Ma and Pa's Blog

Since joining the ranks of FB zombies, I was still a little baffled by its appeal, but then I realized why  it’s been a long time since we updated the blog.  Facebook has sort of taken the place of the stream of consciousness posting that sometimes occurs here.  It’s a lot easier to write a random thought, no frills, over in FB than to compose a blog entry.  And, after all, do we really need an entire blog  to say, essentially, “Holy Freaking God, When Is This Damned Winter Going To Be Over?”, which is pretty much what our Ohio February lives are like.   So I guess the FB appeal is to let our “friends” in on the minutiae of our humdrum lives without the burden of worrying about composition.

Not that this is particularly well-composed, but still.

I’m sure we’ll post more blog entries when we can get some sun and fresh air and blow away the winter brain-fog that grips us every February.   Oh, and as my silvery stripe of growing out gray hair becomes more visible, I’ll be sure and share the horror of accepting my 60 year old hair with grace and dignity .

We got ours overnight . . . our snow, that is.   We should be done in a few more hours.   Looks like about a foot so far.

We delivered the toy fridge and spent last evening and this morning with Mike, Jenn, Caleb and Owen.   It was a fun visit, and we staged some photos for manipulation before we left.   You can see the results here.  I think we’ll need a bigger place to gather for vacations — with all the additional children and grandchildren.

I built this play fridge for Caleb and Owen — an addition to the kitchen set they received for Christmas.   I hope they have as much fun playing with it as I had building it.

I came across a post on using masks in Photoshop and had to try it.   This was done in Gimp using the same technique.   While not perfect, it’s pretty good.   I can see this being much fun in the future.

We tried in vain to capture Owen making volleyball returns and kicking the balloon — both of which he does very well.   He’s still cute in the below video.

Owen’s Soccer and Volleyball Skills from Pa on Vimeo.

Here’s Ma’s video of our Mentos and Diet Pepsi experiment that Caleb described as “very dangerous” to Sebastian.   Enjoy.

Mentos and Diet Pepsi from Pa on Vimeo.

Thanks so much, Sebastian, Anna-Marie, and Jeff.   We’re keeping it out all year long!

And, for those who haven’t already seen Sebastian singing “Hippopotamus for Christmas”:

We just got home from a wonderful evening at Lyn and Bob’s.   The family, sans Kris,  Deborah, Nathan, Cooper, James, Jackie,  Jeff,  Anna-Marie and Sebastian, were in attendance.   There was an art raffle (artwork by Amanda and Zach) to raise funds for a lamp for their clubhouse (basement closet), lots of great food,  and the gift exchange.   The children were much more a part of the festivities this year, and they seemed to genuinely enjoy seeing each other.   Liam and Caleb became good buddies over games of tic-tac-toe.   Ma made Liam cry by pretending to have stolen his plate of cheese and crackers.

click on picture to see more

White Summons –

Common Pleas Court

Jurors summoned on-call for the week of December 21, 2009 through December 23, 2009: Your service for the one week period has been completed with sincere thanks of the Court for your time and consideration. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Yay!   I’m safe for a year at least!  Woohoo!