Virtuoso

 Watching a message from Santa.

No idea where his plate went. Did he eat it? Doubtful - I do change his diapers. I'd think I'd notice that. Also, notice what a well balanced meal!

"Asher, you tired? Wanna take a nap?"

"No."

But he does have a good appetite . . . sometimes. Basically when we don't think he'll eat anything, he chows. It's like the kid learned to be as contrary as possible at all times . . . no clue where he gets it from.

A little break here as I get swallowed by google while checking on a Star Trek character. Have since spiraled into a text challenge with Bart touching on DS9, Anthony Michael Hall and Batman Movies. It's like Six Degree's of random ass tv characters. So far my randomjit-su keeps getting side tracked. I was thinking Crom for Quarks brother when it's Rom. Clearly we all know Crom is the god Conan the Barbarian prays to.

It's all getting squishy in there.

Also, in case you were wondering, I ran the Jeopardy category Science Fiction TV tonight. The 2000 dollar question was Doctor Who. AND NO ONE GOT IT! Like they just didn't want two grand.

I'm gonna write Trebek.

Oh, here's some randomjit-su: Conan the Barbarian was written by the guy who wrote Apocalypse Now and Oliver Stone. Crazy. So the people who brought us "Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Back. And to the left." and "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" also gave us "Grunt, grawh, ugh."

*Star sweep* THE MORE YOU KNOW *Twinkly music*

I call the first picture Two Turkey's. These are from Thanksgiving time. It's a place, near where Maura grew up actually, that dyes turkey's different colors. I assume they do it to let the dyed turkey know how easy the turkey dinners have it.

Two with sun glasses.

ICE CREAM!

Relaxing. On the couch. And at Ikea.

Charlie at craft time. Brianna got Charlie a plaster garden stone. For children. So it comes with a dust mask and adult size plastic gloves. Of course I'm going to have her put them on. I am a responsible adult.

The other mask came from pre-school and freaks me out.

Operation. Ryan's really into it.

Balancing and cooking.

An extra pic of Sid the ferret. Much missed. You know you can train a ferret to use a litter box? Pur-it-tty awesome.

Here's some pics from New Years.

Charlie got a hair band. I got a fake mustache. Pretty equal.

Amazingly, Asher crawled into this box of his own free will. Not like the time his loving Aunt Linda locked him in a dog crate, which is a picture I can't find right now, dammit, move a long MOVE ALONG.

Gifts

Robin's friend's daughter. We had to take this picture because, really, who would think there's two little kiddo's with silver sparkley moon boots?

Running through the streets on New Years. Most of these people are actually sober. 

Cranson

Enjoy.

Stoat

Saturday was a very action packed day. We went to Amelia's 1st birthday party. Amelia is Michelle's daughter. Michelle was Dianna's roommate in grad school. Dianna is my wife. Grad school is what you go to after college if you want to get a good job that won't pay you enough to pay off grad school.

Anyway, we had a lovely time at the party. I got a cupcake and regular cake (so did the birthday girl, but, since I've had them before, I was a bit more excited. She will be next time. It's a cumulative thing). Our kids actually appreciated the treats as well. We can tell by the way they saved the tantrums for the ride home. Thankfully not in the middle of the party, but in the confined space of a car - so a trade off on awfulness. If I ever write a parenting book it'll be called A Trade Off in Awfulness.

Or Bill Cosby's Guide to Children. Just because it would sell more, although I might get sued.

Then when we got home, Charlie found a ferret.

Which, in my mind at least, isn't something that actually happens to real people. Who finds a ferret? Are ferrets even wild animals? Like dachshunds - you just don't find them in the wild. Or hamsters.

At first we were a bit freaked but since it didn't act like a normal wild animal (it didn't book when we looked at it) we figured it was probably someone's pet. When I held my hand out to it, it hopped up, climbed my sleeve and sat on my shoulder. So we brought him in to keep him warm.

Turns out I can do this with the camera. Has no use what so ever.

This is him. Her. The ferret, whatever. How do you tell? Does it matter? There's only so much about ferrets I'm willing to google. We named it Sid.

He hid under the oven a lot. Turns out, if their head can fit through the rest of the body can too. Which is gross but fun. At one point he climbed under the oven, through the back of the pan drawer and into a plastic bag under a pot lid.

Dianna read that they like to cuddle up to things or be covered so she got him a bag to chill in. I threw some rags in there, for comfort and he closed the bag behind him. Slept in there all night.

VIDEOS:

We had him, it, for about 24 hours. Dianna found a friend of a friend who's had ferrets before. I feel happy we found it a good home. It's also odd how sad I was when it left.

Fibber MacGee

At school last week, it was K week, where they learned all sorts of stuff about the letter K (including, I would assume, the correct spelling of Kool and the Gang). The K word to start off the week was Karate! A karate instructor (from where Henry takes karate) came in every day to teach them a little karate and help them find ways to run around.

Then at the end of the week they were all invited to a White Belt Ceremony to get their white belts at the karate school. Basically the worlds cutest sales pitch. A nice little intro to martial arts and the instructor was really good with the kids. Charlie looked forward to it all week and was amazingly excited when she was there.

Here's some clips.

Coffee Thug

Carbonized Ham

Here's the Christmas post.

In the last post I went through some of the things I did to gobble the days that Charlie didn't have school. Some ways to keep them busy, for the love of god, for a minute or two. Something. One of the things I left out was Christmas ornaments (you know, to put in the Christmas post . . . this one). Anyway, Charlie and I mixed up and cooked a bunch of dough ornaments. Most of them broke. Yeah. The ones that survived, and were passed out, were cooked for about 10 hours more than the directions intended.

So, after fretting over these things for way too long I figured I was going to have some fun with them. I painted the Hulk and sent it off to a friend's daughter then made myself the Iron Man. Feel free to debate which is nerdier: making home made Christmas ornaments or painting them like comic characters. When you figure out which is nerdier, let me know so I can take you off any future ornament receiving lists.









Of course, now that the season is done (and I'm less hyped about baking, varnishing and painting ornaments) I've come up with five or six I really should have done. Oh well, if you get ornaments next year, that reflect events of last year, just say thanks and we'll all move on.

Putting up our tree.

Big shout outs to Nana and Bob. This was the first year, since I started blogging, that I haven't asked for pics of your trees. They sent theirs anyway. I appreciated it. It's nice, you know?

My kids also had, basically, 12 Days of Christmas. More people brought gifts to my house than any other time ever. I was expecting a giant wooden horse full of Greeks before the break was over. Bart came down before Christmas to soak up the awesomeness which are my kids.

Asher wouldn't put down the wrench set Bart got me. He carried it around like it was a briefcase.  

When Bart first showed up, Charlie would barely talk to him. When he left she was calling him Uncle Bart. This is him reading a Scooby Doo comic and doing all the voices.

Here's our tree all done up.

Charlie was up first.

She had to wake Asher up. But he got into it pretty quick.

Stockings.

Lots of candy in these stockings.

Like Reese's Big Cups. It's a Glorious Hockey Puck of Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter.

Pancake Breakfast.

Then onto PRESENTS!

Giving his La La Loopsy doll a piggyback ride.

A tub full of giant plastic bugs.

Just super cute.

New sled.

New boots.

Train tracks amid the rubble.

The day ends with a Mad Max pose.

My mom came up the day after. More gifts and more great pictures.

A programming note. If you've wanted to comment on the blog, but we unable before, you should be able to now. Go ahead, give it a try.