D's Notebook

Tag: holidays (Page 8 of 19)

Belated Holiday Wrap Up

January 3, 2018 /

Glory be! After roughly 36 hours without either cable or internet access, our house (and neighborhood it turns out) has been reconnected! So I can finally start unloading some of the accumulated content from the past week-plus.

First, Happy New Year! I hope your celebrations, large and small, were fun and safe.

Let’s go back to 2017 and review how our family rolled over Christmas.

Christmas Day

I believe I mentioned this in my annual Christmas Spirit post, but the myth of where gifts come from was finally burst in our house this year. There was no formal acknowledgement, just little comments here and there that made it obvious the girls know that all those Amazon packages that show up from late November through December contain their gifts, not a jolly fat man and his reindeer who deliver them on Christmas Eve. L still put up appearances at times, because that’s what she does. But we knew the girls knew.

It didn’t help that at least one of them found our gift hiding place. For years we’ve been able to put boxes on a shelf in our closet that only I can reach. It’s just inside and behind the door, so younger eyes were generally not looking in this area. But one night I went in to change for bed and noticed the box was on the floor. I asked S about it the next day and she said she hadn’t taken it down. We’re not sure how but one/a combination of the girls pulled the box down and saw all their unwrapped gifts. S was more than a little pissed and wanted to say something. I pointed out that one year I had unwrapped nearly all of my gifts well before Christmas.[1] Looks like we’ll have to hide things better next year.

Anyway, Christmas morning… our girls all did well. M got the Beats headphones she desperately wanted but was sure we wouldn’t get her. She also got some new adidas and a shirt. Yep, she’s reached the age where she’s more interested in clothes than toys. Along those lines, C got a new desk and sheets. L got an Amazon Fire tablet and some Star Wars Legos. All were pleased with their gifts.

After presents, we did our final packing and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Denver. As we had hoped, the Indianapolis airport was pretty slow that morning. The weather was fine – we got about an inch of snow on Christmas Eve, but Christmas morning was cold and clear – and our flight was on time. We looked forward to being in Denver in a few hours.

The Flight

Facebook friends know our flight had some issues.

We took off as scheduled and headed west. Shortly after the fasten seatbelt sign went off, we heard an announcement that the front lavatory was not working. A few minutes later, the pilot said the rear lavatories were out of order, too. They were trying to figure out a fix in the air, but he added they were “exploring all options.”

About 15 minutes later, he came on again and said that they were still talking to the ground to see if the lavs could be fixed in the air. He also said that because our flight was so heavy, we had limited options on where we could land if we needed to. That seemed a little ominous. He would keep us updated, he promised.

Another 10 or so minutes went by when he came on again and announced than none of their in-air fixes were working, so we were turning around and landing in St. Louis, hopefully for a quick fix and back into the air shortly thereafter.

We were just a few minutes past St. Louis, so were on the ground quickly. Then we waited as technicians came in-and-out trying to get the shitters fixed. We sat for an hour, with some folks exiting to use the airport restrooms, before they announced we were switching planes. So off we went, down one gate, and waited about another hour before we boarded and took off again.

We figure St. Louis was the only airport on our path that had an extra plane we could switch to if needed. Because it would have made more sense to continue to Kansas City and land there. Yes, I was wondering if there were any decent barbecue places in KCI these days.

Oh well, we arrived about three hours later than planned, hungry, tired, but excited to start our Christmas adventure.

Denver

So my sister-in-law and her husband knew we were coming, obviously, but their kids did not. We Facetime with them once a month or so and ever since we booked the trip in the fall, our girls were always giggling and whispering “Don’t give it away!” when we talk to them. My sister-in-law picked us up and delivered us to their front door, where we all donned Santa hats and rang the doorbell. The kids answered and freaked out a little bit. My nephew, who turned 8 the next day, fell over and grabbed his heart. His five-year-old sister squealed with delight. It was exactly the reaction we had hoped for and a Christmas surprise all the kids will never forget.

On Tuesday we celebrated W’s birthday. We went bowling in the afternoon and had his local grandparents and an uncle over for dinner that evening.

On Wednesday we drove up to Vail, where my brother-in-law’s family has a place, for some mountain time. Since we were only spending one night there, we decided not to have the girls try skiing. So Wednesday we walked around Vail, had lunch and dinner there, let the kids ice skate in the evening, and got our girls the obligatory local sweatshirts.

On Thursday we drove down to Frisco and went snow tubing. That was a lot of fun. We did this ten years ago at Keystone, and that was a small hill on a golf course you had to drag your tubes back up each time. This was a manicured hill that was twice as big and had a Magic Carpet ramp that hauled you back up. We found that connecting multiple adult tubes together really made you fly. It was a pretty good time and no doubt better for our girls than trying to teach them to ski in just one day.[2]

I was pleased at how well we handled the altitude. I was very nervous because 10 years ago I had a really hard time in my first 24 hours in Breckenridge. But I had only occasional moments of needing to quickly catch my breath in Vail. We figured it was because 10 years ago our time in Denver was in a hot hotel where I didn’t drink much water, with a wedding squeezed into the final night. I went to the mountains dehydrated that time, where I was drinking tons of water as soon as we got to Denver this time.

Unfortunately, by this time my nephew was getting pretty sick. And it was beginning to pass through to our kids. C was coughing a lot and the rest of us all had sniffles. So Friday we kept things pretty tame. We had planned on going out that night to look at some of the holiday stuff in downtown Denver, but the kids were dragging so we let them watch a movie at home.

Saturday morning C was feeling much worse, coughing like crazy, and having trouble breathing at times. There were a few moments where we worried about whether she’d be able to get on the plane or not. But we got her steadied and we made it home without incident.

Other than the illnesses, which you kind of have to expect if you travel this time of year, it was a great week. We had plenty of fun in Denver. I do admit it was weird spending Christmas week somewhere else. When we got home Saturday evening I kept thinking, “Wait, Christmas is over?” My brain is still having trouble with the abrupt ending to all our traditional activities. But I also appreciate how our Denver relatives are often spending their holiday week in Indy with us, so was glad they could stay home for a change.

NYE

As has become a family tradition[3] we threw together a last-minute dinner for S’s sisters and their families. I made chili, there were lots of appetizers, and we did a mock countdown around 10:30 for our girls and their young cousins. It was a fun night. I’ve managed to hold off the illness for the most part, but was still pretty wiped out. I think I read until about 11:15 before I called it a night. L claims she was still up in her room until after midnight.

F&%K It’s Cold

We’re are about 36 hours away for setting the longest stretch in Indy history where the temperature has not risen over 20. We had some more light snow Sunday and are supposed to get enough to make rush hour tonight pretty nasty. When it finally warms up a little on Sunday we’re supposed to get hit with an ice storm.

Already so sick of winter.

We’ve had a couple practices and have a couple more later this week. The girls have some friends over now. L has a party Friday. We are gathering with some friends on Saturday. I’m trying to come up with some other indoor activities to get us to next Tuesday when the girls begin the new semester.

  1. We’re a put all the gifts under the tree Christmas morning family. My mom preferred to slowly lay them out over the course of December. Since I was home alone roughly six hours every afternoon/evening, I sliced through the tape on one side of each box, carefully peeked inside, then placed a new piece of tape directly over the original. Christmas morning I made sure to open each gift from the re-taped side to hide my work. As far as I ever knew, my mom had no idea.  ↩
  2. And, to be honest, me as well. I only tried skiing once, 30 years ago, and was not good at it in the hour or so I tried. I’d be starting from scratch, too.  ↩
  3. Based on the last two years only.  ↩

Wrapping Up (+ TWOD)

December 22, 2017 /

We are in the full-on holiday frenzy around here.

Yesterday was the girls’ final day of school of 2017. St. P’s always dismisses early on the last day before Christmas break which adds even more excitement to the day. While sitting in the parking lot at dismissal, a friend said he was taking his kids to Dairy Queen and asked if we wanted to join them. Of course my girls did! So the first act of Christmas vacation was having some ice cream.

About an hour later it was off to the airport to pick up my in-laws. They’re staying with us, so I had spent the morning getting the house ready for guests.

Right now the girls are having a major cookie and cake baking session with their grandmother and three aunts. The house smells really good! We have only done our normal weekly baking this month since we’re leaving town Monday.[1] Thus the girls are extra excited to be spending hours baking.

I had to go run a couple small errands this morning. But it was a little odd popping into the grocery story for just milk and a couple other things, rather than making a huge trip to get all the goods for a large gathering. One of S’s sisters is hosting our Christmas Eve get together, and then the family is doing a Christmas afternoon event at our house, but after we depart. Odd but nice. Our grocery store of choice was a complete madhouse when I stopped in today. I saw one accident in the parking lot. I needed to get gas but there were lines for the pumps two cars deep that spilled out into the street.

I also hit three liquor stores looking for a specific kind of beer. My favorite beer of this holiday season has been Sam Adams’ White Christmas. Apparently it’s very popular because it had been unobtainable for about a week and no more shipments are coming. I’m still drinking Nutcracker Ale, Celebration Ale, and Sam Adams’ Winter Lager. But I’m disappointed I had my last White Christmas a couple weeks ago.

Oh, and one other thing has been a part of our week…

S and I attended the sold-out War on Drugs show last night. It was, simply, the best small-mid-sized venue show I’ve ever been to. Sixteen songs stretched out over two hours and almost all were magnificent. The show was perfectly paced, as the songs just kept getting bigger and bigger, some in surprising ways. A couple of my favorites were offered up in new formats, slightly stripped down, which I loved. Both of my songs of the year, “Pain,” and “Strangest Thing,” were played. The guitar solo in “Pain” ended up being better than the one in “Strangest Thing.”

“Thinking of a Place,” which lasts over 11 minutes on the album, was stretched out over an insane 15 minutes, complete with an epic, five-minute solo in the middle section. I’m pretty sure I saw a couple people’s heads explode because they couldn’t take so much brilliance.

And “Under the Pressure” was a bit of a surprise as a highlight. I thought they played it OK in their last appearance here three years ago. But last night? HOLY FREAKING SHIT! It began with a nearly three-minute solo effort by Adam Granduciel, as he slowly built up layers of feedback-heavy riffs. Then they launched into the song, which kicked ass for about five minutes until they reached the final section of vocals, when the band built-and-built-and-built and just exploded the understood rules of physics and they raced into one, last, lengthy jam. Oh, and they had a snow machine blowing out on the crowd during this final section. Or perhaps those were just the souls of all the attendees being plucked up and thrown around because of all the pure joy in the house. I may or may not have passed out during this stretch.

From there the segued immediately into an absolutely lovely, Bob Segar-like take on “In Reverse,” which has my vote for best album-ending track ever. It was really a beautiful way to ease us down after about 105 minutes of music.

A two-song encore capped the night off really well. I must admit we snuck out a hair early, during set-closer “Eyes to the Wind,” which is one of my absolute favorite TWOD tracks. But my poor wife, who did not complain all night, had been up since before 6:00 in the morning so she could make a 7:00 meeting, saw over 30 patients during the day, was on call that night and had to sneak outside to take several calls during the show, and then had to be back at the hospital early this morning to round. She was hanging in there but I could tell as it approached midnight that she was stressing a little bit. Last thing we needed to do was get stuck in the parking garage for 30 minutes, which always happens at shows at this venue. So we eased back through the crowd during “Eyes to the Wind” and headed out the door about halfway through.

The War on Drugs is a band that is absolutely locked in and confident. They were even missing a key member – for reasons unexplained Jon Natchez was absent – but did not miss a beat. His understudy did a fine job on keyboards but Natchez’ gorgeous sax solos were missing from “Red Eyes” and “Eyes to the Wind” most notably. They were really good three years ago when I saw them the first time. Now they’re without a doubt one of the best live bands in the world. Seriously, they absolutely destroyed last night. One day my face might return to its original state after being melted so many times.

We will return home in December 30. I imagine I’ll save my trip breakdown for the following week. But I do plan on posting something for the year’s end on the 31st. Until then, though, this is likely my final post. I hope all of you have wonderful, merry Christmases. If you’re traveling, travel safe. If you’re gathering with family, hopefully those gatherings are drama-free. Mostly, enjoy the most wonderful weekend of the year.

  1. Each week one girl picks the dessert for the week and we make it together. So we’ve made three kinds of Christmas cookies as a part of that rotation. But no big piles of cookies for Christmas day, so a couple of my regular Christmas cookies did not get made this year.  ↩

Holiday Vibes

December 14, 2017 /

Tonight’s the night. Last school Christmas program ever for our family. After fifteen total performances between preschool and 1st–3rd grades, L will close it out this evening when she stars as Ms. Jingle, the mayor of Jingle Bell Hills.[1] She has one of the three biggest roles and has taken to it in classic L form. She had all her lines memorized before Thanksgiving weekend was over. She’s added a little bit of flair to them over the past week. Not sure if that was because of urging of her teachers or it is all on her. She really gets everything out of her lines that she can, though. She’s also frustrated because some of her classmates still don’t have all their lines down.[2] I’m sure it will all be fine tonight.

With the Christmas program coming tonight, I should probably offer an update on the state of Christmas spirit in our house. As you would expect with our girls’ ages, it has dipped significantly this year.

M rolls her eyes and mutters “Ohmygod” under her breath at things she used to go crazy for. She wants nothing to do with the traditional kids Christmas shows, although she will pay some attention to Elf and Christmas Vacation. Her gift requests are decidedly teen: expensive headphones, new shoes, new clothes. She’s repeated her crappiness from last year where she ruins where our Elf is for her sisters. I knocked that shit off early this year, and for the most part she has little interest in where he ends up each morning. Although this morning, when he was in the refrigerator door, she jumped and laughed and put a warning sign on the fridge door after her sisters had seen him.

C isn’t quite to M’s level of disinterest yet, but it’s certainly coming. She’ll sit and watch part of Christmas shows, but generally disappear to do other things. She’s been doing some Christmas crafts on her own. She has also asked for very practical gifts: she wants a new desk and some new sheets. She and L also got all excited about making gifts for each other on their day out of school Tuesday.

And L is hanging in there, but I can’t help but think it’s mostly for show and for my benefit. She and I faithfully watch a Christmas show every night, although she finds the classics like Rudolph boring and prefers to watch all the Food Network holiday baking shows.[3] She excitedly looks for Elfie each day, although she doesn’t write him cute little notes like she used to. L is the pleaser of the group, so I figure she’s always going to have Christmas spirit just because she knows it makes me happy.

We have an Advent calendar on the wall that uses a felt candy cane to mark the current day. The girls used to fight over who got to move it. Now some days it doesn’t get moved until well into the evening, and I think L has kind of taken over that duty.

And only L has requested driving around and looking at lights in the evening.

As I mentioned earlier this week our big family Christmas gift is going to Denver to spend Christmas week with family out there. The girls are CRAZY excited about that. We fly out on Christmas day, and their cousins[4] do not know that we’re coming. We bought Santa hats to wear when we surprise them at their front door. Our girls CAN NOT WAIT for that! Which, as I think about it more, means they are getting a more mature view of Christmas. They’re excited to make someone else’s day special and memorable. So I guess we’ve done something right.

  1. I believe I called it Jingle Town in our family Christmas letter. I regret the error.  ↩
  2. Her emphasis.  ↩
  3. We had begun watching ABC’s Great American Baking Show. I just read how the show has been cancelled because of sexual harassment claims against Johnny Iuzzini. I guess it’s time for that talk with the girls.  ↩
  4. Eight the day after Christmas and five.  ↩

Thanksgiving 2017

November 27, 2017 /

An action-packed Thanksgiving break in our house.

We kicked things off Wednesday by heading to the post office to submit passport applications for all three girls. We are going to Mexico next spring break and wanted to give their applications plenty of time to percolate through the system. We double, triple, quadruple checked that everything was in order, talked to a couple friends who had gone through the process recently, and arrived thoroughly prepared…only to discover the post office now takes reservations for the passport window and they were booked solid for the day. We got there early, and they told us if we wanted to hang out they’d try to squeeze us in. We gave that a shot, as there were only two groups in front of us, but before the first family got processed two more came in and we gave up. So much for planning ahead!

Off to a couple stores to do last-minute shopping for Thanksgiving dinner and then it was back home to wrap up cleaning/straightening the house to get ready for the big day. One of the girls’ big Christmas presents was delivered that afternoon. In a rather large box. With a sticker listing the box’s contents. Somehow the girls didn’t see it as it sat at the front door until I could sneak it up to the attic. Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m trying to act like their gifts don’t come from Amazon, Target, Pottery Barn, etc like everything else we get them. One of us has to keep up appearances, I guess.

Last year I let L watch the Cheers “Thanksgiving Orphans” episode with me on Thanksgiving eve. As I recalled, she didn’t seem to really understand why I laughed so much, although she did enjoy the food fight. So this year I went back to my old system of waiting until the girls went to bed to watch it. I drank a little too much bourbon and laughed a lot, just like I have for the past 31 Thanksgivings.

The next morning L asked me, “Are you going to watch the show with the food fight?” She was disappointed when I said I had watched it the night before. I guess she’ll join me again in 2018!

On to food prep. We were hosting, but it was about the smallest possible group we can have in our local family: only six adults plus our girls and two one-year-olds. I handled the turkey, corn casserole, and made Giada’s stuffing/dressing. When I put the bird in, I thought something looked different about it. When it was time to carve it, I asked my sister-in-law who is a chef take the knife. She started carving, paused, and wondered why it wasn’t cutting like she expected. That’s when she realized I had cooked the bird upside-down. She said that was actually a good thing, as it kept the breast in all the juices and fat, which kept it moist[1] and tender. Fortunately the bird turned out great, so I decided that will be my thing going forward, and will refer to it as my Famous Upside-Down Turkey.

We had a fine meal, and I once again bemoaned the fact that my minor stomach issues prevent me from eating nearly as much as I used to. Seriously I can’t even go back for mid-evening leftovers anymore. That just meant more food for the weekend.

Friday is decoration day in our house. I stepped outside in the frosty morning to begin putting up lights while S worked a half-day. Within an hour I was chucking my jacket aside and wiping sweat from my brow as it turned into a beautiful, warm, fall day. Weird. Usually I’m freezing on decoration days. Once S got home we headed out for the purchasing of the tree and got the inside decorations taken care of. We ended up with a very handsome tree once again.

Saturday was another prep day as C was having two friends over for a sleepover. It was a Harry Potter-themed sleepover, as the girls would be watching the Freeform marathon of the Potter movies while doing some Potter-related crafts and playing games. C decorated the basement so it was filled with references to the books and movies. She’s very creative and did a fantastic job. The nice thing about having 11-year-olds over for a sleepover is you just kind of turn them loose. We only saw them when they came up for pizza. Now we did hear them plenty. They were still going strong at 12:30 when I finally fell asleep. We heard Sunday morning that C and one of her friends made it until 3:00 before passing out.

Oh, and we squeezed in taking a picture for the Christmas card Saturday afternoon, too. This has always been a problem in our family. Each year at least one kid doesn’t want to cooperate. S and I are usually yelling at them to knock it off/stop pouting/stop whining/leave your sister alone the entire time. Somehow we always end up with a decent pic. But, man, this year was an especially big struggle. I won’t out which kid was the biggest problem but I took the fewest pics I’ve ever taken because there was a complete meltdown after about 10 minutes. Fortunately one of the pictures was good enough to work, although neither of us think it is one of our best.

Sunday was clean-up, chill-out day.

The girls got an extra hour added onto break as I made an appointment first thing this morning to knock out the passports. The lady at the post office was really nice, rushed everything through so they could get to school quickly, and the forms are off to Chicago for processing.

Just before sitting down to put this together, I whipped up a batch of cookie dough so C can make the first Christmas cookies of the year after school today.

The holiday season has begun!

  1. You’re welcome.  ↩

Halloween 2017

November 1, 2017 /

Well lookee there, it’s November, bitches. The baseball season ends tonight. SiriusXM will begin playing Christmas music at some point today. The slow trickle of holiday commercials will turn into a flood over the next few nights.

All kicked off last night by Halloween, of course. It was a very different Halloween night for us compared to anytime in the past 13 years. The girls all went in different directions, and all without either S or I. M went with a neighborhood friend one way. C went with another neighborhood friend another way. And L took off with her aunts and uncles and trio of one-year-old cousins to make a different loop. Meanwhile I hung out with our neighbors in the driveway next to a fire while eating and drinking. S, who had a crazy day at work, stayed inside and worked on her charting most of the evening. So no more wandering around the ‘hood with the girls while they filled their buckets and bags with goodies.

Oh, costumes. M had hemmed and hawed for a couple weeks and ended up wearing a llama onesie we found at Target.[1] M LOVES llamas so was pretty excited. It was also a much warmer choice than her other options, which was important. The friend she went around with had a matching giraffe costume, which was perfect and random: they weren’t planning on going together but somehow ended up cruising the streets next to each other all night. M also claimed this was her last year of trick or treating since her friend next door will be in high school next year, and high schoolers don’t trick or treat. Never mind that they ended up not going together last night, and the girl M hung out with is a freshman. So maybe we’ll get her out one more year.

C went as a Starbucks barista. She also had about five different ideas over the past few months, several of which would have required crafting skills both S and I lack. The two friends she hung out with both went as crazy cat ladies, wearing robes with stuffed cats sewn onto them and curlers in their hair. I’m not sure why C didn’t want to join in with them, but she got lots of compliments on her Starbucks hat and apron, which I found on eBay and were of really high quality.[2]

L also had multiple ideas and ended up going as a sumo wrestler. Her costume had a little fan that screwed into the side to keep it inflated. It was pretty hilarious but also a little tough to get around in.

What was also weird about the night was how quiet our neighborhood was. I’m not sure if we’ve had a lot of turnover in the subdivision and now have a mix of older and younger kids, but the streets seemed deserted all night. We hardly had any kids come down our cul-de-sac and the girls said the main streets weren’t busy either. It was chilly but dry, so it’s not like the years it has rained or snowed and kept people inside. Weird. We had a ton of candy left over.

So it was a very different Halloween than all the others we’ve been through since we became parents. While it was nice to just hang out in one spot next to a warm fire, afterward I felt like I missed out on the night a little bit. Especially given how light the overall trick or treating was.

And today is the first All Saints Day we haven’t had a kid dressed up as a saint in forever as well. Man, this kids getting older thing is throwing me for a big loop.

  1. Credit to Caroline N in KC who wore the same thing to a trunk or treat last week. M saw a pic on Facebook and was inspired.  ↩
  2. We had to fix the apron string twice before she went out.  ↩

Weekend Notes

October 17, 2017 /

A quick (and late) rundown on our weekend. Which had a little cray-cray in it.

Saturday was a freaking perfect day. Low 80s, breezy. One of those mid-October days that you wish you could hang onto for the next five months. So of course we spent it blowing leaves at the lake house and then hauling the boat out for the winter.

There was a wrinkle to our winter boat plans this year. The place where our boat was originally purchased, and where we’ve stored it the four winters we’ve had it, went out of business at the end of the summer. We used it not just because it was where the boat came from and because they were an authorized dealer for our brand, but because it was about the easiest major boat place to get to. Once we got it off the rickety, country roads near the lake, it was a straight shot up a county highway. Only two lanes until you hit the city, top speed limit 55. As long as I kept it straight, I was good. And things got much easier two years ago when we upped the size of our vehicle that pulled it.

But now I would have to get on the interstate for at least part of the jaunt to the boat place. I don’t know why, but hauling a trailer and a 3000 pound boat at 65–70 miles per hour stressed me out way more than driving those curving, hilly roads that have nowhere to bail out if you get into trouble. I guess it was because I don’t really know much about trailers and was concerned maybe something was wrong with either our trailer itself, or how we hook it up, that would present itself at 65 on a four-lane interstate but not at 35 on a rural, two-land road.

Everything turned out just fine. Those 10–12 minutes on I–465 were a little white-knuckley, but we made it to the shop without losing the trailer or boat or causing any accidents. She’ll sit there for six months before we get to make the trip back south for the summer of ’18.

BTW, it was in the mid–30s down near the lake this morning, so we got it out right in time.

Sunday was supposed to be L’s last soccer game of the year. The weather turned cold, blustery, and rainy that day, though, so we rescheduled it for tonight.

Our wackiness kicked in Sunday night. Or Monday morning, rather. I heard something kind of bang around that was loud enough to wake me up. Moments later I heard a car door slam and pull away. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after 2:00.

We have a Nest camera at our front door, but at night I silence the notifications so I don’t get woken by every moth that flies by. Or spider that builds a web right on the lens, which happened a couple weeks ago.[1] I picked up my phone and there were two new notifications from the camera. I swiped, watched the clips, and ran downstairs. The video showed a couple kids running up to our front door, grabbing some of our Halloween stake lights and the pumpkin L had carved the night before, and then running back to a car parked in front of the house. The banging around I heard was because the dumbass who was harvesting our lights didn’t unplug them from the extension they were on, and a large, plastic pumpkin “chased” him until the cords finally decoupled.

When I got downstairs, they were already gone. I looked around and made sure there was no damage or graffiti or other nonsense, and all appeared fine. I watched the video again. One kid had a hoodie on, but the other kid’s face was partially visible. Unfortunately the headlights from their vehicle kept me from being able to identify the make/model.

I tried to go back to bed but I was a little wound up. It was close to 4:00 before I was out again.

After I got the kids to school I checked with my neighbor, who also has a Nest cam, to see if his video showed anything. On his we could see a couple more kids walking around, that they were driving a Jeep, and that there appeared to be other pumpkins thrown in the back.[2] But the taillights blinded the night vision camera and we couldn’t grab a license number.

Since there was no damage and we were only out about $10, I didn’t file a police report. I just let our HOA know and then sent the videos over to the police in case there were other reports of theft/vandalism at the same general time.

Now what the hell were teenagers doing out at 2-something AM on a Monday morning? Because it was freaking fall break in the district we live in.

I loathe fall break. I think it’s a useless interruption in the academic calendar for schools that remain on the traditional August-May school year. Why the hell do we need two days (or more) off this time of year? It’s not like spring break, when we’ve been suffering through 2–5 months of brutal weather. And it totally screws up youth sports, as different schools being on different break schedules means you go through a three-week period where at least one kid is going to be gone.

You’d think with our kids going to Catholic schools things would be regulated, but they’re not. A few schools in the Archdiocese had their break two weeks ago. Ours is this Thursday and Friday. So while we’re not in any CYO sports right now, plenty of our friends have had to deal with reschedulings because St. Whoever is on break and none of their girls can play basketball on a given weekend.

Garbage.

I have two ideas to fix fall break:

1) As most schools give 2–3 days for fall break, let’s move those to November and give everyone the entire week of Thanksgiving off. That’s when kids need a break, and every year it seems like more families duck out a day or two early anyway.

2) Or even better, GET RID OF THE FUCKING BREAK. It’s useless. Take those added days to bump the beginning of the school year back. Our girls have been starting on a Wednesday or Thursday for several years. Push that back to the following Monday and we have one more weekend of true summer.

I think I’ve found a new cause…

  1. No shit, I had 60 notifications the next morning. In each one you could see the spider slowly moving back-and-forth across the face of the camera and its slowly building web.  ↩
  2. My first thought was that these were all going to be placed in one person’s yard, likely a friend or rival from school. Not that I did anything like that with election signs back in the fall of 1988.  ↩

Summer Doings

July 10, 2017 /

Time to get back at it. After the long holiday week, bookended by trips down to the lake house, we’re finally home for what should be a very quiet week at home.

Last week we had my brother-in-law, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter from Boston staying with us. It was good to catch up and hang out with them. The two-year-old, we’ll call her Little L, has reached the hilarious stage of kid-dom. She does funny things and then continues to do them when they get a reaction. Our favorite thing she did was calling me “Uncle Ken” and S “Aunt Cindy” all week. I’d go walking through the room and hear a little voice say, “Bye Uncle Ken!” Apparently she does have a great uncle Ken, but he and I have zero in common in appearance. And Cindy is the Asian lady who runs her daycare. So we’re not really sure how we got labelled with those names. It made us laugh all week, though.

She has a fun way with words because of her background and how she spends her days. Her mom is from Kuwait, so Little L has learned Arabic from day one. The daycare she goes to in Boston is run by Chinese women, so she learns Mandarin from them. She does the normal, two-year-old babbling where you can only pick out a word or two clearly from every 7–8. With her you wonder are those words you miss really either Arabic or Mandarin words and she just said something that makes perfect grammatical sense if you allow for three languages. She’s going to be one smart cookie!

This weekend we had three families from St. P’s down to the lake house, 18 people total. It was a busy and fun weekend.

C got to check out a little early as she headed down to CYO camp yesterday afternoon. This is her first time going and she was super excited. We’re a little nervous about her going away simply because every time she has a sleep over she gets herself worked up and ends up with a stomach ache or headache or sleeps weird and can’t move her neck without pain for three days or some other weird ailment.[1] She’s in a cabin with at least five of her classmates from St. P’s, so hopefully they’re getting so wiped out during the day that she can pass out at night.

L is camping it this week, too, although she’s just going to a half-day basketball camp five minutes from our house. She’s in a group with four classmates and apparently they are the only girls in a camp of about 100 kids. She claims they still “dominated” at today’s session, but she always says that. She was pretty excited to get her school shoes early so she would have new kicks for camp. She picked out some Kyrie Irving 3s with matching socks this year. But she also got a new Steph Curry ball so she’s properly representing her favorite player.

So M and I are home alone for three hours a day all week. She went shopping with S this morning, as S had no meetings today. But the next four days I imagine will involve her sitting in her room reading and listening to music on her iPhone while I sit in another room and read and listen to music on my iPad. Apples falling close to trees and whatnot.

As much as we love going to the lake and sharing it with friends and family, we’re kind of glad to be taking next weekend off. It’ll be nice to have a quick break and do some summer things closer to home.

  1. The best was the night she was sleeping away and woke her host family up at 4:00 AM saying she felt like she was going to get sick. Which meant we got a call and I had to go pick her up. She never got sick.  ↩

Summertime

May 30, 2017 /

Memorial Day weekend is in the books, the girls are out of school, and summer is officially here!

The school year wrapped up uneventfully. All three girls passed. Or at least we assume so; middle school grades are mailed so I supposed there’s still a tiny chance we’re going to have an uncomfortable talk with M about her academic plans for next year.

I kid! By our calculations she’s going to get her highest GPA of her career. Which is a good thing since she had her phone taken away for five weeks to being this quarter after she failed to take care of some academic business in the third quarter. Point proven, lesson learned.

If there’s one weekend when everyone in Indiana is watching the weather forecast, it’s Memorial Day weekend. “Think they’ll get the race in?” is the most popular conversation starting question around here. And this year it did not look good. At various points over the past week, it looked like the entire weekend would be a washout. Fortunately some of the storms went south, some went north, and the rains Sunday waited until both the race had ended and we were pretty much done in the water for the day.

It’s been a crazy wet 4–5 weeks around here, and because of that, the lake was not super warm. I dipped my toes in a few times and thought better of dipping more. So I contained my enjoyment of our new dock area to the decking. C and L did a few jumps off the elevated deck into the water. There were a few tubing and kneeboarding trips. And they kayaked and paddle-boarded a lot. But this wasn’t one of those spend three straight hours floating kind of lake weekends.

It was a family weekend, with most of the local family coming down for at least part of the weekend. A highlight of the gathering was the first birthday for one of the local nephews. We had the obligatory smash cake for him, which he enjoyed. Lots of other good food for the grownups.

We hung around through yesterday afternoon, which ended up being the best lake day of the weekend. The sun finally came, and stayed, out and it warmed up a little. A perfect day to spend mostly doing more work in preparation for the summer season. Yard work, power washing, adding some hardware to the new dock, and some other activities that had me over my FitBit steps goal before lunchtime.

And now summer break has begun. The girls aren’t doing swim team this year, so there’s no built-in activity each morning. There are some camps coming up. But for now we’re just going to wing it on our daily activities. Hopefully I can keep them from sitting in front of screens all day. And hopefully they, and I, all get along most of the time. We have a library trip scheduled for here in a bit. And our one trip of the summer – to Kansas City – is just three days away. Other than that, the next 10 weeks are wide open.

The End and Beginning

January 3, 2017 /

The holiday portion of our Christmas vacation is over and the new year is off to a decent start.

Things ramped up another notch last week. Our family from Denver flew in late Wednesday night for a brief visit. We picked them up at the airport after 11:00 pm. By the time the luggage was collected, we got home, and gave all the kids a snack, it was 1:00 am. And the kids all whined about having to go to bed. The power of hanging with your cousins, I guess.

Thursday night was our game night. Well, in theory it was. Rather than go to a bowling alley like we’ve done the last 2–3 years, we decided to move it back to our home and play board/card/table games. Everyone came over, we had pizza and conversation, but never really got to the games.

Saturday we took the kids to a local “indoor activity center” to burn off some energy. There were bounce houses, a rock climbing wall, and Euro-bungee – where the kids are connected by bungees to two arms that raise up and allow them to jump off a trampoline about 20 feet up. M and C had a great time doing that. L wasn’t so sure at first. In fact, she disappeared from the line twice while waiting for her turn. I asked her what the problem was and she said, “I’m not sure I want to do it.” When her turn came, she looked awfully nervous at first. She kept her knees locked and refused to push off the tramp, all while having an odd look on her face. A part of me thought she was going to throw up. She finally loosened up and had a lot of fun. When she got off, she said, “Dad, I thought I was going to puke at first!” Glad she didn’t.

We had a final, impromptu, family gathering for New Year’s Eve. Mexican food for dinner, football on the TV, kids trying to throw popcorn into their mouths. You know, the usual. We did New Year’s at 10:00 for the younger kids and then put them all to bed. Our girls got to hide in our room and play games on their own. They made it to midnight, although separate from the adults who were busy polishing off bottles of wine, getting into some bourbon, and playing Cards Against Humanity downstairs.

Sunday folks started heading home. Or at least they were supposed to. Our Denver family left as planned. Our Boston family was, unfortunately, delayed a day because of a sick kid. But they made it home safely yesterday. An especially big departure was my in-laws, who left for their new place in Florida on Saturday. They had spent some time down there in the fall, but this is the transition point to where Florida becomes home. We’re pretty excited to visit their new place later this month.

With the weird holiday schedule, we put off a lot of normal New Year’s Day activities until yesterday. I took down all the outside decorations on Sunday since it was warm and dry. But the tree and all the other inside decorations stayed up an extra day finally coming down yesterday. And, since our girls have another week of vacation, we got together with some friends last evening for a fairly late night of eating, drinking, and watching football. There is still one more gathering on our scheduled before we jump back into the academic calendar.

This week we have volleyball or basketball practice every day, which is kind of nice. It will force us to be motivated and get out of the house at least once per day. We restarted our Netflix account this week – after dropping it for some time so S could watch a show that is only on Starz – and the girls have been spending a lot of time watching shows and movies available there.

It’s been a very good holiday season for us. A lot of fine times with family and friends. More than enough good food and drink. Our girls are generally well-behaved by now, although they still drive us crazy often enough.

I must admit I was dreading New Year’s Day. The past two January 1’s, I’ve had to deal with health emergencies my stepdad was going through. Both years, as we took the tree down and got the house back to normal, I’ve had to take extremely upsetting phone calls and contemplate terrible outcomes. I know it’s dumb to think this way, but there was a part of my that kept thinking, “OK, we don’t need anyone going to the hospital this New Year’s Day.” As if my stepdad’s health issues were in any way connected to anyone else in my extended family. Still, it was a relief to get through the first day of the year, and the taking down of the tree, and not have any family health crises.

Anyway, I hope all of you had fine and safe holidays. Happy New Year!

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