Category: Miscellaneous

Henry has been inseparable from the small guitar at his preschool, and decided he wanted to use his birthday money to buy one of his own. Needless to say, he is loving it!

The dudes have been clamoring to try out the new “shade tent” that Mom-O has added to our Beach Readiness Kit, so on Sunday we headed out to Santa Cruz. After chillaxing on the beach…

…we took an aerial tour on the Sky Glider:

From there we headed off to brave the swinging Pirate Ship. Fortunately, unlike a teenage Uncle Ted, the boys didn’t follow the experience by decorating the world with their lunches. :-p

One Finnster, plus “Walter the Blanket,” minus all energy, equals a happy chap. 🙂

The boys *totally* put one over on me for Fathers’ Day, “letting slip” that they were making me a cake. Imagine my surprise, then, as I sat upstairs awaiting breakfast in bed, only to see them show up with a CAPE. We may come to rue the day these guys became so wily.

If you think Henry would be enthusiastic about sharing his dessert with “El Chivo” (aka The Goat, aka Dad-O, Consumer of Leftovers), well, you probably don’t know Henry. 😉

Bonus: The “Pizza-Eating Machine” passes out happily post-snack.

You can take the boys out of Illinois but you can’t take the Illinois out of the boys. 🙂

Downside of traveling for work: Separation from the fam.

Upside: Crushing the “Best Dad Ever” category by toting a pair of giant ballon A380s. 🙂

Just your typical Guys’ Night, creatively misusing hardware-store wares while burning off some In-n-Out Burger. 🙂

I love Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts”—especially this one:

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take mylittle nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh no”, I said, “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

Man was I thinking of that the other day when we & the lads walked (and walked, and walked) through the mall en route to the super-pneumatic, hyperkinetic promised Bouncy Land—only to discover that it was closed & padlocked!

Poor Hen cried & cried. We felt terrible, but don’t despair: We almost immediately located another “jump-around place,” drove there and had a ball (actually 300 balls, as the boys tried to force-feed me the contents of a ball pit). Henry was delighted, gleefully announcing, “I’m making myself a new chair, and it’s gonna be called ‘Your Face!!’” All’s well that ends with Dad-O at the bottom of a well. 😉

Legos a go-go. 🙂 

I awoke to the sound of Margot “cracking up,” as Finn later put it. Apparently when she greeted the dudes around 6am, they treated her to a news flash: “Henry can’t marry Maya anymore because she keeps singing ‘Let It Go.’” This is the super annoying, catchy, and strident theme from Frozen. Ask the parents of any young girl. Finn continued, “We’re gonna write a note: ‘FORGET IT, Maya!!’” And so they did!

The boys love to call me KOBI (King Of Bad Ideas), and now look what I discovered on campus at Google—a rolling Bad Idea:

The CoBi is a seven-passenger death machine that I pedaled past yesterday. Here’s hoping I can get the little KOBIs (Kids Of Bad Ideas) on it soon. 😉

(Seeing this Margot makes a loud “thbbbbtp!” sound while giving a thumbs-down. “I’d rather team-build over drinks!”)

It’s not news that John is known as KOBI in our house (King of Bad Ideas). For example: “Hey kids, let’s use yarn and duct tape to make ‘tripwires’ and not tell Mom-o until she hits one and lands flat on her face in the living room!” or “A fistful of cookies right before bedtime? What could possibly go wrong?”

[Hey man, they *start* this stuff; I just greenlight it. 😉 –J.]

And now the boys have gleefully adopted their own KOBI moniker (Kids of Bad Ideas): Using a glue stick to hang posters on the wall? GREAT IDEA! Jumping up and down on the nice couch? You bet! Bringing sandy, muddy toys and sticks into their rooms for playing? Bring it on! Peeing in the trashcan? Why, certainly!

I am the lone, battle-hardened MOGI (Mom of Good Ideas), up against three hearty, persistent KOBIs. The fact that everyone remains alive, relatively unscathed, and our house is still standing tells me I must be doing something right. Right?

[Yeah, and the house continues to pulsate with hilarity, so we all play our parts, eh? 🙂 –J.]

Little G-Man’s mind has been blowing a lot recently:

• Spotting some icy grass, Henry got breathless: “Dad-O, a man named Jack Frost visited our school, and he made everything icy!! For real!”
• Poor Hen was kinda busted up after he grabbed a cat tail and shoved it into a foam tube, thus stripping it to the stem: “Aaaagh, all my cat feathers are gone!”
• When I pointed out a beautiful Fisker Karma (like the one pictured above), Henry remarked, “Dad-O, flat cars are the coolest! If we drove a [Lamborghini] Aventador, how would we even sit in it? Would we have to put the steering wheel on the ceiling?” Let’s cross that bridge the next time I have four hundred grand to drop on a car, kiddo. 🙂

We’re the kind of family that likes to make up our own goofy versions of songs, and the Twelve Days of Christmas song is no exception! So, minus the “a-swimming, a-leaping, and a-milking”, and without further ado, here is the Micronaxx version of the ol’ holiday favorite:

• On the first day of Christmas, Dad-o gave to us: One elf on the shelf
• On the second day of Christmas, Auntie Laura gave to us: Two Lego advent calendars
• On the third day of Christmas, our friends gave to us: Three Christmas parties
• On the fourth day of Christmas, Mom-o and Dad-o gave to Hen: Four traffic cones
• On the fifth day of Christmas, Grandma & Grandpa Nack gave to us: Five packages from Galena
• On the sixth day of Christmas, Mom-o gave to us: Six strings of icicle lights
• On the seventh day of Christmas, Netflix gave to us: Seven Christmas videos
• On the eighth day of Christmas, Mom-o and Dad-o gave to us: Eight penguin ornaments
• On the ninth day of Christmas, Mom-o, Dad-o and the Sturtevants gave to us: Nine passengers on the Holiday Lights train
• On the tenth day of Christmas, Mom-o and Dad-o sang with us: Ten Christmas carols
• On the eleventh day of Christmas, Finn and Henry decided to make: Eleven salt dough Christmas ornaments
• On the twelfth day of Christmas, Mom-o helped make: Twelve slices of pumpkin bread!

I rarely apply captions to individual photos, and the “recently used” list in Lightroom (my photo adjustment/management app) dates back roughly four years. I just now stumbled across it & had fun glimpsing into our family’s mind circa Christmas 2009. 🙂

G-Man gets fashion-forward at Barber Tom’s:

Tonight as Margot was enjoying a girls’ night out, I heard the lads rustling around in the TV room. Henry was bumping the remote, trying to “accidentally” turn on the TV. As he & Finn pondered how its little screen would light up, I heard Finn getting frustrated & asked what was the matter.

“Well Dad-O,” he said, “there are a bunch of numbers on it, and I pressed 408-444-2565, but it’s not calling Mom-O!”

I chuckled, complimented him on actually knowing her number, and then showed him how to dial the number on an actual telephone. Surprises never cease. 🙂

…or is it screams? 🙂

Our colleague Steve Ross ran into Henry at Pasitos the other day & sent us this report:

When he saw me, he started up a conversation in which he remarked on how Finn is enjoying kindergarten. He then told me how, that same morning, he and the other Pasitos kids had gone to a park. This wasn’t just any park, however, he explained. This park apparently had a dead baseball player buried in it. Henry proceeded to tell me that were I to go there, with some magic powder, and then sprinkle it on the grave, the baseball player would rise up and be alive again, ready to play ball! This stuff is amazing! He then completely switched it up, turned to an older lady (someone’s grandma?) standing next to me and told her that he had a bunch of smoked salmon at home.

You keep it weird out there, little buddy. 🙂