Favre and the Horny Helmets won today

As did the Packers.

Favre connected on a 60 yard bomb to Rice (was it?) that was incredibly impressive.

Oh! I said I put up a couple pix to show how things are going at Mom's house.

Well, here's the bunch I brought out trick or treating:



Quite the cute bunch, aren't they?




Here's Mom and the family:












And, Fall in Muskogee:

I thought of a little ditty while showering up after the long

July 4th weekend:

Bug bites and sunburns and duck-poop-caused itchin'
Long weeds and deadfalls and Mom-in-Law's bitchin'
Patching the rooves that hail damaged last Spring
These are the truths of our lake cabin dreams.

All right, a couple lines were tortured into to place to fit the rhyme and meter. We didn't have any rooves to fix this time around. But I'm not quite clear on why they need to remove deadfalls from the woods. Not that it isn't fun to play with chainsaws.

Oh, and I actually like my mom-in-law quite a bit. So, sorry about that one, Mom. But...you know...stereotypes...rhyme schemes...

After that crack, TF

I'm going to have to post some pix of the Mormon rellies:

Wait, there's a boy missing... Oh, there he is with his Dad:

I can't really feel too guilty about invading their privacy or anything; they blog here. But, hey! If you go over there, don't be leavin' any snarky comments or anything: that's my niece and nephew, and, I guess, my great-niece and -nephew (Holy crap, I'm old!). And they're the nicest people in the world! Hopefully they think the same of me.

I don't want them feelin' the need to backtrack you back over here and find out what I'm really like.

Hey, doesn't my niece, here, look a lot like this gal?

Since it's, like, 15° out tonight

it seems like an appropriate time to post a couple pix of my niece's wedding in Muskogee, OK, from last June. (Okay, okay, I just found the old camera.)



Some of you may recognize the grizzled character in the first pic. Yup, Ron's alive and well. That's my mother and my Grandma behind Aliina, along with a bunch of cousins and Aunt Linda and Uncle Joe. I'm particularly fond of Aliina's pose in the second picture.

Oh, that's Aunt Paula, there, too (in the first pic). And that might be my sister, the bride's mother, up by my truck.

Oops!

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I was trimming my hair today, when the guard fell off. So the only option I could see was to do this.

Oh, well. It was on my list of things to do before I die.

Don't worry. My daughter still looks like this:


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I need to thank Rosie when I get home

for all her help this morning. My wife had to get up and head out early today for work and I had to get the kids up and out alone.

I was up late typing up some papers, so I was having a heck of a time getting out of bed. Rosie saw that and got Lena up and dressed and made sure she went potty. Hopefully, they both ate something. I had a glass of milk, but I just realized I didn't check into whether they had anything.

Anyway, I couldn't have done it without her, and I'm grateful. I'm afraid I was mostly gruff and grumpy at the time. She did a good thing and deserves something special for it.

My daughter's just like me.

I guess this goes here. I try to do things about my bourgeois lifestyle here. I know I promised to do a better review of the new production of My Fair Lady today, but I've been rather busy since I made that promise. It rates every positive thing that can be said about it, I kept finding myself grinning during the performance - it may well be the best musical ever, and these guys really do it brilliantly.

Maybe that's as much as I need to say. But back to my daughter:

We're talkin' the older one. Tonight we were talking about her homework project, somehow the subject turned to geology and she ran up to get a library book she checked out today to show me what the MOHS scale is. That's the same rock hardness scale I learned in junior high, but I didn't know the name. Apparently there's another scale for minerals that I wasn't aware of. I should have asked about that.

I tested her personality at INFP, which is pretty similar to my INTP, but I keep in mind that I'm not a professional, and I have to wonder if that personality type might be more common among children. It strikes me as an immature way to think to me, but then all you bastards look childish to me. You're all getting worked up over some insignificant BS.

The thing about INTPs is that we're as close to Spock as humanity has to offer. We think like him, but we keep finding ourselves freaking out over some damn thing.

Packers 34, Vikings 0

Awesome!

I want to know how San Diego did, though. I was thinking that, after the Vikes womped them last week, the Packers were in for some $#!# this week. But nope. The Vikes absolutely rolled over and let Favre and the boys have their way with them. Of course, I had to watch every minute of it. Hadda make sure they'd hold the shut-out. They tried to give up a TD toward the end of the fourth, but Bollinger decided to toss the capper to our guy.

Here's what else we've been up to this weekend:




I bagged up about half that pile.

One more?

Aliina said, "I really like you, Daddy!"

Well! I had to answer, "I really like you, 'Liina!"

So she raised me, "I love you, Daddy!"

I called, "I love you, 'Liina!"

She laid her cards on the table, "We love each other!"
We had to split the pot.

At least, I think I got my fair share. Did she ask me to do something? I'm sure I did it! What do you need, dear?

A few words on my latest readings

I've been reading the Jack Reacher stories by Lee Child. Action/Mystery stories. Good stuff. Keep ya up all night. Reacher, the almost larger than life hero, is a "liberal" but his sense of justice is spot on and he acts directly, but wisely.

I read Aladdin and the Magic Lamp to Rosie. Quite a bit different from the Disney movie. Sindbad the Sailor was in the same book. It too is quite different from the movie Sinbad the Sailor that I saw in a seedy theater once.

Rosie gave up on Oliver Twist as hopeless. It's certainly not a laugh a minute, like The Pickwick Papers. We also read Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception. Next is Robert Silverberg's Gilgamesh The King. Be gettin' to that in a minute.

Now I'm reading That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis, after having read Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra - all on The Probligo's recommendation. Very enlightening stuff: pretty deep theology, delivered entertainingly. Since I'm not done with the last book of the series, I'm still not sure where there's a vision of a utopia that I'd actually want to aim for in them.

And I'm also working on The Betrayal of the American Right, by Murray Rothbard and Freedomnomics, by John Lott. I'll get links for those after I put the kids to bed.

Post #100! I have to celebrate family values.

Here's my daughter as the Grinch:

We're going to have to make sure she pays attention in Sunday School.

She's getting taller:


Finally I caught her twice in a row when she wasn't smiling. She's a very smiley girl. But I'm not going to try to prove it right now. Usually I post a pic of the older girl's dance recital this time of year. Well, I expended all my photographic efforts videoing the thing this year, but here's a picture of the aftermath:


So those are the loves of my life. Minus the gal who isn't interested in being made famous via the Blogosphere.

I think I'll lard up a post with pictures.

Not sure if Image Shack with appreciate me at all, but hey!

Here's a hint of the weather a week ago, on Easter:


Speaking of Easter, what do you make of this?


I think we're going to have to do some reprogramming.

Anyway, Thursday we get:


You can't see it, but the little one was holding that umbrella for good reason. It was snowing to beat the band.

Then Friday:

She wants me to fix the snowman, naturally. We did eventually find enough snow around the yard to stand him upright again, but...

Yesterday (No, that's not the same snowman):


Today I was out in shorts and a T-shirt sliding down the slide with Lina and teaching Rosie how to throw a football. I didn't bother with the camera though, sorry.

April in Minnesota.

I hear they got the real thing in Kansas yesterday, but we sure didn't. It must have something to do with the elevation there. We're at about 1000 ft here, they're about 4500 ft. It looks flat as a board from here to there. Go figure.

I just found myself compelled to say one of those

things that could only come out of the mouth of a parent: "No biting the xylophone!"

Go ahead! See if you can work that one into your next conversation! I'll bet you have to cheat.

Want to see my snowbanks?



And here's a picture I call Bunny and Moomoo:

Ah! C****! I had something important to say,

but I just had to go run and fish the toddler out of the toilet. Of course, my contribution was laughter. Next time remind me to grab the camera.

She forgot to ask someone to put the baby seat on the potty.

Traumatized for life, I'm sure.

Aw! It's kid-pix! Dagnabbit!

But she's so cute!



Do you still doubt it?



But she's one of those damn Canada lovers!



You know my answer.



I gotta teach her real American values!

The kids are having a battle on the spare bed

with a dead exercise ball. I'm gettin' the crap kicked out of me here, and I'm just a bystander trying to blog.

There are a number of products that I actually believe in: Viadent toothpaste, Zim's Crack Cream, any kind of Vitamin E, CoQ 10, liquid minerals, garlic cloves, Listerine, Aveeno, fish liver oil...

But, exercise balls arent't among them. We have two and one's dead flat and one's mostly flat.

Maybe [note the spelling of that word, Ron] they're not designed for truly fat people who have young children.

Naturally, since the Weatherman predicted scattered showers

and thunderstorms, it's been simply raining cats and dogs all day. If these are scattered, they must be huge.

I can't hear any rain on the glass spires of the roof of the atrium because there are too many jovial people greeting and joking and laughing out there.

We're expecting In-laws tonight. The house is a mess. Somebody I know keeps saying that if I'll get the children out of her way, she'll clean up. I think her method is to sit in her chair and brood about how she never gets any help. Then she does laundry until her aches and pains drive her into bed. I don't know how we produce that much laundry, but we do. We always have clean clothes to wear anyway.

I play with the kids until story time, get them ready for bed and put them there. Neither of them ever gives us any trouble about bed-time.

Then, I suppose, Somebody expects me to start house-cleaning, but there's no way I'm going to begin any physical work after nine. OK, I'll fold a basket or two of laundry if you ask me to, or make a bed so we can get in it...

Oh, whine, whine, whine...

Did I mention that it's raining?

Steve reminded me of something.

We had a few difficulties of our own at easter. And I've got pictures.

Who's the first to show up when the camera comes out?


Easter Ham!


So we finally get the whole family together and what do I get?


To be fair, neither The Accountant nor I have any idea how that last picture came about, but it was too effin' hilarious not to post. Of course, the kids, who are obviously hanging their heads in shame (or embarassment for us), might have a different story (that they're not telling us).

Couldn't have had a nicer early spring day!

We went out to Wagner's Drive In for dinner this evening. The wife and I had Double California Burgers and a family-size order of onion rings. She had a chocolate malt and I had a blueberry shake. The kids had identical orders of hamburgers with Rootbeer Floats. And, of course, they shared the rings.

There were several classic cars, and a couple of those kit pseudo-classic hot-rods (that are still pretty cool), there--a black and cream '54 Chevy and purple '49 Ford...some kinda souped-up Willys (I didn't get over to that one).

Then we popped into Walmart & bought grilling supplies for the month. We do charcoal on a Weber Kettle. I have no idea why anyone would spend a thousand dollars on a gas grill. The best tasting thing I ever ate was Johnsonville Brats grilled on a Weber.

Might be why I married the wife, come to think of it.

I'll be darned!

"Canadian diamonds are the best quality diamonds in the world… even better than African diamonds."

Peter was referring to the physical characteristics of the diamond. But he also mentioned that buyers prefer Canadian diamonds for another reason: they don't want to support civil war in Africa and will pay a premium for a clear conscience.

I didn't know they had any.

I've been saying, since my first daughter was born, that I'm movin' to Northern Saskatchewan. Now I find that there's money to be made there.

I should run up there this summer and ask 'em if they've got some hard work they need help with for a week. While the wife and kids check out the local Mennonite, Hutterite and/or Amish communities to see if they have room for another family.