Star Wars

Went to see Episode III yesterday. Elena called her Mom and she watched the kids while Elena and I went to Victoria's italian food and then to the movie. I had manicotti and she had lasagne.

I really liked the movie. Lots of action and darkness. One of my favorite of the six movies.

I have some friends who went to the opening midnight showing. That means the movie started at midnight. They ordered tickes online a couple of weeks early. They got at the theater at 6pm to wait in line. I guess it was cold and rainy so they decided to wait in their car. One of their mom's felt for them and brought down some hot cocoa and cookies. Aww, how sweet. Those goofballs waited in line six hours. Oh well. I probably would have been with them if I hadn't had to work.

I read somewhere that it was looking to gross over $400 million worldwide. Thats a lot of viewings.

past weekend part 2

well anyway, after seeing the hole where the barn was we got together with Hunters and Walters for Pizza Ranch and cards back at my parent's. We relaxed a lot there and caught up on some sleep. The kids had fun listening to music and playing with the grandparents. Dad, Mark, Kevin (marks father-in-law) and Arren (marks brother-in-law) went up to Canada fishing near vermilion Bay. They were the first ones on the lake that year and unfortunately didn't have great luck. First cast was a big muskie but tapered off after that. No walleye in there, mainly only norts, bass and trout. Still would have been a fun trip. Wish I could have been there to show them how to reel 'em in.

Sunday night we finally caught Olivia doing somersaults on tape. She is very muscular from all the climbing and tumbling she does. She'll try to do it and sometimes its perfect roll, other times she falls sideways and she just laughs and laughs. One trick that Elena had her do was to tickle my very sensitive feet. She crawls up to me and scratches the bottoms of my feet and giggles out "tikka, tikka, tikka" in her high voice.

Zach has been enjoying being held standing so he can look around. His legs are getting noticeably stronger and his head control is almost perfect. He likes to sleep in our room in his car seat. We'll bundle him up and hide him away in there and he'll be asleep or content for hours. He is pretty easy to work with. Just give him some food and change him and he just wants to look around. Oh, he still wants to be held and talked to but not as much as the first child.

Past weekend

We went to Decorah last weekend. No special reason other than to see people. It was the first time I'd seen the hole where the old yellow barn was. It made me kind of sad but I know that it was on its last legs and not very practical any more.

I remember there were hay bales left up there from the previous owners and a rope swing that we'd grab onto and swing about. We tore down the original wooden steps and built new ones. I'm not sure how much help Mark and I were but somehow Grandpa Watson and Dad got the job done. I had my first shingling experience there too. I helped out on the small roof on the South side. Again, I don't really know how much I helped but the shingles stayed on until the end. While I lived at the house we used to fill up the South bay to the brim with freshly chopped wood. Then as needed we'd load up the wooden trailer and pull it with the red tractor around the house and toss the lumber through an open window. For unknown reasons, this practice of hauling wood ended shortly after I graduated from high school. Another time, the parents bought a truck and it wouldn't fit in there so they had to build the front of it out a few feet to cram it in. Then it flooded and there was no drain so they had concrete built up around the front to divert water away. We knew when to stop pulling the truck in when we ran into a board with a scrap of carpet nailed to it. Then the overhead door would just barely close over it. The cats lived in the barn. We had lots of cats over the years. When we first moved in there, we'd burn through cats like they were given to us free. Someone seeMed tO constantly run over theM. Or the raccoons or other wandering cats would kill each other. We used to name them. After the first 5 or so I think they all became known permanently as, "The Cat." There was a sliding door, maybe 12 feet long, that used to have a notch in the top sliding rail that every time we tried to open it, it would stick and we'd have to lift up on that big yellow door and unstick it and keep shoving it. It wasn't light and didn't roll very well. There were lots of old time signs in there. They were painted on boards. I don't remember exactly what they said but it was like "Coke 5 cents" or "Restrooms this way." There was a chicken coop that our basset hound Sally lived in. She had a 40' fenced in run with a little gate. The doorway was about 2 1/2 feet off the ground so there was a plank there to walk up. Sally unfortunately couldn't get any grip which was kindof surprising with her massive feet. So she'd try to climb up and either slide down or fall off. So we nailed some shims crossway on the planks to give her some traction and then up she went.

It's late and I need to get some sleep.

Past few days or so

Came home tonight and read that Jake and Jules are pregnant. Congratulations to them!

I sprayed the heck out of our backyard with weedkiller on Tuesday. Its been raining something fierce here so I haven't been able to inspect the results yet but I'm hoping that the dandelions are nuked.

We put up some more bird feeders the other day. When I was growing up one of my least favorite little chores was to fill all my parents stupid bird feeders. Now, I kinda get it. Birds are fun to watch. Squirrels on the other hand are the bane of my existence. All I can think about when I see them crawl into a feeder is, "Man, you little squirrel are lucky that we are in the middle town or I would get a gun and you would be cat food." I'm thinking of getting a hanging squirrel bowl thing to help. I saw a cardinal for the first time there the other day. We get lots of robins, finches and bluebirds now and some other kind of black bird. We had a robin living in a little trellis next to our house until Elena decided to cut away all the cover and then handle it's nest. doh. No more robin.

Elena and the kids went up to Minneapolis on Wednesday to meet up with Mom and Dad and Mark who was in from California. I couldn't go because of work so I had that night all to my lonesome. Poor me. Elena is still driving home right now from there so I'll find out about their adventures here in a bit.

some pictures

more stuff

Zach has been really enjoying standing while holding onto our fingers. He can stand for a long time and just smiles or coos or stares into space. He likes the ceiling fans like all babies too. He's picking up Olivia's habit of not ever wanting to sleep though. Not good.

Our old lawnmower pull cord broke down the other day so I spent a few hours trying to fix it. This mower is probably about 20 years old and when I got in there it was just hard to work with. If I had unlimited time and patience I'm sure that I could have fixed it but a a lot of parts seemed worn and just not fit right anymore so we bought a new one. I liked the old one a lot. It was the best kind of mower, free from Nadine.
I bought a 6 horse mulching push mower for about $100 after discounts and turned in rebates. It works swell. Its green and yellow and Elena made fun of it because it was Packer colors.

New Car Smell

Elena does some online surveys for fun and one of them was to review a pilot for a TV show. They sent us one for the show New Car Smell. It said on the cover not to rewind or fastforward it because as it was playing it erased as it was going. Ohh, very Mission Impossibleish. Anywho, we popped it in when the kids went to sleep and watched it. It had Brooke Shields, Dave Atell from the Insomniac, and one other actor who I'd seen before in a movie. It was a comedy (I guess) about car salesmen and zany events that can happen at the dealership. Being the first episode they try so hard to get everyone's background set that it was too much going on. I thought that it had potential but Elena voted it off the island probably saving millions of people from wasting 1/2 hour of their lives.

Zach has been growing steadily. He constantly is getting too big for the clothes we have. He likes to stand up with some help on the balancing. He kinda shows off with that. Last night he got mad at me for not holding him up long enough.

Three pics

Been really busy lately with work. Elena has gone back to work and that's been going OK. Its tough at night being the only person taking care of a couple of rugrats. Elena has taken the brunt of the childcare duties and with her getting paid to work now its tougher on me. But I think of the rewarding personal time I get to spend with Zach at 4:30 every morning now. He drinks milk and I watch sportscenter.

Speaking of sports, how 'bout them Cards and Twins. I thought that losing Renterria would be a mess but picking up all those pitchers has been awesome. Twins doing great with about the smallest payroll in baseball. Yankees have really been tearing up the loss column with their $200 million payroll and all-stars at every position.

I had to make that last picture so big because of the lines on my shirt got all funky at smaller sizes like this .