More Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch

Elena bought more cereal today for me! Woot!

Been pretty busy around here lately. Zach's been bobbing his head around getting his neck muscles toned up. He's been cat napping and that has been driving Elena a bit crazy. He still wakes up a bunch at night sometimes. We just do everything we can to get him before he wakes the other one up because when the bigger one wakes up you just have to surrender.

Crazy weekend

Got a phone call from Ben on Friday saying that they'd be up to do some shopping and go out to eat. Sounds good. We go to Menards and buy some stuff then eat at the Olive Garden. They arrived there before us and were seated. We came in and didn't see them and told the person that there were seven of us and they seated us too. We waited and waited then Ben came over and found us. In the meal we were invited to go to Decorah to meet up with some other friends too. It was already around 6 then. We thought, "Yea, it'd be fun." So after supper we packed up and headed for Decorah getting there around 9:30. We went to their house and spent the night. AJ and Linda were there too. We stayed up til 2 am or so. Latest I'd been up in ages.

Sunday we went to the 11 o'clock service that lasted for 1 1/2 hours. Olivia and Zach were excellent for it. No complaints at all. Then we picked up the dog and headed for Grandma Nadine's. Erin and Robert were there too. Olivia played with the little kitties and just had a grand time.

Mom and Dad went to Springfield, MO for the weekend. My Uncle Gary we having his last service before retiring. That'd been nice to go to but 11 or so hours in the car would have been too much.

Just call me "The Donald"

I had to fire a kid today. Had some troubles with attendance and availability. One of the worst parts of the job.

Not much happening the past few days. Lots of sick people in the house. Not me fortunately.

I read so much about the Hawkeye football team on different sites I'm getting so excited. How many months til kickoff?

Zach is 8.8 lbs. He's sick and clingy.
We've really been working to get Olivia to speak more. We've taught her some sign language and that's helped but she really needs to talk. Slow but sure but not as fast as we'd like.

new pics

Elena wanted me to mention on here that she hasn't gotten 7 straight hours of sleep since she was pregnant with Olivia. I think that this is a bit of an exaggeration but I said that I'd put it on here.

Snow

I'm thinking about buying a team of sled dogs to get to work. Its just piled up all around here. Speaking of sleep, I got 7 hours straight last night.

snow

We've gotten loads and loads of snow. Elena told me that the official count was 20". That is a lot of shoveling. Olivia has been sick recently. Just coughs and coughs then pukes up. Yuk.

Zach has been really wanting to be held all the time. Set him down all sleepy and cozy and *blam* he's up and crying for attention. Thats all for now.

cereal

Elena picked up some Peanut Butter Captain Crunch and some Grape-Nuts. Whew. We were down to only Special K. You know that you're in trouble when the last of the cereal has pink highlights and pictures of Courtney Thorne-Smith on the box.

Past few days not much has gone on. Zach has been growing like crazy. He wiggles his head around at noises and his legs can hold his weight. He has these chubby little cheeks and big eyes that just bobble around.

We closed up early today for the first time in around 10 years. Lots and lots of snow all last night and still going strong. I shoveled a lot of snow and I'm not looking forward to tomorrow morning. I think that I'm just going to back out and bust right on through the pile. Its supposed to snow most of tomorrow too but then get warmer the rest of the week. I hope.

new pics

From last weekend.




Olivia making two glass kittens kiss

Polka Party

Well, you learn something every day. I found out that I have a cousin who is intrigued with the story about how polka became the State Dance of Wisconsin. He's filming stuff for commercials and movies and stuff. There's a band called the Foot Notes that plays around NE Iowa. They play the waltz, polka, two-step, chattish (or however its spelled) and group dances in that folky way. I went to quite a few of their dances in Highlandville at a one room schoolhouse. Was a good time. I'm sure that they'll do fine. When accepting an Oscar on stage someday I'm expecting that he'll recognize the little people who mentioned his website on their blogs. Time to get some sleep.

past weekend

Came home from work on Friday and got to take a little nap when Elena and Zach went to the doctors office for his 2 month checkup. Olivia was sleeping and we decided not to wake her up and that I should stay home so there is my nap. OK, off to Decorah and arrived around 6 to see GG Watson and the folks. Speckles doesn't really like to travel with us much anymore because of the two kids and their big car seats taking up all the room. Anywho, we went to Cho-Sun's for chinese buffet. We saw a girl I graduated from HS and said hi. Olivia was just the entertainer with her eating and drinking the tea, water and ice. She could spend hours eating a meal. She'd take a few bites of one thing, meticulously take a drink of tea, grab an ice cube, put the ice cube on the table, chew a bit, swallow, play with the silverware, lift her plate and say, "all done," then take a drink of water, pour her water from one glass to another, snag a noodle and chew on that for a while, spit it out and get a drink of tea, etc. Zach just slept the whole time.

Everybody went back home and Elena, Zach and I went over to Ben and Steph's. We just talked about stuff til one in the morning. Kids don't realize that they are supposed to sleep in if the parents stay out late. Luckily the parents helped out with watching them.

One thing that Ben reminded me of was when we were at Luther we and another guy went to Iowa City to go to a Magic: the Gathering tournament. We got there and right in front of the place Ben's car broke down. doh. We pushed his car into a parking spot and registered for the event. A mechanic shop we called wasn't able to get us in for a day or so and that was not so good. Fortunatly Ben's parents were heading down to Clinton and then Iowa City so they were able to drive two cars down there to pick us up. Whew. We had a load of fun at the event. I didn't do so well but had a lot of fun. The tournie people had brought in the big dog professional Magic player and that was going to be neat to watch him play. It wasn't so great. He was kinda a jerk with other players by shuffling and stacking his opponents cards and dealing for them. This would have ticked me off to no end. In the quarterfinals though, (there were around 100 players in this event) his opponent in the final of a best of three dropped a third turn serra angel and blood moon. Hahahahahaha. To the non-magic players thats a real hum-dinger if you aren't prepared for it and this joker wasn't. He started bitching and moaning and his opponent was cool and calmly stomped all over this guy.

We watched Iowa BB on Friday win a big game vs. Mich State and heard the final while at Cho-Sun. A guy had brought his radio to the restaurant. Then we watched Iowa lose a heartbreaker to Wisconsin on a last second three pointer. Oh well. I haven't looked at the final brackets but Iowa has a good shot at making it.

We were asked to sponsor a couple that had moved to Rochester for church. They didn't know anybody so we were asked to stand up there with them. There were about 20 new members at that service. They seemed nice enough.

After that I went it to work for a few hours. It was pretty slow but thats OK sometimes. Elena and the kids went to see her grandmother in Preston at the nursing home this afternoon and they just got back and I hear Olivia so better cut this off.

Don't lay down on the bed

Came home from work yesterday and that was the first thing Elena told me. Not so good. I guess Zach had some serious puke action going on.

I came home from work today and Olivia is layed out with a 101 temp and just feeling miserable. She went over to daycare today and was good but when she came home just hit the wall.

Not much has been going on with me the past few days. Just working and puttering around the house. Elena bought the movie Cold Mountain and we watched part of that last night.

Day off

Had the day off today and didn't do much at all. Zach was kinda gassy last night so Elena was up with him quite a bit and that woke me up a few times. And recently Olivia has had trouble sleeping through the night and she woke up at midnight and at 3:30. Not so good. Then up for the day at 7:30. Hmm. I went in to get her and she was just soaking wet all over her clothes. Her nice new Dora PJ's. Hopped her right in the shower and all was well. Rest of the day just kinda hung out. Played some Warcraft (a computer game) and read about the Hawkeyes. Olivia put her shoes on for the first time today so that was a bit of excitement. Zach has been gassy and he gets all upset. We give him these drops and in about two minutes he's fine so I'm glad that we have them.

Toilet of Doom

OK, Mom and Dad come up Saturday to visit. Dad asks if they're is anything that needs to be done around the house. I say that I want to fix the downstairs toilet because it hasn't worked right and I haven't had time to work at it. We go down there to take a look at it. I didn't think that it would be that big of a project but little did I know. We took it apart easy enough. No troubles there. I thought that there was something plugging up the holes that jet into the bowl so I figured if we took it outside and blasted it with a hose it would clear up. So out we went. Oh, Elena took a look at the toilet then and said that she had put one of those clip-on freshener plastic things and part of it was missing. We thought, "doh." If I were a better storyteller and/or had the patience to describe all the intricate attempts to dislodge the little sucker in detail it'd be a long and very distressing tale of patience, teamwork, and a bit of hate for that porcelain commode. We used two different snakes, coaxial cable (TV cable), copper wire, garden hose, hammer, fishing line and sinkers, and a keyhole saw (a handsaw for drywall) to get that thing out. This was one of those projects that builds character.

We got it out of there and reset it in place and gave it a test flush and it worked like a charm. We cleaned up and had Mexican from Dos Amigos. I had a taco, a burrito, beans and rice. Yummy.

C is for cookie

Elena bought a bunch of chocolate chip cookie stuff at the store today so we made some cookies. When I say we I mean that Elena did most of the work and I tried to keep Olivia from destroying the kitchen and hold Zach. Olivia really likes to help. We would let her empty the measuring cups into the bowls. She really liked the eggs. Zach and I got kinda bored with that set up about 1/2 way through and went and watched the Wolves beat the Bucks. Go Wolves. Only about 10 games out.

Olivia said her first proper name the other day. Guess what it was. Zach? Scott? Elena? Speckles? Nopers it was, "Dora" from "Dora the Explorer"
fame. She'll walk around shouting "Dora!" and pointing at things.

We watch videos on Yahoo Launch pretty much every day. She's getting to like the Kelly Clarkson of American Idol fame video "Since U been Gone." *groan* So we watch it quite often. What ever happened to the other winners of that show? Oh well.

We watched the movie Troy the other day. It was based on the Iliad. I enjoyed it. I thought that Brad Pitt (Achilles) and Eric Bana (Hector) did a great job in their big fight scene. I wished that they'd have tried to make it more epic. I mean didn't the Trojan War last years? The boiled it down to two weeks. They also didn't show the Greek gods directly interfering with the lives of the mortals. Elena was sorely disappointed in the dreamy Orlando Bloom (Paris, the guy who took Helen back to Troy). He was a big wanny who ran away all the time and shot Achilles with a bunch of arrows from across a courtyard and then ran away again.

two pics

Last night Olivia climbed over her door gate and went for a spill. Man was she mad.
She hasn't learned from her fall yet either. Goofy girl.

Well, the deal for Randy Moss was finalized the other day. I think we'll be better off. No good losing a star like that but I guess in the locker room he was a major distraction. Plaxico Burris from the Steelers has said that he would like to be a Viking. He'd be good for us. Or pick up a big name WR in the draft and some defense.

I read somewhere on the 'net that Iowa FB is picked #2 behind USC. I'm not so sure about that high but who knows.

good times

Zach is up to around 7 1/2 pounds. He's getting huge cheeks. Like little apple slices. Time to go to bed. 'night.

Stuff

Came home from work around two. Kids are asleep. Ahhh. I sit down and Elena on the computer holding Zach turns and reminds me that Speckles has a vet appointment. OK, no problem. The kids were asleep.

But not for long.

Olivia starts screaming from her room and Zach gets hungry. Olivia has that I'm not quite awake yet dazed and angry act and wants to be held. And left alone. And given cherrios. And watch videos on the computer. Zach just wants some food so make a bottle and away we go with him. Olivia settles down and becomes her normal goofy self.
She sits on the floor and repeatedly slams the back of her head against the cushions. Zach pukes up some and that worries her. I put Zach in his swing and we vacuum around for a while. Olivia dragged our camcorder out from its hiding place and wanted me to run it. So I start filming. Olivia sneaks up to Zach stands right in front of his swing. She fists her hands and covers her eyes for a few seconds and peek-a-boo's him out of the blue. I've never seen her do that. I guess she learned it at daycare. She did it about 5 times and just grinned and laughed when she uncovered her eyes. Zach wasn't nearly as impressed as I was. I'm told his vision cuts off at about a foot.

OK, time to finish off stuff in the basement. Livi and I head downstairs and we worked on the drain. We put in a new check valve and clean out cap. It took us a while. She was quite the helper. She sat in my lap and grabbed the tools and swung them around. She liked the noisy drill and the vacuum is always a hit. Then we want to work on the basement faucet drain. I had to use a piece of that when we re-did the kitchen drain a while ago. She insisted on sitting on my knee as I hacksawed the pipes and made the fittings work. Oh she was busy. I hear a shout from upstairs. "She has some of your tools!" Doh. Little knucklehead pilfered a screwdriver and snuck upstairs. Oh, she was so proud. All is well in our household for the moment.

Drain troubles

We did a lot of wash today both dishes and clothes. The basement drain clogged up. doh. So I take off the cover and try to unscrew the clean-out. Problem. It doesn't come out. Get the drill out. Use what was left of the battery drilling through the brass clean out. Drain battery and change. Finish drilling a big hole in the clean-out. Get the snake out and attach it to the drill. Run the drill and it spins hopefully grinding through the clog. Shoot the snake all the way down, 25'. Grind away and try to get something loose. Nopers. I forgot to mention I'm standing in 1" of water. OK, get the other snake out. It is a flat band of metal about 1/2 inch wide and 40' long. Run that all the way to the end. Nada. OK this is not looking good. Time to get out the big guns. I get the garden hose and this adapter for the end of it. It is a rubber bladder that screws to the end of the hose and on the other end is a small slit to shoot water out with high pressure. Shoved that down the drain, hooked it up to the washing maching supply and let 'er rip. Blasted right through that sucker. Whew. Then took another half-hour to clean up the mess of tools and wet sloppy black junk. MMmmm, yummy. Smells good too.