Alex, Self Portrait in Winter

Posted on by
Guest blogger Alex on his Self Portrait in Winter:

I made myself in winter. It was fun and it took a couple of weeks to finish it.

The first thing we did was make the face and ears and we tried to find a color which matched our skin. Then we drew our winter hats. Then we made our scarf. I picked red and black. Then we made our winter coats and I picked orange. Then we used oil pastels which were white and pressed hard on the open spaces to make the snowflakes. Then we painted around them and I picked blue and purple. Then we made the mouth, nose, and mouth and eyebrows and eyes. Then were drew pick circles to make our cheeks look cold.

Day out with Thomas Pictures Posted

Posted on by

Alex and I just finished working on the Day out with Thomas pictures for the website. In 2003 we took Alex to the Day out with Thomas and since Andrew is at the same age and enjoys playing with the Thomas train set we knew he would enjoy it too.

Alex just had this to say about the day:
“I enjoyed riding on Thomas and I’m sure everybody did. I ate corn dog for lunch there and for dessert I had a funnel cake.”

Abe’s Log Cabin

Posted on by

If it weren’t for the kids artwork this bog would certainly be a whole lot more stale then it already is. I think it was a couple of months ago now when Alex actually did this artwork in social studies.

Sleep Study and Pictures from New Orleans

Posted on by
A couple of weeks ago I had a sleep study done at the advice of my neurologist. Personally I think he has been angling to have me do one for a while and Jen has wanted me to have this done as well so I finally relented. I don’t think that I showed too many signs of sleep apnea but I do snore, Jen said I stop breathing at night, and during the day I find that I’m tired enough that so some nights I can go to bed at the same time as the kids. By the time the study came along I was kind of wishing they would find something to explain my tiredness.

I’ll spare you the details of the actual study but it turns out there isn’t anything wrong with my sleep. I do stop breathing at night but apparently it’s only one time more per hour then what they consider normal. Something like 5 times an hour is ok and I averaged 6 for the four hours of sleep I managed to get.

Since they didn’t find anything one of the strategies the doctor suggested to combat the tiredness was to make sure I wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. Unfortunately for me I go swim before work some days which means I’m getting up early those days and the days I’m not swimming I need to get up early as well.

As a result it looks like I’m going to have some free time to fill and this morning I used it to get the pictures from our New Orleans trip together and posted to site.

North Texas Spring Storms

Posted on by
Two nights ago we had some pretty strong storms that rolled through around 4:00 in the morning that brought some pretty high winds. Jen had been awake for a while watching the lightning and she went to look outside when she thought it was getting worse which was at the same time I ended up being jolted out of bed when the house was hit by a strong gust of wind that made our bedroom wall shake. We checked the weather on TV and they were taking about possible tornadoes right near us so we woke the kids up and brought them downstairs to the bathroom to take cover just in case. I’m not sure there were any actual confirmed tornadoes but we did have wind gusts up to 90 mph. In the end I think we managed pretty well compared to some other folks as we only lost two sections of fence. The roof appears to be ok as I haven’t seen that we lost any shingles and the house siding is all still there.

Fence%20Damage Fence%20Damage

Alex’s school had a bit more damage with part of the roof missing and a number of windows in he common area that got blown out. They didn’t get the day off school since it was just the roof covering but no one was given tardy slips for not getting there on time. All the houses around the school were in much worse shape then the houses in our neighborhood.

Roof Damage at School Roof Damage at School
Picnic Shelter at School Stop sign bent over.

Just down the road from us the intersection has been closed for the last two days because the power and telephone lines had all been blown into the street.

Telephone Lines Down Power lines knocked over.

Snow Day

Posted on by
A couple of weeks back we managed to get a pretty decent snow fall where it actually snowed over night and then again on the next day so when it was all done there was enough that we could actually have a decent snowball fight. We took a bunch of pictures of everyone having fun in the backyard and getting wet in the snow.

Alex’s Mad Libs – Stegosaurus

Posted on by
For our trip to New Orleans we bought Alex the Prehistoric Mad Libs activity book. I’ve never done one of these before but the idea is that there is a story with words missing and without knowing anything about the story I would ask Alex for a noun, adjective, verb, or number and he would give me the first thing that came to mind.

Here’s the Stegosaurus story with Alex’s words are underlined.

The policeman-eating Stegosaurus was a green dinosaur about the size of a train. Many people recognize the Stegosaurus from the awesome plates running down its back. The Stegosaurus had about 900 plates on its back, each one shaped like a crocodile. Air blowing against these plates kept the Stegosaurus nice and slimy. It also had a gray tail that it used for racing other dinosaurs if it was in danger. It had two red front legs that were about 66,000 feet long and a tiny head-prefect for helping it shoot the ground in search of a delicious rock star for lunch.

A Charlie Brown Valentine

Posted on by

A couple days before Valentines ABC was showing “A Charlie Brown Valentine” and since Alex has always enjoyed the Peanuts specials and Andrew is a big fan of “Noopie” we manged to get home from soccer practice and get them fed and showered in time to watch it. In this special CB spends the entire episode agonizing over the “little red hair girl” and trying to figure out if she even knows he exists, if she’s going to be sending him a valentine, and trying to muster up the courage ask her to the Valentines dance.

About half way though the episode CB is at school sitting on a bench all by himself waving a sandwich around that he’s not eating and he is going on an on about the “little red hair girl.” This particular scene happens twice. After finishing his rant the first time CB takes the sandwich he appears to have maybe taken a bite out of, stuffs into his lunch bag, walks over to the trash, and tosses it away. It really looked like he just threw away a perfectly good lunch without eating it. The second time this scene plays out CB is again sitting on the bench waving his sandwich around talking about the “little red hair girl.” I wish I had the exact speech but it was something like,

“Look at the “little red hair girl” over there. I wondering if she sees me? What heroic thing could I do to make her notice me? I want to ask her to the dance but I don’t think she evens knows who I am and I don’t even have her number.” Just like the time before he stuffs the uneaten sandwich back in the lunch bag and as he’s walking away from the bench still pouring out his soul to the audience Alex cuts him off mid sentence and says,

“If I were him I’d just finish that sandwich.”

Ahh, romance.