He's Observant

I was driving through the neighborhood and my son said "Why does that sign have a picture of Eve-a on it?" I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. The next time we went through the same spot and he said there is the Eve-a sign. I stopped and realized he was talking about the neighborhood watch sign, which did have a graphic on it that looks a lot like Eve from Wall-E. I had to stop and take a picture of it. I'm wondering if anyone reported my suspicious behavior when I was taking the picture of the sign.

Latest Project

My wife bought the red truck shelf, and I made one to match it. All the painting was done by her, I only handled the wood work. The boys like it so much they actually put their cars away. We'll I guess it doesn't exactly match, it is running the other way on purpose.

Putting on the Finish

Here are a couple of pictures of the boys painting their tool boxes. I'm not a fan of painting anything, but they seemed to enjoy it.

A Good Breakfast

Breakfast turned out so good this morning that I had to post it. I'm glad my boys love fruit so much. And yes I made those french toast sticks myself, they are not from the freezer.

Home Depot Kids Workshop

This is a photo of my guy's all geared up for the kids workshop at the home depot. There would have been more pictures of them building their projects if the Home Depot kids workshop had actually been this Saturday. We walked in the store with them all decked out in their aprons and the lady at the door said oooooh, the kids workshop is the first Saturday of the month. I knew this, but for some reason I was thinking it was already June. I saw my son's face start to turn sad and figured I better think fast since I had blundered big time and I said "Hey, that's no problem, we'll get the stuff we need to finish building our tool boxes and go home and build those. Then he smiled and said yeaah, and the little one joined along in being happy. It could have turned out to be a pretty sad day, but instead we ended up having a great time building two of these tool boxes for them.

We want Prenup

I was in the car with the boys last night listening to Goldigger (relax it's the Glee version so it's clean) and Carson was in the back with his mean muggin' face on bobbing his head up and down. Then he starting singing really loud "She give me money, When I'm in need". The funniest part by far was hearing him yell "We want prenup, YEAH!". Nathan was actually doing some of the background sounds, but I couldn't say exactly which ones.

Good Morning Daddy

My youngest was the first to wake up this morning. I asked if he would come lay down with me since everyone else was still sleeping. He said "yes I lay down and cuddle daddy." I laid down with him and he wouldn't put his head down. He just sat up looking at me for a minute or two and then said "You suppose to get up and get me food." I laughed and got up and made pancakes.

Oh yeah, I have a blog

I think I honestly almost forgot about this thing. I'll be posting some more here soon. I update this even less than my facebook. About the only new news I have is that I have started playing the harmonica. I'll put up links to my first two recordings here. Hopefully as I go they will get better.

1st Recording ever

First Tucka Ticka (Train Rhythm)

What in the Box

I picked up food from Jack in the Box last night. I ordered a chicken biscuit combo. When I got home I found a large hexagon shaped box at the bottom of my bag. In the box was some giant cheeseburger with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and pickles. So for dinner I had Orange Juice, hash browns, and a cheeseburger. It was an odd combo. The strangest thing is that for my wife I got an ultimate cheeseburger combo, substitute curly fries, substitute sourdough bread for the bun and the sandwich plain. This they got absolutely right, but for the order of a chicken biscuit combo just the way the make it, not so right. After reviewing the menu it looks like I wound up with the sirloin cheeseburger without the peppercorn sauce of the onions. I would like to say this burger was not as good as their cheaper burgers. It was okay, but it is nothing I would ever order again, actually make that never order since I never ordered it in the first place.

Glad you asked

My two sons were in a rented stroller at the mall. The older one said "Excuse me dad, can I eat this?" I looked down at him and saw that he was holding a small piece of cookie. I asked where he got it and he put it back down on the floor of the stroller and said I found it down here. I quickly told him to put it back down. I was very glad that he asked rather than just eating it. Hopefully he didn't eat any before he asked.

What a nap

Today the kids both took good naps. Carson actually slept until 7:10, which is both good and bad since his usual bedtime is 8:00. He gets to stay up a little late tonight. I even got to take a nap while they were napping I fell asleep on the couch and I guess I was asleep for around an hour. I woke up feeling pretty good. While Carson was sleeping I took Nathan with me to get Pizza.

Earlier the boys and I went to a car show in town. It rained a lot earlier in the day and I didn't expect much, but it was a really good turnout. We saw lots of cars and shared some ice cream. I didn't take the camera so I don't have any pictures for this post. I'm sure there will be more car shows in our future. I look forward to taking them to a race someday, but it will have to wait until they are no longer afraid of noise. Judging from their naps I must have successfully tired them out.

Wisdom

Some say a wise man learns from his mistakes, but I prefer the saying that a smart man learns from his mistakes, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. This is not an orginal quote, but I'm not sure who to credit it to.

That's all I have today. Admittedly not very corny.

Singing songs with Daddy

This is the part where Daddy comes out and sings a silly song.

I made up a new song for Nathan today about his Penguin. It is to the tune of "Five Huge Hippos Hopping on a Hill".

Oh little penguin you are a flightless bird,
Oh little penguin tell me have you heard,
Oh little penguin you live where it it cold,
Oh little penguin that Nathan loves to hold.

He kept saying again until I was literally out of breath.

The facilities are conveniently located

Today we were at a Birthday pool party for one of my son's cousins. He wouldn't swim much at all because he wasn't very comfortable with the big pool and all of the kids in it. After a while quite a few people had left and it was getting calmer. He said he needed to use the bathroom. His aunt asked his uncle to show him where the boys "outdoor potty" was. His uncle Mike led him to a spot in the yard and walked away to give him some privacy.

A short while later he walks up to me with his pants down around his ankles and says "I poopied daddy". I asked "you poopied?", and he replied yes. I asked him to show me where he poopied and he led me right to the spot on the grass where his poop was lying under a nice sized swarm of flies. I guess we should have been more clear about what the outdoor potty was for.

I knew there would be lots of cleaning up poop when I had kids, but I didn't know I would be scooping it out of my brother and sister-in-laws yard at a party. It's amazing that a kid who isn't comfortable swimming in a pool with a bunch of noisy kids doesn't mind dropping his pants and pooping in the yard with them. The most impressive part was that he didn't get anything on him. Apparently there is something to be said for instinct.

Let me be your hero

I love how easy it is to be a hero as a husband and a father. I don't have to save the world or cure some disease, I just have to smash the occasional spider or pick them up when a large dog approaches.

My most recent heroic event occurred when my youngest decided to drop his stuffed penguin out the car window. I turned the car around and parked in the McDonald's parking lot. I ran through the very large ditch as I watched the poor penguin roll around from the wind from the passing cars. Once I got up the other side of the ditch I had an opening in traffic and I dashed out and grabbed the penguin and ran back to the car. Penguin was saved. I then informed the boys to never ask to have the windows down again.

It worked!

I had always heard that if your headlights have that yellow haze on them you could polish it off with tooth paste. I was told that gel wouldn't work and it had to be the regular tooth paste. Today I washed and waxed the car and figured I'd try to fix the headlight haze. I only had gel but I figured it couldn't hurt anything. I have to say that if regular tooth paste works better than the gel that wasn't supposed to work then the regular stuff must be unbelievable because my headlights look almost like new now. Not only are they very clear they also smell minty fresh :)

I Love Having Boys

I know I could do all of the same things if I had girls, but then I would probably get static from some people for making them tomboys.

If it isn't obvious this is a picture of my almost four year old son helping me sand a board for a shelf to go above the TV in the basement. The focused look on his face is just perfect.

A few days later on the day after his fourth birthday he helped me jack up the car to change the oil and the fuel filter. He could work the jack all by himself. He is four years old and he already lifted a car. He even looked at the jack while he was using it and said "Daddy this is a lever, a lever is a simple machine." He's absolutely awesome.

I taught him all about safety and how important it is to put new oil in the car. I also told him how important it was to put your tools away when you are done, but I didn't learn that until I was about 25, so I am not holding out hope that this lesson will stick for some time, but I have plenty of time to teach it to him.

It's Been a While

I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would talk about why. It's because 90% of the things I think to blog about get forgotten. I have a very bad case of CRS. If you don't know, that stands for Can't Remember Stuff or something like that. I am going to start trying to have a picture for everything I think of to blog about. This should help spark my memory. I'll dust off the old digital camera and keep it with me. Any good photographer should always have a camera with them anyway. I'm not really insinuating that I am a good photographer, but if I don't have a camera with me my chances decrease dramatically.

The main reason for my affliction is that with the exception of maybe ten nights I don't think I have slept more than 5 consecutive hours in about 2 or three years. I am one of those people that really needs 7 or 8 hours a night. They say lack of sleep is cumulative and you never make up for it unless you sleep those missing hours. So I'll be conservative and say I need 7 hours of sleep a night and I get 5.5. We'll also limit it to a 2 year period or 730 days. That means I am down 1,095 hours of sleep, so if I could just sleep for 45.625 days I would be all caught up. Oh, wait I forgot to add in the 7 hours of sleep I would have gotten anyway for the 45 days of sleep I am catching up on. Can you miss sleep while sleeping? The math is starting to hurt now. Okay a train leaves Seattle at 6:00 am traveling 65 MPH . . .

One monday after some of those three day weekends I had I was pretty well rested. I know I slept at least 7 hours straight on the Sunday night before. When I got to work I felt as though I had super human abilities. Solutions were clearer, I remebered things that were told to me, I was able to sit at my desk without having that 2:00 am and I've driven all night head snapping motion I sometimes get. It was a very productive day. I'm not saying there aren't days that going through a work day in a haze has advantages, but clarity is a good feeling when you can get it. I imagine many parents can relate.

Changing the World

I watched Evan Almighty tonight. I must say it was a really good movie. It was funny and it had a good message. Now here I go getting mushy.

Everyone always thinks of changing the world in such a large way. It was nice to stop and think that letting some one over in traffic, holding a door for some one, or spending time building a better relationship with your family are all ways to change the world. I think the fact we have this mindset that changing the world requires a lot of effort keeps many people from trying. I also think that we sometimes forget that millions of people doing something small can accomplish the same thing as a few people doing something large. So I'm going to try this week to think of something nice I can do to help some one else and do it. Let's all give it a try. If you'd like you can share the ideas you come up with in the comments section. I figure the comments section might as well be used for something.

So let the Acts of Random Kindness begin.

What to Expect when you don't want to be Expecting

If any of you have read my wife's blog you know carrying babies is quite an ordeal for her. We talked it over and decided that a vasectomy was the best route for both of us. Since I am down to a 4 day week now it seemed like setting up an appointment for a Friday was a good idea.

The scariest part of the whole experience came the night before the procedure. Before going I had to shave the area where the incisions would be made. I must say my amateur self down there with a razor scared me far more than a trained professional down there with a scalpel. It also took me about 3 times as long to accomplish this task as it took the doctor to accomplish the vasectomy.

The morning of the procedure I got up and made breakfast for my two sons. This is something I usually do on "Daddy Days" which is what we call all the days I don't work. I figured I wouldn't be able to do this for them the next day so I wanted to make sure I did it for them that morning. They had no knowledge of why I was going to the doctor, but they were being very sweet and funny. Looking at them at the table eating their muffins and smiling I realized that I was totally okay with this decision. They are more than I could ever have hoped for and are far more wonderful than I could possibly deserve. I love my boys very much and I know that they love me.

I had to have a driver for this procedure because they give you Valium before the procedure. Any time you are offered Valium take it. I'll elaborate on that later. We were unable to find a baby sitter, so the whole family got to go along with me for my appointment. Carson kept saying he wanted to go in with me and I kept assuring him he did not.

When I got to the office to sign in was the first time I realized that it was Friday the 13th. I am not a superstitious person, but for this it still made me cringe for a second. When the doctor first came in I asked him if his first name was Jason. He said no and asked why. I told him I was just joking because it was Friday the 13th. He said he had not realized that and maybe that was why they had so many people chicken out today. I still can't believe I unknowingly scheduled my vasectomy for Friday the 13th. I guess next time I fly I'll purchase a ticket for flight 5050.

The actual procedure was really not bad at all. Of course there was that previously mentioned Valium that I'm sure helped. I don't know if all doctors take this first step, but again if you are considering this I suggest looking for one that does.

After everything was complete they brought my wife in for the after care instructions. They could tell I was a little out of it. I was making jokes that I don't remember that may or may not have been funny and may or may not have been appropriate. I do remember picking up the little model of the male inner workings and pointing to the vas and saying to the nurse "hey this guys been snipped hasn't he?" As it turns out I was right about the model and I could tell that the nurse was very impressed by my medical knowledge, or maybe she wasn't.

My wife also told me the nurse commented that I had quite a lot of volume remaining that would have to be cleared. Now if you let a man know that anything positive was mentioned about anything to do with his "maleness" and size or in this case volume you are opening a door that is likely best left closed. This is especially compounded when for lack of a better term that man is high on something. I can't remember exactly what I said but I do remember being very proud and having my wife clarify what was said a few different times. I guess maybe I am still young and dumb. If you get that reference you are laughing right now. If you don't get it I won't explain it here.

When you get home from one of these you have to ice the area for the first twelve hours. This is about as much fun as it sounds. I waited as long as I possibly could before going to the bathroom for the first time. I really didn't want to see it. I finally couldn't wait any longer, and I have to say their had been quite a bit of bleeding. This prompted a call to the doctor and I was assured that everything was normal. Now we are just down to the waiting and testing. Hopefully I pass.

If any of you still are wondering about the procedure the doctor allowed me to video it. I was curious about what it actually looked like being performed, but I knew I didn't want to watch it live. It is from a tripod so it is not the best quality, but I really didn't want to invite a videographer into the room. Now I will caution you that there is blood and nudity involved so if you aren't up for something graphic don't click the video link. I went ahead and hosted it on my own website because I wasn't sure it would be okay with the blogger terms of use.

Video of My Vasectomy