Our Christmas Photo Shoot

Hot dog. I just beat the 'expert' level of Minesweeper :)


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Shortly after I was laid off I lamented to Lisa that it took place when it did. Had it happened in summer, I said, I'd have had the unique opportunity to interact with the kids all day.

Yeah. And then came the ENTIRE WEEK they were (inexplicably) off of school for Thanksgiving, and that statement came to be known for the utter cr** that it was :)

But, we did use that week to accomplish some things. With our finances curtailed we could not go 'all out' as we usually do on Christmas cards, much less get a professional portrait. Instead we dressed 'em up and headed down to Southridge Mall to take a picture with Santa.









We got there early - earlier than Santa actually.



Here's two shots I tried taking with our camera. Neither was adequate, and I was running out of room on the memory card or out of battery power (I forget which) and couldn't take another.





It didn't matter, really. The mall still made us buy a photo (although I talked them down to half-price) and it was quite good enough. We later scanned and made copies to distribute in our cards.



If you DIDN'T get one this year, please don't be angry or remove us from '09's list. With our finances we only managed to get 40 or so cards in the mail (as opposed to 70-80 normally) and even those were staggered over a few weeks time.

After the shot we went and let the kids play in the jungle gym area of the mall. While we were there we ran into Lisa's cousin Jodie and her son Jackson, and chatted awhile while the kids played.













In case you can't pick up on it, Smiley LOVED wearing a tie!

Smiley's Christmas Concert

Well, holiday concert actually as it was at his public school, although you know what? I think they did call it a Christmas concert and just stuck to secular songs.
Because of the lack of a proper auditorium at his school, the concert was held at a nearby middle school.



Here's Smiley with his teacher Ms. Heidi before the show. He's got a little crush on her.



Anyhow, we took everyone but Lump to the show.



His class performed a Hawaiian Christmas song (not Mele Keleekemaka [sic])complete with pointy elf hats and a lei. I'd know the title of the song but Smiley appears to have stolen the program from his drawer in our filing cabinet (each kid has their own drawer full of momentos and schoolwork).

[update: I found the program. It was 'The Merry Hula']

He's third from the left in this shot.









It was a ball. Afterwards I snuck down to his class to retrieve him and take him home, as we weren't going to stay for the whole program (very rude I know, but every once in awhile you gotta just do what's best for yourself)



But . . . the guilt got to us, and the songs were pretty good, and so we stayed for 3/4ths of the performance (and therefore got a chance to see his other teacher sing a song in a trio)







We left early, as I said, and loittered for a minute or two in the hall.











Even with a bad hair day going on I couldn't stop being proud of the little guy!



P.S. One thing I did want to mention is that his school videotapes every concert and event and offers the results to families at a very reasonable cost - two DVD's for $10 in the case of this concert. What a great program, one that spares me from having to watch every special day through the viewfinder of a camera. Good job public school!

New Years Eve 2008

Yeah, I've got a ton of Christmas posts on back-order, but I figured we'd skip ahead and jot down a post about New Years.

It wasn't the most exciting of nights. It was the first time I've had New Years Eve off in more than a decade (I might have 'officially' had a night off, but I assure you it was riddled with phone calls and double-checking things) and what does Lisa do? She has to go to work.

So until she got off at 11 in was me and the kids. I'd drafted my niece to babysit from 11 on so we could go out, but she got an invite to a party and 'volunteered' her mother in her place. My sister showed up super early at six, which turned out to be a good thing as the kids were set to be a handful.

Before Lisa left she made a cake the kids frosted - and with the proper utensils. I assure you, this was a posed shot ;)





I'd done a good deed by downloading a two-CD set of Hannah Montana that the kids jammed out to.





Then YaYa did the dishes before settling down to blog a Happy New Years post on her site.





Smiley got a train set from his Great Aunt Royette for Christmas, and I set that up for him. He had a blast.









Here's the Lump. That's not 'red eye', it's just her devilish nature spewing forth.



Then the kids just kind of chilled out for hours, disappearing at times to watch the Disney Channel countdown upstairs. In the meantime I made a run to the liquor store, where I had to park two blocks away because of the traffic at the store.

At ten - two hours later than I intended thanks in part to the line at the liquor store - I rounded up the kids and celebrated 'midnight' and the turn of the New Year.



Lisa had bought noisemakers, glow in the dark bracelets, and whatnot, while I supplied cranberry juice 'champagne'.









No one could figure out how to make the kazoos work, except for Smiley and the next day, the Lump! Everyone else was symied.



Apparently the power of suggestion is as powerful as advertised, judging by this photo. It's non-alchoholic LuLu!











When Lisa came home I was rip roarin' to go out, but she was feeling worn out and sick and asked to stay home. Not . . .the answer I was hoping for, but I understood.

By midnight Lump and Smiley were fast asleep of course . .



But the rest of us gathered in our bedroom to ring in the New Year.









Happy New Year everyone!

Attention Please

I have a column in today's Journal-Sentinel.

Smiley's New Hairstyle

This is how a paranoid mind works. A few days before the New Year I saw Smiley come down the stairs looking like this:



and instead of thinking "someone cut his hair!", which would be logical, I instead thought "Oh man, I hope he doesn't have some weird disease where he goes bald young. Oh God that would be awful for him!"

A moment later it dawned on me that, like his sisters before him, he had taken a scissors and walloped his own locks. Only with his buzz cut that meant he tread awful close to the scalp. It's a wonder he didn't break the skin.



As Smiley still can't talk, I asked the girls if they knew what happened. Both LuLu and YaYa admitted to being in the room when he did it but 'didn't notice' or stated 'it wasn't my fault'.

No one lifted a finger to stop him, but I guess that's par for the course with this bunch.

Lisa wanted to buzz it even before a recent social outing, but I stopped her. "Leave it," I said. "At least I'll have a topic of conversation to work with."