Anniversary

10 years. Where, exactly, does the time go?

Ten years ago today Meron and I were married here at Wesley. Like most every couple that exchanges those vows, we really had no idea what we were getting into. The general concept, sure, but the day-to-day details? Who really knows that stuff ahead of time?

I'm pretty sure, though, if you'd told us we'd have two great kids in ten years' time, we'd have been content with that. We have been, at least!

Anyway, we sent the kids to an extra day of TLC this week to enjoy the quiet. We spent the morning working on the house, as we are having two parties here this weekend. My mom and dad agreed to pick them up and keep them overnight, which thrilled the kids to no end. They have come to enjoy spending the night at Meemaw and Papaw's!

After Mom swung by here and picked up their bags, Meron and I headed down to Little Rock to do some last-minute shopping as well as have a nice dinner. We first went to Toys 'R Us to pick out gifts for the kids that would be from Meron's mother, who sent us the money instead of trying to pick out things herself.

After that, we walked over to Barnes and Noble. We picked out a couple of books from my grandmother to give to us and Meron also snuck around to get me a couple for Christmas as well. Because, as we all know, happiness is a pile of unread books.

Then we headed to Best Buy. My mom had also given us Christmas money to go and buy a new camera, since the screen had gone out on our old one, making it difficult to use. We looked around and finally settled on a bundle, with camera, bag, etc. that was on special, but it turned out they were out of them. We had them call the Conway Best Buy, and even though they couldn't get in touch with them, the inventory showed they had plenty. We resolved to stop in Conway on the way home.

By this time, it was time for dinner. We went over to the Olive Garden and, after waiting for about 20 minutes or so, got to have a wonderful dinner. We had a sampler of fried zucchini (for Meron) and fried mozzarella (for me), then Meron had the parmesan crusted tilapia, while I had the manicotti formaggio. Good stuff all the way around.

We then went over to the mall to check and see if the Build a Bear down there had the Star Wars outfits that I had seen on line (they did, so we may take the kids down there next month to make one if they want) and to get a couple of other items.

After a stop in Conway to get the camera and hit Target for a couple of other Christmas items, it was time to return home. A full day, but a great way to spend our anniversary by and large!

Making Cookies

This time of year, Meron really gets into the baking. Any of you that have come to our fairly annual open house/Christmas party have seen the large variety of cookies that are out for consumption. I think this year she has eight types scheduled for the big shindig, as well as to give out to some of our church shut-ins.

The one type she's most proud of, though, is her brown sugar cookies. She loves making them and they get very good reviews. She cuts them into shapes and then frosts them with brightly-colored frosting to make the stockings, trees, etc. look just so.

This year, she decided to let both Sarah and Benjamin cut out the shapes for the cookies. As you can see, they took to it very well.

Sarah was so particular with hers, as she can be a little fussy about things at times. She carefully put the cutters into the dough, then was later moving the cookies with a spatula.

Benjamin enjoyed the process as well, though I'm not sure he was as enamored with it as Sarah was. Still, he's been known to enjoy his time in the kitchen.

Here's what the cookies looked like before they were baked:

All in all, it was a good evening for the holiday family get-together stuff that you expect out of the holidays. Hopefully some of you will get to taste the results this weekend! I'll leave you with a few more scenes from today's cooking. You'll note that Sarah kept an eye on her brother when it was his turn, but goofed around some as well.....

Santa Time

Boy, this daily stuff is hard to do. Seems like I always remember it right before I head to bed, with no time to catch up. So today will likely be another double-dose, though if I forget the second half, I wouldn't be shocked.

I mentioned Richard Ruble in the Promise Keepers post of a few days ago. Richard has had bright white hair for as long as I've known him. I think he said it changed color in his thirties or so. Anyway, about June he stops getting haircuts and stops shaving, so as to be ready for this time of year, when he can play Santa Claus. He does it quite well, as you'll see.

This year, he had knee and hip surgery scheduled for late October, which he thought would give him enough rehab time to do his yearly Santa duties. However, the surgeries then got postponed to the first week in December, which meant he had to cancel all his appointments at various places.

Before he was scheduled to go in, though, Meron asked him if he could get the suit (he borrows it) and visit her mommy group. They met at one of the mom's house special for him to show. The kids loved it and I'm pretty sure Richard did as well. Meron got our kids all decked out for the event, putting them in some nice Christmas clothes. The result:

Hopefully this helps get or keep you in the Christmas spirit! Merry Christmas to all!

A Christmas Concert

Today was Benjamin's Christmas TLC concert. The oldest class in TLC puts on the Christmas music, while the second-to-oldest does Valentine's Day, which he did back in February. It was fun to see him singing all the songs and going through all the motions.

I've never had a lot of luck converting our video files to anything that can be seen anywhere but our computer, but if I get it working, you'll be able to see the first few minutes of his performance below. He's wearing a red vest and grey shirt and should be close to the center of your screen.

Just another one of those growing-up milestones. This will be the last thing he does for the parents until his "graduation" in May. Meron and I aren't quite ready to believe he'll be going to school next year!

Promise Keepers

It's Monday night, and usually right now I'd be sitting down at our church with the men of the Promise Keepers. Since I'm not, it seemed only fitting to talk about them.

I've probably talked about PK numerous times in the past, but it seems right to give a brief overview. PK at Wesley started in the summer of 2000. Phil Disney was wanting to start a men's Bible study based on the PK model. There were four of us who took him up on the offer back then--Richard Ruble, Dick Kleypas, Clarence Hesselrode and myself.

We met at Phil's house every Monday night at 8:00 pm. The TV might have Monday Night Football on occasionally, but mostly we'd sit around the kitchen and talk about things before heading into the den to have our devotional and study.

Then, after a couple of years, we were able to see faith in action when Phil unjustly lost his job. Instead of worrying on how things were going to pan out, where the money was coming from, he simply trusted that God had a plan for him. He interviewed a few places in the area, but nothing happened.

His faith was justified, however, when he received a job offer in Kentucky, his home state. Not only was he going back to his roots, but Owensboro was right between his son and his daughter, both of whom were married and had just had grandkids.

Needless to say we were very happy for him, but that meant we lost him (and our meeting spot!). We moved down to the church and, for a while, we were just four. After a preacher change, the new pastor would come occasionally, but he too moved on.

Clarence works in Clarksville, which is 20 minutes away, and lives even farther away than that. There were times he wouldn't make it in, which became more frequent as the processing job he holds started having him come in at three and four in the morning.

Most weeks we'd meet, though some we wouldn't if we knew it was only going to be two of us. We seemed to be in a rut membership-wise, even though we tried numerous things to get others to join us.

Then, one evening, a guy none of us knew showed up. We didn't know what to make of a complete stranger sitting in with us, but we welcomed him in. Turned out he actually was a member of the church, though he hadn't been attending for a long while.

Darren wasn't like the rest of us, which made for some great new blood in the group. His background was one where he came to God late, but he was determined to make up for lost time. He brought a passion and unique viewpoint to the group, which always meant we'd have good discussions if nothing else.

With a solid four people meeting, our weeks off became fewer and fewer. Occasionally it was still just two of us, but not often. Darren and I would sit down there waiting and talking, or Richard and I might chat a while before giving up for the evening.

The Lord had plans for Darren, though, and they weren't around Russellville. Earlier this year he moved off to Georgia, where he's involved with a ministry spreading the word among homeless people in the Atlanta area. Again, we were glad for him and knew he had to go, but hated to see him take off.

With it back down to the three of us, the group was still good and a highlight of the week, but meetings were a little more tentative. Richard was supposed to have knee and hip surgery at the beginning of December, though that got postponed until the beginning of January. Dick was going to England for Christmas, since his wife is from there, and left a week earlier than expected due to the death of his wife's brother-in-law from cancer. With him being gone a month and Richard then being out of commission, we decided to skip December and get back to meeting in the middle of January.

So it's very strange not being out on a Monday night. It doesn't seem like things are going as scheduled when I don't get down to the church and enjoy the fellowship. So that's one of the few reasons I'm looking forward to the middle of January, to get back into that embrace!

Sarah's First Haircut

Yesterday was a bit of a crazy day around the house, so I didn't think about my blog until way too late to do anything about it. So you'll get two entries today, one that will probably be panned as too picture-heavy and one that'll be panned for being too short. But they are entries none the less!

As you've seen from the pictures, Sarah's hair is a wonderful shade of red. However, it's taken its own sweet time really growing in. Meron would love to see pigtails and ponytails, but that's just not happening. Meron's mother had told her often that if she'd get Sarah's hair cut, it'd grow in faster. However, Meron's mother subscribes to a lot of old wives' tales and so we never really thought much about it.

The next time she took Benjamin for his haircut, though, she asked the beautician if that was true, and the woman said it most likely would help. She said she could give Sarah a pixie cut and she'd look girlish. So, with that in mind, Meron made the appointment for her first haircut.

Here is Sarah right before she went:

Meron's the one that took her, so I don't know first-hand how it went, but it seemed to go well. No crying or fussing, though I think she was pretty quiet when she first got in the chair. On the whole, though, she seemed to like the experience.

She seemed pretty happy with the finished product as well. This was two months ago and while the hair has gotten thicker, it still isn't very long. Hopefully the new year will bring a growth spurt!

Back To The Felt

One thing that you haven't been missing in my long hiatus is the poker updates. Not that you weren't wanting them, just that there haven't been any. Seemed like just about every regularly scheduled game wound up conflicting with something else, and so I hadn't been back out to The Shed since September, until last night.

It was good to be back out with the guys for a while. There were nine of us playing. Well, at least sitting around the table. I don't think Kevin was actually playing, since he kept sending his cards back on a regular basis.

I didn't have a spectacular night, but at least I was able to linger around until around 11:30, even if I was the third one out. At least once I won a nice bluff. All but a six for a straight was on the board, so I played like I had the six. Which meant my actual top pair wound up beating the folded two pair of Craig.

Still, though, I wasn't able to really win much of anything, just lingering around. I pushed all in with Buffalo Joe once, but we both had Queen-Jack, so we wound up splitting the pot. Finally, Craig went all in. I looked down at pocket 8s, realized it was around 11 and I had to get up to do the annual inventory at the local lumber company, and figured I might as well go for it. He had me covered by just a bit, so all my chips were on the line.

However, an eight came out on the flop and the trips held, so I wound up doubling up. Looking around the table, that seemed to put me in good position. Kevin was already out, Craig was down to four chips, Jeff, Russell and Ben all also were quite short. It looked like it was reasonable to believe that I could be at least in the top four.

Which means, of course, that it wasn't going to happen. Soon after the double-up, Ben went all in when I was in the big blind. It was less than double what I already had out there and I looked at King-10, so I tried for it. It didn't work. Soon after, he pushed again and I had Ace-eight. I called. Again, no luck.

So suddenly instead of having a comfortable stack, I'm not even twice the big blind when they were raised. A few hands later I had Ace-seven. I had 19K, with the next hand bringing the 10K big blind to me and the next the 5K small blind. So it was pretty much go now or go in a few and I went all in. Buffalo Joe called me with a pair of sevens and they held up.

It wasn't a memorable night at the felt by any means, but it was good to get out there again. They are playing next week, but since that's my 10th anniversary, I'd say I won't be out there. I look forward to joining them in the new year, though!

Talking Baseball (Literally)

While I have let this personal blog slide somewhat, I've stayed active over at my Cardinal blog. I've got a day planned to talk about that later on, but as part of that blog, I'm involved with a group called the United Cardinal Bloggers. (OK, involved is a minor term. Founded, organized, run, that's closer.)

Out of that group has come a weekly Internet radio show called the United Cardinal Bloggers Radio Hour. Every Wednesday night, a couple of the bloggers (right now we are rotating through three different hosting teams) spend an hour talking about Cardinal baseball, what's happening, what we want to happen, etc. Rarely get any callers, but I think we have some people that listen to the show via download either from the site or from iTunes.

Anyway, this year has been a huge year for the show. We've had numerous people as guest on there, including two of the major writers for the Cardinals, Derrick Goold from the Post-Dispatch and Matthew Leach (three times, including recently) from MLB.com.

We caught a break with the All-Star Game being in St. Louis this year. I was contacted by a media rep and, through some back and forth, was able to land for others talks with Cardinal Hall of Famers Bruce Sutter and Lou Brock.

However, I got to do the first interview, because there was no way I was handing it off to anyone else. The original e-mail was to get a chance to talk to Ozzie Smith, my favorite player growing up. It wasn't anywhere near smooth, but it was fun. Little did I know that I'd be seeing him in person in less than a month.

We've talked to minor league players on the show, but we were even able to grab a major league pitcher as well. PJ Walters didn't spend a whole lot of time up in St. Louis, but he's played in the big show.

I was able to take part in interviewing probably the most influential person we've talked to. Bill DeWitt III is the team president of the Cardinals and son of the majority owner. It was fun to talk to him, get some insights on what the front office is thinking, and to make a pitch for a personal project of mine.

We've had a lot of fun with the show and we look forward to seeing what happens next year!

Pumpkin Patches

Side note: This is my 300th blog entry here at this site. Hard to believe, huh?

When I was growing up, I don't remember pumpkin patches being a big deal. In fact, I don't remember them at all. In the last few years, though, they seem to have taken over Arkansas. Which has enthused my wife, because she loves taking pictures of the kids in such a setting.

This year, Meron, Benjamin and Sarah made it to three pumpkin patches. I only hit two of them, but we've got pictures from them all!

The first one we went to this year was down in Mayflower, not too far from Little Rock. We were invited by the parents of Benjamin's best friend Micah, who moved to LR earlier in the year. It was a surprise for Micah, who was overjoyed to see Benjamin again.

This was a huge pumpkin patch with the works. It had a hayride, which you rode out to the actual pumpkin patch, a playground, a corn maze, hay bales to climb on, a huge tub of corn to play in, you name it. The kids had a lot of fun playing, running and just generally enjoying the area.

You may not be able to tell on that one, but Benjamin and I are standing up on some of the hay bales, looking down at Meron taking the picture.

That was on a Saturday. The next Monday, the rest of the family went to the patch in Greenbriar with Meron's mommy group. Again, a good time was had by all.

Finally, at the end of that week, we took them over to the "pumpkin patch" that First UMC, the other Methodist church in town, has. It's not really a patch, since the pumpkins are brought in and put on the church grounds, but it's nicely arranged and the kids have a great time. The kids don't go to TLC there on Friday, but the classes were going to visit the pumpkin patch that day so we went when Benjamin's class was out there anyway. It was a bitterly cold day with a strong wind, so we didn't get just a whole lot of pictures out there. Still, some of them turned out pretty well!

Needless to say, after that week, we really didn't need to see any more of the pumpkins! We did get some at every stop, I believe, though most weren't very big. The kids carved a couple of them (OK, they picked out the pattern and helped a little, but basically Meron carved them) and they turned out pretty well. See?

Halloween 2009

And I was doing so well. First eight days, no problem. Oh, well, such is life. I'll do a post early this morning and another one this evening to catch up. Is that OK, dear reader(s)?

Good thing the one planned for yesterday (yes, I have a schedule written out) was a short one. The kids had a great time on Halloween. We don't do the door-to-door thing, but we spend the evening at the church with their Halloween Carnival.

At the Carnival, they do the trick-or-trunk, play some games, and ride on a hayride. You know, the same stuff they do every year.

This year, Benjamin had to have another Star Wars costume, of course, so he went as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Meron found a flower costume at a consignment sale and it fit Sarah perfectly. So here they are, in their dressed-up glory!

Four Years Ago

It began four years ago today.

I told the story so often back then that the dates tend to stick in my mind. Four years ago today I had a continuing education class down in Little Rock. On my way down to the class, I adjusted my watch and noted a spot with no feeling between my wrist and my thumb. I didn't think a whole lot about it, though I did worry at it most of the day, trying to figure out if it was supposed to be like that, I just hadn't noticed.

The class passed without incident and I drove back home. When I got out of the car, the back of my leg felt like it had cramped up, causing me to limp around a little bit.

I wouldn't walk normally for another four months.

Obviously, that's well in the past now. I still occasionally have people ask me if I had any long-term effects from the whole thing. Save for a little "dead spot" on my big toes, really not much at all. Thankfully, I seemed to have a mild case, though it didn't seem mild at the time. The more I've heard and read about it since then, though, has made me feel fortunate that I was able to recover as well as I did and as quickly as I did.

Still, with that whole Christmas season in 2005 shaded by trying to figure out what was wrong and what we were going to do about it, it's not too surprising that when the calendar flips to December, my mind tends to remember where I was that year and what I was doing.

And give thanks that I'm not doing it now.

Going to the Razorback Game

Richard Ruble, a member of my Promise Keeper group and a member of my church for as far back as I can remember, every year gets season tickets to Razorback games. Often he doesn't get to go to all of them and he'll find people to either buy or give his tickets to. I always let him know that I'm willing to take them if he can't find anyone else, and I've been lucky enough to use his Fayetteville tickets a couple of times.

This season, Richard called me a couple of times to go to Fayetteville, but both times they worked out where I couldn't make it. Never having gone to Little Rock for a ballgame (at least since my freshman year on campus), I figured I'd have to wait until next year to take Benjamin to his first Razorback game.

However, the day before the Hogs last game at home, which was down in LR, Richard called and asked if I wanted to go. I worked it out with Meron, since it was an early start (11:30 kickoff), and Benjamin and I headed on down to Little Rock.

Being that I'd never driven to a game at War Memorial Stadium, I had to try to find a place to park. I didn't want to get too close to the stadium, mainly because that'd be too pricey (but the side benefit of being able to get out early, because I already knew there was no way Benjamin was going to make it through the whole game) but I didn't want to walk terribly far.

After a little driving around the neighborhood, I finally parked at a school uphill from the stadium. You can see our trek on the map, though it doesn't really take into account elevation. (Apparently the map doesn't keep the markers, but the school was the big gap between Hillcrest and Kavanaugh and the stadium was at the very bottom of the map. It was a straight walk, downhill there, uphill back, for the most part.)

View Larger Map

Between the fact that we left later than I expected to, the trouble finding a place to park, and the walk to and into the stadium, we actually missed the kickoff of the game, which was too bad, because I thought Benjamin would have gotten a kick out of seeing the players run through the A the band makes. Still, we didn't miss any plays, I don't think.

Benjamin seemed to think the sights were pretty nice, but almost immediately he was asking for his real focus: a hot dog. We waited a few minutes to let the rest of the late arrivals come up and get to their seats, then hit the bathroom and the basically-vacant concession stands.

We both got a hot dog and a drink and then went back up to our seats. Benjamin got to work on the food while I watched the game. Mississippi State took an early 7-0 lead, but it didn't last very long. There were some nice plays, including a great bomb down the sidelines by Ryan Mallett that went for about 50 yards are so.

After the food was gone, Benjamin lost a lot of interest. He would go in spurts, get fired up and cheer, then start whining that he wanted to go home. I told him we were staying until halftime and tried to get him interested in seeing the band, but he'd have none of that.

Still, there were parts he liked. He loved seeing them run around with the Razorback flag after the Hogs scored. He got into the "Arkansas" "Razorbacks!" cheer with the other side of the stadium. A section or so over had a beach ball going in the crowd and he watched that with interest, hoping it'd come our way (though it never did). I let him take a couple of pictures with my cell phone, which had mixed results as you can see.

One of the times when he was wanting to go, I got him distracted by seeing if he'd guess whether they'd run or pass the ball on the coming play. He actually went four for four in guessing before missing one, including calling two runs in a row, which this incarnation of Hogs isn't necessarily known for doing.

When the field goal kicker missed a 50+ yarder with 2 seconds left in the half, though, it was time to go. We headed out, missing the crowd of course. By time we walked up the hill and got back into the car, halftime was over and the game was into the third quarter. We listened to it some on our way home, keeping track of what turned out to be a comfortable Razorback victory.

I made sure Benjamin thanked Richard the next day for the tickets and he told him that he'd had a good time. Richard said we'd have to make sure he got to do it again next year, maybe with a trip up to Fayetteville. I think Benjamin might be up for that!

Daddy-Kids Day

Back in September, Benjamin had a birthday party to go to on a Friday when I was home from work. So he and Meron went to that while Sarah and I had what we called "Daddy-daughter day", which basically was a trip to McDonald's for lunch.

Today, Meron went to see the new Twilight movie this afternoon and then had a dinner with her mom's group this evening, so it was "Daddy-kids day." Didn't seem to bother the kids any, and I was always up for it.

While Meron was at the movie, there wasn't much going on. Sarah went down for her nap and I let Benjamin play a few games on the internet at PBS Kids while I did the dishes. After I got done with that, I sat down to play the Star Wars Lego game that is on the Lego site, with Benjamin watching and cheering. It's a little advanced for him to actually play it, but he enjoys seeing it and seeing what happens.

Sarah woke up around 3 and we got a snack, but it wasn't too long after that when Meron got back from the show.

While she was at home, I wanted to get this arch up that was still missing from our Christmas decorations. A few years back, we bought this arch and lights set after Christmas and we've enjoyed putting it up since then. It came with greenery as well as zip ties to put it on, but after the first year, when we had to cut the zip ties off at the end of the season, we've just attached the lights on it.

I went out to get the pieces out of the garage, but it was freezing cold outside (at least to my point of view) and the metal was cold from sitting out in the garage, so I brought everything in. Of course, that meant Benjamin especially (though Sarah also tried) had to help put it together. Benjamin did OK, though I found out when I was outside that I had to undo and reverse most of what he had done.

So we get out, fuss with the arch in the cold and occasional drizzle. Sarah comes out for a few minutes, but her and Meron quickly return inside. Benjamin, however, stays out with me, though he spent more of his time running around the yard rather than helping me out. He would hold things when I asked him to, though, so you can't fault him.

This year, after I got the lights attached to the metal frame, I decided to run some more lights through them. We had a set of red and green C9 lights that we hadn't used yet, so I ran those through the frame as well. It turned out fairly well, though I didn't even out the lights when I sent them through, so one side is heavy with them.

It was about 5:30 when I finished that up. I was going to run another strand of 100 multi lights through it, but I didn't have time and Meron thought that'd be too much. (I, on the other hand, have never seen "too much" when it comes to Christmas lights.)

After I came in and changed clothes, Meron left and I took the kids out to K-Mart for a couple of things (this time of year, it's much better to brave K-Mart than Wal-Mart) and then we grabbed a pizza and came home. It may not have been the most exciting of days with the dad, but I didn't hear a lot of complaining. (That'll be when they are a few years older, I figure!)

Christmas Events

The last couple of days have started some of the annual Christmas activities. Every year you can look forward to a few things in December as part of the holiday season, and the city parade and the office Christmas party are two of them.

Thursday was the Russellville parade. I've been told it's the largest in the state, and I don't doubt it. The crowds are large and the parade goes on for quite some time. They changed the parade route a few years back so that it doesn't go past my office, unfortunately, but over by the old junior high school. Thankfully, that's on our side of town and we can use some back roads to find a place to park and go stake out a spot.

For the 6:30 parade, we got there probably about 5:45. We brought our chairs and our blankets, as it was pretty close to freezing. (It would get below freezing later in the night, and last night it was 18. How strange is that for Arkansas?)

With the kids now, the problem is keeping them still while we sit inches from one of the main streets as traffic is still going. They don't block off the road until closer to 6:15, so until then cars are whooshing by. Benjamin is old enough now that he will stay pretty still, but we had to make sure to keep Sarah in Meron's lap to make sure she didn't scramble the wrong way.

My mistake for the parade happened earlier in the day, when I went and purchased a Route 44 drink from Sonic during Happy Hour. (Honestly, you have to love half price drinks, right?) Anyway, that all hit my bladder about two minutes before the parade was going to start. So I spent the hour dancing around and hoping the parade would end!

There were a number of good floats this year, and there seemed to be a minimum of trash trucks and other vehicles with a few lights on them to make them Christmasy. Of course the emergency vehicles were in the parade as were the classic cars. Can't have a parade without them! All in all, though, it was a good parade, capped off with Santa on top of the fire truck.

Last night, we had our annual office Christmas dinner. For many years, my parents had it out at their house, but the last three years they've held it at the old Tyson Management Center out by the nuclear plant. It's been refurbished and redone into a very nice meeting center that caters a good meal.

This year, it was tortilla encrusted tilapia and prime rib for the choices. I had both and thought they were very tasty. Unfortunately, my years of living with a cook who doesn't do red meat means that sometimes eating a large quantity of it doesn't always agree with me. That prime rib and I went rounds when I got home!

For dessert, we had creme brulee. Now, my coworker Chris loves the creme brulee. He first had it when we were out in Arizona four years ago and can't stop talking about it. Two years ago, in our first party out there, they served that for dessert, so he was quite disappointed when they didn't last year.

This year, as everyone is arriving and milling around, I notice that they already have the creme brulee on the tables, even though we've not had any of the meal yet. Another coworker notices this as well, but Chris is off talking and has no idea. So we took all the creme brulee from his side of the table and hid them.

He goes through the whole meal without noticing. He doesn't notice that Meron and I, after our meal, are eating something for dessert. However, that coworker comes over with hers and he says, "What are you eating? Where'd you get that?" We tried to tell him that they ran out, but he wasn't to be denied, trying to sniff it out wherever he could. Finally, we gave his back to him. I think he only had his and his wife's, though people kept bringing him extra ones or leftovers.

The holiday traditions are always fun, aren't they?

Thanksgiving Weekend

It seems hard to believe that it's already been a week since the long Thanksgiving weekend. As with every year, we spent the day out at my parents' house, with a good portion of my mother's family, plus my dad's brother and his wife that live up the road. My mom's mother, brother, his wife, their three sons, and the wife of one of the boys means that there are about 15 of us all around for the afternoon, enjoying the food and just relaxing. It's always nice to sit around, waiting on the meal, looking at the shopping circulars that are in the paper, even though I'm not crazy enough to actually go out on Black Friday.

This year, both Benjamin and Sarah stayed with my parents for the night and went with them Friday to take my grandmother back to her house in Newark, on the other side of the state. So for only the second time since Sarah was born, we had the house to ourselves. Boy, it's quiet when the kids aren't there!

We used that time to get started on the Christmas decorations. I got all the boxes out of the garage, which is quite a few. We put up both trees, the taller one that goes in the den and the shorter one, passed down to me by my parents, the tree older than I am, in Sarah's room. Most years, we've put it up in Benjamin's room, but since Sarah never spends time in her room, we had given her toddler bed back to the people that had let us borrow it, and there was much more room in her room, we went that route. (Benjamin got one of those table-top trees in his room with miniature ornaments.)

Friday, we slept in, which was lovely. No kids in the bed, no reason to get up and around, just not something you have very often! When we did stir, we started putting other decorations around the house then, after a lunch out, we came back and worked on the outside of the house. We are people that love lots of lights, so it took the both of us working on it to get it done before it got dark and the kids got back. We didn't quite finish, but the majority of the work got done then.

Saturday, the kids went to spend some time with a couple from our church that have basically adopted them as grandchildren. That gave us time to finish working on the outside (save for a lighted arch that I still haven't gotten up yet). After that, Meron went to pick up the kids while I went over to my friend Andy's parents house to watch the LSU/Arkansas game. It's been a tradition in our high school friends group to watch that game, but the power that be moved it from Friday afternoon to Saturday night, so I was the only one that made it, and I had to leave at halftime. Still, it was good to see Andy again for a little while.

Sunday, we let the kids help put ornaments on the tree. They decided which ones were going in Sarah's room and which ones were going on the main tree, then Benjamin especially got into hanging them on the tree. So if you come to our house and notice it's a little ornament heavy in one spot, you can thank him. Sarah tried a couple of times, but then lost interest and let us finish it up. Meron helped Benjamin on the main tree while I put on hooks, while we flipped assignments on the secondary tree.

For the most part, the house is all Christmas-fied. Which is good, since we have two holiday parties to host in the next couple of weeks!

Fall Photo Shoot

The day after Benjamin's birthday party, Meron decided that, after church, we should stick around and take some pictures in the leaves surrounding the building. The kids got dressed up for services, then afterwards I found a rake and started making a pile. Here are some of the results!