Mother's Day Montage

Happy Mother's Day, Cathie!

We let Cathie sleep in today and all three kids helped make Cathie breakfast-in-bed. Emily hand-made (literally, she picked out and placed each piece of fruit in the bowl) a giant fruit-salad, while Nate helped me with the sausages, eggs and french-toast. Maddie and Em went out and picked some wild flowers to complete the breakfast ensemble. We let Cathie sleep in until 10 before we woke her and brought out creation.

Today was about making sure Cathie had nothing to do but relax. We waited on her hand and foot and the kids were on their best behavior (helped, in my opinion, by my 5x punishment rule for the day - something that would normally put them in bed 30 minutes early was now 2 1/2 hrs early). Cathie hung out in the beautiful weather and enjoyed the sun and a good book.

The girls decided that Cathie needed some pampering so they went out and gathered wild flowers and then gave her a spa treatment. Madeline staretd with a foot massage and Em gave Cathie a back massage.

Maddie finished it off with some strange leaf treatment which involved lots of lotion topped off with leaves which she was told to keep on for an hour afterwards.

We had a great mother's day, touched with a twinge of sadness, all of us missing my Mom today. I think my wife is the most amazing mother I've ever seen. She is the standard by which I measure all other Mom's. She was made in part to be a Mom and she lives in that so well. I love to see her playing with the kids, which she does all the time. She radiates this joy and beauty that make me so proud to be married to her. I'm crazy in love with this Mom.

I got Cathie a couple dozen roses for Mother's Day, having found that I can't really pick out clothes and that she's got all the jewelry she needs (in my opinion) and a vacuum cleaner or cooking pans might have not communicated the message I was going for. Note the beautiful card below in the roses (2 dozen). Cathie asked me, "You drew that? I thought it was Madeline or Emily."

My Mom

Today is my first Mother's Day without a Mom. Even though we've had a great day celebrating Cathie and what a great Mom she is, there's been this sadness in me thinking about the fact that my Mom isn't here anymore. She was an amazing Mom and our memories of her are vivid. We tell stories about my Mom with smileson our faces, but today still has a pang of sadness about it. I miss my Mom. A lot. Still.

The Chair

All of the kids that love and care about our grandma came down to move her out of her apartment in Haslett. The highlight for everyone was driving the chair. My Grandma had only used it for a few days before she managed to break her ankle with it. While my Grandma was living at the apartment, I was the only one allowed to sit on the chair or even look at it. We went over to my Dad's afterwards where the boys dug for fossils in the back yard. Later, I walked into the basement where the boys were huddled around the computer. They explained that they'd found a meteor and were listing it on eBay.

Brad's Cottage

Eli, Mark, Brad and I went out to Brad's cottage to grill out and watch the Wings game

Brad's Girly Sweatshirts

Note the thumb holes. Wonder if Brad's wife knows he borrowed her sweatshirt?

Interpretive Dance

Maddie is part of a dance group in church that periodically does "interpretive dances" to songs as part of worship at our church. Not my thing, but for some it is. I think I've finally found the kind of dance that works for me at church. Thanks to Tom for this:

Happy Birthday Allie

My niece Allie or (Al-wi) turned 4 yesterday. Here are some things about Allie:
1. Allie coined the phrase, "What Say?", which translates to, "What are you saying?" Even my Grandma uses this phrase.
2. Allie is a middle child. She is stubborn like her Mom. The two of them will but heads like nothing else as she grows older. Should be fun to watch.
3. She's one of the only little girls I know who goes hunting with her Dad. She has killed a deer with a .30-06
4. She must have lived with Jess Shinn at some point, because her fashion sense is fairly "eclectic" (read: odd). Most of time she is wearing Emily and Madeline's old clothes - and the occasional turtle-neck from Matthew/Andrew/Stephen.
5. Allie is a wonderful little girl who's smile lights up a room and whose pronunciation we all love to imitate.

Striker's Win

Em's soccer team won 7 to 3 tonight. The team consists of Kindergarten and First graders, many of whom it's there first time playing soccer. Throughout the game there were these two woman next to us complaining non-stop about how the coaches weren't calling fouls. I jokingly said, 'They're letting these kids playing as if they're kindergarteners!' The women responded 'Yeah! That's what we're talking about'. After a pause, I reminded them that they ARE actually kindergarteners. I laughed. They didn't.

Mother's Day

Cathie was working in Em's Kindergarten class, helping the kids with their Mother's Day cards. She said that it was pretty funny watching the kids spell their cards out phonetically. she said the best one was: "Mom, I love you. you're the Beast."

E-Mail

So far this year I've sent 3,268 work related e-mails and I've received 7,455. Seems out of whack.

Life Lesson

My friend and co-worker Bill was on-site working with The Limited today, which happens to be the parent company of Victoria's Secret. He learned the hard way not to use his company credit card to pay for lunch in the cafeteria. The charge goes through without a problem, but the hard part is getting reimbursed for the expense. It ends up in the expense system showing that you made a purchase at Victoria's Secret, which can be a tough one to explain away.

Em's Soccer Pic

It doesn't get much cuter than kindergarten soccer.

It's a Beautiful Day

I love my job. No commute and the freedom to work where ever. I got home from the gym, grabbed my coffee, my laptop and my wireless headset and I've been working on my deck in my back yard all morning - listening to the birds chirp and savoring the perfect weather with my dog at my side.

Vegas Montage

I compiled some of the pictures and videos that we took in Vegas into this video montage. I only watch these things if I'm in 'em, so it's probably not worth your time unless you want to see pictures of neked statues or pictures of Eli in a bathing suit (Jon), don't bother watching.

Girls for Sale - $.25

Will's Surprise Party

On Saturday afternoon Brad, Bob, Monaca threw a surprise party for Will to celebrate his graduation. We had a huge turn-out and it went on until the wee hours of the night. One of the highlights was the food. Bob brought enough food from Mexican Fiesta in Canton to feed the whole group (for $10 more than Eli's previous order for the 6 of us at one of our previous poker games).

The party would have been a surprise, had Brad not parked his truck right on the route that Will took to my house. Brad did not feel it was his responsibility to hide his truck. In Brad's defense, Will said that one truck by itself wouldn't of given it away, but seeing Bob's, Brad's and Jen's trucks all parked next to each other was a dead give away.


That wasn't the only debacle. We have a giant tractor tire swing in our back yard. Fully loaded with kids, getting hit with this thing feels like being laid out by a linebacker. Especially if you're 1. While pushing the kids on the swing, Makenna came running over and took a shot from the swing right above her left eye. I saw it all in slow motion as it threw her a couple feet up and a few feet back. I blame Brad for this.

We finished the night out rocking to Guitar Hero on the Xbox 360. As Dan put it, it's like Dance-Dance-Revolution for men. We played this first at the Kohne's and got hooked on it from there. I pretty much justified buying my 360 based solely on my love for this game.

You can see the rest of the pictures from Will's Graduation and Party here.

Will's Graduation

Bill, Brad and I attended Will's graduation on Friday morning. It was long and dull, but worth it to see Will's big moment in his life. There were a couple of fun moments, including the VP of Diversity's speech capstone's call of "Go White". Apparently this was not a call to white-power, but a response to the previous speaker's "Go Green" call to action. At another point, one of the PhD candidates thanked Jesus for what He's done in her life. You could have heard a pin drop as the Social Worker students sat around angry at the mention of the name. Even Will did not clap as he said he would be black-balled from all social-work circles.

Spideman 3

Nate and I went to see Spideman 3 at the IMAX. Everyone I'd talked to had so-so things to say about it relative to the first two. Nate and I both dug it. As good as the first two, maybe even better action. A little too much drama, but the visuals on the IMAX screen more than made up for it. I agree with Nate, who thought the action scenes would have been ever better in IMAX-3D.

How Many Guys Does it take to Hang a set of Lights?

We had load-up/take-down this morning at church. Brad and I had fun watching Matt, Mark and Eli try and setup this light tree. We recruited Tony Muzzi at Will's party to join the load team. Bob Rays ditched us to atttend bed-side chapel this morning, which means he buys breakfast next time.