Busy couple of months

So I have talked about the dining room and the rest of the paint projects and meeting The Pioneer Woman. Once that all died down, it was time to decorate for Heather's party. Let the chaos ensue: a total of 7 trees.

First up: the living room

This tree the photo tree. It has wallet-sized picture frames hung with red ribbon on the branches along with 4x6 and 5x7 framed photos stuck into the branches. The small frames a silver and the larger frames are black along with red ornament balls.

Next is the dining room.

This tree has all of the ornaments that we have either been given, kept from childhood, or things the kids made that they want to hang. Heather calls is the Heritage tree. I call it the tree with all of the old stuff. Then in the middle of the dining room table is the wreath. We just pulled the table slightly apart and dropped the electric cord through. The cord is run under table and the across a small part of the rug with piece of plastic that is the color of the rug to hide it and for safety.

The other three trees are a set of a 5, 4, and 3 foot trees that we call our forest. Then each of the kids have one. Don't be that impressed.

So the day of the party this is how the room looked.

The jars on the table look like this:

You can thank Bakerella. It's all her fault.Heather made 30 of these. They weren't too expensive but you spend about $65 to make 30.

So after that not much happened. Heather went to OKC this last weekend to see Beth Moore along with Precila Shirer and Kay Arthur with several friends and had a great time. Sunday morning all of the kids in the children's choir had their performance and they did well.

Yesterday was Heather's birthday. So instead of trying to go out to dinner last night, we went down to Tulsa and went to Ted's Cafe Escondito. The place was very good. Until....

The waiter asked if we had been there before while Heather and Reid went off to the restroom. I answered "No, we are here for my wife's birthday". Heather and Reid get back and just shortly after getting our food, they came over and ...

began to sing. The sombrero was an unexpected, but welcomed side benefit. Shortly after I took this with my iPhone, Heather yanked it out of my hand and took this:

This way there was evidence that I was at least having a good time before the bodily harm started. They needed a way to ID the body. But no, Heather decided that I should pay in other ways.

My penance - purchasing her a

iPhone 3GS. 32 Gigabytes. Black. So her device has 4 times the storage and has some features that mine doesn't have. I'm thinking that her tactical maneuver was more psychological than financial. So much so that I actually had a slip of the tongue when were talking about her phone: I said "my phone" instead of "your phone". She immediately said "Excuse me?" Oops. Bad Damon.

The funny thing was as Heather was getting instruction on how to use the device, the kids were over at the iPhone display playing games that were on their demo devices. When we went to leave, Reid asks "Where's my iPhone? I want one!" I couldn't contain my laughter. Sorry dear Reid. Not any time in a future that you can comprehend at the age of 4 3/4!

I had another doctor appointment this week for some follow ups. I think I have just one more but we'll see. Heather gets an MRI Thursday for her knee. Looks like she may be having some repair done on her menisci on her left one. We'll just see.

More later.

What fun...

The last couple of weeks have not been fun at hour house. Jackson got sick with the swine Flu. And just as Jackson hit rock bottom, Heather and I started down. Then I just ended up with bronchitis not two weeks later.

The highlight was Saturday night. One, the kids did all my work of gathering candy so I would have something to snack on. Two. I got to meet Ree - The Pioneer Woman at a book signing in her little town a mere 30 minutes away.

As it turns out, I've already known her (I say that loosely) for a while before Cathy Zielske's web page led me to Ree's. I used to work at the hospital in the town I live in, which is Ree grew up; just 50 miles from her ranch. Her brother Mike worked there and he would talk about his sister Ree. It finally hit me one time when I was reading her blog and she was talking about her brother. I thought that the person she was describing was the Mike I knew from the hospital. Lo and behold, she was.

Then. Jackson used to go to school with a boy at his old school who is now on his swim team. His mom, Vanessa and Heather are friends. Vanessa has an email address that is tied to her husband's business. Now I knew Vanessa's husband was in the cattle business, but there again was able to put 2 and 2 together. Just funny that way.

I snapped the above picture with my iPhone. I didn't notice then that she had her camera right there on the table.

So I waited in line and snapped the two pictures above. I changed the one to black and white using her actions. Not that she didn't look nice, but the B&W looks really good.

So when it was my turn, I took my books up to her and she was very nice. I told her about I knew Mike and Vanessa. She did think that it was funny that we could not get more than 2 degrees away (the whole 6 degrees of separation thing). I noticed her Nikon D3 on the table and commented on it. She then said "Oh, pick it up and shoot a few frames and see what you think." She then commented on my "old" Nikon D70 (which is what her first digital SLR was) and said that it is a great camera.

All in all, it was well worth making the little hop over there.

A little of Reid...

I posted this on my Facebook but forgot to put this out on my blog. We had pictures of Reid taken where she got to wear a tutu and she was the only one to wear it. The photographer had a thing called Tutus for Wishes where the session fees were donated to the local Make-a-wish foundation. It was too funny.

Evidence here:

Thanksgiving lesson from a kindergarten student - Humor from the Internet

This will probably bring back many memories to any of us having had experiences with small children's conversations. For most people Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what we've been given and to savor the scents of crisp autumn days and pumpkin pie, but for this woman it has a whole different meaning.

One November afternoon when my daughter was in kindergarten, I picked her up after school. She bobbed out to the car and crawled into the back seat. "What did you do today?" I asked. She couldn't wait to tell me. "We learned that boys are different from girls" she chirped.

Looking into the rearview mirror I could just see the top of her head. "My teacher told us that boys have a thing the girls don't," she added. "Well, yes they do..." I said cautiously. Then she piped up again, "That's how girls know that boys are boys. They see that thing hanging down and they know that he's a boy...".

I mentally calculated the distance home. Our five-minute commute already felt like an hour. "Did you know that when the boys see a girl they puff up?" My palms were beginning to sweat. "Um...well.." I was still searching for something to say to change the subject, when she asked, "Why do the girls like boys to have those things?" Well I didn't know what to say. I mean, what woman hasn't asked herself that very same question at least once?

"Oh, well...um...", I stammered. She didn't wait for my answer. She had her own. "It's cause it moves when they walk and when girls see that they know they're boys and that's when they like them. Then the boy sees the girl and he puffs up, then the girl really knows he likes her too. And then they get married. And then they get cooked".

That last part confused me a bit, but on the whole I thought she had a pretty good grasp on things.
As soon as we got home she hopped out of the car, fishing something out of her school bag. "I drew a picture," she said. "...you want to see?" I wasn't all that sure I did, but I looked anyway.

I had to sit down. There, all puffed up so to speak, looking mighty attractive for the ladies, was a crayon drawing of a great big Tom Turkey. His snood, the thing that hangs down over his beak, the thing that female turkeys find so irresistible, was magnificent. His tail feathers were standing tall and proud.

She was a little offended that I laughed so hard at her drawing. I laughed until I cried. But I told her I loved it - and I did - and she got over her pique.

Who says church cannot be funny?

How can you tell if a Catholic is driving too fast?

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know. You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems. Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green. Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

The Muppet Personality Test