Kill Me Now

I got *maybe* two hours of sleep last night. The cough I've got just wasn't letting me go to sleep. I exiled myself to the couch downstairs because I was afraid all the coughing would keep Ginger from being able to sleep (apparently that was unnecessary though since she said never even heard me coughing). This morning Ginger got up with Catherine and then I went back upstairs to bed. Ginger took Catherine to school and since she has ballet today also, she wasn't planning on coming home till lunch, which meant I would be responsible for Quinn. After they left for school, I was able to sleep for about 20 minutes before Quinn woke up.

The good news is Quinn is feeling much better. No more fever to speak of, he still has a cough, but it is very intermittent. The bad news is I'm still running a mild fever (100.6 degrees) and Quinn is feeling much better. That means he's chatty and wants to play. And since I was feeling like death warmed over and operating on little to no sleep, I just couldn't deal with it. I made him a breakfast of pancakes, and he even ate all 9 of them (they were little silver dollar sized). But then he kept wanting me to play with him and asking me stuff. Some of which were valid questions (like why do cars have four wheels instead of three), but I just didn't feel up to dealing with it. I eventually took the cheap cop out and let him play Mario Kart for a bit to keep him from asking me to play with him. I know using a video game as a babysitter is terrible, but I just wasn't up to being able to really play with him like he wanted (and he wouldn't stop asking me stuff).

Eventually Ginger came home, and I was able to go try and sleep. I think I got to sleep for about half an hour before I could hear Quinn screaming about something (I think it was bath related). Once Quinn's screaming woke me up, I came downstairs to get something for lunch. Catherine was playing with the Prince from her Cinderella set. And now I know he's not anatomically correct. For whatever reason she had stripped the Prince down to nothing but his shoes. When I asked what was going on, she said that he had taken off his pants because he had peed in them. When I asked about the shirt, she told me he had peed on that too (and I'm thinking to myself, that guy is just out of control). I assume it's role play stuff since she just went through the whole potty training thing. I helped 'wash' the Prince's pants and shirt and helped him put his clothes back on. But no sooner had I done that than she brought him over to me and told him he had peed in his shoes, and we had to wash those too (at this point, I'm thinking the Prince really ought to go get that checked by a doctor).

Eventually it was time for the kids to nap. And I was actually able to get a couple of hours of sleep at that point. But it wasn't meant to last, I woke up around six burning up and sweating profusely, but with the bonus of chills. I'm guessing the Ibuprofen I had taken earlier in the day had worn off. I took some imitation DayQuil that Ginger had bought for me, and after about an hour felt a little better. Still had this really nasty cough deep in my chest though. I tried sleeping again but I just couldn't get to sleep. Ginger and the kids ordered Pizza Hut for dinner, so I had one piece when I came downstairs. I think Ginger took a couple of pictures of the kids today since I heard Quinn talking about having a picture taken with a milk mustache, but I haven't taken any (been too out of it). Maybe tomorrow I can get the mustache picture online if it's good.

Ginger tells me the house assessment came today and it's gone up again. Which means we'll be paying even more on our monthly payment to cover the taxes. Yay. In case you're wondering why we moved to our current house, this might help explain things (it's from end of summer 2003):

Quarantine Reestablished

Quinn woke up this morning around 10 AM with a fever of 102.9 degrees. The good news is he's actually sleeping through some of it, the bad news is when he sleeps that long the Motrin completely leaves his system and fever comes back. I woke up today running a fever of 100.3 degrees. I'm thinking if I follow Quinn's apparent incubation stages I might be much worse tomorrow. I gotta say, 100.3 doesn't sound that bad, but man I felt like crap. Just generally weak and all my joints ached. Of course, Ginger has pointed out on numerous occasions that I'm a terrible sick person.

There must be some advantages to being young. Quinn can be really sick, but once he gets Motrin in him, his fever drops down to normal levels (I took 4 Ibuprofen tablets and my fever only dropped 1 degree to 99.3). Also, once the medicine kicks in for Quinn, you wouldn't even know he was sick as hard as he plays. Although before the medicine kicked in this morning, he got to watch some videos in his room. Ginger took the laptop into his room so he could watch some On The Farm DVDs. He really loves the rooster.

So I stayed home with Quinn while Ginger took Catherine to school. And then after lunch Ginger took the kids into the doctor's office. Today it was Quinn's follow up from the last time he was sick and his inner ear burst. The doc says they can see where the scaring is from where it burst before, but it looks like it's healed up nicely.

I stayed in bed most of the day. I was having a hard time sleeping since I felt like crap, but if I laid down, I would get drainage going down my throat which made my throat sore. While I was in bed, I watched a movie on DVD, "War of the Worlds" (the new one). While it was interesting special effects and what not, the movie itself was complete crap. There are plotholes big enough to drive tractor trailers through. My personal favorite is how the alien machines had been buried on Earth for millions of years. No mention of how the aliens knew exactly where the largest human population centers would be within a million years. Or how they knew there would be human populations. Or why they planted the things there a million years ago. Or what the purpose of their invasion was. Or why they would stage an invasion using equipment 1 million years old. I don't know, I used to like Speilberg movies, but recently, not so much.

When the kids went down for naps, Quinn was feeling needy and wanted someone to stay in the room with him. So I napped on the floor using the big brown dog as a pillow. After about an hour, I got up and went and slept in our bedroom. I heard later that Quinn got up about an hour after I left his room. After dinner both kids wanted to play trampoline on the sofa again while listening to the Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack. From looking at the pictures, you would have a hard time telling Quinn was even sick.

Catherine Catches Some Air

Quinn's Bouncing

Synchronized Dancing During The "Be Our Guest" Song

Lest people think this whole let's use the sofa as a trampoline is something new, here's a video of Quinn from March 2004 (so he was a couple months shy of three at the time).



After the kids went to bed for the night, Ginger watched the rest of Disc 1 of Grey's Anatomy Season 1 and then we went downstairs and watched "How I Met Your Mother", "Two and a Half Men", and "Courting Alex."

Whatever You Do, Don't Drink the Tea!

Quinn woke up this morning around 7:30 running a higher fever (it was 101.8 degrees) than he had yesterday. Luckily I was able to give him some Motrin without it turning into the 10 minute standoff it normally is. After he took the medicine he wanted to get up, but I convinced him to go back to sleep. After he finally he got up, the Motrin had kicked in and his fever was down around normal levels. Since he was sick though, we had to bail on going to church. And I think I may be catching whatever it is Quinn has (I seem to have a nasty cough now, no fever yet).

I drank my last Coke yesterday. So this morning I was really jonesin for a caffeine hit. I was doing really good with no caffeine (ten years I was free of the stuff) right up until Catherine was born, then <John Madden Voice>BAM</John Madden Voice>, I was hooked again. Anyway, Ginger mentioned she had some fancy smancy tea that she could make for me, so I said sure. Word of advice to people out there. If (hypothetically speaking of course) after you receive tea from your wife / spouse / significant other who mentions right after giving it to you that "Oh, by the way, it looks like that tea went out of date in 1998", DON'T JUST DRINK IT ANYWAY! I'm not going to go into great details about how I came to this startling conclusion, but please, learn from my mistakes.

Eventually I was feeling better enough to go to the grocery store and buy some Coke. The kids were watching a On the Farm video when I left and it had just finished when I returned. Since we stayed home the kids did more of the same stuff they normally do. Both did some cutting with their cutting books. Quinn played some video games throughout the day (with Catherine watching, see below). After their naps we played around downstairs. I had originally been trying to keep Quinn from being too active, but when I removed the couch cushions and turned the couch into a trampoline (I'm sure Ginger was thrilled), that plan went out the window. I took some video of them bouncing around, so you may or may not see it eventually. At some point today the memory card for the Nintendo decided to stop working. I was about in tears since I think I have saved games on there for like ten different games (I really don't like the idea of having to start completely over on Zelda: Windwalker). For the record, the memory card was a third party card made by MadCatz. I'm going on record saying that in the future for things like memory cards for game systems I will only be buying name brands.

Quinn's doing well, and Catherine's cheering him on

Catherine's tries to give Quinn a kiss

As I was reading to the kids tonight, Catherine was wiggling around on my lap and jabbing me in my stomach. During that I came to the realization that I still wasn't completely recovered from the tea. After the kids were asleep I caught completely up on Colbert Reports. I am now done with those and I have nothing on the Tivo I need to watch (until later tonight when Boondocks airs.

Btw, looks like Google pages is allowing people to create pages again.

Photo Shoot

The kids gave us a break this morning and slept in until around 10. I think it was a combination of completely tiring them out running around last night at Robert and Gretchen's combined with not going to bed until after 10 PM. I don't want to dwell too much on the why, just thankful that they slept in that long.

We didn't do a lot today. Partly because it looks like Quinn isn't feeling too great (he seemed to be running a mild fever). I watched the kids while Ginger ran to the store for some essential groceries we needed. While she was out she also went to the bookstore for a new cutting book (so now Quinn has his own).

I tried getting some pictures of the kids together. It seems impossible to get a decent shot with both of them looking good. I think I can crop some shots and get really nice ones of them individually, but combined I only got a couple where they both look halfway decent.







This last one I included not because I think it's a good picture of both of them together, but for some reason it makes me think it's for an ad. Maybe for Axe Body Spray or something. It's got the whole "guy appearing to be aloof while female seems to be throwing herself at him" vibe going (which now that I write it sounds incredibly disturbing that I see that since they're both my kids, but I digress).

Ginger made a delicious dinner. It was the popovers and the soup she had made before, but this time it had peas too. In addition she baked cookies for dessert (Quinn got to choose what type of cookie she made and he picked Chocolate Chip).

I had one of the most special moments I've ever had with Catherine tonight (which in retrospect sounds really bad after the above comments, but I'm going ahead with this anyway). After the kids had been put to bed, they were both being pretty needy calling us into their rooms constantly. Quinn was probably doing it because he's not feeling too well, but with Catherine we didn't really know what was up. So when she called out for Ginger one too many times, I went in and laid down beside her bed so she would know she wasn't alone. I think the reason she was being so needy was because of the wind. It was extremely windy here tonight and for whatever reason the wind was just hitting the right spots on her windows to make a ton of noise. Anyway, I put my hand on her bed and she reached over and grabbed it with both hands and just held it for the longest time. Then she took a blanket from the bottom of her bed and gave it to me and laid her head down on my hand as she started to go to sleep. While this may not sound like anything really special, Catherine has always drifted towards her Mom when she needs comforting, so it was nice to know she likes having me around sometimes.

After I was done there, I came down stairs and watched some "Daily Shows" and "Colbert Reports" as I killed time until "Justice League Unlimited" came on. I didn't think this week's was as good as last week's. It was still better than probably 95% of what's on television normally, it's just last week's episode was really well done. The neat thing about tonight's episode was that they used one of Grant Morrison's revamped characters as the bad guy (The General, which to be honest, in the animated version seemed to be a take off on the Hulk, but with intellect still intact).

It Makes Me Sound Like a Tiger

I took the kids to school today (since Ginger had my car yesterday, the car seats were still in my car this morning). Aside from a minor tantrum about whether we were going to listen to "Thomas the Tank Engine" (Catherine) or "Van Morrison" (Quinn) on CD, it was a fairly uneventful trip. Ginger came by work later and got the car seat so she could pick them up at lunch.

After work I came home and Ginger packed up the kids and we headed over to Robert and Gretchen's shanty (or as they named it, "Pebble Creek"). On the way we stopped by Baja Fresh and got the kids dinner. While Ginger was picking up the food, I chatted a bit with the kids and asked them about their day. When I asked Quinn what he had done, he told me he couldn't tell me and it was a secret. Although later he said something about getting pencils with race cars on them (I was a bit fuzzy on when / where that happened). And I know from some pictures Ginger took of them earlier that they were both playing at Catherine's new activity desk and cutting stuff out of Catherine's cutting book (I don't think Quinn has his own cutting book, but at this point I have to assume more cutting books are in our future). Ginger also mentioned that they came downstairs to my office and watched a bunch of the videos I had pulled off of the 17 tapes I had captured so far. One other thing Ginger mentioned that I found highly amusing was that earlier today Quinn had burped pretty loudly, and after he did it, he said he liked burping. He said he liked burping because (and this is possibly paraphrasing, but I think fairly close to what he said) "It makes me sound like a tiger."

Once we got over to Robert and Gretchen's and kids had eaten a bit, they were off and playing with Autumn and Tyler. Everything was great till everyone wanted to race while being carried. I ended up giving rides to everyone except Tyler. That got a little tiring after a while. I'm definitely not in as good of shape as I used to be, and to be honest, I was never really in that great of shape before, so that's probably saying something right there.

If you have a gmail account and were fast yesterday, you could have gotten access into Google's new feature, 100 Meg of free webspace / homepage. It would be accessible from http://<yourgmailaccount>.googlepages.com. I say if you were fast because they disabled allowing people to sign up yesterday because of too much demand. I think I got one address signed up, but by the time Ginger got around to signing up, it had been disabled. I'm on the waiting list now for another one. You can see what you may have missed out on by checking out googlepages. They do allow you to sign up to be notified in the future if and when access is enabled again.

As for TV tonight, all I got a chance to watch really was Battlestar Galactica. To be honest, the past three or four episodes of BSG haven't been anything special. The show seemed to be wallowing in mediocrity. Some of the episodes were just okay (Apollo commanding Pegasus), and some were just plain not that great (Scar). This week's though was just plain good.

Where's My Chauffeur

Both kids went to school today, although Catherine claimed she didn't want to go once they got there (I think it's because it's been so long since she had actually been she was getting used to not going). After dropping off the kids Ginger came back home and chauffeured me to work. I believe she ran some errands after that and picked up some new pajamas for the kids.

Catherine did some cutting today. She got a book for her birthday where she gets to cut out pictures. Quinn immediately wanted to play with it once he saw her playing with it, so Ginger thinks she's going to have to go get another book.

Ginger's car was fixed today. I had to get a ride again to pick it up (thanks KennyG). Because of that I ended up coming home a bit earlier than usual. I believe my coming home may have woken up Quinn early from his nap. Quinn and I went outside (the high today was around 50 degrees, so it wasn't too cold) and I replaced some lightbulbs that had gone out in the lamp on our walkway. Quinn raced around the yard while I did the light changing. Changing the light didn't take long and soon we were back inside. Once Catherine was up and over being cranky, her and Quinn started playing together. Quinn was playing a xylophone, then they pretended to play / act out an episode of Little Einsteins for a bit. After that Catherine played with the xylophone by herself while Quinn went into the library and played with his race cars (he's amassing quite the collection of cars).

There wasn't much to watch on TV tonight. Ginger watched "Dancing with the Stars" and I watched some Daily Shows. The Olympics being on have really cut down on new television programming since other networks are running reruns or in the case of the WB just not running programming at all and throwing up some movies.

I found out tonight that all the video recording I've been doing of tapes recently with Microsoft's movie maker have been fairly low rez captures (320x240). I should have realized what was up when a full hour of capture was only taking up ~220 meg. The captures I was doing before with Pinnacle were recording avi files that were closer to 6 Gig for half an hour which I assume is the data in raw format with little to no formatting / compression (the reason I finally noticed was I started to wonder how I still had so much disk space after capturing so many tapes). I'm curious how other people are bringing in their video. I know KenC said he basically had a terrabyte of disk space for video storage, but how are normal people handling bringing in that much data? Are you bringing it in at the lower rez? Or bringing it in at the higher rez, then creating a new movie file and allowing some compression of the data and deleting the larger original data file?

In other news Ginger and I are looking into trying find a beach house for a vacation down at Nags Head. We're not sure what our exact criteria is yet. A hot tub is a must, but a pool is more iffy since the kids have access to a pool here over the summer.

Smile

It was snowing this morning. They predicted only minor flurries with no accumulation. But it was actually pretty heavy through most of the morning with some accumulation on the ground, but luckily nothing on the roads. And most of it had melted away by the end of the day (except for the stuff right in the front of our house which seems to never get any direct sunlight). That didn't stop traffic from being a bit worse than normal though. And I had to be in early today for a meeting with Security about setting up an area for us to do some development. Turns out that all our issues were already taken care of (wish I had known that before going in early).

The snow wasn't enough to delay schools or anything, so Quinn was back in school today. Catherine wasn't, but that's because she had her first dentist appointment today and it conflicted with school. Ginger said Catherine did great. The doctor pointed out that one tooth may have been slightly injured at some point, but it was so minor he couldn't tell for sure. Catherine also got some X-Rays of her teeth taken, and she did didn't have any problems getting them taken. This is such a contrast with Quinn getting his teeth X-Rayed. When Quinn gets his done you would think they were torturing him from the screams. Usually it gets so bad they send Ginger and myself out of the room and bring in the main dentist who ends up putting Quinn into some half nelson headlock or something. But Catherine apparently just sat there and didn't say a thing.

On the trip to the dentist Ginger's anti lock brake light and traction light came on indicating there was some problem with the car. So I came home for lunch and swapped cars and took her car to Craven to get it fixed. They seemed iffy about being able to get it done today, although they assured me they would be able to run the diagnostic to just see what the problem was (just hooking their computer up to the car to get the error codes results in a fee of over $100, ouch). I should have known that the car wouldn't get done, since they told me they would try to get to it, but right before I left one of the guys from back came out and started giving me this story about how their diagnostic guy had two cars to do before mine. So he indicated they would most likely have to keep it overnight. I wasn't expecting them to fix it, but to be honest, I had expected them to at least run the diagnostic. So when I called them at like 15 minutes to closing to ask the status, I got told they had looked at it, and it could be one of three things. In my head I translated that into "We looked at the lights that were on, but didn't actually run the diagnostic to get the error code." If they had actually hooked it up, they should have known what the problem was. So maybe that'll get done tomorrow. Until then Ginger has commandeered my car and I'm now carless. Without car. No longer possessing a car. I'm now officially that guy at work who asks you for a ride. I bummed a ride home from Rex since it's at least partially on his way.

Once I got home the kids were in the process of looking for all the miniature Calico Critter pieces that had been strewn all across the room (have I mentioned I don't like those because of all the small pieces?). After I helped find all those Quinn and Catherine started working together building with their Lincoln Logs. It was really nice to see them working together on a project without fighting. I think Quinn did most of the work, but Catherine was definitely helping put on pieces. From hearing Quinn talk about it. I think he's been working with the logs at school.

Tonight we had Chili for dinner. I'm guessing few people will be visiting me in my office tomorrow. And tonight was also the last night Quinn had to have his ear drops. Thank goodness, because every night it's this five minute long standoff before we can do the drops. I'm just glad that's done. After the kids were asleep I watched some Daily Shows from last week. Think I have a good chance at catching up completely because all last week the Colbert Reports were repeats. Ginger used to time to start watching her latest Netflix DVD, Disc 1 from Grey's Anatomy season one. And she said she liked the "In Her Shoes" movie from last night for anyone that was interested.

Titles? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Titles

Once again the kids didn't have school. What's up with that anyway, I remember when I was going to school the only time you got five days off was when there was two feet of snow. Anyway, so not much really happened today around here. Although you wouldn't know that from asking Quinn. When I got home from work, Quinn had apparently just woken up from his nap, and was in the process of describing to Ginger how one of the wrecks in the Daytona 500 had played out.

Once he finished detailing the wreck, Ginger made a snack for him to have before dinner. So as he was munching on his popcorn he was telling me about his day. You think it's tedious reading through the minute details I put on here, then you should listen to Quinn tell me about his day. It was they took Catherine to ballet. Then there was some story about playing with the kids before class started. Then he left with Ginger. And they walked across the street. And they and got hot coffee (for him that means warm milk from Starbucks). And then went back to get Catherine. Then they left the building. Then they got into the car. Then they buckled their seatbelts. Etc, etc.

The story of his day went on for a good while, there was a trip to the book store, the grocery store, home, back to the book store and home again (now that I think about all that, maybe it's inaccurate to say not much happened). About the time the story was ending Catherine woke up from her nap. She was less talkative than Quinn, but overall in a pretty good mood (relatively speaking for her upon waking up).

Once the kids were in bed Ginger watched part of a syndicated episode of "Sex and the City" (I think she was killing time until she knew for sure the kids were asleep). I've been working on trying to make a video focusing on Catherine (since it was recently her birthday), but getting all the different video together has been tough. I really should have been pulling this stuff off the tape on a regular basis instead of waiting until 5 years after I got the camera to finally start saving it to the computer. On a related note, does anyone know where I can get a decent instrumental version of The Beatles "A Day in the Life"?

I let the computer pull off two hours worth of tape while I watched "The Island" on DVD downstairs. Apparently I'm getting old and my eyesight is terrible, I almost had to go get my glasses to be able to watch the 35 inch screen from 10 feet away (I couldn't read some of the LED message screens, so instead of getting my glasses I just moved closer). The movie itself was okay. It came from Netflix, so had a brief description of the movie on the DVD slipcover. Unfortunately it revealed a little more detail about the movie than I wanted to know going into it. The movie itself was really stretching credibility at points, but I suppose overall it was a decent popcorn action flick. Nothing spectacular, but good enough that I stayed up way later than I wanted to finish it (that and the computer was still recording and I didn't want to put up my blog entry until the capture had finished for fear of dropping frames in the capture process). During all this Ginger I believe watched "In Her Shoes" on DVD upstairs. I don't know what she thought of it, but I'll get her opinion and try to put it on tomorrow.

I know everyone's disappointed, but no sunset pictures today (one has to get home before the sun sets in order to get those).

No Holiday For You! Come Back One Year!

No school again for the kids, and yet I still have to head to work. I didn't get a full report on what happened throughout the day, but I sort of got the impression Quinn played with his Nascar race cars and Catherine apparently at some point started working on sewing together the puppets that she got for her birthday. It was also pretty obvious that she had been playing with her new Calico Critters. I'm personally not a big fan of the Calico Critter stuff simply because it has so many teeny tiny pieces that are just begging to lost (or dropped on the carpet which then makes them almost impossible to find).

When I got home the kids started working on some crafts from Catherine's new art supplies. They took glitter glue and then used that to put little butterflies and dragonflies on the paper. Took me a minute to realize that the glitter glue sticks in addition to having a screw on top also had a plug inside the pen that needed to be removed before the glue would start coming out.



I saw that my cousin Will has finally started updating his blog. Will is an extremely talented artist and I wish him well on getting some business.

For TV tonight, I didn't get to watch too much since I took an unintentional nap after putting the kids to bed. Once I woke up from that, I watched "The Boondocks" and the news intro to two Daily Shows from last week (they seemed to have a lot of fun with the Dick Cheney shooting story).

And finally, part 3 in the ongoing series of how long can I milk taking pictures in my backyard at sunset.

Fun With Phonics

After church we stopped for lunch at Wendy's. During lunch Quinn announced he had to go to the bathroom, so we walked over to the restrooms. The ones at this particular Wendy's have no figures or anything other than words to differentiate the restrooms.

  Quinn: I don't know which one it is.
    Me: Can you read the words?
 Quinn: Is it this one?
    Me: Sound it out, what's it say.
 Quinn: Mmmm.  Ehh.  Nnnn.
    Me: Now say it all together, what's
        that say?
 Quinn: Mmm...Boys.

After lunch we came home and had a mini party for Catherine with some presents from Ginger and myself. I ran out of tapes for the recorder, so I made a quick trip to the store to get some more, until I got to the store and realized I had no wallet, then had to come home and head back out, so the trip ended up being a bit longer than I wanted. The kids were getting ready for nap by the time I got back.

When Quinn got up from his nap, we watched the last 30 or so laps of the Daytona 500. Quinn got a kick out of spotting all the cars he owns and the ones that are in his calendar. He pointed out that the M&M car had changed it's look slightly since the numbers are now orange. Once Catherine was up, we watched some of the video from when she was born. The kids took great pleasure in pointing out their respective escapades on screen.

Catherine's Birthday Party

Today is Catherine's birthday party. We decided to just have a small celebration with a couple family members versus a big party with kids from her school. Ginger's point of view is we didn't do a big party for Quinn until he was four, and Catherine is young enough that she doesn't really care about other people being there. My point of view is it's cheaper (come on, like that surprises any of you).

Quinn still needed to buy a present for Catherine today, and I needed mini baking cups for cupcakes. So Quinn and I took a quick trip to the store this morning before everyone showed up. We stopped by Food Lion first to get the baking cups, but they didn't have the mini ones. At least I don't think they did. We couldn't locate any among the regular baking cup area, and when I asked at the checkout if they had the mini ones it was like talking to the CVS pharmacy lady all over again:

     Me: Do you have any of the mini
         baking cups? Like these but
         smaller.
Cashier: You want another one of those?
     Me: No, miniature baking cups.
         These are regular size. Smaller
         ones. *uses hands to illustrate
         point*
Cashier: You want a package with less
         cups?
     Me: *Sigh*

Luckily the customer that was in front of me heard my conversation as she was leaving and came back to inform me that Michaels had them. So we walked over to Michaels and got the cups (and yes, they get link pimpage because they had the cups, and their cashiers knew exactly what I was talking about when I asked and directed me right to them). After that it was off to Toys 'R Us for Quinn to pick out a present for Catherine. Unfortunately he apparently had his heart set on buying her this Disney Princess Harp. It was $30, which was a little more than I was hoping to spend (okay, give to him and have him spend), but when he told me he wanted to get it for her because he knew she would love it, I broke down and bought it. Curse me for being a sentimental fool.

Once we got home Catherine and I started baking the cupcakes. She likes to help mix the ingredients, but gets bored about the time you have to put the batter into the bins. All the guests arrived (Grammy, Pop Pop, Grandmaw, Uncle JJ and Nana) while the cupcakes were baking. Around that time Ginger and Quinn wrapped the harp he bought her. And then shortly thereafter we all headed out to eat (I know regular readers of this blog are shocked that Ginger's Mom came to visit and we went out to eat). We went to Artie's, which is the restaurant next to where I (and some fellow friends) used to bowl back in the really old days. Quinn loves to go out to eat with his Uncle JJ because JJ always brings his Nintendo DS. We heard nary a peep from Quinn the entire meal. Except for a couple of times when he got indignant that I had the audacity to eat a couple of french fries off his plate. Both kids hate the chicken at Artie's, so Ginger had stopped by KFC and got popcorn chicken to replace the chicken in the kid meals there. I ended up eating the chicken from the kid's dinners that they didn't eat (I also had the Lobster Bisque, which I can heartily recommend if you happen to go there).

After lunch we headed back home, and Catherine's birthday party began in earnest. Quinn gave Catherine the present he got for her, and shockingly actually stopped playing the Nintendo DS long enough to watch her open it. Catherine got lamps, clothes, Calico Critters, and more Disney Princess stuff than I thought China capable of producing. Quinn also got a couple of presents. I don't necessarily buy into this idea that siblings should get presents on a child's birthday, but I was an only child, so what do I know. Anyway, Quinn got some "Rescue Hero" toys (which he just absolutely loved) and a Nascar Nintendo game (that's probably a little too hard for him, and sadly too hard for me also).



Then came the cakes. There are multiple cakes because Ginger bakes a chocolate cake for the kid's birthday's and I bake them (yellow) cupcakes (and Ginger makes the icing). This has been a tradition for about as long as I can remember. So Catherine got a cake and cupcakes, each with 3 candles on them. After that we ended the present giving with Catherine getting her 'big' present. Which was an activity center from Ginger's parents. It includes a desk, easel, chalkboard, puppet theater and a toy storage piece (all of this Ginger and I assembled the night before). The other big present was from us (Ginger did all the work getting it). We gave her a bunch of stackable plastic drawers and filled all the drawers with things for Catherine to use on the activity table (crayons, markers, paint, pencils, etc).

After all our guests left the kids quickly got shuffled upstairs to go to bed. No nap for them again today, and they weren't in bed till almost 8:30. They're going to be hurting something fierce tomorrow (actually, so will I more than likely considering how late I'm up and how long I've gone on writing this). Once the kids were down, I watched another "Colbert Report", then Ginger came down and we watched "Chicken Run" (good movie, it was Ginger's first time seeing it). After that Ginger went to get some sleep, and I watched this week's "Justice League Unlimited". This was (in my opinion) one of the best episodes so far this season. I really hope people are watching this (last chance, the show has been effectively cancelled, so this is the last season) because it's really well done. Tonight's episode had the Big Three (Supes, Bats and Wonder Woman) plus guest star Deadman. If you didn't see it and have any interest in watching it, let me know.

I tried another sunset shot tonight since I had such good luck last night with no planning. Apparently if I have time to prepare, it just doesn't turn out as good.

No School

No school for the kids today (I assume because it is President's day). That didn't mean no work for me though. The kids went and got their haircut this morning, and then afterwards came by my work and had lunch (from Old McDonalds) with me in my office. We had the door closed, so I'm hoping their chattering didn't disturb other people working. After that they headed off the to doctor's office to check on Catherine's ear. Which apparently is a little pink or something. So now she's got some of the same medicine Quinn has. According to the doctor, it's not uncommon for children with a virus to develop neck muscle spasms (this was news to me, I had never heard of such a thing before).

It was another warm one out today, so the snowmen are basically toast. And by toast I actually mean devoling into their primordial matter states. Although in their current state they kind of look like those crop circles.

By the time Ginger and the kids got home, it was really too late for a nap, so they stayed up and had an early dinner and then went to bed early. I came home early so I could see them for a bit and read to them before they went to bed. And in addition there seems to be a lot of preparing we need to do for Catherine's birthday. I managed to get home just as the sun had finished setting so I rattled off this shot from the backyard.



I finished working on the sledding video last night, and it's been approved by Google (now with more Googly goodness). This one only took me maybe 5 hours, which really it shouldn't have, because there's nothing all that special in it. But it's almost 3 times longer than the last one (it's clocking in around 8 minutes), so be warned. Also, it's basically the same joke over and over, so it may be a bit boring (unless you're me). The Ginger review of this is something akin to "Well, at least there's less flashing in this one." Which means it's not that great, so don't be expecting anything from the academy on this one.


Sledding: Fitz Clan Style

Adventure Day

Kids had a puppet show at school today. In addition to the show a fire truck came by the school and handed out some plastic fire hats to all the kids and some activity books on general fire safety (stop, drop and roll type stuff). I'm getting the feeling they didn't learn a lot today. And they have tomorrow off (President's Day or something I think).

It was another unusually warm day today (it was in the low 60s I believe). So after coming home and having lunch, Ginger took the kids on a walk around the neighborhood. They saw three snowmen and an angel (or so I've been told). I assume the three snowmen they saw weren't including our own deteriorating snowman army since we still have five snowmen still standing (although one is now headless). Quinn lead the way to a park through some snow. And then things semi returned to normal once they got home. I hear they watched some of the Olympics. I think based on the description they saw some Ski Jumping, Alpine skiing, and as best I can tell they watched Curling (don't ask me why).

After the kids went to bed, I watched Smallville. I think they must be getting close to ending the series. I say that because in the early seasons Lex's actions were morally questionable, but he would often try to do the right thing. This season he's flat out lying and just being plain evil. I also watched Lost and some more Daily Show / Colbert Reports (still about 2 weeks behind on those). Lost is starting to stretch the bounds of believability with the six degrees of separation between all the cast members.

Back To School

The weather has turned much warmer. Got up into the 50s today. Doubt the snow's going to last much longer. With it getting that warm (same temperatures expected tomorrow), even the snow fort will probably be gone soon. The leaning snowman toppled today, and the large primary snowman in the back lost his head. World domination using the snowman army looks like it might not be in the cards. It's too bad the snow is melting, I was hoping it would stick around long enough for us to try sledding at least one more time.

Quinn and Catherine both went to school today. Quinn is on medicine for his ear for the 10 days (9 more after today), but it's not contagious.

Quinn apparently has decided his new favorite sport is downhill skiing after having seen it on the Olympics. He flies through the house a couple of times and then stops and asks how fast his time was.

For TV tonight I'm trying to catch up on "Daily Show" and "Colbert Reports" episodes before Tivo deletes (since we're recording the Olympics). I also watched the Boondocks episode "Let's Nab Oprah" (which featured Samuel Jackson as a guest voice again).

Valentine's Day

The kids at school were assigned not so secret valentines. So each of them helped make a Valentine card last night for one of their classmates. Catherine is still sick though, so she didn't get to deliver hers personally and Quinn had to take both Valentines to school with him. I stayed at home with Catherine while Ginger took Quinn to school. You can see Catherine is a little run down, but that didn't stop her from dressing and undressing her new groovy girl about 7 times before Ginger got back. It was "She needs to put her coat on", "She wants to take her shirt off", "You need to help put her pants on", and "She needs her coat" over and over. She loves her groovy girls.

I heard from Ginger that the kids went to Wendy's today for a special Valentine's day lunch. And they apparently have Curious George toys in their kid meals.

It's been in the 40s here, so the snow is slowing starting to melt. One of the snowmen in our snowman army is further out in front of the house than the others and therefore gets more sun. Not sure how it's still standing up at this point.

I had wanted to leave work early (but it didn't happen). I needed to stop by Hallmark on the way home (take a guess why) and I had to stop and pick up Quinn's other prescription at CVS. There was a different lady there tonight, and she seemed much more competent. Although they were suppose to have the prescription ready by three and I still had to wait 15 minutes for them to prepare it at 6:30. Not too long after I got home Catherine threw up. It was odd. There was no notice. Nothing like "My tummy hurts" or anything. Ginger and I were in the kitchen and Catherine just suddenly said "I need to change my shirt." Neither us understood why she would be saying that until we went over to see her, then it was like the keystone cops as we ran around trying to clean up. After that Ginger read some books to Catherine and I helped with dinner (which basically consisted of me constantly asking Ginger what I'm suppose to do next).

The kids watched the Charlie Brown Valentine's Day special during dinner. They had gotten the book version of the story in the mail a couple days ago from Grammy and Pop Pop and it's already one of their favorites. Everyone really liked it when Charlie Brown got into the mailbox.

Not too long after that John came by for a visit. He's been in town for a bit and tonight is his last night here. He took Airborne before he came over, we'll see if that actually prevents him from getting anything (John, if you get sick, I apologize in advance). The kids really seemed to enjoy playing with him. And after a rousing game of football they even had him play "Nascar" and "Mario Kart".

Once the kids were in bed we got to chat with John for a bit before he had to head back to his hotel. After John took off, Ginger decided she could stay up a little late tonight if it meant being able to watch "Gilmore Girls." John had pointed out we neglected to have our usual TV update last night, so for those that care last night it was Ginger watching some "Project Runway" and then we both watched "Courting Alex."

More Snow Fun

Today is Rob's birthday. So click the link and send him what will now more than likely be a belated birthday greeting.

The snow made traffic going into work almost unbearable. I think it took me 9 minutes (it usually takes 8). The reality is the main roads seem to be perfectly clear. Our cul-de-sac is a mess with some ice and stuff on it (other side streets in our area seem to be in a similar state), but once you're out the main road through the neighborhood, everything is fine.

Ginger took Quinn and Catherine in to see the doctor today. Turns out that earache he was complaining about back on Saturday was actually a problem even though the hotline told us it wasn't. Something apparently burst in there and it's potentially infected. The good news is that the burst part has already healed. The bad news is now Quinn has to take some ear drops for the next couple of days.

I came home early so I could let the kids go sledding. On the way home, I stopped by CVS to pick up the kids prescriptions. Quinn had 2 prescriptions, but they were out of stock of one of them, so my conversation with the lady at the drive-up window went something like this:

           Me: So what's the purpose of
               the prescription that's
               missing?
Pharmacy Lady: We're out of it. We
               should have it in
               tomorrow.
           Me: I know, I got that, I
               want to know why it
               would be used.
Pharmacy Lady: We can't use it, it's
               out of stock.  Try
               back tomorrow.
           Me: Right, you said that.
               The prescription that's
               missing, what's it for?
Pharmacy Lady: It's for... Let me look,
               it says it's for Quinn.
           Me: Okay. One more time. I
               want to know what is the
               reason he would be
               taking it. Is it for the
               cold?  Is it for his ear
               infection?
Pharmacy Lady: Oh, it's an antibiotic.
           Me: Thank you.

They have no mouths, but they must scream

Once I got home, I had to inflate the tube sled. It took a long time, and we went out before it was done. The kids posed with the snowman army. Ginger had to finish blowing it up and bring it out to us. I think both kids had a lot of fun for the limited time we were out. And they both seemed to enjoy the sledding, but they did have some problems walking through the deep snow to get to the hill. I took some video of the sledding, but I'm not Barry or Scott, so who knows how long it'll be until I actually put it into a format that's worthy of something to upload. At this point it's like 20 minutes of video with most of the video being us walking up the hill, it's going to require some serious time editing.

Attack of the Snow Clones

And lo, on the seventh day of the week, there was snow. And the snow was good. And verily Ginger looked out upon the snow said: "So when are you planning on shoveling the driveway, because it needs to be done before tomorrow."

So I was a bit off last night when I said it was probably going to continue snowing for another 2 to 4 hours. It was still snowing this morning up till almost 11. Based on my semi estimates at measuring the snow on the back deck, it looked like we got around 11 inches. Pretty impressive considering the lack of any real snowfall recently and the stretches of 60 degree weather we were having. Even though it got to 11 inches, the temperature never got that cold. Last night I think it was down to 34 or 35 degrees. And today it's been in the low 40s.

I made waffles for breakfast (Ginger coached me through the process). After it stopped snowing I bundled up (hope OJ isn't still looking for the "real" killer) and headed out for some serious shoveling. While I was shoveling, Ginger gave the kids a bath and went through the long and tedious process of getting them bundled up enough to be able to go outside in the cold. Probably not the best idea we've ever had since Quinn's still recovering from being sick and Catherine still has whatever it is. But it's hard to deny them a chance to go out and play. And Catherine absolutely loves playing out in the snow. In addition to shoveling, I built the kids a snow fort. Once they came out, they seemed to like it, but not as much as the army of snowmen c(l)ones! Now with the army of snowmen at our command we shall achieve world domination! Provided of course the temperature doesn't get too high over 32 degrees. The kids helped me by bringing over snow and reinforcing the snowmen by patting the snow onto them. And Catherine used her "snowball maker" that she got from Nana for Christmas to make small snowballs which she proceeded to put on the heads of the snowmen.

The Snowclone Army (the primary one is somewhat taller than me)

I have to admit that once I had finished the driveway, the fort and the 6 snowmen, I had sweated more than a little. I think my entire shirt and jacket were wet, and not from melted snow. On the plus side, I think I lost 5 pounds! Ginger was eventually able to come out and play with us also, she had been busy inside getting all the kids ready and preparing lunch so that it would be ready as soon as the kids came inside. The Nikon's battery ran out before she came out. I got a couple of pictures of her out there with the Sony video camera, but I don't know exactly where the cable is for pulling images off the Sony (although we did give Nana a memory stick reader for Christmas, maybe she'll bring it up next weekend for Catherine's birthday and I can get the pictures then). Quinn really wanted to go sledding, but with it as deep as it was, we didn't really give that a shot (and the only sled that we have that would work in this much snow was outside and deflated). Maybe in a day or so once some of the snow has melted we can do that and get some video of it (the site of me crashing into trees is almost always amusing).

Quinn in the Snow Fort

Catherine in the Snow Fort about to launch a SMD
(Snowball of Mass Destruction)

After we had our fun in the snow, we came inside and had lunch and a hot drink. Then the kids and Ginger watched some of the Olympics. Quinn seems to like the downhill skiing and Catherine likes the ice skating. Go figure.

I went around and tried to take some pictures. The white metering on the Nikon apparently got all confused with all the light bouncing off the snow, so none of the shots look too impressive (nor what I had envisioned in my head when I was taking them). The ski mask look was done at this point (and I had sweated in it, so it was nasty), so I decided to go with the Abramoff look. And now you get to suffer through some pictures from by backyard.

Nor'easter

I admit, I was skeptical. They were calling for this big snow, but lately their track record hasn't been all that great (last two times they called for multiple inches of snow we got either a light dusting or nothing). The snow was suppose to start last night (Friday) around 6 PM and continue for a while. So last night when I went to bed and it wasn't snowing, and when I got up this morning and it was snowing, but 40 degrees out so not accumulating, I initially thought this was going to be another false alarm. But the snow kept coming down, and just after lunch Ginger decided we needed to go to the store to get stuff for making soup (which I might add was delicious, but more on that later). You see, soon as we were going to have to leave the house, I knew right then that this snow thing was going to amount to something. And sure enough, as the kids were putting on their coats and we were getting ready to leave, I could see it was starting to stick outside on the ground. And as we were driving to the store the temperature went from 40 to 34 degrees. Luckily we didn't have to spend very long at the store and got home before it really started sticking to the roads. Which it now has. In fact, we got a call around 9 PM that our church has cancelled services tomorrow morning. And it's still coming down, looking at intellicast's radar, looks like there's probably another couple of hours before it's past. It'll be interesting to see the total accumulation.

Quinn's fever seems to have really broken now, but he has a minor ear ache. This didn't start until after his nap when he got up (around 6 PM). This managed to briefly worry us, since the roads were already pretty bad, and if we had ended up having to take him in, it could have gotten ugly. Ginger called the doctor's hotline, and they said since he didn't have a fever it was probably due to drainage and just give him some Motrin. Catherine though is still sporting a minor fever, but it's not that bad, and for the most part you wouldn't even be able to tell she's really sick. Quinn on the other hand, even though he's not running a fever anymore, still hasn't completely recovered and still looks a little run down.

For dinner tonight Ginger and I had soup that she made. As I mentioned about above, it was fantastic (although I couldn't help but noticed that her bowl had a lot more meat in it than mine did, but I managed to alleviate that problem by going back for seconds). After dinner, Ginger was working on Valentine Day cards, and the kids were helping. Ginger made this bookmark for me. Which is nice since I've been reading one of the New Frontier books around the house lately.

Not a lot in the way of TV watching tonight. I went through some Colbert Reports and Daily Shows. I also watched "Justice League Unlimited", which had it's first new episode in a while. Too bad Cartoon Network isn't picking up that show again next season. It's a really well executed show. Ginger taped some of the Olympic events so that we can have that to watch with the kids tomorrow if we start to get really bored.

And for a parting shot, here's what the snow looks like out on the deck at the moment.