She Comes From A Long Line Of Eaters

Wonderous Winterland

This morning Old Man Winter woke up with a headache. What fun! (Except that meeting was canceled.  Nobody's going anywhere in this mess.) 

The boys decided to brave the elements and go for a walkabout.

The snow stopped before too long, but the it looks like the wind is going to howl for at least another day. We should have a couple of fine drifts by then.  My repaired fence is taking on the full fury of the storm - I guess we'll find out if I used enough cement for the posts, but so far so good.



Cold 1

Tonight on our way home the thermometer in the van read -2 degrees.  Brrrrr.

When I Grow Up...

Tonight Anthony declared, "When I grow up I'm going to be a mad scientist! But not an evil one!"

Perfect.

Kenrick got the giggles.  He tried to explain: "My instinct is to laugh forever! (Hiccup)"

Can you tell what he learned about in school today?

Meanwhile, Little Miss Activity tried to yank Daddy's nose off by the nostrils and Paxton kept a running dialog of nonsense.  Here's his version of a knock-knock joke: 

"Daddy!  Daddy!"
"What, Paxton?"
"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"Banana who!!  Ha Ha Ha!  Squeeeeeeeal! Kenriiick, no touch me!"

Then he fell off his chair.

More Paxtonisms

Paxton has a certain saying when things aren't quite going his way.  For example, the other day he was trying to dribble the soccer ball in the hallway like a basketball (which is against the rules, for the hundredth time!) and he was having difficulty keeping the ball bouncing.  I heard him say in his frustrated, two-year-old, world-is-coming-to-an-end voice,

"Can't work!"

He also has a response whenever he's accused of any wrongdoing.  Andrea asked him this evening at the dinner table to stop waving his fork around and eat.  He replied indignantly,

"Me not!"

His favorite song lately is "I've been working on the train-road..."

Boxes, Boxes, Everywhere

This is a story about boxes.  They came to visit sometime in the middle of October and within two days had eaten all our stuff.  Here's proof.

The books strategically fit into boxes that look small enough to pick up. Just don't do it without a hernia belt, or you'll twist your back into a pretzel.

Anya's room. Wait, wasn't this space cleared up and pretty just a couple of months ago?  Oh well...

Our room, on the other hand, hasn't been this clean in a while.  See the box on top?  That one might hold Andrea's sweaters.  Or maybe the one below it.  Hmm.

The Moving Truck.  And various items scattered across the front lawn for all the neighbors to see.  Where did all this stuff come from?  Anyway, all the boxes said goodbye and piled into the truck along with their new-found friends and left.  Beautiful day for a move huh?

With all our stuff gone and our little house empty and echo-ey, I guess there's nothing left to do but say goodbye ourselves and find another place to call home.

Here it is.  But it's empty.  Hmph.

Just when we were starting to wonder what we were going to do with an empty house, a couple of familiar trucks wandered by.  Hey, how about pulling in here?

Books in the family room.  Lots of books.  Did the books have babies?

The master bedroom.  Remember that box with the sweaters in it?  I think it's the one on the bottom.  Or maybe that one... 

The living room.

And the kitchen.  Both seem to have been struck by the same proliferation of boxes. Most are finally unpacked. Some have been relegated to the basement for storage.  Indefinitely.

I was able to make space for the van before winter, but I'm afraid the garage will be an ongoing project.

Anybody need any boxes?

Cutie Pa-tutie

From Kenrick's camera, a particularly precious picture of our little Anya.

Frankenthony

If you are the least bit squeamish about blood and guts or metal pins sticking out of peoples arms, DON'T LOOK AT THE PICTURE BELOW!
You already looked didn't you? Sorry.

These three little titanium wonders held Anthony's arm together for four weeks, then slid out quietly with a little twist and a gentle tug from the steady-handed doc. Notice Anthony's scar from his run-in with the broken glass? Now he's got a few more to keep it company.

Re-Connected

We finally have an Internet connection again after almost a month of being isolated from all things weblike, so I thought that I'd better put down a couple of highlights before I forget what happened.

1. We moved.
2. To be more precise, we packed all our stuff into a giant moving van and said goodbye our home of 9 years in Peoria and moved it all to a nice little ranch-style house surrounded by corn fields, on a dirt road next to the edge of Chicagoland.
3. Somewhere along the way our boxes had babies, most of which are still sitting in our living room.
4. Anthony got a cast put on his broken arm (red).
5. Anthony got his cast removed. Break looks good, elbow is still a little stiff, he got to keep the pins that were holding his bones together.
6. We had a tremendous wind storm a week after we moved into our house that blew down a section of fence and blew in one of the basement windows.
7. I fixed the window.
8. The fence is still broken.
9. Kenrick and Anthony love their new school.
10. We got a kitten.

I'm probably forgetting a couple of things, but you get the idea anyway. I'll try to post some pictures later.

Broken Bone #1

Well, after seven years of ricocheting around like a pinball, Anthony finally took a hit that he couldn't bounce back from. We were at a local park two Saturday's ago and he came to me crying, holding his arm from a fall off the monkey bars. My first thought was that he'd knocked the wind out of himself, but his right elbow didn't look quite right. My second thought was that he'd dislocated it, but nobody present was a doctor, so we had him hold a package of frozen deer meat to his arm (thanks Don) and took him in to the doctor's office. Poor kid had to wait forever in the not-so-prompt Prompt Care, but we finally got some x-rays and this is what it showed.

Doesn't take a doctor to see that's bad news. Unfortunately, our timing and choice of doctor was poor, so Anthony had to wait longer than he probably should have before we could get him hooked up with a proper ortho-doc. To make a long story short, we took him in to the hospital on Tuesday afternoon for surgery and came out that evening with patched, pinned, and slightly more subdued monkey boy.

He was basically back to normal by this weekend. Still a little painful, and highly inconvenienced by the sling on the wing, but generally in good spirits. He's only got a wrapped splint on now, but he'll get a fiberglass cast this week. When the nurses asked him what color of cast he wanted he said white - so that everyone could sign it.

Moving Week

Our time in Peoria is rapidly coming to an close.  After what seems like a very short two and a half months from the time we knew we'd be moving, we've signed the papers on a new house west of Aurora and we're expecting the movers bright and early in the morning to start packing up the Pandemonium.  We're not really moving that far, but it's still hard to think of living somewhere else, and we still have to say goodbye.  After twelve years, we are saying goodbye to our dear friends, to our little town, to our creaky, quirky old house and many, many wonderful memories.  It seems a little unreal still, like a dream that I'm having a hard time waking up from, but I know that our new house will soon become home, just as this one did, that old friends will remain, new friends will be made, and that many new adventures await.

So thank you to everyone who made us welcome, who have made us family, who have made our time here special - we will remember with warm hearts your hospitality and your wry sense of humor, your love of life and of truth and of good warm bonfires on chilly October evenings.  And we'll expect you to come visit.

Big Boy Toys

Yesterday afternoon I took Kenrick and Paxton up to the open house at the facility where I'll be working in Aurora. The whole factory was shut down for the day to let everyone show their families where they work, so we hiked from one end of the plant to other to see how the magic happens. Even though the work was stopped, it was cool to see where loaders and excavators begin from sheets of steel and chunks of cast iron that get bent and welded and bolted and shaved and drilled and painted and stickered and come out all bright and shiny at the other end.

Paxton was delighted to see all the 'essabators' and even got to sit in one.

The troopers, all tuckered out from such a long walk.

The job I'm moving to is with a new division at Cat and so there is a lot of activity at the Aurora facility to get ready for us. They even put up a sign. It's nice to be welcomed.

Anthony Logic

Kenrick and Anthony both have to keep reading logs for school.  The other morning Kenrick asked Anthony, "Anthony, how many minutes did you read last night?"
"I don't know, probably a thousand."
"A thousand minutes! You didn't read for that long!"
"Well, it was a really long book!"
Must have been.

Busy Girl

If this little cutie doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will.

New Digs: Pre-Pandemonium

Although a part of me won't breath easy until all the papers are signed and the moving van is parked outside the door, we are getting closer and closer to closing on our new house and I'm starting to believe that it might really happen after all. The past two months have contained a year's worth of activity, including finishing up projects on our current house and getting it on the market, searching for and making an offer on a house in Aurora, and juggling Realtors, attorneys, inspectors, banks, insurance agents, and miscellaneous other people who get involved with moving Pandemonium from here to there. Last week was particularly agonizing with inspection reports hitting us in the gut on Monday and appraisals on Tuesday, followed by an interested couple and an offer on Thursday.  We're not sure quite yet where the debris will settle, but it's starting to look like there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel.  Oh, and I'm trying to transition from my old job to my new, which basically means that I'm doing both.  Can I breathe yet?

Anyway, here's a picture of the house that we're in the process of buying.  Simple, but with a decent layout inside, enough bedrooms, and a great big back yard.  Kids, go outside and play for a couple of months while mommy and daddy take a nap.

Google Magic

This evening I typed our address into Google Maps to get driving directions to someplace. You know that sidebar on Google Maps where general information about a region usually shows up, like hotels or gas stations or points of interest? After the map of our little town came up I noticed that the sidebar said, "Real estate at this address:", and there was the listing for our house, all four bedrooms and two bathrooms worth!  How do they do that?

Say What?

You know you have three energetic boys at the dinner table when you hear Daddy say something like, "Kenrick, sit down! Sit up! Anthony, stop chewing with your mouth full! Don't talk with your mouth open! Paxton, I know you no like 'matos, but please stop shoveling them onto my plate!"

Happy 1/2-Birthday Anya!

So, six days after Anya's six-month birthday I'm posting her Five Month picture.  Oh well, that's kind of the way things are going around here.  Isn't she a doll!

We never really had a chance to take a Pretty Princess picture on her half-year birthday, but in honor of the start of football season we did get a chance to dress her up a bit to help cheer on the Hawkeyes. Go Iowa!

Progressing Pandemonium

As you know, I'm transferring from here to there in the next month or so, so we've been working nonstop on our house, trying to get it ready to put on the market.  When we added up all the projects that were either half finished or partially started or completely ignored but necessary to make the place sellable, and it was evident that I wasn't going to get them done any time soon, we decided that we'd better call in the Big Guns. My brother-in-law wasn't available (something about a tooth that needed pulling?), so Dad came instead. We're very grateful.

Dad was here for two weeks, and in that time he knocked off a pretty substantial chunk of the to-do list; pressure washing the house, repairing and painting trim, stripping paint from the remaining set of French windows, and generally cleaning things up.  Here he is wielding a big gun on the garage door - much to Andrea's delight.

Sometimes he just looked at me like, "you want me to do what?"

One of the things we got done was sub-floor in the living room. Then we sat the whole rag-tag crew down in the middle of it and took a 12th wedding anniversary picture.

I was also able to get the downstairs bedroom trimmed out and the upstairs hallway finished while dad was here. Now that it looks so good, I'm not sure I want to sell the place!

Then, two weeks ago Doug and Eldon came over and helped lay some flooring in the kitchen.

Anya approves.

Finally, I was able to finish what I started on the dining room windows last year by getting the left one re-paned and re-painted. The glass wasn't cheap and the labor wasn't necessarily fun, but I think the windows really define the character of this place. I hope someone else will think so too.

Sign Of The Times

See the little sign next to the road on the left side of the picture?

Yep, it says 'For Sale'. Crazy, huh?

There's been much activity around the ol' homestead, trying to get ready to put that sign up - and we hope we've made the place irresistible to just the right buyer. Or at least sellable. Now we wait for a nibble...

I'll post some pictures of the results of some of the projects we've been working on these last four weeks - I think you'll be impressed. We're impressed, which makes us more sad than ever to be leaving because now the house looks like we've wanted it to for a long time!

See the little kid in the middle of the picture? He's oblivious.

Bright Eyes

How can anyone resist?

First Day of School, 2010

Andrea accompanied the boys to their first half-day of school today and snapped a couple of photos.

I guess fourth graders eventually grow into their desks...

No grandma, the water jugs aren't for hydration, they're going to be art supply totes.  Anthony begins second grade, moving over from the high school building (where the first graders are) to the grade school building (where the grade schoolers are, duh!). He looks a little nervous, but I don't think he really is.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Moving Pandemonium

So, just when we thought life couldn't possibly get any more chaotic... Bam! Congratulations, you've just reached a new level of crazy: we're moving.

Not just moving, transferring. To a new town. New schools, new gym, new library, new taxes, new commute, new routine.  Oh yeah, and a new job.  I got a great opportunity to start in a brand new design group working on Caterpillar's newly reintroduced mining shovels in Aurora (Illinois), and it's going to mean a tremendous interruption of our current state of Comfortable Pandemonium, but I couldn't pass it up.

We're just starting the relocation process, so we don't know exactly where we'll land. Aurora is just on the western edge of the Chicago suburbs, with lots of little towns surrounding it, so we could end up in new development (surrounded by foreclosures) or out in the country (for a price!). We're trying to work out the school situation for the boys and are trying to wrap up some of the perpetually unfinished projects here on the house.  Dad's here helping with the house. We'll start talking to a Realtor in Aurora within the next couple of days and work on getting our house on the market to sell.  Anyone interested in a four bedroom classic?

The schedule of events is still a little fuzzy.  I'm supposed to 'start' work in my new group on October 1, but I'll be in transition for at least the month before that. Depending on how things progress on the home-finding front, we could be moved as early as the end of August or as late as November.  We'll let you know.

It's going to be tough to move out of Peoria. The folks here have treated us like family since Andrea and I first crashed down the door, newly married and full of energy. Now we're older married and surrounded by energy and our friends have truly become family.  And even though we'll only be a couple of hours north it's still going to be hard to leave.  Needless to say, we didn't ask any of them before we decided to move.

But, we look forward to new friends and new experiences and new challenges and we'll always be able to say Pandemonium played in Peoria.

Chicago Activites, Day 2

Day two of our adventure in Chicago included two primary events: a visit to the highest point in Illinois and an outing for the boys to historic Wrigley field to take in our first Major League Baseball game. The girls went shopping.  Some would consider that another major event, I guess. 

The top of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower is 2325 feet above sea level, 1730 feet above street level, and visible from almost anywhere in the city.  After passing through security and winding our way through the crowd-control maze in the basement, we took the express elevator to the 103rd floor observation deck.  That's not quite 2000 feet above sea level, but it still feels pretty high.

See the little bumps sticking out of the side of the tower, way up top? Keep those in mind for later.

The Pandemonium Fam, looking east over downtown and Lake Michigan.

The Spambanana crew, looking west out over the 'burbs. And yes, that is a glass floor they are standing on. Remember the bumps on the outside of the building? Those are 'Skyboxes', big Plexiglas boxes that stick right out of the side of the building. Really cool.

Some people are quite nervous about stepping out into apparent thin air and looking straight down to the street below.  Paxton and Anthony have no such fear.

After lunch we grabbed the Red Line subway to the Near North where we shoved the girls and the stroller out of a very crowded train car to begin their shopping spree and then continued on to Wrigley Field. There we negotiated a very crowded street and a very crowded stadium and climbed and climbed to our seats just as ump hollered "Play ball!" Here's what we saw.

Sam was able to get tickets that put us near the top of the upper deck, looking right down the first-base line. We relaxed in the shade with a breeze at our back, the lake in the background, and enjoyed the atmosphere of the classic American sport. That's what I did anyway. Kenrick and Anthony and Cooper were so excited they hardly sat at all. The ladies behind us didn't mind.

The Cubs were playing game two of a four-game, mid-season series with Philadelphia. Not that we really cared - it was just fun to be there. Although Kenrick is showing signs of becoming a die-hard Cubs fan.

Kenrick and Cooper took pictures of almost every pitch, hoping to catch just the right moment. This one's not bad. See the ball between the pitcher and the batter?

Oh yeah, the Cubs won 4 to 3. Go Cubs!

After the game we reconnected with the girls and made our way out of the city, fighting traffic the whole way, tired but happy to be with excellent family at the end of another excellent adventure.