The Hydrant

Naughty

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 13:00:03 -0600

Apparently all my kids are naughty! In the online world, dealing with bullies and hate speech is constantly a topic. It’s very easy in an anonymized world to pop off to people in ways that you might not if you were in the same room. Quinton has shown us that for years, though he was pretty inventive about it. At one point, I think he had 5 or 6 different free email addresses that he would use to sign back up for services that he got banned from because he was bullying or harassing people. I never in my life thought that my demure, perfect little daughter would be up to the same shenanigans…

Hey Mo!

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 08:03:43 -0600

Jenny’s been looking at robot vacuum cleaners for awhile. Strangely, I’ve been against them. I’m not sure what it was about them, but I didn’t think they would be able to handle our floors. Our first floor has a mixture of wood and high pile carpet along with rugs and the like - I just figured a robot vacuum would struggle.

Then my brother bought one. Rocky, his robot’s name, is a fixture in his house now, and from what I can tell, is doing a serviceable job on his new hard floors! So I started to soften and do some research to see what the big deal was.

Best Mother So Far

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 14:43:30 -0600

One of the best parts of being a parent, in my estimation, is watching my kids’ sense of humor develop. Early on, it’s at once fun and annoying to watch them try new things out and see what type of reaction they get. The annoying part comes with things like the constant use of the word “diarhea” that Mireille currently thinks is funny. The fun part, though, is seeing Ethan tell his grandmother, who had recently burst a blood vessel in her eye, that she could potentially remediate it with a quick trip to the Halloween Store.

So Long GPs

Thu, 18 May 2023 09:03:26 -0600

Today we parted ways with our furry friends Zazu and Odin (or as Mireille would spell it, Oddainn - I don’t know why). They were fun little pets that kept me company while I worked with their squeals, foot falls, and very much so their smell…

Zazu joined us I think 5 years ago already. Quinton really wanted a pet - he wanted a dog. We convinced him that a guinea pig would be better. He was young enough at the time that he believed us! And for awhile, they were buddies.

Hair

Wed, 10 May 2023 09:38:11 -0600

Hair is really important to my daughter. This is something I learned early on in her life with us. When she came to us from Congo, she had extensions in her hair and, though she coudln’t say anything in English, she conveyed very clearly that she liked them. She wasn’t very happy when we took them out a few days later (well, she wasn’t very happy about anything, really).

Over the years, she has been very vocal about wanting long hair and the types of things she would do with it. Jenny has done wonders caring for Mireille’s hair, but there’s just not much you can do with hair as curly as hers to make it long like she wanted it!

Catching up

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 20:12:26 -0600

It’s been a minute…

Today, Bryce introduced me to a friend of his that is planning an RV trip. Rather than just answering a bunch of questions, I pointed him to this blog, which caused me to go back and re-read it, which reminded me how much fun it was to have these things written down. So here we are.

Well, what’s happened… Oh, I got laid off! Yeah, the great startup experiment didn’t go the way I had hoped. I mean, I really enjoyed working there, and the pace of work was a lot of fun and all, but the downturn in the market along with the introduction of ChatGPT, as well as ALL of the tech companies laying people off, combined for the perfect storm to mean that I got to experience my very first layoff from the being layed off perspective. I have to say, not a fan. Anyway, after 87 interviews with more than 20 companies, I finally landed at Tempo Software and I couldn’t be happier. The product mix is really quite interesting to me - they deal in Agile planning and tracking tools, which are things that I really enjoy working with!

Ozark - Season 2022 - Wrap it up

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:35:41 -0600

And, that’s a wrap! We managed to get out of there a little before 8:00 on Friday morning and traveled straight back to where we came from. The drive was gloriously boring and uneventful. We stopped one time to get food at a Burger King near Topeka, but other than that, it was a more or less straight shot west on 70. Strangely, the winds of Kansas seemed to switch direction in the week we were gone, so they were in our face the whole way back just like the trip there. Kansas is weird.

Ozark - Season 2022 - The Cave

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:23:41 -0600

Two of the families had to leave on Friday morning, so it was just the Chovanecs and Gradys for Friday! Given the smaller group, we decided to do some excursions since logistics would be easier. Of course, we still couldn’t all fit in a single car… Damn big families!

After seeing off the other two families, and after some breakfast leftovers, we headed out towards Bridal Cave, a cave about 15 miles away. The drive was nice. Along the way we saw lots of interesting signs, including one for a bar called the “Glory Hole,” one for a mini-golf course called “Putt Pirates” who asked you to “put your balls in our puttholes,” and yet another one for a sausage place that bragged that “nobody beats our meat.” The realization came all at once that the Ozarks had a thing for double entendres. And they weren’t bad, honestly! Sadly we weren’t able to visit any of these classy establishments..

Ozark - Season 2022 - Jenny's Birthday

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:13:41 -0600

Thursday! The last full day for some as they were leaving for various weekend commitments. It also happened to be Jenny’s birthday! There was nothing much on the docket for Thursday, so you guessed it, we did a bit of swimming, drinking, and eating.

The week was punishingly hot and muggy for those of us that live in the high desert in Colorado, so we did take plenty of breaks in the very cold, air conditioned house to play games. Pool was a big hit! Quinton played tons of it, probably in no small part due to the fact that he didn’t have a phone! Foosball was also quite popular. We did play some Jenga, Scrabble, and other board games as well. There was no lack of downtime activities at this house.

Ozark - Season 2022 - Dan's Birthday

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 19:25:41 -0600

Wednesday (I think, it started to get fuzzy in the middle there) was more of the same. We needed to get the boat back to Pirate Petes by 9:00 AM, so Micky, Jenny, and I took off around 7:30 to transist the 27 miles of water between our cabin and there. It was a lovely drive and we really didn’t see a boat to speak of! I think I had to deal with a wake one time when we passed a pontoon going the opposite direction.

Ozark - Season 2022 - The Boat

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 18:31:41 -0600

The one thing we did that was “productive” on Monday outside of making food and fixing drinks was to decide on renting a boat for a day. Todd and Sandi had been out earlier that day checking out the area and found a rental place called Pirate Petes where we could rent a pontoon that would sit 12 (we had 13, but we figured we would chance it). So this morning, Todd, Tim, and I went to Pirate Pete’s to pickup our boat. This was about the time where we marveled at how much the Ozarks area has leaned into the Pirate mythos. I presume they encountered lake pirates at some point in their distant past… Probably from Illinois…

Ozark - Season 2022 - And, we relax...

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 18:13:41 -0600

Day 1, really. Full day 1. Nothing on the plans for the day, so there was little possibility of being late. In that spirit, most of us managed to sleep well past 9:00, even Mireille. We got up and Jenny made some breakfast food that we had purchased, and we eventually meandered our way to the Party Deck!

This property is equipped with many outdoor surfaces from which to party. There is the boat deck, where one could party if they liked. There is the Martini Deck, another party location. There is the deck off of the game room, the deck off of the kitchen, and the main focal point of all water and party activities, the party deck.

Ozark - Season 2022 - Retrospective and The Drive

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 17:55:41 -0600

I’m going to try this one a little different. We just got back from the Ozarks yesterday. Consequently, Jenny and I watched the first episode of the last season of Ozark last night, and they started with the end, so I figured I’d try that.

It was nice to get caught up today! I started out with a nice run - a little slower and shorter than my normal route. Jenny and I got Starbucks, which we hadn’t done in a week. The dogs convalesced from their internment in Doggy Prison, er, camp. All in all it was shaping up to be a good day. We cleaned ou the Guinea Pig cage, then spent 45 minutes trying to retrieve Odin from underneath the hedge in the front yard that he decided was his new home…

Catching Up

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 19:39:41 -0600

So I find myself, once again, very far out of touch with these updates. One of the things I like best about these updates is the running dialog they represent for our vacations. Given we’ve got one of those coming up, it seems a good time to reboot!!!

First, what’s happened since we last talked:

RV Update 20!

It seems I rudely left the world hanging on a final update from our Epic RV Trip from last summer! Many apologies. I had big intentions, and even some cool content planned, but much of that is now lost to time.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 19 - and 20...

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 19:49:31 -0600

We made it!!! I had a good feeling that we would make it when we woke up in Battle Mountain to see about a 12 hour duration for our drive home. Of course, we are in an RV, so you spend about 25% more time than the map would tell you. Depending on road and wind conditions, I was most comfortable pushing Harvee at about 65 miles per hour, no more. The speed limit in Nevada and Utah is 80. So do the math… Also, there are stops, there is road construction… We tend to drive pretty leisurely, and when we stop, we typically do so for at least 30 minutes.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 18 - The Long Journey Home

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 18:27:56 -0700

The Interstate Highway System is an amazing thing! Of course, it takes a 9 hour drive on a road other than the Interstate to really drive that fact home.

Today we gave in and pulled up stakes, one day early, and started the 23+ hour trip home. We have allotted three days (well, two and a half) to get home, but we’ll see. The trip today started going back where we came from on Highway 199, with all the tight turns and incline changes that it entails. It was everything I remembered from a few days earlier!!! I again judiciously utilized the turnouts. It took us about 2 hours and 15 minutes to travel the 85 miles from Crescent City to Grants Pass. We figured that would be the worst conditions of the trip! Well, we hoped…

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 17 - Jetboat Cruisin

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 18:27:56 -0700

We had a reservation for a tour today and had to be there by 9:30. It was south back to Klamath, CA, so we had to negotiate a couple of road closures and the windy roads, so we left pretty early, around 8:15. After filling up the Jeep with fuel (gah, California gas prices!!!) and getting some much needed caffeinne, we headed back south along much the same route we had traveled the day prior. The drive was nearly the same in all ways, just a bit shorter as we stopped at Klamath Jetboat Tours for our trip.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 16 - Redwoods National Park

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 18:27:52 -0700

The day started out with a smash, literally. Jenny was making breakfast on the stove, but didn’t quite prop the stove up correctly. After setting off the smoke alarm a couple of times (a feature), she turned the stove off and moved the pan to a different burner to cool - that’s when the tempered glass that covers the stove when it’s not in use shattered. In her brain fog, Jenny forgot to put it up, and in my early morning fog, I failed to notice. So that was an unexpected 45 minute cleanup exercise and now will be an unexpected expense upon our return. Hopefully that’s the worst thing that happens - the stove still works, it just doesn’t have its handy cover…

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 15 - California Bound - Updated!

Fri, 09 Jul 2021 21:35:26 -0700

We are definitely starting to show some signs of either home sickness or road weariness, but we have one more stop on our journey, so we are determined to finish it off. We started the day off with a bit of logistical fun! Our camp was south of Portland about 30 miles, but we had to return the car to Portland. I didn’t want to drive the RV back into Portland and have to backtrack to get back south, so we had to figure something out. Luckily we are technology capable! I drove the car back into town, returned it, then it took me all of 5 minutes to wait for my Lyft to come and to drop me back off at camp 30 miles away. Honestly, it should have been much harder! I thought it was also an interesting sign that I happened to pickup the Lyft right outside a brewery - Moon Shrimp Brewery. Might have to try to find one of those, though judging by the size of the place, that could prove difficult. The other thing I noticed on my 35 minute Lyft ride back to camp was that Oregon, unlike Colorado, allows dispensaries to advertise. I found it a little jarring, I guess, but interesting nonetheless. So many strange laws around…

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 14 - PDX, again

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 21:31:38 -0700

Wow, 14 days of vacation! It definitely shows up in some ways. The little things that start to annoy you about the people you are sharing 150 square feet with, like how they chew, or how they are looking with their eyes. We will need a bigger space soon, but for now we are OK.

We started LATE today! Leaving the waking to chance, nobody stirred until after 8:00. In my defense I stayed up slightly after midnight last night reading by the fire. I mean, the wood just wasn’t going out, so I had to stay and make sure it didn’t start a forest fire. Luckily nothing jumped from our fire ring to the surrounding area.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 13 - Day of Rest

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 21:37:34 -0700

We decided to take it easy for a day! Our initial plan was to head out to Mt. Hood today, but we decided that we’d been going HARD for like 2 weeks straight, so we opted to stay around camp and do camping things today instead! That said, Jenny and I decided to do a 3 mile trail run this morning to stave off all of the calories we’ve been eating on vacation! It was a really nice run, actually. Super flat, low altitude, and nice and cool. Just what the doctor ordered for these old legs.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 12 - The Oregon Coast

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 20:53:51 -0700

OK, first an answer to yesterday’s mystery. I’m sure if you are my “audience” (hi dad), you were saying something like, “well duh, it’s the airport code for Portland.” Yes, of course it is that. But why PDX?? I think I have half an answer. Airport codes were first used in the 1930s when airliners started assigning two letter codes to all airports. By the 1940s, however there were too many airports for the codes, so they had to switch to three letter codes. So Portland used to be “PD,” but when they expanded to three letters, one of the “filler” letters was “X.” So Los Angeles (LA) became LAX, and Portland (PD) became PDX. I suppose the “D” was just the last letter of Portland, so, there you go…

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 11 - PDX

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 20:21:24 -0700

I have no idea why Portland is abbreviated as PDX. I will make it my mission before the trip is through to try to understand that.

Today was a driving day, but we only had about a 2 hour drive in front of us, so it was a little different than other driving days. Jenny and I got up early to try to finish off the laundry from the night before, but sadly the laundry facilities were closed. We were ready to say good by to Thousand Trails, Chehalis. It had some nice features, but overall the experience was suboptimal and may have turned Jenny off to RVing forever! It was damp all the time, it was completely full, there was trash everywhere because there were so many people, the water didn’t work for a quarter of the trip, and the toilets were overflowing for a good portion of the rest, and the laundry facilities, while modern, were more or less occupied during the times we could use them and closed otherwise. Oh, and we weren’t able to properly level the RV, so we were sleeping down and to the left for the whole time!

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 10 - Olympic Peninsula

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 21:50:25 -0700

Well, we’re about half way through. RVing is becoming a bit challenging. Between losing the water for a full day and being in the Northwest where nothing ever gets dry, people are starting to show some chinks in the armor. One of the men’s toilets today was overflowing onto the floor, and it wasn’t nice, fresh water flowing out… We move on tomorrow.

Today we visited Olympic National Park, our third National Park on this trip! Olympic is situated on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, and due to the fact that there are mountains in the middle of the peninsula, it makes it somewhat difficult to get anywhere. You pretty much have to travel around the perimeter to get anywhere. So you might see something that is 30 miles away and it will take 2 hours and 30 minutes to get to it. We chose the closest place in Olympic National Park, the Stairsteps area, and aimed for that, which was pretty good - it wasn’t too busy, and the foliage was very lush.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 9 - My Favorite Mountain

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 19:46:04 -0700

We lazily started the day, for the most part. Even still, I was up at 6:45, which is 7:45 local. I’ve been sleeping pretty well here! Last night when we got into the park we were surprised by the fact that the water was out in the park! We’ve been getting used to “roughing it,” but no shower in the morning - that’s a road too far!!! I took a little walk around the park and found out that there was one restroom in the park with water, but it was FAR! I went back to the RV and told Jenny who immediately grabbed her shower stuff and the car keys. She was able to shower while I was waited and also finished up some morning business, then we were set for the day!

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 8 - The Emerald City

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 19:45:55 -0700

One week ago we left on this adventure!!! In a lot of ways that is hard to believe. We’ve certainly held up better than I would have expected being in such close quarters. This is in no small part due to Quinton’s mood being quite good the entire time. He really does seem to enjoy this style of trip - despite all the driving and hiking that we are doing!

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 7 - Thousand Trails

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 19:16:35 -0700

Today started late! Nobody stirred until 7:00 local (Pacific) time, which was 8:00 in the time our bodies were used to. We grabbed a quick shower, got some chai teas and burritos, then headed out on the open road in hopes of making it to the Seattle area early!

The first 40 minutes of driving were much like the last hour of driving the previous day - very windy!!! The temperature wasn’t quite so bad, though, and the light of day made things much more positive and the driver much more optimistic. Once we got into the Cascades about an hour later, the wind had died down, and we started to remember how amazing the views were here in Washington!!!

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 6 - Westward Bound

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 19:03:19 -0700

Travel day!!! We didn’t have a campsite booked for the night, so our next trip was necessarily going to span 2 days. We didn’t really have a plan for where we would stop, but we spent quite a bit of time trying to plan the logistics since there was a massive heat wave that started in the Pacific Northwest and was now moving east, right in our path. We were happy that it moved out of the Seattle/Portland area because that’s where we would spend the next 8 days or so, but we still had to travel through Western Montana and Eastern Washington, and temperatures were reported as high as 115 degrees!

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 5 - Chasing Waterfalls

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 19:03:19 -0700

Up early again today! We set the alarm for 6:00 AM, had a quick breakfast, then were out on the road for the 50 minute drive to the North Entrance of Yellowstone. It was definitely worth it, again. We beat a good deal of the traffic and didn’t have to wait in line to get in, though to be fair, I don’t recall seeing a line to get in any of the times I passed the north entrance gate.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 4 - Whitewater Rafting

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 21:05:48 -0600

Quinton may well be a blood relative of Tom Tibbett. Certainly he has a lot of traits in common with him, as well as his Grandpa and Grandma Grady. While the rest of us are happy to exist on our own, nodding to friendly folks but nothing more, Quinton is curious and likes to engage people in conversation.

We started more “Grady style” this morning. No alarm was set and we woke when the spirit moved us, which was around 7:30. It felt good to rest after putting about 22,000 steps on yesterday (probably closer to 30,000 for Mireille!) I was excited to try my new griddle and camp stove this morning. We had all the fixin’s, so I spent way too long getting things setup, and then basically made bacon and eggs. But they were made on a camp stove on a griddle!!! Honestly, it was pretty great, I’m not going to lie, though I am constantly surprised at how effective companies are at separating me from my money. We could have done the same thing in the RV in half the time with regular pans… One nifty trick we did - Jenny gave me the teapot from the RV to heat up on the stove. After about 30 seconds, though, the plastic cover melted off and now we don’t have a teapot! Oops! I guess the camp stove is too strong…

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 3 - Snoop Dogg's Windows

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 22:32:13 -0600

Yellowstone, wow! The “grandfather” of the national park system, and it is quite the site!

The Granddaddy of them all

We started early by our standards. 6:00 AM we were up, teeth brushed, breakfast eaten (waffles and sausage). By 7:00 we were on the road. It was nice to drive the rental car! It could go the speed limit, was maneuverable, and it didn’t get thrown around by the wind so much!!! By 8:00 we were in the park, had purchased our pass, and only had another 1.5 hours to drive before we would finally get somewhere fun to see. Yellowstone is HUGE!!!

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 2 - Harvee, meet wind

Sat, 26 Jun 2021 21:01:05 -0600

Sleeping in a rest stop has its perks. It’s free… It’s close to the bathrooms… And that’s about it. It also has its drawbacks. It’s bright (which could be a perk considering some of the other drawbacks), it’s loud, and there are a lot of people coming in and out all the time. We were able to fall asleep more or less OK, although it was hot, and we had a hard time configuring Harvee for optimal sleeping without jutting out our bed in the back, which can only be done in camping mode. Once we did fall asleep, however, there was a somewhat regular stream of car alarms and horns while people get out of their cars and forget their keys inside.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 1 - 9.5 MPG

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 22:47:37 -0600

We just arrived at our first stopping point, a modern-ish rest stop in far north Wyoming, near Sheridan. The rest stops are pretty nice here in Wyoming, and unlike Colorado, they allow people to park overnight at their rest stops. We weren’t really sure where we would stay, but after stopping at a rest stop earlier in the day, they seemed to be setup properly with enough people around that it seemed safe. Some basic research on the internet said that rest stops were valid for staying, though they recommended NOT parking in truck spotss they needed to stop for legal reasons, so if you took their last spot, they might not be too happy! Not really wanting a mid-night confrontation, I am definitely trying to keep on the right side of the truckers. I’ve titled this day 9.5 MPG as that seems to be the average efficiency this vehicle will achieve. No more, no less. We’re about 550 miles into the trip at this point and the entire time, even with a reset, Harvee has averaged 9.5 MPG.

Epic RVing with the Gradys - Day 0 and 0.5 - The Preamble

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 08:17:57 -0600

It’s been an undeniably weird year. About 8 months ago, having been cooped up just like everybody else, I made a bold claim to Quinton that we should do an RV trip and that we would buy an RV. I’m still not sure what I was thinking, but like I said, it’s been a weird year! For awhile, I honestly looked at ways to make good on that strange claim. In January, though, Jenny helped me come to my senses and we decided it would be better to rent an RV. Yes, they are expensive to rent, but they are more expensive to buy, and then you have to store them, maintain them, and keep paying for them whether you like them or not! So we decided, even if it would cost us 10% of what it would to purchase, it would be better to just do that, get a really nice RV, and really put ourselves to the test of whether we are “RV People” or not.

The Weakest Part of Every System...

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 19:23:27 -0600

In the movies it is popular to portray computer hackers as these happy-go-lucky nerds who are mainly interested in whether they can do something rather than whether than should do something. In the movies they typically get in over their head, or go up against a rival hacker gang and… get in over their head.

In the real world, it’s hard to say that computer hackers are the same as the way they are portraid in the movies - at least the movies I remember. Sure, they are smart folks. But more often than not, at least for the vast majority of the hacking attempts, they are looking to exploit people to get access to their personal information so they can sell it to another bad actor who will then try to profit from having that information. Oh, and most of the time, hackers are targeting the weakest part of every system - human beings!

COVID Rituals

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 08:03:41 -0600

I started this post almost a month ago, that’s how things are going! Life in COVID remains largely the same, but is starting to feel “normal” in a lot of ways. Certainly there are things that we’d like to do, like go to the movies, or sit in a coffee shop, or have the whole family go to a basketball game, but in some ways, things are probably better. One thing we have been doing all along with varying degrees of success and consistentcy is to create new rituals to make things a little better.

College - Year 2

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 09:03:44 -0600

Ahh, COVID. I guess life goes on, or we try to do so, anyway. Ethan, after spending the last 5+ months at home (bonus Ethan time for us!) has now completed his transfer to Colorado State University and we have moved him into his dwelling for the upcoming school year! Even though this is Ethan’s second year of school, this year seemed almost worse in some ways than moving him in last year. Last year he was going to Regis, which on a good traffic day was only about a 30 minute drive from home. He had access to the city bus and train system to get him home whenever he liked, and we were pretty “comfortable” with the school. Not to mention, after last summer, we were kind of ready for him to leave (sorry Ethan)! This year he will be attending a big state school which we haven’t had an opportunity to really visit or connect with it at all due to the pandemic. Also, it’s a bit further away, 90 minutes in good traffic. Given all that, it just felt different. Quinton seemed to actually care and notice that it was happening this time around. At one point he asked Jenny and I in an accusatory way why we weren’t more upset about Ethan leaving! It was kind of nice having him around for the last 5-6 months…

Mary the Tooth Fairy

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 13:03:38 -0600

Parenting can be hard, obviously. And sometimes we (read I) don’t really live up to the challenge. I’m hoping this has happened to others… The last time Mireille lost a tooth was in January. For Mireille, losing a tooth is a somewhat difficult exercise. For some reason, her teeth are very stubborn, and new teeth come up all over the place and don’t always displace the tooth they are supposed to replace! So for a few of her teeth, I’ve tried my dad-best to extract them, only to end up in tears (both of us, actually), and she’s had to go to the dentist to get them out. That’s what had happened in January the last time she lost one!

Mireille's Channel - Peace Out!

Mon, 11 May 2020 09:03:58 -0600

For the vast majority of this blog’s audience (Hi mom and dad!), you probably don’t know much about the Youtube generation and what types of things go on here. I can’t say I know much more outside of what I observe from my children as they are interacting with these sites, but let me try to explain. In today’s day and age, being a “Youtuber” is an actual profession that people aspire towards. There are some “internet famous” people that actually make not only a living, but millions of dollars a year just posting videos on Youtube. Some notable ones are PewDiePie and Rhett and Link, among others. Basically they post various things to Youtube, ranging from just recording themselves doing something mundane like playing video games, to full on productions in an almost talk show format, sort of like a more interactive PeeWee’s Playhouse.

Mireille, the runner and COVID haircuts

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 09:14:58 -0600

And it continues…

I believe we are about 8 weeks in to this new reality now. Funny how initially I had all these ideas of things I would do “every day” during this situation. I was going to blog every day, that seemed like a funny and interesting idea. I was also going to draw something every day, which was fun for awhile, and I’ve continued it on a far less frequent basis, but I’m definitely not doing anything on a daily basis other than just living.

Sex... Explained...

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 09:47:40 -0600

Over the past several nights, in the midst of our Corona Quarantine, Quinton and I have started watching the show Locke and Key on Netflix together. It’s a nice time for the two of us to hang out, watch a pretty well done, suspenseful show together, and have some interesting banter and conversation as a matter of course. Last night, the episode was a little shorter than normal, and to be honest, our sleeping routines are starting to trend later on either end of the sleep equation, so after our episode was done, the next thing Netflix recommended for me to watch was a show called Sex Explained. Quinton looked at me with a little grin… Being the designated sex educator in the family, I made a command decision that it would be a fine thing for him to watch, though I hadn’t watched it myself, so I had no idea what the content might be like. It was rated TV-MA (which Quinton still pronounces TV “mah”) afterall.

COVID Reality - Day 2-9

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 10:50:59 -0600

COVID Reality Day 6 was the Grady’s breaking point. There was widespread dissent in the ranks, and those that are supposed to be even and get us through all this were SUPER crabby. Mireille had a big tantrum the likes that I haven’t seen in quite awhile, Quinton managed to squeek out some tears at some point, Ethan is cooped up and wants to see his friends and his girlfriend, and Jenny and I were basically not on speaking terms with one another most of the day. We were on yelling terms, just not speaking terms. Today seems to be better. The saving grace is that it’s very nice outside - spring weather makes everything seem a little better.

COVID Reality - Day 1

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 08:50:41 -0600

Today is the first day of what I’m calling “COVID Reality.” In Colorado, while we aren’t ordered to “shelter in place,” anything that would be worthwhile leaving the house for has been closed down, most notably all sporting events, theaters, churches, restaurants, breweries, and bars. Oh, and schools. These closures are setup right now for 4 weeks. We’ll see how long it actually ends up being (I doubt shorter than 4 weeks). So we’re getting to know our family better, for better or worse. I’m working from home, the kids are doing school from home, Ethan is doing college from home (they closed the campus for the rest of the year), and Jenny has had to take on the new jobs of teacher and principal in addition to Janitor, Laundress, and overall house CEO.

Spring Break - COVID-19 Edition - Chapter 4 - Home

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 19:39:41 -0600

We’re cutting our vacation short! Today was originally supposed to be the day we took a trip on the narrow gauge railroad, but alas, they canceled their trips starting today. We were then going to go up to Telluride to take in the scenery there as well as do some snowmobiling, but threats of weather in the mountains and continued restaurant closures convinced us otherwise. As I write this, the county in which Telluride resides has just issued a “Shelter In Place” order, which is even more reason to be happy we didn’t end up there this morning!

Spring Break - COVID-19 Edition - Chapter 3 - Closed

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 19:39:41 -0600

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

We had a plan for the day, but we needed first to get some breakfast. That would come in the form of McDonalds and Starbucks, both of which were open, but neither of which would allow you to eat or consume there, abiding by the governor’s orders! Quinton discovered the mediocraty but sufficiency of the McDonald’s breakfast burritos (better with hot sauce) while Mireille enjoyed her Hot Cakes and sausage, which are… fine… The best part about where we are staying is that it is walking distance to so many places - mostly restaurants! But we were able to walk to both of these places, order in the dining room, then enjoy them back in our room before departing.

Spring Break - COVID-19 Edition - Chapter 2 - The Drive

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 19:39:32 -0600

On Monday at 7:45, we left home, without the animals (Ethan’s college canceled their classes the first three days of this week, so the animals could stay with him). We first stopped at Mireille’s school to pickup her packet of “school at home” papers. Then we headed west through the mountains towards Durango, CO.

For the first few hours, we listened to public radio. After about 2 hours of that, we had had enough of the Coronavirus talk, so we listened to a podcast about the space race. During that time, the mayor of Denver announced that he was ordering all restaurants and bars closed for dine-in for 8 weeks. Well, lucky for us - we weren’t going to be affected by that!

Spring Break - COVID-19 Edition - Chapter 1 - Preamble

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 21:12:18 -0600

Spring Break!!! Woo!!!

Actually, as the years go on, the event has become more and more complicated. Three kids in two different schools last year was one thing - but this year, three kids in three different schools increased the complexity. And add to that the fact that I just started a new job… No worries - we would ignore the adult child, and that will simplify things!!! Well, sort of. Still, with the two youngers in two different schools, of course their spring break didn’t line up. So we took the older child’s break, took the younger child out of school, and planned on heading to Phoenix to visit with the Grandparents who we haven’t seen in Phoenix for a couple of years now. Easy peasy!!!

So - I got a new job...

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 11:35:19 -0700

It doesn’t happen very often, thankfully, but I started a new job this month! It also doesn’t happen very often that I blog about myself. Both good things, I think!

At the beginning of February, I started a new job with Twilio. Headquartered in San Francisco, I’m actually working in Downtown Denver where one of the largest non-HQ offices is located. There are so many new things that I’m experiencing, which is sort of the point, I guess. For one, It’s been a long time since I’ve worked at a company with more than 500 employees (Twilio has ~3000). Also, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve worked downtown anywhere, and the first time I’ve worked in downtown Denver. The obvious complication is commuting, which is something I’m still experimenting with. Denver is progressive enough to have a Light Rail system, which I’ve been taking advantage of. Jenny’s actually been kind enough to ferry me between the house and the light rail station a few miles from our house, so even two weeks in I can already feel my driving skills start to erode!

Big Update on Grady Kids

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 09:25:40 -0700

It’s a broken record on this blog, but it’s again been a LONG time since I’ve done anything. There is definitely an ebb and flow to my state of mind that really dictates how much I observe of the world around me, and around the end of the year is a time of reflection for lots of people. So here it goes…

This post is going to read mostly as a Quinton post. It’s not that I don’t love my other kids, he’s just at a point where the things he does crack me up more than what I’m observing from my other kids right now. Ethan, Mireille, forgive me!

The Dead Cat Saga

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 14:51:03 -0600

A couple of weekends ago, Quinton and I, on a whim, went outside to play catch with a baseball. It’s sort of odd that we would do that. Most of Quin’s time at home involves playing XBox, and most of my time involves yelling at Quinton about playing XBox, but on this occassion we both decided to do something a little different.

Flash back to earlier that morning, upon waking up I saw that our doorbell camera had gone off a couple of times during the night. I studied the pictures (since I’m too cheap to pay for video storage) to find a cat hanging around on our front stoop. Kind of strange, but whatever. Later that morning I took something out to the garbage and, upon rounding the corner to the front of the house, I was presented with some kind of bad smell. I chalked it up to needing the garbage taken away and went about my day.

College

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 20:24:15 -0600

Yesterday, I had to mow my own lawn. Actually I wasn’t even that sad about that - it only takes about an hour to really do a number on my lawn. I do the mowing, of course, along with regular mower maintenance. Then I get the trimmer out and move the infringing grass back off of the cement walkways and what-not. Heck, I even took the time to fertilize. It was all done while I walked, contemplating what had just happened. A life event. A first. My indentured lawn-mower had left home and went to college!

Firsts, and a Conversation with Mireille

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 09:50:50 -0600

Quinton started middle school this week. For some reason, middle school scares the hell out of me on behalf of my children. To boot, he’s been actively and heavily lobbying to be moved to the public school from our relatively more comfortable private school middle school situation. Well, he made pretty good arguments, so we relented, so now he has started school at Laredo Public Middle School, right next to where Ethan has spent his last 4 years at Smoky Hill.

Adult Child

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 13:18:08 -0600

Is that a contradiction? I suppose it doesn’t matter - that is what we have now. Ethan, as of last Friday, is considered by this society to be “an adult.” He is now able to drin… Well, he can rent a ca… Hmm… He can be drafted, and he can vote, and if he were to do something bad, he can be punished like the hardened adult criminal that he would undoubtedly be.

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 8

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 20:38:50 -1000

Day 8 - Is it time to go home yet?

While we love Hawai’i, we are all ready to go home. We started the day like most others, coffee at the hotel lobby. We then collected the spawn and did some swimming before showering and heading back to Hale’iwa for lunch at “Killer Tacos.”

After lunch, we decided to do some more beach stuff. We got some stuff, though not as much as we did yesterday, and headed off on the .75 mile walk to Keiki Beach, home Keiki Pool, which is a natural pool in the beach that is popular for people with little kids with them.

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 7

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 19:55:11 -1000

Day 7 - Submarine

Morning

Day 7 - this vacation is getting long!!! Still fun stuff to do, and so much that we haven’t even done yet! Today we had an appointment in Waikiki at 10:00 to go on a submarine! The trip there is about 90 minutes with morning traffic, so we left by 8:00 to get down there.

We took the standard mid-island route this time which looked much different this time! We got to see the pineapple fields and everything. Of course, it isn’t anywhere near as interesting as the windward coast route, but it was still interesting to see in the daylight.

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 6

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 18:09:33 -1000

Day 6 - Relax

Morning at Turtle Bay

Thursday, I think. It’s sometimes hard to keep track on vacation - especially one this long! So we’ll go with Thursday. We didn’t have any excursions planned for this day, but that sort of made Jenny nervous that we would sit around the condo all day and play video games. She was probably correct… That said, we began the morning with some Smash Brothers, as is now becoming a thing. Perhaps we will take this activity back to the mainland with us! I’ll give it a shot.

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 5

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 22:19:47 -1000

Day 5 - Polynesian Cultural Center

Morning

Well, we are certainly adjusted to the timezone by now. Nobody stirred until well after 6:00 AM, and nobody got out of bed until after 7:00. It seems pretty easy to acclimate to westernbound timezones, at least to a point. I remember the adjustment being very difficult in Manila, but here it’s been a breeze!!!

Jenny, Mireille, and I went over to the hotel lobby and got some morning drinks and a croissant while the boys continued sleeping. While we were there we started picking out locations where Forgetting Sarah Marshall was filmed. It’s kind of fun recognizing things from a movie…

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 4

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 21:51:32 -1000

Day 4 - Koalua Ranch

Morning Shenanigans

The day still started earlyish. Jenny and I were out of bed and walking to the hotel lobby for some “coffee” before 7:00. We then went on a little walk of the grounds to see what we could see. Unfortunately it wasn’t much!!! There are a lot of trails on the property. Good for walking, biking, horse riding, etc. We probably did about 2 miles, but needed to get back to the kids and make sure they weren’t killing each other.

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 3

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 16:41:27 -1000

Day 3 - Pearl Harbor

Sunrise

After our busted sunset last night, both boys were all into the idea of waking up this morning and seeing the sunrise. As it stood, I was able to convince Mireille to come with me! We had a nice walk, but ultimately our quest to see a sunrise failed due to clouds. Oh well!!!

Bah - clouds!!!

Mireille on our sunrise walk

Windward Drive

Our excursion for the day was to Pearl Harbor - perhaps you’ve heard of it! Unfortunately we were3 meeting all the way back in Honolulu. In fact, we were meeting in Waikiki, and our pickup time was 8:30 - right in the midst of rush hour!!! We took off around 6:45 as the drive is an hour in good conditions, and true to point, it took us about an hour and 15 minutes.

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 2

Sun, 16 Jun 2019 20:54:53 -1000

Day 2 - Turtle Bay Resort

Birthday!!!

Before I say anything, I have acknowledge the celebration of another year for my beautiful wife and mother of our children. 46, er, 39!!! Happy Birthday, Jenny!!!

The Birthday girl at Breakfast with Mireille and Quinton

Sunrise

After crashing “early” Hawaii time, I managed to wake up “early” Hawaii time again. Though I had only 6 or so hours of sleep, I couldn’t get it out of my head that I wanted to see a sunrise. So around 5:15 I ambled out of bed, brushed my teeth, and headed outside towards the beach.

Hawaii Vacation 2019 - Day 1

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 00:44:45 -0600

Day 1 - Travel

DIA

In typical Grady fashion, we arrived at the airport area about three hours in advance of our 2:30 departure time. Don’t want to be hurried!!! We were able to secure parking for the week+ for around $60 at an off site lot, and even got upgraded to indoor parking since all of the outdoor spots were taken!

Shuttle on the way to DIA

The morning went pretty easily. Prep for this vacation started over a week ago with Jenny’s packing, and really went into effect yesterday when we tried to get Mireille’s hair braided, then this morning with a haircut for Quinton. As we sit here waiting to board, I’m thinking back on vacations past, and looking forward to how this one might transpire.

Quin Said a Bad Word

Wed, 22 May 2019 13:18:08 -0600

It’s graduation week. I have a longer, more sentimental post that I’m working through, but I had to jot this one down quickly before it was lost to history. Since it is graduation week, we have family that have started arriving to help Ethan celebrate and to help remind us how old we are.

Last night, my parents, Ethan and his girlfriend Rachel, and Jenny and I were sitting around the table just talking about different things. It was nice. Quinton was in his room playing XBox and Mireille was kind of bouncing between the TV in the living room and upstairs. At one point, though, she came in and talked with all of us to ensure that she could tattle on her brother.

Teeth, Hoops, and Firsts

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 09:38:11 -0600

Mireille finally lost that first tooth! It was a few weeks ago, now. She was walking around the kitchen, and I asked her, like I had been every day for quite a few weeks, how her teeth were doing. Her two front teeth on the bottom were coming in behind the baby teeth. On that fateful night, one of them was finally loose enough that I felt confident enough to give it a little tug and evict it from its spot that the other tooth so badly wanted. She was tough - no crying or anything. I think she was a little sad that she didn’t lose it at school since they give you a cool necklace for your fallen chomper so you can take it home - she really wanted one of those necklaces!!! The other one never really got loose enough for me to pull, but the dentist did the deed a couple of weeks later with the help of some laughing gas and a little numbing medicine. I, sadly, wasn’t there to see it, but Jenny said she was pretty out of it. A little video would have been fun!

Big Man on Campus - a tall tale by Quinton

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 09:58:38 -0500

Quinton had an assignment to write a tall tale. Coincidental with getting the assignment, Quin had learned about a competition that his cousin, Graham, had recently done with his uncle, Bruce. For those that don’t know them, Graham is a 10 year old, not particularly big, and Bruce, his uncle, is about 5’ 2" and weighs probably about 130 pounds. Anyway, Graham challenged uncle Bruce to a plank challenge. Bruce was able to plank for 5 minutes, but Graham was able to do it for 30 minutes! Inspired by this competition, Quinton decided to memorialize it in his very own tall tale.

Catching up to 2019

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 17:00:42 -0700

A new year… It went and happened again, and again I find myself in the position of having a resolution of writing more. It seems a yearly concern, but here goes the latest attempt.

2018 was very kind to the Grady’s. Ethan wrecked a couple of cars, but has now had his latest one for over 6 months without incident (knock on wood). Brandon got a new (to me) car in the form of a 2017 Chevy Malibu - yeah, I can’t seem to break that mold. Hey, they’re nice cars!

Zazu

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 14:48:10 -0700

We added a new family member this weekend.

Zaz and Quinton

Say hello to “Zazu,” or “Zaz” as Quinton likes to call him. Quinton has really wanted a pet of his own for awhile now. He has been trying to get us to get another dog and for me to leave the dog alone so I wouldn’t be the “alpha male” to this one like I am to Heinz.

Moab

Sun, 25 Nov 2018 19:58:19 -0700

The Trip

Moab. Or as Mireille would pronounce it, Mo-Ab. Small city of 5000 some people in Southeast Utah, the land of Mormons, backwards liquor laws, and some spectacular natural landscapes. Since we’ve moved to the west we’ve always looked for a reason to get out here to take in these sights. Thanks to some early travel by Mom and Pop Grady, having come through Denver the weekend prior for Thanksgiving day festivities, we finally had our opportunity to check it out over the Thanksgiving day weekend, figuring it wouldn’t be quite as busy or quite as hot as it would in the peak months.

Mireille the Investigator

Sat, 10 Nov 2018 19:58:19 -0700

I couldn’t find my toothbrush this morning. That may not sound that strange, but I have one of those big Sonicare toothbrushes that would seem very difficult to lose. In fact, where my toothbrush was supposed to be, Jenny’s had taken its place, a similar Sonicare but different color.

I had no idea where it could be. Initially I blamed Jenny for hiding it on me. She came home angry last night for reasons unknown, and was argumentative. Since I had brushed my teeth before she had gotten home, I immediately blamed her for hiding my toothbrush out of spite. However, she explained that she did not hide it, and I eventually believed her sincerity.

Mireille the Observer

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 10:10:26 -0600

Mireille is far and away the most observant of our children. Ethan’s not bad - far better than myself. Quinton, well, he and I are about in the same boat, and it’s not a good boat. Mireille will notice just about anything, even if it seems inconsequential. For example, Jenny occasionally colors her hair, but in a subtle way such that color blind me will not notice. Mireille does, though. The other day, Jenny swapped out the pulls on our dressers in our room, and the first thing Mireille said when she walked in the room was “when did you get new ones of these?”

Miscellaneous Catching Up

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 08:52:45 -0600

It’s been awhile on a couple of these, so I figured I should jot them down before time erodes them from my memory.

This first story has been getting good traction in my friend and colleague circles. Before I can tell the story, I need to tee it up a little bit. Quinton is obviously a black male being raised among “the whites.” From time to time that causes some conflict in him. He really likes the idea of exploring black culture, but acknowledges that he doesn’t know much about it. One thing he likes to do to try to dip his toe into it is to listen to rap music. While there is a very deep collection of amazing rap songs, many, many of them delve into topics or language that is just a little rough to continually barrage the ears of our five year old, and ten year old as well.

San Francisco - 2018 - Day 6

Sat, 21 Jul 2018 20:18:26 -0700

Flying home is tough, but today was tougher than normal since our flight wasn’t until 8:30. I think I would almost prefer a midday flight. We theoretically had enough time to do some stuff, but we managed to accomplish all that we had set out to do in the prior 5 days. So it was going to be awkward. As I sit here, we were 3 hours early for our 8:30 PM flight to Denver, but it has been delayed by an hour, so we will be sitting here for some time!!!

San Francisco - 2018 - Day 5

Sat, 21 Jul 2018 20:18:22 -0700

Our penultimate day of vacation started out early-ish. Of course, we got out to Starbucks and had some donut holes from our new favorite donut shop in California, the creatively named “Jelly Donut,” where I can’t say I ever saw a jelly donut there… I was a little nervous to be going to the wharf today because it was a weekend, so tourist traffic would be high. Our ultimate goal was to get to our whale watching tour by 3:00 which took off at the wharf, and the website gave instructions to places where you could park inexpensively for $50 a day. Being slightly more tech savvy, I found a spot at a nearby garage for $19 using Spot Hero.

San Francisco - 2018 - Day 4

Sat, 21 Jul 2018 20:18:16 -0700

Day 4 - I finally was able to get up in time to hit the road for a run. While I’m quite out of shape, I was still able to cut 25 seconds per mile off of my new-normal running speed while in the oxygen rich California air! Almost enough to get me to go out and do it again on this trip… Almost…

Much like yesterday, today was about doing the things that Jenny and I had planned on doing on our last trip but were prevented from doing due to the wildfires in Wine Country. So after our typical morning routine of breakfast, Starbucks, and now donuts, we headed NORTH this time to the Napa/Sonoma region for some wine stuff.

San Francisco - 2018 - Day 3

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 22:16:20 -0700

Friday was all about Muir Woods. Jenny and I had planned to visit here when we came to the area last September but weren’t able to make it due to the wildfires at the time. We were lucky to have seen a sign that warned visitors that they needed a parking reservation prior to visiting. We had secured a noon parking reservation for the day, but we were a little early. The parking attendants informed us that we couldn’t come until our reservation time, so we continued down the road to Muir Beach, about 3 miles past the entrance to Muir Woods.

San Francisco - 2018 - Day 2

Fri, 20 Jul 2018 22:16:15 -0700

After some much needed sleep, we woke up fairly early-ish and took in the world famous Embassy Suites complimentary breakfast! Well, most of us did. Despite getting up in time, Ethan decided not to partake.

The first order of business, feed the addiction, off to the local Starbucks. Once that was out of the way, we were free to head downtown for a day in the city. Our first stop was Fisherman’s Wharf. To get there we got to cross the Golden Gate Bridge going south, which means we had to pay a toll! Actually we didn’t pay the toll right then, we were just scanned. For those interested in how to pay tolls for Golden Gate Bridge, you can just go to their website up to 48 hours after you cross and enter your license plate information along with payment details. Pretty easy. It costs $6 to cross the bridge most times.

San Francisco - 2018 - Day 1

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 21:48:18 -0700

I’ve been traveling WAY too much lately. After a brief trip to Jacksonville, the boys and I went into the mountains last weekend, then I boarded a plane to Chicago on Monday only to return on Tuesday in anticipation of an early Wednesday departure to San Francisco. I’m happy I’m not sick!!! Can’t say the same for Quinton, however. Jenny called me on Monday evening to inform me that Quinton had been throwing up all day and into the evening. Should be fun!

2018 Boy's Trip - Day 2

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 20:50:03 -0700

Day 2

We started the day slowly, as any good boy’s trip would. Since we didn’t go to bed until later, we slept in until after 8:00. I sort of wanted to get going, so I got up and started cooking half of our 2 pounds of bacon and a dozen eggs. The smell was enough to wake Ethan up by 8:30, mainly because the apartment was so full of smoke that I think he started suffocating. No matter, he was up.

2018 Boy's Trip

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 20:29:30 -0600

Day 1

Here we sit at 521 Elm St. in historic Leadville, CO, our VRBO for the weekend. Ethan, Quinton, and I are doing our first “boy’s weekend.” It was hard leaving Jenny and Mireille behind, but we stayed the course and are going through with it.

The trip up here was rougher than expected. Traffic out of Denver to the mountains via I70 was somehow worse than it normally would be when we are coming up to ski, but we persevered. We even took a slight detour going over Loveland Pass, a route that we normally cut short by 30 minutes by going through the Eisenhower tunnel, but this weekend is about adventure and doing things that we wouldn’t normally be able to do when the girls are around!

Old Blog Reclaimed!

Fri, 04 May 2018 14:45:58 -0600

I have a small project going on right now. I’ve downloaded my old blog from Blogspot and have started persisting it here, in a more controlled fashion - everything all in one place! Since I had over 180 posts on that blog, it will take some time to reclaim all of the old posts and reformat them to properly work here, but the work has begun. It is tedious work, involving some level of digital archaeology, but I think it is worthwhile and will make this blog much more portable in the future.

Spring Break 2018 - Day Three

Sat, 31 Mar 2018 20:15:04 -0600

Taos

Our third day was dedicated to Taos. Having slept in a little, but not quite as much as the prior day, we had a little extra time to do some swimming in hopes of getting away from the crowds in the pool. We weren’t successful in avoiding crowds, but we did get about 45 minutes of swimming in before we left the hotel. Mireille, Quinton, and I played some hide and seek (it’s more fun than you would think). Mireille learned she could float with her little floatie thing, and even jumped into the pool with it on! Jenny and Ethan I’m sure did boring things in the room… Probably showered or whatever.

Spring Break 2018 - Day Two

Fri, 30 Mar 2018 21:34:29 -0600

Los Alamos

Thank goodness, today started out MUCH later than the prior one. Nobody really stirred until 9:00, giving Mireille a much needed 13 hours, and Quinton an even more needed 11.5. Of course, I was also happy to finally get 10 myself, though I was up several times in the night for the “old man pee.” While we all got ready, Jenny and Mireille went to get some coffee at the very convenient on presmises Starbucks in the lobby. Jenny noted when we got back that they rode the “alligator” to get down to the first floor.

Spring Break 2018 - Day One

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 21:00:53 -0600

AM

As we suspected, and as is typical, we were up way too early. Mireille woke up around 7:00 the first time, Quinton followed about 7:30. While Mireille was able to fall back to sleep for a bit, Quinton was screaming for food by 8:00, so we were up! We left Ethan to sleep while the rest of us went down to one of the dozen or so restaurants the hotel had to offer for a nice buffet breakfast. It was at breakfast that I learned that New Mexico is the only state in the union that has a “state question.” That question is, perhaps predictably, “red or green.” They are referring, of course, to what color alien they keep at Area 51! OK, they don’t mean that - it refers to chili peppers, where New Mexico is the “world leader,” whatever that means. At breakfast and restaurants it means that you basically get chili with anything you order, and you can order red or greeen chili to your liking. I typically choose green since I am now a Denver native, and that’s what us quirky Denver natives like.

Spring Break 2018 - The Drive

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 22:29:27 -0600

“Are we going to the hotel tonight?” This is the question repeated at least nightly for the last two weeks by our youngest, Mireille. For some reason she just loves hotels! I think it has something to do with the swimming pools. Perhaps she just likes to travel! At any rate, it had been a constant anthem for the last several weeks - “are we going to the hotel?”

The day before we left, we dropped the “Flex-car” off at Rack Attack to get rails and a luggage rack installed. We also purchased a travel box so we could finally travel in style. While the car had it’s new rack put on, Jenny, Ethan, and I visited the University of Denver, a local private school, to see if Ethan had any interested. Thankfully, he didn’t. It’s a pricey school!

Honor Roll

Mon, 26 Mar 2018 12:42:11 -0600

Last Wednesday, I was able to witness the St. Pius X 2nd Trimester Honor Roll ceremony, and my favorite middle child was among the honorees. Quinton achieved all A- or better in the last trimester. In fact, he got all A’s with the exception of one A- which he got in Art.

Congratulations, Quinton!!!

Quinton and the Gold Honor Roll

Oh, and just because she is adorable, here is a picture of Mireille in her new soccer uniform.

New Website

Sun, 04 Mar 2018 12:26:58 -0700

I know, it doesn’t look any different. That’s sort of the beauty of this story. I’m going to warn you, if you normally come here for my amusing anecdotes about my kids, or perhaps to be regaled about my home improvement exploits, this story will probably seem somewhat dull. However, I owe this entry to the greater technological community, as there might be somebody, somewhere, that thinks even a little bit like me and are trying to do something similar to what I’m trying to do. And if they are a little like me, they will systematically hack their way through problems using Google, and maybe this article will show up and help them.

The Next Renovation

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 09:36:02 -0700

It’s been awhile since we’ve done any major remodeling work to our house (yeah, right!), so it was time for us to embark on our next gigantic project. The thought was that we would do both upstairs bathrooms at more or less the same time. The kid’s bathroom was supposed to be “easy” since I was going to leave the shower pretty much alone, just update the fixtures and the shower head, but concentrate mostly on the floor, toilet, and vanity. Our master bathroom was going to be a little more involved, new toilet, floor, and entirely new shower save for the shower pan. Well, plans changed…

Christmas with the Tibbetts

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 10:50:09 -0700

We live in Colorado. Our families, by and large, still dwell in places throughout the Midwest. Year after year this generates some degree of conflict, particularly when it comes time for celebrating the holidays. For this holiday season, we celebrated Grady Christmas on the ever traditional weekend of the first weekend of November. For the Tibbett holiday celebration, then, we coordinated an early January celebration. Actually, it was planned to coincide with my 45th birthday, because who wouldn’t want to travel to the frigid midwest to stay in remote, rural Wisconsin with his in-laws on their 45th birthday!!!

Elf on the Shelf

Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:45:01 -0700

There are many traditions that I’ve learned of since leaving the nest that my family was either ignorant to or just didn’t celebrate. One happened this morning, and has for the last 21 years of my marriage, yet I still forget to celebrate it - St. Nicholas’s Day. Jenny celebrated it year after year, yet I did not, so even though I’ve now been in my adult life much longer than I was ever in my parents’ home, I still forget…

Thanksgiving 2017

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 12:16:24 -0700

Thanksgiving is literally my favorite holiday. I just love getting together with family and friends, cooking a delicious meal, eating said meal, just hanging out and napping with people. I think even more than Christmas, it is the most relaxing holiday out there!

This year, having already done the “Grady Christmas” several weeks earlier, our plan was to stay put for Thanksgiving. Luckily there are others in the greater Denver metropolitan area that are also too far away to spend the day with family, so they became our extended family for Thanksgiving. On the menu was the traditional Thanksgiving faire, turkey, rolls, potatoes and gravy, stuffing, scalloped corn, pie (lots of pie), macaronni and cheese, gouda roll-ups, bean dip - you know, the traditional stuff! One of the reasons I like hosting so much is because I get to keep the leftovers, so I planned ahead. For the nine people that were at our meal we cooked 28 pounds of turkey!!!

The Epic of the Flex

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 16:16:59 -0700

If you are familiar with our family, you know that we don’t really place a high value on vehicles. Basically whatever can get us from point A to point B reliably and without a whole lot of money in maintenance will do. In our particular family, we now have three vehicles, two Chevy Malibu’s that have a combined age approaching 30 years, and a “new” Ford Flex that is only 3 years old, but is approaching 100,000 miles itself. The Flex is supposed to be our “reliable” car.

Suburban Archeologist

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 08:42:44 -0600

Not an interesting update for those that are looking for news on my adorable and smart children, but something I’m documenting for posterity, and for my own purposes.

We do quite a lot of home improvement. I’ve always been the type that likes to try something on my own before calling a professional in to do it correctly and quickly. Last weekend, a couple of long running “curiosity” type projects finally had some major movement, which, since I’m kind of a dork, made me pretty excited!

A perfect parent's weekend...

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 09:38:40 -0400

This was a couple of weeks ago now, so it’s not as fresh in my mind as it was when it happened, but the event was important enough that I think it warrants documentation. You see, this was Mireille’s fifth birthday, her second in the United States.

For the weeks leading up to September 9, Mireille has been asking on a regular basis about her birthday party. She really wanted to have a party, with a bounce castle, and a cake, and presents! Hopefully she wasn’t disappointed. The only thing we didn’t really have was a cake, but we had a whole bunch of cupcakes! She didn’t seem too impressed, though, because it wasn’t a cake!

Mireille Funnies

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 11:52:46 -0600

Jenny was talking to Mireille on Sunday about things that girls talk about. I wasn’t privvy to the details of the entire conversation, because that wouldn’t be appropriate - I’m a boy. One little nugget Jenny shared with me was when Mireille admitted to her, “I wish I was a unicorn. But I’m just Mireille…”

Then, yesterday, our little Unicorn proved she listens and absorbs way more than she ever lets on. Since moving to Colorado we’ve had some difficulty adapting to the local colloqualisms. It’s not too different here, but the differences that do exist between here and Milwaukee are hard, particularly for adults. The one that seems most stubborn for Jenny and I is calling the last meal of the day dinner (CO) instead of supper (WI). Any time Jenny will say it in front of Maylee, she will make a big deal of correcting her. Just yesterday, Jenny and I were sitting on our newly completed deck with Mireille and discussing what we should do for supper. Mireille looked seriously at Jenny and said quietly, “It’s dinner mom, not supper.” Maylee is so proud, and now I am double thinking anything I say in front of her.

Colorado Adventure Series - Snow Mountain Ranch Day 4

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 17:52:46 -0600

Day 4

Today started out much the same as the last. I got up “early” and headed out for a quick run around the campus. The main difference today was that Ethan decided he would come with me! He’s training for soccer and was supposed to run 5 miles over the weekend. He decided that 3.2 at 9000 feet was a rough equivalent of 5 at 5280, which I’m inclined to agree with.

Colorado Adventure Series - Snow Mountain Ranch Day 3

Sat, 12 Aug 2017 16:52:46 -0600

Day 3

Day three started out later than day 2. With nothing really pushing us out of bed, the room slept in. I got up “early” around 7:00 or so and circumnavigated the property on a “run” of sorts. Not sure you can really call it a run. Jogging occured, but a lot of walking also occurred. It was very brisk to start the day, at only 36 degF, and a bit of fog made it a little spooky, but it was good to get out and about and get the blood pumping earlyish. As part of my run I found the Heritage farm, a turn of the century farm that has been preserved and now they hold horse riding breakfasts there. There are also some llamas there. The nicest part was the view from Piano Prairie, though. Framed just right, you could almost imagine what it might look like if there were no roads or dwellings of any kind.

Colorado Adventure Series - Snow Mountain Ranch Day 2

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 21:52:46 -0600

Day 2

Our first full day of vacation! Today is exciting because it will be most of our first time whitewater rafting. We were to be in Kremmling, about 45 miles away, by 8:30 for our half day whitewater rafting adventure. So we set an alarm for 6:30, which was fine with everybody considering we were all in bed early the night before, got dressed, had breakfast at the cafeteria, and headed west on 40 to the bustling metropolis of Kremmling via Granby. Fortunately for Jenny, we quickly passed a Starbucks at a City Market in Granby so she was able to feed her addiction while in deep rural Colorado.

Colorado Adventure Series - Snow Mountain Ranch Day 1

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 20:52:46 -0600

Prelude

When we first moved to Colorado two years ago, we made a point of being “tourists in our own state.” It seems so often that we live somewhere and never really get to experience it like somebody who visits. Life always seems to catch up with us. Lord Soccer demands attention, work, school, the house… It’s a never ending cycle of demands on our time. So we’ve tried to keep it more fresh here in Colorado, since there is so much to see out here (despite there not being any measurable amount of recreational water anywhere out here).

Logitech K810 Reset

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 08:26:10 -0700

I have been using the same external keyboard for my last three Macs, an excellent little Bluetooth keyboard from Logitech called the Logitech K810. It’s meant to be a keyboard for a Windows machine, but it works perfectly well for my Mac as well as my various iDevices.

This morning when I came in to start working for the day, I found the keyboard had lost its mind! None of the keys worked properly. When I’d press Alt (which I have mapped to Command), it would turn the volume up. If I tried the Alt on the right side of the space bar, it would bring up the Print dialog. Things just weren’t quite right.

New Driver Out There

Thu, 29 Jun 2017 14:52:46 -0600

As of Monday, June 26, the world has a new driver. Ethan passed his driver’s test last Friday and made it official with the DMV (and our insurance agent) on Monday. It was actually a nice thing today. It’s Bike to Work day here in Denver, so I rode my bike in. About 2 miles from home, one of my tires popped, and I didn’t have a repair kit with me. It was 7:00, but since he now has a license, I was able to save a marriage by having the 16 year old come and pick me up so I could repair the tire and continue on to work. Already that insurance money is paying dividends!!!

Summer is here!

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 14:52:46 -0600

Summer is finally upon us. Last week was a full week without school, except for Mireille, but that’s daycare - even though she calls it school. The temperatures as of last Thursday definitely represented a shift into the ungodly hot area, though in Denver, if you can find shade, you are in good shape since the humidity is very comfortable. As a family we are definitely settling in more and more as the years have gone by.

Mireille's English Progression

Tue, 30 May 2017 15:18:41 -0600

It’s been over a year, and Mireille continues to grow and develop. Outside of some difficulties in identifying colors (something I can’t really fault her here) and a current disinterest in letters or numbers, she’s developing quite on par with what I would expect. She does continue to have some interesting phrases, usages, and interactions from time to time that merit documentation.

Recently she has started using a phrase whenever people do something that she really doesn’t understand. Not that she doesn’t understand what they are saying or doing, but doesn’t understand why a person would do that in the first place! As you can imagine, this is something that happens a lot with her American family, particularly her dense father and brothers. The phrase she attributes to this is, “What your problem is?” The look on her face is impossible to properly document, but it’s pretty hilarious any time she does it - funny enough that it hasn’t started bothering me quite yet.

Happy Mother's Day

Mon, 15 May 2017 11:04:40 -0600

Happy Mother’s Day to my kids’ mom, and of course my wife, who luckily happen to be the same person! This year we celebrated by going to a brunch at one of our favorite places, Bull and Bush Brewpub! It’s a difficult thing to get all of our kids both out of the house and behaving in a public place, but for the most part they held it together through brunch.

Bathroom Remodel

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 08:26:10 -0700

Our house was built in the 80s, 1982 to be exact. Many, if not most things have not really been touched since then. Sure, fresh paint has been applied to the walls and carpet occasionally replaced, but the “bones” of the house have remained unchanged for the last 35 years.

That changed immediately when we moved in almost 2 years ago. It started with windows, moved to the kitchen (which is still awesome, btw), moved on to doors, and now has passed to the biggest thorn remaining on the first floor, the bathroom.

Potpourri

Sun, 29 Jan 2017 17:02:48 -0700

As is typical now a days, I find myself delinquent in my posting. I blame my new job. Nothing more. Oh, and having three kids is hard. Not sure I’ve mentioned that. Still, they keep us on our toes, and I occasionally remember to write some of the remarkable things down that they do. The following is a small collection of the things I’ve remembered.

Mireille

…on language…

Mireille’s pronoun usage continues to improve, though her favorite pronoun continues to be “him.” The possessive form of her version of the “super pronoun” is him’s. I don’t know where she heard the song, but the other day she started singing an adorable rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” or at least the beginning of it. Her’s, however, went like this.

2016 - The Year in Review - First Trimester

Mon, 26 Dec 2016 18:55:09 -0700

I can remember one year when we did the traditional “Holiday Letter.” It was the year that we were in the process of trying to adopt Quinton, so we were “marketing ourselves” to our family and friends that year. Looking back, it was a fun letter to do, even if it was not necessary from the salesman side of house. I thought it would be fun to condense 2016 into a bit of a letter to our family (thank you both of my readers) and so that future versions of ourselves might enjoy reading it as well. So, here it goes!

Mireille's English - now with Pronouns!!!

Sat, 03 Dec 2016 20:47:29 -0700

Mireille has been in the US for right around 8 months now, and she still has yet to stop amazing me with how quickly she is adjusting. It’s not only just the English, though that is remarkable, but everything else as well. I don’t think I can really explain it better than I can show it with the picture below which I believe encapsulates the completeness of Mireille’s Westernization.

Westernized Mireille

Beyond device usage and creature comforts, Mireille continues to pickup English at an alarming rate. She’s been playing around with pronouns lately. The other day, while in the same bathroom as is shown in the above picture, she said to me, “Ethan’s too big for this bathroom.” I prodded her to ask her why she thought he was too big, and she responded, “him’s butt’s too big.” Him is pretty much the pronoun for any person that is not herself. She still rarely uses “I” or “my” but instead opts for speaking of herself in the third person, but she has started referring to others in the shorthand “him,” so that’s progress!

The First Snow of the Year

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 09:31:29 -0700

Last week it snowed in Denver for the first time this season. It’s a mixed bag out here for snow. People don’t really care for it in the city, like most places, but love when it happens in the mountains, where it is supposed to be. My kids certainly love it, at least the first snow.

Mireille has been saying “snow’s coming?” since about August when Jenny showed her some snow boots she could wear. When it finally snowed last week, I picked her up from school and the first thing she said was “it’s snowing!” As soon as we got home, she wormed her way into her snow pants, coat, boots, hat, and gloves and demanded that I come outside with her so she could play in the snow.

A Bloggable Offense

Tue, 08 Nov 2016 09:22:02 -0700

Quinton loves his iPad, and he loves video games. Those are his leisure time activities, which is a funny thing to say, leisure time for an 8 year old! What he really loves to do is to enjoy both of them at the same time, which is something we try to limit for various reasons. It also presents itself as an opportunity for us when dolling out discipline.

Last week, Quinton had some egregious issue for which he had to be punished. The worst thing we can do to him is to take away his iPad. Since this escalated, we had to not only take away his iPad, but also limit video games for the weekend. Because he is stubborn he still managed to get his iPad from time to time, so I took additional measures to actually take away his network access, which I can do from the wireless router. This was effective, for a time…

October 2016 - Big Update!

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 19:39:06 -0600

It’s October! October has been a busy month, but what month hasn’t been, really. So it’s been awhile since there’s been an update of much substance. So, while my family answers the door to greet and treat Halloween visitors in full costume, I thought I would take a few minutes (or 60) and update the world on the goings on in the Grady Household.

Adoption - Complete

I don’t have to restate how much work and waiting it’s been to complete this, our second adoption. It’s been long. This past Friday, though, we hit a big milestone. Mireille had her day in court, and she is now officially adopted in the United States, meaning she if officially a Grady! I wish that meant we were all done! But alas, this is yet another milestone. It marks our ability to complete more paperwork, and pay out more money for interesting new bureaucratic processes. But, it is a reason to celebrate, at least for the fact that this part of the process has come to a close.

Mireille the Magician

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 20:34:27 -0600

Quick one today. I need to document this, because it cracks me up. Lately Mireille has been doing magic tricks. Yes, you read that correctly - my four year old knows how to do magic tricks. Well, she knows a single trick, but she’s OK at it, and is working at it and trying to perfect it.

What she does is she takes an item and puts it in her hand. Then she asks you to pick which hand it is in. When you do, she shows you, and typically it is in that hand. Then she will try to distract you while she puts the object in her pocket. Then the routine starts over - pick a hand… This time she’ll open both, and lo and behold, it’s gone. She’ll even proclaim, “It gone!”

Quick Updates

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 10:18:11 -0600

After five days of adult vacation in New Orleans, Jenny and I were happy to be back with our kids, and probably a bit surprised that five days wasn’t quite enough to really decompress! Things went back to normal very quickly.

Mirielle gas been constantly about three things - now, trick or treating, and the party that she was going to yesterday. The snow things is pretty funny. I seem to remember her not liking it very much when it showed up last spring, but just about every day she will ask us, very seriously, “snow coming?” I think she mainly wants to wear her snow boots that she found in her closet. Having a girl is weird!

Mireille's Birthday!

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 08:39:35 -0600

Mireille on her Fourth Birthday

Our little girl turned four!!! This was a pretty special birthday for us. It’s the first one we got to celebrate with her! We have sent her gifts for each birthday in the Congo, but I’m pretty sure she hated all of those gifts. It was a weird thing - it’s very expensive to send stuff to the Congo, so we would just send one of our agency’s lawyers money and ask them to purchase something local for her. Then they would give it to her and send us pictures. One year they got her this really creepy looking doll and she looked like she would rather play with mud than with that doll!

Colorado Adventure Series - Crested Butte

Sun, 28 Aug 2016 21:38:05 -0600

A couple of weeks ago, friends of ours from Wisconsin contacted us and asked if we wanted to spend some time with them in Crested Butte. They have a condo there that they were going to be visiting, and we decided it would be fun to check it out. I have to say, I’m glad we did.

Crested Butte is quite a long drive from our home. At about 4.5 hours, it’s by far the furthest we’ve traveled for this summer’s adventures, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check it out. It was supposed to be a nice place with a good sized and under attended ski hill. So why not!??!

New Theme!!!

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 19:04:39 -0600

You may have noticed something new when you browsed here today. No, I didn’t adopt another kid… I didn’t have to shovel 12 inches of snow… It’s a new theme for the website! I’m sure you are as excited as I am about the change… Doesn’t matter - this is my blog, and I can put whatever I want here.

This theme is awhile in the making. I’ve been doing web development for probably 17 years (well, I’ve been pretending to do it for that long - much of that time has been dedicated to managing web developers, but let’s not split hairs), and in the time I’ve been doing it, it has changed mightily. In the early years, you had to do literally everything yourself. And in an environment that didn’t match up with many of the desktop or server environments (that being HTML/JavaScript/CSS), it wasn’t always pretty.

More English

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 09:19:33 -0600

I was amused by these so I had to post them. Mireille is learning English really quickly. Not all is worthy of recording as most is mundane, but there are a few…

She loves to eat! And she loves to try new food - but she doesn’t always like the food that she’s trying. When she happens to try something that she doesn’t like she says “I like this uh-uh.”

Family Hikes

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 21:04:51 -0600

Last summer when we moved to CO, we weren’t very busy initially, so we took the opportunity to explore our great new state. This summer, after track has ended and we’ve buttoned up most of our backlog of home improvements, we have decided to do the same thing.

Two weekends ago we went to Frisco for the weekend with Maylee and Steve. While there we stayed at a hotel, did a little shopping, visited three breweries (yeah), but the main event was a 20 mile bike ride, 10 miles each way between Frisco and Breckenridge. It was really a lot of fun, and the kids did really well, particularly Quinton who biked it all under his own power and didn’t complain a single time! Mireille was biking in her own way behind my bike, even peddling (the wrong way) from time to time. It was a lot of fun, but we were all very tired when we were done.

Ethan Driving Lessons

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 21:27:19 -0600

It’s fun having somebody to drive you around, I’m finding. Since getting his permit, Ethan has logged a little over 5 hours of driving of the 50 that he needs to log by June next year in order to obtain his driver’s license. When he started driving, and after seeing the number of hours he would have to drive, I told him that there were over 300 breweries in Colorado, and the way he was going to learn how to drive was to take me to as many of them as he could… Last night he told me that it was time to drive, and that I should grab my Pub Pass and we would stop for a beer somewhere. Man, that kid knows how to convince me!

Quinton's Last Track Meet

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 21:27:10 -0600

Quinton joined the Aurora Recreational Track Team this summer. We were excited about this particular activity because it would be something Quinton couldn’t just partially do. We find that, often times during soccer or basketball, Quinton is perfectly content to move at about half pace. He is bigger and faster than most of the kids he plays against in those sports, so if he plays about half way, he can still be competitive but not sweat too much. Not so much with track - there, he has to run his butt off to compete!

More English with Mireille

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 21:27:01 -0600

It’s been nearly 5 months now, and Mireille has really amped up her mastery of the English language. We recently went on vacation with the whole family to Wisconsin, so I had the opportunity to spend a lot of focused time with her. As the week went on, I started to see how she is systematically adding new words to her vocabulary all the time. First, she will point at something and ask you what it is (she says “Ques at?” which means “what’s that?”). Then you will tell her the name for that thing. Then she will repeat the name, but with a question inflection at the end of the name, forcing you to then repeat yourself. Finally, she will repeat the word, this time with statement inflection. The word isn’t always locked in at this point, but you can see it settling in for remembering.

Life of a Single Father

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 21:43:24 -0600

It’s 9:44 PM on Thursday evening. I’ve finally settled down to my computer and a bomber of my local’s double IPA. It’s the first time today that I’ve been able to sit without somebody demanding something or me having to be preparing something for somebody. You see, Jenny has been traveling for work since Monday morning, leaving me, a single father of three.

I’ve been a single father in the past. There’s something much more complicated about being a single father now-a-days, however. Not only is it three kids, which even though we’ve added only one child, the apparent number of children seems to have risen exponentially. No, it’s not just the third child, but the fact that the third child is a three year old black girl! Let me explain.

ACHC Camp and English

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 07:58:48 -0600

Last weekend we had to opportunity to go to the African-Caribbean Heritage Camp. It is one of a set of camps put on by an organization in town here that focuses on transracially formed families, specifically formed through adoption. Yeah, they have organizations for everything! We had been to the camp once before, two years ago, and enjoyed it so much that we decided to move to Denver!

Over the course of the two and a half days of camp we were all immersed with people in a very similar situation to our family. There were many speakers and round tables which were both thought provoking and frustrating (mainly the round tables), but in the end it was a great experience for our family to be around other families that look just like ours. That just doesn’t happen very often!

My Father-In-Law

Thu, 26 May 2016 10:33:43 -0600

This post got lost in the draft folder. So I’m posting it about three weeks late. Just for context…

Last weekend, my father-in-law, Bruce Tom Tibbett, passed away. It was a difficult thing to comprehend, somebody that we’ve been so close to for so long will no longer be with us. I’m sure I heard it somewhere how Freud describes the death of a parent - it reminds us of our mortality. It starts the clock on when we are likely to follow. I think that is certainly true, but for Tom, I think it is something more as well. He has left a hole that will not be easily filled again in many people’s lives, my own being one of them.

Quinton the Actor

Mon, 23 May 2016 14:15:12 -0600

For some reason, Quinton has decided lately that he wants to be an actor. He feels he could be rich, and feels that he’s every bit as good as the people he’s seen on TV and movies.

Yesterday on our trip back from Colorado Springs where we were watching soccer, Quinton was going into great detail about what would happen when he’s an actor. First I told him that he’d probably need to hire an agent. He said fine, but when I told him that he’d have to pay one, he changed his mind. Eventually he decided that he could just have me be his agent. I’m sure he figures I have great Hollywood connections and would make a great agent. Of course, he wouldn’t have to pay me… When confronted with the fact that I would still need to pay for things, he came up with some clever thoughts. I could live with him, for one thing. Jenny and Mireille would still live in our house, but he and I would live in his mansion. Then we could have a Mustang to drive around in since we wouldn’t have anybody else to drive around, and he doesn’t intend to have a girlfriend or anything. He did say we could get a truck - you know, for long trips…

Happy 15th Birthday, Ethan!

Tue, 17 May 2016 07:42:46 -0600

It’s not often that I blog about our oldest son, Ethan. He’s not cute and little anymore. He doesn’t say stupid things innocently so that I can have poignant teaching moments with him… Well, he doesn’t do that as often, and he would probably take exception to me announcing them to the world now that he’s all social media savvy and all.

Ethan has grown into quite the young man. Though he is only 15, he has already learned many of life’s most important lessons, mainly the ones about treating others as you would want to be treated - he excels at that. He has adjusted famously to having his life uprooted, moved to a new state, and started a high school where the lunchroom staff is larger than the entire population of his old school.

Learning English

Tue, 03 May 2016 07:57:13 -0600

Mireille has been in the US for around 2 months now and by all accounts is doing pretty well. One thing that we constantly worry about is whether she is picking up English quickly enough. Of course we are on all these Facebook groups and we constantly hear about how much English people’s kids are picking up and Mireille has been a bit slow on that front. I tend to think many of those people are embellishing their stories quite a bit, but whatever - she is a strong willed girl and she’s going to speak Lingala, dammit!!!

Mireille Quickies

Fri, 08 Apr 2016 08:30:03 -0600

I have a couple of “novels” in the works. Sometimes I let those clog up the works when I should be doing smaller, more frequent updates. So this is one of those smaller, more frequent updates. I’m finding my available time much harder to come by with the addition of the third child. I’m sure that will normalize out at some point, right? Those with three or more kids, back me up here!!!

A Sh!tty Morning

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 07:40:04 -0600

Mireille’s been home with us for two weeks today. Many of you are probably looking for some post that goes through that in some detail. This is not that post. I’m working up a larger post, but interestingly, going from two to three kids, and having that new kid be 3.5 years old, well, it changes how you can spend your time. Ah, material for another post. This post deals with an acute familial incident that happened to involve the entire family in one way or another…

Two Days on the Hill

Sun, 28 Feb 2016 10:15:09 -0700

Preamble

I briefly considered titling this “Mr. Grady Goes to Washington,” but I didn’t like it for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t really think of myself as Mr. Grady. And more importantly, I have never really seen the movie, and I hate giving false information.

This is a story about a number of things… Adoption, politics, travel, weather… Hold on to your seats, and grab some NoDoze. This might get boring!

She's Coming Home!!!

Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:59:33 -0700

Riding to my Red Eye

Dulles Airport

Empty International Arrival Terminal

UA 951 from Brussels

At at DGM, Ironic Lunch

The Wait is Excruciating

The Plane has Landed!

Busiest Time of Day

She's Here!

Confused?

Proof - in the U.S.

Playing Dress-up

And... Out.

Playing with Mama

Women, they be shoppin!

Playing with Yaya

Starting the Hair Restoration Project

Left on the red-eye on Saturday night. Nothing open in the airport. Arrived at Dulles at 4:00 AM. Nothing open in the airport. $25 cab ride to the hotel 7 miles away. Couldn’t check me in. I annoyed them into letting me check in early. Napped for 2 hours.

Happy Birthday Quinton!

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 08:26:05 -0700

8 years ago yesterday, we were given a call that Quinton’s birth mother was going into labor. By 10:30 AM on this morning, 8 years ago, Quinton was born!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 8 years. Looking back on the pictures, so much has happened. He has grown so much, made us laugh, made us cry, asked so many important questions, and taught us things we never thought we even needed to know. I don’t think he will ever know how lucky we are to have him as part of our lives.

The "Hack" Font

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 10:53:23 -0700

Sorry, no cute stories about Quinton and the funny things he says today. No interesting tales about Ethan and his quest to become a driver one day in the next year or so… Today I thought I’d take an aside and post a public service announcement on the “Hack” font.

Why do you care? You likely do not. However, if you’ve found this post and are still reading, let me tell you why I like Hack.

January Ski Weekend

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 07:41:50 -0700

As a sort of late birthday present, a few of our Wisconsin friends came out and enjoyed a ski weekend with us at Copper Mountain, the resort where we have our season passes. Tim Z. was the first to arrive on Friday afternoon. After dropping off the dog, then picking Tim up from the airport, we headed west through typically terrible Denver traffic - perhaps leaving at 4:30 was a poor decision. Nevertheless, we made it to our hotel by around 7:00 after only having to stop once for snacks and toilets.

DRC Update

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:04:12 -0700

So… There are a couple of updates, but we’re still stuck.

The US sent a delegation of congressmen to the DRC to talk specifically about this issue. As has become typical, the DRC responded with things that we want to hear. I won’t go into details, but I wanted to document, for posterity, the letter I wrote to my congressmen in Colorado. I’ve been interacting with their offices for the past couple of months and have a fairly good rapport going with my contacts.

The Mission Viejo Elementary Football League

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 08:08:47 -0700

I’m pretty sure I posted about Quinton’s recent obsession with Football in a prior post or two. If not, let me just say that Quinton has fallen HARD for football and all things about it. It’s to the point where he will actually put down his iPad (gasp) and ask me to turn on a football game when he knows one will be on. If you know Quinton, you know that is not something to take lightly.

Kids these days

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:21:28 -0700

Most days are pretty much the same. I get up at 5:30, shower, get Ethan up at 6:00, make breakfast for us, then leave around 6:30 to get him to School. After that I’m not sure what typically happens as Jenny just takes care of it. Well, last week I had the opportunity to walk Quinton to school because Ethan had final exams and would be getting done around the time Quinton would normally be going to school.

There, I fixed it - plumbing edition

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 07:27:08 -0700

One of these days I will get around to posting the epic project that we’ve undertaken of redoing our kitchen. It’s been about 4 months in the making and we’re hitting the final stretch! Last week the countertops were installed so we finally got our new sink installed. Unfortunately, the countertop guys don’t do plumbing, so that’s my job!

I had budgeted three trips to the hardware store, and I was right on the money! The problems I had to deal with in this particular plumbing experience were as follows:

Thanksgiving, Colorado Style

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 07:44:26 -0700

Our first major holiday in Colorado is my favorite of all holidays, Thanksgiving! While it’s difficult to not be able to spend it with family, we were able to make good memories of it by spending it in the Mountains at a ski resort. Hopefully this is something we will make a tradition out of, because it was a lot of fun!

We went up on Wednesday and left a little early in hopes of beating the traffic into the mountains. One thing you will hear from people that live in Colorado is that going into the mountains, while awesome, is severely compromised by the traffic on I70. At only 2 lanes for a long ways, many, MANY resorts to service by that road, and unpredictable weather, it can be tricky to navigate. We were lucky and made it up in the basic standard, about 90 minutes from our house (maybe a little more, but it was in that general timeframe).

The Grady Farm

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 09:37:32 -0700

Grady Family Farm - circa 1980

The picture is of the farm I grew up on that is 13 miles north and west of Marquette, Iowa- The present owners took down the barn, chicken house, granary, and corn crib- but curiously left the outhouse that is south of the house. The picture is looking to the west and the farm my mother grew up on is the one in the distant west, just in viewing- you can not see the church and cemetery that is less than on quarter of a mile to the right in the picture- St Pius V Catholic Church, Cherry Mound where my Mom and Dad are buried and where I mowed every summer for about six years- I knew every tombstone in the cemetery and when someone wanted to know where their relative was buried, the priest would contact me and I would show them. I had the documents where our family, the Horans, (Mom’s mother’s maiden name) gave the land for the church and cemetery in 1874 or 5- but gave them to one of my brothers who seemed to want frame it and hang it on his wall somewhere.

Casa Bonita

Sun, 22 Nov 2015 20:49:12 -0700

Welcome to a new section of the blog, the Weekends section. These entries will cover things that we do as a family on the weekends. From hikes to restaurants to whatever else. Since we’re new to the area, most things we do here are new to us!

Casa Bonita

Last weekend’s destination was Casa Bonita, “The Most Entertaining Restaurant In The World.”

Casa Bonita

That’s their tag line, anyway. We shall see.

Bike Hangar Idea

Sun, 22 Nov 2015 20:02:33 -0700

Thought I would put this out there as I had never thought of this before. We needed to hang our bikes in the garage. I didn’t really want to spend too much money on hardware, so we just got the cheap hooks that you can get at Home Depot - they were like $1.50 each. I typically don’t like using those hooks because it’s a pain to find studs to drill and put them into, and then when you do, it rarely lines up with the thing you want to hang.

Adoption Woes

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 10:22:35 -0600

If you’ve known us for any amount of time, you know that we are, and have been in the process of adopting from the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past 3 years. It has been a long, LONG process.

TL;DR;

Last month, the Congolese government has dashed our hopes of completing this adoption in the near timeframe. It is questionable if we will ever be able to complete it.

Quinton's Snowboard

Sat, 14 Nov 2015 21:44:52 -0700

We are first year Coloradoans, so we are behaving like them. We purchased season ski passes, even though it is next to impossible to get into the mountains due to all the traffic. We are in the process of upgrading all of our equipment because no Coloradoan would be caught dead with the 10 year old skis that we have!

Since we are planning on going to the mountains for our first trip over Thanksgiving, we needed to get some equipment for Quinton and Ethan. Luckily, they bend over backwards in Colroado to hook your kids on the whole mountain experience. So they have all sorts of deals on equipment. For Quinton, who wants to snowboard, it costs $109 to purchase a bunch of used stuff for the year, then you can sell it back to them next season for $55 and put that towards a new setup. Great theory.

A Kitchen Discovery

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:55:58 -0700

We’re redoing our kitchen right now. I have a long post queued up for some time in the near future to go through some of the experience and show pictures. It’s been fun, but it’s also been interesting.

Last weekend we finally got to the point where we could take out our old lower cabinets and replace them with the new ones. The plan was to demolish on Saturday and install on Sunday. For the most part this went off without a hitch.

Quinton's Christmas List

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 08:38:04 -0700

Jenny had Quinton write a letter to Santa. Since he was also typing a thank you letter to his grandparents on my e-mail, he decided to e-mail his letter to Santa this year. I came across it in my drafts folder and found it amusing.

dear santa i want a ps vita a dirt bike a soccer ball a trampoline football gear mostly a dirt bike and a ps vita and halo 5 and ps 4 and 100 dollars and a golden retreiver.

New Blog Home

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 10:06:00 +0000

Announcing (DogsButtBrew.com)[http://dogsbuttbrew.com]!

It’s with some degree of excitement that I announce that I am retiring e-and-quin.blogspot.com. Over the years, the Blogger platform has served me well. It has captured many memories that I enjoy reading and re-reading.

No, I’m not giving up blogging. In fact, I’m doubling down on it! I’m just giving up on Blogger. As I said, it has served me well, but my interests have moved on. I wanted something that I could have better control over, something I could call my own. Oh, and I already owned the DogsButtBrew.com domain name and was paying for hosting… That site was in desperate need of a refresh. Combine that with a need to rejuvenate the blog, and you have the relaunched (DogsButtBrew.com)[http://dogsbuttbrew.com]

Now With Comments

Thu, 05 Nov 2015 10:12:59 -0700

If you’re here, great! I’m not sure how you found it because I haven’t yet linked the old blog to this one, nor have I done any advertisement or anything (I probably won’t ever advertise).

There will be a larger series on how the new blog was constructed and some of the technical ins and outs, but I wanted to quickly mention that the blog is soft-launched, and today I added the ability to comment using Discus, a SaaS based commenting and discuussion platform. Please test it out and contact me with any problems you see. It’s sort of “in beta” right now (not Disqus, but my usage of it).

Quinton and Fun With Words

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 19:21:14 -0600

New words for the dictionary:

becept /bee * ‘cept/

Origin - from what I can tell, a combination of except and besides. Perfectly encapsulates the meaning of both in different situations.

Example: “Everyone is having fun becept me.”

w’bout /wuh * ‘bout/

Origin - shortened version of “what about.” Not particularly interesting for its meaning but rather it’s usage.

Example: “The moon doesn’t have it’s own light - it only reflects the sun’s light.”

There, I Fixed It

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 21:34:14 -0600

Quinton has really wanted a remote control airplane for quite some time. Uncle Blaine bought him a remote control helicopter a little over a year ago that he absolutely loved for the entirety of the 10 minutes before he lost it in the trees. Over the years he’s amassed quite the aresnal of cheap, crappy remote control things - cars, trucks, motorcycles - each one cheaper and crappier than the last. So when he continually asked for an airplane, I continually managed to push him off.

Skype with Mireille

Sat, 24 Oct 2015 09:53:21 -0600

We got to Skype with Mireille this morning. It’s always bittersweet talking with her. On the one hand, you want to make sure you keep in touch so she at least has some sort of connection, but on another hand it just sort of hurts to talk with her. When we talk with her, we are reminded of the situation that we’re in, whereas other times we can sort of ignore it.

Hide and Seek

Sat, 24 Oct 2015 09:52:05 -0600

It’s hard to play Hide and Seek when you have a dog…

About

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 21:45:01 -0600

About The Hydrant

The Hydrant is the home space for me, Brandon Grady. It represents my random musings about things in which I have interest.

Myself, I am a married father of three living in the greater Denver, CO area. I like to brew my own beer, watch movies, officiate high school football games, program stuff using Ruby, Go, and JavaScript. We do a lot of home improvements. My wife and I like to run and try to stay fit. All of this will likely come out in one way or another in these posts.

Glenwood Springs, CO

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 10:41:00 +0000

A few weeks ago (well, over a month ago now), we took a trip to Glenwood Springs, CO. It was a trip to celebrate the end of summer and to get away for a little bit before the kids started school the next week. It was a nice long weekend, though the traffic coming down from the mountains left little to be desired.

At a high level, we walked around, went on some long bike rides along the Colorado River, visited a wild west theme park on the top of a mountain, took a cave tour, and did the hike at Hanging Lake. For anybody looking to go to Hanging Lake, here are my recommendations:

So... We moved to Colorado...

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 13:48:00 +0000

In case you haven’t been following the blog… Er, wait…

So we moved to Colorado. We’ve been eyeing a move up for awhile. This was the year to do it when Ethan was transitioning to High School and before Quin got too entrenched in his activities and the area. So we set out to do something new, and Colorado won out.

The thing that allowed us to do all of this was a company that decided to hire me as, get this, the Executive Director of Technology. Cool title, eh? IQNavigator is the company, and by now I’ve been working there a little over 2 months.

Congo Children's Fund

Sat, 28 Feb 2015 10:10:00 +0000

This won’t really benefit Mireille, but a family in much the same situation we are in has started a fund to help bring food to orphans in need in Kinshasa. We’re planning on doing some fund raising to help this organization. Despite your feelings on international adoption, it’s hard to disagree with helping children to get nutritious food and water.

Please consider donating.

http://www.congochildrensfund.org

Now with Video!!!

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 18:28:00 +0000

Update

the video permissions have been changed and should work now. Thanks for your patience while I learn to use computers…

As my brother pointed out, my Congo posts came out with images that looked like they should be videos. They were supposed to be videos! I’ve gone through the lot and switched them out for YouTube videos where applicable. Please go through from Day 1 and see some motion you may not have seen the first time through! You should be able to navigate to the posts from the nav-menu on the right. Enjoy!

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 8 - On the way home

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 14:25:00 +0000

Kinshasa - Day 7

My last day. I feel bad, but I was looking forward to this in some ways. Over the last 5 days, Mireille has turned into a typical 2 year old, and taking care of 2 year olds is HARD! Particularly by yourself. Luckily, when you have nothing else to do, it makes it much easier. It’s much easier to completely invest in what the child is saying and doing, which I did - once I got done showering, washing the dishes, and packing (I’m such an adult).

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 7 - Kinshasa

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 11:41:00 +0000

Kinshasa - Day 6

Getting down to it! Today I’m nervous again, but that hasn’t changed much from day 1 here, or day -2 for that matter.

Last night started out rough. Mireille was restless. She didn’t fall out of bed, but was up like 3 times up until about 1:00 AM. She didn’t cry or anything, but she got out of bed and asked me to hold her. After rocking her to sleep the other two times, I convinced her to just sleep in my bed with me the last time. That ended up working very well. She settled down and was completely out in short order. Her only requirement seemed to be that she had one foot touching me somewhere. That forced me to settle down and not be so uptight and nervous as well, so we both got a good night’s sleep.

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 6 - Kinshasa

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 11:29:00 +0000

Kinshasa - Day 5

It’s a hotel day - all day at the hotel. It’s a good and a bad thing. Getting out would be nice simply to stave off the boredom, but it also allows for a very concentrated, focused time for just hanging out with your child - something I’m not sure I ever did so much with the boys, or at the very least don’t do it anymore…

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 5 - Kinshasa and Surrounding Areas

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 09:36:00 +0000

Kinshasa - Day 4

Bad habits I’m already allowing my daughter to develop, because, hey, she’s under a lot of stress just hanging out with me. I hope I’m not setting myself up for bad things later:

Drinking soda - this is a big no-no for the sub-40ers in our household, but Mireille has already had soda every day I’ve been with her. She likes it.
Not brushing her teeth - it’s difficult enough to get her to open her mouth for me, much less brush. She has finally started using the toothbrush herself, but she does a terrible job at brushing…
Holding her until she sleeps - I’m pretty sure I broke my boys of this habit prior to them being 30 months old. I actually think it could be developmental progress in that she’s regressing to a more infant state. My guess is that she didn’t get a lot of personal attention as an infant, and perhaps craves it now. I’m happy to provide it, though it is frustrating at times to try to set her down and sneak away before she wakes up. Raising a two year old is hard!

Today started out fairly badly again in that I just cannot seem to get to sleep at a reasonable time! Despite only getting 2 hours the night before plus a 2 hour nap, I still could not fall asleep until after 4:00 AM local time (9:00 Central, coincidentally). I imagine by the time I leave I will have adjusted better to the time change - just in time to screw it up again. At least there I will have full access to my modern diversions and drugs.

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 3 - Kinshasa

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:48:00 +0000

Kinshasa - Day 2

After a rough night night, I managed to get up and get myself together by 9:00, when Papa John was schedule to show up so we could go grocery shopping. By the time he showed up, though, it was 10:30. Traffic… Common problem in Kinshasa! By then, we took off to ShopRite, a local, modern supermarket, where I purchased my groceries for the week. It was a little nerve wracking buying groceries for the week, let me tell you. Normally Jenny takes care of that kind of thing! I was very surprised at the selection, though. I managed to buy some fruit (bananas and grapes), eggs, butter, milk (which they store warm - weird), bread, sardines (Papa John insisted), cookies, and rice. Apparently a lot of the Congolese diet consists of rice dishes. Either that or “Foo-foo,” something I just learned of today from my new friend Andrew!

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 4 - Kinshasa

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:48:00 +0000

Kinshasa - Day 3

Today, I met my daughter! Yes, I met her yesterday, but that version of Mireille was guarded, afraid, and sullen. She’s asleep now - hopefully for the night. Today we made very good progress, and I am beyond excited!

The morning started out not so well. I slept terribly last night, by that I mean I didn’t really sleep at all. I fell asleep around 10:00, but Mireille fell out of bed at 10:45, and I didn’t sleep after that. I was worried about her, too many things going through my head… Every time she moved a little bit, I was up and on edge. So when 5:30 rolled around, I wasn’t very excited to hear her up, though I wasn’t surprised since she had been asleep since 6:00 the evening before!

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 2 - Kinshasa

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:47:00 +0000

Kinshasa - Day 1 - Airport to the Hotel

I was happy when I landed in Paris that I finally got a text message back from my guide, Papa John. That made me feel much more comfortable about landing in Kinshasa, seeing as how I’ve read many bad stories about the experience.

It is 6:30 local time on Sunday evening as I land, and it is completely dark already. Since I was in the middle of the plane, I didn’t get a good look at the landing, but what I could see, there didn’t seem to be too many lights.

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 2 - Paris, France

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:45:00 +0000

Paris - Charles De Gaul Airport

I landed around 8:00 local time in Charles De Gaul Airport outside of Paris, France. For my first trip to France, it was a little underwhelming. I suppose it’s true what they say that you don’t really visit a country when you visit the airport…

After disembarking my flight, I followed the hallways and signage to where my next flight was taking off, Terminal 2E the K gates (I think). I bought the AT&T Passport plan before taking off, which allows for free text messaging and reduced call rates via cell phone, so I attempted to text Jenny to let her know that I landed. While my texts successfully went through eventually, Jenny was unable to text me back due to some complications with switching between iMessage and SMS texting. This is something I need to take up with Apple at some point, because it took us four days to finally figure it out. For those that might suffer the same issue, you have to turn off iMessage on your sending phone, then remove any text conversations that are on the phone, then send a new text message to the phone number and not the e-mail address… What a pain!

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 1 - In the Air

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:44:00 +0000

Seat 9a to MSP

Leg one is done. Yes, the easiest leg, but significant nonetheless. My seat wasn’t bad - I was on the window next to an older woman who didn’t take up too much room, so that was good.

Things I learned from this step of the journey:

My earbuds suck. So much so that I have already replaced them with some cheap on ear headphones so I don’t have to monkey with them the whole time on the next two flights.
I’m too obsessed with food. Not knowing what the status of food on the upcoming flight is, I gorged myself at Charly’s Philly-style subs. Delicious, but didn’t need all that food! I think I’m afraid of starving in the next week and feel like I can stave it off by eating way too much before I go!

Now I’m sitting at gate G9 waiting for my next leg to board. Interesting room of people. Some people are clearly foreign, but it’s not super easy to determine. Going to be an interesting flight, but probably not quite as interesting as the next one!

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 2 - In the Air

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:44:00 +0000

Seat 33G to Kinshasa

I’m Tired!

Despite there only being like 50 people in the gate area, this flight is completely full! I’m on the aisle in the middle section among the cattle again. The seat’s not bad, though there’s little leg room due to a heater or some box that is in my leg area. This is a cutting edge plane… from the 90s. It has screens in each of the seatbacks that are touch sensitive (sort of) and retain the old 4:3 aspect ration. Didn’t matter - I slept for a couple of hours, woke up and watched Birdman (or most of it), then slept some more before watching the flight information channel as we descended to Kinshasa, where it was already dark by 6:30 when we landed… 1 Day down and I’ve seen very little sunlight!

The Great Congolese Caper - Day 1 - Milwaukee

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 08:33:00 +0000

Saturday, 7-Feb-2015, Milwaukee, WI, USA

So it begins… The trip I’ve been both dreading and anticipating has finally started. As I sit here in General Mitchell International Airport, I am anxious and hopeful at what the next week will bring.

We’re adopting a child from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mireille is her name, and she is 2 and a half years old. She’s been our daughter by Congolese law for over 6 months, but politics and what appears to be corruption have prevented us from bringing her home to live with us in the U.S. One day, I’m sure that will happen, though that day is not today, nor is it this week.

Mireille

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:23:00 +0000

I’m outing us to the world. Well, Jenny outed us on Facebook about a month ago, but this post makes it official - we are in the process of adopting a little girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In fact, we’ve been matched with our daughter for 18 months, and are in fact her legal parents by that country’s laws. In a very strange combination of power plays and international politics, however, we are unable to bring her home to the United States. What’s worse, we still have no idea when it might be that we will be able to bring her home. That aside, she is already starting to provide for some fun stories, which I always like to share.

The Great Mouse Caper

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:09:00 +0000

History

Quin loves pets. Ignore the fact that Heinz is our pet and he rarely is very nice to him. In fact, the nicest he typically is to him is when he ignores him. But if he finds a toad in the yard, or a stray bug on a window, he gets his ice cream pale, fills it with a little water and some leaves, and puts the poor thing in there until we force him to release the poor animal before they become a dead animal.

Quin Quickies

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 11:22:00 +0000

The Circumcision

This weekend, my brother-in-law turned 50 and we were invited to his party. On the 30 minute drive to his house, Jenny and I were behaving like the good parents that we are and allowing the kids to listen to the Comedy Central channel on Sirius Satellite Radio, something of which we are currently enjoying a free trial. The content on the station isn’t all that, well, appropriate, but we count on the kids not listening much like they don’t listen to us - ever.

Older Kids...

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 10:39:00 +0000

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything about Ethan. He’s getting older, as you might guess. It’s actually been quite shocking of late. In a year’s time he passed his mother up in height and weight and his voice has reached a near approximation of a man’s voice - a small man maybe, but a man’s voice nonetheless. His shoulders and arms bear resemblance to the Tibbett side I can only assume since they have grown muscular despite him not really doing much in the line of working them out, and he can grow a fair mustache. Sure it’s a little thin, but it’s facial hair. Not sure how I feel about our baby getting so big so quickly - he promises to pass me up in the next couple of years. I keep joking that I need to find ways to scare him in case he one day realizes that he could take me in a dual.

Big, Fat, and Stupid

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 10:37:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from an old co-worker who still worked at my old place of employment. It was a complimentary e-mail, fairly light in nature, which made it all the more mysterious why the e-mail header on my iPad read, “To: Big, Fat, and Stupid - From: <name omitted>”. Hmm… I asked him why that was what he had called me in his address book and he claimed innocense. I figured somebody at my old job was probably playing a funny joke by getting one of the IT guys to mess with my name on the company mail server.

Summer Vacation 2014 - Day 5 - Saturday

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 21:29:00 +0000

That’s right, we’re going a little Tarantino here with the time jumping and what-not. By now it’s been nearly two weeks and the scars are just starting to form. This will be a blissfully short retrospective on the fifth day of our summer vacation, lest it is lost for all time to the memory of the harrowing experience of the trip home.

Saturday was not at all unlike Friday in most regards. A quick breakfast at the hotel, stop at Starbucks, then off to Regis University for our second and final full day of camp activities. The format was much the same as the previous day - we dropped the kids off into their age banded groups then headed off to our adult talks.

Summer Vacation 2014 - There and Back Again

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 23:04:00 +0000

Introduction

9:30 on Monday, June 30, 2014. We’re all showered, Quin is in bed, Jenny’s powering through another bout with Facebook, I’m watching The Wolverine with Ethan… It’s easy to forget about the events of the last 36 hours. It’s taken me an hour to type up the summary on this page, so I can only imagine how long the actual account will take me. This will be an epic, to be sure. It will only cover about 36 hours of actual time, but I fear it may take me almost that much time to condense my thoughts into the written word. I can promise you intrigue, adventure, horror, romance - well, maybe not romance, but it is quite a story. It will be long. I feel like Tolkien sitting down and recounting Bilbo’s trip back to The Shire. This could take a while, but hopefully it will not bore too much.

Summer Vacation 2014 - Day 4 - Friday

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 23:38:00 +0000

Friday started our first full day at camp. We had hoped to get a vacation run in this morning, but alas, it was not meant to be. We were able to get moving in time for our 8:30 breakfast meet-up for new families. New families were quite the thing this year with the camp doubling in size or so over the last couple of years.

After breakfast we dropped the kids off with their age appropriate groups, each color coded by shirt color. Quin’s group, the first graders, were colored red, and Ethan’s group, the middle schoolers, were colored tan. The separation ceremony was done in the gym along with some African dance being taught to us by a local troupe of African dancers. We, and most others, were predictably inept at dancing, though Quin made up for the rest of us. Ethan didn’t care to have any of us around him for the separation ceremony, but we could see him from across the gym and he looked typically uncomfortable, though he was trying, it was clear.

Summer Vacation 2014 - Days 1-3 - Tuednesday and Thursday

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 00:04:00 +0000

This year’s edition of summer vacation is to the Mile High City where we are attending an African and Caribbean Heritage Camp. It’s been a few years since we’ve been in Denver in the summer, so we were pretty excited to get things started.

The plan was to make the 15 hour drive from Tuesday through Wednesday morning. After 2/3 day of work, we packed up the car and… waited for Target to deliver some new patio furniture. That could have probably been planned better. They gave us a window from 2-6 on Tuesday. Luckily they turned up at 5:00. It seemed a little sketchy - they showed up in a Penske rental truck and had the back full of stuff. I don’t recall if they had uniforms on. Very strange.

Spring Break 2014 - Home!

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 22:44:00 +0000

Raining again this morning. As we were packing our room, I was thinking on my post from last night and how I had forgotten to put some important color on it. After the mall, the three boys (Ethan, Quin, and Loudon) and I went swimming in the pool. After we had swum for awhile, a couple of young girls came in - I would estimate they were around 10 or 11 years old. At one point they went to sit in the hot tub, where Quin followed them. I didn’t even notice he was gone… I was hanging with my nepphew, trying to show him how to float. A couple of minutes later, Quin comes jumping into the regular pool and asks me, quiely, “dad, where do we live?” I told him Oconomowoc, and he got out of the pool and went back to the hot tub. A couple of minutes later he did the same thing, this time asking what state we lived in… Then went back… It was kind of spooky how natural he was at working these two girls - I was at once impressed and taking notes.

Spring Break 2014 - Mall of America

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 22:17:00 +0000

The day started REALLY late this morning. The plan was to meet Uncle Bryce and Loudon at the Mall of America (MOA) at 10:00 to do rides and other fun stuff. When 9:00 rolled around and we were still having difficulty getting Quin out of bed, we knew we were going to have to delay a bit. It seems that vacation finally caught up to the 6 year old, who went to bed at midnight the night previous and hadn’t slept much to date. He sure made up for it last night!

Spring Break 2014 - The Museum

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 21:58:00 +0000

Ethan and I knocked one of our meager goals for this vacation off this morning, we had breakfast at Taco Bell! Yeah, we have lofty goals. We piled down a couple of waffle tacos and breakfast burritos each and headed into St. Paul to take in the Minnesota Museum of Science.

The MMS is one of the better science museums I’ve been to, quite honestly. We easily spent 3.5 hours there without even doing a movie! This included the dinosaur exhibit, which was very cool. I learned some interesting new things, in fact. I had no idea what a rennaissance of dinosaur discoveries we were in lately! I don’t think I recognized a single dino in the exhibit, they were all new discoveries in the last 10 years or so. My favorite was an entire new class of dinosaurs, the “titanosaurs.” Very cool name.

Spring Break 2014 - Minnesota

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 22:56:00 +0000

We departed Neillsville sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 AM, right on schedule. Jenny’s plans didn’t have us overtaxing ourselves today. The plan was to hit a couple of tourist stops south of the Twin Cities, then drive up to spend the late afternoon/evening at Blaine’s in Inver Grove Heights.

Our first stop was at (LARK Toys)[http://www.larktoys.com/] in Kellogg Minnesota. This was not our typical drive for a vacation as it involved ZERO interstate time. Highway 10 to Mondovi, then meandered south to the river, across the river, you get the picture. It was picturesque, or would have been if there had been any leaves on the trees. We stopped in Mondovi for a soda as we were parched, and were surprised at how WARM it was outside! I think it’s been so long since we’ve felt warm air that we didn’t know how to respond, but the day was beautiful!!

Vacation - The Emergency

Sun, 20 Apr 2014 23:54:00 +0000

Vacation just isn’t vacation until there’s a trip to the E.R. So today officially started our vacation!

This afternoon was pretty nice outside. It was around 60 degrees, not too much wind, so the kids went outside and played baseball. They were chasing the balls all around the property, including through some longer brush and what-not.

After a long day of playing, and a long night the night before, Quin was pretty tired. So around 7:30 we decided it was time to start what we thought would be a quick descent into sleepy time, starting with a bath. It was your typical bath, even though it was in a strange tub. Once he got out and was drying off, Quin was feeling around and discovered something strange on the underside of his “special purpose.” He showed it to me, and I confirmed - a tick!

Spring Break 2014 - Happy Easter!

Sun, 20 Apr 2014 13:32:00 +0000

Welcome to Grady Spring Break, 2014! The itenerary is quite extensive, to be sure, and the destinations exotic!

The trip started yesterday where we left the house in the van around 9:00 AM, heading north! Yes, you read that correctly, we headed NORTH for spring break. Didn’t say we were all that bright! The first stop was probably just off of MTV’s list of destinations for this year’s spring break, Neillsville, WI.

6 years ago today...

Sun, 16 Feb 2014 07:43:00 +0000

It was Saturday. I don’t remember many of the details of the day, unfortunately, but what I do remember is that we got the call that the birth mother had finally completed the harrowing experience of giving birth to who would come to be our child through the institution of domestic adoption. Over the years we’ve found that we’ve been given the gift of a wonderful, healthy, smart, and strong boy with whom we get to spend time with, learn from, be perplexed and frustrated by, and love on a day to day basis. It’s been a wild ride and I can’t wait to find out what’s next!

Quinny Quickies

Sun, 19 Jan 2014 21:43:00 +0000

Welcome to the new year! With a new year comes a renewed hope that I will actually keep this thing up to date. Here goes this week’s attempt!

Quin continues to grow up fast. Despite that, he still has the occasional accident at night where he wets his bed - and when he does, he wets it epically (his word). So we typically put him in a pull-up in the evening, which he takes like a good sport. A couple of mornings ago, I had just gotten done going for a run and was getting ready to take a shower. In our house, modesty is laughed at, so I was trekking from my bedroom to the bathroom, where Quin was using the toilet, without any clothing on. Since I had just gotten done running, I had the imprint of my elastic band shorts around my waist. Quin took a look at me, unfazed by the fact that I was completely nude, and gave me a concerned look. He pointed and said, “that hurts, doesn’t it!” I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I pressed him for details. He pointed at the imprint of my elastic band shorts and said, “there, where your pullup was. That hurts. I know!”

Couple of Quick Updates

Sat, 19 Oct 2013 16:11:00 +0000

We just got back from a vacation in our nation’s capital. This post is not about that, however, but I wanted to warn you that an update’s coming about that in the coming days/weeks.

A couple of quick ones, though. First, Ethan has had a couple of milestones in the last few weeks. As a seventh grader, Ethan decided he was going to run for his school’s student council as the vice president. At first he was quite excited as he thought he was running unopposed. In the days after deciding to run, however, he found out that he would have an opponent after all - and worse yet, he was running against an eighth grade girl. Undeterred he crafted a speech and started a social media campaign (OK, I’m exaggerating about the social media campaign, but that would have been cool) and ended up winning the post.

Too funny to pass up...

Wed, 04 Sep 2013 17:48:00 +0000

I haven’t blogged in awhile. Part of it is sheer laziness. That compounds on itself in that there are just too many things to blog about so I just can’t find the time to get it done. I’m in that situation right now. But something happened a couple of weeks ago that was too funny not to document - so here goes.

We went to Noah’s Ark - America’s Largest Waterpark - last week for a last ditch summer celebration. To set the tone (since I can’t tell a short story), I am building a deck, and had the guy coming out to auger the holes for the footings in the morning. My assumption was that he was going to be there for about an hour, from 8:00 until 9:00 or so, then we would leave after that. Well, that didn’t exactly happen as planned. He was there for almost 2.5 hours, and the fun vacation day to the Dells started out with one very angry wife.

Sweet Vacation - Alabama

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:32:00 +0000

Home at last!

Strange way to start a blog about our vacation to Alabama, but I ended up not really writing during the vacation - something I’m sure I’ll regret in the end as I’m sure there is some level of excruciating detail that I will miss out on by not doing this in real time, but in the end I’m sure it will save you, dear reader, from the droning on that would undoubtedly result from a real-time, blow-by-blow that I would have otherwise forced you to endure.

Late February Update

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:46:00 +0000

“He’s On Fire!”

When I was in college, one of my favorite games on the Sega Genesis was NBA Jam. It was great. You could crank out a game in 15 minutes, everybody could play, and best of all, most of the time, I would win. A couple of weekends ago I got nostalgic. Ethan has all sorts of time to play all these complicated games. I want nothing more than to do that, but have other priorities than an 11 year old boy does (getting old sucks). I figured, though, that I could still play NBA Jam - it fits into my schedule, it’s family friendly, and it is cheap.

Four Eyes!

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:56:00 +0000

n has finally succumb to the fates of his genes, or I suppose since we’re (yes, that was intentional) learning about heredity in science right now, the alleles that he’s been gifted from Jenny and I, and has gotten glasses. His prescription is very mild - he only needs them for class, pretty much, not for sports or basically anything else. But it has begun. Later this year we will probably be putting him in braces (for his teeth, not his legs). Get in line, ladies!!!

'Cause I like to party...

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:49:00 +0000

I have a running joke with the boys. Any time they ask me a question that begs me to define reasons for behavior, I like to answer, “‘cause I like to party.” It’s a brilliant quote from Talladega Nights - if you’re not familiar, check it out here:

Anyway, like most things I’d prefer they didn’t, both boys have started using it in daily conversations, with improving timing.

Quick Updates

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:40:00 +0000

Quin’s stretches

Toronto phone call - pless 2. Want to talk to Heinzie?

Halloween casinova.

Ethan’s soccer tourney

The booby man.

Editorial Note - I’m leaving this in here since it came across. I do remember a couple of things from it, but not nearly enough. I should always finish my blogs…

Halloween Update

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:33:00 +0000

Adoption

It’s all begun again. Jenny and I have started pursuing another adoption, this time an international one through the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). So far much has been the same as last time around - filling out paperwork, background checks, talking about my feelings - fun stuff. We’re getting to the point where we will be having a social worker come to the house to interview us, so we were explaining to Quinton what we were doing. Jenny explained it to him that he was going to have a new brother. He looked very confused and concerned and asked her, “is Ethan leaving?”

My Little Triathetes

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 20:41:00 +0000

Last weekend was the annual “Tri-ing for Children’s Triathlon,” a weekend long set of triathlons to benefit Children’s Hospital here in town. Jenny and I were both signed up to do the sprint triathlon, a 1/4 mile swim, 15 mile bike, then 3.1 mile run. We’ve done it a few years in a row now, so that’s not what I’m writing about - this year we decided to let our kids participate in the kid’s event on the Saturday prior to the adult races.

Little Quinny

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:53:00 +0000

Have you ever heard the “Little Johnny” jokes? For several reasons, I have a feeling that they might one day be replaced by “Little Quinny” jokes. Here’s an example of one - Little Johnny was in class learning his ABCs. The teacher was asking the class to name something with each letter of the alphabet in order. Little Johnny raised his hand for each letter, but she kept skipping him thinking that he would say something bad, like “ass” for A and “butt” for B. Finally, she had gotten all the way to R. Little Johnny dutifully raised his hand while nobody else did. She figured, “what could he say that is naughty that starts with R?” So she called on Little Johnny. Little Johnny immediately said, “Rats!” “Oh, that’s nice,” the teacher said, relieved. “No, Rats, with big penises!” Little Johnny followed up immediately…

Quinny the Spy

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 22:35:00 +0000

Quin and I were at home together the other day - I can’t remember why. Jenny and Ethan were out somewhere, I think to get Ethan a haircut. We opened the garage and heard something flying around in there. Before long, Quin had spotted the culprit - a bird had gotten itself stuck in the garage. He was having a hard time finding his way out, and Quin was enthralled! I went into the house and started putting things away from my day’s work.

Happy Memorial Day!

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:10:00 +0000

We had the opportunity to travel to Spread Eagle, WI near Iron Mountain, MI for Memorial Day this year. A friend of ours works for a company that owns a “cabin” on a lake up there, which they allow their employees to rent by the week during the year. When say cabin, I mean a 5 bedroom, 4000 square foot, modern home that is situated on a lake up north. So we joined 3 other families up there for the weekend.

Happy Mother's Day

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:53:00 +0000

My boys really don’t think much, normally, before a Hallmark Holiday like Mother’s Day. Last night, however, Ethan asked me (discretely) what mom’s favorite breakfast was. I told him that she liked an egg over easy with toast. He nodded, then said that he’d like to make that for her in the morning.

So this morning, Quin (and I, I suppose) woke up a little after 6:00. He watched Garfield while I watched the inside of my eyelids for an hour more. Around 7:45, I heard Jenny stirring, watching TV in the bedroom. After another 15 minutes, I went upstairs to wake up my tweenager who had only 10 hours of sleep at that point, and told him it was time. He asked me what to do, and I told him. While Ethan was frying the egg, Quin made and buttered toast. Ethan got the egg just right on the first try, impressively! Quin then put a carnation in his teeth and carried the plate while Ethan poured some orange juice in a glass and delivered it to mom for mother’s day! I have no idea how it tasted, but Jenny ate it all up, so either it tasted fine, or she is just a good mom - I suppose it could be both…

Westward Expansion

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:02:00 +0000

I had an interesting experience as a parent last night and had to share it with the world, because that’s what we do in the day and age of over sharing… Ethan has a test in Social Studies today. They are covering early history of the United states, from Washington’s presidency through the war of 1812. As an aside, I make a way better fifth grader as a 39 year old than I ever did as a 10 year old… That is to say that this information is way more interesting to me today than it ever was 30 years ago. So the way I quiz him is I go through and read the chapters while picking out what I think are key details of the chapters. To my delight, we were talking about Daniel Boone and the Westward Expansion, Louisiana Purchase, etc., and we got to a quote that is credited to DB himself when asked why he continued to move west until his dying day, which was (I’m paraphrasing), “I need some elbow room.” That, of course, made me think back to Saturday morning cartoon interludes from our friends at School House Rock. Since I had my laptop sitting right next to me, I quickly searched for the video and was rewarded with the 3 minutes and 10 seconds of goodness that I remembered. I quickly brought it up and let Ethan watch it. I now share it with you for nostalgia’s sake:

Potpourri

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:50:00 +0000

The Big Update

First, for the prerequisite apology. My wife and my mother both have scolded me for not having an update out here for going on 2 months now, so here is the big update.

Quin Does Music

Over the last 2 months, Quin has put his musical skills on display. He enjoys listening to music on his CD player in his room - last night he told his babysitter all about the music player he had in his room with at least 10 CDs! He also told her that he had a really big bed. Something tells me that he is starting to develop his pickup lines early. Anyway, he loves listening to all kinds of music, but some of his favorites are “Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO (he sings it “Sexxies and I Know It”) and “Moves Like Jagger” by Marroon 5, which Quin sings “Moves like Quinton.” His moves are not to be taken lightly. He very much enjoys doing “The Booty Dance” for us (sorry, I don’t have a video), particularly when Ethan is showing us some of his moves. More on that later.

January update

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:05:00 +0000

It’s tough for me to write today because my favorite group of millionaires lost to somebody else’s favorite group of millionaires in a game I was sure would go my millionaire’s way. Oh well, we must persevere!

It’s been a typical busy couple of weeks. Today was one of Ethan’s last functions as a Cub Scout, the Pinewood Derby. For most kids this is an exciting event, but for Ethan and I, we sort of dread it. Neither Ethan or I really understand what it takes to build a “good car.” Our cars generally make it to the end of the track, but rarely very fast, and always much slower than most other cars. After the first year of innocence where we thought we could possibly achieve a place, we settled into the common goal of not finishing last. Last year we only achieved that goal by 1 or 2 places, and that was in the overall results, not just within our den! So it wasn’t too shocking this year when Ethan told me that he didn’t even want to make a car. Since I’m a den leader, though, I was bullied into pressuring him into making a car, so we did, but we did the barest minimum of work on it. No cuts, he wrapped it in a car wrapper purchased from the local hobby shop, we sanded and polished the axles and wheels like we’ve heard you should, and finally finished up the car on Saturday night. It wasn’t much to look at, but it at least went straight!

Great West Adventure - Day 9 - Travel day

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:55:00 +0000

The last day of vacation is always the dreaded travel day. We were lucky enough to be able to get some laundry done at mom and dad’s before we left (OK, Jenny got it done), so we (Jenny) would not have to do it when we (Jenny) got home. But travel days are always a pain. Most of the morning was spent biding time until our flight. We departed pretty early for the airport - we had a 1:00 flight and arrived at the airport at 11:00, so we had plenty of time to get some pizza and wait at the gate.

Great West Adventure - Day 8 - Don't look down...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:10:00 +0000

Day 8 was to be a relaxing day! In that right, it wasn’t too bad. Mom and dad wanted to show off their new winter home state to us, though, so we headed out of town on Arizona 88 around 10:30 to catch up on some history and engineering marvels. Our first stop was Tortilla Flat, a (very) small stop on the way up to the Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River. What might be said about Tortilla Flat is that it is the last sane place to stop on Hwy 88 before you wish you had brought a dune buggy! After spending a short time in Tortilla Flat getting a beer and looking through some of the buildings, we headed out again on 88 with a destination of the Roosevelt Dam. 88, however, was the real attraction of today’s trip. All along my dad was explaining to me how horrendous this road was, and let me drive to prove it to me. Of course I didn’t really take this all that seriously - he’s old, right!? Well, let me be the first to admit that this is far and away the nastiest drive I’ve taken in all my years. Not only is it a curvy, mountainous road with little or not shoulder or barrier between the road and the canyon floor many hundreds of feet down, but the road is unpaved and, seemingly, ribbed (for her pleasure). I’m not sure of the science behind dirt roads and why they get so bumpy, but this one seemed to have been made so on purpose, perhaps to keep people from going more than about 15 miles per hour. Anyway, our 28 mile trek from Tortilla Flat to Roosevelt Dam took well over an hour. We did stop for some lunch along the way at Apache Lake where Quin started out napping, and upon waking half way through the meal asked us “where is everybody?” Business was not bustling in Apache Lake today!

Great West Adventure - Day 7 - Permission to Board

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 23:48:00 +0000

There was no plan in the works for today other than to drive back to Phoenix at some point. Small portion of the day, only 6.5 hours… Surprisingly, though, it seemed relaxed since we didn’t have an itinerary. So we started out the day like we did any other day on vacation, we ate at a local breakfast establishment. This time we found a local favorite, Panera Bread. Excellent bagels and sandwiches - oh who am I kidding, we just wanted something fast.

Great West Adventure - Day 6 - It's a zoo out there

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:56:00 +0000

In case there was any question to the subtitle of yesterday’s post, we were watching the weather where the cute weather lady exclaimed that the clouds were pretty moist and deep, and that she wouldn’t be surprised to see them start to rain at any time. I found that amusing - I suppose I’ve never really progressed past the age of 12 as far as my maturity level goes…

I again find myself 3 days tardy in posting this, so I think this will be pretty short. Today was about the zoo. The day started out a bit earlier than any of us would have liked. Around 6:25 AM, the hotel’s fire alarm system started going crazy. We awoke in a daze, but figured out what was going on well enough to put some clothes on, grab our “necessities,” (my wallet and keys to the car - oh, and the kids), and get outside. We weren’t outside more than a couple of minutes before they gave us the all clear stating that it was a false alarm. No kidding… By this time, Quin was finally starting to wake up. As I was holding him in my arms, he took his head off my shoulder, looked up at me and said, “please I push the button?” Apparently to a kid of three, pushing the elevator button is pretty much the coolest thing you could ever hope to do. The entire week he would dash to the elevator anytime we hinted at going up or down in it. Ethan caught on, being the mean big brother, and taunted him at every turn, threatening to push the button instead of him, sometimes succeeding. Of course, being the opportunistic parents that we are, we used it as leverage to get Quin to do the things we wanted him to do. So, whenever we were heading to the elevator, he would ask us if he could be the one to push the button…

Great West Adventure - Day 5 - Moist and Deep

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:36:00 +0000

Man, I have to start doing these as they happen. This is my third log today!!! To get me through it, I’ve gone to the fridge to finish off my San Diego brew sampler with a Karl Strauss Brewing Company Boardwalk Black Rye. Tasty!!!

Today’s plan was to go to Seaworld. We figured we would do things a little differently today since we completely missed supper yesterday, so we opted for a smaller breakfast of Subway sandwiches and Starbucks. After breakfast we headed north to Seaworld, San Diego.

Great West Adventure - Day 4 - A Ton of Bricks

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:16:00 +0000

Day 4 - San Diego. Today started out early with Quin waking around 6:00 - he’s getting better. He and I passed time playing iOS games on the iPhone and iPad in the second room of our suite while Jenny and Ethan grabbed 90 more minutes of sleep. By 7:30, Jenny got up and I hit the road for a quick run along the water.

By 9:00 we were off for a full day of vacationing. We decided to load up on breakfast since our plans for the day included Legoland, and our guess was that food would be somewhat expensive there. So I mapped out Perry’s Cafe near the freeway where we all ate enough to skip the next several meals - well, I did anyway! Delicious!

Great West Adventure - Day 3

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:57:00 +0000

Since we were up by 6:00 anyway, we decided to try to get an early start at things, so we got ready and left by 8:00. My parents graciously lent us their vehicle - they are currently going without any sort of motorized vehicle of their own, relying instead on pedal power and favors from friends - so we loaded it up and took off on our 6 and 1/2 hour drive to San Diego. Before we left town we had to make a quick stop at Starbucks to get Jenny her vacation nectar, Tall non-fat Chai Tea Latte, and at the gas station for a Pepsi Max for me - it’s not a diet soda, it’s a zero calorie soda for men! At one point, Quinton asked “where are we going?” I explained we were going to Starbucks to get mommy a coffee - he responded, “oh darn it, I wanted to go to California.” I need to take this opportunity to say that the gas station/car wash/oil change establishment at the intersection of Highway 60 and Signal Butte Drive in Apache Junction is perhaps the most beautiful gas station I’ve ever encountered. From the clean, modern, southwest exterior, to the wide aisles, copious beverage choice, leather chairs, high definition televisions while you wait… It was spectacular!

Great West Adventure - Day 2

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:56:00 +0000

As should probably be expected, since Quin went to bed at around 6:00 local time, he woke up around 4:30 local. I suppose the day was going to start early! We aimed to do quite a bit during this day, but ultimately decided to back it off a bit seeing as how we were still a bit groggy from the previous day’s travels. We did manage to get to the (Superstition Mountain Museum)[http://www.superstitionmountainmuseum.org/] which is the site of an old Hollywood set for westerns which only recently burned to the ground. We also spent some time at (Goldfield Ghost Town)[http://www.superstitionmountainmuseum.org/] where we got to see a gunfight, Ethan bought a cowboy hat, and we ended up taking in some old west entertainment at the Saloon.

Great West Adventure - Day 1

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:40:00 +0000

3:45 AM - the alarm called out the start of our Great West Adventure. We were ticketed for a 7:00 departure from Milwaukee’s General Mitchell Airport. With 3 and 10 year old in tow, we didn’t want to leave anything to risk. So we all showered the night before, set the alarm for 3:45, and aimed to leave by 4:15.

The plan went off without a hitch - the crew was excited for the trip. We pulled into our offsite parking lot at 5:10, plenty of time to spare. I suppose we could have probably slept a little longer, but who knows on a work day how bad traffic will get. After a quick shuttle ride we were at the ticketing counter, then off to the gate to meet up with our first trip on Southwest Airlines.

Staying in Shape

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:57:00 +0000

Four years ago I ran in my first organized race since I graduated from high school when I participated in a sprint level triathlon. Since then I got in shape, got out of shape, lost 30 pounds, and have been in pretty decent shape since then. I’ve also managed to run in a half marathon, 2-200 mile relays, a number of 5Ks, 10Ks, a 20K, trail runs, road runs, you name it. After all of these races, my last two have been the most enjoyable for me.

Welcome our new Family Member

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 07:19:00 +0000

A big welcome to Heinz Doofenshmirtz Grady, our new puppy! Heinz comes to us from Little Buddies Rescue where he was dropped off from a puppy mill. We originally went there intending to adopt his sister, but she had already been spoken for by the time we got there. No worries! Heinz immediately endeared himself to us by fetching a toy for Ethan - a sure way to his heart! He had to stay at the rescue for a few more days so he could be neutered and have his initial vaccinations, so we went and picked him up yesterday. Unfortunately Ethan is up north spending some time with his grandparents, so he was not here to help us bring Heinz home. Quinton has been a lot of help, though! He was so impressed yesterday by the decrease in attention that he pooped his pants!

Catching up with Quinton

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:49:00 +0000

Neither Jenny nor I are very good about creating content for a baby book. In fact, I know I could not tell you where either of my children’s baby books are - perhaps in the top of our closet collecting dust. To capture memories, though, I’ve turned to this ‘blog. It worked out pretty well with Ethan so far, and Quinton has been no different. This post, then, is going to be some quick hitters to get into Quinton’s virtual baby book.

Buyer Beware

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:56:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I ran a Webelos Scout Camp for Ethan and his Cub Scout cohorts (I know, the scouts are an intolerant bunch, but that doesn’t have to affect Ethan’s learning - let’s keep this among adults, shall we). The camp was pretty enjoyable - the boys were tasked with setting up the tents and camp themselves, had to take part in meal prep and cleanup, etc. Part of each camp is doing some kind of craft. After observing how crazy the kids went for this Indian neck thing they made at the winter camp, I thought it would be fun to do some kind of craft where the kids could make something and take it home with them - something they could wear. I came across “Paracord Survival Bracelets” through my searching, which turned out to be right up their alley. A week or so before the camp, I practiced by making one for myself, then I showed Ethan how to do it. After about 5 minutes he had picked it up, and about 10 - 15 bracelets later, he had decided that he was going into business!

Quin's First Movie

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:38:00 +0000

Cars 2 is out! We’ve been waiting for awhile for this event as I had unofficially earmarked it as the first movie I would attempt to take Quinton to. I’m happy to report that there was nothing out of the ordinary that happened… Yeah, boring blog post, but I’ll take it. I’d say he was as good as, if not a little better than Ethan when we took him to his first movie (I don’t recall which movie that was right now).

My Mac is actually a Slot Machine!!!

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:24:00 +0000

The other day, Jenny wanted me to burn a DVD for her to give to a person at church. I told her no problem, grabbed a blank DVD which I promptly attempted to insert into my Mac superdrive. I was somewhat surprised to find that I could not put the DVD into the drive, however. The computer did not say there was anything in the drive… Quite strange, I thought. I suppose that there could be a disc in there that the OS didn’t know about somehow, a computer glitch. So I went to “the Google” and researched how to force the Mac DVD drive to eject. Having found my solution, I executed it according to instructions. The drive whined and made that mechanical eject noise, but no DVD appeared.

Quinnie Quickie - TMI

Sun, 22 May 2011 21:19:00 +0000

File this one under TMI (that’s “too much information” for those not in the know). I believe I’ve discussed how Quin and I have pee races in this blog in the past. On Friday I went on a field trip with Ethan, and to make a very long story much shorter, I didn’t have much to drink during the day. When I got home, Quin wanted to have a pee race. While we were racing, I said, “wow, daddy’s pee smells bad” (I told you this was too much information - you had been warned). Quin leaned forward and sniffed and said, “Yeah, it does. You need a new penis daddy. A black one!”

Ethan's 10th Birthday Party

Sat, 14 May 2011 14:35:00 +0000

My son is 10 years old! It’s tough really to get my head around that fact. I can only imagine what it is like for my parents to think about each year one of their aging children reaches another annual milestone.

9 was a pretty good year. Ethan’s shown a lot of improvement in school, thanks to his mother’s constant prodding and encouragement, he’s begun to really shine at the piano, and is starting to show real promise at soccer. I’m not saying that he’s looking like he may be Pele one day, but considering our dismay at his total lack of competitiveness or energy in previous years, this year has been one of wonder! It’s hard not to have high, unreasonable expectations of your kids. Lord knows how badly we’ve screwed him up already. Well, I suppose we get pretty good contact with him for the next 8 years or so (man, is it that few?!?!!), hopefully we don’t mess it up even worse than we have…

Not my friend...

Mon, 02 May 2011 18:50:00 +0000

Quinton has experimented with lots of different ways to express his anger with people when they don’t do things he likes. Initially he liked to call people “poopy butt,” but we quickly tried to squash that. He then moved on to calling people “stupid,” which I think I like worse than poopy-butt. Lately he has categorized you as either his friend or not his friend. If he likes you particularly, or if he wants something from you, he tells you, “you’re my best friend (he pronounces it fwond).” If, on the other hand, you tell him that he cannot have a candy bar after he hasn’t eaten his supper, he says, “you’re not my friend, Ethan’s my friend.” Of course, he will pick whoever else is around at the time, but you get the picture.

More Adventures with Potty Training

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:33:00 +0000

So - potty training boys… Yeah… Well, we’re still doing pretty well, but something new has reared its ugly head. Now that Quin knows when he has to go to the bathroom, and no longer does it in his pants, he has decided that he wants to find other things to pee on other than the toilet. Jenny caught him peeing in the bathtub the other day. Yesterday I stopped him from going in the garbage can and in the refrigerator, while Jenny caught him trying to spray down the plunger in the bathroom. I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming. Oh, the joys of raising boys!

Adventures in Potty Training - again

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:15:00 +0000

Boy, a week makes a big difference. As of today, Quin is a week without diapers (while conscious). Last Saturday, Quin finally decided that he really, REALLY wanted to wear his light-up shoes all the time. He woke up on Saturday morning and told me, “daddy, I want my light-up shoes.” I told him that he had to wear underwear if he wanted to do that, and he thought that was OK. Since then, it’s been pretty much smooth sailing. Sure, he had a couple of minor slips the first couple of days, but overall it’s been outstanding! On Sunday morning when he woke up, Jenny went upstairs to find him sitting on the toilet pinching a loaf, so to speak. In fact, most mornings now when he gets up, the first thing he does is strip down and put something else on so he can wear his light-up shoes. One night I caught him with his shoes in bed with him! It’s kind of nice that we really don’t need to do a lot of potty training, we just have to find a bribe worthy of our kids training themselves.

Adventures in Potty Training

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:06:00 +0000

I hate potty training. Jenny does, too, for the record. We’re no good at it. We rarely stay at home long enough to actually get our children into a rhythm of going every so often, we constantly forget to ask, and, well, it’s just pretty convenient to not have to worry about one of the four bladders in our posse at any given time of day. That said, we have (finally) started attempting some degree of potty training with Quin… It’s not going so well.

Ski Vacation - Part II

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:22:00 +0000

Tuesday was another ski day. This time it was adult ski day. Quin was going back to school, and Ethan was enrolled in Woodward, an indoor extreme ski and snowboard school. The warehouse is immense with fake snow ramps that empty into foam pits and trampoline sections to teach people how to tumble with ease through the air. I think Ethan was in for a fun day!

Ethan and I went down to Woodward to drop him off while Jenny dropped Quin off at school. Apparently this day wasn’t as easy to drop off as the previous - Quin really didn’t want to go.

Ski Trip - Interlude

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:56:00 +0000

OK, I hope this goes away like almost all other things, because if it comes back and is something serious, I will look like a schmuck. But Ethan had his little spell with sickness yesterday, during which he thought he was going to throw up. He is a fan of the drama! Today, he has a low grade headache as far as I can tell, because he’s running around, tubing, and being a general 9 year old menace, but after sitting on the couch for 30 minutes drinking water and eating popcorn he started complaining of a headache again. He stood in the kitchen, looked at me, and said, “I hope this isn’t something serious. It probably is, though. I’ve had a headache for 2 days now - that’s not normal, dad!”

Ski Trip - Part I

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:56:00 +0000

As I sit here in our rented condo, Ethan and Jenny are sitting on the couch studying social studies (Jenny struggles, so they need to study), Quin is watching Monsters, Inc. on the iPad, it is brisk and snowing outside while the gas fire burns warmly in the fireplace. Our first ski vacation in 7 years is in full swing!

This vacation finds us in the beautiful US Rocky Mountains outside of Denver, CO. Though we’re already settled and active in our vacation activities, the trip started many days ago. Last Wednesday to be exact. We had settled down for a typical evening at home - Quin and Ethan were sleeping soundly in their beds while Jenny and I attempted to get some last minute television in before our whirlwind trip to Colorado. All seemed normal, that is until 10:30 when Quin called out from upstairs. It’s not atypical for him to wake up from time to time, particularly early in the evening. I slowly made my way upstairs to check on him. As I started walking down the hall, the door to his room opened and he walked out, covered in vomit. Awesome! Here we were, less than 48 hours from leaving for our trip, and Quin had come down with the flu! He was up the better part of the night, mostly dry heaving as he had done a pretty good job of emptying his stomach on round 1.

Dancing Quin

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 10:58:00 +0000

This video is hilarious, I think. Obviously there must be some degree of nature going on here as nobody of the non-adopted persuasion in our family can dance like this…

6 Feet of Air

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:03:00 +0000

Ethan belongs to the ski club at school. Last week we went skiing for the first time this year. Since Alpine is close to some friends of ours, we were able to meet up with them and their two kids, one of which, Justin, is Ethan’s age.

Justin and Ethan were having a blast! Justin snow boards, but Ethan skied. Of course, as soon as he saw Justin snow boarding, he immediately wanted to try that. Jenny tried to convince him that he would want to do that prior to us going, but he didn’t want to until he saw Justin doing it…

Christmastime

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:35:00 +0000

Wow, it’s been a long time again! I hope to post multiple times this week to get caught up. So much to talk about!

Well, it started a few weeks ago with Quin getting sick. The sickness eventually spread throughout the house but Quin got it first. The poor guy was just listless, throwing up, no fever, but sick. Every time he threw up over the course of several hours he just did it over the bucket, no crying or anything. He was fine the next day, but now he constantly tells us that he’s going to go “throw up.”

Pre-puberty...

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 07:47:00 +0000

My relationship with my oldest son seems to be changing quite rapidly of late. This morning after getting out of the shower I noticed a can of Axe body spray sitting on the sink intended for me.

Let me rewind a little bit - over the past couple of months it has become evident to us that we had “the stinky kid” in school. Ethan would get into the car, or just walk near us, and you could certainly tell he was there! Not wanting to be the parents with the stinky kid in school, we racked our brains to fix the problem. We tried buying him deodorant, we tried making him scrub extra hard on his every other day shower, but nothing seemed to really be working. Finally, fed up, Jenny laid down the law and mandated daily showers along with a strict regiment of male fragrances. He was resistant at first, but eventually he came around, so now he is a daily showerer.

Monsters

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:44:00 +0000

Quinny and I played “monsters” tonight. That little boy has quite an imagination. First he pestered me until I came to “play me.” So I followed him upstairs where he declared that he saw a monster. For the next 30 minutes we were hiding, kicking, and even kissing the poor monster until his daddy put him to bed (both monsters). Good times…

St. Germain - Day 4