Author Archives: joel

Snooze

Posted on January 2, 2009 by joel
Between the ice storm, vacation, and working from home a few days, Sean and I have been able to spend a lot of time together. As much as I hated the complete disruption of our lives the last few weeks, I can't really complain about all of the time Sean and I have been able to connect. Lori took this photo yesterday. I was zonked on the couch, and Sean was curled right up into me playing Sonic the Hedgehog on his Gameboy. He probably stayed there for almost an hour. We've had a lot of moments like this lately, and it warms my heart just looking at the pictures.
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Don’t Cry Mommy

Posted on January 1, 2009 by joel
During the ice storm, we were out of our house for about 12 days, all told. We spent the majority of that time at my folks' condo up in the mountains. It was Lori, the kids, the dogs, and I, plus my parents, their two dogs, and their two cats. Everyone was trying real hard to make the best of it, but it was a pretty stressful arangement - especially with Christmas looming. So we were all worn a little thin. At one point, I accidentally walked in on Lori crying in the second bedroom, just overwhelmed by it all. So I'm trying to console her, but it was Sean who finally got her to smile. He was headed to the bathroom, and heard his mom crying. So he came in, wrapped his arms around her legs in a great big hug, and said, "Don't cry Mommy, it's ok. There aren't any monsters in here."
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Ice Storm

Posted on December 28, 2008 by joel
For those who didn't know, and have been wondering what caused the lack of updates here on the blog, we were out of our house for about 12 days due to a massive ice storm in our area that happened a couple of weeks ago. Luckily, a friend of Lori's father helped us drain our heating system before we took off, so we didn't have any pipes burst. But we are just now finally getting our life back to some level of normalcy. So expect the updates to start rolling out again within the next day or so.
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From the Archives – Spelling Bee

Posted on December 13, 2008 by joel

Here is another old newspaper clipping I pulled from that old stack of Lori's stuff. This is from the same year that I moved to Epping and Lori and I met - and started dating. I think it was her goofy haircut that attracted me the most - heh! But seriously, all that spelling acumen has paid off well. We have to spell almost every interesting word when we are in front of the kids, in order to keep things a secret. It's amazing how adept you get at it with practice - I can probably spell d-e-s-s-e-r-t faster than anyone you know. And this is off topic, but it has to be said. Dan, you look like quite the goober in that photo. Get a haircut, hippie!

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Scenes From Space #45

Posted on December 11, 2008 by joel
If any of you have taken a look at the moon in the last week or two, right at sunset, you might have noticed two bright points of light right next to it. Those weren't stars though - that was Venus (the brighter of the two) and Jupiter. How cool is that?
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From the Archives – Honor Roll

Posted on December 10, 2008 by joel
I found this in a stack of Lori's old stuff. It lists Lori and I as being on honor roll in 7th grade. It's weird to look at that list, and realize that I know almost every person on there. Barring just one or two exceptions, I haven't seen any of those people since graduation. It's strange how fast you lose touch, and how "meh" I feel about that. And not to call you out or anything, but - Chris, Dan - where are you on that list? Slackers. :P
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HTPC Follow-Up

Posted on December 9, 2008 by joel
Well, it's been a few months since we started using the HTPC, and the verdict is in - we love it. It passed the wife-acceptance-test, which is the critical tipping point for any geeky husband to get one of his projects into the living room. It's funny though - we are using it differently than I had anticipated. Originally, I figured that the features we would use the most would be games (for me) and movies (for Lori). But it turns out that the feature that gets the heaviest workout is recording shows for the kids. We has actually turned out to be a lifesaver for our bedtime routine - I could only have watched the same dozen or so "goodnight shows" so much longer before I would have snapped. Now, we've increased the size of our library of kid's shows dramitically. But the feature that Lori and I are having the hardest time adjusting to is the fact that we can pause live TV. It must just be all those years on conditioning - we still wait for commercials if we need to get up for something. And on the very rare occasion that we do remember that we can pause, we both feel so high-tech and futuristic, even though any redneck with a TiVO has been doing this for a long time.
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Blueberry Jam

Posted on December 8, 2008 by joel

Two Saturdays ago, while Lori and Carter were out shopping, Sean and I made another attempt at blueberry jam. Sean had a great time, as you can see. And this batch turned out much better than the last one, which was rock-hard once it cooled.

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Pigtails

Posted on December 7, 2008 by joel

Just recently, we've finally started to try and put Carter's hair up in pigtails. It's been long enough for a while, but we've had a few problems when we tried in the past. First, her hair is very fine, so it tends to slide right out of whatever we try to contain it with. And second, until just recently she would just pull out whatever we did manage to get to stay in. But now she is more interested in having pigtails than in playing with the elastics, so she isn't fussing with them as much. Isn't she adorable?

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Sean Bowling

Posted on December 6, 2008 by joel
In an earlier post, I mentioned the daddy-daughter day that Carter and I shared. Well, on that same day Lori took Sean out bowling. She tells me that he really enjoyed it, and didn't due half bad. He was knocking pins down, but apparently it took ages for his ball to reach the end of the lane. Pictures don't do it justice - I'd love to see a video of this. :)


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