Category: Family

I just suffered through another episode of Celebrity Apprentice. I don’t believe that I have ever had the displeasure to experience someone as completely annoying and worthless as Ms Omarosa. So, this will be an Omarosa-free post on an Omarosa-free blog. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, consider yourself the lucky one.

It’s been a long time. My strategy has been that you all miss my wit so much that you’ll click on the ads on the page so that I can afford to have this kewl blog. But my strategy will need to change. Especially now that Ali has thrown down the who-ha gauntlet. Who knew that not only was Ali an awesome Wii tennis partner (just a reminder that we destroyed Julie and Mid), she’s the witty one to boot. I’d like to think that we were pre-destined to be a Wii team. We’ll name ourselves the wits. Maybe I’m making to much of it.

We’ve had a good . . . (has it been a month since the last post) . . . month or so since the last post. We went up to St. George for Brady Dunkley’s return from New Zealand. We got to experience him doing the Hakka, or as we call it around here, the “wanna-hacka-lugi.” I had some classic footage of Michael doing the Hakka at Lake Powell. However, sadly, he commissioned some thugs to steal the camera out of our van about 2 years ago, so the evidence is lost to posterity. Shame, it is.

Life continues to move on for us. We stay up too late, eat too much, and generally act as the gluttons we are. One of Julie’s friends told me today that I was looking too skinny, so I promptly ate a bag of Chips A’hoy. Yes, a bag. That’ll help the figure.

Last weekend we planted a garden. We’ve got lots of tomatoes, some herbs, peppers, etc. We finally cleaned up the area around it as well. We got some paver/brick things to outline the area. It looks much better. While we were putting it all together, the girls decided that it was hot and that they needed to cool off in the pool. It was about 80 degrees on Saturday. It was a beautiful day. The girls found out fairly quickly that, although it was warm outside, it wasn’t warm enough to contrast the 50 degree water (or whatever it was). So this means that we only missed just over 3 months in our swimming season. Hopefully they’ll get over their pneumonia soon.

We met all the siblings (sans the Davies, who, Aaron said, were — appropriately — “praying for [his] soul”) out at Kabuki’s in Tempe on Saturday night. It was good to set out of 85379 for an evening. For some reason, I was feeling less than adventurous about dining (plus I’m a sucker for shrimp tempura), so I didn’t get any sushi. I got the tempura and chicken. The tempura was great. The chicken was a few steps up from Samurai Sam’s, at best. But it was fun to be out there. Last time I was down at the area where Tempe Marketplace is now, there were piles of junk everywhere and a few less than desirable places. Looks like it pays to be a developer with friends on the city council.

Spring Break is next week. I hope we’ll be able to get out and do something fun. I’m a little worried about Lucy and the sun/heat. She spent much of Saturday telling me that she was really hot and that she couldn’t get the sun off of her head. Poor girl.

No, not the Valentine’s Day heavy breathing. Stop it. There is something about a one year-old’s heavy breathing that is like nothing else, and Gwenyth does it all the time. It might be because of her Chucky-ness. But that’s OK. Tonight I was laying down next to her in her bed, trying to get her to go to sleep. The heavy breathing would slow down, then start up again. I thought that she was nearly asleep, then the next thing I know she’s got a finger in each of my nostrils.

Julie, Lucy, and Grace are starting to feel better. Especially Julie and Grace. I’m very proud that she is one of the few world-wide to actually conquer the bird flu. Please send media requests directly to her. Unfortunately, Chucky herself has started to feel a little under the weather. We’re just passing it around, I guess.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Always an interesting day for me and usually disappointing for Julie. My intentions are always good, of course. I’ll see what happens this year. I love all of my girls.

More pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/midder/

So I’ve been told by my little Gracie O that our blog background “is lame.” I’ve also been told that we need to join the 21st century and put music on our blog. Apparently you blogspot homeys out there have impressed her. She likes to listen to the music when she goes to the different sites. She also said that she was embarrassed by my comment about deer heads over at Catherine and Zac’s blog. Speaking of being embarrassed, we went in to take lunch to Abigail and speak to her teacher about 2 weeks ago. We saw Grace as we were leaving. I went to go say hello to her and she TOTALLY HOSED ME! Poor girl is already embarrassed by her father.

Julie told me (in all seriousness, I found out) that she thinks she has the bird flu. She, Lucy, and Grace are all out for the count. We went up to Prescott over the weekend to see Julie’s sister Nancy and her new baby. We came back with more sickies. We’re hoping we didn’t spread the love too much up there. Nancy’s baby is beautiful and I love Prescott. It’s always such a production to get us out the door to anywhere.

Poor Lucy is moaning on the couch right now, so I’ll need to go take a smoke break or something and see what I can do for her. You know, since I’m working. It seems my hours these days are: 8am – 8:40am, 9:30am – 12noon, 1pm – 3pm, 4pm – 5:30pm, 7pm – 11pm. It’s great. Tonight is racquetball night, though, so Julie’s going to have to figure out how to calm the locals for an hour or so.

Unfortunately (for some) the Super Bowl weather wasn’t exactly Chamber of Commerce-worthy. But my opinion is that you take all the cloudy, cool days you can get around here, because you know it’s bound to change. This winter has been the absolute most pleasant winter I can remember. It’s been relatively cool and wet. You know that when you hear desert folks constantly complain of how cold it is, it’s been really nice. I’m just hoping that it’s the start of man-made global cooling so that Phoenix summers can be more like they used to be when I was a kid. You know, rain actually hits the ground during the monsoon season?

In any event, it’s funny to see how you adapt so quickly to what’s around you. I have frequent conversations with folks up in Utah and in Boston about work things, but it always shifts to the weather for some reason. They all end up asking me how things are out by the pool. They seriously think I’m fibbing when I tell them that it’s in the 60s. They get downright angry when I say that we’ll be in the 70s this weekend and for the foreseeable future. Then it turns to belligerence when they remind me that it will be hotter than the surface of the sun in 7 months. Somehow that makes them feel better. And, while it is true, I prefer to just enjoy myself for now. You know, I’m just a glass half full kind of guy. Or something.

I’ve been working quite a bit lately. Lots going on. The day job, the side job, the hit job, everything. Hopefully this is the year that I break out and actually conquer the world instead of just talk about it. What does that mean? Who knows. In reality, it probably means do a project and get paid more than $3/hr to do it. We shall see.

We’re heading up to Prescott this weekend to see Julie’s sister Nancy and her family. She just had baby #4 and they’ll be blessing her on Sunday. We got a hotel up there Saturday night, so it should be a little less hectic than normal. Maybe. Everyone’s finally starting to feel well. We were passing things back and forth there for a while and it was no fun. So now we’ll plant some stuff in the garden, pull some weeds, finish painting, etc.