A Year of Change

Today is my Mom’s birthday. I’m not sure how old she is but she looks like she’s in her mid 60’s. (this is a compliment as she’s somewhere between 75 and 80) Yesterday her furnace went out and she’s lucky it happened then as it’s going to be really really cold for the next 3 days. We bought her a few small things (she always says to get her nothing), but I know all she really wants is for the Packers to win the Super Bowl next Sunday.

Yesterday was a busy day for the boys and me. We played some football at the park, went to an old fashioned soda fountain, squeezed in another ice cream cone later in the day and made dinner for Mom who was clearly beat up from her 8 hour shift at work. Again we did some laundry and cleaned the house. I never realized how much of a never ending job it is keeping up the house. I mean I knew about fixing meals and doing dishes but there’s a pile of laundry almost every day. I might have to look into getting a maid, (like that’ll happen). Both boys and Mom seem to have a cold, sore throats and the sniffles today. They’re after me again! Who knows where it started this time.

The boys decided to make some water balloons yesterday. As soon as I saw this I demanded they go outside as I knew one would burst all over the house. The boys complied (or so I thought) with my wishes, however an hour or so later here comes the youngest bounding down the stairs with a box containing two giant water balloons. I instantly repeated my instructions at a higher volume level (also known as yelling) as I just knew one was going to break. Well they did make it outside and after a few minutes of strutting around pretending that the two giant balloons were big breasts, (they’re all boys), one broke all over the oldest. He was soaked from head to toe but thankfully it was outside. He changed clothes quickly and we headed back out for some more playtime.

It’s 6:18 in the morning and we’ve just finished breakfast and are trying to get the kids cleaned up for school. Everyone is on edge, probably because the other 3 are not feeling well. We all need to suck it up and just get on with our day. We’ve resorted to separating the 2 boys from each other for the next hour until it’s off to school. There’s a thin sheet of ice outside (I almost went down getting the paper) due to the mist and temperatures in the teens. The next two days will not be fun on the roads. Mom’s off all week so I’ll get a reprieve from laundry, thank god! Gotta run as I need to shower and get ready for the day.

Hope all’s well with everyone, stay healthy and enjoy the day, there will never be another January 31, 2011!

p.s., another quote for thought,

“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” – James Madison

Yesterday the boys and I were all alone as Mom worked from 11 to 7. We cleaned, did some laundry, played, ran some errands, briefly visited grandma, and had a pretty much uneventful day. I tried my hand at making a red lentil brown rice soup which turned out ok, you just need to make sure you add some spices and salt before you eat it. Mom works again today from 10 to 6 so we’ll be bachelors again. It’s going to be about 48 degrees today and we’ll have to get outside as the high tomorrow will be in the 20’s and they say it’ll be only 1 degree on Tuesday! Here comes the cold again.

I found out a couple of days ago that a good friend of mine has liver cancer. A former Recon marine, who was shot up in Iraq, has already had to face that challenge as well as lung cancer 6 years ago, even though he had never smoked in his life. Now to top it off, he has been diagnosed with advanced liver cancer (never drank either) and has 8 and 13 year old kids. Makes you wonder if he picked something up overseas. We’re praying that he somehow comes through this ok. Point is one day everything is breezing along in normal fashion and the next day you can be hit with something so life changing. We must all appreciate each day we have as it’s a gift not to be wasted.

So even though the day was uneventful, there were a lot of little things that made it special. The youngest was once again skating around the house with his Ipod on, (you have to see him!), his older brother helped out a lot cleaning up after the dogs and helping me clean the house, they both played hard and giggled and laughed endlessly at things only kids understand. There was a lot of horse trading going on with the neighbor kids of old toys from our house being exchanged for old toys from their house which made everyone feel excited as they all ended up with new toys! Someone should start a kid toy exchange.

I worked a little bit yesterday and need to squeeze some into today to be prepared for the coming week. Uncle J arrives tomorrow for a quick 30 hour work session and Zio (uncle in Italian) Lolo is still here until Tuesday as well. Hard to believe it’ll be February in a couple days. I think the boys and I are going to play some football today and also need to try to walk the dogs. Not much else going on, I’m kind of tired as I had a headache all night and didn’t sleep much. So, enjoy and appreciate the day and god bless.

p.s.,

Here’s a quote I ran across the other day from the man who brought us the Star Spangled Banner. I think in this day and time, with everything going on in the World, we could all use a reminder to be more patriotic, remember to strive to be people of great character, and be kinder to our fellow man. Funny how even 200 years later, words still apply.

“The patriot who feels himself in the service of God, who acknowledges Him in all his ways, has the promise of Almighty direction, and will find His Word in his greatest darkness, a lantern to his feet and a lamp unto his paths.’ He will therefore seek to establish for his country in the eyes of the world, such a character as shall make her not unworthy of the name of a Christian nation….” – Francis Scott Key, February 22, 1812

Yesterday posed a few big challenges. First, getting the five beds changed which actually was going quite well until…I was cleaning the guest bath and after I turned off the water I could still hear water running somewhere. I ran upstairs thinking perhaps I forgot to turn off the bath water, but thankfully my faculties are in fact in tact and I had turned off the water. I called Handsome Husband and he suggested calling a plumber right away. I did. Then I checked everything upstairs and upon walking into the downstairs bath/laundry room I found the water.  Unfortunately it was not the sink water.  Water was pouring from the ceiling on to the washing machine…Uggh! I now have the plumber on speed dial, after our New Years cellar flood and now this one. Bob, the plumber got here in less than an hour and my investigating of said leak lead us to the culprit…the guest bath tub. An hour and a half and $200 later all was right and ready for our weekend guests. Yeah!

The boys both had great days at school.  The oldest is working on a project “Movie Maker” and actually made a film at school.  The content included everything that was happening t school yesterday. He is very excited about the project as are we. The youngest did not miss any of his spelling words on his test and is of course proud of that.  The skates were put on immediately after arriving home and remained hat way until the boys went across  the street for 2 hours while my husband and I joined Zio Lolo for a wine tasting at an Art Gallery downtown. Home by 8…stopped in at our neighbors with kids in tow for his 70th birthday bash.  In bed by 9.

The Lab needed to go out at 3a.m. and my husband reluctantly volunteered to go downstairs and let her out. After she didn’t immediately return to the door he went out to investigate…no dogs! The power company was here yesterday and although I told them to make sure the gate was closed when they were finished, they failed to do so. Both dogs were M.I.A. and my man called me downstairs for reinforcement. We went out front and called to them and of course they came running home with tails wagging, and I am sure they were both grinning from ear to ear. Happy to have them back we headed upstairs as our oldest was heading downstairs. I made him a warm cup of milk and we insisted he go back to bed…3:40a.m. Oh yeah, it was 6a.m. when the roller skates started circling my bed.

Time to start a new day…we may all need naps today.

God Bless

LLF

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,