Veenie Babies

Remember us?

2007-03-04T12:09:00.000-05:00

This is our fancy, professional-like, family portrait. The scan's not the best and there are imperfections in the pose that I think the photographer should have caught (like the overall darkness for example), but I still like it. We are the Veenie Babies, after all, perfection and cleanliness are not our style. Don't worry Jamikins, we ordered some reprints so that you could have a 5X7, but you owe us $129.84.

What follows this post are about two months worth of unblogged events and photos. They're not neccessarily in chronological order, so cut me some slack, remembering of course, that Veenie Babies = imperfection. I hope you enjoy them and I hope you haven't missed the blog too much. It's been about two years, and I think we're all starting to lose some momentum on our on-line journals. I know, I know, say it ain't so. . . but that's just the facts of life, folks. At first they were a wonderful way of sharing our lives with minimal effort, but, at least with me, even this is becoming too much work. Veenie Babies is not gonna go away, but the guilt over not updating it seems to have ridden off into the sunset.

You say it's your birthday? It's my birthday too.

2007-03-04T11:34:00.000-05:00

Here are some pics from my birthday party this year. . . er, I mean Hailie's birthday party. Or was it Laura's? Or Brandi's? Or Danny's or Emily's for that matter. . . heck, I don't know. The point is, we were all together, we each aged a year, and a good time was had by all. That's what birthday's are all about, right? Oh, of course we got presents, too, that's what birthday's are all about, right? But since it was just about two months ago, I don't remember what any of them were. Other party componants included dancing, games, prizes, and one sick child watching TV in grandma's bedroom.

The picture Jamie doesn't want you to see.

2007-03-03T23:27:00.000-05:00

We got a new bed.

2007-03-03T23:14:00.000-05:00

It's attractive, soft yet firm, and has a sweet 'new-bedding' smell. It's nearly twice as tall as our old bed, though, and you need to attend some kind of college-level lab to figure out how to make it, but all-in-all, our contentedness-quotient has just improved five-fold. The first night, though, I was extremely uncomfortable, and couldn't sleep. I assumed it was the bed and felt very disapointed, but then I ran to the bathroom to upchuck, and realized that I was only sick. I did it three more times, but it was a relief to know that the bed wasn't the problem, considering how much we paid for this beast (tax return $).

This is why he doesn't get paid for babysitting

2007-03-03T23:05:00.000-05:00

Chantze wasn't actually babysitting. He actually just soothed Elia to sleep in his bed then fell asleep himself. He's very sweet to his little cousin and I think he's one of her favorite people. When we go next door to pick up the kids after school, sometimes we can be a bit overwhelming to the baby, and the first person she runs for is her big cousin. Then when I see him fawning over her, I have to wonder why he isn't kindler and gentler to his own sisters.

Kids with cameras

2007-03-03T22:54:00.000-05:00

Up above is a picture of me, taken by Paige, as I'm learning important things about the unifying theory between quantum mechanics and astrophysics from a camoflauged textbook, see how it blends in with my pants? And below is a collection of pictures the kids took themselves - of themselves (but mostly by Paige again). I really like what they've done, and I think that I'll allow them to do it more often. I had to edit the crap out of them, but the way they've captured their personalities is more than a little impressive. Wouldst thou not concurreth?

We're constantly being stalked by wild beasts

2007-03-03T22:43:00.000-05:00

This is a deer. They come into our backyard. Everyday. We don't see them everyday, though. Sometimes we are doing other things. Like being at work. Or painting flattering likenesses of Goerge W. on our walls with different colors of toothpaste. In case you couldn't tell, this post goes with the post below. It would have made sense to put them in the same post. Google video didn't seem amenable to that. Ho-hum.

The Return of the King (from picking up his daughters at daycare)

2007-03-03T22:20:00.000-05:00

This is just one of the weird random things we find left out by the girls after their attention spans drag them elsewhere. Another common discovery is every seat at our dinette occupied by stuffed dogs - and no, they're not playing poker, I think they're coloring and having birthday parties. Remember the people on plates from a few months ago? That was just creepy. And the superhero's sitting around a cup of water with half-naked polly pockets? I also have another picture which I'm reluctant to post, containing two female dolls under the sheets of a toy bed, one kind of on top of the other. I really like them at that age, and I'm completely sure that I'm gonna miss this kind of stuff when I start finding non-Dora undergarments and wrappers from the monthly 'you-know-whats' laying around.

Pictures of three-fourths of my brood.

2007-03-03T17:37:00.000-05:00

This here is just a collage of some random pics Maw snapped with the newer camera. In my opinion, its stills ain't so good, the color is realistic but the lighting and detail is too low. Anysuchaways, we been playing lots of board games and the like - these here expressions may have been taken during one of those bouts: Chantze arrogant, Paige frustrated, Brooke cool as always.

Winter dawg.

2007-03-03T15:50:00.000-05:00

Here she is, curled obediently in her doggie-corner after coming in from outside. She knows that when she's covered with snow that to go anywhere but directly to her blanket results in angry faces and angry voices. Here she is saying, "Did I do what I was supposed to do good?"

Hailie's song

2006-12-29T12:26:00.000-05:00


She did a good job, huh? btw, big birthday party for everybody at Grandma's, Sat, Jan. 13th.

Jibson Christmas program

2006-12-29T12:12:00.000-05:00

Kids impromptu play

2006-12-29T12:07:00.000-05:00


The kids make up yet another play

First gifts 2006

2006-12-29T12:06:00.000-05:00


After posing and unneccessary delays, the kids finally get to open one.

Veenie Baby Christmas slideshow 2006

2006-12-29T12:03:00.000-05:00


Veenie Baby Christmas slideshow 2006

And then on Christmas Eve...

2006-12-26T11:07:00.000-05:00

Will he shoot his eye out?

2006-12-26T11:05:00.000-05:00

Unlike Ralphie from the movie, Chantze has been very conscientious about safety and such. I can't get him to use a better posture, but his aim is surprisingly good. In this instance, not having a white Christmas worked to our advantage - the weather has been just lovely, and we were able to spend a couple days outside shooting. Here we are aiming at this 'Hawaaian Punch' container, and after about fifty shots, I felt a richocheted BB bounce off my shoulder. On closer inspection, the plastic punch carton was completely undamaged - the BB's had been bouncing off from it the whole time. I'm a bad 'parental superviser' I guess. We switched over to a beer can at that point.

A very Veenie christmas

2006-12-26T11:00:00.000-05:00

Ahh... here we are once more. That most magical night of all nights, the night before Christmas Eve (or whenever we get an opportunity to have our Christmas in between other Christmas'es and my visitation schedule - in this case, Dec. 23rd, 8 pm). It was exceptionally sweet, with everybody getting exciting, touching, well-thought-out gifts, and no yelling whatsoever. It's about love, and togetherness, and giving from the heart, not to mention acquiring every single one of the materiel items you've had your eye on for the previous year but didn't have a good enough reason to buy.

Here's a rundown of the major acquisitions: Hailie - clothes, jewelry & giftcards, Twins - 'Wake-me-up' Rescue pets, & Barbies ('Baby Dr.', 'teacher', and '12 dancing princesses' varieties), Chantze - PS2 games and a Red Ryder B.B. gun, Cindy - perfume, undergarments, and season 1 & 2 of Newsradio, me - laptop accessories, boots, and the PC game and clothes I got early.

Hailie's school pic - sort of.

2006-12-18T12:20:00.000-05:00

Here's another couple miscellaneous and meaningless photos. Or are they?

And lastly, Dalphon the great.

Glamour Ghouls

2006-12-18T12:14:00.000-05:00

Just playing around with the new camera. These're some cute ones, eh?

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS BABY!

2006-12-18T12:08:00.000-05:00

He came back with bags full of souveniers, mostly for himself, but there were several nice things for his sisters so we can forgive him. It was all money he'd saved himself anyway. He did bring the digital camera and took a few pictures, but I'm not gonna put them up at this juncture. Maybe later if everybody begs good enough.

I want to ride this more than any other ride in any other amusement park anywhere in the world.

We Chucke-eed while Chantze was away

2006-12-18T11:46:00.000-05:00

We had lots of fun, even without the boy, and took lots of video. For some reason, I only felt compelled to upload the video that explains the pictures. It amenable to my sense of balance I suppose.

Testin the new videocam

2006-12-15T15:01:00.000-05:00

This may not work, but if it does, it is a movie I made of our practice of the song we're doing in church this weekend. "What Child is this". Hailie's singing, I'm playing guit-box, and Cindy's the puppet. That ugly white frame of the puppet theatre is now covered by brown materiel which I'm proud to say I sewed myself on Cindy's mom's sewing machine. I'm sure I'll post more pics after the fact, but I was just curious if I could put all of my newfound graphical tools and knowlege to work.

Tic off another one (total of eleven)

2006-12-10T08:12:00.000-05:00

Here's the only picture we have of Chantze's birthday party last weekend (of Chantze anyway, there are several of Elia). It's a shocking, scandelous situation, I know, but our digital camera is getting so old and hard to use. It's got duct tape holding the battery door shut that you have to peel off every time you need to change the batteries, (which is everytime you go to use it) and the flash takes almost two minutes to charge for each pic - no exaggeration. So we've been needing a new camera for a while, and a few nights ago, we bought one - as a sort of a family Christmas present. In fact, it's a hard drive, digital video camera, so we might be posting some videos from time to time. That's if it doesn't take too long to upload with dial-up.

But back to the party. Chantze had a few buddies spend the night, and I think they all had fun. He got a star wars playstation game, starwars action figures, a star wars lightsaber, and we got him this other big lightsabre kit so he can build and design his own, but it turns out that its so fancy, he doesn't want to take it outside or use it to fight his cousins with. So anyway, yeah, it was a big 'star wars' party, even the cake had a couple jedi fighting on top of it. I'm kind of ashamed that we didn't get a better picture of the cake, but veeflower got almost the same shot, with the cake, here.

Incidentally, Chantze is gone to Florida right now and we let him take the rotting digital camera, so, we ought to have some pictures of his trip for you next week. Between that, the new camera, and Christmas a-comin, Veenie Babies posts should be more prolific in the near future.

(one last little thing - turn on your powers of perception and click here, what do you see? Nothing? try again, don't give up)

NEW GLASSES! WOO-HOOOO!!!

2006-11-14T20:02:00.000-05:00

I MAY NOT BE THE FIRST TO POST PICTURES OF THEIR GLASSES, BUT MY PICTURES ARE OF WHEN THEY FIRST WORE THE GLASSES. HAH!

So both of them can see better now, which is good. And they look awfully darn cute, which is also good. But they don't like wearing them at all, which is bad. As they were having their new frames adjusted to their faces, both of them seemed miserable, Paige more so than Brooks. As soon as the lady was done, they wanted to take them off and we had to say, "Sorry sweetie, you're supposed to keep them on." The obvious next question was "For how long?", and we didn't quite have the heart to tell them. They wore them for Aunt Jamie, Then Gramma Violet, then Meemaw and Papa, then to do their homework, but as you can probably guess, they took them off every time in between.

The bottow two pictures are just random playtime and homework time pictures to fill the collage, as is this gem below. (They know they're not allowed to play 'Hannibal the Cannibal'.)

Your typical Veenie Baby post

2006-11-07T20:45:00.000-05:00

Oh the things I have to tell you.

First: Chantze. He had a headache for two days and was complaining of seeing flashes of light. I was concerned enough to take off work today to get him in to see the pediatrician. He may be developing migraines, so pray for that, but he’s otherwise good and healthy. Here’s the funny thing: the doctor asked if I had a family history of migraines and I started going on about my mom and my sister. He nods and says, “Yes, that’s the family history I was looking for.” Then I had to sheepishly explain, “Oh, but Dr. Woods? I’m not his biological father. I adopted him.”

An excerpt from Paige’s mealtime prayer yesterday: “…and help me so I doesn’t puke. And don’t let anybody in my family puke. Cuz I don’t wanna puke. Amen.”

At conferences tonight, Brooke’s teacher told us a story that really embarrassed me. After her oral presentation, one of the kids asked if her story was about her pool. She went on to tell the whole class, “No, we don’t have a pool, but my daddy writes books and when they get published, he’s gonna get lots of money and we’re gonna get a pool. We’re not poor, though, we’re ‘in-between’.”

Here’s something else about Brooke’s teacher, she went to high school with Cindy and they ran track together. Mrs. Mezeski told this to Brooke and class, and when she got home, she asked Cindy about it. When Cindy confirmed that, yes, they ran track together, Brooke asked, “Did you hold hands? So you didn’t get lost?” Cindy said, "No, she was faster than me."

Stay tuned for in-depth Christmas and birthday lists from the kids.

Check out these pictures

Remember this pic from a long time ago? Turns out it's prophetic.

2006-11-03T05:32:00.000-05:00

Paige was crying at breakfast this morning, sitting ‘Indian style’ in a kitchen chair with her head on the table. She looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “My pants are too tight. It hurts when I sit criss-cross applesauce.”

We took them for an eye exam and they’re both farsighted. Glasses are ordered and will arrive in two weeks (thank-you, God, for good work benefits including vision). Neither of them are very happy about it, and in fact, while we were trying to help them decide on frames, Brooke flopped down in a chair looking very sad. I thought it was because she didn’t like the frames she’d picked out, even though they were both extremely cute. Her explanation was, “I like the glasses but I don’t want them.” I felt really bad for her, but despite this fact, both of them tried to walk out with the display frames in their hands. (FYI, Paige’s are classy gold wire-frames, and Brooke’s are contemporary, plastic, purple ones)

And Chantze? Well. He’s achieving a measure of fame at his school for eating multiple atomic fireballs at the same time. Tomorrow some of the kids are bringing in other hot stuff for him to eat to kind of step up the challenge.

Don't be scared - they're just costumes.

2006-11-01T20:40:00.000-05:00

Here is the recap of last night’s big game: Bride lasted forty minutes but wanted to be done after ten, Tinkerbell lasted an hour and five minutes and held hands with anybody who’d take it, Executioner played the whole game, every second, hauling in the most loot and throwing up in the van on the way home.

A note on the playing field: Mom’s house was the best house in the neighborhood. She really goes all out, maximizing her creativity and resources, for occasions like these. Her garage door was up and she had this black backdrop set with gravestones. For mood, she had music, a strobe light, and her smoke machine. The mummy was attatched to strings so they could make it dance to the music from the candy-passing station in the breezeway. I stood in the driveway for a little while and watched kids laughing and dancing with the mummy, and I heard one mom say, “I could hang out here all night.”

School Pictures 2006

2006-11-01T20:12:00.000-05:00

Here's some stuff about some things.

2006-10-21T08:50:00.000-04:00

We finally caught one of Hailie's games the other day, and I've gotta say, totally objectively of course, that my daughter is a great cheerleader. Look at those straight arms, that determined grit, that poise - this young lady takes her school spirit seriously. Except when she's messing around with her bud, Shauna. Then we went out to dinner and had a fascinating conversation about the social dynamics at her school and among her circle of friends. It was pretty much what you'd expect, and like with any good drama, it seems to suck you in and make you curious about all of the characters. But I have to say, again, totally objectively, that my daughter is about the only one with the maturity to rise above all of the petty squabbles, alliances, and deceptions. If you ever want to ask her about it, it'll take a while to get her to be willing to explain everything (there's simply too much background information that goes into giving you the proper framework to understand why so-and-so wanted revenge on so-and-so) but its well worth it.

Quick Chantze tale: He came in from outside the other day while Cindy and I were talking in the office. We tried to pull off our usual "We know what you did" stunt, to try to get him to admit to something, but apparently there was nothing for him to confess to.

Me: This is your only chance, confess now and we'll lighten your punishment.
Chantze: But dad, I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!
Me: Oh, getting an attitude now? I'm gonna have to double your chores.
Chantze: What? That's not fair!
Cindy: Chantze! Go unload the dishwasher.
Me: Whoa... you're mean.

(because she would have made him do it and laughed about it afterwards)

Mac Daddy rules the court with lightning moves and matching ‘tude

2006-10-09T06:39:00.000-04:00

Chantze story: We've been playing a lot of basketball in the driveway lately. A little one-on-one, but mostly 'horse' and a game we made up called 'ten'. You basically make ten shots in a row, adding one for baskets, subtracting one for misses. It may not sound that hard, but you have to get exactly to half of them to break zero. My high score is six, Chantze's is like three (Uncle Sam got a ten once). The important thing is that you don't end up with a negative score. I've been thinking of adding a penalty for a negative score, but it needs to be something that I can do easily, but Chantze can't. Any suggestions?

Brooke story: I walked into my bedroom on Saturday morning and found this little girl lyin on her side with her back to me. I asked if she was sick or something, but as I walked past, I noticed a row of stuffed puppies and kittens with their snouts pressed into her stomach. "I'm their momma."

Paige story: The twins spend an inordinate amount of time coloring, writing and drawing on every scrap of paper they can get their hands on. Completely out of left field, Paige shows me this note she intended to put under her pillow.

“I am sorry that I don’t have a tooth.”

Apparently some strange urge made her feel guilty about not losing any teeth. Wanting to stay on good terms with the tooth fairy, she left her this friendly message.

Happy Birthday girly-girls

2006-10-09T06:14:00.000-04:00

And now we’re six – actually not until next Saturday, but it was a rockin celebration nonetheless. Brooke and Paige had a couple friends overnight, balloons and streamers were flying, the manufacturers of Polly Pockets made a bundle, and a good-sized group of family and friends ate all the way to the bottom of a big pot of chili.

It was nice to finally have a birthday party for them in our home. If you remember, last year we were staying with the inlaws during our construction, and the year before that, the party was at church. So it’s been since their third birthday that they’ve had a real party, in theiry own home, and I doubt that they can remember back that far.

Above is general party action: the girls from left to right are Brooke, Jordan, Molly, and Paige. Note the loot in the bottom picture – the highlight of every birthday party. Below are the piñata pictures which I nearly forgot. Only it wasn’t a traditionsl piñata. The kids pulled on ribbons dangling from Dora’s butt, and they all slid free except for the one that opened the trap door, dumping the candy. My brilliant son held his open bag beneath the stream of goodies – I’m so proud of him.

Twin Trim and bonus stories

2006-10-02T05:18:00.000-04:00

Here they are getting their biggest haircut in over a year. They're both pretty happy with the end result, but let me warn you, it'll hurt Brooke's feelings if you don't recognize that she had about five inches cut off. Paige wanted a drastic haircut but Brooke didn't. Okay? So at the birthday party this coming Saturday at our house at three in the afternoon where we'll be serving chili for anyone who wants to stay afterwards and eat and visit, make sure you make a big deal out of how beautiful both haircuts are (because they are - I would never encourage you to lie).

Let me leave you with two related stories, starring Paige, related to the cleaning of her bedroom. Cindy usually sends the girls in there with a number, "Pick up twenty-five toys", the idea is to get them used to cleaning, not to actually get their room clean - none of us have that kind of ambition. I don't think I have to tell you this, but Paige is usually the one that gives us the bigger problem. The last few times haven't been that bad, though, one day she came out with a smile and announced that she'd picked up thirty toys (more than she was told). When we made a big deal and praised her, she said, "Yeah, I counted by twos." So, another time more recently, we had them in there cleaning, she came out of her room and said, "I picked up thirty-one toys." Just joking, I asked if she counted by twos. She didn't, but the question seemed to prick her consciounse. She goes, "I need to tell you something, I started at twenty."

Anonymous said...

2006-09-25T10:20:00.000-04:00

Anonymous said...
sure enjoyed your family news...thank you....just like being there. We live too far apart dag nab it.....

Anonymous said...
oh how I wished I were there to sit by the firepit....I sure do miss that...we are not allowed to have fires in town...dang it...cant wait till next summer.....hopefully we will be invited for a evening of song and hotdogs.....and firepit conversations...and singing of course.....ta ta....grma

Anonymous said...
your grandma in tulsa is very, very happy for you and love the pictures.....enjoy , enjoy , enjoy

Anonymous said...
you are so good looking ramondo....do you know who this is...? love ya....nice cake....thanks for your blog...keeps me in touch....so who am I?

Anonymous said...
Nice family outing. thanks for the pictures. I do enjoy them so much.

Anonymous said...
Why not bring your vedio camara and record this great time u all are having ...it would be so nice to see. pleaseeeeeeeeee...cant wait.............

Anonymous said...
I hope you enjoyed your walk with the kids. Bet it was nice to get home and enjoy the warmth and cozy furnace. Quite an adventure. Happy you are all safe and warm.

Anonymous said...
Love the pictures...thank you ever so much.

Anonymous said...
love their answers. Great grandmas are eager for the pictures. The comments are a bonus. Thanks so much

Anonymous said...
Chance I love it....omg....you too dad.....handsome pair I would say....your grandma from tulsa is tellig you this

Anonymous said...
Im alway's coming to visit your blog and now I feel disipointed because there are no new post's : ( *sigh*

Anonymous said...
my gooodness another story teller in the family. I enjoyed it so much Chance...cant wait for the rest of the story

Anonymous said...
When I get this dang camara fixed I will send some pictures also, with Vans help (the first few times, well maybe the first ten times) I cant find the software to show the pictures or print them on my computer. Van will know what to do. thank you sooooooo veryyyyyy muchhhhhh mr wonderful. YOu are sweet to share such great pictures of the events you attend. ty ty ty ty ty

Anonymous said...
a very special day for both dad and daughters...beautiful....thank you for sharing.....and ...also wanted to say whats the new arrivals name...(the bunny)

Anonymous said...
sure enjoyed that post cd...makes me have faith in the comeing generation if they get that kind of attention from their dads. So happy that you enjoyed it and Im sure it made the girls feel very important and loved.

Anonymous said...
looks like everyone had a great time...thank you so much for the pictures...I sure do enjoy seeing them.....

Anonymous said...
It's about time you got the yard seeded so that when I come to your house for a party and want to sit out by the fire, the wind won't blow dust and sand in my eyes and hot dog. Thank you! I would have liked to be there to help. Instead, I did some work in my own yard. Wah.

Anonymous said...
its worth every back braking hour you spend on it....yea a fire and no sand ot blow in our eyes (like at the beach) yeaaaaaaaaaa

Anonymous said...
just think what they will look like in ten years....time really flies......nice to see them so happy.....thank you again for shareing the lovely picutures.

Anonymous said...
this is special..makes me soooooo darned jelous....dang it....love pit fires and guitars and visiting and singing around a fire....its the best time of all for me....cant wait till Aug.....

Anonymous said...
this looks like a wonderful country church....beautiful...peaceful ...

Anonymous said...
busy, busy family and a happy looking family. thats what makes the world go around.......thanks for the lovely pictures...enjoyed them so much. see you in Aug. if the creek dont rise....

Anonymous said...
reminds me of the days when your grandpa would take your mom and the rest to Rodens for a bag of candy and whatever else and remember Nipper had to go also...he insisted.

Anonymous said...
I think the name of the grocery store in Lakewood was Rawdons...spelled that wromg above

Anonymous said...
thats youth for you..always clownig around....they look happy....remember your middle teens.....

Anonymous said...
loveeeee the pictures...tanks ramondo...enjoy them so much. good luck with the new laptop they can be a thorn in the side...

Anonymous said...
I love the pictures, however.....your hair ? I loved the way you use to wear your hair..it was sooooooo neat...this style makes you look old...no way....go back to your handsome self hair style....your a young dude and a good lookin on at that...so....dont spoil it with that shaved look PLEASE>>>>>>>>

grandlar said...
thank you chill....loved the pictures and the update...its like a ray of sunshine to me....thank you again.....

grandlar said...
did you know that cat's urine glows under a black light? (so does ringworm)

grandlar said...
oouch! I can relate...poor little girl....she will be in misery till tht cast is off I am sure....bless her heart.....

grandlar said...
these pictures will surely be a blessing as time passes....its so nice of you to share...better put them on a cd so you will keep them forever...thank you so much ....bless her heart...

grandlar said...
the older you get the more pictures are important...and sucha treasure...keep up the good work chill and love you for sharing.....thank you ...beautfull and so thoughtful of you ...

grandlar said...
I sure do enjoy your pictures mr and mrs V###....the family is looking well fed and so happy...a wonderful way to preserve these beautiful days in all of your lives.....keep up the good work...thank youuuuu so much for sharing....

grandlar said...
thank you for the update and pictures....enjoy them so much...kids are getting so big...happy that they have such a good life out in the country where they can have room to roam...

grandlar said...
love the pictures....thank you soooo much...good job...I'm sure you will be happy to have them years from now....put them on a disk so they will keep forever...good looking bunch of dudes....

We're gonna miss you so much, Grandma - darn that creek for risin'

Additions to the family

2006-09-23T18:02:00.000-04:00

Picture this: our house is on a dirt road, way out in the country. I’m messing around in the yard with my kids, and this black truck comes down the road, and slows down in front of our house. I don’t know if it stopped completely or not, because to tell you the truth, I wasn’t really paying much attention. Then it sped away, and moments later, these four lovely kittens came running up the driveway, straight into the arms of my delighted children. They purred and rubbed their faces on them, and licked them, and let them carry them around with the bulk of their bodies swinging around beneath the twins arms, all with contented, half-closed eyes. The kids immediately started in with the joyous noises and the naming, and what could I do? We put some food and water in the barn, but within a day or two, they were living in the garage, waiting desperately for our love and attention, making daring rushes to get into the house whenever the door opened.

After much thought and research, we decided to keep one male and one female, get them fixed, and keep them as outdoor/barn cats to keep the rodent population down. The winners: Orange-blossom and Sammie-Sue. The losers: Snow and Purrfect. They went for a long ride during the day on Friday – and no, we didn’t kill them.

Almost six

2006-09-16T11:18:00.000-04:00

So, as you can see by the above pictures, taken innocently by Cindy, they’re showering themselves. The twins are gonna be six in a month or so – can you believe it? Did time suddenly get a kick in the butt or something?

The party is on Saturday, October 7th, at our house, in the afternoon (precise, to the minute time to be announced). We’ve already done our birthday shopping. We got them the Bella Dancerella cheerleading DVD thing, a couple Ken dolls (because Barbie is all the sudden interested in dating and getting married – should we be worried?), and a bunch of Polly Pocket stuff. They wanted Polly’s with animals, so we got two ‘Pet Boutique’ sets, plus, ‘Totally Trendy Pets: Wild Ride’, and the ‘Limo-scene’.

I listed the sets we got because if anybody else wanted to buy some Polly’s, they’d still be thrilled – a six year old girl can never have too many Polly’s. Other gift ideas: Barbie’s got a new set of ballerina dolls from some new movie, one of them that I saw was a set of twins that could dance together or apart ($19), Bella Dancerella has a ‘Swan Lake’ DVD dance thing that comes with the mat and the pole that they don’t have from their first one – which they still adore ($25). Then there are some new plug-n-play TV games that I think they’d like: Disney Princess’es and Dora’s something or other ($15-$20-ish). Some cheaper ideas: Polly’s, Barbies, and little girl jewelry which is the only other thing they asked for.

Why I love the rain

2006-09-16T10:37:00.000-04:00

Totally unrelated to the above picture, here are two more Veenie Baby Tales.

We took the kids to a free carnival thing at a church. There was a guy there doing some face painting, which gave Cindy a totally devious idea. We worked it out with the guy, then I went and got Chantze, and told him that this guy could perfect ‘Yu-Gi-Oh’s’ and ‘Avatar’s’. He was excited, and happily paid his two tickets, telling the guy he wanted Yu-Gi. So the guy says, “Yeah, I can do that,” and proceeds to paint a huge heart over a third of his face with big capital letters that said, ‘M-O-M’. When he was done, I was like, “Oh yeah, that looks perfect.” Chantze hops up, strutting away cuz he thinks he’s got this cool cartoon character on his face, and one of his fifth-grade girl friends sees him and says, “Your face says Mommy.” He was livid. “WHAT? I PAID TWO TICKETS FOR THIS!”

At the end of the night, dozens of children were crowded around the prize table, trying to exchange the tickets they’d won, and the lady working it just seemed overwhelmed. The mob of kids were shouting, pawing the prizes, and waving their streams of orange tickets. Paige is in the middle, barely taller than the table, patiently waiting her turn. So she comes back later with a few cheap little trinkets, we get in the van and leave. Then Brooke notices that she still has all her tickets. “Pai-aige, yer sposed to pay for them.” Chantze yells, “Daa-aad, Paige stole those toys!” Paige gets instantly panicky and emotional, “NO! I DIDN’T STEAL THEM! I just took them and she didn’t see me!”

First day of school (two weeks ago)

2006-09-16T10:13:00.000-04:00

Early bus-stop

All the kids are back in school (full-time, full-days) and its been kind of nice, and kind of not nice. Advantages: they go to bed nice and early and actually fall asleep, plus, we don’t have to burden the in-laws anymore with the free daycare. Disadvantages: homework, finding school clothes, fundraisers, filling out papers, numerous school functions, expensive hot lunches, and dealing with after-school fatigue-y whining.

All-aboard, ye scurvy brats!

The kids themselves are pretty happy to be back. Outside of complaining about the early start and Ravenna’s extra long hours, they pretty much love school. Chantze’s best friend moved away last month and it sounds like he’s hitting a few snags in the search for a new best buddy, but it seems like he’s well-liked, so it shouldn’t be a permanent problem. I just hope he doesn’t settle on that juvenile delinquent that steals erasers from his desk. The girls are in different classes, which they weren’t happy about at first, but it’s probably been good for them. They talk about their different teachers and the different kids in their class, and especially compare notes about who is on ‘green’ and who got to ‘blue’ (their ultra-important classroom management system – there’s candy involved). The biggest problem for us is that they have different homework schedules, despite the teachers insistance that they’re trying to do the same thing. Paige, actually, has about three times as much as Brooke, poor kiddo.

Home again. Fighting to commence shortly.

Labor Day Camp-mania

2006-09-04T18:39:00.000-04:00

So we camped for three days over Labor day weekend. We went with a group of about twenty 'family and friends of Bryan Archer'. They reserved a whole row of campsites at White River Campground between the pool and the bathrooms, then set up the amazing camp kitchen at one end, and about a dozen tents at the other end, leaving a space in between for games like croquet and squirt gun. The above pictures are merely to set the stage.

(Top L-R) Brooke and Paige spent a lot of time on this wooden ship and made a slew of new friends. They've been watching 'Little Mermaid' a lot, so this was the ideal setting to pretend they were mermaids. In the next picture, Brooke is standing in front of the cage of a pack of ferocious Chihuahuas that threatened us every time we walked by. The dogs belonged to Bruce and Dare, other members of our group. Here's Bryan and Officer Dean Lohman sitting by an early evening fire. I'll tell you a story about them later. Next is a nice pic of Chantze and his mom swinging - ain't they just the cutest? Then we have Brooke, eating the eyeball out of her pudding in one of Mr. Archer's creepy eating contests. Next is Paige, pouting. Unfortunately, we saw a lot of this. This could have been her camp profile picture. In her defense, I don't thing she got enough sleep, and the layers of filth she acquired probably sullied her normally sweet nature. Bottom left is a picture of a little turtle we found, then let go. Bottom right is the new Mrs. Jonathan Archer (Kelly) holding Paige holding the turtle. She was very sweet and attentive to the kids. In the middle of the bottom row is Chantze pouting because he had to give up something for one of the girls "A-Gain!" In this instance, it was pretend-driving the wooden train.

Here's the story I'll never forget from this weekend. I was sitting and talking to Bryan and Dean, both godly Christian men, and Dean is a cop. Chantze comes running up, excited, saying, "Dad, Dad! I just saw two teenagers with a rum bottle."

Me: Are you sure?

Dean: Where are they?

Me: How do you know it was rum?

Chantze: Cuz it looks just like the rum you always put in your pop.

Cindy: (laughing at me) Yeah, every day.

Me: (embarrassed) Well... Chantze doesn't actually see that many rum bottles.

Dean went to the boys and made them pour out their rum AND vodka, then grounded their vehicle. When he came back, he and everybody else kept saying what a good job Chantze did by telling - the teens had been driving around the child-saturated campground all day and somebody could have been hurt or killed if Chantze hadn't saw and told.

I was still embarrassed.

Camp profiles: Cindy- had headaches, took nap, got bored, didn't bring enough warm clothes or shoes because somebody gave her bum advice. Paige- made a friend named Paige, got emotional a lot, got in trouble a lot, got dirty A LOT. Brooke- colored, played 'on the ship', in the pool, at the park, in her tent, and carried her Strawberry Shortcake around. Chantze- got messed with a lot by everybody, went swimming, rode his bike, played catch (baseball), treated his sisters well even when they got on his nerves, tried to catch sparks from the fire, had to pee five minutes after every time they closed the bathroom for cleaning, and tripped over multiple tent ropes in the dark on his way. For clarification, Chantze is holding a keychain he made with Bryan's leather-craft stuff - the twin's bracelets are beside him on the table.

More Camp-mania

2006-09-04T18:30:00.000-04:00

Ten minutes after we set up their tent, it looked exactly like their bedroom. An hour after we set up our tent, it looked exactly like our bedroom.

Pictured at the bottom is Mr. Jonathan Archer, fresh off his honeymoon with his lovely new bride. His interests include fine beers, X-box 360, e-bay, fantasy novels (especially Harry Potter), music downloads, movies, and large amounts of food. I saw him messing with my computer and thought, 'I don't have any pictures of him, yet, what's he doing anyway?'

The photo beside him is a screenshot that explains it all.

Cindy's suthun relation

2006-09-04T18:20:00.000-04:00

It's alwaze a nee-slapin good tyme hwen the kin frum kintucky com roun. Top left is Sherylin and her daughter Diane, recent bride of Uncle Kenneth, Cindy's Dad's brother (together in bottom left). Top right is Ashley, a cute little fifteen year old who takes her brother and sister on the church bus every Wednesday and Sunday and is the captain of her youth group's drama team. Bottom right is Dan and his son Adam, both of whom are wild southern-twang madmen. A quote from Adam after the wedding: "Dang, I didn't know she was my cousin. Turns out our family tree don't go straight up and down - it's got branches."

More stuff I wuzgonna blog

2006-08-25T05:26:00.000-04:00

Excuse number 1: I get too busy raisin' em to blog em.
Excuse number 2: Short story contests
Excuse number 3: Playstation

Here's a quick story fer ya - I took all three kids to Chantze's Dr.s appt. yesterday. He had a massive wart on his toe. Dr. Woods brought out a cryo-kit and a scalpel, and cut it off in front of all of them. As he was shaving it with his scalpel, Chantze was very nervous, but the normally shy twins crowded around the doc, hypnotically drawn by morbid fascination. I thought I was going to have to tell them to back off and give him some air.

As we were leaving in the van, Chantze starts talking about this dirt behind his ear, how he washed it off, but then it came back, and it's really bothering him. I looked at it, and saw not only a terrible rash, but a dry split where the back of his ear joins his head.

"Dude, why couldn't you tell me that before we left the doctor?"

Honor Cadre - First Muskegon

2006-07-23T09:58:00.000-04:00

I have tried to upload this picture six times, now, finally, here it is. It was actually supposed to go with the post below. This is most of our group, starting in the back is me, head counselor Bryan (and assistant camp director), counselor Kevin, junior counselor Trent. In the front row, the cadets: Jaeger, Ceejay, Chantze, Ryan, and Austin. Not pictured are Aaron and Noah, two of our best.

Second half of Veenievacation - Cadet Camp

2006-07-21T19:12:00.000-04:00

Chantze and I spent six days at the 2006 Musketawa Camporee on the Au Sable river. It was hot, the mosquitos were terrible, and there was a ton of exhaustive labor to be done every day. All that aside, it was a wonderful, bonding experience with my son that we’ll both remember for the rest of our lives. ‘Cadets’ is a Christian boy scout-type thing, Chantze is a third-year cadet and I’m a counselor.

Every year they get permits to set up their own camp for one week on state land, complete with an archery range, a rifle range, and a fleet of canoes from Happy Mohawk. These guys do a first-rate job of ministering to boys by being good, godly role models, and working their a##es off to set up this camp for them. It’s high-quality, safe fun that builds character, discipline, and spirit, and I can’t fully express what a rewarding experience it is to be a part of it.

The boys missed their playstations, and complained about all the hard work of maintaining a camp, but in the end, they really took care of business and won 'the spear'. For something like forty years, this spear has been passed around by the winners of each camporee's 'honor cadre'. There's a lot of history in it, and First Reformed's club hadn't won it in like a dozen years.

In the picture below, you can see Chantze is raising the American flag upside-down. He was the only kid all week to make that mistake. Ryan is whispering fiercly, "No dude, it goes the other way!"

This is a picture of Chantze with Trent, our junior counselor. They wrapped him in shrink wrap and paraded him around the camp because he's such an 'annoying kid'. Actually Chantze is very popular and well-liked by everybody, so they always choose to mess with him first.

Here's a little euchre action, and Chantze at crafts with a complete ADD child named Levi. (we kind of befriended him and tried to keep him out of trouble) In the bottom picture, he's wearing two of the dream-catchers the boys made as earrings.

This is their 'display project' that our boys made in our camp. The sign describes how you can build one of these if you're ever lost in the woods to protect you from the wind, rain, and cold.

First half of Veenievacation - Greenville

2006-07-21T18:45:00.001-04:00

The 'Danish Kingdom' - don't ask me why they call it that.

We spent four days in Wendy's vacation home in Greenville, on two lakes (one dock in the backyard, and one in the front yard) and it was very pleasant and restful. And free. We swam, rode bikes, went out for ice cream, paddled the paddle boat, did a tiny bit of fishing, and watched the first three Star Wars movies each evening. There are too many great stories to share, of family and love and quality time and other mushy tripe, but I'll leave you with this one.

After swimming one day, I laid the bathing suits out on the deck to dry. Later I brought them in but left Paige's bikini top out by mistake. After dinner that evening, we all went back out to the deck to relax, and when Paige noticed her top, she snatched it with an irritated expression. "Dad, you forgot my bra!" We all laughed so hard that it hurt her feelings.

(Top L-R: twins cruisin, Chantze and Mom swinging, kids chillin, us peddlin)

(Top L-R: Hailie's catch, Chantze's ambush, Twin A, and Twin B - you guess the names)

Backlog of cute pics

2006-06-24T09:36:00.000-04:00

Real quick explanation: After having a Father’s day dinner last Saturday, we went to Wendy’s house and swam. The through the week, the bigguns started to get a little bored while we were at work, so they put up a new wall on our old, rotting tree-fort.

The kids have had vacation Bible school every night this week, and it was kind of nice to have a little break in the evenings. They had fun for the most part - they brought home all kinds of painting, crafts, candy, and junky little plastic prizes. They had to memorize a Bible verse every night, which the twin's did surprisingly well, and there was also a boys vs. girls giving contest. Their offerings were put into a scale and I guess the girls totally dominated. If you know Chantze, you know that this really bothered him. He bitterly complained and said that there should be some kind of limit as to how much people put in the offering.

Dad-ness

2006-06-19T05:25:00.000-04:00

Shortensweet was blogging about how great it is to have 2 dads, and that got me thinking. In our culture, our idea of a 'father-figure' has become blurry and abstract. With the lack of marriage so prevalent, either through divorce, or childbirth out of wedlock, it's completely common for a person to have several 'father-figures', and barely know their real dad. I'm one of those people, and, sad to say, so are two of my children to a certain extent.

You know how some algebraic equations have more than one answer, so the solution is expressed in a 'set'? That's kind of what the 'father-figure' is these days. My stepdad Fritz is the first in my set, followed by my father-in-law, and I'll always have fond/fun memories of 'rottendad'. My own dad fits into the equation, but until a year ago, I didn't know a thing about him. I'm not sure how you express that mathematically.

I suppose I wouldn't mind so much if my kids form paternal attatchments to other men, like Hailie's stepdad, Karl, for example, but I'm gonna do my best to make sure that, when they begin to start their own families, their idea of what a 'father-figure' is would be pretty darn lofty. I'm gonna set the bar as high as I can so that Chantze has an ideal to live up to, and my daughters have a standard for a mate that they won't comprimise. The next generation of Veenie Babies will influenced by what kind of a father I am, and that's a sobering thought.

You know what's cool, though? My kid's, all four of them, did housework to earn the money to buy my father's day gifts this year. That makes it ten times sweeter. I feel more appreciated because they felt I was 'worth' the effort. Thanks guys.

It was nothing special... or was it?

2006-06-10T21:00:00.000-04:00

Today was all about the kids. We totally focused on them and blew a wad of dough in the process. It started with ice cream sundaes at Fat Jack’s, an hour at Seyferth park, which was cold, so we spent a couple more hours at a more inland park. I don’t know the name but it was five degrees warmer and there was no shade. We left there and took a pleasant walk on the nature trails behind MCC, then we ate at El Camino’s and rented a big stack of movies.

Here’s the thing. I can rattle off a list of activities, but that in itself doesn’t convey the sweetness of the hours that we shared as a family today. Holding hands, laughing, tickling, snatching the shoes off kid's feet to throw up where they can't get them - priceless. I drove home thinking how great it would be if we could do this everyday, if these moments could last forever. But, we have jobs and dishes and laundry and so many other things that distract us from our treasures. My kids are growing (Good Lord, look at Hailie) and the days I don't focus on them are days I can never get back. Hopefully, the memories we're trying so hard to make will be enough to last us all the rest of our lives.

When I get to heaven, I hope it feels just like today did.

Did we perhaps take too many pictures?

2006-06-10T20:43:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile, back in Veenie Baby land...

2006-06-10T10:29:00.000-04:00

Besides our accident, life has been cruising along at its usual wild pace. We’re acting all ‘summer-like’ again; going to parks, eating grilled foods, visiting/being visited by family, hanging out in the yard, making our kids work… it’s all good.

Here’s a recent exchange I shared with my youngest daughter regarding our accident. We were backing out of my Mom’s driveway and I said,
“Paige, put your seatbelt on please.”
“I AM…. You’re not gonna kill me.”
“WHAT?!”
“I know you broked Mama’s neck.”
“Why would you say that?!”
“Cuz you’re a bad driver and you wuz driving and you crashed and you broked Mama’s neck.”

Mad baby.

2006-06-10T10:24:00.000-04:00

Thought y'all'd wanna see this.

Wrist Watch Update #4

2006-06-10T10:15:00.000-04:00

For the record, Paige is getting along fine with her cast. She adapted instantly and hasn’t complained once. One time when we were falling asleep on the couch together, she described at length the procedure she goes through if she has an itch, “I stick a stick in here, and in here, and in here, and sometimes in here…”

I also have a confession to make; that x-ray a few posts back – I ‘doctored’ it. I drew the wicked black lines across the bone. Her actual fracture is very hard to see and I thought it’d be fun to freak everybody out so…. When I showed my blog to people at the hospital, they laughed cuz they knew right away, too bad none of you made a big deal out of it – that would have been more fun for me.

Dr. Recknagel's reaction when somebody showed him the blog x-ray: "My heart skipped a beat, I thought 'Oh crap, I don't remember reducing that fracture."
('reduction' is ortho-jargon for putting broken bones back together right)

The whole story

2006-06-03T10:33:00.000-04:00

This is the police officer's sketch, scanned from the police report. The little boxes that represent our vehicles don't really convey the absolute 'horrific-ness' of what happened.

We were on our way to work, six-thirty in the morning, the sun was just coming up over the tops of the trees behind us. I was driving and Cindy was looking down, reading the last few pages of the book I dedicated to her, "The Runaway Apprentice." I saw the car on our right, stopped at a stop sign, waiting for traffic to clear. The car in front of us passed in front of her, and she pulled out - like we weren't even there. I slammed on the breaks, Cindy barely had time to look up, and we smashed the crap out of her. Her car went flying across the road and crashed into the cement block wall of a little store. I was surpised that I wasn't hurt, but Cindy said, "Ray, I can't breath. You've got to get me to a hospital."
I couldn't open my door so I crawled through the window and ran to see if the other woman was okay. There were instantly a dozen people milling around, all calling 911 on their cell-phones, but none of them would go to her car. I think they were thinking what I was thinking - the lady was surely dead. When I got to her, she had her cell-phone out, also calling 911. "Oh, I'm okay."
I went back to Cindy and waited with her. She knew something was wrong with her neck and wisely decided not to move at all. So the fireman got there, slapped a collar on her and eased onto a big yellow backboard (where she spent the next three hours). Then they put all three of us in the ambulance together and took us to the hospital where we spent pretty much the remainder of the day.
The rest is pretty boring, but I'll just leave this description with a couple of obversations: they don't let husbands ride in the back of ambulances holding their wives hands with deep concern, the first thing that popped into my head as we bore down on the defenseless little car was "I wonder if this will look like the car crashes in the movies", and an adrenaline rush can last more than five hours.

This truck was like a member of our family. We've had it longer than we've had most of our kids. We used to park by the lake and make out in it when we were dating. I thought we'd have it forever and I'd be able to give it to Chantze when he turned sixteen. It was twelve or thirteen years old (Cindy was it's first and only owner), it had 180,000 miles on it, it never had any major mechanical problems, and it's been paid off for almost nine years. Now, it simply doesn't exist anymore. Weird.

At least I don't have to worry about when I can get the time to change the brake pads that were starting to grind.

Goodbye, old friend.

Is this not the hottest accident victim you've ever seen?

Wrist Watch Update #3: Adventures in Orthopedics

2006-05-18T06:09:00.000-04:00

Today Paige met Dr. Jeffrey Recknagel, the nicest Orthopedic Surgeon in town. He put her permanant cast on - a glow-in-the-dark, waterproof short-arm cast. No more sling. We're excited that she can bathe and it gives her more use of her hand, she's excited that it's so hard (squeeze it, Daddy). She refuses to smack Chantze with it although I've offered to let her several times.

Dr. Recknagel is man I admire - a truly genuine, down-to-earth Christian, who treats non-docs like people. He hopped up on the examination table and made her feel as special as I would have. Paige's impression: "He has hair right here and right here (indicates sides of head) but not right here (top of head)."

Wrist Watch Update #2

2006-05-16T17:23:00.000-04:00

Brooke's Reaction:

"My bones are bigger so they won't break, feel 'em!" (makes muscle)

Wrist watch update #1

2006-05-16T17:10:00.000-04:00

Paige gets her cast on tomorrow, so we had to pick up her x-rays today. We haven't installing the viewbox in our palace's medical station yet, so in the meantime, I hold them up to the bathroom light and take digital photos - forgive the low-tech graphic.
All of her friends at school had lots of questions for her today, the only answer she could give them was "I jumped on furniture."

Paiger-poo's News

2006-05-16T06:01:00.000-04:00

"I broked my arm."

Jumping from the couch to the recliner has never been encouraged in our household, and now we have a good example of why. I foresee many occasions in the future when our children will hear the phrase, "Stop that, remember when Paige broke her wrist?"

Her and I had a lovely time together at the medi-center, until they put the splint on her arm. As soon as they walked out, she looked at me and said, "When the clock goes to five, I might take this off."

Sorry baby, you got six weeks.

Things I 'wuzgunna' blog:

2006-05-13T11:01:00.000-04:00

When we were kids and would get in trouble for not doing something we were supposed to do, Mom usually deftly deflected our excuses. I think one of her favorites was "But mom, I 'wuzgunna'. . . " I won't tell you how she responded once when Laura tried to use this excuse, but the point is: we learned quickly that 'wuzgonna' is not a valid explanation for a failure to do something.
So, having said that, let me now say - sorry I haven't been active here lately, I've been active other places. To make up for my absence in a lame, hasty manner, here is a list of the things I 'wuzgunna' blog:

1. All of our kids are doing just fine: happy, healthy, and wild. There're at least two funny stories a day I could blog about, but I'm too caught up experiencing them to document them, know what I mean?
2. I saved probably a thousand dollars hauling load after load of garbage from my barn to Ravenna's dumpsters they provided on 'community clean-up day'.
3. My Dad came into town unexpectedly, and we were able to spend a few pleasant evenings together. Perhaps next time he'll come when no-one is near death.
4. Our grass is coming in nicely, and the lilacs are exploding (see photo above, taken from the far edge of our property)
5. The cement contractor poured my driveway too short and overcharged me.
6. That's Hailie's sister Molly in the top picture, sleeping with Brooke. We had her one night and she was an absolute riot. Paul spent the night the same night, and I think she fell in love with him.
7. We released the lil' bunny into the wild, and Chantze saw him a couple days later with a bigger bunny.

That's all for now, but I'll surely keep you in the loop next time. After all, when have I ever promised you that and not delivered? Technically: never.

Additions to the pictoral archive

2006-04-29T10:54:00.000-04:00

Not to flog a dead horse, but I recently aquired these additional photos of the now legendary Daddy-Daughter Dance. I thought you might enjoy them (I can picture you now, jumping up and down, hooting and cheering with glee, as though all of your fondest dreams have just come true – furniture’s tipping over, lights are blowing out, the air-raid sirens blare overhead… okay so it’s not that big a thrill, sorry for being a dork)

If you’re just joining us and feel an irresistible urge to actually read about the magical evening, scroll down a couple posts. I've described it in more detail.

Above is the formal, below was scanned from this weeks edition of the Ravenna Independent News.

Cross-section of a typical Veenie Baby week

2006-04-29T10:20:00.000-04:00

Yes we’re still nursing the baby bunny. I think that officially makes this the cutest blog on the web, what with the kids and bunnies and all. Somebody tell somebody who gives out prestigious blog awards.

Quick Veenie Baby Comedy: (overheard at dinner)

Paige: Daddy, wanna hear a knock-knock joke?

TheDad: Okay.

Paige: Do snacks... eat.... um, ther-self?

TheDad: (about to respond, but gets interrupted by punch line)

Paige: Yes.

(Top L-R) Brooke says “Hi”, Brooke asleep, Paige says “Hi”, Paige asleep

Date night with the twins

2006-04-20T18:16:00.000-04:00

In a word – magical.

It was the annual ‘Spring Daddy/Daughter Dance’ at Beechnau Elementary School. My dates were the lovely five-year-old twins, Brooke and Paige Veen. I was looking forward to it, but I had a pretty good idea that it would be a couple of guys leaning on the gym walls, talking about landscaping and politics, while their daughters hung out in front of the DJ talking and, occasionally, dancing. I was fully prepared to be the only dork on the dance floor, because, honestly, I don’t care what the other dads think of me, I was going for my girls, and if they wanted to dance, well, what choice would I have in the matter.

I was completely wrong.

The place was packed with wall to wall men dancing with their little girls under the colored lights and disco ball. Every man wore a tie and every little girl had her hair done and held a fresh carnation. The way these men focused on their little angels, like nothing else existed in whole wide world, just made my heart warm over. Like I said – it was magical. Every little girl dreams of being a princess and being swept away by her prince, and that night, every single one of them had their dream come true. I hope they all grow up and meet men who treat them with as much honor and respect as that room full of men – God knows they deserve it.

Nowadays, we’re all kind of jaded when it comes to the quality of fathering in our society, but what I saw that night gave me hope. I don’t know how well these guys parent at home, but at least for one night, their daughters got to be the most special thing in the universe. At least precious, wholesome memories were made.

I know the twins had a wonderful time, and you can tell that I did too. I do have to tell you that instead of dancing, they mostly just each grabbed a hand and ran around in a circle until I thought I would throw up.

They pooped out doing the ‘Macerena’ and we went home happy.

Easter, and all that implies

2006-04-20T18:04:00.000-04:00

Easter was pretty much what you'd expect: colored eggs, cute kids, evangalistic church services, time with family, and hunts for Easter baskets. In the above picture, I've shown where the baskets were hidden, and yes, that's an outhouse - perfect for Chantze's basket, don't you think? Below are some pictures of the action, including Chantze's reaction when he finally figured out where I hid it.

I'll let Cindy blog about the Easter bunnies. (a tragic tale indeed)

A summary of last weekend

2006-04-20T17:43:00.000-04:00

2 rosebushes

11 trees

110 lbs grass-seed

2 sunburns

Chronicles of a four-day weekend

2006-04-09T20:36:00.000-04:00

This may be my longest post ever. On second thought, I'll break it up into about ten others to leave all of you ample opportunity to comment. So.... feeling guilty for the neglect this poor little blog has received over the past month, I kept my camera close to me over the last four days. In honor of spring break, Cindy and I took Thursday and Friday off from work, and it’s been wonderful. We had no kids Wednesday evening (thanks mom), so we went out for dinner and drinks, then, starting on Thursday, after the dentist’s appointments, the real fun began. I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story, but let me just say – we’ve accomplished a whole lot, in the way of both recreation and the category that includes all the things you’ve been meaning to do during the week but never find time for.

(btw, in the midst of all the activities you see below, I found time to write a couple chapters)

We got our skate on

2006-04-09T20:27:00.000-04:00

Friday night was Grace’s birthday party. We started out at ‘Jumpin’ Jupiter’s’, and “nobody had fun”. Actually they all did, it’s just that most of the kids had something to complain about. The twins were very uncomfortable on skates (although the way they slipped and slid and pinwheeled their feet was quite amusing to me – in a cartoonish way) so we paid for them to go into the ‘galactic bouncer’ thing, I don’t remember the name. Anyhow, they had a blast from there on, although an adult had to stay in there with them. Emily was upset because she couldn’t skate backwards, and Chantze was hurt because Grace and Hailie kept “ditching” him. I think it had more to do with individual skating velocities.

Sorry about the picture quality y’all. It’s not easy capturing action, in the dark, at a distance. I just realized that I put one of the wrong pictures of Emily in the collage. I have a cool shot of her being pulled by her Aunt Jamie like a caboose on a train – sorry guys. And oh yeah, did I mention there was an arcade?

Happy tenth, Gracie-poo

2006-04-09T20:21:00.000-04:00

Then we went to Mom’s for dinner and the birthday party. Grace got lots of girly stuff – make-up and jewelry and clothes and whatnot. What’s with kids not wanting toys anymore?

Another fine theatrical performance

2006-04-09T20:17:00.000-04:00

Our group of entertainers made up their own play, complete with costumes, props and sets. It was called ‘The Farm Folk’, and the gist of it was that this old couple (Grace was Mr. Smither and Chantze was Mrs. Smither) and their baby had been attacked by a bear (Emily). So they go and enlist the aid of the ‘Hunter’ (Hailie) who takes care of the bear with her banana gun. The plot got a little hazy at that point but somehow the dead bear turned into a giant gorilla and a new bear got her hands on the banana gun and shot everybody, including herself by accident. The funniest part was how we kept thinking the story was over and started applauding, then the kids would protest irritably, “It’s not over yet!”

Saturday morning work detail

2006-04-09T20:11:00.000-04:00

So Grace wanted to spend the night. We let her but told her she’d have to work in our barn the next morning because Chantze and Hailie are both trying to earn and save some money. (Chantze is going to Disney World and Hailie wants an ipod) They bagged up fifteen huge bags of dirty garbage and did a really good job – I was very proud of them. My barn looks a lot better and the kids are all a little richer. Yes, I ended up giving Grace some money because she worked really hard and had a good attitude.The grown-ups kept busy most of the rest of the day too. Cindy caught up on laundry and housework and I cleaned out the garage, fixed the firepit, and changed the oil in both vehicles.

Patterson Park beckons...

2006-04-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

After all their hard work, we let the big kids ride bikes to Patterson Park, almost a mile down the road. I joined them later with the twins and got lots of good pics. It’s downhill pretty much the entire way to the park, which conversely means it’s uphill all the way back. So I threw their bikes in the truck and drove them back.

The littluns threw rocks and anything else they could get their hands on into the creek, while the bigguns entertained themselves by climbing onto objects in the stream and getting as dirty as possible.Everybody had to get their feet wet of course. And let me tell you, this stream felt like it was flowing off an iceberg – April in Michigan is just not a good wading-season.

First fire of '06

2006-04-09T19:54:00.000-04:00

Chantze and Hailie capped off their first big outdoor day by building a fire in the newly repaired firepit. Actually I had to get it started for them because, not being men, they didn’t have the ‘kindling pile’ and ‘tee-pee’ quite right, but from then on, it was their fire. It was very very pleasant. The twins, Cindy, and I stayed out there with them for a while, but it got really cold. The only ‘unhappy’ part of the whole experience were the disagreements over the ‘poking stick heirarchy’. Everybody wanted to poke with the broken shovel-handle.

Little white church on a hill

2006-04-09T19:48:00.000-04:00

And here’s where we’ve been going to church – it’s called, ‘Jibson Emmanuel Baptist’. It’s Cindy’s parents little church, the pastor is a wonderful man, but we probably won’t go there forever. At some point, I’m going to want to get back involved in children’s ministries, and this quaint elderly church has really no ministry opportunities.

The park by Jenkin's

2006-04-09T19:34:00.000-04:00

After church today, we met Cindy’s whole family at her brother Eddie’s house. We had a little lunch then walked to a nearby park. The fun revolved around trying to spin people off spinny rides like the ‘merry-go-round’. Get it? The fun ‘revolved’? Nevermind – nobody tell Fritz about this because it’s not technically a pun, more of a clever play on words, anyhow… I was amazed that no children were seriously harmed, not even during our lengthy stick-sword wars.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of our four day weekend. If you’re not tired of looking at it or reading about it, I’d be surprised – I’m tired of typing it and uploading it. Have fun and God bless.

"Waiting is fun!"

2006-04-06T10:11:00.000-04:00

First off, everybody, I’m sorry. You know what for. Blame my new ‘internet-connection-challenged’ laptop. I’ve been getting a lot of writing done, though, and I promise that once I can quit my job, this blog will get lots of TLC.

This picture here is one of the finest pictures I’ve ever taken of the Veenie-Babies. Don’t ask me why, but there’s just something about it. Their smile’s, their happiness, their cooperative posing – it’s a perfect, spontaneous snapshot of evething I love about them.

We were in Wal-mart’s parking lot, waiting for Cindy to grab one or two things, and of course the wait turned in to a half-hour. It's not Cindy's fault, though, I blame the two cashiers manning the fifty-eight checkout lanes. Fifteen minutes is the scientifically-proven threshold of a child's ability to wait, so shortly after this 'Kodak-moment', I had to scream at them to stop whining.

"Don't make me turn around!" (evil eye in the rearview mirror)

What the...?

2006-04-06T10:07:00.000-04:00

My mom had a rockin’ birthday party with lots of family and friends. There were many great photo ops, but somehow, the only picture I ended up taking that day was this one.

Weird.

It’s my emo-cuzzin Micheal riding his sister’s boyfriend. Welcome to the internet, gents.

Cadet-O-Rama

2006-04-06T09:48:00.000-04:00

The twins, because of their age and personalities, demand a lot of attention. I sometimes feel bad for Chantze and Hailie, not that they’re being neglected, but just that they need special time individually once in a while. We have to remind them that they’re just as important, even if we make them give one of the girls a certain seat in the van, or force them to let the twins play in their room or with their toys or something.

I take Hailie out to dinner every other Monday – we go the mall or something, and we both really enjoy that time together. For Chantze, there’s ‘Cadets’.

This is our third year, and one of favorite parts is the ‘Pinewood Derby’. We’ve done really well in the past, in both the ‘race’ and ‘best-in-show’ categories, as you can see from the trophies, there’re also several ribbons, but I didn’t get them in the picture. This year was a total wash, though, Chantz’es hot-dog car was slow because of it’s non-aerodynamic shape, and he was inelgible for best-in-show because it wasn’t an actual car. My futuristic UFO car started out great, but once it was shaped, pretty much every step from there on went ‘worst-case-scenario’. The metallic paint would not dry and the screws for my wheels skived off the lead in the bottom, making my wheels crooked. Consequently – it wouldn’t roll all the way to the end of the track. It was a real heart-breaker.
Then I was on call the day of the races – I got called in before the races were finished and worked until really late.

In the top picture, Chantze's cars are on the right, mine are on the left. The nearer ones are from this year, the further ones are from our first year.

Below is a collage of different race-day pictures -- our uniforms really are the same shade of gray -- I think my digital camera's just getting old.

Caged with bears

2006-03-12T09:21:00.000-05:00

We'd just worked our full day, run some errands, picked up the kids, and were working together to try to get dinner on the table. This is usually one of the most stressful segments of our day -- we we're hungry, our feet hurt, and we're trying to get through dinner so we can sit and relax for a few minutes before we start homework and baths. Then the twins pulled these charming, crafted bear puppets from their bags and wanted to give us a puppet show.

They couldn't just stand there and make them talk, they had to pull out chairs (right in our way) for a make-shift puppet theatre. It was one of those moments where you just wish they'd wait and be cute later. We were tempted to say, "That's nice sweetie, go in the other room and play while we fix dinner."

It was one of those moments where you have to make a pivotal decision. Do you choose your own comfort and sanity, or do you take the hard road? Do you have the strength to indulge them and make them feel loved and appreciated despite your own desperation for a moment's peace? As the picture clearly shows, we decided to actually parent.

For our Hurculean efforts we were treated to several minutes of ultimate-fighting style, paper-bag smack-down.

In the end, both bears survived, dinner was eaten, homework was finished, and our children had another positive childhood experience. They do add up, you know. Hopefully the positives outnumber the negatives when they look back on how we raised them.

Pajama day follows a night of horror

2006-03-08T05:16:00.000-05:00

Today was pajama day at school, thus the children's sleepy poses. Paige needed the extra rest to heal. 'Why's that?' you ask? Continue reading beneath the following charming collage. . .

7:42 pm == The twins finish their homework, I send them to put it in their bags

7:49 pm == Brooke’s bag is neatly zipped and put back in it’s proper place. Paige’s bag is in the center of the floor, paper’s are evenly scattered to about a six foot radius.

7:52 pm == I tell Paige to hurry up and get her paper’s picked up – it’s almost bath time.

7:55 pm == Paper’s have been moved around, none have found their way to the backpack. "What are you doing, why aren’t these papers picked up?”

7:57 pm == No change. I’m starting to get frustrated. I speak to her like the adults on the Peanuts.

8:04 pm == No change. Voice rises.

8:06 pm == No change, but Paige starts to cry. I don’t care – I want the papers picked up.

8:06 pm == Crying turns to serious, terrified screams. “Uh-oh” I think, “Something is happening here. Something more that meets the eye.”

8:07 pm == I conduct a thorough investigation and determine the cause of her screams to be intense pain. (advisory: grandmother’s may want to stop reading at this point) She has found a thick sewing needle in the carpet and it is now stuck through the side of her foot, AND, out of the top. Yes folks, the needle has gone through-and-through the flesh on the side of her foot.

8:07 pm == I remove the needle.

8:08 pm == I administer first aid and TLC.

8:09 pm == Cindy puts her beer down and screams at us to “cut out all the racket!”

* upon further examination, needle appears to be same needle from the INFAMOUS corn-bag incident.

"my boy, was just like me..."

2006-03-08T04:48:00.000-05:00

The Night the Martian’s landed
By Chantze Veen

One nice night somthing aprerd in front of my window. I opened my window. A little tiny UFO when it landed two little aliens came out of the UFO.
I asked them their names. Their names were Bob and Gergorgy. They ask me, my name is Herbert.
“What planet are we on?”
“You are on Earth. What planet are you from?”
“We’re from Pluto, it is cold there. We ran away from home because there is an evil king there that’s destroying our homes. We came for help. So what, we’ve been on Merkry and Mars and now here. You won’t pick on me will you?”
“Of course not, why did ask?”
“Because all of the aliens are bigger than us. So will you help us?”
“Yes, I will help you fight that evil king. So how big is that king of yours, ant size?”
“No, axally elephint size.”
“Did you say elephint? Wow.”
“Oh right, I forgot to say he has rocket lanchers, raffles and machine guns. He also has ninjas and sword men and asasin. Now let’s shrink you with my shrink gun, no that’s my shrink gun.”
“Whatever.”

...to be contuid...

Hunter - 7, Emily - 8

2006-03-05T10:40:00.000-05:00

It was a total ‘Kid’s Birthday’ weekend.

You know how I dislike children, so, you can imagine my frustration. My niece, Emily, turned eight, and my nephew, Hunter, turned seven. Both had massive parties with kegs and screaming kids in togas (HA! Just kidding – you believed me though, didn’t you?) Seriously, though, LOTS of kids were at both parties.

Emily’s was a wild dance/game/piñata party, the kids were so much fun (except for those who loudly complained about being left out whenever the entire universe didn’t focus it’s attention on them – none of ours, mind you). In the top two pictures, you can see some of the relay game where two teams raced to don hats, sunglasses, necklaces and whatnot. The next two are ‘dance’ pictures; a good number of original moves created that evening, I can tell you. The absolute highlight of the evening was Emily herself. This chick can DANCE! The lower collage is her doing a PERFECT recreation of the dance Napolean Dynamite did in the movie – to the exact same song of course. I wish my camera had a better shutter speed cuz I missed the wildest best moves, but she thrilled the crap out of the whole room, much like Napolean did in the movie.

Hunter’s party was less structured, but somehow less wild, considering the volumes of children glutting the Pham’s huge farmhouse. It was also a nice time, and Wendy (Cindy’s twin) made a very creative cake, don’t you think? Hunter is an extremely bright kid, maybe a genius, but he is still a kid. I tried to mess with him a little by putting a big note on his present. It said something like: “Happy birthday Hunter, we know you’re getting older and more mature so we thought it would be nice to start getting you more grown-up presents. I hope you like books on economics and politics.”

It was actually a power-ranger that transforms into a dinosaur.

Happy birthday, Hunter and Emily – the Veenie Babies love you.

Party at Pinhead's

2006-02-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

Top row: karaoke bliss

Bottom row: dance fever

In the very center of the collage is a picture of me with my cousin Micheal, the King of Sleep. He epitomizes 'phlegmatia'. Read his T-shirt, it's especially funny because I don't think he has a job right now.

To the right of this picture was the absolute highlight of the night. First of all, Hailie sounded excellent - as good as any proffessional (and in front of 50-60 strangers), but when she got up and sang 'Forever', Chantze and Paul got up behind her and did some wild, funky dancing. It was hysterical, several people told me how good she sounded and how much they enjoyed the impromptu back-up dancers.

I'm rearing entertainers.

OH YEAH....

2006-02-25T15:35:00.000-05:00

There's a spot out in the woods where vine-laden trees are fallen down against other trees and bushes. The tangled web of climbing-delight is a place the kids call, 'Oh yeah...' (spoken with a sly-eyed nod). To be specific, the particlular vine Hailie's standing on is called 'Oh yeah' - everything else in Mother Nature's jungle gym is a secondary pleasure.

So last night, as it was getting a little dark, the bigguns went out to show it to their friend Paul (top left). Cindy was making a nice dinner, so I went out to call for them. When they didn't answer, I figured they were playing a game with me and hiding or something. I went back in a little disgusted, but then when it was time to eat, Cindy called out back for them again - no answer. As the littluns made the table, I went out to find them. I trekked through the now dark woods, calling their names, telling them I wasn't playing around and they better answer or they'd be in trouble. Finally well beyond our property and some time later, I heard a far off cry. I yelled, they yelled back a little closer. I continued yelling, and they followed the sound of my voice. Soon I saw the shapes of three bodies speeding between the trees, contrasting against the white snow. They ran up to me out of breath, excited and relieved, all talking at once about how long they'd been lost. They were so glad to see me. They recounted their adventures, the things they found in the woods, the threatening 'no tresspassing' sign, and debated at length who's fault it was that they'd gotten lost in the first place.

I led them back to the house, but they were still in a little trouble. They got a lecture about wandering too far away, too late, and not wearing enough warm clothing - really something disasterous could have happened - there aren't a lot of houses out here. Since they never found 'Oh yeah', they resolved to go back today, with Cindy, because she grew up out here and knows her way around the woods.

Cindy did take them, she even took the twins - in broad daylight - and guess what?

They all got lost.

It's hard to be ugly amidst so much beauty

2006-02-16T09:59:00.000-05:00

I really like this picture of Hailie and Cindy. Thus, you get to look at it.

Aaaahhh..... my girls.

Veenie Quoties

2006-02-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

What do you want to say to the hundreds of millions of people surfing the internet?

Hailie: "I don't know, I have beautiful hair and clothes."
Paige: "I love my pink and white dog"
Brooke: "I have money in my beautiful purse"
Chantze: "Me Tarzan, king of jungle"

So... even if they don't solve global warming and end world hunger, I still think they're pretty cool. They make me laugh -- and that's my only 'great expectation'.

Cadet Sunday, 2006

2006-02-16T09:52:00.000-05:00

L-R: Chantze ushes with Ryan (the ketchup-slurping kid), our group photo, minus all the kids that didn't fell like getting out of bed, me an my homey's kickin col in the church yo, Chantze reads a lengthy segment of Matthew in front of First Reformed's rapt congregation (uh, yeah, he used his high girly voice)

Haircuts

2006-02-03T21:20:00.000-05:00

It's pretty self-explanatory:

Before = sad.
After = happy.

(I liked Chantze's hair long though)

Birthday cake word scramble

2006-01-29T10:10:00.000-05:00

"Habrdaphptiyy to me
Habrdaphptiyy to me
Habrdaphptiyy dear Daddy
Habrdaphptiyy to me"

Is the cause of this tragic misspelling:

A:) My wife's lack of an advanced language degree?

B:) Birthday-cake, word-scrambling, prankster-gremlins?

C:) Another malicious attack on the sanctity of my family by none other than 'Shortenevil'?

D:) The result of the combined effort of one dozen half-crazed, non-reading, ankle-biters desperate to be involved in the delicate and complex arena of cake-decorating?

If you said 'D', you are correct, and you've probably been reading this blog for too long.

So, my 35th birthday party (eight days ago) was pretty fun. I got a tool belt and stuff. I actually turned 35 at one of those alcohol dispensing establishments the night before this. We went with Mom and Jamie (shortenevil) and that was also pretty fun. I haven't had that sort of 'grown-up' recreation in quite a while. In fact, I don't remember ever celebrating my birthday at an alcohol dispensing establishment. Probably cuz I'm a nerd (see above photo).

Anyhoo, sorry for not being quite so bloggy lately. I've been spending my free nanoseconds writing - nearly finished with the fourth book - and playing the playstation games Chantze got for Christmas. So as you can see, this blog has kind of slipped on the old list of priorities.

Take care y'all, and God Bless.

How much does Chantze's Aunt love him?

2006-01-29T09:57:00.000-05:00

Enough to put a secret toy surprise in the corn bag she made him for Christmas.

Chantze tells the story like this: "Well, um, I put it on my head and the needle stuck in my head. Then I went and told my mommy and I was not crying. Mom told me to put it on the counter. The end."

We saved it to humiliate Jamie.

Now all of cyberspace knows. Tell 'Shortensweet' (or should we say 'Shortenevil') how you feel about sharp objects hidden inside of children's gifts at Junk from Jamie.

The lovely Elia Dawn Jenkins

2006-01-19T16:50:00.000-05:00

(top left) This was the only one actually taken today, but let me tell you, this sweet little baby is always sociable and happy. Her parents might disagree in the middle of the night, but I'm gonna hold to my personal opinion. We love watching her but NO, it doesn't make us want to have another one.

(bottom right) This was taken almost two months ago. This is her dad, feeding her a hard sucker WAY before she should be having anything other than milk. Please forward this image to Child Protective Services.

Just another day in paradise

2006-01-19T16:37:00.000-05:00

We took today off from work in honor of the day of my birth, and tomorrow, the 35th anniversary of the day of my birth, we will also be observing this momentous occasion.

Anyhoo, since we were home, we had the privelage of babysitting Elia, and, sending our own kids off to school for a change, thus the pics.

The real reason I’m blogging, though, is because when I woke the twins up this morning, Brooke told me about the dreams she had. Cindy’s Dad is very interested in her dreams and pays close attention to them everyday (he’s the one that usually gets them off to school) and it’s not very hard to see why. I’ll share one with you, but keep in mind, one has to ask her a lot of questions to get the whole story out of her, she doesn’t tell it in quite this linear a progression:

Mommy was eating in the kitchen and a 'shadow boy' passed in front of the house. Four dogs who were outside came running in and told mommy how scary the green ghost was. She couldn't go the window to see for herself, though, she had to finish eating.

What the heck, that one was so much fun, I'll tell the other one:

Scary monster ghosts were at Gramma Violet's house while she was cooking in the kitchen. One of them looked just like Papa Doctor except he was green. Brooke had to save everybody by talking to the scary monster ghosts (I can only assume she convinced them to leave).

Okay, psych-analyzers and spiritists, what do these dreams mean?

A nice pic and a lame excuse.

2006-01-18T16:59:00.000-05:00

Here's a picure I haven't posted yet, but which I'm sure all the Veenie Babies followers will enjoy.

(Sorry for not updating. I've been busy doing yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.)

My birthday party is on Friday, so I’ll certainly have something interesting to post afterwards, but in the meantime, here’s a little tidbit to hold you over.

The setup: School was cancelled yesterday due to ice, so the kids stayed with my in-laws who live next door. They normally don’t do this, but they let Chantze come back to the house to play on the computer, so he was home alone for awhile. Then Cindy decided to call and check up on him.

Chantze: Hello?
Cindy (disguising voice): Is your mother there?
Chantze: Who’s this?
Cindy: Sarah.
Chantze: Uh…. My mom’s at work.
Cindy: Is your dad there?
Chantze: Well…. Uh…. My mom and dad are at work right now, but this is Chantze, leave a message after the beep…… BEEP.
Cindy: (lectures at length regarding answering phone and telling strangers he’s all alone)

Hailie's big 12th birthday par-tay

2006-01-07T14:05:00.000-05:00

These pictures tell the whole story

2006-01-07T13:50:00.000-05:00

Routine bathing of the twins

2005-12-31T14:45:00.000-05:00

Something tells me that someday, I'm going to miss things as mundane as making sure the kids get washed up. When I'm at work and I'm telling my stories to co-workers who don't have kids, they smile and nod and their eyes kind of glaze over. I can tell they're thinking "Yeah, that sounds really cute, but having kids seems exhausting. Can these moments really be worth all the work and sacrifice, and lack of money, lack of privacy, lack of rest, and lack of freedom?"

If they asked me out loud, I'd say, "Hell yeah."

I wouldn't trade these moments or these years for any freedom, money, or experience in the world. I just hope I remember to try harder to lock them into my memory, because they'll be grown up way too soon.

Oh great, now I'm getting verklempt.

Anyhow,

(top: L-R, Paige got undressed and I discovered that she's been rather creative today, "I need four pictures for a collage so give me some nice smiles", standard tub play, how superheroes and polly-pockets party.)

The pretty side of winter

2005-12-31T14:37:00.000-05:00

A few pictures I snapped while walking through the woods by our house. I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but... it's GOOD to live in the country.

The ugly side of winter

2005-12-31T14:29:00.000-05:00

The first picture is something I saw this one morning when I opened up my garage door - I ended up being late for work.

Belive me, these pictures do not accurately portray the heinous extent of a Michigan winter.

The single most exciting moment of the year.

2005-12-27T09:53:00.000-05:00

Do you remember the way it felt when gift-opening was immenent?

You'd been looking at the presents for days, fantasizing and scientifically deducing the mysterious contents. Then when it came time to open them, you're parents had to do 'just one more thing' before you could start. You were so breathless and excited it was almost an ache.

Then the moment finally arrives and the frenzy begins.

Each wrapped package was an emotional roller-coaster in itself - sometimes there was an amazing thrill at the end, if it was something you desperately wanted, sometimes it was bitter disappointment. . . but you'd smile anyway, thank your mom for the socks, and move on to the next wondrous gift -- after all, they can't all be socks.

I love seeing the Christmas drama being replayed with my own children. Hearts beating fast, excited squeals of joy, I even get a kick out of polite plastic-faced thanks for things they didn't really want. I wish I could give them every thing they wanted and blow their minds with lavish surprises, but like any responsable parents, we forced to admit that we can't afford to do that. We spend about 70-80 dollars per child which is a fraction of what other parents I know spend. I'm glad they're not spoiled and haven't learned to have unrealistic expectations about materiel gain, but I love them so much, I want to give them everything their hearts desire. In the end, the real magic happens, not when they see what bought them at Target, but when we're taking it out of the package, holding their excited bodies in our lap, assembling the toys or dismantling packaging while they hover, intense and waiting. The real thrill is being a part of their joy, seeing them happy, and maybe getting an appreciative hug.

Christmas '05

2005-12-27T09:34:00.000-05:00

We had a great Christmas, celebrated Friday the 23rd because we had Christmas with both sets of Grands on Christmas Eve and Hailie had to be back with her Mom at ten. Hailie got a lot of jewelry and gift cards, the twins got lots of Polly Pockets and Littlest Pet Shop toys (millions of tiny pieces distributed evenly over every carpet in the house), and Chantze got action figures, a karate DVD, and Playstation games, including my favorite game ever, SPIDERMAN 2 BABY!!

I picked out some clothes for Cindy because that's what she said she wanted, all black, a little trashy (that's right), but she's taking them all back because, "they don't quite fit". What do you think the chances are that she'll come back with more all black, slightly trashy outfits? The last time she wanted me to buy her clothes for a gift, I got all of the shirts too tight (that's right) but she decided to keep them that time. Either I'm a bad judge of size or a bad judge of style -- and something tells me its not exactly a size issue.

Oh, and I got some shirts (which are stylish AND FIT), a bottle of Carolyn's Irish Creme and a nice refillable pen for my writing. Cindy is apparently a much better gift-giver.

A few quick twin stories.

2005-12-20T21:17:00.000-05:00

Story 1 -- Paige: Last night I was trying to get her to come to her bedroom and get in bed. She's the queen of dilly-dallying, and when she finally came, she twirled and pirouhetted down the hallway with all of her finest ballerina moves. I said, "Wow sweetie, that was really beautiful."

She looks me straight in the eye and asks, "Can I have some money for that?"

Story 2 -- Paige: The kids were all running back and forth through the house tied to each other in a straight line with two bathrobe ties. All four of them were laughing like they'd lost their minds, until Paige started hacking and gagging. She had been last in line behind Hailie, and Hailie turned and set her free so she could go straight to the bathroom and retch her little guts out. I got everything cleaned up then held her in my lap and asked her what made her throw up. She said through miserable tears, "Hailie farted. . . now I'm allergic to Hailie's farts. . . I'm allergic to three things now," she counted them off on her fingers, "kittys, boys, and Hailie's farts." My theory is that the bathrobe tie got too tight and maybe jerked too hard.

Story 3 -- Brooke: She knocked on our door and woke me up at around 11:30 one night last week. She seemed scared. She said, "Dad, I heared a noise in my room."

I said, "What kind of noise?"

"It was in my pillow, it was like my heart was beeping."

I said, "Well, that's a good noise, your heart's supposed to do that."

She seemed relieved and somehow proud. "When my heart beeps, that means cuz I'm growing bigger."

"Yup, you sure are."

She smiled, gave me a big hug, and ran back to bed.

The movie we've been waiting for.

2005-12-20T20:55:00.000-05:00

Our wonderful Uncle Brian (see July 20th) sent some nice cash for a Christmas present to the Veenie Babies, and we decided to have a wonderful family night. First, we went out to Pizza Hut, (see previous post), and then we went to see 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'. We've been very excited about this movie coming out for quite some time. They're some of my all time favorite books. Cindy's almost through reading them, and even Chantze and Hailie have read the first one.

We all absolutely LOVED the movie. It's very exciting and magical, and, most importantly, family-friendly. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a movie to take their kids too. It was a little long for the twins, though. Brooke told me several times, "I wanna watch the rest later. Can we go ride the horses?"

For those who don't know, there's a carousel in the lobby of our local movie theatre.

Thank-you, Uncle Brian, do you know how much it costs to take a family of six to dinner and a movie? This was a rare treat.

A very pleasant family night.

2005-12-20T20:45:00.000-05:00

Top L-R: Our pleased and thoroughly entertained expressions during the credits. Daddy and Brooke, Paige and Mommy, Chantze and Hailie.

We ate at pizza hut before the movie and had just a nice, happy, special meal together, as a family. Nobody argued or stole food from one another or spilled any drinks, a first for us. The cool people ate a large meatlovers, the two wierdos (bottom left) ate a medium Hawiian. And yes, if you must know, the beverage of choice was Pepsi. I might as well mention that we had cheese bread sticks and cinnamin sticks for dessert, just to be thorough.