That was NOT three days off

A three day weekend occurred and I missed it. Actually it wasn't that bad, but is sure seemed short. I really didn't get as much done as I should have, but a few small things. Jen had to work Saturday and Sunday so I spent much of those days playing with the boys. Usually I can get stuff done with William and Andrew helping me, but when I watch Christopher, I don't like to be too far away. Usually I wait until his naps to get stuff done. Saturday we were up pretty early due to the children alarm clock. After I got out and fertilized the lawn, Jen left for work and the boys and I had a lazy morning. When Christopher went down for a nap I saw the opportunity to get some stuff done. I grabbed some tools and headed for the back yard to do some weeding with the two boys. I would weed a little bit, go over and push Andrew on the swing, weed some more, push Andrew, etc... After a while of this I was tired, and Christopher woke up. Then I took the boys for a walk to see if I could wear them out a little bit. We had a nice walk and headed down to the community park that we have in the addition so the boys could play on the playground equipment. After that we headed back and I fed the crew dinner. Jen arrived home a little bit later and we just visited and put the boys down to bed. The bed time process is finally getting a little easier in our house. Christopher goes down very easy, William is pretty easy and doesn't require me to sit in the hallway anymore. Andrew is the pistol. He will usually get out of bed at least 2 or 3 times and go into the hallway, but I can sit in my chair and just snap my fingers and tell him to go back to bed and he does.
Sunday we all got up and went to church. After church Jen headed off to work and I took the boys over to my mom's house after feeding them lunch. My mom had talked about getting together to watch the race, but I wasn't sure what time it started, and also I didn't know that she actually made it a party with snacks and everything which was very good. So we just hung around mom's place and the boys played with my brother and uncle while I tried to watch the race. Unfortunatly Andrew started a coughing fit which ended with him puking all over my mom's house. (so much for those circus peanuts and m&m's). I couldn't tell if his coughing was due to the cold that he is currently fighting or if he is alergic to mom's new dog. It seems like everytime he comes in contact with that dog he ended up having some sort of reaction. It might just be a coincidence, but we are probably going to get him tested. For some reason he doesn't have a problem with mom's other dogs. I would hate for my mom to have to get rid of her new dog, but I am not sure I want to have to drug Andrew every time he goes over there either, we will see. We went home and met up with Jen coming home from work (sucks to be in retail sometimes).
Monday we woke up to rain and gray skies. We didn't really have a plan for the day, but seeing the weather ruled out going to the lake for the day. I just didn't want to take the chance (or spend the gas) to up to the lake for a few hours to sit in a camper either. We broke out the newly repaired (aka. rigged up) waffle maker. Yeah I fixed it with a couple bolts and washers. I was about to cut the box recipe in half since the boys already had breakfast, but decided to make the whole batch since they freeze, and I am glad that I did. Even after two bowls of cereal, the boys were more than happy to help me eat some waffles. After a couple rounds of "I don't know, what do you want to do today?" between Jen and I we decided to go over to the zoo for a little bit. We figure if it did rain that it wouldn't matter since we had the season pass and we wouldn't be out anything. It ended up being a real nice day after all. We walked around the zoo, ran into the Kannings, and had fun. I took the boys on the zoo train ride, and then both of them on the horse ride. It was Andrews FIRST time to ride the horse. Technically he isn't old enough to ride the horses since you have to be 3 years old to ride, but he is tall enough. He really enjoyed it. (will post pics later). After closing the zoo down we headed home and had Reuben sandwiches for dinner (a little treat for memorial day). We put the boys to bed and broke out the laptop. We had fallen way behind on our "Bones" and "House" watching. Good thing they have their old episodes on-line. We sat huddled around the laptop and watched 3 episodes until after midnight. I need to find a cable to plug that thing into the TV.

Spicy

One of the perks that we have here at work is a popcorn maker. It's one of those big ones like you would see at a movie theater. Actually it was at my former place of business, but I called up the new manager when I got here and he offered to sell it to me. For some reason since I am the one who arranged the purchase of the popcorn maker, it also makes me the popcorn maker. So a couple times a week I will head back to the break room and make a batch if it's out or if it's a couple days old (people here have a real issue with two day old popcorn). The ironic part is that I don't eat the popcorn due to my stomach issues. Anyway over the years I have always said that it might be cool to get some flavored seasonings for the popcorn, but since I am not the one purchasing the popcorn and supplies I just forgot it. I noticed that we were almost out of the popcorn seasoning the other day and decided to search for popcorn seasonings. I found a couple of places on-line, but didn't think it was that good of a deal and didn't want to pay for shipping and handling. I found one company that sold the seasonings at Walmart so I stopped by and bought a couple little (2.5 oz) canisters of seasoning. After doing that I remembered that there used to be a place off main street that sold seasonings. I stopped by the place, but it was closed up, but after looking on the net I saw that they were at a new location. Yesterday I decided to stop by the place and see what they had. According to mapquest it was just South of Lake on Coliseum blvd. I drove by and nothing. I drove by again and nothing. After giving up I was in the turn lane and noticed that the little shop that was part of a gas station had it's doors open and I could see plastic containers through the window. Sure enough this was the place. No signage at all and part of a gas station, but the place was amazing. I love cooking shows on TV but they usually use a spice in the recipe that I have never heard of. This would be the place to go to find that spice. They had all kinds of spices, rubs, oils and bbq sauce (the words "ass destroyer" were on alot of them). The place is pretty big, but poorly organized with no labels on boxes or prices on anything. I picked up a container of popcorn seasoning and a mix that supposedly, when put together, will be the same as Coney Island sauce downtown. We will see how that compares to my sauce. The one nice part is that it makes smaller batches of sauce and at less time. Stay tuned.

http://www.americanspice.com/

If you are looking for the place, it's in the gas station that is just South of the Cap n' Cork / Oley's pizza place on Coliseum. It also has a pretty good web page which is where I am thinking a majority of there income comes from.

So far no one has commented about the seasonings near the popcorn maker so I think all that messing around was for nothing. oh well, I found a new place if I ever need Galangal Root Cut/Sifted

let's see if I can sqeeze a little more

Already in the throws of pinching every possible penny I am trying to find new ways to squeeze a little bit more out of that penny. First of all, I have slowed down. On my 50 mile trek to work everyday it's all highway at 70 miles per hour, but being that it's 469 and not that traveled I have backed down to a max of 65 miles per hour in an attempt to get a little more mpg out of the Saturn. If it were a busier highway or one lane I wouldn't, but I don't mind being passed. Unfortunately I can't really tell if it's working since the car doesn't have a little electronic thing that tells me my average gas mileage. I can't afford to fill it up all the way (how sad with only a 10 gallon tank) so I can't do the odometer/math thing either. But I know it's still around if not over 30 miles a gallon for that great little 7 year old car. Yeah we are going to drive the wheels off of that thing. One thing that might help is getting new tires on it too (time to call the tire Nazi).

The other is finding deals around town. I recalled a couple years ago a guy I worked with a guy who would stop by the Nickel's bakery thrift store and get bread. On my weekly driving to do some deliveries I pass by one of these bakery stores. I stopped in there a few months back and got hot dog buns for Christopher's baptism. I decided to stop by this week and see how much a loaf of bread was. I had paid $1.37 at Wal-mart the night before, so imagine my surprise when I purchased 4 loaves of bread for $1.77. Lucky for us we have the big freezer and this stuff freezes pretty well.

I figure if I can find a few more of these little deals I can help in the overall budget. Of course we don't deny ourselves the occasional carry out from a local restaurant or a purchase for the house or kids, but hopefully it will help a little bit.

Revoke my Geek Card

Scott sent me this cartoon the other day. He said it was too funny and geek not to send, but I didn't get it. Sadly it took some explaining from Jen to understand it. My wife is more geek than I am. Sigh....

Movie Review

Sunday Jen and I pawned off the kids and went and saw the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Lesbian. I will preface this review with the statement that I didn't really care for the first narnia movie. I didn't like the story, and I was looking to hard for an overtly religious message in the movie. I wasn't even really that impressed with the scenery. I liked that second movie a little better (yeah still not a glowing review). The story still left much to be desired and this time the religious message was pretty much in my face. I didn't get why the one kid was in such a hurry to get into a fight and get everyone killed, the narnians were pretty happy in their thousands of acres of woods for centuries. Then when Prince Lesbian all of a sudden gets the hots for one of the princesses. It's almost like they forgot to build it up and then all of a sudden said, "oh yeah, give her the googly eyes" halfway through the movie. This might have been a case where the books might have been better than the movie adaptation, either that or I just don't get it. Either way, might be worth the matene', but not full price. It's currently #1, but it won't be there for long with Indiana Jones coming out this week.

I have high hopes for the Indiana Jones movie, but hope it still maintains the magic after 20 years. Of course some of the critics panned the movie in Cannes which is pretty typical for those hacks, but Harrison Ford had the best quote for those snobs. He said:

"I'm not afraid at all. I expect to have the whip turned on me," Ford told reporters after the screening. "It's not unusual for something that is popular to be disdained by some people, and I fully expect it.

But, he said: "I work for the people who pay to get in. They are my customers, and my focus is on providing the best experience I can for those people."

Little something for the Movie Critics

Christopher & Crew

Just some pictures and video for the out of towners

zzzzzz... huh......crap

So I am snoozing away this morning actually enjoying a good nights sleep. I got to bed pretty early, no visitors at 2:00am, and Andrew actually sleeping pretty sound. (I think Andrews ear infections finally cleared up since he has been sleeping in). Then all of a sudden I hear a electronic jingling sound in my subconscious. Huh? What? and go back to sleep. Then I hear it again. My phone (of course downstairs) has just received a text message. I was thinking who would text message me at 5:30am? I start to curse Jeff since he is the only one that has texted me, but then think that he would never do that at this hour. Of course after receiving the text the phone proceeds to jingle every couple of minutes... crap. So I trudge downstairs and look at my phone and sure at shit it's a spam text about perskription medicaution (their spelling not mine). Son of a B****. I want to throttle the SOB's who do this crap and string them up by their nads. So after venting, I trudge back upstairs and back to bed to have the radio come on soon afterwards. There might be hope for this weekend....

Mudder's Day..

When me prayers were poorly said
Who tucked me in me widdle bed
And spanked me till me arse was wed

Me Mudder

Who took me from me cozy cot
And put me on the ice cold pot
And made me pee if I could not

Me Mudder

And when the morning light would come
And in me crib me dribbled some
Who wiped me tiny widdle bum

Me Mudder

Who would me hair so neatly part
And hug me gently to her heart
Who sometimes squeezed me till me fart

Me Mudder

Who looked at me with eyebrows knit
And nearly have a king size fit
When in me Sunday pants me s***

Me Mudder

When at night her bed did squeak
Me raised me head to have a peak
Who yelled at me to go to sleep

Me Fadder!

Mother's day weekend kinda started Friday night. On the way home I stopped to pick up a pizza. Papa Murphy's was running a special on a Taco pizza. Now usually we are just the typical pepperoni kinda family, but occasionally we will splurge and Jen will get one with all the "junk" on it (aka supreme in the Pizza Hut parlance). This was actually very delicious as specialty pizzas go. Yet another pizza from Papa Murphy's that has impressed me. The other being the stuffed crust 7 meat one. Saturday I got up and took the Saturn to get the oil changed and a transmition leak looked at. I was able to get the oil changed, tires rotated, and transmition leak fixed for a little over $100. It probably helped that I wasn't dealing with the one service manager that beats you up with preventative maintenance until you agree to it. (The only thing I don't like about getting the car serviced there). Besides that I like the free pop and cookies and WiFi. After getting done at Saturn I ran the Jeep registration to Odaniels so they could get the paperwork finished on transferring plates and other stuff. I pull up so see every sales guy hanging outside the door. How is it that every time I stopped by I had to fight to get any attention from my sales guy? It was a nice day and people were staying home and getting stuff done around their house. I got home and soon after Jen took off to work. I asked Jen what she wanted to do for Mother's Day and she couldn't make up her mind, so that left Sunday up in the air. The boys and I just hung out around the house. I was thinking of trying to get outside, but it clouded over and started to get pretty chilly so I decided against it since I don't want to take Christopher outside too much just yet. The boys did pretty good and went to bed half way decent as well. Jen didn't get home until midnight so I knew it would take her a while to wind down. Andrew woke me up Sunday morning around 7:00am so I took him downstairs to get him breakfast and to let mommy get some more sleep. Around 9:00 we started getting everyone around and ready for church. After church we talked to mom and came up with a quasi-plan for the day. We took the boys home and fed them lunch, then we went over to mom's for a visit. We hung out there for a little while, and then Jen and I took off for a nice lunch. Nothing like celebrating mother's day than getting rid of the kids for a while. We lunched at Triangle Park which we were hoping would be done with the after church crowd by the time we got there. No such luck as we were waiting with 20 of our closest friends. But surprisingly we were seated very quick since we indicated "first available". I think people still have a stigma about being seated in the bar area since it used to be a place people could smoke. Jen got her usual (stuff shrimp), but I got something a little different. It was a baked chicken breast over fetuchini alfredo topped with crab meat and a holendase sauce. It was good, but if the holendase sauce had a little more flavor it would have been perfect. As we are sitting there half the crowd gets up a leaves. We were just a little early to miss the Sunday buffet people. Of course as we are leaving there are people waiting for seats by the front door even though the bar area was still less than half full. I like the dinning room too, but there isn't anything wrong with the bar area. Oh well. After that we picked up Christopher's pictures at the mall and headed back to mom's house. We loaded up the kids for Grandma #2 house while my mom was about the head over to Dan's house. We picked up a ice cream cake on the way to Grandma's house and spent the rest of the day visiting and playing with them. Uncle Jim had just bought a new playstation 3 so we started to play with that. I tell you the graphics of the Wii blew me away and then seeing ps3 was even better. We started playing a driving game that William tried out and was actually pretty good at. Of course playing the PS3 with a 57 inch plasma two feet in front of you helps the effect quite a bit. So home pretty late and put the boys to bed..

That was kinda freaky..

Yesterday I was checking my email and it I see that someone has emailed my facebook account. I hardly ever go on there so it's good that my email gets alerted. Anyway the email is from Jim Hall who is wondering if I was the Dave Hogan that went to St. Charles School. I notice the name is one that I remember from grade school. In almost 25 years since leaving grade school this is the second time that I have actually came across someone from grade school. Or at least one that I recognize. The other was a girl who I worked with at the radio station and ended up taking her job when she left. Kinda freaky blast from the past and I email him back. Then today, I am in line at the bank and a guy comes walking up to me. I look at him and he looks familiar and he says to me, "aren't you Dave Hogan? I am John Klingenburger" another grade school classmate. I must look kinda similar than I looked 25 years ago. We sit there and chew the fat a little bit. Come to find out that he just had a new baby back in Feb and his two other children are about the same age as my kids. We both got a late start on life and we both have the white hair to prove it. I tell him about my email from Jim and he says that Jim is his kids soccer coach and that Jim's parents live in the same cul-de-sac as him. He also says that on the other part of the cul-de-sac lives another guy we went to grade school with. That was so strange...

Minivan Madness

Yes we are the proud owners of a 2007 Chrysler Town and Country, but it was quite the journey to get there. Where to begin.... It began with the birth of Christoper and seeing how the car seats in the back of the Jeep weren't going to work out that much. So the search began with me looking at car lots on-line and a few visits to some different dealerships over the past 6 months or so. One of the lots that we stopped at was Odaniels. We get the jeep serviced there and my mom has bought two Sebrings and her Prowler from them. I talked to one sales guy and he seemed real genuine and not like a typical used car sales weasel, so whenever I would go back to the lot I would ask for him. We were still looking at our finances and seeing what we could afford to do for the longest time, and seeing if we could put a little away for a down payment, but with medical bills coming in from Christopher's birth, that wasn't an option. We noticed that Odaniel's had a sale going on with a few program cars that were pretty affordable. Yeah they didn't have the DVD and the automatic doors on them, but they were 2007 and had low miles and also had the stow and go that Jen likes. We were finally ready to get serious about buying one after seeing the the jeep sitting at 99,500 miles and hearing from a couple different people that if it does reach 100,000 miles that it will effect the trade in a lot. We we get my mom to watch the kids on Monday and head over to Odaniels. I didn't see anything on the website, but they are getting new stuff in all the time and I wasn't sure how updated their site was. We get to the lot and find out that they are closed for the night, but there is one sales guy who stuck around late doing something. We talk to him and find out that the 2007 vans with low miles for the good price were all gone. Crap. "But" he says they are expecting a few more on a truck in the morning. We tell him we are going to stop by the next day. On the way home we decided to stop by another lot that also has 2007 program minivans on their lot, but they don't look to be in that good of shape and the sales guy gave me the heebeejeebies (typical used car sales guy), but it was good to know that if we couldn't work out a deal at Odaniels that there was an option across the street. So anyway Tuesday night after work I stop by Odaniels and talk to my sales guy Mark. I had told him what time I was going to be there, but for some reason he started talking to this other guy right before I got there. So he is trying to deal with both of us at the same time. He shows me the 3 vans "right off the truck" and they aren't too bad. The two that are the better price are both silver so we don't have to worry about trying to decide what color is better. The only difference is one had a power driver's seat, satellite radio, and different cloth interior, but is also had 5000 more miles that the other one. I tell him I like the one with the stain resistant interior and the 23000 miles. I don' t really need a power seat and satellite radio. He puts that one on the fast track for clean-up so when we come back it will be good to go.
back to work on the deal, but looking at our schedule it would have been next week that both of us would have been Wednesday neither he nor I are available to look at the van so I figure sure as shit it will be sold then. But last night we were able to enlist my mom again to watch the kids. We show up to the lot to talk to Mark, again with a time I am going to be there, and again he is dealing with someone else. Yeah we were a little late getting there but still. He pulls up the van and is starting to put on the plates for a test drive. I am pointing out to Jen some of the features when I noticed the wrong interior.... wrong silver van. So he pulls up the other one and we take it out for a test drive. Pretty nice van with a pretty good ride in the middle and back seats (I was hopping around the different seats). We get back to the lot ready to sit down and crunch some numbers but he is still dealing with the other family. This is when I notice that it is already 8:00pm. One, they close at 8:00pm and two, Christoper likes to eat about now. We are considering comingavailable. But the other family gets finished pretty quick so we sit down to see what we can do. The one thing that Mark tells me is that he gave me the wrong price for the van, but since he told me the price that he would honor that and take the bite on his commission. Sales guy B.S. or honest sales guy? I am thinking honest sales guy. (yeah he is that good). So we are giving him information and the sales manager takes the jeep out for a look over and test drive. I am thinking that since we get all of our service at Odaniels that they have pulled the service records and know some of the laundry list of problems with the jeep, but they didn't. The only thing he really notices is when you stop the front end shudders, which I attributed to bad shocks. Yeah I know about other problems with the jeep, but I am not about to volunteer that information. We still owed a couple grand on the jeep and they gave us about $4,200 for the trade in which I thought was a pretty good deal (and close to the book value). I was going to dicker with him, but knowing the work they would have to put into it and the wrong price problem he had I didn't beat him up too much. So an hour of sign this, enter that in the computer, sign this, sign this, sign this it's now 9:00 and we are both getting pretty tired. Both Jen and I are dealing with Sinus issues and our heads are spinning. So finally he hands us off to the financing lady who is also stuck there late because of us. We were already approved from our bank at 4.75 %, but they were able to find another place that got us 4.4%. We could have gotten even lower rate, but making it a 66 month loan rather than a 60 got us the higher rate, but a lower monthly payment. Of course they tried to sell us extended warranties, rust proofing, gift certificates, and all kinds of other add-ons and we just said "pass". The van is still under factory warranty for another 10,000 miles so that is pretty good and I really trust the Chrysler product. Both Jen and I ask a million questions because we want to make sure everything is correct, but also because we are both very tired and want to make sure that we don't sign anything we don't want to. Jen recalls a deal that her parents had done late at night with a car lot where things did not turn out well at all, so she is hesitant. I might have to ask her parents about that sometime. Overall we made out very well and are paying just $11 more a month than we were currently paying for the Jeep which is one thing that I wanted to do. Actually I was trying to make the payment lower, but that $11 more a month I will take. So we are escorted out the door by the finance lady and we head back across the lot. Mark is already transferring our license plate and we start to unload the jeep into the van. Both Jen and I kept double,triple,quadruple checking the jeep to make sure we got everything out of it. It's kind of like when we leave a hotel room we have to check the drawers (even if we didn't use them) 10 times. There was a tear shed in memory of the jeep, but I won't say if it was Jen or I. I think the thing that I will miss the most is the four wheel drive in the winter. So we get home at 10:00 to pandelerium.. Christopher was crying because he was WAAAYYY overdue for a feeding. I almost told mom to give him some out of the fridge but it's so hard to say that because she didn't know how close we were to being home. I have a hard time heating up the "white gold" if I know Jen is near. The one thing that we find out is the van is longer than the jeep. The front end is almost touching the freezer that just allows for the garage door to close. Looks like we are either going to swap car parking in the garage or I have to reorganize stuff and move the freezer. The boys go crazy when I show them the new van and they want to play in it, but I tell them it's bedtime and take them upstairs after profusely thanking my mom for being so late and her having to deal with fussy boys. After putting the boys to bed Jen is getting some stuff ready for the next day and realizes that she can't find her purse. We tear apart the new van, and the house and can't find it. I tell her that it is probably sitting in Mark's office or the finance lady's office, but there is always a chance that she left it in the van after the test drive and someone took it, or that we left it on the parking lot when we were transferring crap from the jeep. Along with credit cards is alot of cash from the garage sale that we were going to deposit on the way to the car lot but the bank was closed. Also, Jen's work keys that cost hundreds of dollars to replace. So Jen is freaked. I am too,but there isn't much we can do about it now, we will just have to wait for the morning. Jen crashes on the couch at11:30 but of course wakes up at 2:00 and is up for hours. She even goes online to our bank to make sure that no one has withdrawn any money. Lucky for us it was in the finance lady's office. I am going to pick it up today. Whew............ So we are one step closer to paying a visit to the Q's this summer, but I hear they might be heading this way too... stay tuned

I feel safe.....

Last week PBS was running a special on an aircraft carrier. A real interesting behind the scenes look of what goes on during deployment. I find these types of shows very interesting and used to watch these shows on "Discovery" all day long back when we had cable. It's things you never really think about like how they get rid of trash, how to feed a couple thousand people every day, and stuff like how they handle religious services while on board. Along with a very interesting behind the scenes look there were a couple of disturbing things too. The people they decided to interview for the documentary were scary. Almost every one of them were from broken families, their mom's were crack whores, the service was their only choice, they didn't want to be there.. Yeah I know it's only a few of a crew of thousands, but they chose these people to follow in almost every episode. It actually turned into a little soap opera with these people which I found annoying. In the interviews with the crew members (or at least the ones that they aired) almost all of them didn't want to be there and didn't agree with why we were there. I could have used a little less soap opera/anti war propaganda and a little more information, but still it was an interesting series.

Busy weekend

Saturday was a lazy day for me and the boys. Jen had to work so we just hung out around the house for the day. It was real windy and a little cold so I decided to stay inside and try and get a few small projects done around the house. The boys love it when I get out my tools since they know I am on my way to fix something and they can "help". Of course they "helped" me out of a tape measurer. I am sure it's in a toys box some place. The plan was to do a few things outside when Jen got home, but she ended up working later than planned so that didn't work out. A curious thing happened when Jen was at work. Jen received a text message from someone claiming to be an old friend and gave a few clues to who they were. Jen deleted the one message figuring it was spam which held part of the clue. Only a select few (and you know who you are) have my cell number. So I figure if it was someone we actually knew they would call or text again, and if it's spam then not answering it might end it there, but it's still curious. I saw that Jeff called later on in the afternoon and thought it might have been him since he is the only one who texts me, but his call was due to his brother-in-law's sewage filled basement.
Sunday started pretty early with the boys up by 7:00, and I got up and went to church. Then I came back and picked up the family and we headed downtown for another church service and a confirmation. We were able to sit with my father and mother in law toward the back of the church. There were 4 teenage girls sitting in front of my father in law and they were not dressed appropriately for church and they TEXTED and talked all during the service. They also had a little kid in front of them that they were playing with which the mother did nothing to take care of that. I think they were all related. I asked my father in law how he kept from saying something to them and he said it wasn't easy. Very few things get my father in law going, but that is one of them. I knew if I found it inappropriate that he must have been going nuts. TWO HOURS later we finally left the church and headed for a reception at the families house. The boys and I hung out outside while Jen and Christopher were inside being passed around. (Christopher not Jen). The boys really liked the sandbox in the backyard and played in that for hours. We might just have to get one of those. Their current playset has an area for a sandbox, but the view is blocked by the rockwall and I think I prefer to have something we can see and that we can cover in case of rain. The food was very good at the reception. They borrowed the hot dog steamer and got numerous comments on it. I was even surprised to see that they had chilled up some beer! That really surprised me, but when I tasted it there was a funky taste so I don't know how long it had been around. After a couple hours of eating and playing we decided to get going. I got a call from a friend putting on a benefit concert on the lake north of columbia city and decided to pop up there with the family to check it out and to return her computer that I fixed. It was a nice drive up there. We pulled up to the restaurant/tavern/bar/dive and was able to park among the motorcycles. The outside looked just like an old cottage that had been converted. We walked around to the back where the bands were playing, of course still in our church clothes and waaayyy over dressed for this crowd. There was a tent with the bands at the bottom of this large hill with about 20 people crowding the small deck off the back of the bar. The bands started playing and it was too loud for the boys to handle. They both covered their ears and were never far from me. I wanted to go into the bar and check out how the inside looked, but I don't think the boys would have let me. It's always good to know where a good restaurant is for a weekend drive, much like Clay's restaurant or the retreat on lake George. After a little bit the boys were getting used to the music and they had found a moon walk and were really enjoying that. Around 5:00 we thought we better head for home since Christopher was due to eat and there wasn't a good place to feed him around there. Of course half way home Christopher wakes up and wants to eat.. NOW. So we got home as quick as possible. After that the boys played some more and Jen and I just sat on the couch exhausted and wanting to fall asleep. The boys went down pretty well with Christopher being the problem child for the night. He either had too much gas or was over tired from the day so that took a while. There was nothing on TV so we put in a movie that I think I saw 10 minutes of before falling asleep. Nothing like waking up to go to bed and remembering that I have to make lunch for the next day. So I finally get to bed and William comes in the room around 4:00am crying for whatever reason. It took about an hour of numerous trips down to his room for various reasons until he finally fell asleep. Of course then the garbage truck comes at 6:00am and he comes in the room. We just let him sleep with us and he crashed until after I got out of the shower. It was a busy weekend, but I am trying to get the boys to experience new things. It seems like they, like us, get into a routine and we need to break them out of that as much as possible so they aren't afraid to try new things.

Too Cool

A last weekend I was helping out at the March of Dimes charity walk. I noticed that one of the guys that I knew was sporting a new iphone on his belt. I had to try it out. He let me play with it for a little bit and I have to say it's the coolest gadget I have ever seen or played with. I wasn't sure if it would live up to all the hype and do all the stuff that it does on the commercials, but it sure did about everything with the short time I had to play with it. If I had the means, I would definitely own one of these things, but I don't think that is going to happen in my lifetime. Maybe some day I will get an itouch since I don't really need the phone feature. Now where are those lottery tickets?