More Cardboard Fun!

We still haven't gotten rid of all of our boxes, so it was time for more cardboard fun. We decided to make space ships or race cars. Milena has a fancy space ship. I have no idea why she wanted a "W" on top of her ship.

Eli has a race car. It is supposed to be Chick Hicks from Cars. I missed the part of the movie where Chick had a gun on his hood.


Kelson is very serious in his space ship. And no, I don't get any advertising money from Home Depot.


Koleman made his spaceship all by himself. With no help from me. He wants everybody to know that.

Grandpa Lindy's 90th Birthday

Well, you have already seen the highlight of Grandpa Lindy's birthday party - the big flaming cake - but I've got some pictures to share, as well. Here Michelle helps Grandma Karen prepare the flaming cake.


Grandpa is amazed by the huge number of candles. (Next to him is one of his older sisters, Blanche. His 88 year old sister was also in attendance, but his 96 year old sister couldn't make it. In other words, I've got a good shot at hitting 90.)


Milena is very proud of Grandpa for blowing out all his candles.


We tried to get all the kids to sit with Lindy and Lu for a nice picture, but Kelson was being intentionally obstinate. So this is what we ended up with.


Or this.

Koleman in the Snow

Koleman is searching for ice chunks.

Now That's a Fire!

Yesterday (Saturday), my mom and dad threw a great 90th birthday party for my Grandpa Lindy. I'll probably have some pictures to post later, but right now I wanted to show the video of my mom lighting the candles for Lindy's cake. Yes, 90 candles. All connected together. Good, clean fun.

Kelson In The Snow

Koleman Pictures

Koleman also dressed up. I'm not exactly sure what he is, but if you combine Frankenstein hands, a hook, dog face, wizard hat, cape, Peter Pan shirt, butterfly wings and pirate bandana, well, you get this.


Kelson likes to tell Koleman to build things for him. Here Koleman built a huge Imaginext castle for Kelson, and then the pirate ship that Kelson wanted built. I wish he listened to me as well as he listens to Kelson.

Dress Up Day

The kids realized that the dress up stuff is in the house and within their reach. Eli is a baseball playing gorilla.


Kelson loves to be a firefighter.


Milena is a cute little mouse. See the tail?

Eli Hurt Lip

Eli fell on the stairs and hurt his lip. Here he is going to show how sad he was.


Now he's happy.


And now he's trying to show where the blood came from.

Look What I Can Do With Picasa!

Still Testing

I lost my preferred way of posting pictures, so now I have to try something new.


I just posted four pictures of Kelson, but I don't see them anywhere.


Let's see if three of them go through.

Test

Testing. Please forgive.
 

Michelle's Birthday!

Holy cow, look at all those presents! As it got close to Michelle's birthday, she made an off-hand remark about getting X presents (since she was turning X years old). Well, I took the challenge, and the kids and I got X presents for her. We kind of cheated, and counted envelopes as presents, but still, can you blame us? I mean, X is a lot of presents!

And here is the birthday girl surrounded by the four greatest gifts of all - her children.

Hey, I almost typed that with a straight face!

WARNING! This post is not for children or those who are easily offended!

OK, you've been warned, so don't blame me.

Well, we got our butcher block today. Finally! And it's, well, um ... it's f**ktastically craptastic! It's a brilliant work of craptitude! OK, let me be fair - it is a beautiful piece of wood. A lovely Brazillian Cherry to match our floors. However...

... something doesn't look right, does it? Are we supposed to see an inch of the cut edge of our countertop? My guess is that we're not. And no, I'm not a countertop engineer, a countertop installer, or a countertop guru, I'm just a guy with a kitchen. A guy with a very nice kitchen, who has been waiting for TWO MONTHS for a butcher block that was supposed to take three weeks, in order to complete the kitchen. A pissed off guy, with a ticked off wife, and four little grumpy children, all of whom wanted a butcher block, but not one that was left in the dryer too long.

How the h**l can you mess up like that? We didn't have the block when the countertop was installed because they wanted to wait until the top was in, so they could measure the block exactly. We thought that made sense, so we waited. They came the day after the countertop was installed, with their little tape measure, and their little notepad, and their little brains, and they measured the spot.

Doesn't look like they did that great a job measuring, does it?

And then, when I called to ask the status of the butcher block in late November, I mentioned that we were having people over for Christmas, and wanted to make sure it was in by then. She scoffed - scoffed! - at the very thought that I would consider contemplating that it wouldn't be in by Christmas. Well, I sure hope to h**l we get a butcher block that fits by next Christmas.

Look at this! It's not even a near f***ing miss!

Sorry.

Snow? In Minnesota?

Apparently it's not just a legend. We finally got some of that white stuff.

The good news was that my dad was here to help shovel. The better news was that he was helping Michelle, and not me. The bad news was that I had to drive home from the Cities through the blechy snow. The worse news was that I was at the Vikings game.

Koleman takes a relaxing break.

Eli holds up the basketball pole.

Milena tries to see.

Kelson helps shovel the driveway. (Note that all these pictures are copyright Michelle. I was miles away.)