Not that Christmas has kind of crept up on us or anything, but we did a lot of last minute shopping on Wednesday. The 23rd. Of December.  Mostly for the little things like stocking stuffers, though. On Thirsday, bizarrely, Missy passed out overnight. Beth had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and Missy got up at about the same time, and she passed out when she was in the bathroom. Not sure why, maybe she was just really tired, or not even fully awake. She seemed fine in the morning, though. We had Christmas at home on the 25th, nobody was sick this year fortunately, and Ruby enjoyed her first Christmas. The kids got a pretty good haul; Missy only wanted Webkinz stuffed animals, and she got something like 10 of them. Alex mostly wanted video game stuff, so he got Splatoon and some Disney Infinity figurines, plus both kids got some Lego stuff. After we were done here we headed to Michigan to have Christmas with the Wiessner/Pinkster family. We spent the day at Stephanie's house with everyone, then spent the night and did some shopping/returns the next day. Topped off by all of us going to see "The Force Awakens" together at Crossroads, in 3-D this time.

Tonight: one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of all time, in our house anyway. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. All of us went out to see the movie, and I think everyone was equally excited. Well, except maybe for Beth, who was interested. Good show, I say, and in keeping with the finest traditions of Star Wars. The plotlines all seemed familiar, but I'm hoping that was all on purpose (I'm sure it was) and things will progress in the next episode. It's been a good weekend overall because Saturday was the Komets' annual teddy bear toss. We went to Fort Wayne with the Boschains, got dinner at Red Robin beforehand, and then got to witness not only a Komets victory (5-1 over the Brampton Beast) but even a Komets hat trick! First I've ever seen. Of course I didn't realize it was a hat trick until after the game was over but it was still cool. Ben (who is not quite 1) also really likes hockey, we found out. And we got the kids to all contribute stuffed animals.
Ruby the kitten has finally been declawed. We thought about not doing it but she is just to aggressive with them (and she's also a biter). A bit of luck with that too, we had an appointment to bring her in the other day and forgot about it, but another appointment opened up all of a sudden so we got her in right away instead of waiting weeks like we did for the first one. We had her fixed while we're at it, of course.

One of the most disgusting things ever is when your daughter gets sick overnight and throws up over the side of her loft bed. O my goodness. Splatter...all...over.... She truly spewed and it went everywhere after falling a good 5 feet. Blaaaaaaaa. So Beth and I were up late last Monday night cleaning things up as best we could, and getting a bunch of stuff into the laundry, while Missy went downstairs to sleep on the couch because her room smelled strongly of barf. Ewwwww. So gross. Anyway, the good news was that school was closed in the morning due to fog, so she didn't miss school, and as soon as I could I rented a carpet cleaner from Owen's. We also had to clean a bunch of stuffed animals, pillows, books (several were pitched), and everything else in the room. I hope we never have to do that again.
And the week just kept getting better by Thursday, when Beth dumped an entire cup of coffee all over the laptop! She said the screen just suddenly went blank and wouldn't come back. And yep, it's all sticky all over. I took it into a computer repair shop in town to see if they could get the photo files off the hard drive, other than that I don't think anything on it matters that much. They were able to copy the hard drive onto a big memory stick so that's ok, and after things dried out a bit we got it to boot up again (they couldn't even get it to boot at the repair shop so it must have still been too wet). It seems to be working now except for about half of the keys on the keyboard, but we have an on-screen keyboard we can use. That's a pain. But it works for now until we can get a new one.
Saturday I rented that big walk-behind leaf blower again since the backyard is now piled high (now that it's mid-December, the oak leaves have finally all dropped) even though I cleared it a month ago. I was able to clear everything in a few hours, even blow most of it through the gate. Also yesterday we all went to Owen's and rang the bell for Salvation Army for an hour. You wanna hear kids grumble?
We had the Christmas program at church this morning, Pretty typical kids' program, really, but a nice show anyway. Alex being in middle school means that he hasn't been in children's church all year, so no more of that for him, but Missy was in it. However she did not want to have a speaking role so she was an angel. Typecasting, you know. She sang all the songs but no solos. Tonight was a white elephant gift exchange for our Bible study small group. It was held out in the country at the house of one of the couples in our group. I brought a DVD of "Notting Hill" that we never opened, and took home a string of Christmas lights with the huge old school bulbs. The grand prize was a giant old turntable, but I wasn't that lucky (not). Unfortunately Beth did not attend the party because she is sick. Missy puking all over he room might have had something to do with that...

The Christmas tree is up as of today, and wow does Ruby love it. Kitty's first Christmas, and she thinks it's all for her. She's a pretty hyper kitty anyway, but wow. Climbing, jumping, batting, chewing, climbing, climbing...and knocking ornaments off as soon as the kids get them on. So, we just don't have breakable ones on this year. We did caroling with the church group earlier today...on the 6th? Yes. No competition, I guess. No snow on the ground, no decorations up most places, but we went caroling. Don't know why so early but whatever. Beth and the kids and I were in a group that went around some of the neighborhoods just up the road a bit from the church, most places were friendly enough if someone was home but it looked like they weren't expecting caroling this early. Anyway. Michigan State defeated Iowa to become Big Ten champs, and are going to the playoffs! Woohoo! I hope they don't embarrass themselves against Alabama. In other big news this week, Beth and I went on a date to Fort Wayne last Thursday to see the Piano Guys in concert. What a fun show! We've never been to the Embassy Theater before, but we're going to have to go see more shows there. Loved it.

We are back from Thanksgiving trip to Indiana Pennsylvania to visit Laura and Thomas. But didn't we just see Laura in Chicago a couple weeks ago? Yep. We left Warsaw as soon as I got out of work and headed east, got there pretty late as we usually do. We had a nice Thanksgiving visit with them, possibly highlighted most of all by the first time Beth and me playing "Cards Against Humanity" with them. I made Thomas just about lose it at one point: to his card "It turned out that _____-man was neither the hero we wanted nor needed." I played the card "insatiable bloodlust." For a graphic novel fan that must have been quite a mental picture because he could barely go on after that. We all got to the point where we were laughing so hard we couldn't go on several times. In the morning after that Alex told us we were pretty noisy and he heard us say some inappropriate things. Dear me, I hope he didn't hear too much. Friday it was an unusually warm day so we all headed out to a nearby park/lake with a dam. We did a little hiking, waking the dog, hit the playgrounds, some exploring, a bit of geocaching. The cache at the park required a bit of hiking, climbing, and a little bushwacking, which intrigued Thomas so the next day we went off together to do some urban caching. We drove all through the town looking for benchmarks and caches (didn't find the benchmarks we were supposed to find, but did find several caches), until one hidden somewhere at the fairgrounds stumped us. We must have spent an hour looking for it. He doesn't like to not find something as much as I don't. But it was getting late and rainy so we eventually gave up. Alex found the Battle Ball game set in the basement so we learned how to play that and had some epic battles. While we were out the ladies took the kids shopping or something. Later in the afternoon we took our leave and headed to somewhere outside Pittsburgh, where we have learned that our good friends the Caspers have moved. Brian is now a civilian but he still works for the navy in something to do with procurement or materials development, and he does this from the Pittsburgh area now. So since we were in the area we spent the evening at their house and spent the night. It was almost like we've been together all along, it was really just like old times and we all just had a great time. Their little girl is now graduating from high school (we still love to tell the story about when we had dinner together just before we left Virginia in 1999, and as we parted Gracie was strapped into her car seat and waved bye-bye to us with one finger in her nose) and their son is 14, I think. Brian also makes trips to a vendor in Indianapolis fairly regularly, so we're going to plan to get together whenever he goes there. We had a great visit with them, then hit the road again the next morning and headed home. Long drive.

This weekend we hosted Lauren for a sleepover. We departed for Michigan as soon as I was home from work, picked up Lauren, and headed home again. We set up an air mattress in Missy's bedroom, and we were all set. The girls giggled and played with their tablets a lot but weren't up too late. They basically did more of the same most of the day on Saturday. That day, I thought I needed to get all the leaves raked and cleared out before the snow hit, which it began to do (lightly) as I started working. I was hoping to stay ahead of the great mass of leaves that covers our back yard every fall, and the great mass hadn't fallen yet, but the backyard was still pretty leafy, so I worked with rake and tarp. It took about all afternoon to clear the entire back yard but I got it done. By the time I was done the back yard was getting pretty covered with snow. And it continued to snow until evening. We had arranged for Ric and Nickie to meet us in Shipshewana at Essenhaus and have dinner after the Lauren handoff, and I'm glad we didn't have to drive any further than that because the roads were getting really slushy. The Wiessners had a long drive home with the snow getting worse and worse as they went.
Today in the afternoon (snow was pretty much gone by then) we headed down to Kokomo for Renee's father's viewing, as he passed away last week.

Our new kitten Ruby is a bit of a wild one. She's kind of a biter, and certainly hyper. I'd like to not de-claw her (I regretted de-clawing Iris and Opal), but she puts those claws out a lot. Anyway, it was kind of a freak accident, but she scratched Alex's eye pretty good last Tuesday. Alex was sitting on the couch when she jumped up on it, then he moved and startled her so she jumped and bolted, and her back leg caught him right in the eye. He was complaining about how much it hurt the rest of the day, but we both just kind of told him to suck it up. Then the next morning it was so red and painful Beth kept him home from school and took him to the doctor, who reported he had a scratched cornea. Yep, we felt pretty small about that. So he had a big patch to wear, and stayed home from school and out of the bright light the rest of the week. Saturday was the Veterans Half Marathon in Columbia City, my second time running it, and I came in better than last year, at 2:04:40. Beth and the kids came to watch me finish and get my medal, featuring the Navy this year (I think, maybe it was Coast Guard). Then I just had time to run home to shower before we hit the road for Chicago, second time in just a few weeks, since Laura was going to be there. She had a convention or something, presenting a poster and all. We headed out and picked her up downtown when she was done (we had to wait for a while, so we headed down Michigan Avenue a bit and got lunch at M Burger), then left her the van so she could go pick up her friend Jen while we went up the Willis Tower. Or so we thought: there was a long (like 3 hours) wait to get up to the top, so we cancelled that plan and had Laura come back and pick us back up again after she'd picked up Jen. Then we headed for the suburbs to visit with her friend Monica. Monica has become guardian of a special needs elementary school aged boy, who is a real sweetheart. I'm not sure what his story is exactly, but anyway he stays with Monica most of the time. He got along with Alex and Missy pretty well too. We visited with them through dinner, then took our leave and drove back home. Laura is staying with Monica for a couple days.And today, we went to the farm to pick up chickens!

Today was the Lincoln Elementary Veterans' Day program. I made it to this one, although Missy was not presenting. It was a very nice program, with the kids reading poetry, choir singing the national anthem and some patriotic songs, and a play. Afterwards I stood in the hall with the other veterans and got to shake hands with all the kids, and several of them gave me cards. A very nice program.

We've been on the move pretty much all weekend. Friday was John Pinkster's college graduation party up in Kalamazoo, so we headed up there as soon as I was out of work. Interesting note about that: while we were there we met Marve's new girlfriend. Named...Beth! He had been saving that news to surprise us...but he told us he wanted us to meet someone so we had a suspicion. Not about the name, though. Anyway, Saturday we went to the mall in Fort Wayne. Barnes & Noble had advertised that they were hosting a "maker" event in the store, which we all thought sounded really cool, but it turned out to be not that much. They had some guy demonstrating a little 3-D printer, making some sort of doo-dad or other, but all you could do was watch it print. There were a few other displays but nothing sticks in my mind. In other news, our new small group seems to be going pretty well so far. We hosted at our house tonight, with pretty much everyone here, including a lot of kids. We did a breakfast for diner think so there was a lot of breakfast casserole and bacon and such.

Ah, the joys of a lost retainer. Last week Alex realized hours too late that he had left his retainer on his lunch tray at school, and it was gone. Any clutching-at-straws hope we had of it turning up in a pocket, or a lunch lady picked it up, or something, were for naught. So, with all of a couple days of use out of the retainer, we spent $195 to get a replacement for it today.

Alex got his braces off this week Monday! He's been looking forward to that for quite some time. You know, it always seemed like I had my braces for a lot longer than my kids had theirs. but actually looking at it I don't think they did. I had mine for part of 6th and 7th grade, that's about what they had. Anyway, he was happy to get them off before Halloween. No snow this year, but we did have rain. Not too badly though. Alex was Batman, and Missy was a witch (or, a pretty peasant with a big hat). . We met up with the Rahns to go trick or treating in town along Main/Fort Wayne Streets like we usually do (one of Abby's sisters wore Missy's geisha costume from a couple years ago). The kids got a decent haul of candy before we punched out. Tonight, Beth and I joined a new small group, with several families that we don;t know as well. Hopefully it will go better than our last one did, where we met at our house and attendance was so spotty. Frustrating. Also, this weekend I finally got back to where I was running before the pneumonia; I finished a half marathon distance in town Saturday morning! So I've got 2 weeks to keep it up.

We are back from our fall break trip. We aimed a bit lower than the epic Niagara trip from last year; this time I took Friday off and we just overnighted in Chicago. We dropped the van off at a mechanic on the way out of town because it had been making a loud roaring/rattling noise from the back end for a while. Then we got breakfast at the new Crazy Egg Cafe on the way out of town, and headed to Chicago and went straight to the Museum of Science & Industry. We'd wanted to go see the "Robot Revolution" traveling exhibit for some time now, and that was the primary reason for the entire trip. The exhibit was really cool, but not as cool as we'd all thought/hoped. We also caught an Omnimax movie (about whales) while we were there, and stayed overnight in a nice motel out in Schaumberg, which had a pool, of course. Early the next morning (so early we had to wait a few minutes for it to open) we hit the IKEA and spent almost $350. But we did get the desk attachment that goes under the loft bed we got for Missy a while back, and a storage unit for Alex's room that should make things a lot better there too. On the way back we stopped in Merrillville at the Albanese Candy Store, which was...busy...and at the Valpo Fazoli's, which is fast becoming the kids favorite restaurant. And I even had a win with the van just before break; the big rattle it turned out to be a loose exhaust pipe heat shield that according to the mechanic wasn't really needed, so they just removed it and it only cost $20. So I had a tire repaired and an oil change while we were at it and still got out for only $86, sweet.

This week brought the last Race for Education my kids will participate in. Which is not that big a deal. Missy helped raise money and Beth helped with the racing part at work.
Yesterday the kids had a cookout/party at the Letsch's for children's church. Alex went too, even though as a 7th grader he is no longer in children's church but youth group. Anyway, they had the whole shebang going on there, with games and snacks and hot dogs and tractor rides and trampolines and Frisbees and catapults and everything.
And I gotta say that probably the highlight of my week, maybe even year, was watching the highlight over and over again of the Spartans beating U-M by converting a botched UM punt into an MSU touchdown on the last play of the game. Hee hee hee!

Iris, although she remains constantly agitated by the presence of the kitten, continues to be a provider for us. This week, she brought Beth 2 snakes! What a good girl!
Yesterday morning I ran the Run for Life 5k, coming in at 26:14 which isn't great but considering how pneumonia wrecked my training plan I'm pretty good with it. I did win my age group too. Ran into Trey from work there, he was helping with registration (he had a recent bike accident and can't run on his foot). I feel like I'm starting to get back to where I was before, running-wise. Anyway, later on since it was such a nice fall day we went for a geocaching drive. Since we've pretty much got all the local caches, we headed for Wabash. We hit several schoolhouse and ISQ caches in the area before punching out (not least because the country air was pungent). The schoolhouses were really cool; apparently there are a bunch of old one-room schoolhouses from the 1800s still standing out in the country, which now are on the property of whoever owns the farmland, and many are now used as garages for tractors and such.

This morning I took a load of junk to Lewis Salvage, most notably the old water heater, the old desktop computer, and a box of scrap metal from the garage. And got a whopping $15.17 for the whole load. Beats a poke in the eye, I guess. Iris had to go to the vet just afterwards, always an adventure, especially now that she's constantly enraged by the presence of the kitten at home. She was pretty wigged out but took her shots well enough.

Today was Alex's rocket launch day. He's been pretty stressed about it for a few days, but it went ok in the end. For his middle school science class, they've been learning about rockets and this project was for them to build one out of a 2-liter bottle. They fill it about halfway with water, add some pressurized air, and foosh. But the kicker is they have an egg in the rocket that they have to recover safely. So Alex did all the design work and I helped with the build. We made a cool looking rocket out of two bottles, one smaller, so it looked kind of like a two-stage rocket. Foamboard fins and nose cone, trash bag parachute, urethane foam egg container, decorated with duct tape, and named "Inertia Mk II." The upper stage and nose cone was supposed to detach and expel the egg which then parachuted to the ground safely. Well, his rocket SAILED maybe the highest in the class, or at least one of, but my guess is the upper stage got jammed together with the lower stage during acceleration, so it never came off and the whole thing plummeted like an arrow. It fell a long way. And the egg did not survive. But, even though nothing slowed it down on the descent, he had a really good aloft time. He lost a few points for a dead egg but still got an A- for the build and flight. Even with the egg loss, it was impressive. I wish I'd had a launch pad that we could do test flights with, maybe we could have made some tweaks to improve it. It worked fine when I threw it up by hand in the backyard.

The annual church picnic was today, and it looked to be a beautiful day for it but unfortunately we were pretty much all driven inside by the bees. We had the picnic tables, the bounce houses, the games...and the bees. Everywhere. So most everyone went inside, which cut the picnic short by a lot.

Last Thursday was Beth's surgery day. Wait, you say, didn't Beth just have surgery in January this year? Well, yes, she did, on the left thumb. Now, she's had the exact same surgery by the same surgeon on her right thumb. Again, everything went super well and she was headed home within a few hours of the procedure, in no pain (yet). We know this time exactly how much pain to expect. Judy came fro the surgery, she had planned to stay for a few days but decided to leave since I was home from work for the day of and after surgery, so anyway we finished up watching the entire series of "Friends" on Netflix and watching basically whatever else we can find, and overnight I just slept on the couch and set an alarm for every 2 hours for Beth to take her pain meds. So far she says the pain management is better than it was last time, but that may have been because her dominant hand was so much worse than the left. Anyway, you know what the best thing about this surgery is? It was free! I was really hoping to be able to get Beth in for both surgeries in the same calendar year. We burned right through our deductible and hit the out of pocket maximum by the end of January, so health care has been free (ignoring the premiums, of course, since they're deducted from my paycheck so I never see them) for the rest of the year! And another surgery is included! Anyway, we're all hoping Beth recovers from the surgery soon, because she's planning to start making soup again this week. We've already started getting the jars and bulk ingredients ready.
I'm still trying to get back to running since the half marathon I want to run is in about 2 months. I made it about 6.5 miles this weekend, so halfway back.

Gotta love a day off of work for Labor Day. No camping this year, but instead we all went up to Mishawaka/Elkhart/South Bend on Saturday to look at some. We stopped at a few of the larger dealers up there (it seems to be the world RV capitol) and found a few nice ones, both hybrids and bunkhouses. While looking at the campers somewhere up in Mishawaka, Beth got a call from the lady she was supposed to be meeting for lunch and coffee, oops...Anyway, unfortunately they cost a ton of money new and depreciate fast so my guess is we would buy a used one. We are once again thinking of selling the popup and upgrading. The camper has actually been for sale on Craigslist for about a month, and we've received no serious offers, although a couple of people did come by to take a look at it. My guess is we'd have better luck selling it next spring rather than late summer so I'm not going to take a lowball offer. I'm still trying to recover from the pneumonia, I ran again today but about 3.6 miles was all I had in me before I was pretty much done. Later on we all went to Paige's Crossing to play some mini-golf and drive some go-karts to celebrate the day off. The go-kart track there is not that great (just a simple racetrack) but we had fun. Missy kept it slow because it made her nervous but Alex and I raced each other full out. Beth also chose not to drive.

I'm starting to feel better, but have very little wind. I tried to start running again this weekend, but even 2 miles was a real struggle. At that point I could not go on, could barely breathe. On a lighter note, I have given in to the persistent pleading requests of my daughter (at one point during the school year, she actually finished an assignment to write a letter making an argument for something by writing to me describing why we should get another kitten. She made some good points, although some of them are probably assumptions. And Beth was not discouraging it either. Then a lady Beth knows through work who lives out in the country recently had two pregnant stray cats choose her house as a nice place to have their kittens. So, that was pretty much it. One of the kittens is even a calico, so we were planning to take that one home. Thursday though, I got the call from Missy that they were headed out there to pick up the kitten so I met them right after work, and when I got there it turned out the calico had been taken earlier that day. So we picked out another one, a tiny all black little girl kitty that we named Ruby. The lady says the kittens are 8 weeks old but I'm not so sure, because they are teeny tiny. We brought her home and Iris wasted no time making her displeasure known. She does not like this new development. At all. But lucky for us she doesn't punish us by peeing like Opal did. Anyway, Ruby's making herself right at home. And she's still so tiny that the claws are just cute.
In other news, I bought a new water heater this week. The old one has been making me very nervous. The relief valve has been leaking for a while now, and the handwheels on the shut off valves have been corroded badly for some time. And that crusty buildup...lime or something...on the fittings keeps coming back so things are leaking a tiny bit all over. So I got a new one, which I fully intend to install myself, as soon as I am confident I know what I'm doing before disconnecting the gas line.
Saturday was also the BBQ at Jordan's house in Fort Wayne. Jordan is my new boss, what with the recent merger between Zimmer and Biomet things got shaken up a bit. I'm still officially in Trident until the end of this month but as soon as that's all over I'll be back in research with an entirely legacy Biomet chain of command. The department I'll be in is about a half and half mix of the legacy companies though, so Jordan had everyone get together at his house as a welcome to the new group. It looks like the group will be good and Jordan will be good to work for. Personalities seem to mesh pretty well and everyone hit it off pretty well.

What a week. I am planning to go back to work tomorrow, for the first time in over a week. After missing two days of work the previous week, I went to the doctor on Monday (Dr. Dick was out so I saw Dr. Remington). I told him about Alex having the horrible cough and getting a Z-pack which cleared it right up and then got a lecture about 1) doctors now consider upper respiratory infections to be self-limiting, 2) antibiotics are over-prescribed, 3) it was irresponsible for Alex to have gotten antibiotics, 4) he does not do that. But he did check me out and send me across the street to the radiology clinic for a chest x-ray. Then he sent me home, saying they'd call me back by that afternoon with the results. Well, they called back about 90 minutes later asking me to come back in right away. Yep, it's pneumonia all right, and here is a particularly strong prescription of antibiotics, and I don't see you going back to work at all this week, come back Friday for a follow-up. So I spent most of the past week in bed or coughing my lungs out (I felt like Doc Holliday). The softball season also ended this past week, without me. I was unable to play due to the pneumonia, so I dropped off the bag at the park and went home. I wanted to stay to watch but Beth didn't think I should. The team won a game without me, but lost the next, so the season is over. Not sure why it's single elimination. Friday I came back and the infection still wasn't clear, so then I got three *more* days of antibiotics. And now I've spent the whole weekend doing not much more than coughing.

Oh kay. This week is not going the way it was originally planned to. To start, Beth and I had planned several months ago to take a trip to Ontario this long weekend to visit the House of Industry and Refuge, a poor-farm now-museum that I recently found out in our genealogical odyssey is where her maternal great-great-grandmother lived the last years of her life. How she got there, we do not know. But we do know she went from Iowa to Ontario somehow, had epilepsy, and died of an aneurysm around 1915. But, we cancelled because neither of us are really healthy, we don't have a passport for Beth, and we're low on funding for another trip. Just as well, really, because remember that coughing illness Beth had a couple weeks ago, when we were camping in Holland? Now I have it. It's been bad enough that I stayed home from work Thursday and Friday, but now it's bad enough that I'm looking forward to going to the doctor tomorrow. It certainly got no better over the weekend, although I did go to the Black Pine Animal Sanctuary with Beth and the kids today. Probably shouldn't have.

Remember that doctor's visit Beth had just before we went camping to Holland? And how the doctor decided that it might be pneumonia but it was probably allergy-related asthma so he was going to treat her with steroids and leave it at that? Well, she spent most of the trip coughing because of not being treated properly, and grouchy and having to pee all the time because of the steroids, and Monday went back to the clinic and saw a nurse practitioner, who was incredulous that she had only been given steroids instead of something that would actually help her when it was obvious she at least had bronchitis ad probably pneumonia. So she got a Z-pack now, and after less than a week it cleared up. Go figure. On a higher note, Missy got her braces off Monday.

We finally got a good camping trip in this summer! After a couple of weather related fails, the past week at Holland was beautiful. We headed up there on Monday and were set up at the State Park by about dinnertime, and even though it was a bit rainy, we all wanted to go to the beach if for no other reason then to put our feet into the lake. By Tuesday though, it was clear blue sunny sky, warm (water was a bit chilly but the kids didn't care) and an awesome beach day. I may have said this before but the canopy we bring to the beach makes going to the beach so much better. Just a bit of shade and we can stay for hours. The kids and I did some hiking and geocaching later on, and we even dropped in on an event at the park. From the description, there was going to be a gathering near the lighthouse to learn how to paint with watercolors, and we thought everyone could participate, adults included. Actually it was an event for little kids. Ours were maybe the oldest there. But they did paint the lighthouse in watercolor and we got to take them home. We did some shopping around downtown Holland and even went back to Dutch Village (just to the shops...not to go into the park). There is also a Delft factory just outside of town, apparently the only place outside the Netherlands where delftware can be made and called Delftware. It's not as high quality as the real Dutch stuff but worth getting a mug or ornament or something. We also went to the candle shop at Dutch Village to look at replacing our wedding candle, which neither Beth nor I can remember what happened to. We think it was ruined in a move years ago somehow. Anyway, we went ahead and bought a new one that we even like better than the original. And we caught the sunset at the beach, but I did not see a green flash. Oh yeah, we were also camping just down the lane a bit from a slightly older couple, who had a very retro looking camper that looked to Beth just like to one her family had when she was a kid. Turns out, it's not retro, it's old! She had restored it and remodeled it. They were both authors, he writes mostly westerns and has several published (like 75 of his books for sale on Amazon). I started reading one of his about the Earp brothers. We hit it off pretty well and hung out together by the campfire a couple evenings.  Friday I got up early and did a bunch of bike geocaching. We headed out later Friday afternoon, only going as far as Plainwell because Saturday was Beth's 30-year high school reunion. Friday everyone got together for a pre-reunion party at a bar/restaurant in Plainwell (terribly uncomfortable for me); we met up with Beth's friend Amy at a pizza place down the road after mingling at the bar for a while. While we were doing this we had dropped off the kids with Judy at the cottage, where they stayed overnight without us. Beth and I stayed at a motel by the airport (way too far away from the action). Ditto for the next night, the kids were with Judy while Beth and I went to the actual reunion, held in Plainwell at a conservation club. She seemed to have a good time. We stayed overnight without the kids a second night, then headed home today.

We are about to leave on our last camping trip of the summer, and I'm not sure this one is going to go any better than the last two. More on that later. Got the brakes done in the minivan last Tuesday. $819, ouch. Wednesday, Alex participated in a Smash Bros tournament at the library with his friend Riley. That is probably the one thing he's been looking forward to the most all summer. They did all right; lost their first game but they were ok with it, and made it to the quarterfinals though the loser's bracket. Friday we went to a wedding...yeah, Friday evening wedding, who does that?...for one of our friends' daughter. The reception was at Pottawatomie Park, which was really nice except after dusk the skeeters were out for blood. Alex and I just got chewed. We stayed until the couple had their first dance then I couldn't stay any more. Alex hadn't said anything about the bugs, but he was playing DS with Jacob so he may not have noticed. I ran a 5k for Habitat for Humanity Saturday morning, and won my age group (which means there weren't a lot of runners, only ~40). Yesterday was my birthday, but we didn't do anything (except go to a spaghetti dinner fundraiser) because we're getting ready for a camping trip, and Beth is sick. She went in to Medstat Sunday (yesterday) and the doctor said it was viral so she has no Z-pack like Alex got which made him all better by the next day. She has felt awful for a couple days, but we're still going camping. As of now.

County fair day today. We always take the kids to the dollar ride day because otherwise, you may as well just take a pile of money and set fire to it. But we've found that on dollar ride day we can get out for under $40...which is amazing that it doesn't seem outrageous. $16 to get us all in, then $20 for rides, and of course games. We headed over there after I got out of work and we had a quick dinner, then let the kids go. We met up with the Monsmas there so Alex and Missy could go on rides with their friends, of course Missy wasn't that interested in the rides so she went o go see the animals, which Alex didn't want to bother with. The hang-glider ride was there again which was a big hit, as was the funhouse thing, and we also rode the Ferris wheel which for some reason made Alex really anxious.

Welp, another camping fail. We were all set to spend 4 days at Spring Mill State Park starting last Thursday, but on Wednesday Alex's cough had gotten so bad Beth took him to the doctor and he had bronchitis. Plus, the forecast was for rain to heavy rain on each of the 4 days we were going to be there. So, by Wednesday night we had cancelled altogether. Nobody was really feeling like camping at that point anyway. Turned out to be ok for me, since I had signed up to play on a volleyball team for a quarterly celebration at work, forgetting that I wasn't going to be there, but since we cancelled I got to go and not get the admin that did all the scheduling really peeved at me. I did take Friday off, and to compensate for missing the camping trip, we went to Kalamazoo to go see the Air Zoo and have dinner at Red Robin. They had a touring Da Vinci exhibition (builds of his designs, e.g. the tank, helicopter, geared things, were pretty beat up) and another touring exhibit about tigers, which turned out to be what the kids liked the most.

It's been a weird week. After the Turkey Run debacle, we thought we'd have a nice getaway for July 4th, but not to be. More on that in a minute. I went ahead and took Monday and Tuesday off, even though we no longer had plans (due to the Turkey Run debacle), and since the 4th is on Saturday this year I had Friday off as well. A 2-day work week, nice. Missy had her actual birthday party on Wednesday, which was going with some friends to the Black Pine Animal Sanctuary (again). That place is so up her alley, she was just there a couple weeks ago and immediately changed all her plans for her birthday party to take her friends there instead of the Zoo, which we didn't mind because it was a lot cheaper. Tuesday we did some last minute shopping for fireworks at Tim and Katalee's shop, and made sure to spend a lot less than last year. Friday I finally got the truck in to the shop to have the power seat fixed; none of the buttons on it have worked in maybe a year, which means that Beth can't drive it. I finally got around to having that done because the brakes in the minivan need work too, and Beth will need to drive the truck for a bit. The power seat was $153 to get fixed, expect the brakes to be more. Now to July 4th. We thought it would be nice to get away for a bit, so (not early enough) we headed for Indiana Dunes for the day. It was a nice day, unusual this summer, but we headed out and upon arrival got stuck in a huge traffic jam miles from the entrance to the park. Seems everyone else had the same idea. We crawled, car lengths at a time, for almost a couple hours, only moving from the visitors center to the overpass to US-12, which ain't far. At that point, we could see the jam went on for the next couple miles at least, and at that point someone on a bike came riding the other way yelling at everyone that the parking lot was full, and they were only letting people in when someone else left. So the only progress we were making was when someone gave up and pulled out of the line. Which at that point is what we ourselves did. By that time it was almost 2:00. So, we headed down US-12 looking for something else to do. We decided to just head up the shoreline until we found another beach, which turned out to be New Buffalo. It wasn't easy to get in there either, but we did find a spot to park in town and walked quite a ways to the beach carrying a lot of stuff, but we made it, and had a pleasant few hours at the beach. Of course, the water was freezing with as bizarre as the weather has been this year. We made it back home in plenty of time to see the fireworks at the fairgrounds in Warsaw.

Today Missy had her actual birthday party. She loved the Black Pine Animal Sanctuary so much she decided to take some friends there instead of anything else. Which also meant I didn't go, since today's Wednesday. But she and her friends all loved it.

We are home. We are not supposed to be home, but we are. This entire week, Saturday through Friday, we were supposed to be camping at Turkey Run State Park. However there was no cooperation from the weather. It's been awfully wet this spring and early summer, and it looked like the rain was going to continue this week so we kept an eye on things, and decided to go for it anyway since we'd already paid for it. We drove down to the park on Saturday, got there in the evening and set up in a swamp. The campsite was mostly mud, but we were able to find some semi-solid spots to put the chairs. We tried to swap sites to move to a less muddy spot but had no luck. The park itself was half-closed due to high water; many of the trails were closed and the suspension bridge was closed for the whole weekend. All of the rafting and canoeing rental places along the river were shut down, too. From one end of the bridge, you could see that the water was covering even some of the boardwalk parts of the trails on the other side. I went for a run on Sunday morning along one of the trails but had to turn around because a large chunk of it was literally under water. But anyway, we did do some fun camping stuff while we were there; a park ranger took us on a hike to show and explain the edible plants in the area, we came to the interpretive center in the morning to help set up the bird and wildlife feeders and watched behind one-way glass while they all came to eat (Missy loved that), we were able to hit the pool Sunday afternoon since it was sunny and warm, but that didn't last long...we went horseback riding a bit later and by the time we were done, it was starting to rain again. The forecast was calling for rain pretty much all week. So, we packed up very early and went home. Funny story on the trip home. We got dinner at a KFC in Crawfordsville, then an hour or so down the road, Beth says "where's my purse?" Ha ha! Yep, back at the restaurant.

This week Missy has been away at Michiana Christian Service Camp at girls-only camp. We also helped out with sending her bestie Rebekah to camp with her, and dropped them off last Sunday. They've had a great time. This is Missy's second time at girls-only, and she already has told us she wants to go again next year.

Alex and I are back from a GT trip to Cedar Point. At some point during the school year they did some study using roller coasters as an illustration, so they thought it would be fun to organize a trip to Cedar Point to kind of bring it all home. This was the trip that the Nelson's fundraiser was for. Anyway, they needed chaperones and I volunteered, even though the trip fell over Missy's birthday. We caravaned to Ohio on Sunday, where arrangements had been made for us to spend the night at the KOA near the park. We had several of those mobile-home-slash-cabins, which were serviceable but crowded (not nearly enough beds. Alex and I doubled up), we grilled burgers and hot dogs for dinner, and were ready to hit the park first thing in the morning. We were there when they opened, and although it threatened to rain pretty much all day, it never really did. That was awesome because it kept the crowds way down, enough that I rode Millennium Force twice, and Gatekeeper maybe 8 times altogether. Alex kind of struggled all day though, because he's not a roller coaster rider. We got him to ride Gemini early on, but he didn't like it and wouldn't ride another. I wish we had started with the Iron Dragon, which would have been a much better first ride. Gemini is so clattery. Just about everyone else was riding the coasters so he did a lot of waiting and walking. But things got much better when we got to the water rides, especially the Thunder Canyon, where everyone sits in a round raft and floats down a wild river going under waterfalls and such. That, he loves. We rode it enough times to get soaked to the bone several times over, which came with its own problems because of the subsequent chafing. We played some games and rode some less thrilling rides too, and ended after dark. The next morning we hit the water park, which Alex would have gone to all day both days if he could have. I was one of the few parents that was diligent with  the sunscreen, which was good because unlike the previous day, Soak City day was bright and sunny and hot. Alex kept a t-shirt on and so did I, and we were noticeably not burned to a crisp by 5 o'clock like may others were. Anyway, the park is very nice, with a lot of really cool water rides. And again the park wasn't super crowded so we had no super long lines. We headed for home by about 5 on Tuesday, everyone was pretty tired and quiet on the drive.
As noted, Missy's birthday was while Alex and I were gone. On her birthday, Beth took her and the Purvis' to Black Pine Animal Sanctuary over near Columbia City. Missy LOVED it. She wants to do a birthday party there now instead of a sleepover.

We're back from the family party in Michigan. Since Missy's birthday is coming up, Judy offered us the use of their beach house for a birthday party. Mom and dad left earlier in the day, and we all headed up to Michigan. It was a very nice party, with all the cousins and aunts and uncles. We had a cookout and took the boats out, had water balloon fights and did some fishing. Missy caught maybe half a dozen fish altogether. She also scored a whole lot of Legos.
This past week I also set up the pool. It's been in storage on top of the camper since last fall, but now it's back out and not even any holes. But wow o wow does it take a long time to fill 5000 gallons from a garden hose. The kids are pretty excited even though it's still as cold as ice.

Lots happening lately. The school year is winding down, and summer is winding up already. Monday was Alex's last elementary school field trip, to the Fort Wayne Zoo, followed by 6th grade graduation Wednesday morning. I ducked out of work to go to the graduation but I wasn't expecting it to go on as long as it did. Anyway, Alex and Missy both won class awards, Alex for math and Missy for creative writing, and both were on honor roll or high honor roll. So now Alex is moving on to middle school...where life sucked for me...but I'm sure he'll do fine.  Last day of school was Wednesday. Tuesday the softball winning streak ended at one. The stump from the ginormous tree we had cut down a few weeks ago got ground out Saturday, and I spent most of the day getting all the wood chips and sawdust cleared up. The lawn is going to need some serious rehab. Mom and Dad also arrived Saturday evening, and in keeping with recent trends the rain kept up; today we all went to the Winona Lake art fair, but of course shortly after we got there the rain started, and most of the vendors were already packing up by the time it started. Figures, the one thing there is to do in town while they're here. We were there for maybe 15 minutes and went home because of the rain and lack of artists at the art fair.

It's been a rainy week, but it always seemed to hold off when we needed it to. Tuesday, for example. It was threatening rain all day, and it did rain some, but it dried up in time for the softball game, which was a rout, not unusual, but we won it, which is. We won the game 20-2, jumping all over the team that beat us in the opening game. We won mostly because their pitcher wasn't there and their backup walked something like 13 in the first inning. I walked 3 consecutive at-bats myself, without a single strike thrown. It felt wrong. Anyway, Beth was at a work dinner party at the Boathouse so she missed a win again. Back to the rain, Friday evening was a fundraiser sale of Nelson's chicken for the Cedar Point trip, and it threatened rain but didn't. We sold out by around 7 pm, including some 50 or 60 people who bought tickets but didn't show up to claim their food, so we re-sold it. An older couple showed up to get theirs just after we sold out, but it says on the ticket to claim it by 5. Missy was at a birthday party while we were selling chicken. Funny story about that. Not one but both kids forgot major amounts of homework this week: Alex was supposed to turn in a large algebra study book by Friday and did not, Missy was supposed to do several reading counts tests and did not. For both, serious drags on their grades. Beth not happy. She had to run a lot to try to get things taken care of by the end of the day (including getting Missy away from the party at Pottery Bayou) and could not, so it'll have to be taken care of on Monday (had to talk to all the teachers). Both kids got themselves grounded from electronic games until school is out. Missy almost lost going to the party but it almost seemed more punishment to make her go back to it. Then it rained most of the rest of the weekend, so we cleaned house!

Memorial Day weekend is over, and once again we did not camp. For the second year in a row, we took stuff up to Milford to sell at the town garage sale at Jessica's sister's. We made about another $150 on leftovers from the garage sale at the Harrison's a couple weeks ago, plus $50 for the older freezer, the one that had the meat meltdown last summer. Mostly kid clothes again though. But while the ladies were at the sale all day Saturday, Patrick and I were at my house splitting wood. For like 5 hours, he split, and I loaded, hauled, and stacked. I don't know how many loads got split and carried off but it was a lot...a LOT...of wood. Only a little bit remains. And a lot of sawdust. Patrick already has told me that if we get any other trees cut down he does not want them. Sunday we took the kids to see the new "Avengers: Age of Ultron" movie...wow....Today was the Tracy Yeager Memorial 5k, my first run since ending the course of steroids, and I had a respectable time (for me) of 25:38, not too bad. I didn't place though, since there were over 600 people in the race.

FCC softball dropped both games of a doubleheader tonight, both close, but we also lost our pitcher. Fairly early in the first game Dig had a comebacker hit him just below the left eye. I was playing first base and didn't realize it had hit him, I thought he had gotten his glove on it and it bounced off that. I didn't realize he was down until after I had chased down the ball and turned around again. He was dazed and bleeding but he stayed around until midway through the second game, when he tried to come back in and pitch, but his vision got blurry. He was looking pretty rough.

Pizza Hut tonight! No, not for dinner, for working. Alex's class is fundraising to go to Cedar Point, so we took over the serving duties in exchange for tips. I'm sure we are all more in the way than anything, but hopefully it helps. I was getting drinks ready for the most part while Alex helped bus tables.

Today I went to see Dr. Dick because something happened to my ear yesterday. Not sure what. Beth and I took the kids to the pool at the new YMCA yesterday evening, and after swimming for a while at some point I put my finger in my ear, as we all are wont to do when swimming, and the moment I did there was a loud clanging noise in my ear, as if someone had struck a hammer on an anvil right next to my head, and it rang and rang and rang and rang and rang. It didn't really hurt, but the ringing went on for hours and is actually still going on. I don't know what happened but my ear must have been filled solid with water and my finger enclosed it and made a shock wave or something. The doctor did a hearing test while I was in today and thinks I may have lost some hearing in the left ear at high frequencies. I have an appointment with a specialist to see what's what but it won't be for a couple months. In the meantime, my ear is still ringing and I'm having a hard time hearing out of it.

A win! A win! Only the second game of the season, and we won! We defeated the other team 14-11, and get this...we hit 3 home runs tonight, including 2 grand slams, one by me! Not over the fence of course, but really not far off. I hit it about as squarely and as hard as I ever have, and it exactly split the left and left-center fielders, over their heads and just out of reach, so by the time I was rounding second one of them had just picked up the ball. And from then on I gambled that he couldn't throw it back all the way in time, and ran right past the 3rd base coach telling me to stop, and scored easily. Wow, my first home run since...looking it up now...August 6, 2002. And where were my wife and kids? At the Orthopaedic Capital Center for Alex's D.A.R.E. graduation, which apparently was an awesome event and featured nationally renowned speaker Retro Bill. I had no idea until after we were all home again that it was as big a deal as it is. Alex won one of the self-esteem awards, which is also awesome, and got his t-shirt by all his friends and Retro Bill himself.

Garage sale weekend! We took a bunch of stuff over to the Harrison's today to help them out by making their sale look bigger. And we wound up making over $250 which was a lot more than they did. And that without any big ticket items, really, mostly clothes. Some dishes. Missy's old bike. Some books, some CDs, and some junk. The Harrison's big stuff did not sell, which is a bummer for them. Alex was at a sleepover for most of the time we were doing the sale. That is a brave family. They had several boys over, and the evening before, took them all out to dinner and to a Fort Wayne TinCaps game (which did get played in it's entirety, despite a threat of heavy rain) and kept them until around 5 the next day. Video game overload there I imagine. Last Wednesday, a tree guy I ran into at the credit union a couple weeks ago came to take down the big oak tree that leaned over the house. Now, it's an e-freakin-normous pile of logs and sawdust, and a stump with some 150 rings in it. And ants. Big black ones, mad that we cut down their house. The Purvises have claimed the wood, and by their faces they did not really know what that was going to mean. Getting this wood split and carried off it going to be a big job. During the week, Alex had his last orchestra concert on Monday, as he is not going to continue with the viola. Since it was on Star Wars day they played the theme music, which was cool. Tuesday the softball game was rained out.

Help a Neighbor day was today! We split up again, Beth was doing laundry love with Missy while Alex and I were at Warsaw Meadows. I was on the crew building raised flower gardens for the residents and cleaning up around the building.

Opening night for FCC softball! New season, new players, new division, old result. But actually, it kinda felt like a win. They scored 19 runs in the first half of the first inning, then not again for the rest of the game, winning 19-8. We played well, had some good hits, but we couldn't come all the way back. I'm encouraged though, I think we'll do ok this year. I'm trying playing at first base, something new.

Tonight should have been the FCC softball team's re-entry into the lowest division, but for some reason the game was inexplicably cancelled. Not sure why, since we've played in worse than what it was doing. Last year, for example, opening night was cold and drizzly. Anyway, since we had a team but no game, most of us stayed a couple hours for a practice on the field.

How cool is this? Thursday night the GT class association sponsored a real live astronaut to come visit the students. He gave a presentation to the school during the day, then in the evening the Sharpies and Zillionaires (and some middle school STEM kids) did their own presentations on some space exploration aspect. Alex's team did a presentation on the International Space Station, to which Col. Kevin Ford has actually been fairly recently! After the kids' presentations, he did another presentation of his own with new material, then took some questions and signed pictures and met with the kids and other attendees. Alex got him to autograph his model of the ISS, that's so awesome!
In other news, my bracket is horrible but the Spartans are back in the Final Four baby! Woo hoo!

Busy weekend. NCAA basketball and all. The weekend really started early this week because Friday was practically a party day. Alicia at work was having a send-off as she goes to do her rotations for pharmacy school,  which was at TG's Yogurt around lunchtime. After that, Michigan State's opening round game was showing at BWW, so I spent an hour I had blocked to catch up on training that I didn't have there watching the first half of the game with most of packaging development. By halftime I was confident we were going to win, so I went back to work. In the early evening I was working at the carnival at the school. I was doing the elementary school version of beer pong, only we were using a dozen mason jars filled with colored water. If you got the ping-pong ball in a jar within 3 tries, you won a 2-liter of pop. If not, you went to the endof the line and tried over and over. Some kids had 6 bottles before we were done. We did just run out of pop as the thing was ending. Missy did get the stuffed dog on the rigid leash that she had wanted this time, which was good after last year's debacle.

Here is my NCAA 2015 Final Four, in order: Kentucky, Duke, Arizona, Louisville.
And while we're on the topic of sports, the coach's meeting for the 2015 church softball season was yesterday. I expect after last year we will be moved down to the lower league, where we belong.

This weekend has been all about Alex's birthday. 12 years old, hardly seems possible. As desired, Alex had a sleepover Friday night, with 5 of his best friends over. I picked them all up after school (with the truck, which was pretty packed) and took them to our house, where they began the process of playing video games in earnest. Pausing just barely long enough to eat pizza and do cake and ice cream and presents in the evening. Not sure how long they were up, but it was pretty late. We did refuse to allow them to set an alarm clock for zero dark 30 this year, but they were up early enough as it was for pancakes and sausage before we all headed to SkyZone for an hour (Beth did not go, instead she took Missy to get pedicures). Alex hurt his back a bit but otherwise no injuries.We were back home before noon for all the boys to be picked up. Now, all Alex has really wanted for some time now is a Wii U, and with the Financial Peace University class Beth and I have been taking, we came up with an idea we liked. We decided to agree to match whatever Alex saved, dollar for dollar, towards the purchase. So, he asked everyone for money towards the Wii U instead of presents this year, and between what he's saved over the last couple of months and his birthday money, he had enough. So we went out to Wal-Mart Saturday and he bought one. Now that's a birthday present. Sunday, we had the family from Michigan visit (some of them anyway). Ric & Nickie and the kids and Marve all drove down here together to visit for the afternoon. We weren't sure anyone was coming because Nickie had been throwing up yesterday but now she seems just fine. Anyway, we had another cake and a nice visit, and between all the presents Alex got today (again, all cash) he was able to buy a new Wii U game he's wanted. However since we weren't willing to run straight over to Game Stop to get it, he bought it online for download. So far it's been downloading for around 4 hours and it says it has 20 hours to go.

Happy birthday to Alex! And just as a reminder of what getting older means, tonight there was an informational presentation at the middle school for all of next year's 7th graders, on what they can expect and what classes they can take in middle school. Alex is pretty stoked about the STEM stuff. There were robots and computers and all that. He's also interested in learning Chinese. Boy, middle school has come a  long way since I was in it. Thankfully.

Today we had an occurrence that was new on me. I was at my desk at work at about 5 minutes before 2pm when there was suddenly a general announcement that Zimmer building 5 would be closed at 2 o'clock and would not be reopened until the evening, and everyone should leave and take your belongings with you immediately. Nobody knew exactly what "closed" meant but everyone left and didn't come back, except me, because I had a 2:00 meeting in another building that was not "closed." The meeting, of course, was supposed to last a half-hour but lasted an hour and a half. So my free few hours off was cut short. Anyway, as we learned during that meeting, the reason for the abrupt closure was a bomb threat. WTH? Apparently there are disgruntled workers at Zimmer.

I have already called in to work to tell them I won't be there tomorrow, since it is still snowing like crazy and school has been cancelled for tomorrow, and Beth is in no shape to take care of the kids yet. The thing about being done with painkillers a few days after surgery....nope. She's hurting bad. So we all get a snow day. It stormed so much that even church services were cancelled today.

This has been a brutal winter. How bad? Church was cancelled today because of the snow.

Today was Beth's surgery day. It went super well, and it even seemed a bit weird taking her home when she was awake and alert and not in any pain. We had to leave early so we dropped off the kids with friends and headed to Fort Wayne. It took a while to get her through pre-op but once she went in, it didn't take more than an hour or so, and not too much longer after that for her to be discharged. So, we were home by around 2 o'clock or so, headed home without any pain in her hand (although it was totally numb and more or less useless) and we got to enjoy the time before the anesthesia wore off. The doctor told her not to wait until she has pain before taking the medication, so we're trying really hard to keep up. She was getting sore later in the day. but the doctor said everything went very well, he was pleased with everything and it couldn't have gone better. One of the nurses also told us that most people are done using the painkillers after just a few days after surgery. That would be great, please.

We finally have meat in the freezer again! For the first time since last summer when the freezer door was left open and it all thawed/bled all over the garage floor. We drove up to the butcher last Friday and loaded up, and we were actually able to fit it all inside one freezer, which is good since the other one still kinda smells a bit, and I was concerned that the meat would taste like...last year's meat...after being in that freezer for a while. Anyway, moot point since it even fit with about a dozen frozen chickens in there too. This was also supposed to be the first week back to school for the kids (starting Tuesday), but we're having something like Snowmageddon II, and it closed school on Thursday and Friday, so Beth has been trying to find things to do to entertain the kids. It also has been snowing enough that school would have closed last week if it was on in the first place, enough so that we offered to let a friend who works at the hospital crash here if she couldn't make it home after her (2nd) shift.

Welp.....back to work. And remember how I had a rock hit the windshield of the van on the way back from Niagara a couple months ago? Well the crack that resulted completely bisected the windshield by a day or so afterwards, so we've been operating outside the law since a while back. I finally got around to having the windshield fixed today. $346.66 for a new windshield...considerably more expensive than having the van's heater fixed before we left. Expensive trip overall, van-wise.

The holiday season and Christmas break appear to be over. I will be going back to work tomorrow. It's been a good break, more low-key than some breaks we have had; there was no road trip or long visits, and we just stuck around. Break began inauspiciously, as I actually had to work about a day and a half longer than planned trying like mad to get a validation completed and signed off, including the document changes et al, but at lunchtime on the Tuesday 23rd I was done for the year and took off. We did a lot of last minute shopping at in the evening, but the following day we stuck close to home. We did go to the new Y building for free swim, and ran into the Harrisons and Johnsons doing the same thing. I also worked like mad to get the kitty condo I've been building for the Boschains done before Christmas. Missy started throwing up at around 10 pm on the 23rd, and continued to do so about every hour or so until late morning. It is nice that she is old enough to throw up in the bathroom or the trash can, though. I did take her trash out about 4 times during the night. Turns out that one of the Harrison kids was also throwing up at the same time. Most of Christmas eve I was starting to feel sick myself so I raced to get that kitty condo done, and finally did, but last thing on Christmas eve was I started throwing up myself. I did get sleep overnight, threw up again first thing Christmas morning, opened presents and went back to bed for about 5 hours. But that was it for me, and Missy was fine after a day too, and nobody else came down with it. Anyway, the my big thing was a new DeWalt cordless drill & driver set, Beth got her Keurig, Missy got a 3DS, a bunch of games and Legos, and Alex got the new Skylanders set, and a bunch of games and Legos. The day after, I took the kids to Tokens & Tickets (tokens were in the stockings), and we made the kitty condo delivery. The Boschains were sooo excited by it, and their cats were pretty stoked too. Beth has been making soup all season again this year, and just after Christmas she finished up and we deposited $405 in proceeds of which about $255 was profit and we gave to the church for miracle day. Laura and Thomas (not Ben this time, he's at his mom's) came to visit on the 28th and stayed until the 30th. Something of a surprise was that Chloe came too. Their dog. She was well behaved but Iris didn't care for her being here. I don't know if it's related, but Iris somehow fell off Missy's bed during the night that first night they were here. Or she jumped and something she was standing on moved and she fell, or something. She appeared to be hurting and was limping, but she jumped up into the top shelf in the master bedroom so we thought she was ok. Except in the morning she couldn't get down and was in more pain. I ran her in to the vet Monday morning, and x-rays showed a fractured fibula. Told us to cage rest her for two weeks. Yes, 2 weeks in a cage, to keep her from jumping and hurting herself. So, we got a big cage at Big R and put her in it that first night, and she yowled and paced all night long. In the morning, everything was turned over, litter was everywhere, and she was NOT happy. We were afraid she was going to hurt herself worse by being in the cage than not being. So, she never went back into it. She's just wanting to lie in a box anyway, so we're just going to let her. New Year's Eve we spent at our house. The Boschains and Lancasters came over with their kids, and we were going to let them play while we played cards or something, but we wound up watching funny videos on YouTube on the TV all evening. Gary had never heard of Weird Al, so we started with "Word Crimes" and it escalated from there. We watched a lot of 'Ew!' and other Jimmy Fallon bits, other Weird Al videos, stand-up comedy, just a bunch of funny stuff. And ate snacks until midnight. On New Year's, I went on the Frigid 5k run at the new YMCA. The 5k trail from the new Y building is not that interesting, I'm afraid. And it was pretty darn cold. So much so that I regretted my decision to go on the run before half a mile. But it worked out, and my time was pretty slow, but not surprising given the temperature and the fact that I've been slacking since the Veterans Half Marathon a couple months ago. Off to Fort Wayne today. I had an old gift card for Barnes & Noble, so we headed there and spent a bunch of money over that. Then we ran out of things we could think of to do, so we drove around a bit to check things out and had the idea to take the kids to SkyZone. We let the kids jump for a while (nice to have them use up some energy) and to Red Robin for dinner.

Closing Day! I started the process of refinancing the house a couple months ago, we've had a few odd bumps in the road, and today was the end of it. I dropped our rate from 5.5% to 3.25% through the refi, added in the home equity line of credit to the mortgage to get rid of that, and even so dropped our monthly payment by over a hundred bucks. Today was the day to go downtown and sign a million pieces of paper. I'm going to be glad to get it over with, the process has been a bit of a pain at times.