance to enjoy that feature.

Before

After

Posted by Dad about Family at 6:25 PM | Comments (2) | Trackbacks – Ping URL|

While Uncle Evil was visiting Alice managed to call him “knuckle evil” for no apparent reason. I decided that was too cute to pass up so I created “Knuckle Evil” who is pictured to the left. I use him to help out with discussions when normal methods do not seem to be working. Charles in particular required several interviews with Knuckle Evil before just the sight of him would result in increased cooperation and attention.

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A rare moment of Corwin and Charles cooperating to succeed in a WWII submarine training station.

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