Let’s not forget the important part of our recent trip.
Alice with an old pink friend (dolphin) and new pink friend (penguin). Charles named his new friend “Stingy” (and not “ray-ee”) even though it’s not a sting ray.
Today was a special day at church because Mom was scheduled for being an usher and Charles had his first outing as an acolyte. As a result I was drafted to do the ushering while Mom hovered as a acolyte support system for Charles who not only had to light the normal candles but also the first Advent candle. He, with Mom’s moral support, pulled it off flawlessly without any extraneous burning.
Mom was fixated focused on home improvements, inspired no doubt by my efforts in my office. She put up the LED accent lights we got from IKEA many trips ago over the sink. She sorted through most of the toys in the basement in preparation for a culling. Later we spent some time together as a family buying flooring, both wood laminate and vinyl. Nothing brings a family together like that. Mom then spent the evening ripping out the black flooring in Polynomial’s room and replacing it with less absorbent vinyl flooring, although she didn’t have quite enough glue.
We did various things during the day but I can’t quite recall them. I spent more time working on fixing my office and everyone else did things mostly around the house. Mom got in to a cleaning mode and did a lot of cleaning.
In the evening we went to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It was OK. We tried to asked Corwin about how well it followed the book (which he had read) but he couldn’t remember much of it.
Oh, and we ate lots of turkey.
Hi, this is Corwin. I’m once again being forced to write on the kidlog. This time, I’m writing about our trip to Chicago yesterday.
It was just a day trip so we didn’t have to pack. We got in the car around 8-o-clock, and we got on the highway around 8:30ish.
The drive took about 2 hours. On the way there we watched Invader Zim and (evil) Dora. We brought some snacks, granola bars, oranges, apples, a fruit snack, and some chex mix. Alice had two oranges and a fruit snack. I just had some chex mix and Charles had nothing.
When we got to Chicago, we went to the Shedd Aquarium. It was busy, so we had to park near the Adler Planetarium. When we got to the Shedd there was a huge line. There were like 100 people in that line, but we’re members1 so we got to go to a members line which is much shorter. We first went to the Wild Reef which is where they keep their sharks and rays. They also have lots of stuff about reefs, lots of imformation about an island called Apo, and flashlightfish. They also talk ed about mangroves. There’s also a lab with coral in glass containers.
We went back up to see the aquarium right in front of the place you enter for a bit. Then we looked at the many little aquariums surrounding it. That’s when my Cousin Dana arrived. My Aunt Debbie and Uncle TJ, and Cousin Tara were supposed to be here but they arrived later. We then went to the Fantasea water show. It was okay. All of the interacting was done by the people in the front row and a girl who was given a free “magical” necklace. I really wanted to touch a penguin. Also during our show, the belugas didn’t appear. They swam around a bit but then left. They also only flew the hawk once.the rest of the group just managed to get into the show. After this, we looked a bit more at the aquariums then left.
On the way home the way home, we went to IKEA. We spent two agonizing hours there and didn’t get that much2. I must admit that they have good food. On the way back I had complete control of the DVD player. When got home I was almost asleep and Alice and Charles were alseep. That was the the end of our trip. Bye.
1 Because Mom signed us up as members the previous night on the Internet.
2 Mom was in a planning phase for another trip near Christmas.
We had a low key Thanksgiving this year. We had hope that Uncle Evil would come up but he was “busy”. Or something. If any governments collapse in the next week or so, we’ll know who was “busy” with that.
Grandma and Grandpa came down to help work on Mom’s 22 pound turkey which she personally brined. It defrosted just in time (brining helped) and cooked very quickly. Mom had allocated 6 hours but after about 3 or so the interior temperature indicated it was done. It was fine at dinner, no pink bits so I am not sure why Mom’s estimate was so far off.
I spent a good part of the day starting an office re-structuring. It turned out to be a bigger project than I had anticipated partially because I decided to be thorough about yanking anything that wasn’t in use. I found a number of extension cords, power adapaters, and other things that had accumulated over the years. Now it’s all in piles around the office but I did get my new computer and displays fully operationally, along with a new printer placement that keeps Mom from peeking at my screens having to walk around my desk to get her print outs.
The boys mostly gamed. Alice, I am not quite sure what she spent her time on.
In the evening everyone else stayed up late to watch Cars. I was actually the first one in bed.
It was a good day.
Today was Mom’s day to get ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Lots of cleaning and some panicking over the lack of defrosting on Mom’s 22 pound turkey, even though she put it in the refrigerator on Monday Saturday. We attended evening church services which as you can imagine thrilled the children. Alice and Charles were the only young kids there and because Charles has always refused to go to the childrens’ sermon the pastor skipped it. Charles and I managed to deliver popcorn to all but one house, who seem to have left town for the week.
Corwin and Charles were playing Score Four out on the back porch the other day. Corwin was doing well so I decided to intervene a bit.
I showed how, in the last game, Charles would have won if Corwin had made a certain dumb move. I expained that if Charles had made a certain other move it would have set up a fork after which Corwin would have to either make the dumb move and lose, or not and still lose. I helped Charles do it to Corwin in another game after that to make it clearer. I was rewarded for my fatherly virtue a bit later when Charles laughed with joy because he deliberately set a fork up by himself. Corwin was not amused.
We are still having problems with Polynomial running over to the neighbor’s garage. The fact that the neighbor gives Poly treats by the handful might have something to do with it, but I think it’s just Poly being deliberately annoying.
This afternoon I saw the school bus stopping at the corner and Poly was excitedly hovering at the door so I opened the door let her out to greet Charles and Alice. Poly zoomed out, gave Alice a sniff, then headed over to the neighbor’s garage. Now we know who Poly really likes.
I’m now being forced to write on this weblog. If I don’t do this by Friday, I can’t game until I do a writing assignment. Anyway, I’m writing about a paintball trip.
Keith’s dad invited us to go on a paintballing expedition with his co-workers. My dad overpacked with guns, drinks, and masks as usual. He also brought cookies. I couldn’t bring a book because they wanted Keith and me to interact on the way to Firemark Paintball (it’s same place we went to last time). We interacted for five minutes, then Keith got his dad’s I-phone. That was pretty much the end of our interaction.
Then we got to Firemark paintball. We were the first ones there. After the drive, we got to lug our stuff a quarter mile. Then then the rest of the department got here. After they rented all their stuff, we had to listen to a saftey talk. In the saftey talk we learned to say “paint check” and such. We also chose to be able to shoot point blank.
Then we chose teams, it was basically fathers and sons versus everybody else. Although Keith’s dad switched sides some time through the games. The games were mainly a blur because most of the time I just shot randomly, but these are some of the highlights. In one game I was crawling to a bunker and took some shots. The fort was like a U so I was on one end, and Keith’s dad was at the other. So when I got up to take some more shots, Keith’s dad shot me full of paint from eight feet away. During another game, I was following my dad’s suicide runs and we got to the other end of the field. My dad charged the last man but he didn’t make it. I tried to creep up quietly and I got 10 feet away from him. Then I opened fired. I guess the guy didn’t expect to be flanked by two crazy guys. During another game, my dad was shot by an old lady. I also think I may have shot one of my team members who was off the field.
After we were done, every one was sore. I probably have at least five red marks on my body. Keith complained about his arm on the way to the car. Keith’s dad was happy though, he got to shoot me, Keith, and his boss. His car probaly wasn’t happy because I alone slipped several times in the mud. Anyway, the moral of this story is that paintball is awesome although painful and dirty.
It was kind of a blur today.
This morning Corwin had a special Boy Scout meeting to teach leadership skills, which are apparently lacking in his troop (I must admit, Corwin has not been the best patrol leader he could be). Charles and I went out in the afternoon to deliver popcorn. In the evening the boys went to play in the Granny’s Porch Concert in bustling downtown. That went well, Charles even played! At least, his finger moved on the fret board, as that’s all I could see of him. Most if not all of the songs were plucked by the cellos, rather than bowed, so I couldn’t watch for bow movement. I will get some video of it up sometime next week. Maybe.
Mom took Charles and Alice in to the doctor last week to see about their perpetually runny noses and the claim is that the two of them have allergies. I find it a bit odd that both children would develop an allergy at the same time, but I suppose stranger things have happened. It may be related to the very wet October we had. In any case, the doctor said to drug them up dose them with an anti-allergy chemical.
This seems to have helped, which Charles’ nose mostly healed. We think we’ll just apply the chemical until the initial allotment runs out and see what the situation is then. It’s possible that whatever virus or allergy is the cause will have cleared up by then.
The biggest disappointment is that the claim that avoiding a sterile environment for children (difficult for us, especially me, but it was For The Children™) was supposed to help prevent allergies. We did the best we could on that front but it wasn’t enough. Perhaps Mom should have gotten the chickens.
While driving in the van, we were all listening to It’s All About The Pentiums when Corwin asks, “what’s a pentium?”. I couldn’t believe. I showed him one when we got home and he still didn’t understand. What have I raised that this is not more intuitive than breathing? We can fix this, we can overcome!
A joy we have been experiencing lately is child debris. Both Charles and Alice have semi-persistent head colds which require a lot of facial tissue use. This wouldn’t be so bad if both children didn’t tend to discard used facial tissues the instant they’re done, rather than say putting them in to a garbage can. As a result Mom and I spend a lot of time picking these discarded items. It’s a cruel dilemma because it’s still better than having the kids not use them at all. While Alice tends to make a token effort, Charles will work with a single tissue well past its expiration. He’s given himself quite a sore under his nose this way.
On a related note, Alice has been taking the guinea pigs out quite a bit. This always makes me nervous because Alice is not always as gentle as she should be and sometimes wanders off and forgets she had a guinea pig out. The worst, though, is that when the guinea pigs pee Alice just moves on, leaving little puddles of guinea pig pee for Mom and Dad to find. We just haven’t been able to convince her that she should notify one of us when it happens, rather than assumign we will find it someday. It ranks right up there with gathering up the guinea poop under the couch cushions.
Mom tried to take Charles off to acrobatics this evening, which made him break down in tears. We thought this odd since he had been quite willing to sign up for it at the start of the season. Charles claimed, on the way over, that he had done that just because Mom would buy him ice cream afterward. But that’s just not enough anymore it seems.
Yesterday was quite the day. Both Mom and I had to be out of the house on community service projects before 8, leaving Corwin to watch after his siblings all day (Mom got home around 3:30, I was back at 4:30). The house was mostly intact and the kids apparently fed and undismembered so I suppose it was a success for Corwin.
I spent the day with the rocket club doing our annual outing with the university class. It was a nice day but a lot of corn was still in the field so naturally the rockets landed in the fields. I ended up spending a couple of hours wandering through corn looking for them but we got them all back. Mom was just happy that I got a lot of exercise.
Mom went off to work on building a house, a project her church is cooperating on. Corwin was originally intended to help out with that and lunch but because the launch was delayed from last week he had to stay at home instead.
Mom and I have been concerned about Corwin’s lack of communication skills so we have instituted a policy where Corwin has to write a multi-paragraph item of some sort once a week, before he can enjoy electronic stimulation. It could be a game review, a post for the kidlog, a book review, etc. Corwin absolutely hates it but the reality is he’s going to be doing a lot of that most (if not all) of his adult life so he’d better just get used to it.
Anyway, he naturally put it off this week until today — but! — he was invited to a sleep over birthday party for Jack this evening and he didn’t want to go there while banned from electronics.He managed to crank out a decent comparison of two computer games just in time.
Corwin played much music today. His school string band went on a field trip to play at various other schools and had a concert in the evening. Mom had arranged (cleverly!) to be at a church council meeting instead (and they’re all Lutherans so you know it got out of hand) and therefore I was tasked with delivering Corwin and watching the other two.
Mom wanted some video recording so I sat in front. Charles and Alice preferred to sit in the way back so they could ignore the concert as much as possible. Until the concert actually started at which point Alice got lonely and moved up to sit with me. She only had to go to the bathroom twice during the 40 minutes of music. She wasn’t in a good mood because Andrew’s older sister was playing but Andrew didn’t come along. Alice had spent most of the pre-concert waiting time looking for Andrew and asking if she could sit with him so it was a bit of a let down.
Corwin has been complaining of some issues with his computer. So I generously said to him “we could look at your computer to see if we can fix it” and Corwin responds “that’s fine — you can do that while I finishing my homework”. Such a giving boy!
Also, Polynomial really likes guinea pig poop. She goes after pellets that drop on the floor like they were bacon snacks.
Grandma came down this weekend. It’s always a bit traumatic for the children because they end up having to clean because it is only the impending visit that give Mom and I the energy to push the kids in to doing something useful.
To make things even worse for the kids it was stunningly good weather so they were forced to go outside much of the time. The horror, the horror …
Although the kids were booted off the computer today, Mom spent quite a bit of time with Grandma fiddling around with their Facebook pages. I, of course, only spent time on the computer as necessary to fulfill Mom’s demands for pictures. Not that I wanted to, you understand, but as a dutiful husband what else could I do?
Other than that, however, it was a fun visit. Grandma even got a visit from Little Red Guinea Pig Hood.
P.S. Corwin got a funny Mom story out of it, we’ll see if he writes it up or lets it go.
Charles went to visit Josie yesterday. Josie’s mom came by to pick up Charles, which turned out to be a mistake. Josie’s sister Kennis was along, plus Kennis’ friend Erin, who is third grade along with Charles and Josie. The two of them immediately took off to explore the house and were totally lost when Alice brought out the guinea pigs. I had to take a phone call in the middle but by the time I was done the girls were still scattered. Apparently one parent could get one girl recovered at a time but recovering the other one would release the first. Eventually we had them corralled but Erin was still on the couch with Alice and a guinea pig.
JM: Erin, we need to leave.
Erin: OK.
JM: You’ll need to leave the guinea pig.
Erin: Yes, I know.
JM: Erin, you need to stand up so we can leave.
Erin: [finally trapped] Allright…
I think next time the request will be for us to drop Charles off there.
The kids were all out of school today due to parent / teacher conferences. We set them to clean up the basement. We thought it would take an hour or two but they were so slow it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that we finally had pity on them and released them from servitude. Alice we had to put to bed because she had been so cranky and uncooperative.
Mom said the primary reason for the cleanup was to prevent Grandma from suffering a mischief. So Charles carefully got her to agree that only the part between the door and the guest room needed to be cleaned to “10 out of 10” while the rest only had to be “8 out of 10”. About mid-morning Charles reported that things had progressed to “6”, which in my opinion was about right. I think they got to about the 10 / 8 state before they were freed.
[Alice and Dad are on the couch watching some junk TV with a plot that involves a kiss]
Dad: See what happens? You’d never kiss a boy, would you?
Alice: Yes.
Dad: No, that can’t be right. You won’t kiss any boys when you grow up.
Alice: Yes I will.
Dad: Oh Alice!
Alice:: [giggles]
This was the week to talk to the kids’ teachers to find out what horrible things they have been doing. For Charles and Alice it wasn’t so bad. Alice’s teacher had already experienced Charles so she was inured. She has noticed that Alice is a bit more social and talkative than Charles and loves to play housekeeping with the other girls in the class (which is about 2/3 girls). Alice doesn’t participate in class computer time, presumably because she gets all of that she wants at home and home doesn’t have other little girls.
Charles got a good rating from his teacher despite his frequent choice of story subjects. The teacher bravely labeled this as “strong creativity”.
Corwin, on the other hand, was a bit more problematic. He dropped off “highest honors” because he messed up some assignments in reading. Reading! For a boy who spends every spare minute possible reading books beyond his age level.
One assignment was just forgetting about it and failing to complete it until after several attempts but the big one was a 6 week project he tried to do on the last day and unsurprisingly to everyone except Corwin it was not acceptable quality. It would have been much less disappointing if Corwin were struggling with the material but in fact it’s all easy for him. Mom had a long talk with him about quality as regards to one’s personal efforts and effective time management. We’ll see how it goes. We think one problem is that Corwin does not like to write — the very suggestion can bring tears to his eyes. So we’ll be focusing on that, since it’s a two-fer — no pain, no gain, as they say!
One of the things Alice has learned from school is the concept of a “collection”. Alice decided that she wanted a collection of Yuna pictures so she has been coming in to my office during the day when she’s home, or early afternoon, and making me search the web to find additional images. I had to limit her to one per day or I wouldn’t be doing anything else. At least Alice gave up on dressing as Yuna for Halloween (although I got a very dirty look from Mom when I said “next year for sure!”, as if Alice will even remember any of this in a year).
