I survived the Holiday!

I was much more unplugged from the Internet than usual over the Thanksgiving holidays, though probably not as much as I should have been. Anyway, the family survived the usual return to the ancestral homelands for the Thanksgiving gathering.
As I reported last time, my mom came in during the previous week to help take care of the Tornado. That Sunday, she and the Princess returned to San Antonio so my parents could have her to themselves for a couple of days. It seems kids these days get the whole week off for Thanksgiving, but nobody told all our employers, so Momma and I still had work to do. As usual, work was difficult, although less so since many people were out.
We headed into San Antonio ourselves late Wednesday night. It was a pleasant and quick drive as traffic was light and fast moving, and the Tornado fell asleep about 20 minutes into the trip.
We slept in late Thanksgiving day and enjoyed a non Turkey lunch with my family. These days, it is just my parents and my aunt who are with us. Since my grandmother passed away and since all my generation of the family have scattered to the far corners of Texas, Thanksgiving is no longer the big family gathering that it used to be, but it is still a good time. In the afternoon, we rested, watched football, and planned our traditional Black Friday assault.
While we weren't in the market this year for the ubiquitous Flat Panel TV deals, we still found plenty of things to go after. For the first time, the wife and I split up (she took my mom with her). I lined up at Best Buy around 3:45 for a 5am opening to score a 22" widescreen LCD monitor. When the doors opened, I was able to easily get to the monitors, pick up a few other things, and actually was out of the store by 5:20 due to a lucky find of a register with a short line. I'm actually writing this post looking at my new monitor is all its 1680x1050 resolution magnificence.
My next assignment was Toys R Us. However, by the time I got there, the big item we were looking for was already sold out and the line to checkout wrapped all the way around the store to the front door. So, I bailed on that one. Your loss, Toys R Us.
Meanwhile, the women folk hit Wal-mart, Target, KB Toys, and even Walgreens. They came back to the house with a full minivan of stuff. We were both back at my parents by 8am and somehow managed to get all our Christmas shopping done. That is a first, I think.
After that, we kicked the kids and my parents out of the house so that we could get everything wrapped up in order to take it back home without the kids seeing what they were getting. We also enjoyed the quite surprising victory of A&M over UT that put the finishing touch of taking UT from defending national champs down to Big 12 also ran. After the way this season has gone, I'm still not sure I believe that we won that game.
Saturday was for recovering, packing, and traveling. The tornado had been doing extremely poorly during the nights, so we were not getting much sleep. We ended up napping on Saturday afternoon. The wife and I managed to get away to dinner by ourselves before making the final packup. We planned another late evening run in hopes that the kiddos would sleep. However, this time the boy would have none of it and decided to scream most of the way. We had to make a couple of stops to settle him down and he finally gave up about an hour away from the house. It was another rough night.
Sunday brought unloading, unpacking, and the start of holiday decorating. We've decided that we just can't have a real tree in the house. As much as we like them, they just make everyone in the house sick throughout December. The wife found a used artificial tree at the church rummage sale for $9. I put it together on Sunday and it turned out pretty well. I didn't get a chance to put up the outside lights yet, but I did buy some more today. So, perhaps I'll get around to it tomrrow.
And, my dad has turned into the shutterbug since he got himself a digital camera earlier this year. You can checkout his handiwork from the long weekend here.

I am not a Blogger

Look at this - I've let a whole two weeks slip by without a new post. And it's not like there hasn't been anything to post about. Quite the contrary.
Work has been very busy and will remain so for well into 2007. Every day I leave work I'm farther behind than when I arrived in the morning. One of my friends says I just need to stop coming in so I'll quit losing ground. Doesn't sound like too bad an idea some days.
For the past week, the wife has been in Chicago for business, so it had been me alone with the Princess and the Tornado. Which, in itself would not normally be so bad. But, the Tornado decided to start running a 102F Fever the first night and I ended up staying home with him part of the week, pretty much staying awake the whole time trying to comfort him. My mom came in a few days ago to help watch him so I could get back to falling behind at work.
As I read postings on the blogs of friends, I must come to the realization that I'm not really a blogger. I can't really write during the day, especially these days. At night, after the kids and wife are taken care of, I usually just want to vedge out a bit, catch up on some news, and crash. Gathering my thoughts and writing about the day just doesn't rise up to the top of the stack.
I've got the time to write now because I've just gotten the Tornado back to sleep after being up with him for two hours. I've got to get ready for Church in a little while, so there's no point to trying to get back to sleep myself at this point. As you can expect, this is not the kind of free time that comes very often and certainly not the kind of free time I'm looking for.
So, I'll continue to check in, hopefully I can commit to at least once a week with some kind of write-up. But, I can see that this place is not going to be the spot for my pontificating about the issues of the world, unless it is something really big and I can make extra time.
As always, Life, the adventure, continues.....

A full weekend

Well, the weekend draws to a close and it has been another full one. Friday, the princess and I spent the evening at a Daddy/Daughter dance hosted by our Church. The theme was Hawaiian Princesses, so the wife put together a nice outfit and the princess fit right in with the other girls.
Yesterday, we started off with a tough soccer game, though my girl did well and scored a couple of goals. After that, I took my two, and three of my nieces and nephews to McDonald's for lunch while the wife, her sisters, and their mother all went to the Olive Garden for lunch. The original idea was for all of us to go there, but I couldn't see this group of kids having much fun in that environment, so I loaded them up in the minivan and turned them loose on the McDonald's playground.
Last night, I got to see A&M lose a close game to Oklahoma. I was hoping we could pull it off, but it looks like we're not quite there yet. But, I think Francione has done well enough to warrant another year, especially if he can give a strong finish to this year.
Today, I started off as usual with my CCE kids. I have 19 in my class, although it seems like I never have more than 15 show up on any given week. I have assistants to help manage them and we have a good time.
We finished the weekend by taking the princess to her first Karate tournament. To see how that went, you can check out the video:



Now, it's time to head to bed. Another busy week of work beckons.

Pirates and Mermaids for Halloween

I think Halloween is now the Tornado's favorite holiday. He really got into the spirit of going up to houses to get candy this year. Both the kids went as pirates this year and looked good doing it. Their cousin came over and joined us.
I don't know if there is some secret post somewhere that tells everyone in town to come to our neighborhood on Halloween. We had groups of kids and teens pour into the streets and some places the roads were impassable with all the vans and SUV's that were shuttling them in.
Still, the kids managed a good haul of candy this year. Now, if I can just keep from eating too much of it myself!