What kind of lame blog am I running here?

I can't believe it took me more than a month to come back here. Actually, I can. I have a short attention span. I'm surprised I kept this thing going as long as it has.

I haven't been around much here, but I'm still on Twitter, Tumblr and Google+. Mostly I've been posting pictures there and I'll probably end up doing the same here. It's what I like to do know, so I should probably put it here. I hope I don't bore you all too much.

Speaking of pictures, here are the last batch from Hawaii.

This is the helicopter that the family rode in to see the sights. How did I get this picture, you ask? Well, I wasn't in there. Our daughter was afraid, so someone had to stay. I took one for the team. What?! I'm not getting in one of those things.

This is Mauna Loa from the helicopter place, Blue Hawaii. I originally thought it was Mauna Kea but was corrected on Google+.

These are some palm trees at The Place of Refuge. My wife and I went by ourselves here. It was a neat place to walk around. Yes, those are people. The trees were TALL! 

This is from our last night. Some damn good sunsets in Hawaii.

This is also from The Place of Refuge. Blogger wants this picture here and will not let me put it in order. Anyway, you see a lot of little things like this around. Right near here was a sign saying not to do this. It's considered graffiti and since this is sacred ground it's not cool. Though I don't think the person who put this here meant any harm. 

Putting these up so late really make me want to go back to Hawaii. I knew I'd love it, but I didn't think I would this much. I really want to go back. Hopefully in a couple of years we can. 

Before I move on I want to thank Dreamybee (not her real name). She lives in Hawaii and was a great source of information and was especially helpful through Twitter when we were stuck in Honolulu. This is why the Internet is great. 

On to new business. Jenn just left for India for 10 days. I just looked and her flight is in Dubai now and she heads out to Mumbai next. That's a lot of flying. So, I'm home alone with the kids and getting some work around the house done. You know, painting, fixing up stuff, re-wiring the family room (220-221, whatever it takes).

Right now I'm working on the painting and I'm at the, "Oh shit, this may not work," stage. I'm hoping it's okay, but I have my doubts. I'm painting the fireplace. It was really dark before and I'm worried the lighter color is not going to work. I'm working on priming it now and it just looks like it's going to look like crap. I think I'm doing it wrong. I'm taking before, during and after photos so you can see what I'm talking about. My plan is to have all this stuff done before Jenn gets home. Won't that be a nice surprise? Actually, it will be a surprise if the house is in one piece. 

Family Vacation: Part Two

Our second day involved more walking, and a trip to Epcot. This time we went to the pool in the morning since we had dinner reservations at a restaurant in Epcot. Mexico to be specific.

We didn't do Epcot right the first day, which I'll explain later, possibly in another post. It was kind of neat to walk from country to country all in one day. First we hit England. We didn't do much there, but it looked nice. See.

I had to get a picture of the phone booth and mailbox. I don't know why.

Next we walked through France. We didn't go in many shops there either, but we got to see a man balance on some chairs. Our son was mesmerized by that.

I know the chairs are specially made to do those tricks, but sill, that was pretty cool.

Going through France we stopped in Japan.

Jenn and our daughter both wanted sushi. So us guys went over to America to eat some burgers and fries. Actually I didn't eat anything there. I wasn't feeling so well that day. I think it was from the heat.

After a food break we headed over to Germany and Italy. We had to hit some countries of our heritage.

There was no Swedish representation, but Norway was there. So I took a picture of this giant gnome. That seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?

We got some smoothies as we walked through Africa. You know, nothing says Africa like a strawberry smoothie. This Coke machine was cool, though.

We also went to see Nemo and his friends at "The Seas with Nemo and His Friends." The little ride was okay, but the really neat part was talking with Crush. It was an interactive show with an animated Crush who would talk to the crowd. The kids liked it, even though they didn't participate all that much. The show was fun for adults and kids, just like a Pixar film.

Like I said, we had dinner in Mexico. I made sure to get the least spicy thing on the menu, luckily the waitress helped me out. I've forgotten all my years of Spanish. I think the kids favorite part of the day was the little boat ride through Mexico with Donald Duck and his friends.

The kids were pretty wiped out after all that excitement, so we headed back to the hotel.

The next day was Animal Kingdom day. I took lots of pictures here. Like the tree of life. Cool, huh?

At first when we walked in to the park we were under a huge canopy of trees. We thought we were going to be in the shade all day, unfortunately that wasn't the case.

We walked the Pagani Forest Expedition Trail first. It was like a zoo, but you could walk through it. Does that make sense? You were a lot closer to most of the animals, and the seemed to be more integrated.

We saw Gorillas, some weird animal called and okapi, lots of birds, including this giant one that reminded me of Kevin from UP.

Next we went on a safari. I liked how they did this. They pretended like you were on a real safari. They had radio where a pilot was radioing positions of animals to the driver and then warned us of poachers in the area. Luckily, we scared of the poachers, but not until after we were shot at!

I got a couple nice shots of giraffes, ostriches and the lay of the land as a whole. The place was really nicely set up.

We hung around the park for a little while longer by going to Dinoland USA. That wasn't so fun. The kids were hot, we were hot and there wasn't a whole lot to do there. But the giant dinosaur that greeted you seemed nice.

Then it was pool time and back to the Magic Kingdom for dinner. Which we followed up with another spin on the Buzz ride and a trip to the Laugh Factory featuring the cast of Monster's Inc. This was another interactive show, but this time the had cameras on the crowd and would get you more involved with the show. Our daughter got picked out as "Boo" from the movie, probably due to her age and hair. She was a little embarrassed, but it was cute.

Before we left we walked through the Swiss Family Treehouse. Can you believe Jenn has never seen that movie? We went back to the hotel were the kids passed out before the fireworks show. Again.

That's enough for now. I promise, Star Wars talk (and pictures) on the next installment.

As before, more pictures on Flickr, but I'm not done with them all yet.

Family Portrait: 500th post

Hi! It's been a few days, as my sister reminded me. I've been a little busy this weekend and today Jenn left for Orlando for a conference, so I've been flying solo here at home. Hence this post being written at 11:22pm. 

Also, I've been holding off on posts since this is my 500th. I didn't want to link to some stupid article, or video, that I though was funny on this monumental occasion. But, to be honest, I really did't have anything special to post about. I mentioned all my friends in my anniversary post back in December, I can't add much more to that. 

Lucky for me, and you, my daughter helped me out by drawing a picture of our family. Let me share it with you. I'm sure she won't mind. 

Jenn is on the far left, I'm on the far right, and my daughter is next to Jenn and our son is next to me. If you look closely, you'll notice that us guys only have hair on the tops our our heads, while the girls have three-sided hair. It makes sense when you think about it. Oh, the thing that is on top of Jenn's head is a butterfly, and the other flying thing is a bird. Obviously, flowers line the bottom of the picture. 

So there you have it. That is our family. Just perfect, don't you think? 

I'll try to come up with my own material for the 1,000th post. 

 

Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #32: Spring Holidays

I missed last week due to being on midnights and thus too tired to take any pictures. This week, I'm on midnights again, but I managed to find the energy. I know, the sacrifices I make...

Anyway, Carly wants some pictures of the Easter and/or Passover holidays.

EMPS# 32: Spring Holidays and Observances.
Very simple. Grab your camera, and show me, through your photography, anything related to the upcoming Easter or Passover holidays. A family dinner, an Easter Bunny, an Easter lily. Preparation for the holiday works as well. If it is related to the holidays, it's just fine. If you don't celebrate either of the two holidays I mentioned, you can choose any of the wacky holidays found at the link below, or, if you are just not in the mood for holidays, there is an alternate assignment below.

Well, since the kids just colored some eggs yesterday, we can take a look at those.















Nothing says Easter quite like C-3PO and R2-D2. Am I right?

Here is the full dozen, after coloring. One looks a little cracked.

















This is our dining room table after Jenn packed some little treat bags for the family.















As an alternative to this Carly also posted a secondary assignment:

EMPS #32a. FLOWERS.
Pick a FLOWER... any FLOWER! Real or fake... any FLOWER will do!

I happen to have a couple pictures I took, so I thought I'd add them here as well.

I was playing around a little and wanted to focus on the inside of the flower:

















The focus on the outside. It worked out okay. I'm still learning.















So, there you go, this is Easter in our house. Well, part of it anyway. Go over to Carly's place and check out the rest.

Hope you all have a nice Easter or Passover.

Missed it by that much. (A late EMPS entry)

Last week Carly wanted us to take pictures of snacks that we enjoy. Once again, I had the pictures but I didn't get to post them on time. This time it was do to all the things we needed to get done for our son's birthday. So I thought I'd share them with you now. Okay?

First, here is a picture of our snack cabinet. Yes, we have a whole cabinet dedicated to snacks, doesn't everybody?

As you can see, many of them are of the 100 calorie variety. It makes you feel good about snacking on them -- until you realize you ate four bags while watching a rerun of Hogan's Heroes.

Next up we have a chocolate bar from the same cabinet. Well, I guess they are all going to come from that cabinet.


Dark chocolate is one of my favorites. This may not be the best kind of dark chocolate but, again, it is only 100 calories!

So after all the sweet stuff I need something salty. Why not some chips?

Do I need to say they are 100 calorie Pringles? No? Good. They are quite tasty.

And finally here is a cookie. It's a generic brand from Jewel in the Chicago area, I think they are Albertson's elsewhere, but these are my favorite chocolate chip cookies. I don't know why; something about the texture and the taste of the chips works well together. I don't know.


So there you go. These are some of my favorite snacks. Do you have any? It's okay if they are healthy snacks. I won't judge.

Halloween Wrap-up

Did everyone have a nice Halloween? Wait, is Halloween supposed to be nice? How about; did everyone have a fun Halloween? Yeah, that sounds better.

For us here in the Chicago area, you couldn't ask for better weather. Well, sure you could, but you wouldn't get it. It was near 70 degrees, mostly sunny, and best of all, it was still light out until about 6:20pm or so. Thanks Congress!

The kids had been excited about it all week. Talking about all the candy they are going to get, and our son was just happy he was going to get to wear his Batman costume. (Hee, I just typed 'Batmoan'. That's kind of funny!) Our son was sick over the previous weekend and missed school on Monday and Tuesday with strep throat so he was still a little on the tired and worn-out side for most of the week. He was doing pretty good by Friday, but I could tell he wasn't 100%. Mostly due to the fact that he wasn't running from house to house. Last year we couldn't keep up with him, this year he did pretty well staying close to us. After the first block both kids were already showing signs of fatigue. Our daughter was getting pouty and wanted us to carry her bag. Son was doing okay for a while, but his bag started getting too heavy not that much later. I tried to explain to them that they need to enjoy this Halloween. They are never going to see weather like this again, probably. All I remember is getting rained on, being cold, but getting lots of candy.

Want to see our awesome decorations we did this year?

This was one of our first 'big' Halloween decoration purchases ever. You can't tell here, but the zombie is coming out of a mound where an old tree used to be. So it kind of looks like a burial place. Do you notice any thing wrong with is arm? Let me know if you do.

Here is a creepy skull:

So scary, I know. It was just off to the left of the zombie. Since it is dark you can't see the giant spider and web that is just to the left of the skull. There are also some paper ghosts hanging from a tree. We are out of control, I know.

Here is a pumpkin that a neighbor had. I thought it looked nice for a non-carved pumpkin:

If it isn't obvious already, we got a new camera. I took a lot of pictures that I normally wouldn't take. I like new toys.

Here is my favorite picture I've ever taken. No offense family members. I just think it turned out really good. For me that is.

I just wish the fence wasn't in the picture. Though, I think it adds something to it. I don't know what that would be exactly.

So, yes, we have lots of candy. Actually, I brought a big bag to work on Saturday in order to reduce the potential of a serious candy coma. By me that is. The kids don't really eat it. Thanks kids!

How was your weekend?

It's picture day at school

So what happens this morning? My son smacks his head on the edge of the end table 15 minutes before we leave for school. First comes crying, then the bleeding. It looked bad since there was so much blood, but we got it stopped and it is only a small cut. No stitches needed. I can't wait to see the pictures. He should look cool sporting a Scooby Doo bandage on his forehead. Maybe he'll start a new trend.