Scarface

Had my surgery for the skin cancer (basal cell, the “good” kind of skin cancer) on my face today. All went well and I think the Dr. did a good job, so my scar won't be too bad. He tried to put the cut along my smile line.
Before	After
In an hour or so I'm off to Sacramento, hopefully I sleep on the plane.

The Workers

Here is Master Gardener Jacob tending his stick garden with able helper Faith.

Reuben, naturally, still spends his days moving dirt around.
Tomorrow I'm off to CA again. Stay tuned for a new hotel review. I hope this time I found a better place to stay out there.

Just A Nice Day

We had a just a nice day today. Which to me is perfect! Jacob and I went to temple this morning because its my week for minyan duty. I brought a magnadoodle and a sticker book with me to keep him busy. He was great. Sat quietly next me for the whole service; a short one of about 40 minutes. Then it was off to swim class for Jacob and tumbling for Reuben and Faith. Apparently Reuben was not on his best behaviour during the class and the teacher almost didn't give him a sticker. The class also a little too slow moving for Faith, requiring the kids to wait their turn in line. Faith at 2.5 has a very hard time waiting for more than a few minutes. Anyway, after the classes we had lunch at Einstein bagel and then came back home. All the kids napped over 2 hours!!! After nap we watched the Lion King and then had a nice dinner together. About an hour more of play and then off to bed. I was even able to get some office work done today during nap time.

Here is Reuben's backhoe loader. He asked me to a picture of it and I was glad to. His pictures are now starting to look kind of recognizable.

Jacob the pirate.

From the autoshow, perhaps the best picture ever taking of our kids together. Who new the Chrysler photographer was so talented.

60 Degrees Again

It was nice and warm outside this afternoon. So even though the kids had a busy day at the auto show and there was no time for naps, they begged to go outside and play. We wound spending an hour out in the front of our house mostly playing with sticks and some balls. I was able to shoot some baskets while they played.
Here is Faith finding the Moon.
The parade of sticks.
An attempt at some closeups:

Day At The Auto Show

Long day... We all took the Metro into the DC Convention Center for the auto show and then spent a few hours getting all varieties of pickup trucks and SUVs. I was luck to squeeze in time to try out a Buick and Mercury. Boy do I sound old ;-)

And here is a movie Karen took of the boys taken out their aggression in a controlled manner. Karen made them a crash pad and they loved it.

Fairy Godmother Brushing Up On Her Story

Finally Snow !!!

Finally we have SNOW!!! Coming out of lunch at Uno's today it started to flurry. The kids were very excited. I wasn't sure how much snow we would get so I tried to set expectations. I wasn't that successful. So I promised that after nap time they could play in the snow. Luckily Mother Nature complied...
The backyard early on showed good signs of accumulation. After nap time, they were raring to go. Even Faith!!	It was nice to see Faith enjoying the snow. You'll see even more of her in the movie below.
As for Reuben, it's always pulling teeth to get him to pose for a picture. Here he gave his best attempt. Jacob as usual is the ham.
January 21, 2007 - 1st Snow Day

Welcome Nana

Nana arrives from Florida to Virginia for our first cold spell of the winter.

Here Nana is an eyewitness to a fire rescue of a stranded princess.

Everyone was safe and sound. Sorry for the long delay in posts. I was on business travel and my internet access was not working for the first day and half. I stayed at the same hotel as last time, the Lions Gate. No change in the place so my previous review stands. However, next time I'm out there, I will hopefully be in a better hotel that was recommended by one of the people with whom I'm working.

Thank God For Scotch

Today was one of those days!! Started off pretty good with swimming class for Jacob and tumbling for Reuben and Faith. Afterwards we stopped at McDonalds for lunch. The day went downhill from there. The kids could not behave and as soon as Karen came back with our food, I decided we were not staying. We had a mandatory silent ride home and I threw their happy meal prizes in the trash. Reuben and Faith were especially bad, and now in hindsight it may be because they are both on augmentin. Its a pretty potent antibiotic and may be upsetting their stomachs. Anyway, after quiet room time (formerly nap time) things did not improve too much. Hopefully, with their early bed time (I think they are all already asleep) and my Scotch and water, things will be better tomorrow.

Monster Truck Jam

Monster Truck Jam – Verizon Center Featuring:
Reuben, Jacob and I went to the Monster Truck Jam this afternoon. Great time had by all. But I'm not sure which the boys liked best the Monster Trucks or the Metro.	The Metro ride there was very easy. Going home it and the stations were jammed. The show was sold out and probably 2/3 of the 20,000 folks were Metro'ing.
Grave Digger winning the freestyle	Ninja Turtle Truck – Are the Ninja Turtles still popular?
They also had freestyle motocross which was my favorite. Those motorcycles were making amazing jumps. I highlighted the kid in the air, otherwise he's hard to see.
There were also some go-cart races. This is where it got like wrestling with the winners and losers trash talking each other and the crowd. The Philly team was bad mouthing the Redskins, which in my opinion was well deserved.
Priceless	Expressions
Monster Truck Jam – The Movie

Prepping For The Show

Last night and this morning the kids were prepping for the big show today. I got the video shown above from the library on my way home last night and we watched it as soon they finished dinner. Since the show is pretty much sold out for all three shows in DC, I was surprised the video was still at the library. So far this morning its been nothing but monster truck talk. Well, we also talked about breakfast because they had their favorite: scrambled eggs and kippers. I needed to open a second can of kippers because they devoured the first one that we were sharing.

It's OK To Play With Your Balls

Today, Karen and the kids made their own play-dough. Each of the kids chose the colors to use on their play dough, though Jacob's brown turned out closer to dark green. But, more exciting today was my purchase of tickets to the Monster Truck Jam!! Saturday afternoon me and the boys are heading into DC's Verizon Center for the show. They are very excited. Its just too bad that I waited until today to buy tickets. I didn't figure it would be a big deal getting tickets. Turned out the show is almost sold out. We'll be sitting way up. Still should be fun. Check back Saturday night for photo highlights.

How to watch a football game

Its not easy to get the time to watch a football game, but I figured I had a good chance to watch the Jets game today.  This morning the kids started a class at a Fairfax Rec Center near us.  Jacob and I were doing a toddler swim class, while Reuben and Faith did a tumbling class.  Since I with Jacob, I know he loved it.  Reuben and Faith were alone, with Karen waiting outside; it was a kids only class.  Afterwards we had lunch and then headed home.  I figured the activity would induce a nap and I 'd get the Jets'playoff game in.  

Well, like usual they didn't nap, but on the bright side they spent some quality quiet time in the room.  By, the 4th quarter, though, they were ready to come down.  And of course they wanted to be near me... so TEA PARTY TIME!!!
During the tea party I has able to watch the Jets fall apart in the 4th quarter.  They held it together for awhile, but just couldn't get touchdowns and had to settle for field goals several times. It just was not their day.

Now its time for: "Go Giants

Dad got hosed - Verizon Christmas commercial

My favorite commercial. I've been waiting since X-mas for someone to post. Also I am still experimenting with AOL journals. Google Videos cannot be used within AOL journals for some reason, but obviously AOL's own uncutvideo.aol.com uploads can. Unfortunately this video so far only exists on Google Video. One nice thing about AOL video is the qualit. AOL's uploaded video are better than Google and you can really see the difference with the puppet video which I also posted to AOL. Go to Hemmerworld on AOL to see it.

Puppet Show

Introducing Cookie Monster Puppet Theatre:

The Gifts Keep Coming

We're still giving out gifts... Today it was some puzzles, meant to be one of the small gifts for the low key Hanukkah middle nights. Turned out there were no such low key nights; though we did miss a couple of nights of gifts for various reasons.

Here is Faith making a candelabra with her new building toy. She then accurately called it a menorah.

And, here is Jacob and Reuben with their completed puzzles. They were pretty complex and they knew it. They were very proud to show me them when I got home from work.

Reuben is still coughing a lot. He also is congested and I think the congestion is in his chest. I had to steam up the bathroom for him again tonight and he just recently settled down and pretty much stopped coughing in bed. Notice how red his cheeks are in the picture, not sure I understand that symptom. Hopefully we'll find out more tomorrow when he sees the doctor.

Blogger Peeves

There are a number of issues with blogger that annoy me and keep me looking out a bit at other alternatives. One major disappointment is with posting straight html. I usually use blogger's WYSIWYG compose editor, but sometimes it is too limiting. When I posted my diet plan an diet results (BTW today I weighed in at 199.5 today - Happy New Year), I wrote the article out in an html editor first. I wanted some numbered lists and such, so the editor provided an easy way to get the formating. So to post blogger I figured I would just have to copy the html source into blogger's html editor and presto. Wrong. The lists were screwed up, the indents were screwed up, and the text didn't wrap right to fit the frame. So I essentially had to hand edit to make it look decent. You will notice there are lots of unnecessary line breaks. So today I decided to take another look and AOL journals. My last test there was disappointing, but as at it turned I was using the wrong layout option to do my picture posting test. This time out it was to test an html post, using my diet posting. If you follow this link you will see the results. Complete pass! No editing required, looks just as I typed it. My other peeve with blogger is with how they are handling images which no longer automatically resize in a browser. The details of which are complicated, but well documented. AOL journals handles pictures simply allowing for the resize function to work. AOL does have its drawbacks. Three obvious ones are: 1) Large advertisement banner; 2) Short list of sidebar options with no way of customizing (that I could find); and 3) Boring blog name area (there's got to be a way of prettying it up, but I can't figure out how. Also there is no direct blogging from Picasa, but that hasn't worked for blogger now for a few weeks.