A bit early, ain't it?

For the last few days, I have been inundated at work with Christmas music. I realize that the season is fast approaching and for years retailers have pushed the public to begin their Christmas shopping starting as soon as you shovel that last piece of pumpkin pie in your mouth. But to start playing Christmas music over a week before December 1st is a bit much. With all of this Christmas cheer, I'm afraid that I'm going to be burned out by the time the actual day gets here. What's next, we start decorating our tree as the kids are eating their Halloween candy? I used to work at Hobby Lobby (an arts and crafts store) and I thought it an aberration when we would start putting up Christmas trees in July. But now it seems that beginning the season early is fast becoming the norm. And if the SPIRIT of Christmas was being exuded all year round, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. But more and more, Christmas is being pushed as a shopping holiday. You remember that old adage of not wearing white after Labor Day? Pretty soon it's going to be "Put up your Christmas decorations after Labor Day".

What, no peanut gallery?

I've noticed something over the course of the last few dozen posts (more on those posts later). No one is leaving comments. You people know that you can do that right? Or is my readership declined to the point that it's just me and some guy from Hoboken reading this thing? Is it the genius reading level thing? (Surely not). Anyhoo, everyone who comes to visit is encouraged to leave a note, even if it's just a "hey, keep up the big words".

Speaking of posts, I'm one post away from 40 posts this month. 40 posts in one month! When I started this thing, it took me over 5 months to get to 40 posts and now I'm slinging them out at more than a post a day. Granted, Emma's birthday party helped a bit but I've tried to keep the posts to a fairly high standard instead of resorting to "Hey look, it's my butt!" or some such.

What's all this white stuff?

Snow? Already? From the online shopping deals to the powdery white stuff, it looks like the universe is itching for some Christmas. This was taken outside my front door at 9:15 this evening.

Christmas time already?

It's the day after Thanksgiving and you know what that means. Yep, it's time to get ready for Christmas. I put up our tree tonight thinking the children would ooh and aah over it. But aside from a few interested moments from Emma, it was pretty much "ehh" from both of them (I'm sure that will change as presents are added under the tree...although I've given thought to not putting any presents under the tree until after they've gone to bed on Christmas Eve...y'know, 'cause of Santa and all that). Anyhoo, this is our tree, sans decorations save one. That would be the ornament in the middle (that's my ornament...it's an OSU cowboy). Heather gets to decorate it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Some Thanksgiving pics from my mother's house. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Blog Reading Level Addendum

I was curious to see whether or not this was all just BS...so I did some searching and found this website: juicystudio.com/services/readability.php

After running my blog through the test results, I came up with some interesting numbers. Without boring you with all the details, the readability test scored my blog (in terms of an average reader's ability to understand the content) above The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and most popular novels. The only thing that scored higher? Documents written by the US government.

The darker side of beauty

Scary, isn't it? Underneath all this...stuff...is Tracy. No, she isn't getting ready for her part in the latest mutant horror film, she's getting a facial. The school let us perform facials on each other the last two days as a Thanksgiving present. Boy, is this stuff messy. What you see here is a strawberry/banana mask (with cucumbers over the eyes for added effect). The strawberry works as an astringent and the banana works as a toner (if I remember my theory work correctly...they could just be gross). Both of them work together to cleanse the skin and make it more firm. To make things even more disgusting, this stuff SMELLS! And how. But it is fun to get to do this stuff, even if I never have any intentions of repeating it outside of school.

This Blog's Reading level

A friend of mine (Seth) posted this link on his blog. I thought I would give it a whirl on my blog to see how I stacked up. I don't want to brag or anything but...man I evidently write this blog on a high reading level. Essentially the above website determines, based on word usage, syntax and what not, what education level you would need to read at to understand what I'm saying. Either that or America is so dumbed down that paltry entries about poopy diapers rates genius level reading. At least there's pictures.

Speaking of, check out this news link:

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070821/ap_on_re_us/reading_habits_ap_poll

I DO like my wagon!

Seems Emma DOES like her wagon (she must have been crying because Pops was pulling it...boy does he scare her). Heather took the kids for a spin around the apartment complex last night whilst I was at the gym. As you can see, the kids loved it. I think we might make this a nightly ritual as long as the weather holds out.

And we're done

And that's about it folks. Emma had fun but she was a bit cranky from lack of sleep. Emery was pretty much the same. They're both at Grandma's tonight so that we can recover from today's festivities. I hope everyone enjoyed watching Emma's first birthday party. Tune back in for Thanksgiving.

Pops!

I'm back with the commentary:



The old guy is Darrell, my mother's husband, affectionately known as 'Pops'. Emery and J'son love Pops. Every time Emma looks at Pops she screams.

Me and my Nana

Even though I scream my lungs out almost everytime I see her, I love my Nana!

Me and my Loot!

I got me some big booty!

Little Red Wagon

Emma will now be taking over the commentary:


I got a wagon!



And it scares me to death!

Happy Birthday to You!



A little shy at first...



Digging in with both hands....

For Me?

Emma's reaction upon seeing her presents.

The guests arrive

The guests are arriving...I always thought of our apartment as rather large. Indeed, we rearranged the furniture to accomodate some larger living room space. But it's cramped in here

Resting Up

She's resting up for the upcoming fiesta!

The cakes

Heather wanted to make the cakes. There are three...two for everyone else and one for emma to cover herself in.

And so it begins...

In what is sure to be a very long and event filled day, we had breakfast. We even had my sister and nephew over for breakfast. Emma is gearing up to the center of attention for her first birthday party. Since the party doesn't kick off until 5pm I'll be filling the day with posts on party construction and whatnot. Stay tuned...

Our Mommy's Birthday

Tomorrow is our mommy's birthday. We love our mommy very much even though we wouldn't hold still for this picture our daddy was taking of us. We just want everyone to know about our mommy's birthday and that we love her very much.

And we're sorry about the stain on the carpet.

Emery and Emma

Something humorous

Nothing much happening except one humorous incident at daycare this afternoon. I went to pick up the kids after school. Emma was raring to go and after retrieving her from her classroom we went to pick up Emery. He had to make a pit stop for a quick diaper change and I went back to Emma's classroom to discuss a diaper count issue. When I came back, Emery greeted me at the door with his usual "DADDY!" Only this time, another boy called me "daddy" too. Emery turned around and smacked him in the chest and said, "That's MY daddy". I tried to hold it in, but I couldn't help laughing.

Happy Birthday!

Today is Emma's first birthday (actually, today is the anniversary of Emma's first birthday...her actual birth would be her first birthday). She was primed and ready to go the minute she woke up. We sang happy birthday to her (she loved that...at daycare they sang happy birthday to her and they said she laughed the whole time) but no birthday swats. Actually, I have had to reprimand her beyond a verbal warning thus far. She's a well-behaved child, Emery's influence notwithstanding. Check back here on Saturday, November 17 around 5pm. I'll be running a series of posts similar to what I did with Emery's birthday party.

The above pic is Emma enjoying chicken, corn and biscuits at dinner time.

General updates

Not too much happening these days. Emma's birthday is tomorrow. She will be 1 year old. I'm kind of sad about that. My little girl is growing up. It's nice that we can interact more and it's fun to see her take her first steps and tackle words but just knowing that she's growing up makes me sad. She'll always be my baby girl, but it will become a bit hard to hold her in my lap in a few years.

I gave my first ethnic haircut today (ethnic is the PC term for black...which is kind of a misnomer 'cause ethic could refer to any type of race not Caucasian). I was asked by one of the instructors if I was up for a challenge. When I prompted her as to what said challenge was, she told me that a women came in for a hair cut. And it was a black woman. I immediately said that I would do it. I have actually wanted to have an ethnic haircut for some time now, just for the challenge. And it turned out really good. She was very pleased with how it turned out, so much so that she took my card when she left.

Emery is up to his usual hi-jinks. I think he's going through a growth spurt. Either that or his metabolism has kicked into high gear. He is eating twice as much now as he usually does.

Heather is back to work full time now. She's been cleared by the neurosurgeon for her back problems. It's nice to have the extra income but she works 7pm to 7am so it sucks that we don't get to see much of her.

That's about it. Make sure to tune in for Emma's birthday party on Saturday. I'll be running it similar to Emery's party with updates every few minutes for those that can't attend.

Lookin' Good

Are we a pretty little girl? Yes, yes we are.

A new look

I'm changing the look of the blog. The color scheme has been changed to reflect an Oklahoma State theme (Heather suggested it). If you know me, you're prolly wondering why I haven't done this already. If you don't know me, then now is the time to learn that I am a HUGE Okstate fan. HUGE.

Me and my Daddy

No relevance or humorous anecdote. Just a fun pic on a Saturday morning.

Hungry, hungry Emma

Emma is going through an eating spurt. Between her and Emery, they polished off two bananas (and Emma was holding her own in eating them). Then, she devoured two cupfuls of some baby snacks. This is coming on top of two cupfuls of snacks and half a chicken breast last night. She must be taking her new tooth out for a drive.

I go potty

I've made mention of the fact that Emery looks a lot like me (as have others). Now I have evidence that Emery is starting to ACT a lot like me...case in point, this picture. I love to read, so much so that I read whilst I'm...um, fighting some crime (it's a euphemism I use for going to the bathroom). Emery said he needed to go to the bathroom so we made a beeline for the toilet. Before he sat down, however, he went to my nightstand and got one of the books that were laying there. He then came back and proceeded to do his business while he "read" the book. And what did he pick out? A Star Wars novel. It brings a tear to my eye.

Emma is doing fine

Emma got tubes put in her ears Tuesday. She has been battling chronic respiratory illnesses since day one and the doctors thought that tubes could help alleviate some of that (the doctors also think she might have cystic fibrosis but we don't have the test results back yet). She had a VERY big smile on her face when I walked through the door tonight (Emery was more ho-hum about my return...but you could tell that he missed me). She is definitely shaping up to be a daddy's girl. In fact, every time she sees me, be it in the morning when she wakes up or when I pick her up from daycare in the afternoon, she always starts smiling and saying, "DA-DA-DA-DA". Brings tears to my eyes and warmth to my heart.

I'm Back

This has been, without a doubt, one of the longest stretches of 48 hours I have ever endured. I'm finally back from my grandmother's funeral. I have a lot of thoughts concerning her death, the funeral, and the surrounding free-for-all that is going to ensue shortly (if it already hasn't).

I've already posted comments on what my grandmother meant to me. I won't rehash them now. But needless to say, I loved her. Very much. Both of my grandparents. They were such a large part of shaping who I am as a person. Even when my life took a turn that they didn't approve of, in the back of my mind I was always conscious of how my decisions would affect them and what they would have to say because of it.

The funeral went well (as well as a funeral can go, I guess). It was a closed casket funeral, which I think was more for my mother's sanity than anything else. She just lost her mother (I hope to hold up as well under the strain when my mother passes as she did this week) and I'm sure the last thing she wanted was over 200 people (or more...believe me when I say that it was standing room only at the church house...and this is a church that is so far back in the woods that I don't think any GPS system in the world could have found it) reminding her of that fact as they walked by for a final viewing. The prepared remarks that I read at the funeral were well received (I posted some of them here...although, as is my wont, I rewrote a large portion of it 30 minutes before I read it...and I also improvised on the fly, but I do that all the time too) but I personally felt that I could have written something...I don't know, better perhaps. More apropos. Still, it was nice to have old people that grew up with my grandmother come to me after the funeral and give me a hug and tell me that what I said was exactly what my grandmother would have wanted to have been said. (I relayed an anecdote about a tractor play set I wanted her to buy for me as a child to the audience...after the funeral, I was besieged with old women who kept telling me, "You forgot to mention the time you tried this to get what you wanted..." Let's just say that my grandparents spoiled me outrageously).

The free-for-all? I'm not going to go into it here...my standard response when prompted for my thoughts and opinions regarding the disposition of her estate came from one of my cousins, who I dearly love. The line she told me to say, and said herself several times, was "I'm just a grandchild." But needless to say that with any large estate there are those who feel that they need a big piece of the pie. Me? I got some very personal things of hers and I'm MORE than happy with that. I don't need her money or possessions because I know that I had my grandmother's love.

One humorous anecdote: Flowers absolutely FESTOONED the church from friends and family. But off to the side was a little bouquet from "Charlie's Fried Chicken". What is Charlie's? I don't know how geographically spread out they are (they could be like white castle who operate primarily in the Chicago area) but it is a fried chicken joint that both of my grandparents loved to eat at (indeed, I got my love of fried chicken livers from eating with them there...often). My grandmother LOVED Charlie's Chicken. And apparently, they loved her back. So much so, that they sent flowers to her funeral.

Leaving

I'm getting ready to leave for my grandmother's funeral today. The funeral is scheduled for 10:30 Wednesday morning. My mother wanted my sister and I to come down early to help organize and box up my grandmother's things (my grandmother has a lot of things...knicknacks, quilts, 3 complete sets of china, one of which is approaching 100 years old). And since my grandmother lives in the backwoods of Oklahoma, I won't be able to check email or the blog for the next few days. So if you leave a comment or send an email, I apologize in advance for not being able to get back with you promptly. But go ahead and leave something anyway.

On a lighter note (and man, did I need something positive in my life), I was voted Student of the Month at school today. I think it was one of those things were no one thought I would get any votes and voted for me out of sympathy, only they didn't compare notes beforehand. Not that I'm saying I didn't deserve it or anything, but there is something of a subconscious bias regarding me and school. Now, I'm not saying this to be hateful toward my fellow students (most of whom I love dearly) nor am I making comments about them in any negative light. But as I'm in a distinct minority at school, being one of only two guys (the second guy started with the newest class), there is a gender barrier that lies just below the surface. I'm sure that most of the other students don't even realize it, but I have sensed it. Still, it's nice to be recognized for something. Not that the honor comes with much...I get to park my Jeep right in front of the school for the month and that's about it...oh yeah, and the groupies are nice too.

My Grandmother

My grandmother passed away today. I don't think that it has fully hit me yet. My grandmother, "Mammo", has always been such a large part of my life. Up until I was sixteen or seventeen, I spent every summer with my grandparents from the time school let out until just a few days before it started back up. She was an amazing woman. I am posting an excerpt of something I have prepared to read at her funeral.



My grief is terrible for losing her. My grief is for losing a grandmother who loved me as if I were her own son. A grandmother who inspired me by doing nothing more than living an honest life. A grandmother that looked beyond my faults, countless though they may be, and focused instead on what I meant to her. This, in no small part, is why she meant so much to me.

But this grief will last but a little while. However, the love that I have for her will never pass. And this is why I cry. Not to mourn her loss but to celebrate her life. A life filled with both sorrows and joys. That she suffered sorrow and hardship in her life is without question; that she did so uncomplainingly is amazing. I never once saw my grandmother complain about a hardship. She always found the silver lining to the darkest cloud; most often that silver lining was her family. My grandmother loved her family, every son and daughter, every grandchild and great-grandchild. Every time I spoke with her over the phone, she always asked about my children. And her eyes danced merrily every time she saw them. And it was the same with everyone in her family. Indeed, it cannot think of a time that any family member who darkened her doorway was not greeted with a hug. My grandmother was also generous and giving. Without exception, everyone who came into her home, family member or total stranger, was greeted with the phrase, “Make yourself at home.”

Tears are an expression of sadness. They are also an expression of joy. And so, the tears I shed are not tears of sadness, at least not primarily so. Instead they are tears of joy: joy at having known and been loved by one of the most remarkable persons I will have ever known. My life has been made more rich and full for having her in it. Yes, I will miss my “Mammo”. But I will also cherish her memory and the love that she gave to me.

He only looks innocent

What is this little boy planning? Prolly something big and messy

Monopoly Rules to Live By

You should never mix alcohol and Monopoly if you're playing against me (if you want to win, anyway). Not only will you lose (as both my sister and Heather did...very badly, to boot) but you can wind up stuck under the kitchen table too.

Not Quite the Energizer Bunny

Believe it or not, Emery actually does run out of steam...sometimes in some surprising places.

A Slow Friday

It was a slow Friday today. This is unusual because Fridays are usually VERY busy for us. But slow days can be fun days, as you can see...especially with the next pics...





And even though she's prolly going to kill me for posting these pics, Taleya hammed it up for the camera (little did she know that she would be on my blog mere hours later).

Emma 'n Crackers

Emma loves crackers. She also loves to ham it up for the camera. Here, you can see both.

Halloween School Pics

Perhaps you've read in a previous post about how I've commented on the fact that my instructors are a varied and unique group of individuals? This would be filed under "unique".

Halloween Pics

The kids had fun at Halloween, as you can see. The usual haul of chocolates and candies were taken in and the kids have been chipping away at them over the last several days.