Wedding Bells

We were late. All the adults were ready for Misty's cousin's wedding. The girls were ready, too, but down to the wire, they both decided they wanted their hair straightened, which takes a while. Flying down the highway, we've got less than ten minutes to get to the church after getting off the interstate on the way to town.

I made a couple sharp, fast left turns and dropped the girls off while I found a parking spot, parked the car, grabbed the baby and headed for the doors. The photographer was taking shots of the wedding party as they prepared to walk down the aisle. I didn't see Mom or the girls and waited for the shot to finish, then darted in the church. There we were; on the left side, in the very back row . . . couldn't have cut that any closer.

We made it on time to the reception. The family ooh'd and ahh'd over Jack, for many it was their first time to see the boy. We got some really good pictures, but missed some of the best.

Terra and Madeline practiced almost all day on a dance routine. They were prepared to bring Madeline's boom box to the reception. I was surprised, but it ended up Terra had to coax Madeline into going through with the show. The girls made all the arrangements. They spoke with the DJ, brought the CD, scheduled it, and all. It went great and they got applause from the audience.

Boingers

The trash people would not take the queen mattress I stashed in our garage. Misty and I bought a new mattress last year and ever since the old spring Sealy mattress has been standing upright in our garage. Not anymore.

I put the mattress out with our trash hoping against hope that the trash man would take the large item. No such luck. I was livid. I stayed home from work, the Friday after Thanksgiving, waiting for those guys. When they wouldn't take it, I took drastic actions.

That included bolt cutters, a utility knife, and no less than 10 trash bags. I ripped the mattress along the sides, used the bolt cutters to cut out the steel frame and put it all in trash bags. This item will be taken, the trash man will not win this battle, he will take that mattress away, one way or another.

The springs that make up the mattress comprise 33 in each row (more or less). This left a ton of springs. Stashed in trash bags, it seems like the springs would be more useful for something, but I couldn't figure out what for. I decided to ask my eight year old what we could do with the springs.

"Madeline," I asked, "what would you do with about 600 of these springs?" as I held up a sample. She was laying on the couch watching TV and this caught her attention. Immediately. She sat straight up, "I would tie these to my shoe and spring . . . " she told me.

We attempted to secure a set of springs to a pair of shoes. Madeline said, "Dad. I want to name them "Boingers"." We went to the store later that day to find some velcro strips. The strips will be used to tie the spring to the foot. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the boingers to production.

Although the velcro did its job, the spring is too long and Madeline couldn't get enough leverage to depress the spring sufficiently (and reliably) while making a normal step. The springs would bend at right angles from her stride which isn't desirable. The springs are too long. Back to the "boinger" drawing board.

Garage

Do you know what it's like to have a garage and have both cars parked in this garage? I found out the answer to this question . . . it's AWESOME! I couldn't not look at the garage, with everything in it's place, all the plans working.

In the late summer I built a bench and some saw horses. These two suckers take up a lot of room. Then there was some boxes, and other stuff that needed to find a better home.

The boxes and extra bikes went to Goodwill, the rest of the stuff found a home in the house, and now both our cars are parked in our garage. It's glorious.

Beautiful Fall Day

Sunday was a gorgeous day. What a wonderful day to work outside and rake/mulch 14 bags of leaves! Madeline was really anxious to help rake the leaves. Usually, it feels like it would be easier to talk Terra and Madeline into a gum scraping than to do actual work around the house. I happily accepted her offer.

She started to rake the leaves into a pile by one of the trees. I followed her lead, and eventually after several hours all the leaves were in a pile under a birch tree. She started jumping in, Mom got the camera, and I think these are the best pictures we've ever taken. The light in the evening was great, Madeline and Jack were having so much fun, the weather was great, what a fun day.

Check out the other pictures.

Happy Veterans Day

Madeline made this card for Big Daddy.
I didn't get a card :(

Mr. Messy

Little boys are different than little girls. Jack is a train wreck and neither Misty or I recall either of the girls behaving with these manners. My favorite is the cabinets.

A few months ago I put the child safety tabs on the cabinet doors. Jack was ferociously unhappy when he discovered he was no longer able to open the cabinets, pull his favorite stuff out and throw it on the floor. He screamed, yelled, and whined a little when he discovered his new limitation.

Every weekend morning I'll fix breakfast, and Jack systematically goes to each of the cabinet doors and pulls/pushes the doors in and out, in and out. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. It makes the loudest noise. He's broken one of the child fasteners, he's shaken the screw out of one of the pulls (the wood the screw fastens is stripped).

He broke the plastic off a pull drawer underneath the sink. Then, he finally sits down he comes to the drawers that I haven't locked. He rummages through and pulls out all the Ziploc bags, all the cups and throws them on the kitchen floor. That's on Saturday. Sunday: repeat.

He pulled down the candy bowl for Halloween and pulled out some Nerds candies, chewed, drooled on the box enough where he could pull the candy out, dispense on the floor, and proceed to eat at his leisure.

When he eats, he can't just eat the food. He takes it out of his mouth, looks at it, squishes it some more in his hand, then will either 1) put it back in his mouth and finish eating or 2) throws it as far as he can.

That's the other thing, the throwing. He will pick up a toy. Then walk around at a fast pace with both hands above his head. He grunts in his 15 month old, viking/pirate voice and then catapults the toy as far as he can. It doesn't have to be a toy, even. He loves to throw any number of things.

He's not afraid of mud, I think the more the better. Last time it rained and dried enough we were outside and he is a magnet to puddles, muddy dirt, can't get enough of it.

Worlds of Frightening Fun

The amusement park Worlds of Fun is open until the end of October. The last month it is open, it's always had a Halloween theme going . Two years ago, I remember it was a little cute. Tall characters walked around the entrance taking pictures with the kids; they had a sing-a-long with silly Halloween songs. Terra liked it, and the characters weren't scary. That's all changed.

We went to the amusement park for the day, just to ride some rides. The weather has been fantastic, just windy, but plenty of sun to go around. The girls this summer have evolved their thrill ride tastes. Now they go on the fast roller coaster, what Terra used to call, "the scary choo-choo's." The park switches to Fright mode at 7:00PM, and all through the park there are scary decorations reminding you about this change. There's not the mystery wagon blaring songs like "Thriller" like before, now its decorated with scary looking clowns in some parts, a mock bus that's been in a wreck, supposedly by a scary flesh eating monster.

Just before seven, we took the train ride that goes around the park. It was getting dark before and during the ride it got real dark, real fast. The girls started to show their fear even while the train conductor was telling the worst jokes alive or dead anyone could tell. He briefed us on the haunted rides as we passed them. One was a haunted graveyard and we could see the ghosts, vampires, and other frightening things, not but 10 feet from the train. "AHHHH," screamed one at the girls as he stood up to reach the traing. T-e-r-r-o-r-f-i-e-d. They clung to my arms.

After the train ride we made our way to another roller coaster. The girls hung on my arms the entire way. We saw a few of the creatures jumping out at the guests, trying to frighten them off. Those girls were cowering. "They don't scare kids," one reassured herself. She asked one of the attendants and he said, "No, they don't scare kids . . . they eat them."