Why Bother Buying Toys

My daughter's preschool is having a consignment sale this weekend.  For those of you who do not know, a consignment sale is where a vendor (in this case parents) bring clothes or other items to a store (in this case a gymnasium) and sell them to the general public. A portion of the money goes to the vendor, and a portion goes to the store (in this case the school).

My wife is participating this year, and we have hangers and several totes, some empty, lying around our living room. My son, who is almost two, has decided it is a lot of fun to push the empty totes around our hardwood floors. He has been entertaining himself for hours doing this. When he gets bored with the totes, he goes for the hangers. These, he tries to spread open so that he can fit them on his head. Unfortunately, I to stop that one. He has a big head (a lot of brains) and those poor hangers were screaming for mercy.

With empty totes, why do I need to buy him toys? The answer - so that he can fill said totes with his toys. Silly Daddy, what was I thinking? Have fun while you can little man. Those totes are going back into the attic as soon as Mommy is done with them.

Neighbors

I am fortunate that I live where I live because I have the best neighbors in the world. The battery in my wife's van died yesterday. Of course, it died before Shannon could take my daughter Molly to school. We live close enough to the school that my daughter is considered a "walker." On cold days, my wife drives Molly to school. Since the temperatures were hovering around zero yesterday, we can classify that as cold.

Anyhow, the neighbor two doors down end up taking Molly to school. The other neighbor was going to pick Molly up if I wasn't able to get home from work and change the battery in time. They are good people. They are one of the reasons that living where we live is so wonderful. I will have to tell you more about them some time.

Not Much to Say

It has been a little over a week since my last post, and I really have not had much to say during that time. The thing is that I still have nothing really to say.

I wanted to stop by and let you know I am still alive and kicking. I am working out as I said I would in "I Don't Understand Skinny Jeans." I have the aches and pains to prove it .

That's it. That is all I have to say.

I Don't Understand Skinny Jeans

Skinny jeans perplex me. I am wearing a pair of pants right now that fit me prior to the this fall. Now, they have suddenly become too skinny for me. I cannot explain it, it must be my dryer...Such is life.

The point is that they fit me like a pair of skinny jeans would. I will tell you that they are very uncomfortable. In fact, I was trying to get my money clip out of my pocket while sitting in the car and was barely able to fit my hand into my pocket. Now, I refuse to buy bigger jeans, because I am going to start eating better and exercising, yet again. Yes, I know I said the same thing in September, 2010. This time I have more motivation. I am heavier than I have ever been in my life, none of my pants fit me correctly and I DO NOT like it.

So, my question is how can people find skinny jeans comfortable? I feel like a stuffed sausage in these my jeans that are too skinny for me. Can anyone please explain?

Author's Note: In my post, Goodbye Diet Vacation, I talked about a my wife joining a Biggest Loser Style Weight Loss Challenge. Yeah, well, she won! The Gym to which she belongs, Team AMS, is hosting the challenge again. She signed up again, and is actually leading the Cardio-Kickboxing Class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am so proud of you honey!

When They Hurt, You Hurt

I knew something wasn't right when I came home tonight and my 3 year old wasn't screaming at the top of her lungs. My wife informed me that Jillian's belly hurt. I did not think anything of it - I just figured she was hungry or had to poop (that usually fixes it with my kids).

As it turns out she had gotten a little worse as the night progressed. In fact, she did not fight me when I told her to sit on the step for her half-hearted attempt at hitting her sister. I looked into her eyes and could tell she was feeling lousy. So, I checked her temperature and we got a 102. We gave her some medicine and snuggled with her, and her fever broke right before bed. She was back down to good old 98.6.

Throughout the night, I felt terrible for her. There wasn't a whole lot more we could do for her. It pained us to see her suffering like she was - it always does. Anytime one of my children suffers, even if it is a goofy splinter, a little something inside of me suffers along with them. It really is too bad that kisses cannot make all of there boo-boos all better.

It has been a While

Hello Readers,

Apparently, most of the 17 days of vacation/holiday time that I have been enjoying away from work has transcended into my blog. To be honest, I do not really feel all that bad about not writing. My brain needed an all around vacation.  On top of that, I did not feel compelled to write anything for the blog. What I mean is that, I did not need to unwind my mind like I do when I am working.

I had good vacation spending time with my wife, children, family and friends. I ate a lot of good food and food that was not so good for me. To me, that is part of enjoying the holidays. I hope all of you had an excellent holiday too.

I look forward to writing for you in 2011. I know that this is going to be an all around good year.

Happy New Year to You!

Back in Preschool

Today, I got to go to Preschool with my three year old as a volunteer for her Christmas Party. It was a blast! There are 15 children in the class and two teachers on a normal day, and am not quite sure how they do it on a daily basis. God Bless them for it.

For the party, we had four parent volunteers of which I was one. A couple of weeks before the part my wife had signed me up to do a game. At first, I was like, "Oh, Gee Thanks." I did not realize at the time that on top of volunteering for the party, I had to volunteer for a specific function. It really wasn't a big deal, just a bit surprising.

Plus, I cannot complain because she offered to help figure out what to do. But, I was being stubborn and felt that I could come up with a game on my own. Well, that was not meant to be. I procrastinated and by Monday night, had nothing. Fortunately, I had one more day to "come" up with something. So, I asked my wife for help. She could have easily said NO!, but she is not like that. She agree completely.

We came up with "Pin the Ornament on the Tree" (it was mostly her idea.) It was a pretty simple game and no way for a kid to lose. My wife made the tree out of green poster board.  She drew used various shades of green marker to give the tree depth and silver glitter glue for the garland. The star is made out of yellow construction paper.  The ornanments are "stiff" sparkled red felt cut into circles. Shannon wrote each child's name on the ornament in the silver gliter glue, and then glued a silver snowflake on them. For the ornanment "hook," my wife glued sparkly red pipe cleaners on the top. Finally, she stuck magnets to the back of the oranments so that the children could take the home to display them.

To get the ornanments to stick to the paper tree, we attached blue painters tape to the back. This gave us the proper adhesive to stick to the tree without destroying it when we removed it. When it came time to Pin the ornaments we blindfolded the children, spun them around, and guided them to the tree.  Below is a picture of the tree after they were all done. (They may have had a little help to affixing the ornaments so none overlapped.)

I have to say that Ms. Patty and Ms. Bonnie (the teachers) were good sports as they played too. It was excellent and we really enjoyed ourselves. In an earlier post, I talked about how I volunteered in my older daughter's class. Again, I will say that if you have an opportunity to do it, volunteer in your child or grandchild's class. It is time well spent.