HerdingChaos

Last weekend we took the RV to Llano County. Took a little under 2 hours to make the drive out to some land our friends own. The kids made mudpies while the adults told stories and caught up. Beck and I had not spent time with Jim and Tracey for a while. It was good to catch up. 

We made plans to do the same thing this weekend with friends of mine and their families. Yesterday I took the RV out of storage and loaded a few things. Today I went into work planning to depart around 2pm and come home so we could be on the road by 3 or 4. Becky called at around noon. The school called and Andrew was sick.

Poor Andrew. He threw up shortly after Becky picked him up from school. We are going to wait and see if he feels better tomorrow morning. I am not holding my breath.

Since Becky was home taking care of a sick Andrew and a fussy Loren, I had to pick up Tracy. This was the first time I have ever picked up Tracy by herself. I have picked up both kids before, but never Tracy alone. The trip was special for me.

Seems silly that little things like that are what is special now. Nice to get some one-on-one dad to daughter time.  The ride home was the first time she rode in a booster chair and it was in the back of the convertible with the top down. Maybe it was special for her too. She laughed that the wind was too strong and told it to go away.

Andrew is coughing up a lung in the other room. Gotta go… 

Becky won a free family pack to the rodeo this year from one of the local TV station web sites. We received four wristbands for the carnival, four tickets to the rodeo, and the sweetest VIP parking pass ever. We decided to go to the carnival on Friday morning, and then come back Saturday for the rodeo and concert.

Friday we arrive at around 10:30am. The wind is gusting and there is a slight chill in the air. Our plan is to let the kids ride as many rides as they want until they get tired.

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I had to go to a doctor appointment this morning. The timing was perfect and I was able to take my son Andrew to school. I left the top down when I parked the car last night. I asked Andrew if he wanted to go to school with the top up or down. The weather told me "up." Andrew said "down." Since we are less than a mile from the school and a little drizzle in never hurt anyone I left the top down.

We arrive at school and Andrew asks if I will be leaving the top down. I said, "No, I am going to put it up because it looks like it might rain." Andrew then said, "Yeah! If you put it up then Murphy’s law says that it will not rain today!" and jumped out of the car. 

He is five.

• Law of Thermodynamics: no
• Conservation of Energy: no
• …
• Murphy’s Law: YES

A student photographer is using Loren for a school project. She has been turning out some really great photos.

I have an update on the way to talk about the weekend at the rodeo with the family, but I have to pack for a trip right now so you are going to have to wait. All 1 of you.

Today we took the kids down to Zilker park for the Zilker Kite Festival. We sat around in the great weather and watched people fly kites. It was simple fun. And we needed the break after the adventure getting there.

Normally it would take about 20 minutes to get to Zilker from our house. We did not need to be there at any particular time but decided to leave the house around noon. Noon was also the time that the other million people going to Zilker decided to head out. We drove down to the west side of the park and saw the line of cars. We doubled back and headed to 17th street and the free shuttle bus to and from the park. Well, the line of cars to get into the parking garage was short. But the line of people waiting for a bus?

Oh

My

God.

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Andrew asked Becky if he could open his cat bank (what we would normally call a piggy bank, but its a cat) and count the money inside. The cat bank was given to him by my Aunt and Uncle for Christmas two years ago. Since the bank has a plastic plug on the bottom, pulling all the money out and then click and clanking it back into the bank is something he enjoys.

This time was a little different. Andrew started asking detailed questions about how much each coin was worth. Becky explained it all to him. She suggested he start by stacking the quarters into little stacks of four. As Andrew was starting his task of stacking all the quarters he explained the reason for the accounting to Becky.

Andrew stated that he remembers Mom and Dad and him and Tracy all going to Sam’s club to look around. Tracy saw this really cool princess dollhouse and asked for it. Mom and Dad told her that she could not have it and that it cost too much money anyway. Andrew had been thinking about it, and he was pretty sure that he had enough money in his cat bank to buy the dollhouse for Tracy and he wanted to count to make sure.

I am pretty sure that the cat bank is going to be short, but I think Andrew’s heart is going to make up for the difference.

We are getting new carpet. You have to understand that we intended on getting new carpet shortly after we moved into this house. That was over 5 years ago. This carpet already needed to be replaced and has now seen two cats, a dog and one growing to three kids over the past five years.

Getting the carpet has been a series of failed missions until now. Usually I shop in the "mission" mode. I pick out an objective. Then plan the mission. Then go in; get it; get out.

So far the carpet missions have been more like:

• go in
• look at things for about 2 minutes
• chase children playing in the paint stripper
• start looking for 1 minute
• chase children away from the toilet displays (bad things could have happened there)
• look for another 3 minutes
• chase the children outside into the car
• give up and take them to McDonald’s while we sit around and try to figure out where the mission when wrong

This Saturday we were able to complete a successful mission.

The day started with a trip into the city for a music and magic show. The kids really had a great time. They sold these HUGE balloons as part of the fund raising efforts. Andrew wanted one of the large red balloons. I had to hook up a 10oz bottle of water that and fill it to ballast the balloon so it would not float up in the gym. However when we were walking to the car I made the mistake of setting the balloons down. An updraft of wind caught it and it started to float away. We were lucky, the wind died down and the balloon slowly floated back down (glad I filled the water bottle all the way up!). Of course it took a while to float back down and I went off a chased it. A tall geeky dad chasing this gigantic balloon was not lost on the crowd. I got quite a few smiles and my kids were giggling the entire time.

That balloon did not fit in the back of the wagon. I had to squeeze it very carefully to get it to fit and not pop. It was very elliptical by the time I could close the gate door.

Then the whole family went to EZ’s for lunch.

The night before, my parents called and asked if we wanted some time to ourselves. They offered to take the kids for a few hours and spoil and pamper them like only grandparents can.

So when given the choice:

• romantic dinner
• a walk through the park holding hands and talking about things that adults talk about that does not include talking about the children
• sleep
• stopping by to see some friends and hang out
• go shopping for carpet and accomplish a five year old mission and put a string of horrid failures behind us

I am sure you would have made the same choice given the opportunity. No really, in less than three weeks this house will be full of new carpet. I have the rest of my life to lay on that carpet and plan romantic dinners and walks through the park!

The older two kids are getting to that "stop touching me" stage. You know, where you did exactly what your parents told you, but you did it in a way to maximize the annoyance of your sibling. Yes, those are fond memories for me as well.

Tonight Andrew started it and Tracy just kept saying "Get away!" about a billion and a half times.

Actually they have been doing great. A little "get away" and "stop touching me" is expected with how much rain we have been getting. I really don’t mind the cold. You expect cold during winter. When you start googling cubit and computing the number of trips to Home Depot and Lowe’s so you are ready to build the ark…

The new blog software appears to be working quite well. I was able to turn back on the comments for all of my posts. Within 2 hours I had around 50 comment spams that had been posted. Wordpress does such a better job with this. There are bulk interfaces for cleaning entries up. And Wordpress detected the spam after a few of them started looking the same, and moved them to a moderation queue. That made it quite easy to dump them before they were even posted. There is supposed to be plugins for spell checking and image posting and other nifty features. I do not have any of those working yet. But I will get them running as I have time.

It has been a few months since I have posted. Since that time we have been blessed with a new baby girl. Her name is Loren and she has been the best baby. I am not sure if we are just getting to be better parents at this point, or if the babies just get more laid back if they have a few older siblings. Loren has been sleeping most of the night since day one. Andrew and Tracy are both really enjoying playing with their little sister. Sometimes too much…

I just got back from traveling for a week. I was away for work and then for a memorial service. It was tough being away from the family for such a long time right after Loren had arrived. I’m glad to be back and I am really looking forward to this weekend.

I am going to try and keep up now that this blog software has pretty much taken care of the comment spam problem. I also would not expect the layout to remain the same. Expect more changes and more posts in the near future.