The Josh & Jackie Show

Germany, Nurnberg

2010-04-25T19:50:00.001-07:00

Our last few days in Germany were spent in and around Nurnberg, which is a big modern city with all the stores we have here, and much more. It was interesting to see the old with the new built right into it. Ancient cobblestone walls and watch towers providing security for... Burger King and Foot Locker; Starbucks just down the lane from the 12th century cathedral; eat at the trendy ice cream cafe with Lady Gaga blaring, then walk around the corner to the castle square. Oh, and fountains...

And here's a woman taking a picture with her dog...

In Nurnberg we had an amazing meal. After much walking and wandering, we picked a tiny, humble door in a long lane of shops and cafes and stores. We entered a dark little front room that split into two directions: wooden stairs heading left and up into darkness, or right and down a few steps to a coat rack and the restaurant entrance. Again, all was so quiet and quaint that we thought we might have taken a wrong door and entered somebody's private residence. We hung up coats, gloves, scarves, hats, second coats, and sweaters, then entered the restaurant.

Wow.

The place was small and dim. Candle-lit, with Christmas decor adding more sparkling lights from exposed-beam rafters. The place was long and extremely narrow, but the most interesting part was that we were below street level, so that through tiny square windows up by the ceiling you could see the dark forms of feet shuffling by. Of all the places we ate at, this one most resembled a Hobbit-hole. As the few tables were already occupied, we took our places at a table with another couple. This is typical for German restaurants. Unlike the USA, you do not "own" your table at a restaurant. Others can and will sit at your table with you (but usually only if there is no more room elsewhere). We shared tables many times during our trip, but this was the most enjoyable pairing we had, simply because the couple was from the UK and spoke English (and right proper!). We struck up a conversation with them and really took our time eating and conversing, sharing stories and talking about our families. They were an older couple with kids already grown, and they frequently made the drive down to Germany from the UK, which came to about an 8 hour drive. It was crazy to think that a trip that cost so much money and time and planning for us was merely a weekend road trip for them.

Anyway, I had ordered Nurnberg's specialty: mini Brotwurst links and potato salad. It was my favorite meal of the whole trip. The potato salad was not like we have here - it was amazing. So I had no problem taking my time, enjoying the food and the atmosphere and the company. See, Kelly and I are NOT conversational eaters. Like those people who go out to eat and stay for two hours, just sipping drinks and talking and then ordering desert, talking some more, then coffee, etc. Not us. We eat (usually without talking), and then we leave. But this was one rare occasion when it felt like we were those people. Felt like we were there for hours, and finally it was time to go when the gentleman had downed a beer (or two?) and told a story about Hitler, mortifying his wife when he even started making the "Heil Hitler" hand gesture in the middle of the restaurant. And a great time wasn't all we got out of the encounter: the couple also gave us advice to come back into Nurnberg for New Years Eve, said this city was crazy about fireworks.

Dude. That was an understatement...

In the final blog about our trip: New Years Eve and our departure. Coming soon!

Thanks, Chris!

2010-04-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

Check out the bay window seat my brother Chris made for us (click it to see bigger)...

He lives a thousand miles away and still built it to fit just perfectly. Those doors open to reveal tons of storage space. Nice! We love it, Chris, thanks! And thanks to my dad for all the help transporting it and installing it.

Here's the space as it was before...

GERMANY, PART 3

2010-02-07T19:06:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about Germany was just driving around in the countryside. We would be winding through grassy hills and misty backwoods forests for thirty minutes or so - then suddenly break out into a clearing to see a small town on the side of a hill. Church steeple in the middle. Castle on top of the hill. It seems that no town is too small to have a large church and a castle. The picture of me above was taken in one such town - Colmberg. Now, we didn't get back far enough with the camera, but you are pretty much looking at the whole town. There is a little bit more just out of frame on the right, and that's it. In this pic, we're up at the castle, which actually has a restaurant (but was closed because it was New Years day). These little towns are everywhere, with no fanfare or theme park or tourist map. In fact, we only knew of most of them because of the recommendation of Baron Crailsheim, who understandably dislikes the usual tourist trap destinations (which we also went to, of course - more on that below!). Kelly and I would always have the same remarks upon driving through one of these towns: "Who lives here? And what on earth do they do? Do they have 25 different bills to pay online and hair appointments and parent/teacher conferences, and so on and so on?"

But no, they couldn't, could they? They chop wood for their fires and have family over for dinner and storytelling. They stay up late with a favorite book and a rocking chair that's been in the family for generations. But that's not reality, either, is it? Something in between? Do they all travel in to the nearest city to work? But then, our idea of life is centered around earning enough money to pay those 25 bills online, and maybe life is so different in a little town like this. Who knows how long their families have lived in that same house - not bought, but inherited - so maybe the idea of mortgages and bills is a totally foreign concept. They just live where they've always lived and life's about family and friends and church. Sounds so nice. But maybe it isn't. Maybe it's all normal to them, taken for granted, or perhaps even despised by now, the same old 'same old'.

These are the conversations we would have, or at least what we would each be THINKING, since neither of us is much of a conversationalist (with each other, that is. I've seen Kelly in the middle of a group of girlfriends, and there's no stopping her! Talk talk talk laugh laugh laugh talktalktalktalktalktalktalk). She's good at it, so I know it's me. There's maybe, like, THREE topics that I can talk about for longer than 5 minutes, and Kelly's already heard (several times) all I have to say about those things!

The picture below was taken at a gigantic church in one of these little towns we drove through...

ROTHENBURG

This is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Bavaria. Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a big city with an Altstadt ("old town") that is completely fortified by walls. Here's Kelly sitting atop the wall. You can see it winding around into the background, all the way around the city...

All the best of the typical German touristy festival stuff that you see in peoples' travel photos is on display in Rothenburg. Half-timbered architecture, cobblestone streets, medieval clothing, middle-age taverns, shops full of cuckoo clocks and hand-made treats. The festivals here (we just missed the Christmas one) pack the streets with music and food vendors and general outdoor partying. We were there on a quiet day between Christmas and New Years, so we walked some very uncrowded streets and ate in a little tavern with hunting paintings on the wall. Also, this day happened to be the COOOOOOLDEST of our trip, so we were bundled up good.

Can you spot Kelly in the pic above? You can walk the perimeter of the town up there. It was fun to look out the little slots made for archers. Defend the city! For Rothenburg!

I would totally go to a Renaissance Fair.

GERMANY, PART 2

2010-01-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

(continuing with our tour through Neuschwanstein...)

(Tourists are not allowed to take pics inside the castle. But you can take pictures looking out the windows. How would you like this view from your bedroom? Below are pics from the inside that I found online...)

These castles really were amazing. By the time we hiked back down the mountain, the sun was setting. We stopped in at a quiet little diner at the foot of the castles. I remember this diner because it was very rustic, with soft candle lighting and the typical exposed wooden beams in the ceiling, draped with wreaths and christmas decor. The waitresses all wore the traditional German festival dresses (which is just a touristy gimmick, but still cool!). Couples and families were coming in out of the cold with red noses and cheeks, but all with smiles because they had just come from the castle, too. We were warm and cozy, our food was great - I just remember a nice feeling at that place. Like being at Disneyland, only it's all real, and quiet and calm.

Sommersdorf

That evening we had our longest drive - 3 hours north on the "Romantic Road", which leads through several major historic sites. We were headed to Castle Sommersdorf, which would be our home for the rest of the trip. Personally, I was looking forward to having the drive to Sommersdorf behind us, because it was the last major drive that could get us really lost, and once we could be settled in there, the rest of the trip would not be scary. Well, we ALMOST pulled it off. At around 8:30pm we had navigated through three hours of directions to find ourselves in the town of Sommersdorf. Made it! Except that... Sommersdorf was not exactly what we had expected. First of all, to get to Sommersdorf we had to drive fifteen minutes away from the main road, through misty rolling hills and winding, dark forests. We were like, "Where's the city?" Then we passed the town's welcome sign: "Sommersdorf: population 170." Whaaaa? The town was black - there was one tiny street light on. It took less than 1 minute to drive to the other side of town, and we saw no castle! I began to panic, thinking that maybe I had looked up the wrong Sommersdorf when I got directions. There was a tiny diner with a light on, so I ran in and asked directions, "Hey, where's the castle?" The people couldn't speak very good english, but whatever, I was just relieved when they nodded their heads and said, "Ya, Castle Sommersdorf" and started pointing. At least they knew what I was talking about! The very nice people finally got me to understand that I need to take the second right turn in town. Okay, there are exactly three right turns in Sommersdorf, so that was easy! We took the turn to find ourselves driving underneath a stone archway and entering a vast courtyard area. And there it was...

Okay, except that it was a dark, misty winter night, so this is actually what we saw...

Cool! Except... okay, looking around now... don't see any... front desk... wait, where are we supposed to go now? How do we check in? We walked around a bit, but all was quiet. And cold. And veeery dark. The one light shone over the bridge that spans the castle moat. We walked (more like shuffled hesitantly) across the bridge to the big wooden castle door.

Which was shut tight.

Next to the door there was a buzzer labelled "Baron v. Crailsheim". I knew that to be "the" Baron, the owner of the castle. Right, like I'm just going to buzz the Baron! "Yeah, Baron? It's the Orams, open the castle doors, would you?"

We fled back over the bridge, contemplating a drive to the nearest city to stay the night until morning, when we could come back and find things a bit more lively. It was then that a murderous, barking dog came running across the bridge towards us. That was it for me - done! I'm afraid of dogs, and here comes this ravenous stray to bite us and tear us apart and drag us into the misty marshlands surrounding the place. Kelly, of course, just knelt down to pet the dog, at which point a nice little lady came walking up. It was her dog, she says, and she was out taking a walk, she says, and well, why hadn't we just buzzed the Baron if we wanted in, she says.

We go back and buzz the Baron. And you know, the kindest, gentlest voice came out of the little speaker, "Ah, yes, Mr. Oram. I'll be right down." We hear footsteps, then KA-CHUNG! and the castle door swings open. There's Crailsheim, all smiles and so polite and friendly, with his gigantic bear of a dog, Moritz, following him everywhere. He welcomes us to his home and shows us to our room with an invite to breakfast the next morning! Which ended up being one of the great highlights of our stay, actually. Bright and early we show up at Crailsheim's personal quarters, located way up in the tower. He invites us in and Moritz is jumping all over us. The place is covered with family heirlooms and commissioned paintings, antique furniture, etc. Very comfortable. We meet his wife and learn that their kids and grandkids are visiting for the holidays and also staying in the castle. We feel like part of their extended family! So then we are led into the dining room, where a breakfast spread awaits us on a table set for two with china and lit candelabra. Giant windows affording a view of the morning mists rolling over. Then Crailsheim bids us "Gut appetite" and leaves us to enjoy a delicious breakfast together. We just ate and whispered and looked around, like, "Could you imagine this sort of hospitality in the States? Ha!" What an amazing gesture from the Crailsheims - we are grateful to them for their generosity, especially while they had their own family to entertain.

In 2008, Castle Sommersdorf celebrated its 800th year! It even has catacombs with real mummies!

Walking the grounds...

Talk about quiet! The nearest city was half hour away through winding hills and forests. No cars, no kids. Just me and Tolkien at an 800-year-old castle...

We loved the little breakfast nook, so we went grocery shopping and made some great meals for ourselves...

Did I mention how quiet it was there?

Our favorite things to do during down time at Sommersdorf were to make meals to eat in the nook, and watch "Pride & Prejudice", the six-hour BBC mini-series. And the rumor is true: once we had finished all six hours, we started it over again from the beginning. And yes, most of our conversations throughout the trip included bad impersonations of lines from the film. And I know that film has nothing to do with Germany, but somehow, with our castle setting, it just fit better than "Ironman" or "17 Again".

In Part 3, we're off to see Rothenburg, then the big city Nurmberg for New Year's eve...

GERMANY, PART 1

2010-01-08T07:44:00.000-08:00

We left on Christmas day. Opened presents first, of course, then dropped kids off at Alan & Robin's house, where Kimberly and Benjamin were already tearing up the house with their new toys. Josh and Jackie were so excited by all the craziness that they hardly cared when Mommy and Daddy gave hugs and said, "See you in a week, suckas!"

That was 11:30 AM on Friday.

At Noon on Saturday we were landing in Munich. For that first day we were definitely the most obvious of rookie foreigners - every little thing seemed either amusing or absurd or just intimidating.

"Dude, this rental car looks so... European."
"Oh look, their freeway signs are all blue!"
"No! Don't pass another car on the right, I read that in a book!"
"Dude! The police sirens sound just like in the movies!"
"Why do all the freeway signs say 'fart'?"

But by the end of the trip, we had gotten so much better. It helped that we stayed away from hotels and tour groups. We lived in apartments and did grocery shopping and drove all over the countryside by ourselves. We didn't want to just see Germany; we wanted to live like a German!

(This is actually two separate pictures stitched together, hence the weird placement of us so far apart. Click to enlarge)

Bad Tölz

Our first apartment was in Bad Tölz, about an hour south of Munich, at the foot of the Alps. We dumped all our stuff in the room and promptly went out on the town to get something to eat. Bad Tölz reminds me a lot of Lake Tahoe - a nice little resort town with snowy mountain vistas. Bad Tölz is situated on both sides of the river Isar, which winds down from the Alps. On one side of the river is the 'altstadt', or old town, and on the other side is the newer part. We were starving and jet-lagged and it was getting dark, so we opted for the first restaurant we came across: an Italian eatery. I saw the word 'pizza', so I was good to go.

The culture shock officially set in as we walked into the restaurant. Actually, we had only stepped into the front room, which led to another front room bar area. Beyond that was a little room with coat and hat racks. Then beyond that room was nestled a cozy eating area. When I say cozy, I mean, like, I was afraid I had accidentally walked into somebody's home and was going to be attacked by their dog. The room was small, with hardly any windows. Several tables, candlelit. But what got me was the noise. Like, there wasn't any. There were two other families eating there, and the place was so quiet and peaceful. Kelly and I barely spoke above a whisper the whole time.

Oh yeah, Kelly. She was still in the coat rack room, afraid to come into the dining room! She was just sure that we had come to the wrong place and were somehow intruding. Surely this couldn't be a restaurant! No hostess, no noise, no windows with a view of the parking lot or traffic driving by. Just candlelit tables at which you seat yourself and wait. With some prodding, she finally came in and sat down to help me muddle through our order by pointing at things on the menu.

Our dinner adventure was our limit for the first day. We were exhausted. We were out of our element. It was so dark outside! We walked home and crashed.

It was 5:30pm.

(After this, Kelly told me to stop giving "underwear model poses".)

(We were just driving on the autobahn to another Alpine town when we rounded a corner to see this vista. Amazing.)

(Similar thing here: we were just driving in the Alps and saw this trail heading into the woods, so we stopped. It led to a little bridge that had been built over a gorge with a little mountain river and waterfall.)

Castle Neuschwanstein

Leaving Bad Tölz, we drove west along the foot of the Alps, through tiny little villages with churches peppered among rolling green hills. Just the drive itself was great. An hour and a half of these wandering mountain roads finally brought us to Hohenschwangau, where we toured the two most famous castles in Bavaria. Both belonged to the same King, Ludwig II.

(This was Ludwig's getaway retreat. He lived here while he supervised construction of Neuschwanstein (below), which sits just across the valley, up the mountainside. In one of the rooms we saw a telescope that he would use to look out the window and admire Neuschwanstein.)

(A pic of Neuschwanstein that I found online. This is the castle that Walt Disney used as a model for the famous Disneyland Castle.)

(If I look tired, it's because we just made the 20 minute hike up the mountain to get here!)

October '09

2009-11-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

No, this is not Halloween. It was "Zany Clothes Day" at Jackie's school. Yes, she would dress like this every day if we would let her.

This is Halloween...

Kids went camping with Kelly's family. Don't know why Jackie needs a lantern - her smile lights up whole rooms wherever she goes. Awww, I know.

Kelly ran to get the camera to document me doing yard work. It's too late for some of my bushes. They're not coming back...

More Than You Ever Wanted To Know...

2009-07-09T01:06:00.000-07:00

Been working on this project for the last few months: a photo comparison of Kelly and I at different ages, from toddler to now. I love looking at pictures of Kelly when she was little. There were several more I wanted to post, but I had to stop somewhere...

When we first got married, it was not long before Kelly and I both realized something: we had absolutely nothing in common! We were basically strangers who might as well have been joined through arranged marriage, and if we had just taken a few more months to really get to know each other, we definitely never would have gotten married! It's true.

Which is why we are now so grateful that things happened so fast - we were saved from ourselves, from our senses getting ahold of us and ruining what has become something special and very deliberate, through years of work and discussion and an extremely gradual construction of interests and experiences that bridge the gap between our stark differences.

This one's going to be good. One of the great loves of the earth.

Love you, Kelly!

MARICOPA, AZ

2009-07-05T00:35:00.000-07:00

Been a while since my last post. Makes sense. Since then we moved to Maricopa, AZ, just outside of Phoenix. I've been commuting back and forth to LA, while Kelly handled the house-hunting here. I get confused - sometimes I refer to my apartment in LA as home, other times home means AZ. That should all clear up in 4 or 5 weeks, when we should close on the house that you see here. Is it too soon to post pictures? Like, something could still go wrong, right, and the deal falls through, and this isn't actually our house? I don't know how all this works. We literally walked into the house and within five minutes we said, "We want it." A week later we won a bidding war and my agent was saying, "It's yours." Cool, so lets move in. Maybe in 5 or 6 weeks, they say. Huh.

This was the home that served as model and office for the developers, so everything is done very nicely and upgrades abound. This was criteria #1 during our hunt: find a house we could literally just start living in, without having to do any more work.

Next: the dining area, followed by the kitchen, and then the living room. They are all connected together, great-room style...

An office just off the front door. Double doors shut it off from the house, if needed (and it is).

Master bath. I don't care for the wallpaper, but Kelly does, which is all that matters anyway. Besides, it's done and it's done nicely, so I don't have to do anything else but put my toothbrush in it. I'll take it.

Backyard. To the right is a lawn, but it's all dried out. With some watering it will come right back in, nice and green. That BBQ, by the way, does not work at present. It's all professionally built, but for safety reasons there was never a gas line built out to it, so that still has to be done. Anybody know how to do that?

Tar

2009-04-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

Took the kids to the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum yesterday. They liked seeing huge skeletons, but the one animatronic mammoth that wiggled and roared made Jackie run behind a pillar and cry.

Josh and Jackie aren't into dinosaurs just yet, but Josh did get very excited when we were able to tie dinosaurs in with space (his favorite subject) in the room that explained the theory of the dinos getting wiped out by a giant meteor slamming into the earth. That definitely got his attention. Somehow he has latched on to this idea of meteors hitting planets, because of one tiny illustration in a space book from the library that described the Shoemaker-Levy collisions with Jupiter in '94. Ever since then, he just wants to hear more about that story, and he even asks to see a news video of it (but I don't know of any - although I suppose we could just show him the movie Armageddon and tell him it's the news.). Just today in church I gave him a pen and paper and he drew a picture of Jupiter, then a handful of comets next to it. Then he would draw a line from the comets into Jupiter and scribble big explosions. Just captured his imagination, I guess.

MINI BLOGS

2009-04-12T18:44:00.000-07:00

I've been working way too much lately to blog, so months of stories have gone by without report. To catch up, I'll post the pictures I took with some captions. Mini blogs! (To be honest, I HAVE had time some nights to blog, but lately I've used that time to watch iCarly or play Dungeons and Dragons.)

Also, I realized that there were significant things that happened last year that I should have documented, but I decided instead to write about vacuum cleaners, so lets go back to last November...

Here we go. Time me...

Last November Joshua turned 5. He loved it. Check the video. Done.

We went to a bowling alley and I almost got three strikes in a row without hitting the bumpers.

Oh, and the reason we were there was for Jackie's 4th birthday. Done.

Cool new game in our collection: Castle Siege. Set up the fortresses, then use real working crossbows and catapults to shoot marbles at the other side. The fortresses are rigged with rubber bands so that direct hits at certain points will cause rubble and soldiers to go flying. Kids were in shock. Couldn't believe there was a game that would actually reward them for breaking stuff. Most of the time I push them out of the way to shoot the marbles myself.

Grandpa Dave took us to the Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento. I remember elementary school field trips to this place. Cool to see how it's all still pretty much the same. I guess that's what "old towns" do, though.

The kids got new bikes from Grandpa Dave. Half hour later Jackie fell off hers and hit her head on the curb. The first words out of her mouth as she screamed in pain were, "I have to go pee." (she gets in big trouble for peeing her pants). On a more serious note, though, she seemed okay, so we never took her to a doctor or anything. Then three days later Natasha Richardson died from hitting her head skiing, so we started hearing all these horror stories about head injuries and how a person could feel fine at first, then be dead a few hours later. We took Jackie in and the doctor checked her out. All is fine now. Except that she wet her pants two times yesterday.

Easter was today. In the Easter basket, the kids got stars that stick to your walls and glow in the dark. This led to a discussion later in the day about space. I told Josh all about planets, and I guess this really sparked a sense of wonder in him, because he asked me, "How is there life?"

"There's life on Earth because we have sun and water and air," I said.

"But how were we built?"

"How were people built? Heavenly Father made--."

"No, no, how are people made?"

"Oh. By mommies and daddies who make babies."

"I know, but how do mommies and daddies make babies?"

"..."

Just then Kelly walks in.

"Mommy knows."

"Mommy knows what?" Kelly asks. "I know everything. Ask it, I know it."

"See, mommy knows."

"How do mommies and daddies make babies?"

And then I get that look from Kelly, like, "Oh, gee, thanks."

We figured Josh and Jackie were old enough, so now they know the truth: Heavenly father uses magic to put babies inside the mommy's tummy.

Spend the money ONCE

2009-01-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

(PICTURED LEFT: Me with the Oreck handheld unit that came FREE with my new XL Classic Upright vacuum)

When it comes to buying the necessities of home life, like furniture or appliances or electronics, there seem to be two schools of thought: the "old school" and the "newly-wed school". "Old school" (ie your grandparents) says: "Buy nothing but the best quality. Sure, it's more expensive up front, but it will last much much longer, saving you money in the long run, and naturally performing better than the cheap version. Spend the money ONCE, rather than over and over again on things that just break or wear out quickly."

"Newly-wed school" says: "We're broke! That's why I love Target so much - look, honey, you can buy a toaster for six dollars! SIX DOLLARS. Insane. That's like, I could buy a side of eggs at Denny's, or I could buy this and make cinnamon toast for FIVE YEARS. Wait, do you even like cinnamon toast? I'm still trying to figure out stuff you like and don't like to eat. DUDE - a pancake griddle for fourteen dollars!?"

Kelly and I, of course, are definitely in the newly-wed school for most things, but there is ONE THING that I insist on spending the much much higher price for: an ORECK vacuum. This is the original vacuum, the one vacuum to rule them all. And you know it's the real deal because its design has never changed, since they started like five hundred years ago during the revolutionary war, when Granddaddy Oreck used to show people in the town square how the suction from his vacuum could hold up a cannon ball. This is what grandparents mean when they say, "Buy the best quality and it will last forever." Oreck vacuums last FOREVER, and they work so well that you don't even have to throw out your old Target vacuum - just put it on the floor and let the Oreck suck it up.

I love to vacuum. It's the easiest and quickest way to get a room looking cleaner (it helps that everything must be picked up first in order to vacuum), and I admit to a moderate feeling of accomplishment by making all the lines on the carpet perfectly straight and even. I hate seeing a speck that I missed and having to cross diagonally over my beautiful straight lines.

Anyways, for the first few years of marriage, we naturally went to Target for vacuum cleaners, and when I got tired of them breaking or not working, I even moved up to the more expensive Target models. "90 bucks for a vacuum? This thing better rock." It didn't, of course. It didn't do anything! Except it still made the lines in the carpet, but so not the same, because the fun of the lines is seeing the difference between the fuzzy, dirty side and the smooth, clean side. And these were the so-called "deluxe" vacuums, with the hyper-filtration doodle-dee THIS and the super-sonic suck-o-matic THAT. Appendages and secret compartments and futuristic see-through purple bodies so you can see all the inner-workings, blah blah.

And then I saw the Oreck XL Classic. Here it is...

Yeah, that's what I though, too, when I first saw it. No special doo-dads or techy add-ons, no plug-in for your iPod. What a dinosaur! A relic!

It was my dad that first showed one to me, when we had moved into the house with him in the Bay Area. I wanted to vacuum and he's like, "Look what I got." He pulled out the Oreck. "I found it at a garage sale for twenty bucks. It's like 20 years old, so the guy thought it was broken, but oh no, this is an Oreck! All it needed was a few tweaks and it works great."

I laughed. "Dude! That's thing's ancient! It's a grandma vacuum!"

And then he turned it on and it sucked me up and spit me out a believer.

Ohhhh, such beautiful lines...

Ahhhh, such a nice grip on the carpet...

And... it PICKS THINGS UP WITH ONLY ONE PASS. Not like the Target vacuums, where you see a speck on the carpet, so you go over it and the speck is still there, so you go over it again and the speck is still there, so you go over it again and the speck... it's finally gone. But only until you spot it again a few yards away and realize that the vacuum wheels had only managed to fling the speck away.

Well, I stole that Oreck from my dad. It was mine. My own. My... precious. Told him to find one at another garage sale for himself (amazingly, he did). Fast forward a few years to December, and the thing had finally had it. I had opened it up countless times, performed belt replacements and routine cleanings, managing each time to buy another few weeks. But not this time. She was splayed out, busted belt, wheel come off. Smoking up the living room.

There was nothing more I could do.

So I went to Oreck.com, bought a brand new one, and hurled those nasty old remains in the dumpster. Later, sucka, you've been replaced.

And ohhhhh, my beautiful lines are back...

And only for the price of 60 Target toasters.

Jackie will cut you

2009-01-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

Today I was working at my computer while Josh and Jackie played behind me. Josh was playing video games and Jackie was doing a puzzle, one of her favorite new things. This particular puzzle is made of thick wood pieces, so once the puzzle is made, it's difficult to get the pieces to come apart so she can start over again (and again and again...).

My back was to her, but I knew she had finished when she said, "Crumble the pieces, Dad!"

I did what all parents with 5 year-olds do: I ignored her first petition.

"Crumble the pieces, Dad!"

Still typing, trying to finish one last... tiny... thing before I turn around and bestow upon her my total and complete attention...

"Daaaaaad, CRUMBLE... THE... PIECES!"

"Stop, or I'll crumble YOUR pieces!" I bark, and now I'm literally just moments away from finishing. One more click of the mouse and I turn...

But I stop short when I find that Jackie has moved up to within inches of my face and she is making her mad face. She suddenly speaks with a monster/demon voice and this is what she growls:

"I will open your skin."

I didn't know how to respond to that, other than to quickly, with bowed head, crumble all the puzzle pieces, after which she went back to work with a hum and a sweet smile. What have Kelly and I created?

Okay, okay, so I was going to just end the story there, but I suppose a bit of backstory will help to put other family members at ease. No, Jackie is not a devil-child. The idea of opening your skin comes from when Josh and Jackie get cuts or scrapes. Somehow they started referring to these wounds in a very literal sense by saying, "My skin got opened" rather than just saying, "I got cut." One time I even overheard them conversing about what would happen if your skin opened really big and Josh's answer to Jackie was, "All your blood would come out and your skin would fall flat like a pancake." See, so all Jackie was really saying to me was, "I'll cut you." Phew!

As for the demon voice, we all talk like that often when we're playing or whatever, so that's pretty common around here. Plus, Kelly and I have been using the demon voice often since we watched "House Bunny", in which ditzy blonde Anna Faris remembers new people's names by repeating it back to them in a demon voice.

You'd have to see the movie.

BORED GAMES

2009-01-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

Kelly and I have different tastes in just about everything, except movies. We never have a problem picking movies to watch. Musicals, Romantic Comedies, chick flicks, action/adventure - we both love all those, while we both don't care for Jet Li kung fu, sex/raunchy comedies, or "deep" (Oscar-nominated) dramas about messed-up people having affairs and suicide, etc.

Anyway, games have always been a sticking point for us. Kelly LOVES all games (except of the VIDEO kind). Doesn't matter what it is: Risk, Clue, Monopoly, Uno - whatever. She's always up for playing, and her whole family is the same way. Every family gathering over holidays involves game-playing 24/7. Small, scattered groups or couples play various games around the house throughout the day, and then at night comes the big, all-inclusive team games like Personalitease or Apples to Apples or Cranium, etc.

On the other hand, I mostly dislike board games. I don't hate them, but I definitely have to be dragged into it (except Cranium can be fun with a big group - the challenges in that game appeal to intellect and creativity at the same time, and is not so brainy as, say, Trivial Pursuit). Most board games fall under one of three categories - they are either just glorified get-to-know-you games (like Personalitease) or the game relies purely on the luck of a dice roll or card draw (Phase 10, Uno, and all the regular games like Life or Sorry), or else the game is all strategy (Stratego, Blokus), while not providing any real "game" atmosphere (characters, story, etc). You might as well be doing math problems for hours.

Well, I have had the last two weeks off work, and I mean no e-mails, no calls, no nothing. Just lots and lots of time. Nice. So one of the first nights, I say, "Hey, Kelly, wanna play Risk?" She agrees, of course, and we get set up. We have the "Lord of the Rings" version of the game, and I'm reading those books right now, so I'm ready to get into the atmosphere of those stories and really feel like I'm in Middle Earth. But that doesn't happen, of course. After an hour I just see scores of little pieces in different territories, and not only am I doing math problems in my head (the game is mostly strategy), but I am also subjected to horrible strokes of bad LUCK (sometimes one defender will take out your whole offensive army because the defender wins on rolls that are a tie).

Ugh.

So during that game, I'm saying to Kelly, "There has to be a game out there that's perfect for me. Somehow, somewhere, somebody has created a game for me. A game that really takes you into a fantasy world, as if you were watching a movie, but lets you have complete control of the characters and story. You get to go on a quest, but the game elements are not contrived with the random pick of cards, as in "Life", or set on a board that just takes you in circles past different milestones. "Clue" goes in the right direction, but there's still not enough depth to that game. I want to customize characters and really be able to play a part in a story."

"What, like those freaks that dress up and play Dungeons and Dragons?" Kelly asks.

I immediately say, "No, no, no, not like that." But in my mind I'm saying, "That would be awesome!" See, I know Kelly won't go there, and she's my only playing partner, so I need something in the middle. I need a game that takes the depth of characters and story from role playing games and mixes those elements with the board and dice and random card-drawing of a typical board game. A game that will please both the mainstream board-gamer (Kelly) and the role-playing dungeon master (me).

Within only a few hours of searching online, I found that game. It's called "Descent: Journeys into the Dark." I ordered it online, it came in the mail, we have played it a few times now and we both love it. And in my searching for this game, I came across literally dozens of other games that I think will satisfy both Kelly and I, and these are games that you will never see in stores like Toys R Us or Target. These can only be found online or at local hobby/comic shops - amazing games with sprawling stories and characters, but also confined to the limits of a boardgame.

Check out the picks below to see the formula for great game nights during a two week vacation at home (click to see bigger versions)...

In "Descent", one player controls the heroes, who travel into a dark dungeon seeking treasure (and usually looking to kill some big bad monster), and one player is the Evil Overlord, who controls all the monsters and springs all the traps that the dungeon has to offer. One big draw for me was the customizable characters (there are eight to choose from, and each hero gets to shop in town for different weapons and armor, etc. And each hero has very different strengths, weaknesses, and magical abilities that lend to unique strategies), and another big thing for me: the dungeon is made up of dozens of tiles, which fit together like a puzzle, so you can create a different shaped dungeon every time you play. The final deal-maker for me was the quality of the game pieces. As you can see in the pictures, all the heroes and monsters are plastic miniatures, rather than just little cardboard tokens (I wish they were fully painted, though, rather than just red and white). There are hundreds of pieces and cards and character sheets, and after playing the quests that are included in the rule book, I can create my own scenarios and stories and dungeon maps - I can even create my own, fully-customized characters or monsters to play with. You get all the depth and creativity of a role-playing game, but with the board and game mechanics of a traditional board game.

Here's an example of a scenario that played out in one of our games. Kelly was a warrior hero and she had just entered a new dungeon to come face to face with a giant Orc. Just in front of the Orc was a treasure Kelly desperately needed. But the Orc! Too massive! Just then, I (as the Evil Overlord) decided to spring a trap that would release a huge pile of rock and debris from the ceiling above to crash down and crush Kelly's warrior. Doom! Mwahahahahah. Well, my plan completely backfired, because not only did Kelly's warrior leap out from under the falling debris, but she took that opportunity to suddenly bolt forward, snatch the treasure, and then dash back around behind the fallen pile of debris! At that point the Orc surged forward, but was too big to squeeze past the debris into the hallway where Kelly had escaped. All the creature could do was reach a hand through the opening and watch as the warrior sprinted off, alive to fight another day. And none of that was the result of pulling some card that described all that happening. We were both in control of all those actions at all times (with some luck involved with dice rolls, but just enough to keep you on the edge of your seat).

Anyway, I guess this post has turned into a review of the game now. I give it a big thumbs up, with only one disclaimer: this game requires a major investment of time. The rules are extensive, the learning curve steep at first, and a typical dungeon will take 6 - 8 hours to fully explore. So if you think dwarves and orcs and wizard-lore is all a bit silly to begin with, then this game's not for you.

So go fish.

Grandkids

2009-01-04T16:12:00.000-08:00

At Kelly's parents' house for Christmas. These aren't all their grandkids (missing Sidney and Benjamin), but these are the ones who were big enough to insist on sitting next to each other on the high bar stools. Cute, yes, but what you don't see in the picture is frazzled me constantly hovering close by, afraid that one of them will fall back and crack their head open on the ceramic tile floor.
- J

Santa and Death

2008-12-21T22:20:00.000-08:00

Tonight the kids were all riled up from having friends over for dinner, so they took a looong while to wind down at bedtime. Even after watching a few shows on TV and some reading, I could hear them still in their rooms talking. I had gone in once already when they were being too loud, but at this point they were talking quietly and Josh's tone was gravely serious, so I decided to pull up short of the door to eavesdrop. This is what I heard...

Josh: "...then we'll be at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and maybe he'll come there. We still need Santa to come to Grandma and Grandpa's house to leave presents."

Jackie: "Yeah."

(we're going to Kelly's parents' house for Christmas.)

Josh: "And we don't want to die."

(Josh is very afraid of death - more on that below)

Jackie: "Yeah, we don't want to die."

Josh: "Yeah, so lets say a prayer and ask Heavenly Father to make us not die."

Jackie: "Okay."

Josh: "I go first."

(now some rustling as they both fold their arms, at which point I motion for Kelly to come over and listen in. Now we're both huddled by their door...)

Josh: "Dear Heavenly Father, please bless Santa to come to Grandma and Grandpa's house, and bless us to not die. Name Jesus Christ, amen."

Then Jackie said a similar prayer, after which Josh made Melvin (his stuffed animal monkey) say the same prayer in his "Melvin voice".

After the prayers, Josh said, "Okay, now we should go to sleep so tomorrow we can pack our suitcases."

At this point I walked in and sat on Josh's bed to ask him what they were talking about. He explained his concern that Santa would come to OUR house, not knowing that we would be at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Then he said that he didn't want to die, which, as far as I could tell, was not directly related to the trip. Not dying was just an added bonus he decided to tack on to his prayer. He frowned and said, "I don't want to die. I'm afraid to do that. Your friend died when he was riding his motorcycle and I don't even want to do anything like that."

Weird, because he's right, a friend of mine died at the beginning of this year from a motorcycle accident, but we didn't go to the funeral, and I never told Josh about it directly. Somehow he just picked it out of conversations between Kelly and I, and here he is being afraid from something I didn't even know that he was aware of. He's done that before, though - remembering the most random things at random times. Josh has always been afraid of dying. He's very afraid that I'll die, and he comes to the verge of tears if you tell him that someday everybody will die. He told me one time to not get old, because old people die, and then he wouldn't have a daddy. And even though we always tell him that dying takes us to better places and we'll all still be together, he's still afraid and just says, "I don't want to go back to Heavenly Father! I just want to stay here!"

Interesting. Josh seems to think more about things than Jackie, and not just because Josh is older. He's always more afraid of abstract things (like dying or being alone), while Jackie freaks over regular things like spiders or string or ceiling fans (see one of my first posts from this blog). Even Josh's kindergarten teacher has told us that even though Josh is the youngest and least mature in his class, he'll sometimes talk or say something in a way that an 80-year-old man would. Funny. If I had to describe Josh and Jackie in one word, I would say Josh is moody (perhaps 'sensitive' is a better word), and Jackie is just flighty. Up in the clouds all the time, never a serious or sobering thought in her head. If they had thought bubbles, like in comic strips, Josh's would show some sort of anxiety or fear, while Jackie's would just have cupcakes or sparkling fairies or just blank white space - nothing at all.

Interesting.

Halloween 2008

2008-10-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

Our turn...

2008-09-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

It seems like all of my friends' blogs have featured pictures of kids' first days in school over the past month. I must have read 10 such entries lately (that's right, I have TEN friends). So now it's our turn. Like most kids his age, Joshua has been excited for the past month or so, and couldn't wait for the big day. He had his "Cars" backpack and "Cars" shoes, and a lunchbox full of all those little mini-things that grocery stores stock just for school lunches. All four of us walked to the school to see Joshua's class, after which he soon became impatient for us to leave. He kept asking, "Are you guys leaving yet? I want you to leave." After we finally left, he had a great first day. And with the commencement of Josh's formal education, Kelly and I are realizing that now the time has come for us, as well.

The time for the real parenting.

It's one thing to manage kids in your own home, or on the occasional trip to the park or to play with cousins. You're still there to say, "Stop that" or "That's not nice" or "Come here. C'mere. C'mere, c'mere, C'MERE! ONE... TWOOOOOO..." But now our kid is out "there", brought together with hundreds of different personalities and types (and colors!), new rules and social networks, not to mention an all new authority figure who gets the same amount of time with our kid as we do! So now the real work begins. Some of the issues are tiny, others are harder to explain to Joshua. Here are a few of the things the first three days of school brought...

1. Joshua found out right away that he is a little different at his school. On that first day, we showed up on the central playground, where all kids and parents gathered to line up in classes. Hundreds of people. And it felt like everybody was staring at us. Approximately 80% Latino, 15% African American, another 3% Russian and Jewish and whatever else, and then about 2% white. There are actually 2 other kids that seem white(ish) in Josh's class. Kelly and I can't decide, because the parents in both cases seem at least partly latino or maybe Russian. In any case, Joshua definitely has the blondest hair!

2. Joshua found out on the first day that his bologna and cheese sandwich gets all warm and a little soggy in his lunchbox, so he refuses to eat it. He's obsessed with things being cold (even at meals, he will get down from the table, go to the fridge, and get a drink, then put his drink back in the fridge before returning to eat more. He refuses to keep the drink with him at the table, because it might not stay cold for ten whole minutes.).

3. There's a HUGE kid in Josh's class. Like ROUND. A tank. Kelly saw Josh laughing with the kid after school one day, and later Josh told us that he saw a kid in his class that is FAT from eating too many donuts. While this may be true, we had to tell Josh to be careful about the word FAT. Don't go around calling people FAT.

4. Joshua is the youngest in his class. He doesn't turn 5 until November, right before the cutoff date. His teacher already mentioned to us that she can tell he's the youngest, as some of his skills and behaviors are not as advanced as others. Mmmmm, sad face. So the worrying begins - will he always be behind? Do we hold him back so he's the oldest in his class, and thus more confident? Then I have to remind myself it's only been three days. Let things play out a bit more. He'll be fine. Anyways, I was the youngest in my class, and we all know that turned out okay (wink).

But anyway, one of the young behaviors that Joshua exhibits is a fear of flushing the toilet. He goes potty at school everyday, but then has to get the teacher to flush for him, because he's afraid of the loud noise. Josh has always been sensitive to noises. This is why our trips to Disneyland have not been very successful. He's always so excited in line for the ride, only to freak out when the ride is too loud. So we're working on that. Yesterday I actually got him to flush the toilet in the bathroom at the public library by covering his ears with his hands and pushing the lever down with his elbow.

5. Joshua's behavior has become a little unstable. This is to be expected, I guess. Maybe he feels like school gives him a right to be more independent at home. For the last few days he has been more impatient and demanding. Also, very nonchalant about things we ask him to do. He'll ignore us more and for longer, or even just say "No" when he doesn't want to do something. If we don't let him do something (like take a bath this morning when he was already dressed for church), he stomps and says, "I WANT TO! I WANT TO RIGHT NOW!" His face gets all red. Kelly might say that he's always done that, and that I'm just never here to see it, but still, seems like it's a little more severe since school started.

Jackie, on the other hand, is loving this new deal. With Josh out of the picture for 8 hours, she gets to hog the toys (and Mommy) for herself. Kelly's gotta be liking this, too, because Jackie is 200% more manageable when she's not around Josh.

So school is a good thing. Of course it is. We've been looking forward to this.

But still... You can't help but feel like there's no going back now. Like maybe you just want to enjoy another year of the easy stuff before your kid goes out there for 8 hours that we'll never be able to see or know much about. Josh tells us a few things that he did, but otherwise, there's 6 or 7 hours that we don't hear about. That we know nothing about. That we had no involvement in. That we had no... control over (Kelly's gonna call me out on that one).

Huh. Well, just more stuff to deal with, I guess.

SOME RECENT PICS

2008-08-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

Click the last one to get a bigger view...

KELLY FEATURED IN ELIZA MAGAZINE

2008-08-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

Eliza is a fashion magazine that features clothing and articles targeting a sleek and sophisticated, yet modest lifestyle. Emphasis on MODEST. Summer Bellessa, model and editor in chief, created the magazine after finally getting fed up with the assortment of lifestyle magazines currently available - ie "Maxim", "FHM", "Vogue", whatever - that are immodest and immoral at best, and downright soft porn at worst. The pages of Eliza are filled with the same up-to-the-minute trends in fashion and lifestyle, but without all the skin and "100 ways to seduce a stranger at a bar and get him to have sex with you" articles.

Well, Summer is a good friend of ours and the latest issue of Eliza was to feature a handful of young mothers wearing their favorite comfortable pants - not models pretending to be moms, but real life moms with their kids - so Kelly got a call and now she and the kids are in the magazine. Very cool. I love this picture, but Kelly, of course, does not.

Check out www.elizamagazine.com to see more about the mag and get your subscription!

Indiana Jones!

2008-06-01T22:45:00.001-07:00

I was obsessed with Indy as a kid, and now Josh is, too, and I didn't have anything to do with it.

At first.

Josh randomly picked the movie out one day while I was at work and Kelly put it on for him. By the time I was home, he was crazy about Indy and the giant boulder that chases him (Raiders of the Lost Ark). So, like with all kids, everything became Indiana Jones, and lucky enough for Josh, the fourth film was just starting its marketing craze, so there was no limit to the exposure. He had to have the cereal box with Indy on the front; the happy meal with Indy inside (Burger King); the movies playing constantly; he would refuse to clean up toys or get dressed unless the soundtrack (which I happened to have, of course) was playing the Indy theme song; all the action figures (which I freaked out about more than Josh did and bought a few for myself); and I made him a t-shirt with Indy on it (see photo above) so he could wear it while running through the house collecting treasure with Kelly's brown purse over his shoulder;

You get the idea. And I was more than willing to indulge, naturally. But I have learned that things are a bit different for me now than when I was a kid with the same adoration for the character. It's kinda sad.

For instance, Josh's favorite playtime is to role play. He wants the Indy soundtrack playing while we recreate scenes from the movie, especially the fight scenes, like Indy vs. the huge german mechanic by the airplane. So I'm loving that, of course, because I used to do the exact same thing as a kid. Christian and I would play for hours, "punching" each other and dangling off the bed as if the floor were a bottomless pit. I love play fighting more than anything.

Well, I still love it. For about... 5 minutes. Wait, 3 minutes, yeah. For one thing, when I was a kid, I ALWAYS got to be Indy (sorry, Chris). I was the hero, and Chris was forced to be either the bad guy or Short Round or both. But NOW? Oh noooooo, I can't be Indy, no way. Little Josh just has to be Indy, or we can't play. Whatever. So I have to be the big german mechanic and get beaten to a pulp and have my face blended up in the airplane propellors, etc. So not as cool.

And for another thing, which you probably thought was gonna be the first thing, I'm... kinda... a little bit older. Like, my body. It's not the same. So... yeah, I take a few punches and fall to the floor...

And I don't want to get back up.

Only now the theme song is just starting, 'cause it's only been thirty seconds, and Josh is hauling me to my knees and slamming my face repeatedly into the couch cushions. And I come right back at him with all kinds of WWF stuff - body slams and round-house kicks and uppercuts - we're both drenched in sweat and covered in rug burns, and Josh is a crazed maniac, jumping from the arm of the couch onto my back and now forgetting to "pretend", so his punches are landing for real. No problem - I manage to stick in there for at least ten minutes, just giving it everything I got, 'cause I'm still having a blast. But when I finally convince Josh we have to stop, it's too late. My head won't stop spinning. Like, for hours aftwerward it won't stop! And my head is pounding and I, like, can't move. This picture was taken just after we stopped...

Yeah, I didn't get up from that spot for hours. Just not the same as it used to be. And I won't even go into the time when I was 16 and decided to drag on the ground behind a speeding truck like Indy did. Looking back... not too smart. Josh will think his old man is just exaggerating, of course, when I tell him that story.

But what you all really want to know is what we thought of the movie, right? Of Indy 4? Wow. What a disappointment. I did like it better the second time, when we took Josh to see it, but man, it was very silly. Shoulda/coulda been animated. Oh well.

BACK IN LA...

2008-03-31T00:48:00.000-07:00

...and loving it. These pics pretty much say it all - lots of sunshine and happy kids.

While we lived in the Bay Area, Josh would always say that he wanted to go see LA, that he loved LA, and he would get so excited to visit (and he doesn't really associate Disneyland with LA, so it wasn't for that.). And now that we're back for good, Josh and LA are best buds. LA 'talks' to Josh. The first time we went grocery shopping here, Josh insisted that I buy bologna for sandwiches. I said, "Josh, you don't like bologna." He says, "Yes, LA told me that I like it now." Maybe that's what happens when you live a handful of blocks away from the hospital where you were born. Maybe Provo, UT would talk to me, tell me that I like corned beef...

The below picture of Jackie is so cute, we've included a bigger version (just click on the picture) so you can get the full effect.

Here are some pics of the new apartment. Well, new to us, but actually very old. Like most everything in LA...

SICK

2008-03-23T23:07:00.000-07:00

We've been attacked by the flu. Ever since we moved, which was like two weeks ago or something. So we finally get back to LA and we've hardly gotten out of the house. Miserable. Seems to be letting up, though. Anyway, being sick, plus the move - that's why no new posts lately. But I did have an interesting conversation with Kelly the other night that merits a post.

3:00 AM. Josh starts crying. He's burning up again - high fever, so I come back into our bedroom, where Kelly's in deep slumber...

ME: Kelly... Kelly...

KELLY: Uh-huh...

ME: Can Josh have more medicine? When did he take it last?

KELLY: (slurred speech) Uh... it was like...

ME: (waiting) ...

KELLY: ... like... red, white, and green.

ME: Huh?

KELLY: Those are the colors of the Mexican flag.

ME: Right, but can Josh have more medicine?

KELLY: Yeah, the Motrin.

ME: And what does that have to do with the Mexican flag?

KELLY: ...

Deep slumber.

GET BACK IN YOUR BED!

2008-02-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

Bedtime is a whole ordeal at the Oram house, as it is, I'm sure, with everybody who has little kids. We've settled into a bedtime of about 8pm. 6pm is when I come out from the office and then it's clean-up time. Pick up all the toys and put the house back together. Then we're eating between 6:30 and 7, play for an hour or so, then bedtime. Brush teeth first - Josh stands on a stool in front of the sink so he can spit often; Jackie sits on the closed toilet seat. They both brush well enough now that we usually don't need to help them. Then run into bedroom, get pajamas on. This takes forever, because I make Josh take off all his own clothes and put on his pajamas by himself. He gets distracted so easily that I usually have to start counting to three for every piece of clothing, including each sock and shoe. Jackie uses the time to jump on her bed or bounce off the walls(literally) until Kelly pins her down. This is mostly a time of yelling and rubbing eyes in frustration, and lots of counting to three until they're both in pajamas and sitting on their beds.

Time to pray.

Josh and Jackie both say prayers on their own, though for the last week, Jackie hasn't wanted to. Then Kelly and I switch off saying a prayer each night. Whichever of us isn't saying the prayer is usually making angry faces and hissing at the kids to sit up or sit down, fold arms, put the toys down, stop laughing, stop farting, stop burping, be reverent.

Prayers are over, so time to lay down and turn lights out. But still only halfway through the bedtime ordeal. Tuck them in, turn lights out, but leave a night light on or they both freak out. Give hugs, kisses - if Jackie will let you; she often pushes us away or buries her face, only to complain when you walk away and throw her arms out for a hug, but by then we're done and tell her it's too late. Now it's time for at least a half hour of going in and out to warn and shush and threaten, and they're also coming out to us with various problems - potty, thirsty, Jackie took my toys, etc. I'm sure this sounds familiar to all, so I won't go into more detail.

Once the kids are finally asleep... ahhhhhh... the house is quiet... Kelly and I usually don't even say a word to each other for at least an hour. We just relax at our respective computers or whatever, enjoying the silence.

As for sleeping habits, Josh and Jackie are completely different. Josh only has two or three different positions, and he usually doesn't move that much. Tuck him in (with Melvin, the monkey, of course) and he'll wake up in a similar position that you left him in. And he likes to hug things when he sleeps...

But Jackie! She is ALL OVER THE PLACE. One side of the bed, then the other, then feet up on the wall, then butt in the air, then head hanging off the side of the bed, then legs dangling off the side, or - THUMP! - on the floor, or sitting up for a minute or two (but still asleep) until she wobbles and falls back down. Crazy child!

So yes, each night is a battle, but hey, I prefer this over the future ordeal we'll surely have with getting them to wake up for seminary! If it's anything like getting Kelly out of bed for 8:30 AM church, we're gonna have problems...

SNOW DAY

2008-02-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

Lately, many of the kids' favorite cartoons have featured snow-sledding or snowball fights, so we've had several requests to go play in the snow. We finally found a weekend that worked and headed up about an hour's drive north of Sacramento, where all the ski resorts are. Kelly grew up in Michigan, where you can just go sledding down your own driveway, so she got a kick out of seeing the Californians flock to these slopes with wide eyes and open wallets - it gets expensive with tubing hill fees and parking fees and rental fees (because what Californians own snow equipment or clothes?). Fortunately, we got out of all those fees by just wearing lots of layers, using pool floaties for tubes, finding free parking, and picking our own little slope that nobody else was using, probably because if your kid went too close to the edge, he/she would fall twenty feet down to the busy highway. Whatever, it was free!

Needless to say, the kids loved it like crazy. Except for when Josh had to go pee. There was no private place to go, except down underneath a bridge, where I had told the kids NOT to go because there were BEARS down there (it was just really muddy and wet). So when I tried to take Josh down there to make yellow snow, he pulled away and said, "No way, there's freakin' bears down there!"

My next blog will be about some new vocabulary he has picked up. And yes, he got "freakin'" from me and Kelly.

Check out these pics and video...
Josh throws a snowball...

They turn on me...

To watch the video, click play button...
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JOSH's "THE HAT" #1

2008-01-30T21:57:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know, he had that Nemo hat from Disneyland, but that's more of a toy than a part of your wardrobe.

I think everybody knows that I always have "the hat", which I wear very often, maybe every other day or more (much more when my hair gets long). My hats last a long time - I'm 29 and I've had FOUR "the hats". First one was a 'Stussy' hat (remember Stussy?), but when I was 14, it flew off my head as I was driving down a freeway in Hawaii with my dad (we rented a Jeep wrangler, very cool, but windy). Dad ran back up the highway and recovered "the hat", only to watch with his own eyes as an eighteen-wheeler ran it over - with all eighteen wheels. Unacceptable.

Pictured: me in Stussy hat, just hours before highway incident. Tom Selleck is shorter than he seems on TV.

So we drove straight to a mall and I picked out the first baseball hat I could find. It was a Colorado Rockies hat - this was their very first year as an MLB team and I thought the logo looked cool (not as cool as Stussy, though, right? Remember?!).

Pictured: "The Hat" #2.

That hat lasted a few years, as I recall, until I went to Skywalker Ranch with my Uncle Mike. Coolest place ever - I bought a Skywalker Ranch hat, which became the record-holder for the longest run as "the hat."

Pictured: "The Hat" #3, back when it was new.

Lets see, I was probably 16 when I got it, and I finally retired it (Kelly made me) about three years ago. So roughly ten years, and it showed - the thing is broken and torn, faded, and very, very sweat-stained. Kelly thought I was gonna get a rash if I wore it any longer, so we were at Target one day and I found a hat I liked okay. It is the current "the hat", though I've been thinking for some time about replacing it.

Pictured: "The Hat" #4.

SO, that brings us to this morning, when Josh was getting ready for school and he came into my room wearing "the hat" #3 (Skywalker Ranch). Of course it's way too big and gross, so I tell him he can't wear it to school and he freaks out, 'cause he really wants to wear a hat. Well, okay then. I told him we would go out later this very day and get him his own hat. This is an important time, I explained to him. So we went out tonight and he specifically said he wanted a red hat. As you can see in the picture, we were successful at filling that requirement. So now we begin a new record: Little Josh, Wed, January 30, 2008: "The Hat"... #1.

note: people who knew me in high school might feel compelled to contest the statistic of my only having had 4 "the hats". They would remind me that as a junior (or was I a senior, even?) at Folsom High, I returned from a family trip to Disneyland with an Indiana Jones replica fedora. Just minutes after purchasing the fedora for a hefty sum, I naturally wanted to wear the hat on the Indiana Jones ride. After all, I had come prepared that day, wearing khaki pants and the Indiana Jones jacket I got for Christmas ("the jacket" #1), so with the acquisition of Indy's hat, my costume was complete (a reminder here that I am very, very smart, a gifted student in every possible way, so yes, a senior in high school I may have been, which at first might seem very embarrassing, but remember - super smart = very young senior, so... 11... 12? My mom keeps track of these things). ANYWAY, my parents warned me not to wear the fedora on the ride or it would fly off my head. So after the ride, here I come to find my parents, only with no Indy hat (it flew off my head during the ride). I go to the lost and found to report the incident, and I kid you not, there's a guy standing there with me who also lost a hat on the Indy ride, and the Disneyland employee brings this thing out, and it looks like it's just been run over by eighteen eighteen-wheelers on a highway in Hawaii. Not looking too good for a smooth recovery of "the hat".

We did end up getting the hat back, but only after Dad went back into the park alone the next day to "check lost and found" one more time, which may or may not have actually meant "buy a new hat at the Indy Jones gift store". I still can't get a straight answer.

Now here's where the 'he had 5 "the hats"' theory intensifies, because upon returning home from Disneyland, I did in fact wear the fedora... to school.

Ahem.

Every day. But only for a few weeks, after which I just couldn't take the scrutiny anymore. All those staring eyes across the campus, all those weird looks. I was already "the guy with the tie" (I wore a tie to public school, yes), and now a fedora? And not even the cool Justin Timberlake kind? And I had a younger brother a few grades below me at the same school! Sorry, Chris.

So there you go, yes, the Indy fedora technically should be considered "the hat" #4, but I don't count it, because as we've already dictated, a novelty hat bought at Disneyland - ie Nemo or Indy - is considered to be more of a toy than a part of your wardrobe. Them's the rules.

And besides, seriously, who wears a fedora to high school?

Happy Birthday Jackie!

2008-01-05T21:30:00.002-08:00

And NOW the holidays are over.

Christmas

2007-12-30T22:12:00.000-08:00

Kids were too young last year to get the whole deal with Christmas, so it was fun this year to see them really catch on. Josh just couldn't believe that the cookies and milk we left out were... gone! Santa MUST have come! All the presents were a hit - so thanks to the family members who got them something. Josh and Jackie were so excited to have these new toys, they never once throughout the day stopped to say, "We're hungry!" You should know, that's amazing. If we didn't make them, they probably wouldn't have eaten the whole day. It was torture for them just to have to leave the house to eat (we went to Dennys). I remember being like that as a kid. Sometimes my mom would plan these big breakfasts, but all us kids were too excited to eat, so we didn't ever care. Sorry Mom!

And yes, that is a NERF rocket launcher Josh got. It actually has two more guns that attach to it, but then he couldn't lift the thing. When we play guns around the house, if I use the rocket launcher, I have to miss him on purpose, because it WILL knock him off his feet. Kelly gets mad because I'm really good at just BARELY missing his head as he runs by. Awesome.

FROM THE EDITOR...

2007-11-29T21:55:00.001-08:00

I got “tagged” by my friend Allison (mrsmisses.blogspot.com) to post a blog describing 6 interesting habits or facts about myself. I tried to pick things a little less-known (or just less ordinary).

#1 FACT: Musicals are my favorite kind of entertainment.

Musicals make the best movies, and live theatre is usually even better. Here is my list of top five musical moments…

#5: “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off” – the parade scene, of course, when Ferris sings on the float. His first number was great, but when he kicked into “Twist and Shout,” the movie became an instant classic. I daydreamed for years about being the guy up on that float, with those ladies…

Anyway, the only other film since to suddenly jump from good to brilliant in one scene was…

#4: “Enchanted” – We knew it was going to be a good film. We had been looking forward to it for a long time, because of composer Alan Menken (music man behind “Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Aladdin.”) But when Amy Adams burst into song in the middle of a crowded Central Park, the movie shot up to this spot on my list, just beating out Ferris (Amy Adams is cuter).

#3: “The Little Mermaid” – the whole movie, really, but if I had to pick a scene, I’d say “Kiss the Girl.” This is the film that made me want to be an animator, which then led to film major, which then led to where I am today. Film school in SF, which is where I met Kelly, and so on and so on. All because of this film. And in High School when I used to wake up at 3 am to watch this movie, I would always fast forward to “Kiss the Girl.” The music and the animation, and “da mood”, it’s the quality that built the house of Disney in the first place. Disney hadn’t landed that kind of chemistry since, until “Enchanted”. That’s almost 20 years I’ve been waiting for the real Disney to return.

#2: “Beauty and the Beast: the Broadway Musical” – saw this in LA for my graduation present in 1996. Insane. “Be Our Guest” was the last number before the interlude – the showstopper – and it literally stopped the show. The entire theatre stood and cheered for minutes and minutes – forever, it just kept going and going, and finally the actors on stage actually broke their poses and started laughing, which only doubled the cheering. I’ve seen a few shows since, but none have equalled the scope and quality of this. Really sad that it ended this year (and yes, I know “Mermaid” is taking it’s place. We flew to Denver to watch it’s out-of-town preview. It was awesome, but no “Beauty.”).

#1: “Moulin Rouge.” The whole movie, I can’t pick just one scene. This is no surprise to anybody who knows me. I’ve blogged about it extensively, so I won’t go into it again. The best movie-going experience I’ve ever had. I wait patiently (and doubtfully) for another movie to come close, but nothing does.

#2 FACT: I HATE being cold.

I would much rather be hot than cold. No question. If I’m cold, I can’t function, can’t think. I just feel like punching somebody, just knocking them out. Yes, I actually get angry at cold weather. Makes me so mad. I used to go on Scout trips to the snow, and everybody would be having a blast. I would be, too, until I inevitably got water in my shoes or down my pants or whatever. An hour later I would be sitting on the sidelines, shivering and pissed because we’re hours away from civilization and there’s no way for me to get warm again. I went to Ricks college in Idaho for a year – weather was torture. The next year I was in Nicaragua on my mission – 100 degrees year round. No problem! A few minor discomforts, but otherwise, lovin’ it!

Hot beats cold. I’ll fight anybody who thinks otherwise.

#3 FACT: My idea of the greatest vacation ever is to travel to a 5 star hotel in an exotic location… to participate in ultimate Halo 3 combat simulations.

Huh? So this dream vacation doesn’t exist, but if it did, I would so be there. I’ll explain more. See, I like to go somehwere exciting just as much as the next person, somewhere tropical or adventurous, that’s all good. But the problem is, when I get there, I don’t want to do most of the tropical, adventurous things. I don’t go in the ocean (FACT #3a – I’m scared to death of the ocean, won’t even go in up to my knees. Doesn’t help that the ocean is so COLD!), and I don’t scuba or snorkel or parachute or fish or whatever. I always just end up wanting to see a movie or read a great book or whatever (Kelly hates me, I know it). But what I would REALLY love to do (but I don’t say this on vacation, or I get killed) is play video games.

But not, like, just me sitting in a hotel room playing Mario Brothers. I mean, for real stuff. I mean stuff that only exists in my mind. Like a place you could go to that’s like a video game arena, like “American Gladiator,” but with Halo. So a bunch of guys get paired into teams, and we each get head sets and guns (in my mind, virtual reality games already exist) and we go on simulated combat missions that use real strategy and maneuvering and everything, and all this time there is an audience watching and commentators giving play-by-play for the ESPN broadcast. Like this is the real deal and you get pumped up and everything, and they don’t let people in who say things like, “What a bunch of losers, coming all the way to Fiji just to play Halo.”

It’s exciting, it’s competitive (too much so sometimes), and it’s safe and clean (no ocean). Love it. Somebody create that tropical video game resort so I can go there.

By myself, probably.

#4 FACT – I HATE root beer floats.

I know, I’m a freak, right? I cannot stand the creamy-ness of the ice cream mixed with the fizzy bite of soda. So nasty. It leaves the nastiest aftertaste in my mouth and throat for hours. I think the last time I had one was at a youth activity when I was about 14. That was it – no more. Ever.

#5 FACT – As a little league baseball player (I was 13), my team went to the championships, and I was in that dream situation that every kid fantasizes about. You know the one: “It’s the championship game, folks. Bottom of the last inning, with two outs, and we’re down by one, and there’re two runners on. It all comes down to this. One hit will win the game and the crowd goes wild! And now batting… Joshua-a-a-a (the echo) Oram-m-m-m…”

I struck out. And I cried.

That's only 5 facts, but I'm done.

DISNEYLAND 2007

2007-11-25T21:23:00.001-08:00

For our Thanksgiving holiday, we took a week off to travel to Arizona to be with Kelly's family. We were going to leave Monday for LA, but we got restless and decided to leave Sunday in order to spend Monday at Disneyland. This was a big decision for us (took about three seconds), because we took the kids to D-land exactly one year ago and swore we would never take them back until they were much older and able to really enjoy it (and let us enjoy it!). But in this past year they both grew so much, we thought they would be able to handle it.

And... they did! We had a really great time, with zero tantrums. They were still too scared of most of the rides, but they loved the place. They lasted from 8 AM to about 2 PM. By then Jackie would not walk another step. We had to carry her out of the park and both kids were sleeping within a few minutes of getting in the car.

Highlights: The first thing we did was fly the rockets in Tomorrowland...

The kids just laughed and laughed and thought it was the coolest thing they'd ever done. This was good and bad. Good for them to have so much fun, bad because they didn't like anything else as much as that first ride, and we weren't going to spend all that money for them to ride the kiddie rockets all day, so we made them try other things, and most of those things scared the pee out of them.

Meeting Mickey Mouse...

This was the longest line we stood in, by far. But we knew the kids would really enjoy it, since in the past year they discovered Mickey's Clubhouse and watch it every day. They love Mickey Mouse. The kids were good in line, but our camera broke along the way, so the only picture we have is this online preview of an expensive print we could buy from Disney if we wanted (they have a photographer there when you finally get to Mickey).

Anyway, when we walked in and the real life Mickey was standing there, both Josh and Jackie became star-struck. They hugged him very reverently and just stood there staring. Very cool.

But then, like I said, we couldn't take any more pics for the rest of the day, so I'll just post these two from earlier in the day that turned out pretty well. Here's Jackie in line for the Haunted Mansion (the ride freaked them both out). Be sure to click them to see the big versions...

And here's Josh standing in line. From this angle, his head is huge, so I used this opportunity to demonstrate his likeness to Chicken Little...

Four Years Old

2007-11-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

FULL NAME: Joshua James Oram, Jr.

WHY THAT NAME?: Named after daddy - Joshua James Oram, Sr. Mail is going to get confusing around here when Josh is older. If I could go back in time, I think I would have given him a different middle name, just to differentiate. Oh well, it's all good.

OTHER NAMES: Little Josh, Little Dude, Little Master Chief (the warrior from Halo), and Stop that!

AGE: 4

BIRTHDAY: Nov 12

FAVORITE COLOR: Green

FAVORITE SHOW: Yo Gabba Gabba!

FAVORITE MOVIE: Cars

FAVORITE FOOD: Pancakes

FAVORITE TOY: Trains and dart guns

THINGS HE MUST HAVE IN BED WITH HIM TO SLEEP: Melvin the monkey, a train or two.

QUIRKS: His head is misshapen. It always has been. He had a conehead at birth, but even when he grew into his 'normal' head shape, the back is like a lopsided triangle. You can't really tell, though, unless you run your hand through his hair, so I doubt anybody but future girlfriends will ever notice.

Laziness. So remember that scene from "The Princess Bride" when the heros are trying to enter the castle, but they need the guard to give up the gate key?. "Give us the gate key." "I have no gate key." "Fezzik, take his arms off." "Oh, you mean THIS gate key."

That's Josh with clothes. He's four now, but he'll still try to con us into taking his pants down for the potty. He'll INSIST that he can't do it, but if you turn around and walk away, you'll hear him sigh, then 'snap, ziiiip' and he's naked in two seconds. But the battle's only half over, because then it's time to get his pants back up. Again, adamant that he can't pull his underpants up himself, so we tell him to try. He huffs and puffs with the weakest fake attempt for half a second, then shrugs: "See?" Although, even when he does summon the strength to pull them up, they become so twisted and stretched around that we have to basically redo it anway. Meh.

Same goes for shoes. Velcro straps - wow. "I can't do it, Daddy, I can't, I can't, you do it." "Okay then, I guess Josh is staying home while we all go to the park." As I'm walking away: shoom shoom, two shoes on.

And that's the story with many other things. "I can't get up on my bed." "I can't fit the tracks together." "I can't put the blanket on myself." "I can't fix myself an omelette."

Like he would even eat an omelette. JOSH DOESN'T EAT ANYTHING. We have a list of all the meals he will eat, and here it is: waffles, pancakes, cereal, oatmeal, hotdogs, beans and rice, bologna and cheese sandwich, cheeseburger (sometimes). Other than that, he will just beg for cookies or crackers or fruitsnacks all day (which we don't give him). I wish I had a video camera the other day when we made him try a piece of chicken. A bite of PLAIN CHICKEN. After a half hour of coercion he finally puts the bite in his mouth, but after one chew he freezes up in horror and starts screaming, "My tongue doesn't like it! My tongue doesn't like it!" He cries and cries, but won't spit it out. We just watch him, like, stunned, until the chicken falls out onto the plate. Wow.

We tried that same thing with lasagna one time. He didn't even have time to say he didn't like it before he threw up.

MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT JOSH: He's very impressionable. It's easy to get him really excited about something, or to build up a moment that burns into his mind and he won't soon forget it. Weeks - even months - later he'll randomly say, "Remember that one time when..." Playing Halo was one of the recent times that really got to him. Or Halloween. Or any time you give him fruit snacks. His birthday, of course. Talking about it for weeks, making trips to the toy store. I suppose Christmas will be the next big one. I guess all kids are like that, but Josh seems more so than Jackie. Jackie is always more "Whatever" about things. Like she can take it or leave it, while Josh hangs on every word or sound or whatever. Lots of fun. He's my little dude.

Happy birthday Josh!

Jackie O!

2007-11-06T21:47:00.000-08:00

FULL NAME: Jaclyn May Oram

WHY 'JACLYN'? - actually, it's just Jackie - only legally is it Jaclyn (Kelly insisted), and the name comes from the character of Jackie on "That 70s Show," our favorite TV comedy at the time Kelly was prego.

WHY 'MAY'? - for Kelly's sister, Aunt Cara May. Kelly loves her sister, and I always thought she was hot, so 'May' seemed good.

OTHER NAMES: Jack, Jack-Jack, Jackie-pants, Baby-zilla (when you wake her up too soon), and Scarface (look at her right cheek in the pic (click the pic to see the bigger size))

AGE: 2 (for two more months)

BIRTHDAY: Jan 5

FAVORITE COLOR: Yellow

FAVORITE CARTOON: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

FAVORITE MOVIE: 'High School Musical'

FAVORITE FOOD: Fruit Snacks

FAVORITE WINCHESTER BROTHER: Sammy

THINGS SHE MUST HAVE IN BED WITH HER TO SLEEP: Baby Bunny, Sally Monkey, and pee.

QUIRKS: After finishing dinner, she asks if she can have some "Berssert".

She'll eat just about everything, but can't stand ground beef, even if it's well-disguised.

When she says her prayer at night, she always says, "Bless Uncle Kyle on his mission, and bless Uncle Jeff on his new mission." We have no idea what that means, but she has to say it (we have been praying for Jeff's arm to get better, though, so she modified that somehow, we guess).

Many irrational fears. One of the worst was the night she stayed at her Uncle Mike's house and went screaming bloody murder to wake him up at 3 in the morning. When he asked her what had scared her, she pointed up at the ceiling fan.

The sound of lawnmowers will send her into a panic attack, because she is terrified of the Asian guy who mows our lawn with a SARS mask on.

Any pieces of string or thread - or loose hairs - are nasty spiders. Jackie will come running out of the bedroom at night, screaming, "There's a spider!" Follow her in, look... "Jackie, that's just a--" "AHHHH, get it, get it!"

Mortally afraid of the ghost house level on Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo. She's okay until you run into the giant ghost with fangs. She then runs screaming from the room.

We love you Jackie!

Are video games the new fishing?

2007-11-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

It always seems funny to me when older people get up in church (you hear this often in General Conference) and recall countless hours of childhood spent fishing next to their dads. Looking back, of course, these are the cherished times when life's lessons were learned - patience, integrity, compassion, etc. It makes sense, really. Jesus seemed to know a lot about fishing, as did many of the apostles, who were fishermen by trade. Catching fish just seems to be one of those activities rich with elements that make for easy parables and analogies (though not as popular as planting trees - the ultimate gospel analogy).

Well, I've never been fishing. I know that one time I was present while others were fishing - I might have even held the pole, because I recall how it feels - the weight, the tugging, the reeling, the cold, the wet, the boring. Anyway, so fishing wasn't for me. When I'm the old guy speaking in church, I'll be saying, "I recall times spent at my father's side... watching 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'." Or "... watching 'Back to the Future'." Or "...arriving two hours early on June 10, 1993, for a preview screening of 'Jurassic Park'." Movies were my childhood. Good thing, because I ended up going into the movie industry (or close enough); if my dad had taking me fishing as child, I might be running a bait and tackle shop right now. Not that there's anything wrong with that (Kelly's mom!).

But even my parents had childhoods spent at the movies (not EVERYBODY went fishing back then, I guess). So there's not too much of a disconnect between my generation and my parents' (just much cooler movies now). But what about sixty years from now? What about when Josh is the old guy speaking in church? He'll most likely recall a childhood spent watching movies, like me, but he - and his entire generation - will also be likely to say something that no other generation before it will have been able to say: "I recall countless hours spent by my dad's side, single-handedly obliterating alien Covenant hordes with just a standard issue battle rifle, three frag grenades, and whatever plasma weapons we could steal from the messy carcasses left in our wake."

Video games were new when I was growing up. Too late for my parents to have any interest in them. It was a kid thing. A silly game, or whatever. So while I can recall countless hours of my childhood with a controller (or joystick!) in my hands, none of those hours were spent bonding with my parents or brothers (it was SO not cool to play Nintendo with brothers back then. Whoever was older just stole the controller away and wouldn't give it back). As a result, there really was no quality time spent in this area - no memories that actually mean anything, no matter how cool it was to finally beat Ninja Turtles, or reach the final level on Ninja Gaiden (never did beat it, though).

But now! Now the gamer generation is all grown up (physically) and we have kids of our own, and maybe my dad felt this way when he passed on the tradition of loving movies to us - I feel like my kids are lucky. Honestly, I do. Just as it was so cool for me to have parents that loved movies so much, how cool is it for kids today to have parents that are just as excited about video games as they are! Can people my age imagine that? Can you imagine your dad just counting down the days till Halo 3 comes out, or putting off bedtime just five more minutes because you're soooo close to reaching the next level, and if you don't get there, you start tomorrow way back at the last save point! I think that rocks, and I know Josh does, too.

And for those of you worried about the desensitizing effects of all this simulated violence on the minds of little ones - I want you to know that Josh has already learned the difference between hurting aliens and hurting people - even people inside a game. The other night we were playing Halo and, as usual, we were wasting every nasty alien bug in sight (with the occassional "Eat that!"), when I suddenly came upon a fellow soldier in the game who had gone insane. So he looked like a human, like one of the many friends who help you in the game, only this guy was trying to kill us! So I aim my gun at the guy and Josh freaks out. He tells me not to hurt people, only aliens. So I'm running away from raving psycho killer guy, trying to explain to Josh that this guy has gone bad, he's really an alien, blah blah, but Josh won't budge - he's getting really sad and begging me not to hurt the man, so in the end I had to just run away and find another way through the level. Nice one, little Master Chief!

HALLOWEEN IS OVER!

2007-10-31T21:54:00.000-07:00

Man, it was the holiday that never ended! Maybe we started our big Halloween push too early, because it seems like we've spent months leading up to tonight. Reading Halloween books every night, watching spooky cartoons, picking out costumes, decorating the house, and then this past week: a trip to the pumpkin patch for Josh at school, a giant party at church, a party for Josh at school, trick or treat tonight and another party afterwards. Insane. And Jackie's nerves are shot from all this spooky business. I was happy to tell her tonight (after one last viewing of the Halloween Spongebob special) that Halloween was now over and so no more scary stuff. Now it's time for happy fun things from now on.

Pics from the pumpkin patch trip...

Josh with friend Janner...

Josh's favorite part: the hay tunnel o' doom.

Loved the tunnel o' doom, traumatized by... the teepee.

SPOOOKY HOUSE

2007-10-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

The kids are really into the Halloween scary vibe right now. I always thought Halloween was "Meh" at best, much how I think of every holiday. But with kids old enough to get into it, I think now I'm having more fun than they are.

Jackie is the funniest. She gets scared of the tiniest little things. I'll look at her and simply make the sound of wind and she cowers. We read Halloween books about haunted houses, and pretend there are ghosts in the house that need blasting (Josh blasts them; Jackie just cowers behind him), and Josh's favorite levels on Super Mario World are the Ghost Houses. Jackie recognizes the music now, and as soon as she hears it she runs screaming from the room: "Mommy - I'm scared of the spooooooooky ghost house!" I enjoy it a little too much (I chase Jackie with blankets over my head) - Kelly gives me a hard time for traumatizing a 3 year old.

Anyway, I'm so into this holiday that I even opened up the wallet (whoah, I know) to allow a few dollars to claw their way out of my bank account to purchase decorations for the house. So on Saturday we had fun converting our house into a "SpoOooOoky ghost house" ("Mommy!").

HALLOWEEN PICS

2007-10-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

Kids were invited to a Halloween party, so this is the first time they got to put their costumes on. It was midday, and very overcast, which made me immediately think: picture time! (For those who don't know, the number one reason why family pictures hardly ever turn out looking great is because of sunlight. Sunny, cloudless days are the WORST setting for pictures. You end up with dark, shadowy holes for eyes and harsh shadows everywhere. If you want some great-looking photos, wait for an overcast day - the clouds will act as a giant, natural soft filter and the exposures look awesome. A little tip from me.)

So we snapped a million pics (tip #2 - take a bunch of pics successively. Our experience has been that it takes 20 or 30 shots to get 1 great-looking photo, and even then sometimes we get none.We take tons of photos each year, and still we only end up with 4 or 5 per year (sometimes less) that we want to print out and frame. What you DON'T want to do is take ten minutes to pose everybody for one "Cheese!" and then done. Just snap off a million shots while everybody's just doing their thing, and when you go back to look through them, most of the time you'll find 1 or 2 that are awesome. Natural poses, no fake-ness.)

Anyway, this isn't supposed to be photography tutorial. What I was getting at is that last night as I looked back through all the photos I took, two immediately caught my eye. I knew right away that we had two of "those" pics - the good ones we usually end up printing and framing. Love it when that happens. So all that was left was to do a little work in photoshop. (tip #3 - learn Photoshop)

Here are the two "keepers", followed by some outtakes that were pretty funny (click them to see big versions)...

Josh, the Pirate... of Penzance!

"Dad, Josh is ruining my shot..."

"Goooooo Wildcats! I love you Troy!"

"Listen to this sound I can make..."