band hero's

We got band hero last weekend. Terra's in love with it, she's really good on the drums. I'm terrible with the drums. I can't figure out how to use my hands on the drum and cymbals and by foot on the bass drum at the same time.

Movie Weekend

Madeline went to camp with girl scouts this last weekend. Terra stayed home. She gave Madeline a giant hug when Madeline came back home Sunday evening, "Madeline! Don't ever leave again!"

We went to see the movie "How to train your dragon." Terra invited a couple friends to go (Madeline went to see it Friday night with another friend of hers). Jack was restless. He was moving throughout the picture, but when a spot showed that caught his interest he would stop his wandering and look up at the screen. Then he caught the bucket of popcorn of the gentleman in front of us. Jack reached over, Mom stopped him. "Jack, sshh. Watch the movie. Sorry, sir."

Jack saw his moment later. He reached for the bucket, lifted it off the seat in front of him, then over the seat, and SPLASH. The popcorn landed everywhere. I had to go get another bucket of popcorn for the guy, and Mom's purse was filled with it.

Jack is standing in front of me now with his shirt off, holding a book. "Read book, Daddy."

"No, Jack, we've read that book three times already."

I don't think it's wrong to say, "No," even if it's a book. Whoever bought him the "Cars" (the movie) books for Christmas is EVIL. I've read those books a million time, and that was last Saturday.

Sick, Sick, Sick

zomg, everyone has been sick this Winter, it's been awful.

Misty and I were both sick, terribly sick, in the middle of January. Terra was sick the end of January, went to the doctor's office, and ended up missing school. Madeline wasn't feeling well that same weekend and had strep throat the next week. She was throwing up and missed almost a week of school. I was away in San Diego on a business trip, where I thought I was going to enjoy the warm client, away from a sick family, and I got sick -- again. Misty had almost the same thing I had, so I'm guessing we both got it from Terra. Then last week, Misty came up with a cold, aching sinus-like infection, and I fought through the same thing a few days later.

No more sick. This weekend has been nice and we spent as much as we could outside. I could still feel the sun on my face yesterday evening, I pushed Jack in a swing on a treeless school playground for almost an hour. That child loves the swing.

Trains on tracks

Have you ever seen your kid play gleefully with trains at book or toy stores? Enjoying every minute, right? We've got all the ingredients for that to work at home. A nice table, tons of track, lots of trains, other little houses and people that can you can setup around whatever track layout you can think. But here's the deal, I've never seen the kids really enjoy it.

Jack gets extremely frustrated. He tries to put the track together himself, which is awesome, but then of course it doesn't mate up, there's an upper elementary school level of geometry in the curves and length. or he'll use a track that I've put together and the whole track gets disconnected and comes apart. He gets angry, he grunts, he yells at the Thomas trains. It's sad to watch.

The difference is the track at the stores is completely glued down with bondo. Try lifting one of those tracks up, you'll lift the table before that track comes undone. So, we glued our track down. I bought some hardboard, cut it to size, and glued it on a 1/4" plywood sheet, also cut to size. Then the track went down and when I was happy with the form, I used some hot glue and a glue gun and cemented those suckers on the hardboard. It's great, less than $20, too. It has two bridges, two lifts, a couple circles; Jack (and the girls) can push Thomas and a massive number of trucks along the track and guess what? It doesn't come apart. They don't get frustrated.

The glue comes off easier than wood glue, but it takes some work. Jack still sets up the extra track on the floor or in the spare spaces around the table. He still gets to use his imagination, it's just now if he wants to play with a train on the track, he doesn't have to use his imagination that an earthquake came and superman had to put the thing back together.

Next I'm going to ask the girls to paint some landscaping with streams, trees, bushes, and the like on the hardboard. Then we'll scrape the glue and make a new track design for it and throw away the old hardboard, less than a few dollars. 4' by 8' sheets of hardboard are like $9.00.

Found the penny

In response to a recent post, we've also found the penny! Who can get a picture of the year on the penny first?!

Long Weekend

Jack woke up 11.30PM Wednesday night throwing up. He threw up the rest of the night and on until the next morning. Friday morning, his Mom, had the same kind of thing. Saturday morning, Madeline got it. Then Sunday morning, Mom got it again. Or something new. It's a good thing I don't get sick.

Today, with both of the kids at home feeling reasonably well, we went outside. Madeline bundled Jack up along with herself and we kicked the ball around some in the backyard. I have been clearing a tree out from the corner of the yard, and I stepped back there to view my handy work. Two trunks remain on this tree, down from about 13. The last two lean over my neighbors fence and I've been considering the options for cutting these hold outs. However, in between now and then, it has several foot holds and Jack likes peering over the privacy fence. "Cars," which he says like "hires" and "Trucks!" with a grunt right from the gut pointing out the miscellaneous toys in the yard and on the deck. "I can climb higher Daddy," Madeline says.

She only gets so far, there aren't many branches to hold on to anymore, and so she ran to her old favorite, Terra and Madeline have climbed this tree for the last several years to daring heights.

"See Daddy!" I acknowledge how high she is in this tree. Very high. Jack's demanding a little more attention as he's taking new steps on the other tree, and looking more intently at all the neighbor's yard has to offer.


I hear Madeline say, "I'm scared," which I've heard before, too. I say, "I'm keeping a hold of Jack, he's not so good at this." Then a dozen seconds a loud "SNAP," echos from Madeline's direction, clearly a limb broke. I quickly turned my head to the left to see the scariest thing I've seen with my kids. Madeline falling from about 15 feet.

Terra was bucked off a horse once, and it's amazing how the eye and brain can process all the stimuli. Everything moves so slowly. The limb that's cracked is above her head. It's about as long as she is. My girl's body is in a position that looks like an extended jumping jack in mid-air her arms in a V and her legs in an upside down V. She closed her legs, her arms still flailing around. Then the inevitable, a loud "THUD," as her feet hit the ground. She landed and then fell backward on her bottom and rolled over on her stomach.

I pulled Jack out of the tree with one hand, set him on the ground, and raced over to Madeline. She's groaning, low grunts, no tears. "STOP MOVING!" I exclaimed, and I tried to do the triage questions, but she won't have any of it. Mom comes running outside, she heard the drop on the ground and knew what happened.

Madeline has a huge bruise on her bottom, but other than that she's unharmed. No broken leg, arm, back . . . thank the Lord. That girl is 97% muscle and I'm guessing between that and the adrenaline she avoided breaking any bones. The bruise on her bottom was when she fell back and landed on one of the tree's roots.

They don't get younger

My girls picked up the downstairs, that included my office. Before I learned they picked up my office, I declared, "I hope you didn't mess up my office." They did, and it looks great.

Included in my office is a sweet, sweet poster. It has all my girls' pictures on it, with their little brother. It has "1# Dad, from Madeline" and "To: DAD, from: Terra, Madeline." What a treasure. Misty has a HUGE poster in her office, Madeline taped together a 3x3 sheet of 8.5 x 11" papers and wrote how much she loves Mom, and a portrait of the two. In a few years, this will be the last thing on these girls' minds.

Then you hear Jack crying, because the girls are trying to carry him around the house like a sack of potatos and you think, "THAT'S IT!!! I've had it, he's old enough to walk and he's not an American Girl doll, he wants to walk." Then halfway to the location of the screaming, Jack is laughing hysterically as the girls chase him and you think back, they won't get younger, this won't last long. Treasure it. at least until the next time someone screams (hopefully that's not me).