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Today is the second day of the new school year for Connie and the kids. You should have heard all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the weekend….. and that was just from Connie! [insert drum smash sound] Even Emma was dreading the end of the short Summer. I came home yesterday expecting the worst and was pleasantly surprised. No red eyes, no one confined to their room. It seemed that things went well. Late last night while Emma, Maggie and I were watching Super Why!, Emma told me that she really liked school and that she was learning a lot. She had seen the boys react negatively to school so many times that she expected it to be horrible when in fact she found it to be fun (go figure). So why the early start back to school? Here’s my original post on the topic, but basically it provides the opportunity to take some time off when the weather is nice outside (as opposed to what it is now). Hats off to Connie and the crew at home! Now if we can just keep Maggie from being counter-productive, then that would be ideal. Hope that school goes well on this second day. On Saturday we held Maggie’s actual birthday party. Since all of Maggie’s classmates were out of town, it ended up being a family only affair. It was a pretty standard party for us (i.e. food, but no party games). The one exception was the BB gun shootout in the back yard. It seems that Connie’s great grandfather threw down the gauntlet during our last visit to New Orleans. So both he and Uncle Edward brought there BB guns up. They all shot at a few targets and then took to shooting aluminum cans on the fence. From what I can gather, Paw Paw and Quinn both had best rounds of six cans shot down. One other highlight was the (really) home made ice cream that Stan brought. Good stuff. For her part, Maggie seemed to enjoy herself. She particularly like the Elefun game and the Play-Doh ice cream maker. Of course the four different colors of Play-Doh are now four cans of gray, but isn’t that how it normally works? It sure takes a lot longer to pick up than it does to get out. We can now put that one in the books. Our little Maggie turned three today! Happy Birthday Maggie! She is an interesting character for sure. I can remember thinking that Hayden was all over the place, but I think Maggie has him beat. With an additional four years under my belt, I’m a little more patient and able to appreciate the humor in her actions. It can be extremely frustrating at times because you want to be stern and just can’t help but to laugh (many times out loud). I’ve been saying for some time that I couldn’t believe that she was still two, well I guess those days are behind me (unless I just want to pretend I’m a rambling idiot… which really isn’t that far from the mark many times). Given the tradition of letting the birthday girl (in this case) select the location for her birthday lunch, Maggie selected the fine American restaurant… McDonald’s. Since we couldn’t convince her otherwise, we enjoyed a family meal together in the play-land at the local McDs. To my jumping, running, laughing and smiling little girl, happy birthday.
With that said, I’ve gotten into the habit of watching the weather forecasts. Today the chance of rain hit the highest chance as of late: 30% chance of rain. It’s not a lot, but when you’ve seen 10% for days on end you’ll take what you can get. Even a lot of the Facebook updates of friends were starting to sound like the electronic version of a rain dance. Well this afternoon we got a nice little (too little, but fairly strong) rainstorm in the area. Watching the storm approach on the radar, I was a little surprised at my excitement level… yep … about rain. It wasn’t just me either. People were coming out of their homes just to see that wonderful rain approach. It felt good just to sit and watch the rain fall from the sky. Interesting dynamic to say the least. It definitely lifted my spirits and I would imagine it will do so good for the yard as well. Thank you Lord for the rain and could we have a second helping tomorrow? It was a full day at the water park on Monday. Connie’s parents were nice enough to watch the girls while we took the older kids to Blue Bayou (thank you Stan and Gayle). My two nieces (Morgan and Jayne) came along for the ride as well. We got there around 11am and systematically rode all of the big rides (Conja, Azura, Voodoo, etc..) before eating lunch around 1:30. The lines weren’t that long and with the hot weather wasn’t noticeable around the water. The nice thing is that no one was too small to ride any of the rides, so no waiting at the bottom. I would say that we stayed wet a majority of the time. The kids were all pretty fearless in tackling the rides. Connie went home around 5pm and picked up the girls. They got into Dixie Landing (dry side of the park) for free. So we split into three groups at that point with Connie staying with the girls around the small rides, the oldest three (with the strongest stomachs) on the big rides and then Hayden and I rode the Splinter (log ride). We would switch things up periodically as well, such as the time Hayden went on the Hot Shot ride (200+ feet in the air in a couple seconds and then back to earth). I was a big chicken, but Hayden gets points for bravery. I’m not sure how much he liked it though. There were a few breaks in there to get ice cream and ride the train around the park, but otherwise it was nonstop action until about 9:30pm. What a fun, yet exhausting day.
It’s a great honor to be a father. We hold a position that carries with it a lot of responsibility, yet a lot of joy in getting to see these little ones grow up to hopefully have families of their own. I’m certainly glad that you don’t have to be perfect or I would have been disqualified long ago. I do have four great kids that make life very enjoyable. It would appear that I’ve been tagged by my friend Elizabeth (unless she was referring to a different person in which case I would be a little embarrassed) in one of the social quizzes that are going around. The rules are as follows:
So here we go, six unimportant things that make me happy. By the way, we have to define unimportant as it is used here. I think this refers to the world in general and not me specifically since the “unimportant” thing that makes me happy also makes it somewhat important to me. Got that? Good, let’s continue.
So there you have it. I will say that it has been interesting to read the responses of others to the question. By the way, if you have a blog and you really wanted to be tagged (but haven’t yet), then consider yourself tagged. I know I’m a little tardy in posting a note about our family vacation, but it’s taken me that long to get caught up (and get back into a routine). Over a period of eight days, we travelled just over 1,800 miles. Kudos to the kids since they did awesome on the trip. We stayed in four locations during our trip: Batesville, Arkansas, Paducah &Eddyville, Kentucky and finally Ringgold, Georgia. The basic theme for our trip was “reconnecting with friends“. All of our overnight stops were to visit with friends that used to live in Baton Rouge. We had a great time at every stop. It was a blessing to get to catch up.
June 12th Update: At 7am, the stations when dark. Some of them posted messages and others nothing. To answer my question on how many homes prepared for the switch during the delay, Nielsen Co has estimated it as 3 million homes. That far more than I would have estimated, so if that is accurate than kudos to them. I still think it would have been intellectually better for the TV to go dark. Just back from our vacation in Kentucky (more about that later). Let me just say that Summer moved in while we were away. The weather last week up north? Clear and cool. On the two days that it rained it was wet and even cooler. So first day back in Louisiana? Hot and humid! I had to use an exclamation point. Even the grass in my yard is begging for mercy. I guess I may have to eventually put the sprinkler on for a spell. Okay, okay Summer. You are officially back in town. Just don’t rub it in. |
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The transition from analog to digital transmission of TV signals was suppose to have already happened, but
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