Grilldaddy

Oh there IS news! This will be arriving via Fedex sometime tomorrow:

Not bad, eh? With me being a VERY impatient person, this is going to be a long day.

January 13th? My last entry was January 13th? How lame am I?

So much has happened but at the same time it seems like everything is the same. The kids are happy & healthy, I had a double root canal, I got a new tattoo…I think that’s about it. See you in a few months.

Gotcha.

Last weekend I took Conner to the mall and he played at Dino Towne there. He loves that place and would probably play there all day if I didn’t lure him away with promises of a snack at the food court and a ride on the carousel.

This time though, he had someone to play with. After we had been there about 5 minutes this cute little girl came up to him and dragged him off to the slide. They played for a minute or two and then she yells to nobody in particular “I found a new friend!”. From then on they did everything together; sliding, jumping, running, and laughing. She was even helping him up on this log thing that was too tall for him and when he finally made it on his own she looked at me and proudly said “Did you see that? He did it all by himself!”.

Then came the inevitable end. It was time for her to leave and as she was walking out with her parents she yelled “Goodbye, friend!” Conner shouted “Goodbye!” then turned to me with a very sad look on his face and said “Daddy, I miss my girlfriend”.

What could I tell him? This kind of thing happens all the time? It was her and not you? You are better off without her? I can only hope that this early blow to his poor little heart doesn’t sour him on relationships later in life.

Here are some pics of the short, sweet affair. Sorry about the crappy quality, but whaddaya want from a camera phone?

How do you get caught up when you have been away for 9 months? Do you even try?

I think not.

So let’s just jump right into it. We had a great Christmas, the only downside is that Conner was sick. We knew he was coming down with something but were just expecting a simple cold or something. When Christmas morning rolled around it was obvious he had something more serious. All the symptoms pointed to croup, something the on-call pediatrician agreed with. A trip to the doctor the next day, however, told us he actually had strep. So we loaded him up with antibiotics and he is getting better, but now Evan is showing all the same symptoms. I guess that was to be expected.
Anyway, there are some pics of the festivities in a gallery here.

What else? Deanna was very good to me this Christmas. My big gift from her was a KitchenAid standing mixer, something I have been wanting for years. She ordered it for me months ago and it was supposed to be shipped to her mom’s house for safe keeping until Christmas, but when she got the confirmation it had our address listed. Realizing that it was probably going to arrive in it’s original packaging, and since I am home all the time and would most likely be the one to sign for it, she decided to just tell me about it and let me have it early. As Christmas got closer she kept reminding me that I already got my big gift and I assured her I knew that and was not expecting anything else major.

Well, ended up surprising the hell out of me. After our Christmas was all over and done with, Conner walks into the kitchen with a bag and says “Here Daddy, this is from Evan and me”. Iit up and what do I see?

Yup! An 80GB video iPod. Isn’t she the best? Now my old 6GB Mini has been handed over to her to use at the office and I am not constantly switching out songs to make room for what I feel like listening to at any given moment.

Maybe. I don’t want my regular blog to turn into a daddy blog but I have been wanting to share things kid-related again and the blog feature on the family site is kind of lacking (sorry Apple).
This site might be back soon. A little re-design, a little theme tweaking and it could work.

After not updating this blog since last April I am officially declaring it dead.  After making this decision I then decided this would be the perfect place to test the upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress.  It went fine, except I lost my themes somehow.  Since I am not updating this place anymore I am not fixing it and leaving the default one up.

I have been working on a new place, however, using Apple’s iWeb application that has been working out pretty well. You can find it here.

In addition to photo galleries and general family stuff I have started a blog there as well. It is not as full featured and fancy as this place was, but it gets the job done for friends and family. Check it out, if you are so inclined.

One day last week I decided to make up a big batch of authentic Greek lentil soup. Conner wanted to help so I gave him his little cooking utensils that we bought for him a while back (a kid-sized wooden spoon, whisk, spatula, and a rubber spatula), some measuring cups, and a mixing bowl with a little water in it. He kept asking for things to put in his bowl so I kept giving him veggie scraps as I was cutting them for my soup, like onions, parsley, garlic, and carrots.
He kept saying “Thank you daddy! I am making soup too!” whenever I would toss him something. He would put it in his bowl and mix it all up with his utensils. At some point I had an idea and asked him if he wanted me to cook that soup for him. He said “Oh yes, daddy!”
So I poured his soup into a pan, added more water, a little chicken bouillon, and some spices to it and put in on the stove next to my lentil soup.

He of course immediately started asking if it was done but I told him he had to wait. “No, daddy, I want to eat it now!”
I tried to explain to him that he was learning a very important lesson about cooking. It took a lot of patience to wait for things to cook properly. Well, he could only hold out for around 15 more minutes so I took the pan off the stove and poured his soup into a bowl for him.

It actually tasted pretty good and I made sure he knew how proud of him I was. This is the first time he has actually made something in the kitchen all by himself.
There are a few more pics here.

The other morning while I was making the kids their breakfast I decided to do a quick fridge clean out and put some items I was planning on throwing out on the kitchen counter. Among these were some containers of fry sauce from Sonic. (Those of you who do not live in Utah and have no idea what fry sauce is can read about it here, here, and here) They serve theirs in those little plastic tubs with a peel-off foil lid like some places give you for dipping sauce when you order chicken tenders and stuff.
Anyway, Conner grabbed a few and asked if he could play with them and I said fine, as long as he was careful not tothem. Well, a few minutes later I had my back to him while making his waffles and I heard a slam followed quickly by a long, drawn out whining cry from the boy. I turn around expecting the worst to see Conner sitting there, bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup in his hand, a smashed container of fry sauce in front of him, and fry sauce all over his hair, face, pajamas, hands, and the counter.

I immediately took the syrup bottle and remaining fry sauce containers away from him and then spotted the camera sitting on the kitchen table behind him.

What was a good father to do? Clean him up or take a couple pics first?

Well I finally did what I thought would be impossible with the kids around. I brewed a batch of beer.

Homebrewing was something I used to do an awful lot of back when I lived in Minnesota and I really enjoyed it. When I moved out to California I gave all my beer stuff away to a good friend and a couple years later bought new stuff and started brewing again.
Since moving to Utah, however, all my brewing equipment has been sitting in the garage doing nobody any good whatsoever. I figured it was about time to get off my ass and make some friggin’ bear. There is now a 5 gallon batch of honey weizen bubbling in the fermenter behind me as I type.

What a beautiful sound.

Let’s see…what else is new?

Evan has an ear infection and is all hopped up on Amoxicillin.

I am over my little bout with illness but Conner seems to have picked it up but it has not gotten too bad yet.

We have some bitchin’ triops swimming around a little tank on the kitchen counter.

Last but most certainly not least I am now a Master Mason! I had my ceremony last Monday night and it was amazing. I have been working very hard on my degrees and it feels good to have accomplished something so important to me.

I’ve got some great pics of the kids to show you all and as soon as I get them uploaded to the gallery I will make a new post. Hopefully later today, maybe.

Things are moving right along around here. The kids are happy and healthy, we are settling into our new house quite nicely, we even had a brief kick ass snowstorm yesterday that came on so quick it was almost magical.

Conner has been playing with his new pirate ship almost non-stop for the last week or so.

What a spoiled little guy he is.

In other news, I broke out my beer making equipment from a box in the garage (untouched since the move to Utah), took stock to see what was broken or missing, and ordered some ingredients from my favorite homebrew supply place in the world. I will be brewing a batch of Honey Weizen in a couple weeks and am very excited about it. I will report back with the results.