Have a Great 4th of July Weekend!

MCPON put out an outstanding public service announcement for this weekend.  Check it out:



I couldn't agree more.  Like I told my crew every Friday at quarters on the pier - don't allow yourself to end up in a position where YOU have decide if YOU are "sober-enough" to drive home after YOU've already been drinking.  Drinking impairs your judgment and you're likely to make a bad-call in the interest of convenience. 

Follow MCPON's advice and HAVE A PLAN how you are getting home BEFORE you go out.

That being said, I have also frequently told my crew that I know sometimes plans go awry.  You had a designated driver and next thing you know, you look across the bar and there is your "designated driver" putting down shots of tequila. 

That's okay.  Not your fault.  There are other SAFE alternatives available to you such as calling a taxi cab or a friend.  I think there are a lot of people like me around who would rather you called at 1 a.m. in need of a safe ride home than have to attend your funeral because you didn't call / didn't want to wake me up at 1 a.m.

Along the same lines, here in the DC area, there is a safe ride home program.  From 10 p.m. Sunday July 4 until 6 a.m. on Monday July 5, call the SoberRide program at 1-800-200-TAXI to get a free ride home (up to a $50 fare).  If you aren't in the DC area, then google it for your home town.  Take the number with you JUST IN CASE.

 Have an awesome 4th of July holiday weekend everyone!

Christmas in Oregon

We had a really nice Christmas in Oregon. All the family was over on Christmas Eve to open most of the presents, then Christmas morning we opened the stuff from Santa. After breakfast and the first round of playing with new toys, my dad, eldest son, and I went for a walk in Mary S. Young Park and found another couple of geocaches.


I know anybody in Oregon reading this will probably say, "You took pictures of that???" However, I enjoyed seeing things in Oregon that I don't normally see in Virginia. For example...

Moss

A fallen tree had recently been cut into sections,
revealing these beautiful rings.

Ferns

So many ferns you can hardly tell
there's a tree trunk underneath.

Fungus

Isn't it interesting how the fungus has only grown around the edges of this fallen tree?

Moss and Fungus

On Boxing Day, we went up to Portland to visit the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). One of the big attractions at OMSI is the ex-USS BLUEBACK (SS-581).

Self-portrait with the boys in front of BLUEBACK.

Bearing, MARK!

I won't bore you here with a lot of pictures of the science museum. Suffice to say they have a lot of the usual hands-on science-experiment type fun activities to do with kids. On temporary loan to OMSI, they had Samson, one of the most complete T-Rex skeletons.

Self-portrait with Sampson.

He'll GNASH you apaht
with BIG POINTY TEETH!

There's nothing like a HUGE radiation-trifoil symbol to feed public fear of nuclear power.

Later, my brother and his partner took us all to see Beauty and the Beast in downtown Portland. It was an excellent performance. This was the first exposure the boys have had to a professional stage production like that, and my eldest son was fascinated by how the sets changed.

Playbill

The foyer inside the theater was spectacular.

With that, I bring to a close my blogging on our vacation in Oregon. We had a wonderful vacation and are very thankful for such a loving extended family and for the opportunity to spend time together this holiday season.

We left Portland just in time. As we were sitting on the plane before backing away from the terminal, it started to snow.

We made it home to the DC area just in time, too. Most of the roads are clear from the big snow storm last weekend. This morning I woke up to the sound of our neighbors shoveling fresh snow and ice out of their driveway. Time to get my boots on and get to shoveling.

Have a Happy New Year!

Office Holiday Party Gift Exchange

Good evening sports fans, and welcome to another office holiday party gift exchange wrap-up (no pun intended). This is actually my third annual gift exchange recap. If you're looking for gift exchange ideas, you might want to also read my 2007 or 2008 posts. I'm happy to report that this year's gift exchange turned out much better than last year.

The gift I brought last year was a swing-and-a-miss. It was a snowball-fight-kit with a snowball-making device (sort of a scoop that made very nicely round snowballs) and a snow-fort brick mold. Hey now, I thought they were pretty cool. I even got some for us to use at our house at the same time as I bought the gift. Unfortunately, the coworker who picked up the gift I brought had just found out he was moving to Florida. He most definitely did NOT see any snow-forts or snowball fights in his future, and nobody else in the office thought that the gift was cool enough to steal, so he got stuck with it. (Sorry, Chris! I hope the weather is nice down there in Florida!)

Last year, the big hits that traded hands several times were the hot sauce sampler set and the coffee items (Starbucks gift card, bags of ground coffee, etc), so this year I went in search of some hot sauce for the gift exchange. I checked both the Fort Myer PX and the Henderson Hall MCX and came up empty handed. Wednesday evening, my wife had me stop at Target on the way home from work to pick up something for the boys, and while I was there I browsed the aisles for something for the gift exchange.

I had no luck in finding hot sauce in a gift-pack type of package. (Aside - If I wasn't such a procrastinator, then I would have placed an order with the Chiliman in time to get THAT. But alas, I didn't plan ahead.) I did, however, happen upon a good looking set of martini mix and a martini shaker. I got the chocolate-peppermint martini mix and a bag of Ghiradelli's Peppermint Chocolate candy.

Fast Forward.

We had our office holiday luncheon at Mackey's Public House in Crystal City today. I had a beef briscuit sandwich with fries and cole slaw and washed it down with a pint of Smithwicks. The food and service were excellent, although I thought it was a little pricey.

As we started off the gift exchange part of the event, I made a mental note-to-self for next year:

Self, most of your coworkers commute via public transit and they DON'T want anything big or heavy to carry home with them on the bus.

The bottle of martini mix I bought was fairly heavy, and along with the shaker was in a decent-sized box. As a result, it was in a gift bag that was probably the largest item on the table. Since people were concerned about what they had to carry home with them on the bus, nobody even touched my gift bag until about half the presents were gone. I was really starting to worry that I was having another swing-and-a-miss on my gift choice this year.

Then someone picked mine.

There were hushed "oooooooohs" and "aaaaaaahs" around the table. Flashback image in my head: Ralphy in A Christmas Story with a grin from ear to ear as his teacher reads his essay, writes on the chalkboard and exclaims, "A! PLUS! PLUS! PLUS! PLUS! PLUS! PLUS!..." No, no, my coworkers didn't lift me up on their shoulders and carry me out cheering and clapping or anything like that. However, much to my surprise and delight, the gift was subsequently stolen in the next three rounds. Gifts were only allowed to be stolen three times, so then it was stuck. After it was all said and done, it even got traded one more time with the other hottest gift: home made beer.

Here's what else was up for grabs in the gift exchange this year:
- 4 bottles of home made beer with fancy labels (stolen 3 times then traded afterwards)
- Chocolate-peppermint martini mix, shaker, and Ghiradelli's peppermint bark (stolen 3 times then traded afterwards)
- A sampler pack of little bottles of liquor (stolen 2 times)
- A Starbucks gift card and some Ghiradelli chocolate (stolen 2 times)
- XXXL adult size Superman and Batman underoos (my condolences to Brenda who ended up with these and kept trying to convince somebody to steal them)
- A handheld electronic poker game (that looked suspiciously like one that was gifted last year and never stolen)
- Christmas salt and pepper shakers
- Fancy Candles and lotion (stolen once)
- Potpourri
- The "What your poo tells you" daily calendar (stolen once - this is the gift that is going to keep on giving for the rest of the year in our office, sort of like the Chia Shrek that is still in our office from last year's holiday party gift exchange.)
- A bottle of wine (stolen once)
- A sampler pack of Jack Daniels marinades (surprisingly not stolen at all, but it was opened fairly late in the game)
- An unrated version of Bad Santa on DVD
- Texas Chili mix (I was the LAST person to draw and this was the only gift left, so I got this one, but it looks like it might be pretty good. Thank goodness there's no MSG in the ingredients!)

For those of you reading this because of a Google search looking for ideas for your gift exchange, let me offer one other tidbit of advice. Unless you enjoy the Calvinball* aspect of watching your coworkers argue about how many times the gift is allowed to be stolen each round or over the entire game and whether you can steal it back in the same round or in a subsequent round, etc, etc, etc, then I recommend whoever organizes your gift exchange should WRITE DOWN the RULES** and declare them to the group before hand. There are many variations one can do with gift exchange rules, and if you don't specify it, then Calvinball will be the result as your coworkers try to either keep or steal the gift that they want.

* Aside #1: Calvinball really deserves a Wikipedia entry of its own, doesn't it? You have to scroll pretty far down the Calvin and Hobbes Wikipedia page to get to the section about Calvinball, but there IS a full subsection devoted specifically to Calvinball.

** Aside #2: Certain members of my family will most likely post comments CLAIMING that I made the neighborhood kids sign a copy of the rules before we could play laser tag in our neighborhood. Such claims are boundless and certainly the result of some delusional revisionist history. Maybe there was some other anal-retentive kid in our neighborhood who made the kids do that, but surely not me.

P.S. Go Navy! Beat Army!

Hot Stuff

Bear with me here folks. My brain took several detours on this post.

I've noticed an increasing trend in people visiting my blog via Google searches for holiday party gift exchanges. That got me thinking to myself, "Self, what will I bring to this year's office holiday party gift exchange?" Last year, the big hits that changed hands multiple times were the coffee-related items and the assortment of hot sauces.

Tangent on Ice Pilots...


Thinking about hot sauces gave me a flashback to the 2002 ICEX. When a submarine does under-ice ops, you normally take a couple of Ice Pilots with you from the Arctic Submarine Lab. When our Ice Pilots embarked back in 2002, they brought with them a box full of assorted hot sauces. At every meal in the wardroom, we had at least two or three bottles to choose from on the table, and they brought some really good stuff. They used Sam McGee's as their supplier, and for a while after the ICEX, I continued to order hot sauces for my own home use from Sam McGee's. My favorite was the Trinidad (link is to the hot version, but they also have mild and extra hot varieties).

Tangent on Pick-Up Lines...

Lesson Learned for you young single bubbleheads reading this: After the ICEX when we pulled into Pearl Harbor for a port call, a couple of our junior officers thought that claiming to be an "Ice Pilot" would be a pretty good pickup line.

Yyyyyeah, not so much.

Girls were like, "You're a what? What's that?" As cool as we submariners might think it is, the girls at the clubs in town just didn't get it and weren't at all impressed.

Maybe they should've tried singing.


End of Tangents - Back to hot sauces...

While thinking about hot sauces, my mind also wandered over to the Chili Man. The Chili Man here in Loudoun County, Virginia, makes and bottles awesome hot sauces, salsas, sauces, and marinades from the chilis and herbs he grows at his farm right out here in Purcelville, VA. I was pleased to see you can now order his products off his website.

Tangent on Hot Sauce Humor...

I can't think of hot sauces anymore without hearing Tapatio's desperate voice shouting out, "Cholula, NOOOO!" from Hey Shipwreck Episode 13. For family members who normally skip over the Navy stuff on my blog (yes, I'm talking to you, Kelly :-) ), I recommend watching the second half of this video starting at about 3:35 or so into the video. Hey Shipwreck is a computer-graphics cartoon about a futuristic submarine with a couple of bored guys standing topside (guard) duty on the midwatch (night shift).



I never saw a sequel to that one, but I think the father was Texas Pete.

End of Tangents, returning to original topic of office holiday party gift exchanges.

Anyway, I'm thinking I'm gonna go the hot sauce route for the holiday gift exchange this year.

Do any of you have any other brilliant ideas for holiday gift exchanges that you're willing to share?

Oh! In case any of you who read last year's post were wondering, the Chia Shrek is still proudly displayed in our office. :-)

DC Sightseeing

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend with your family and friends.

I did.

We had friends come down to visit from NY, so we did the DC sightseeing thing.

We started off with a picnic at the Iwo Jima Memorial. The last time we had a picnic together was at the top of Makapu'u Ridge in July 2008 (blog post and pictures here).

In the past, our usual sight-seeing routine has been to take the Metro in to the Smithsonian station, then walk down the mall to the Lincoln Memorial and back. Unfortunately, that route does a good amount of back-tracking and recovering the same ground you walked to get to the Lincoln Memorial.

This time, we tried something different, and I think I'm going to make it my new standard sight-seeing route. We parked at the Arlington National Cemetery Parking lot (which ended up costing us $15 for the day). This afforded us the opportunity to use the very nice, clean restroom facilities at the visitor's center after our long drive in from Ashburn. As we walked from the parking lot toward the metro (our original intent had been to ride the metro to Smithsonian), I looked at the Lincoln Memorial just across the Memorial Bridge in front of us, and I said to myself, "Self, that sure looks close by. I wonder how long it is to walk directly there across the Memorial Bridge?"

So I consulted my handy-dandy GPS.

Survey says: 0.8 miles from the parking lot to the Lincoln Memorial, or 1.1 miles from the Smithsonian Metro back to the Lincoln Memorial.

[Brakes Screeching Sound Effect] [Lightbulb goes off over head]

Change of plans.

So we walked directly across the Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial and continued eastbound from there along the reflecting pool, the WWII Memorial, the White House, the Washington Monument, over to the National Air and Space Museum.

YB on my shoulders as we cross the Memorial Bridge.

ES and I had recently been talking about "with malice toward none, with charity toward all," so it was neat to stand in the memorial and read Lincoln's second inaugural address together.

Tangent: Respect Part I. As we walked up the steps into the Lincoln Memorial, my friend E very appropriately told the boys to all take off their hats. No, not required, but certainly a good idea. I was a few steps behind them because I had stopped to take a photo. As I walked up the steps, I overheard an older lady nearby gasp in surprise and I heard her whisper to her friend, "Did you see what that man did? He told all his boys to take their hats off. Now THERE'S a man who's teaching his kids RESPECT and MANNERS." I couldn't agree with her more - good job, E! (Or "Bee-Zee" as we say in the Navy. Bravo Zulu is the signal flag code for "Well Done.") End of Tangent.

Believe it or not, for a fleeting moment, the idea had crossed my mind, but the adult in me said "no" right about the same time I read the sign.

It was a gorgeous day out.

The boys checking out the geese, and
YB cools off by lifting his shirt up.

Self portrait in the WWII Memorial.

Tangent: Respect Part II. While we were at the WWII Memorial, I was surprised to see some USNA plebes out there in their whites. I didn't think they were allowed out on liberty this early, but what do I know?
     The mids got suddenly visibly annoyed and staring off in one direction together. I followed their gaze and noticed a couple of morons wading through the WWII Memorial reflecting pool and splashing around in the fountains. They were grown adults, both men in their late 20s or early 30s. One of the mids yelled in a deep voice "get out of the pool!" The morons didn't seem to notice, and the mids decided to let it ride and walk away.
     There are several small wooden signs around the pool that say, "Please respect this memorial, do not wade in the pool." So I walked to the edge of the pool, picked up one of the wooden signs, yelled, "EXCUSE ME!" to the morons and pointed at the sign. They looked at me with half sheepish-guilt because they knew what they were doing was wrong and half annoyance like who does that guy think HE is. They stopped splashing and waded back to the edge of the pool. Several people around the memorial thanked me and gave me thumbs-up signs afterward, so I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one annoyed by the disrespectful morons wading in the pool.
     My thanks to the mids who pointed out the morons and had the courage to confront them - your hearts were in the right spot. End of Tangent.

YB hanging out at the WWII Memorial
with the Washington Monument in the background.

I won't inundate you with photos of the rest of our walk past the White House and over to the Air and Space Museum. We ended up logging 6.2 miles of walking on my GPS receiver and were pretty exhausted by the time we got on the metro to ride back to Arlington.

Sunday we went to church and had an AWESOME dinner at home with Caprese salad (tomato and mozzarella slices with basil and balsamic vinaigrette), steak and asparagus on the barbecue grill, and corn on the cob.



Monday morning after our friends left to head home, I headed out for a 13-mile bike ride on the Chesapeake & Ohio ("C&O") Canal trail, but I'm going to write a separate blog post about that one.

Holiday Weekend

(Sorry, meant to post this sooner and got distracted.)

Wow, has it really been a WEEK since I last posted on my blog?

Let's see... what's been going on?

First, I went on a whirlwind trip to Port Canaveral, Florida. I flew down Tuesday evening in order to go to my friend Steve's combined Change of Charge and Promotion ceremony. They held the ceremony in this really cool "ant hill" bunker (it looks like an ant hill with periscopes sticking out the top) from where they launched our first American astronauts into space.

Blunoz self portrait in front of the ant hill.

Honorary parking spots for each of the astronauts who launched from this pad.

One of Steve's boys looking out a periscope.

Periscope View: A line of other ant hill bunkers at other launch pads. In the distance, you can see the Space Shuttle Endeavor being fueled on the launch pad. (Click on image to enlarge)

This was the first time I've flown on JetBlue, and overall I was pretty pleased with their service. This is the first time I've ridden on a plane with your own personal TV screen in the back of every seat and XM satellite radio and DirectTV at your fingertips. THAT was pretty darn cool!

Then I had an AWESOME holiday weekend.

Friday morning, we went on a family bike ride around the trails here in Ashburn and worked on projects around the house.

Family bike ride on the Ashburn Trails
(ES is on the ride-along behind me)

Friday night, I went out with some friends to see Transformers 2 at the Udvar Hazy IMAX theater. It was pretty exciting, but I don't think it was as good as the first Transformers movie. The action was very jittery and you couldn't really tell what was going on until the fight was over and you saw who was left standing. There were several incongruities in the plot - jumping from A to B without any explanation of what happened between A and B. They also put in a few inappropriate elements that I didn't feel were necessary to the movie, didn't add anything to the movie, and will result in me not letting my boys watch the movie. The special effects and the IMAX screen were pretty cool, and I'm glad I had the time out with friends (many thanks to my wonderful wife! :-) ).

Saturday, I worked on some more projects around the house and got ready for several friends to come over for a 4th of July barbecue. I taught the boys how to shuck corn for the first time.


Their facial expressions in the picture sure don't make it look like they're having any fun, but they both volunteered to help, and they both seemed to enjoy the end result.

YB impressed with what he found.

YB took this picture of ES with our pot full of corn.

We had 10 adults and 7 kids over for our 4th of July barbecue. The kids each got to catch a fish in the stocked catch-and-release pond behind our house.


After dinner, the kids got to enjoy some fun with sparklers (thanks Woods!)

Of course, our boys had to turn it into a light-saber duel.

It was an absolutely beautiful evening Saturday evening. Even after all our guests left, I enjoyed just sitting on the deck for a little while enjoying the peace.

This isn't the best panorama shot (you can clearly see the seams between the three pictures), but I include it to give you a feel for the evening out on the deck (click on the image to enlarge).

Sunday we went to church and then my wonderful wife made those mole chicken tostadas for our church home group lunch.

Okay, so as I sit here and type about my weekend, it may not seem like we did a lot, but it was a fun weekend overall. There were a few games of Stratego and Nerf N-Strike on the Wii interspersed here and there, too.

Well, that's all for now. I hope you all had a good 4th of July weekend, too!

Reminder

Public service announcement for you guys out there:

SATURDAY is VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

I would love to offer you some wisdom and advice on how not to get in trouble with your significant other on Valentine's Day, but I have to tread very lightly lest the comments section fill up with stories of my own colossal mess-ups of Valentine's Days past. Note that last year I didn't post ANYTHING about Valentine's Day - I just didn't want to open this can of worms. I figured this year I'd just offer this up as a simple reminder in case you've had a busy week and don't realize it's the day after tomorrow.

Anyway, get thee to a florist.

Oh, and for some humorous Valentine's Day advice, check out this post on Broadside.

Holy Soggy Socks Batman!

I'm sure you've all had the experience of walking around in your socks and stepping on something wet. Dontchya just HATE that sensation as the wetness seeps into your sock and spreads around, sticking to your foot?

So there I was...

In spite of my last post saying I didn't plan on staying up to watch the ball drop, I got sucked into a movie on TV (I Am Legend - pretty creepy). By the time the movie was over, it was like 11:30, so I decided to stay up and watch the ball drop.

I got up to take a dish to the dishwasher, and as I stepped onto the rug in front of the kitchen sink, I felt the cold wetness oozing into my sock and spreading across my foot. I opened the door to the cabinet under the sink and found standing water under the sink.

Doh.

It wasn't readily obvious what the source of the flooding was, so I removed all the stuff from the cabinet and cleaned up the standing water. I laid a towel down and went back to watch the ball drop at midnight. When I went back, the corner of the towel was wet, telling me the water was coming from our little instant-hot water doodad.

Of course, there was no isolation valve to the instant hot water thing, so I had to shut off the hot water to the kitchen sink, get the wrenches out and remove the T-joint that provided the water supply to it.

Corollary random thoughts and observations:

1. Anybody wanna bet the hot water thingy is NOT covered by our useless home warranty???
2. Why do these household casualties always happen on holidays???
3. Where's an A-ganger when you need him??? They need to find an excuse to station a few at the Pentagon to help me with these household emergencies.

On a positive note, I was very pleased that this O-Ganger was for once able to operate not one but TWO wrenches at the same time and didn't break anything. :-)

Happy New Year!

I could tell you but...

Except for my poor wife being sick, I declare today a resounding success.

A) We spent over 5 HOURS OUTSIDE the house NOT playing video games or legos.

B) Although they protested before we left the house, the boys actually thought it was really cool. I was absolutely floored when YB said at lunch time, "I want to come back here TOMORROW!"

Where did we go?

Well... a really cool place with a three-letter acronym.

Sorry I don't have any personal photos to show you, but cameras weren't allowed.

At the visitor's center, they issued the boys these cool visitor badges.


We got to see one of these...


We got to see this...


We got to see a section of this.

According to this open source website, we might also have gotten to see a robotic dragonfly (insecto thopter), a robotic fish ("Charlie"), and a spy pigeon with a camera strapped to its chest among MANY other really cool gadgets. SO many, in fact, that we looked at about half the museum before we stopped and took a break to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The food in the cafeteria was delicious! When asked if his chicken sandwich with honey mustard sauce was good, ES replied, "No... it's AWESOME!!!" After we ate lunch we went back and checked out the other half of the exhibits and the gift shop.

After we left there, I also took the boys by my office today so they could see where I work. Nothing terribly exciting there, but at least they can picture in their minds where Daddy is going when he goes to work.

As for the rest of our New Year's Eve festivities (if you can call them that), the boys and I played some Mario Kart on the Wii (the intro video at that website is cute). I like that we can play four people at once on Mario Kart - it devides the screen up into quarters just like XBox games do. After that, I went and picked up a pizza and some chinese food, and we had a family movie night and watched Horton Hears a Who on Blu-Ray. It was pretty darn amazing in 1080p (high definition video in case you don't speak "1080p").

Now the boys are in bed and my wife and I are watching TV in front of the fireplace. The winds are howling and rattling the house outside. We're the types who won't usually last until midnight on New Year's Eve. We would normally at least have some champagne, but my poor wife is sick today, so I don't even think we'll partake of the bottle of champagne I picked up at the Henderson Hall package store.

Looking back on 2008, I think it was a pretty darn good year for us. I had trouble picking out what picture to put on our Christmas card this year because we had so many great family pictures from all sorts of different places - snorkeling at Oahu, snorkeling at Maui, snorkeling at the Big Island, Volcano National Park and the black sand beach on the Big Island, hiking Makapu'u Ridge, hiking Diamond Head, hiking to Manoa Falls, swimming under Waimea Falls, kayaking around Chinaman's Hat, the Submarine Birthday Ball at the Turtle Bay Resort, Dave & Jess' wedding in Oregon, Crater Lake National Park, the Humbolt Redwoods State Park, Sequoia National Park, Legoland, hiking in Utah, Grand Canyon National Park, the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, seeing the B-2 bomber at Wightman AFB, and our new home in Ashburn. (You can see pictures of all of the above if you just scroll back through my blog posts over the past year). We successfully finished the decommissioning of the Mighty MSP on schedule and without any major problems.

Yes, 2008 was a very good year for us. We certainly needed it to make up for the tough year we had in 2007 though.

I offer you all my warmest wishes for much joy and happiness in the coming new year.

Happy New Year!

Christmas after action report

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas Day. We had a very nice Christmas here in the blunoz household.

Last night, we were waiting and waiting for the boys to go to sleep. As I mentioned in my last post, YB was still awake when my wife checked on him at 10:18, but finally asleep at 10:35. That gave us the green light to do the things we needed to do as Santa's helpers.

I had something else up my sleeve though. I got my wife a sort of china hutch display cabinet for her antique tea cup collection, and I was waiting for her to go to bed so I could put it together. She finished with her stuff and said she was going to bed. I knew she'd be asleep within about 5 minutes of her head hitting the pillow, and so I got to work. It took me a little longer to put it together than I thought, and I didn't go to bed until 1:20 a.m.

That being said, would anyone like to place any wagers on what time ES woke me up this morning???

8:00???

7:30???

7:00???

6:30???

6:00???

Yep, 6:00 a.m. I was startled awake by thumping from downstairs. I went downstairs to find ES digging through all the presents that Santa left. Now, I'm not a morning person by any means, and my brain wasn't functioning well on so little sleep and so early in the morning. In the absence of coherent thought, the gremlins in my brain didn't know what to do and decided to hit one of the prerecorded sound-bite buttons. Granted, the "Merry Christmas, ES!" sound bite might have been better, but the gremlins opted for "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT TIME IT IS???"

ES momentarily stopped his present examination. He looked up at me with one of his pensive looks and contemplated the question.

"Yes... It's 6 o'clock," he said matter-of-factly.

I told him he could sit and watch TV quietly until the rest of the people in the house woke up, then I went back upstairs to bed.

Thank goodness the next time he woke me up was when my wife sent him upstairs to poke me at 8:00. Not very surprisingly, YB was still asleep when ES came to wake me up.

For the next hour or so, we had quite the Christmas carnage going on in the family room. I got a lot of blurry photos the boys were moving so fast...

ES shakes his stocking to see if anything else is in it.

YB empties his stocking.
I guess he got over the whole "I don't want Santa to come" thing.

ES unwrapping presents.

(CENSOR NOTE: Sorry, no pictures of groggy Daddy or bed-head Mommy.)

The family room looked like a bomb went off afterwards. Oh, who am I kidding - it still looks like a bomb went off! :-)

My wife really likes the display cabinet for her teacups. I was just a little frustrated that this morning with the lights on I discovered I installed the doors upside down. Luckily the fix wasn't too hard. I just undid the screws for the top piece and lifted it up far enough for the doors to fall out (the left door landed on top of my foot OUCH).

LW's new display case (some assembly required).

Note: Those curved parts in the tops of the doors look MUCH better this way than they did on the BOTTOM of the doors when the doors were upside down.

We spent a lazy day around the house reading, playing video games, playing ES's new Stratego board game, playing with legos, watching movies, doing puzzles, etc.

Kudos and high praises again to my wonderful wife for another awesome dinner she cooked today. She made prime rib, mashed potatoes, spinach, and garlic bread, and it was all really good. Sorry, I didn't take my camera with me to the dinner table this time, so you'll just have to believe me when I say it looked and tasted really good.

As predicted, YB ran out of steam tonight and started getting a little grumpy, but not nearly as bad as I expected. He fell asleep pretty quick.

Speaking of running out of steam, so am I. It's time to hit the rack.

Special thanks to President Bush for declaring tomorrow a federal holiday!