Our Superheros

Not much time tonight...kiddos were running around for most of the night on a sugar high. As you can see...our two little ones were superheros. Kade loves being Batman and dresses in it at least a few times a week. Payton was a great wonder woman (courtesy of our Detroit connection)...

We made it about 15 houses and then everyone was ready to head home. Not a bad run if you ask me ;-)

The three pictures on the bottom are of Kade, Payton and Kylie making the faces they wanted on their pumpkins.... their SCARY pumpkins.

I just can not pass this one up...sorry

The new A380 is the object of much fanfare lately. Super-jumbo title, full double decker, up to 853 seats (10 wide on lower deck and 8 wide on upper deck), 2 stairways, 50% less noise and a no sex policy to go with that less noise claim ;-)

I guess this makes Jen the majority

ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" took last week's ratings top spot with its Monday edition, outstepping even the World Series' decisive Game 4.

Who would have thunk it!

The Amaizing Pumpkin Patch

As with most of America, last week we took our annual trip to the corn maze and pumpkin patch. It was actually an insanely hot day in the Albunukie sun. Sooooo, about halfway through the maze Daddio took over the map responsibilities and we took the direct route to the pumpkin patch. Enough with wandering around in the sun following the kids. We were lucky enough to catch Kylie posing....ok, maybe it was not so much luck...maybe it was simply having a camera focused on a little 4 year old diva :-)

In the end, as always the kiddos had lots of fun. Kade loved burying himself in the corn box...and Payton loved throwing corn...which we were no so pleased about. Finally, the last pic on the left is of Kade and Kylie making some scary faces...for some reason Kylie's didn't turn out so scary...I dunno...maybe it is just a diva thing. Jen?

Should have known that it was going to STINK

In what might be one of the worst movies I have ever seen...Michael Clayton sets a new standard. This movie makes me want to start a bottom 10 movie list! Jen and I were very excited to have an evening to ourselves and went looking through the Albunukie Journal to see what was playing. We were torn between The Kingdom and Michael Clayton. The Nukie gave Clayton 4 stars...and it looked like a pretty good movie from the trailers....

We pretty much slept through the whole thing. It was way too predictable....you knew the ending before it began. Should have gone to The Kingdom or simply gone out for a nice dinner!

Upon reflection I should have known that it was going to stink. Thinking back to what George Clooney has done recently...I would be hard pressed to find a good movie. About the best one in his past is likely Oceans 11....not exactly Earth shattering.

PASS

Oy

Jen and I were rooting against each other...in the end even she was disappointed.

Pool time with the Zups

Last Saturday morning was spent with the Zups at the Residence Inn pool in Fort Collins. The kiddos had a blast...and that includes the biggest kid of all (me). As you can see from the picture above...the hit of the day was our little game of SharkBait (ooo-haa-haa). Megan and Kade are finally tall enough to stand on their own in the shallow end of the pool which opens up a whole new world....one where we no longer need to hold them all the time in the pool....thanks goodness!

You can see from the second picture that Payton was very excited to be in the pool...even had a little spare time to yawn for dad ;-) And on the right you can see Ellen and Laura chillin' in the sun. Unfortunately the hot tub was out of commission this trip so the sun was the next best place for the girls to warm up.

Joe got some of his very own Payton time...which Payton seemed to enjoy immensely. If you look really closely at the last picture on the right...you can see that Payton is starting to turn blue...hence the trip with Joe to the sun ;-) Overall, a nice little piece of normalcy in an otherwise hectic trip thus far!

Note to American Airlines.... "You suck!"

On this most recent trip back to the states, we flew American Airlines as per our usual route... through Dallas. For once everything went smoothly and we got into Albuquerque with no issues. We get back to the homestead and settle in for a good nights sleep....ahh, ignorance is bliss. The following day we begin to unpack our bags. Low and behold when we open one of our bags we notice that one of our camera cases is sitting on top of our cloths (not in amongst the cloths like it began the trip). "Self, Hmmm, that is odd". Oh wait...the zipper on the case is open..."self, that can't be good". Oh crap...sure enough there is a big void where our camcorder used to be. "Self, what was on the tape....oh crap...all of Payton's first year...including those first steps we were going to post on the blog". As outrage begins to settle in it becomes very evident that the camcorder did not unzip itself and walk away. Who would do this?! Our best guess is a baggage handler in Costa Rica but obviously we have no way to prove that.

Next step...call AA and figure out what to do. Thinking that my long standing elite status will get me somewhere...I call the frequent flier line. After about 5 minutes I get redirected to the local Albuquerque baggage department as they handle these types of things. Well, I try to get a hold of them for 4 days and leave numerous messages. No one calls and no one answers. Back to the elite line. I finally get a hold of someone who tells me that for theft I actually need to file a complaint through email....there is no direct line to this department apparently. So far the customer service has not been a service at all. Since I have no choice I send the following email off to the mysterious department:

To whom this may concern,

On Sept 29, 2007 my family and I traveled from Costa Rica to Albuquerque. Upon reaching Albuquerque and opening our luggage we immediately noticed that our camcorder (Canon Elura-100) was missing - along with the video footage of my daughters first footsteps!! The camcorder case was no longer tucked in between the clothing where I packed it for protection. Instead it was lying on top with the zipper opened and the camcorder missing. This is not a question of a missing item, this is a question of a stolen item since the case was still in the bag, displaced and tampered with. In my mind this is clearly an American Airline issue. When I dropped the bag off at the ticket counter I trusted that American would respect and protect my baggage. Upon retrieval of my bag from AA, that trust was shattered. I have been a long-time AAdvantage member and so far your response in this issue has been terrible - something I did not expect for a frequent customer. I initially got routed to ABQ AA local baggage. They never picked up the phone and never responded to my messages. Finally after 4 days of being ignored, I called AAdvantage customer service and got routed to this email address. To be honest I have very little confidence in AA at this point and have serious doubts about your "customer service" policy. This is something that will definitely impact my carrier decision in the future.

Apparently this email eventually got somewhere because 2 weeks later I received a form letter from American which requires me to provide all sorts of documentation which I do not have with me (like the baggage tag, copy of the original receipt for all missing items). Oh, and I need to get it all to them within 45 days of the incident...uh, it has already been 3 weeks due to their slow asses. So basically we are SOL....camcorder lost...and more importantly....memories lost. So you can all officially thank American Airlines for the fact that you will never see Payton's first steps.

PS - I was going to add the AA logo at the top of this post...but after reading the AA legal disclaimers I figured that would be a violation in some manner and who knows what the hell that would mean.

Last week in Fort Collins....part 1

So this past week we had a great time in Colorado. We got to see most all of our friends in one way or another. Saturday night the Hart's pulled together a "little" get together with everyone and we all got to fight over which game we were going to watch on TV (Boston/Cleveland, Michigan/ Illinois or Auburn/LSU). Luckily I ended up with the remote and so we got to watch all three games with no regard for my thumb's safety. Next time, we are expecting 3 way PIP Mark! Ok - heads-up...cheap plug....Go Sox! It has been fun watching them this post season. Seems like they just like to keep things interesting. Anyway, Saturday was a really nice get together and we all had fun. Jen was good and caught a lot of it with the camera. As usual I am choosing a few of my favorites. The first is of the girls watching the kids and the second is of the guys watching the kids ;-) The last picture from the evening is of Kade and his old babysitter Kaitlyn...as you can see, Kade remembered just how much fun he used to have with her!!!

Sunday came early and we headed out to The Egg and I for a bite at the one restaurant we had to visit during our time in Fort Collins. We met the Mango family there and as usual ate way too much. Then we headed down to Denver to spend some time with the Johnsons. Thankfully they have more than one TV...so watching the football game and Game7 of the Sox game was not an issue ;-) We had a nice time at their new home and the kids enjoyed getting to see Maddie. Kade really enjoyed the fact that three was enough snow on the ground to make a snowman. Maddie and Amy were fair game and so up it went....in no time flat. Then I even got to help Chris hang his deer...now that was an extra special treat I wasn't expecting...but definitely made it an official trip back to Colorado during hunting season! More to come....

A little slice of nastalgia: Papa Gino's

Two weeks ago I was up in Hudson doing a little work. After a late night at the office I drove down one of the nearest roads and spotted a restaurant I haven't seen in almost 15 years...so I had to go in. My favorite used to be the pizza and the tuna sub. Well, I wasn't about to eat a whole pizza and I really didn't feel like a tuna sub. So I searched the menu for what I really wanted...a cheesburger sub....oh man those are what I was really craving. They didn't have one. Instead I grabbed the next best thing...a Philly cheese steak sub and a big coke. I took it back to the hotel and caught the end of the Boston Red Sox Game...ahh, Papa Gino's!