A Year of Change

I am so amazed by the imaginations of children! Last night I went over who the characters of the play for D.I. are, and what they should say. I only asked the question and the answer from the youngest came flowing out. He wants to be “Snake” and live in the tropical jungle where Big Bug resides. When he sees Big Bug he will say “SSS..Hello Big Bug, you are my dinner”. Big Bug will then reply, “Spider, Spider help, help, help”. Spider will reply, “Big Bug I will spin you a web so you can climb up and get away from Snake”. Then our munchkin decided he was finished thinking about D.I. and would think about where Frog(another character) is and what she would say later. This conversation took all of 2 minutes….like I previously stated, “I am amazed”!

The boys went to bed last night with not much fuss, and after a bit of snuggling the youngest went to his own bed to sleep the WHOLE night on his own. We are 2 for 2 the last two nights. Hurray!!

My handsome husband is off to San Francisco as of 5 a.m. this morning  and will return home sometime around 4p.m. Zio Lolo should be arriving at our house 11-ish, and we will all be off to a wine tasting at an Art Gallery tonight.  I may stay home with the boys tonight since I will be working all weekend. I am still up in the air…

I threw the ball and a few of the new toys that Aunt Blondie sent up for the dogs yesterday. I repeated that process at 6:30 this morning….our furry friends are now sleeping in the sun. I will try to exercise them one more time this afternoon…it will have to be another round of ball as I am washing and changing sheets on all five beds today.  We have Uncle J here this weekend as well as Zio Lolo.  A house full in order for great things to be accomplished for the company. A mini summit if you will. Also for me today will entail chasing the ever elusive dust and dog hair around the house with hopes of capture.  I have faith that this is a battle that I will not only win, but I will totally conquer!

Off to battle I Go…

God Bless

LLF

Good morning! Our youngest is involved in a project called D.I. (Destination Imagination) It is quite a project.  His team is composed of 6 1st graders and they have to come up with their own play with only a name to get them started….”Big Bug”. The kids are doing quite well with only a parent coach. No ideas can come from the coach, she can only keep the conversation on topic. The team has come up with what Big Bug looks like, where Big Bug lives, his friends and now they are working on lines and costumes. By the way, they also have to make the costumes and the set themselves. The hardest part for the coach and the parents is to remain “Hands free”.

The eldest is vying for a position on the 3rd grade Junior Achievement team. This team reads various books and then has a discussion on each chapter.  I am hoping he makes the team especially since there are only 4 positions open.

Last night we missed basketball in order to get our munchkins some well needed rest.  They have had too many late nights, so my handsome husband and I made an executive decision to get them to bed by 7;30… Success! They went right to sleep with not one iota of complaint. That is a rarity around this house…the boys were really,really tired.

I didn’t get our furry friends walked yesterday, so my plan today is to throw the ball until they almost drop.  With our labrador that could take a very long time.

Handsome husband here, (from which I shall be called from this point forward!), Queenie just handed me the computer and told me “you have to finish” then headed to the kitchen to make breakfast for all of us. I had to run to the store at 5:30 am for eggs and milk. Our house goes through about a dozen eggs and a gallon of milk daily. It’s grandma’s birthday this coming Monday and I’m seriously thinking of getting her a milk cow and some chickens. It sure would save us some cash! Lot’s of work today and our Queen will be at Whole Foods working all day. I’m in San Francisco tomorrow (6am flight, uggh), but back by 4:30 in the afternoon. Luckily my wife is off tomorrow but does work Saturday and Sunday so it’ll just be me and the boys. The youngest wants to go roller skating while the oldest is still thinking of his choice. In any case, it’ll be a weekend full of physical activity. I’ve always said, kids keep you young and make you old at the same time. Whatever we do, we’ll have fun.

Time to go as I’m getting sucked into Phineas and Ferb. My youngest told me to “put them in the blog”. For those of you that don’t know, it’s the most popular kids show right now and it’s actually tolerable to adults. In fact, I like it. It’s also a show that has no inappropriate language or situations which is rare these days on the idiot box. It’s on the Disney channel, check it out, you might like it.

Oh well, it’s almost 7am so time to get moving. Remember life is short so don’t let the little things bother you as they’ll soon pass.

God Bless

Yesterday was a really remarkable day. You see, at the urging of my wife, we re-connected with my Dad’s (my biological father) side of the family. I’m not really sure why for over 25 years we had little to no contact with them. I guess he passed away in 1992 and prior to that, the relationship with him was pretty rough. My Mom had divorced him some 45 or 50 years ago and the there was little contact by any of us kids. I being the eldest had the most contact with him which was not much.

When my father (who basically raised us from childhood) passed away last August, my Aunt, (biological dad’s sister), and her daughter (my cousin), came to the funeral. Are you with me so far? This was the first time I had seen either of them for decades. I have many memories of my Aunt and Uncle and cousins from when I was a kid. My wife, as I said before, jumped all over the fact that we had had no contact and insisted that we all get together. So last night, my wife, Mom and 2 boys loaded up the car and headed across town to visit my 87 year old Aunt and my cousin, who is in town, taking care of his Mom as she broke her hip right before Christmas. As it turns out, she still lives in the same house as she did when I was a kid. My cousins (her kids), live in town, all within a 45 minute drive, so close yet so far away for all these years. Well it was a fascinating evening. My Aunt seemed very happy to see us and clearly enjoyed the boys, (who by the way were very well behaved) and my cousin was a wealth of information on everything about my Dad’s  side of the family. (for today I’ll refer to my biological dad as dad and the man who raised us and taught us everything we know as my father just to avoid any confusion) We got caught up on all our cousins, where they live, what they’re doing, who they married, their kids, my other Uncles and Aunts and more. It seems they all talked and thought about us for years as too wondered about them. As I said before, I don’t know why no one reached out to “the other side”. That’s not typical of me as I’m usually “the elephant in the room”according to my wife, who will take on uncomfortable situations. (not that it was an uncomfortable situation) I guess life just got away from me and I really didn’t think about it until seeing my Aunt at the funeral. Good news is it seems everyone is doing well and we have now taken the first step of re-connecting with family. Better late than never.

It also turns out that I am a descendant of King John the 1st, Charlemange, Mile Standish (of Mayflower fame) , numerous veterans of the Revolutionary War and more. Deep down I knew something like this was in my background because I always knew my wife was a Queen! My cousin has done extensive research on our family history and compiled a 2 inch thick report going all the way back to the 9th century. (He’s quite an educated man, completing seminary school and many other levels of education) I can’t wait for him to send me a copy so I can read more. It was also a good time for my Mom. While I’m sure she still has some bad memories of her 1st marriage, I think she enjoyed visiting with my Aunt again as they used to spend a lot of time together even after she remarried. When my Aunt’s husband (my Uncle) passed away some 20 years ago, I think they kind of stopped seeing each other.

We only scratched the surface on what we’ve all been doing for 25 years. How much can you cover in 3 hours? So, not being the one to check with anyone else, I blurted out, let’s get our other cousins in town and all get together for dinner! Fortunately my wife is always on board with my spontaneous suggestions. It looks like next week or so, we’ll all get together at our house. Hope my little brother will come, I’m sure he will. Anyhow, it was quite an evening, we’ll keep you posted.

We had a light dusting of snow last night and by the time we stopped for some take out, we got home just in time to get the kids to bed. We’ll let them sleep a little bit later this morning as they need as much as they can get. Sleep sure is a good thing. Lot’s of work today, some more taxes due tomorrow (not sure how we’ll handle that one!), and my wife is also back to work tomorrow. Have to run now as I’m already late from spending more time than normal writing this morning.

Hope all’s well with everyone and God bless you and your family.

The boys had basketball last night. They sure love it. It lasts from 5:45 until about 8:30 which is awful late on a school night but it’s only a 4 week program so we’re living with it. Our oldest was moved up to the group that contains kids up to 6th grade which is actually really good for him. For once, he’s not the “older brother”. This was the first practice I have been to and I was very impressed. Both boys were glad I was there and constantly kept looking over at me for approval, especially my oldest. I was very proud of both of them.

My wife volunteered at school, (which she does every week) and put a weeks worth of laundry away while another weeks worth magically appeared in the dryer. Our two dogs (200+ lbs combined) are playing tug of war with one of the toys Aunt Blondie sent up for them a week or so ago. Normally, they eat anything they get within a matter of minutes, but for some reason have decided to spare this particular toy so they can move some furniture around every morning.

It’s still cold in the mornings but no snow here for a few days. This afternoon were all going to see my aunt who we’ve had little to no contact with for years. (we did see her at my dad’s funeral last August) My wife’s very big on family which means that any lost relative who we find (or have not seen in years), will get the royal treatment. She also wants to know the health history of any relation for the boys sake. it’s funny how people drift apart over the years and I’m glad my wife kept pushing us to get together. Must run in her family as my mother in-law is also this way. She always has some 8th cousin or someone she considers family, even though not blood related, around. I’m not sure how big her extended family is but I’d bet it runs in the hundreds!

The President has his second State of the Union address tonight. I don’t pay much attention to these anymore as they’ve turned into political pep rallies. When I was a kid and Kennedy or Reagan spoke, it really was a speech to all Americans telling us how the Country was doing and what challenges we face. Now it’s one more manipulation of the media to push one party’s agenda. (by the way, this happens on both side of the aisle!) Even a number of Supreme Court Justices are skipping the event, which most people won’t pay much attention to, but is a significant and scary thing. Whatever happens, they all better stop the endless spending of money they don’t have.

All we can do is try to do our best as individuals and pray for the best. Hopefully society can come together and return to the core values of our parents and their’s, and stop the dangerous path we seem to be on. I should probably write these daily musings before I have 3 cups of coffee!

We’re just finishing breakfast as a family again and it’s time to begin the hour long process of getting the kids dressed. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes but they seem to always drag it out by playing, watching some show they’ve been “waiting for years to see” (there sure are a lot of those) or fighting over the smallest most insignificant thing, that neither of them have touched in years, but is now as important as the Holy Grail. Just another day here, more to come tomorrow.

Take care,

As I said before, time sure flies, I can hardly believe in another week it’ll be February. It was a pretty full weekend capped off with 2 great football games yesterday. It should be quite a Super Bowl in 2 weeks between the Packers and Steelers. My Mom’s thrilled! Now it’s back to reality.

I have a couple days worth of work to squeeze into the day and then the boys have basketball tonight. When we arrived at church yesterday, we realized that the kids activities were no longer available at the 8 am service so they had to join us for the regular service. Sitting for an hour listening to a sermon is pretty hard when your 7 and 9 years old. Our boys did really well, much better than I remember I did when I was a kid. Of course they did ask (every 10 minutes), how much longer until it was over. The best part of church for the boys are the donuts that are laid out after each service. It’s a spread of glaze, sprinkles and chocolate beyond compare. As soon as we got home my wife’s back went out and she would be down for the count for the rest of the day. Thankfully she doesn’t work until Thursday which should give her time to heal.

I think both boys grew again last night. They literally look taller every morning. The 7 year old is wearing 10 year old jeans and the 9 year old is in 12’s. It won’t be long until they’re taller than their grandma’s, (all of them), and then their Mom. The youngest is living in his prized roller skates he received for his birthday. Yesterday afternoon he came down the stairs and declared, “roller boy in the house”. He’s pretty good. He’s also been hooking a leash up to one of the dogs and has him (or her depending on which dog), pull him around the house. It’s quite a sight.

We’ll sure be glad when this month is over as it’s been challenging on the financial front. A lot of unexpected expenses in the last few months of 2010 are impacting us now. Once we’re past this week we should be ok for a while. I’m tired of having to worry about money. I’m on a mission to eliminate the stress of money and debt from our lives by the end of the year. Not sure how we’ll do it, but we’re focused and working on it everyday. At least we have good jobs. I really feel for the people who want to work but can’t find a job. A lot has changed in the past few decades, it’s pretty rough out there. Personally I think the key to turning our Country around, is to start building things in America once again. We were all told years ago (and fell into the trap), that it would be good to let China and other countries build things for us as they could do it much cheaper. So we sent all our manufacturing overseas, which over the years cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs, revenue, and gutted the heartland of America. I won’t go into a long rant here, but we need to get back to what built this country, innovating and making things. We also all need to buy American whenever we can, even if it costs a little bit more. It took years to get into this position and it’ll take years to get out, point is, we need to start now. Oh well, enough of my views on society, just realize it’s not going to get better anytime soon, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Have a good day and do something nice for someone,

God Bless,

daant dant dant da, If you’re a football fan you know what that means. If I could write musical scales, it might help but those of us excited about today already know the tune.

Today is Championship Sunday. Two games today will decide who plays in the Super Bowl in two weeks. The only team I really care about is of course, the Green Bay Packers, GO PACK! I think we all know my Mom bleeds Green Bay green and yellow through and through. In fact anything Wisconsin is dear to her. For her sake, I pray they win. They play their arch rivals, the Chicago Bears, at Soldier Field. It’ll be 19 degrees with snow, or a nice sunny day to those who are familiar with Chicago weather in mid January. The great thing about sports is that nothing is predetermined, you don’t know who’s going to win until they play the game. GO PACK! Mom, you’d better be wearing that cheese head hat I brought you back from Wisconsin years ago! If not, turn it upside down and fill it up with cheese dip. Whatever you do, you’d better get it out.

The kids pretty much went right to sleep last night. My oldest just came down to join me on the couch. He’s such a good boy, they both are. They are always on the go and always seem so loud and can sometimes get on your nerves, but sometimes you just have to sit back, take a deep breath and let kids be kids. The youngest had a bit rougher time last night as he was sugared up from back to back birthday parties. On top of that, he also has been dealing with a cold going on a week now. Yes, runny noses and the sniffles are still here, but I somehow have managed to so far avoid it. I’m sure it’ll get me, you see 3 out of 4 of us (all except me), have been infected and I am now surrounded.

Time for me to get some coffee so for the first time, my lovely wife will take over mid stream and finish up today’s post. So long from me until tomorrow.

Breakfast together at the table this morning is proving to be a bit difficult. I made “Green monster”….smoothies…made with kale, whole kiwi, berries, bananas and a little agave syrup. Some days they like them and others…not so much. This morning is a “Not so much” kind of a day.

One of the parties yesterday was at a place called Jungle Quest. The kids swing from 30 and 40 ft trees (indoor), on zip lines..there is also a 60 or 70ft rock wall that my guys scaled in seconds. It is very safe, and the kids all have harnesses and safety instruction before being turned loose in the “Jungle”.

After arriving home from the second party, our youngest again donned his roller skates (in the house of course), and cruised around quite well. He is really getting fast, and at one point I had to tell him once again, “No roller skating upstairs”,ugg!

Dinner together was nice for a while.. until the littlest monkey realized there was mango in his fish taco and he left the table in tears over a tiny piece of fruit. Really?? I of course caved once again and took out the mango so he would finish his dinner. I don’t think that is exactly what Love and Logic had in mind in their “Dinner” chapter.  Oh well, I have to pick my battles and there seem to be so many battles these days that mango just did not make the list. Get dressed, brush your teeth, put on your shoes, tie your shoes, don’t hit your brother…the list goes on….thus mango did not make the cut.

Off to shower and go to church….have a wonderful Sunday.

God Bless

LLF

Time flies, it really does. The weekend is here again and it seems like yesterday we were waking up on a Saturday morning. I didn’t sleep much last night. I think I dozed off around 9 but woke up at 10:30 thinking it was morning. Next was an 8 hour stint of trying to close my eyes and waking up. Not sure when I would go to sleep but I did wake up at 12 midnight, 2am, 3am, 5:15 and now at 6:32. I know as I have a clock on my nightstand that I look at whenever I open my eyes. The boys are already downstairs, I think making breakfast. How do you feel about chocolate gummy bear sandwiches with syrup on top. The wife isn’t moving, so as soon as the volume downstairs escalates, I need to be prepared to jump up and run down to play referee. Whoops there it goes right now, too late. They’re both now upstairs crying from the first confrontation of the day. Luckily no one is bleeding.

I know the youngest has two birthday parties today and am not sure what his brother has going. Both boys have had stuffy noses and coughs for 2 or 3 days but no fever. I’m sure I’ll get the full blown version of whatever it is because they are usually only the carriers. You see, they purposely go out and pick up every germ in the world trying to bring it home to infect me. If by chance I somehow fight it off (through endless hand washing and avoiding any glass, fork, spoon or knife they touch), they then play with my phone or give it to their mother who will sooner or later give me a kiss and then I’m a done. This is known as a sneak attack.

It’s been a week and I’ve virtually had no flour. I did breakdown last night and have a piece of multigrain crust pizza from Whole Foods, boy was it good! Going to try to load everyone up and get to the gym as it’s been too many days since I’ve lifted anything other than laundry, trash, toys or kids. Our friends son in law had elective surgery yesterday on his neck and we don’t know the details, but apparently there were some scary complications. These were our friends that were over for dinner the other night and all four of them are doctors. The old adage, “if you want to stay healthy, stay out of the hospital” seems to have some weight to it. Another girl who works part time for me, just was mis-diagnosed and had her appendix removed when it didn’t need to be. The same thing happened to my wife when she was very young. Wow, take care of yourself, and remember, you know your body better than anyone.

We might win the lottery today. The key word here is “might”. You see I’ve had the number 28, 2.8 or 8 stuck in my head for days. This is odd as it’s not one of my favorite numbers. We might (there’s that word again) just take a chance and spend a buck on the lottery. That’s the limit though as a buck is much harder to come by these days than it was a few years ago. I’m not paranoid (and don’t want to go off on a rant) but hope that everyone we care about realizes we are living in different times. Please, no matter what you believe, do you best to stay healthy and buy a little extra food each time you go to the grocery store. It’s better to have a little extra and not need it than need it and have none.

Have a great day,

God Bless,

It’s Friday afternoon and we’re (actually I’m) just getting around to this! You see today is the first official day of my wife being at her new job where she actually gets to see some real customers! The past two days she’s been in a classroom learning the finer points of what sets Whole Foods apart from everyone else. I’ll tell ya, there’s a few things I used to eat that she’s totally ruined for me. I won’t go into to detail but to give you an example, chicken nuggets are off the list!

The morning was rushed as usual starting with a 4:30 wake up call to take Uncle Lolo to the airport as he’s headed back to NY. Last night we were talking about how fast people wake up and with him being Italian and slow by nature, he said he needs an hour and a half to just get going. I then asked if he needed to get up at 3am to shower and get ready for his flight to which he replied, in his fine english accent, “no man, you see, I will take a shower tonight, get dressed, and then just lay on top of the covers” (in his bed until 4:30). We couldn’t stop laughing, only an Italian would come up with this solution.

Today was busy as usual, pressure mounting, (as it always does about this time of the week) so I’ll be trying to fit some work into the weekend between taking kids to birthday parties, cleaning something (there’s always something to clean!), church and hopefully a bit of football.

I stopped in on my Mom today who was at the kitchen table trying to put on her pierced earrings. This usually takes her the better part of an hour. Being her favorite son, I felt obligated to slide them into each ear lobe for her which took me all of about 10 seconds. She was of course amazed at my hidden talent. If only it paid well. Then she shared with me a little known secret which she recently discovered. I know she’d be upset if I didn’t pass along this to you, which she then told me with great pride. Ready, here it is, listen closely, it’s real important! The University of Wisconsin mens basketball team has the highest free throw percentage of any team in the country! Well of course I was beside myself now that I was in possession of this life changing bit of information. I’m sure this too will have a big impact on all of you that receive this enlightening pearl of wisdom from reading this. In fact it’s so valuable, I suggest you each send us a check for $1000. I’m not sure how we all will be rewarded for knowing this but am confident that sometime, somewhere, we will be glad we do.

My mother in law  just rang us up wondering why there’s no blog today. Besides us being late today, there was a power outage at the site that holds the servers (computers) that send this to you all. My workin woman just walked in with a pizza and pre-cooked chicken (yes at 30% off) so I’m signing off. More tomorrow, hopefully I won’t be quite so tired.

p.s. it says posted on Jan 22nd but it’s actually 5pm on the 21st.

Our youngest munchkin got a brand new pair of rollers skates for his birthday and has been skating around the house morning and night. He puts a leash on the yellow lab and has her pull him through the house.  He has climbed the stairs in the skates a number of times and we have hopefully made the rule on climbing the stairs in skates clear…”No more stairs”.

Yesterday was a fun and exciting day at Whole Foods.  I was in a training class to learn the ins and outs of the company.  WF seems to be an amazing company…they will pay for a health screening once a year for any employee that wishes to have one.   It was a great day.  However, the drive home was a bit of a challenge.  The traffic was bumper to bumper, moving at a slow crawl. The snow was coming down hard and the roads were really slushy…no fun, but I made  it home safely.

We had our good friends over for dinner.  Our friend “Skier extraordinaire” had just come from his first doctor apt. for his cancer and seemed pleased with the Dr. and the facility.  My handsome hubby had dinner all prepared when I arrived.  The prime rib was perfect! The laundry was also washed, dried, folded and put away.  What a man!

The boys had basketball and once again had a terrific time.  We are carpooling with another family, so we did not attend practice last night.  I really missed watching them and this carpool thing may not work for me.

Off to work….hurray!!

God Bless

LLF

Yesterday was my wife’s 1st day (only 3 hours) on the job at Whole Foods. The 3 hours was spent on filling out paperwork and watching safety videos and other HR info. It seems like a really good company and she’s really excited. today she trains from 9 to 5 and same thing for tomorrow. On Friday she’s then thrown into the frying pan. I think we get our grocery discount card tomorow so no buying food until then.

I feel really good since I cut out all sugar and flour from my diet. I thought I’d miss bread and carbs more but am kind of falling into a routine. It’s supposed to snow this afternoon and the boys have their second night of basketball this evening. They are really looking forward to it.

Again today, I have a lot of work to do, it seems every day is gone before I know it. I’m going to try adding time periods ( start and finish times to each task), to my “to do list”. Hopefully this will help me stay on schedule. I’ve challenged myself to finish everything on my daily list and then do “one more thing” that can have a positive impact on the Company. My plan is that after time, these extra “things” will add up and pay off. (I know they will, I just need to make sure to find the time to do it)

My Mom is getting ready to go to Arizona for a few months. I hope she enjoys it as she deserves a break. I won’t go into detail (cause she too reads this), but she’s had a pretty rough couple of years, not that the 10 before that were a picnic! Maybe a change of scenery and a little more sun will revitalize her.

We just finished our family breakfast (a really good idea by my wife), and are headed up to get ready for school and work. I hope my wife enjoys her first full day at her new job. I know she’ll be a huge asset to Whole Foods. More tomorrow,

God Bless,