postponed birthday party

Jack's got strep throat, poor little buddy. He needs a new cranky to make him feel better. I've watched more Thomas the Tank engine movies than I ever have this weekend. We bought season one on iTunes, and I bought the A/V cord to connect it to our TV's. I know the exact minute and second the "Donald and Douglas" episode runs, it's Jack's favorite.

Madeline's been very sympathetic. Although when Jack cries for no reason, just because she's around, she looks a little perplexed at me. "He's sick," is all I can say in his defense.

Misty's picking up his prescription presently. He weighs in at 41 lbs.

lots of time on wheels

Last time I ranted about carrying a silly tricycle up the hill, and how Jack couldn't go fast enough now that we all have new bikes. Two new things.

Yesterday we went for a bike ride where Jack rode his tricycle the whole way. We went to the playground, jumped up and down on the slides, we swinged on the swings, and made it all the way back home. I've just got new way to manipulate inspire the young lad.

First and foremost, avoid the hills. We went the long way to the playground, but there are no hills. Second, take water. It's hot. Transporting water's easy. Third, let his sisters get ahead of him, Jack is fiercely competitive with them, he keeps up.

Then fourth, get an awesome Burley bicycle trailer. That thing is AWESOME. We went really fast down the hill (and really, really slow back up). I can think of a hundred scary things with a bicycle trailer, like turning, wiping out, knocking over something because the trailer is wider than the bike, the trailer tires getting stuck, disconnected trailer from the bike, least of all that it's heavy. The Burley eases these. It's super lightweight, it has what's basically a rollover cage, uses a pin to mount to the bicycle, and a canvas strap, super big tires at 45 psi. Jack likes it a lot, "Whoa dad, that's pretty cool."

It can support the girls' weight. Madeline didn't like going very fast.

I'nna hold choo

This is Jack's saying, "I'nna hold choo, [mommy|daddy]," the last noun is either mommy or daddy, it depends. And that "depends" is what I'm going to gripe about right now.

Mom gets the "I'nna hold choo, mom," at the dinner table, or just before bed time, watching a movie, or when Jack gets hurt. Dad gets the "I'nna hold choo, dad," walking up a giant hill, that Jack has decided he can't traverse on the tricycle. It's not enough that Dad has is required to hold the tricycle, but Dad also has to carry the almost three year old boy up a hill, while carrying a tricycle, after riding said tricycle all over the neighborhood and playing at the playground for 30 minutes in 100 degree (heat index) weather.

Jack -- in 30 years, "I'nna hold choo, Jack." He'll hold his Mom, I know, not his Dad.

Summer almost over

Oh, man. The summers can never be long enough, I think. The girls stay up late, I don't have to shovel snow, lots of grilling, outdoors, and birthdays.

We've gone through three of the four summer birthdays. Terra had a slumber party with our neighbor's kids. She got a new bike. Madeline had her birthday party this weekend (they stayed up until 5AM Saturday morning). I came down stairs to scold them into sleeping and noticed one had evacuated herself upstairs to the couch in the family room. There were five girls in all, minus Terra (not with us this weekend).

Misty's birthday was my favorite, we were able to go to the Blue Stem (sigh, love the Blue Stem).

We all now have bikes. Madeline got a new 10 speed with her birthday money from Grancy and Big Daddy. Misty's had a Cannondale since college, and I just bought a Diamondback Sorrento. It's a hybrid. I hate the "Mountain Bike" phenomenon. I did'nt want shocks.

We tried a test run of us all going out together, however, Jack's Radio Flyer Tricycle doesn't cut it, he gets behind and gets mad when his sister flies past. I'm looking on Craig's list for a trailer now that Jack can ride in and I will hitch onto my bike.

We went to the water park last Thursday, I'm still recovering, but we met up with family there and had a blast. Lots of fun. Some guy Madeline met in line, Tyler, ended up with a little crush that I had to scare out of him.

Flies

I killed eleven flies this weekend, all in the house. Little fly-bags.

Tire Swing

Wow. What a difference a tire swing makes. I'd like to take all the credit. However, whilst running to the garage to pick up a tape measure I handed my beautiful wife the rope that was hanging the tire swing in mid-air. I wanted to get a few measurements before cutting the rope and the chains.

I arrived back to see a perfect slip knot (no, not the band you punk losers) tied to the lawn chair my wife was using.

"How did you do that?" I asked incredulously. Everything with knots escapes me. I'm a pre-boy scout, pre anything useful. I've watched Terry tie a few, and it's completely over my head.

"What?" my wife asked indignantly, "I know how to tie a slip knot," answering my question as if I knew the answer. I admitted my ignorance immediately. My wife showed me how to tie the slipknot and while I still stared with complete bewilderment in my face, she said, "Let me climb the ladder, I can tie the rope off."

Whew, I thought. The design for this tire swing is different than the grandparent's. I think with this one we should be able to get all three kids in at the same time, although I'm not sure about the branch. The equipment from the hardware store will sustain 420 lbs at it's weakest point (that's the S-Hook the three chains connect).

New Compuer. w00t!

The Dell desktop was taking forever to do anything. I'd been having problems running applications on it for a while. I think it could use more memory and a rebuild, probably an upgrade to Windows 7 would have been good, too.

Instead of doing all that I decided I needed to get a new computer, along with a new monitor, and a much needed new router. The old router was years old, ancient by computer standards, I couldn't do WPA, and I blamed it for all my devices being slow. Now I can walk anywhere in the house with an iPod touch or Nintendo DSI, let alone a laptop, and the performance is great. Plus, I don't have to type in some useless WEP key that can easily be deduced on local traffic observations.

I'm going to rebuild the old systems with Linux and build a squid proxy server. The girls are getting pretty Internet savvy. They're using the laptops to go most places.

I've been geeking out all day moving the stuff from my "legacy" computer, to the new computer.