How a Rain Storm Got the Boys New Bedrooms, Part 1

So.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, I remember now…

We were watching hurricane Ike come sweeping up onto the Texas coast, watching it rain outside of ours. I guess God wanted us to experience a little of what our friends in Texas were going through. Granted, it wasn’t close, I mean the winds were minimal, and it was just a little rain.

A little rain that would NOT stop!

A little rain that would not stop and canceled the soccer games for Saturday. Not bad, and actually it played out well for my scheduling, so that I could go to my Ministry Formation class and not have to miss a soccer game. (I hate not seeing Benjy play – yeah, I’m a soccer dad, worse, a soccer dad that is also a soccer coach!)

Anyway, I head up to class in Crystal Lake, about forty-five minutes without traffic and rain. Approximately and hour and a half with said traffic and said rain. Knowing this, I gave myself plenty of time, and arrived in time for class to begin. The class was on the Liturgy and all that good Catholic stuff that all good Catholics should know, but… I digress.

Jenni, the girls and Danny were in Minneapolis visiting her brother and his family. So, I debated about just leaving my cell phone in the car, instead I went for the vibrate format – just in case.

An hour and a half through the morning session, I get this message:

“Dad, the basement has water in it.”

Crap.

“Can you clean it up?”

“Um sure, but there is a lot.”

“Do what you can, and let me know.”

(Mostly paraphrased, as I’m pretty sure my son didn’t text the word, “um”)

At that point I was already planning on leaving the class and was just waiting for our break, to make a break for it. So when said break time came around, I went up to Father and told him that I need to leave and attend to my basement.

I called home to let the boys know that I was on my way, and they were surprised, which made me start to wonder how bad the water really was. I figured that the kids in the neighborhood looking for toads removed our window well covers, and the water was just coming in through the windows. It’s happened before. However, Andy said that they were in place. I then asked him if they (the window wells) were full of water, and he said that they were. I told him to start baling and that I would be home as soon as I could, after stopping to pick up some cat litter.

Cat litter is very absorbent don’t you know.

I finally get home, approximately three hours after the first text – people seem to forget how to drive when the roads get a little wet around here, I don’t understand that at all. I find that one of the wells is full of water, while the other is dry, for the most part. So I bale out the one well and build up the ground around the well, to keep any more water from flowing into the well. I continue to monitor the well, and it stays dry, so no worries there.

I came in from my baling expedition to find the boys playing a video game, and ask if they cleaned up the water.

They say that they did.

BAD PARENTING MISTAKE NUMBER ONE

I believed them.


Stay tuned...

What if you had a Blogiversary and No One Showed Up?

Well, I don't really know, because I had my one year anniversary yesterday and I didn't show up!

What's up with that?

It is a long story - a two-weeker to be exact, and I hope to share it with you all. If Jenni will let me.

If my beautiful, thoughtful, kind and caring wife Jenni will let me.

Or, maybe I'll just work late/early this week and she might not notice.

I doubt it though.

She's smart like that. :)

So, I Went to this Baseball Game...

... and all I got was the Chicago Cubs first no-hitter since 1972!!!

It was awesome and surreal at the same time, I mean here me and the boys are in Milwaukee, watching a Houston Astros "Home" game, and we were witnesses to some pretty cool history.

See the highlights here.

What is funny is Benjy and I were joking about it in the third inning, and told him that we probably already screwed it up for Zambrano. Boy were we wrong.

Thank you Miller Park for being gracious hosts to me and the other 23, 440 people at the game, we will NEVER forget it.

AWESOME!





P.S. - Let's not forget why the game was played in Milwaukee in the first place, and keep the residents of Texas in your prayers.

The Hands of God

This video is so cool, enjoy...

Happy Birthday Katie!!

Nine years ago today, at roughly this time - well maybe a little earlier, you came into our lives and made our family of five into a family of six. Our little Kaitlynn Ann, Katie, Cuddlebug :)

You came into this world in a flurry of activity, which didn't keep me from nearly passing out (again), but thankfully there was an attentive nurse nearby to bring on the smelling salts. You had a hard time breathing initially because of your "rush" out of the womb, you swallowed too much fluid, so they had to wheel you into the nursery to work on drying you out.

I left you and Mommy at the hospital with the words... "I just hope I don't get to be woken up at 1AM"

Around 1AM I was awakened by your Poppa with word that they had transferred you to another hospital. So me and your Nana rushed to the hospital, surprisingly your Nana had me drive, and she didn't complain once about my lead foot. :) The Doctors said that it appeared that you esophagus was not connected to your stomach - there is a medical term for it, but I don't recall it and I definitely couldn't spell it! Thankfully, that was not the case, however you did have pneumonia, which meant that you were staying over at the hospital in their NICU facility.

Now look at you, a beautiful young lady of nine!

Happy Birthday Sweetie! I love you!!





Turning eight in Disney World!

Good thing that young man was holding on, or you might have flown away :)

A blast from the past - I'm thinking that you are five, maybe six here. (Your Mom will set me straight, if I'm wrong)

This one, I KNOW you are five - thank goodness for date stamps.

Earlier this year with some Chickadees. Way Cool!!

Here you are just hanging around.

Some new friends.

You sure do love Tinker Bell!!

I love watching you fly, you are so brave.

And you always love to smile!

Hope your day was great in Minnesota! I miss you and Mommy, and Jessie and Maggie and Danny.

I Just Don't Get It

Seriously.

I mean, why is The Office such a big deal? Sure it has some funny moments, but...

30 Rock on the other hand - that show just makes me laugh, I would watch that show again, because of the writing - it's so well done.

Why, oh why, are commercials so much louder than regular programming? Okay, I know the answer to that one, I think.

I should quit watching TV, I think.

The Bloggy Politic (no more)

Hello.

I have been away for a bit.

Sorry about that. I had nothing but mean-spirited and not-nice things to say as of late, and I did not wish to subject you all to that.

You may have also noticed that I have added a couple of things to the ole sidebar. One is a very cute little button (actually it's a picture, because the code just did not want to work for me), that I was allowed to use by my friend Holly, who like me is really getting tired of all the vitriolic talk about candidate A saying this about candidate B, etc. Actually, and I may be just speaking for myself here, but it isn't necessarily the candidates that I am tired of hearing blather on about this and that, but rather the impassioned fans of said candidates. Let me tell ya, you don't want to get caught in an argument with either side, because guess what, neither of you is listening.

That being said, and I alluded to my feelings about it earlier (down there) I have decided to go political post free, until November 5, 2008 at least. You all probably know who I like, and I can let you know why - just ask, but you will not see it here anymore after this post. Go check out Politico, or Daily Kos, or National Review Online, or whatever if you want your hard hitting political mumbo-jumbo.

Because here, I'm just a Dad that loves his kids and likes to share stories about them. Oh yeah, I am also a Catholic and I like to share stories about that also, in fact I am thinking about maybe doing a daily saint post, but we'll see. I don't know if my ambition is bigger than my eyes, or would that be fingers?

I am also debating whether or not to go full tilt and do the whole dot com thing, along with a facial, if you will, for the look. I love the mountains, but be honest, when you see mountains are you thinking Daddy-blogger? We'll see, again my ambition may be...

The second little thingy that I added is something new from Blogger, which allows you readers (followers in Bloggers terminology) to - I really don't know because I haven't tried it yet (I'm bad my little guinea pigs :) ) so try it and we will find out together!

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog...




UPDATE: I tried the followers thingy and I am now following my own blog... weird, but now you will see what happens. Oh you can also follow anonymously if you'd like, but why would you want to do that? :)

I also added a title.

Spell Check? I Don't Need No Stinkin' Spell Check! Maybe.

Your Common Spelling Mistake Score: 85% Correct

Your spelling is excellent. You don't fall for common spelling pitfalls, and you spell almost everything correctly.

Do You Make Common Spelling Mistakes?

Effortless

Check out this video...






h/t the Deacons Bench

What is...

A Blog-versary (sic) --- something that I will be celebrating on Sep 27.

Uh, do I need to have a party?

A giveaway? I don't have anything to give, but I can get Jenni to keep Maggie's staples from her head and give those away... Like the Doctor said, "they almost never carry any kind of infection."

Almost never.

What the heck does THAT mean?

By the way, my mind is currently debating whether or not to show you all a picture of little Miss Maggie's head, complete with staples! So, if you see the picture, you will know who won.

Oh, and Jenni may be involved. :)

What's that? You want to know why Maggie has staples in her head?

Well, it all began this morning when she woke up in a great mood because her Daddy was staying home for the day (the back is still too sore for work, in my opinion) and she just knew that he would watch her at gymnastics. She's pretty good at it too, for a five year old that has never even had a tumbling class. I think.

Anyway, that was too far for me to go back, so flash forward to this afternoon. I was on my way back from picking up some extra team shirts for the soccer team I am coaching, and from picking up the second (unknown to me at this time) pair of women's soccer shorts for my son Benjy. More on that later.

My phone starts ringing, it's Edna sending me kisses darling, which means that Jenni is wanting me.

"Hello."
"Dad?" - okay, it's not Jenni, but rather Jessie.
"Yeah, sweetie, what's up?"
"Maggie cut her head, DVD, blood, wanna talk to mom?"
"Please."

The result was that Maggie had a portable DVD player fall on her head, and put a nice big(HUGE) gash in her head! Yikes.

Well the boys have Doctor's appointments in half an hour, so I get to take Maggie to the convenient care (called that because it is emergency medicine for emergencies that aren't really classified as emergencies by the bookkeepers in the insurance companies, and it's relatively convenient), figuring she'll get a few stitches, or better yet, she'll get the wound glued together.

12:53pm, we sign in.
12:56pm, we check in.

This IS rather convenient, no?

1:37pm, we finally get called back. All was not lost though, as we saw some pretty cool looking fish and we got to listen to some non-technical women talk about technical things. Their phone and network went down, and they were coming up with some great theories, all too asinine to recall right now, but I did get a chuckle.

1:39pm, Maggie gets weighed (okay she has a head wound and you are weighing her why?)
1:42pm, Adult Doctor starts talking "baby talk" to my five-year old daughter. My soon to be nine-year old daughter is laughing, Maggie is just rolling her eyes. Seriously, she is so not listening to the "baby talk" coming from the Doctor.
1:44pm, we clean the wound - okay the nurse did it, I just saw blood and the nurse made me sit down. Me and blood apparently don't mix too well.
1:48pm, Doctor puts two staples on/in my daughters head. I take a picture and tell Maggie that I just HAVE to blog about this. She says no.
1:55pm, we are on our way to Dairy Queen, and Maggie agrees that I can blog about it.

Isn't DQ great?

P.S. - I didn't post the picture because I wanted Maggie to give me permission (hey it is her head after all), which I think I will get, especially since she was showing it to anybody and everybody that came near.

P.S.S. - Funny side note, I sent the picture, to my boys and got one response, from Benjy:

"ewwww! Whats ur problem? I didnt need to c it"

Aren't text messages fun?

This Just In...

P. Diddy doesn't like McCain.

Heck for that matter he doesn't like white people. But thank God he lives in these here United States of America, where he can say such crap without fear of reprisals or any other punishment that a less civilized nation wouldn't tolerate.

Now get this...

If I said the same things that P. Diddy says about McCain and Palin, about P. Diddy, I would be crucified as a racist full of hate-speech. Don't bother looking for the link on this site either, I refuse to help him out with his foul-mouthed nonsense. Fair warning, if you do find it (I believe it is on You tube), he swears.

Another thing I found out today... Lindsay Lohan thinks that Sarah Palin is a bad choice for Vice President.

Really.

That just shocks my socks off. I mean who would have thought such an upstanding young woman, of high character I might add, would want to settle for McCain/Palin, when she has the new Messiah in Obama to vote for. My guess is that Lindsay Lohan isn't even a registered voter, and will probably be too busy getting her hair done to even bother voting on November 4, if she were.

Okay, stepping down now.

Maybe.

Glad to see the Obama campaign has brought Hope and Change to the election.


P.S. - Okay no more politics this week, unless there is more stupidity to be shared.

P.P.S. - Nope, no more politics... I need a happier subject, like my next post. (quickly looking for happy...)

UPDATE: If you want to compare and contrast a couple of videos, then go here to see the Diddy video, then one from MachoSauceProductions. Night and Day. (h/t: nice deb)

Oh No He Didn't

Did I hear John Williams of WGN 720 AM just say (okay it was a while ago and I will be paraphrasing, but this is the first chance I got to complain about it, so leave me alone) about Sarah Palin "You already have four children... what are you doing trying to have another, be happy with the four you've got, blah, blah, blah..."

What the Hell?

Did I move to China or something?

Who the heck is he to determine how many children people have?

Sheesh! I shall not listen to him again.

Ever.

Period.

End of story.

What a putz.

P.S. - Jenni, can you fill in where I missed this moron talking? Your head is a better tape recorder than mine is. :)