Good Grief...

The Giants, in a desperate effort to completely ruin my life went ahead and made it into the playoffs...now Jen needs to listen to my completely idiotic Tom Coughlin rantings for at least one more week. At least Hufnagel got the boot...that was a nice change!!!

Houston, we have a problem!

First, let me apologize for the delay in our blog updates...as you can imagine we have had quite an adventure this past week. First, we did not get out to ABQ until Sat vs. the plan of Thursday due to Hertz being a bunch of incompetent boobs (oh yeah you knew that already). Then we got down to ABQ and everyone got sick...and Payton decided to be a momma's girl which pretty much tied up Jen for the entire stay. Then we had to leave on Wed vs. the plan of Friday due to the incoming snow storm. So to recap: 2 days of traveling for 3 days at the grandparents! Hmmm, that sounds familiar....oh yeah...that is what we did when we went back to CT in the beginning of December. So I guess to sum up our December...4 days of travel for 6 days of "vacation". And we wonder why we are all so tired ;-)

Christmas: Besides the fact that I overcooked the prime rib, Christmas was a success. The kids had a ball. It was especially great for us since this is the first year that Kade seemed to really understand the whole concept. We even left out a cookie for Santa (which he liked) and some carrots for the reindeer (which I guess were good per reindeer standards). Funny how we forgot to leave out a beer - I mean milk - for Santa! And maybe next year we will leave out some Beefarino for the reindeer...I bet Santa and his elf would love that!! ("I'm so keen-o, on Beefarino, what a delicious cuisine-o, fit for king and queen-o." - Kramer)

Kades Birthday: So we ended up at Peter Piper Pizza for the party which turned out to be a nice break after spending the entire previous day opening gifts. It was actually a lot of fun for the kiddos as they really enjoyed the games. Kade especially liked the race car simulators. Dad really liked the basketball game as he whooped up on mommy...she must have been thinking about tea parties or something and didn't bring her A game ;-)

Uh...Houston we have a problemo. When I went to download the Xmas and Birthday pictures from just the one camera we have 298 pictures. Obviously this is going to take a while to settle out...and I am sure that Jen will claim she has a picture hangover after sifting through the ashes. Anyway, I gave it a go and tried to pull out some of the better (or at least funnier) pictures...

First one is a little pre-Christmas cheer going on by Jen. Apparently she was trying to "cheer" her way through a headache...personally I wanted to see this one succeed as I could have greatly benefited from that...

Second one is a little surprise I caught at the dinner table. Kylie (a.k.a., The Blizzard) was wearing black olives on all 5 fingers...by the time I got my camera she had stuffed 4 in her mouth...
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house the boys were fixing Santa's deliveries ;-)
Payton also got a charge out of the John Deere Gator. She liked driving more than riding in the back with Kade-the-destroyer...
So Kade figured out "forward-at-full-speed-into-the-coffee-table" pretty damned fast. He is apparently nothing like his father ;-)
I do believe that Rocky summed up the Chrismas festivities the best with this one picture...it was a long day...Fay gets an honerable mention too for her demeanor here also, but by far and away Rocky has it nailed.In an interesting experiment...it appears that the Gator's battery lasted longer than Kade's ;-)The two amigos in the Blizzard's new Barbie Jeep. Apparently Kade had a little more juice left in him after all!!!
One last shot before I sign off for the evening...apparently Payton had something else in her formula...maybe Russ slipped in a little eggnog....I guess we will never know for sure...but I have my doubts...
Later!

Quick Post

Just a quick post from Albunukie since I am hiding in a coffee shop and I do not know how long I will be able to get away with that :-) We did get out on Sat morning thanks to Jill and her Chevy Tahoe w/ 4x4 since they still had not plowed our streets. We got down to ABQ sat night and all the kids and Jen are sick...wonderful trip. I will have to tell you about our Burger King experience - it was craptacular. Christmas was great although it did take us all day to finally get through all the gifts...a long day indeed. The kids (Kade and Kylie) loved their battery cars...I will have to get some photos/video up on that since there were many humerus crashes. Kylie even managed to damage great grandpa's car a little!

Today is Kade's birthday and he is over at Ken;s with Kylie at the moment...need to get back soon to pick him up! They are having a blast together!!! We are just going to Peter Piper Pizza today and having a cake...pretty low key but that is nice after yesterday. Payton is a disaster with her cold...she is not sleeping well. Although she is still a trooper and opening gifts ;-)

Looks like there is another storm coming in over the next few days. I can't find any snowfall projections on the net but that is probably because I don't know what I am doing on the Internet. Looks like 8-12 inches in the next 2 days...wonderful. Start the vac with a blizzard and end with one too. Ok, gotta run and pick up Kade...will put up pics/video just as soon as I can!

And did I mention that the Giants were really fun to watch this week :-) Oy vey!

Kiss my butt - and other funny Kade sayings...

Alrighty...so today officially stunk. The day started on a bright note with the roads being somewhat passable. They had been packed down enough with no ruts so small cars could get out. So I called Hertz to go and pick up the car (score one for Jen as she told me I should call before I went over)...well, apparently Hertz had not gotten around to getting their cars out of the snow...so we had to wait until they called...well they never did...GRRRR! I finally called them about 3pm and they were like...oh yeah sure...your car is ready. Well, the sun had softened the hard pack so by afternoon the roads were a bloody mess. Even the 4WD vehicles were getting stuck. Stacy (our neighbor) offered to try to get me to the Hertz pickup...but we got stuck at the entrance of her drive...yes...we only made it about 3 ft before getting stuck. Yuck...so Hertz officially screwed us today. On the bright side...I was home for the entire day and being a somewhat young male...that apparently entitles me to hours of getting other cars unstuck. You see, almost the entire neighborhood went out this morning when the roads were good...and they all came back when they were not. There were 5 cars stuck on our road at one time. It was sooo awesome. In total we got a total of 9 cars into their driveways...I told everyone that we should have just shoveled the entire street to start with as it would have been faster...I do not think that anyone was amused except me ;-)

On a bright note, I did get to play with Kade in the snow again for the better part of the day...today we made a "cave" (as Kade called it) in the giant snow pile in the front yard. He got in it and immediately said that it was a "big cave" and that there were spiders and bats...well, you gotta give him credit. At another time during the day (daddy not present - probably either pounding beers or getting cars unstuck) Kade was pushing Jen's buttons a little - ok what's new about this you say.... Well, apparently she got a to the breaking point and sent him to time out. He proceeded to tell Jen to "settle down"...gee, not sure where he learned that one :-) We also had one last funny run-in with Kade today. He was re-arranging the presents. For some reason he wanted his birthday present over against a different wall. I said to myself "Self, this is not a battle worth taking" so he proceeded to move the presents around. Well, he immediately fell down on his butt...apparently slipping on some imaginary ice or water. Remarkably the crying never came...hmmm, interesting. Well about 20 mins later we are in the kitchen making dinner and he was pointing to his head...so naturally I kissed it to make it feel better (FYI - the magical powers of a kiss at this age is somehow stronger than any form of medicine). He immediately turned and pointed to his backside and said "kiss my butt". Jen and I just looked at each other and started laughing...I am sure Payton thinks we are all quite nuts ;-)
And that was our wonderful day of waiting for the snow plow to arrive!

Ouch - what hurts.? Oh, that's my back!

Well the blizzard has come and gone. We got a total of about 2 feet of snow. Official numbers range from 21-24 so being a fisherman I guess I should have said 3 feet ;-) Kade had an absolute ball out in the snow today...he really loved making the snowman and sledding off the hill in the front yard. Here are a few pictures to show you all the straight skinny.

I made some special seats for the kids in the snowbank as you can see here. They were perfect for the kiddos. Kade and mom also hit the hill in the front yard. As you can see it ended up being pretty steep after I was done shoveling the driveway. Looks like we wont be getting out of town for Albuturkey until Sat morning now...good thing we are not flying! Oh, we also opened another couple of presents this evening...we figure it is best given the fact that the kids have about a zillion presents this year waiting for them...need to get a head start. One last photo before I logoff...
L8R

Blizzzzaaarrrdd!

Well, as you all probably already know we are having a bit of a blizzard today. I can't tell you how many inches of snow we have gotten because its all blowing around....all i can tell you is how many inches I have shoveled thusfar and that is about 1 foot. Note in the picture that the sandbox is buried and the snow is about up to the patio chair level. Jen was out taking Kade to his 3 year appointment this morning when the storm really started kicking up. She wanted to run some errands but luckily she thought about it and decided to come back home. By the time she got home she could barely see and barely drive. She left the car at the bottom of the driveway and started to shovel...uh, that did not last very long. She turned said - "that's enough of that" and left the remaining 90% of the driveway to me...no one can ever say she is not smart! We were supposed to leave for nuclear capital of the world tomorrow...a.k.a., Albunukie...but decided that with the conditions we would hang in FTC for another day. Good thing too as our neighbor made a run over to our house to borrow some Vodka...apparently she is planning to wait out the storm drinking Cosmos...cheers!

Kade opened his first present last night...it was a Geotrax Airport from poppy. He has not stopped playing with is so I would say that it is a resounding success!

Kid news: Payton is really getting close to crawling. I have put a video on YouTube (link below) which shows her progress. It also includes a little bonus footage of the monster dancing ;-) I know that grandma Judy will enjoy that one! Kade has also started referencing Jen as "my friend mommy"...it really is funny to hear him say it. He is also doing pretty well potty training...we have moved into the mode of just making him go every 45 mins...he does it on his own now...besides the need to be told to do it. We also found that after a big drink...it is best to make him go about 15 mins later as things start to work their way through...that is one lesson you learn the hard way ;-) Anyway, hope you enjoy the dancing... (and yes mom, that is the computer you just bought him that he throws...sigh)