Xrays immediately following surgery

One shows the two plates on two bones. The other is a spectacular shot of the screws inside the plate/bone!

Stitches right before coming out--10 days Post-Op

We have no idea how many there were--you are seeing two sides of his are, two sets of stitches. The incisions now have steri strips and glue instead.

Xrays at the office 10 days Post-Op

Check out the screws.

Hangin' With My Peeps

Game Day

Can you tell that the Marching Band is making the letter "A"?

The Mascot--Big Blue!

How would you ever get any studying done with a view like that?

Student Section! They were groovin'.

Half time. It was 9/11, so there was a moment of silence and this cool flag.

We had great seats!

And it's another Aggie

TOUCH DOWN!

Click the photo. There's a guy in the center, in blue, on the ground, holding the ball!

Sweet!

Aggies Fans!

Shell, Me, Mom

Matt and Liz--they attend USU so they knew all the cool cheers.
(Blond in blue shirt, brunette in blue shirt.)


Matt and Jared (thanks for being all cool Matt).

The Prince, Jared, and Grandpa.

I missed Marty, the King and the princess in my photos, but there were there too, cheering the Aggies onto VICTORY.

EXTREME Aggies Fan!

Dude! It that helping you scope out the cheerleaders?

Celebrate America Fans

Proud Parents

Proud Grandpa and Grandma

Proud Uncle and Aunt

Beautiful Becky

Eight costume changes, more than 30 great Big Band era songs, a salute to our veterans, and non-stop fun. The dinner was great. The entertainment was stunning. We LOVED Celebrate America, and we LOVE Becky!

Aggies! Aggies!

The show last night was awesome! Photos to follow when I get organized. Tonight we're off to watch the Aggies stomp Idaho. Life is good down south!

On The Road Again!

It's been a long time since we've taken a family road trip, but we are on the road again!

We left home about 4:30 yesterday and made it to Idaho Falls around 11:00. One night in a comfy hotel bed, a continental breakfast with real sausage, eggs, and cappuccino, and the fact that I don't have to make any beds make me happy! We'll be on the road shortly and to our destination in just 2.5 hours!

On the road again...I just can't wait to get on the road again...

Admit it; you're humming it in your head now!

Happy Birthday Little Brudder!

You look all gangsta in your Elvis glasses! :)

Remember when we were little, and all your sisters were playing with Barbies, and you felt left out so you'd send your G.I. Joes in to massacre the Barbies?

Have a great day!

Our Apologies!

In posting our first September birthday of the month yesterday, it occurred to me that we didn't post our only August birthday! So happy belated birthday Uncle Rick! On the plus side, we didn't entirely forget, the prince did ride his bike over on the day to deliver a card and ended up staying for hours, even enjoying dinner, with the birthday boy! Now that's a great gift! :)

Happy Birthday Tyson!

Ty's turning 17 today! I couldn't decide which photo to use so... We hope you have a great day!

Bunnies

The princess has a little job taking care of these two cuties. The white one is Bebe, and the black one is New Guy. They belong to a person I work with. The princess has to feed them, water them, and scoop out their poop a couple of times a day. They are staying in our garage! It's all in a day's work for her to earn a little Washington DC money.

It's Broken!

The prince fell riding his long-board, caught himself with his right arm, and broke the ulna and radius. A night in the hospital, surgery to put 2 plates in his arm, and a bottle of percocet later, he's resting comfortably at home! We send up a pray of thanks to God that it wasn't worse!

Presenting FALCOE!

The angry pose.

Huddle up!

Oh Falcoe, let me touch your pecs!

Ewwww!

Hello little buddy.

Check him out!

Number one fan!

20-14

Forgot my camera, but here are the kids, storming the field after the Falcons won 20-14 in overtime! Wahoo!!! The prince worked his stunt magic tonight at the varsity game and gets to mascot it up at the JV game tomorrow! SWEET!

Go Falcons!

The Falcons take on the Bison tonight! And it's a BEAUTIFUL night for a football game! Go Falcons!

Skunk Update

There WAS a SKUNK!!

The kids and I hustled off to school without even looking...since there was still no skunk smell, we didn't want to risk irritating it, if it was there.

The king was brave and looked out her window. Sure enough, it was digging away, trying to get out!

He called animal control. This is how it works.

She showed up. When the king asked if she was going to make a plan of attack, she just said, "No. Tell me where it is, and I'll get it." Huh...like she does this for a living or something!

So she had a nice, shiny needle attached to a long pole. She filled it up with nice "skunky go to sleep" medicine and then poked him with it. He didn't even spray then.

She waited a couple of minutes to make sure he was sleeping.

Yep, seems to be sleeping...and then took a bag down there and wrapped him up and brought him up.

Uh-oh. He's asleep but still breathing. We can't have that because mose skunks are rabid.

Better do one more shot, just to finish the job.

She took him away with her.

I love the skunk lady!!

Skunk????

At about midnight last night the princess woke us up to say that there was a skunk caught in her window well.

WHAT????

She heard scratching, looked out her window, and saw white.

What do you do at midnight when you might have a skunk in your window well?

You tell the princess to sleep on the couch in the livingroom, you close all the windows, you go back to bed, and you hope for the best!

We didn't want to go back in her room and startle it. We didn't want to go outside and startle it. We didn't want to deal with it!

Our window well is made of wood and sort of tiered, so we're hoping that, if there really was a skunk in there, it'll have managed to pull itself out by daylight! If not, I'm sure there will be another blog update!

And maybe, if we're really lucky, it was just the white cat that roams around here sometimes, though I did see a skunk crossing a neighboring road about 2 years ago...

Zonked!

This boy has not been a napper since he was 2! He has always been an early riser who could go all day and not nap, not even in the car. But then he became a teenager. He learned to sleep in. Still no napping, but plenty of sleeping. But these 6AM cheer calls are getting him. I found him like this yesterday at about 4:30. He slept until 6:00 when he had to get up to go take his fruit salad to the dinner. And yes, that is a remote control in his hand, because he is a guy, after all!

PS: The fruit salad was "da bomb"! They ate every last piece. My recipe: a couple of clumps of grapes, box of strawberries quartered, can of pineapple chunks (sometimes use fresh), 2 cans of Mandarin oranges. Drain all canned fruit, mix together. No sugar or other stuff need be added. I choose these fruits because they tend not to brown and look pretty together. Choose Dole pineapple (as opposed to store brand) because it's usually a better color. If you want to be really fancy and know it will get eaten right away, mix in a small container of lime yogurt! Now that's what I call "fancy"!

Cancel that nomination.

Cancel the Mother-of-the-Year nomination (see "Hey Mom" post). My son reminded me this morning that I did not send lunch money with him yesterday. Good thing he's a charmer (also known as a mooch)! He and a friend drove over to the friend's grandma's house for lunch. Yikes!

You mean school has started?

Yesterday was what I like to call, "6th grade reality lesson 101." Last Thursday and Friday there wasn't much homework, if any. Monday most of it could be done in class. Tuesday there was "real" homework in most of their classes. Thus yesterday was my first real day of OTC. OTC stands for Opportunity To Complete (your homework, you big dummy). They have to spend their lunch and recess with me, finishing late work. They had lots of excuses--I left it at home; I forgot to do it; I had football practice--but the teachers don't really care. Finally, as one kid was lamenting having to spend his lunch with me he said, "I thought we'd have more time before the teachers were serious about homework. In 5th grade we got a few weeks to get used to things before they got all mad and made us turn stuff in."

First of all, I used to work with the 5th grade teachers, and I know that's not true.
Second, WELCOME TO MIDDLE SCHOOL!

I can't wait to see how many knuckleheads want to spend their lunch with me today!

Hey Mom

Tuesday

Prince: Hey Mom, there's a team dinner on Thursday at 7:00.

Me: Okay. What do you need to bring?

Prince: I'm not sure. I'll find out tomorrow.

Wednesday:

Me: So what do you need to bring?

Prince: I think some kind of salad. But probably not lettuce. And no chips.

Me: So what kind of salad do you want to take?

Prince: I don't know. Oh, and you're not invited to the dinner. No parents except the coach and the hosting family.

He walks away. Really? So this is now my deal, but I don't get to eat?

Later.

Me: How about a fruit salad?

Prince: Yeah. Those are good. Will you buy everything tomorrow after work?

Me: Yes.

Thinking to myself: Sure Honey. I'll buy it all, prepare it all, and drive you to the dinner that we aren't attending. Mother-of-the-Year nomination right there!!! What he doesn't know is that he's putting that salad together when HE gets home from school!

Drum Roll Please

Presenting a member of the Level 4 competition dance team at her dance school for the second year in a row (try-outs were Sunday)...The Princess! Congratulations and here's to a fun year with NO injuries!

Check these out!

Okay, so my friend bought a pair of these--$80 and there's a waiting list--and I laughed and laughed and laughed. Yesterday MSN ran a story on these and ALL the comments were about how great these shoes are, though there is a learning curve (kind of like learning to put in contacts) in getting the toes in the right place, and if your second toe is longer than your big toe then you might not like them, but I guess they are a great shoe for running, climbing, in water, out of water. And they come in lots of cool colors. I'm not saying I'm rushing out to buy a pair, but in case you didn't know they're out there...

Class of 2014

Every year, Beloit College puts out a list of things the current college freshman know to be "normal". I have posted the list in the past. This year I thought the list had a few interesting changes on it.

For most college freshmen starting school this fall, e-mail is passe and wearing a watch on your wrist is, well, unnecessary, according to the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014, most of whom were born in 1992.

The list was first created by the Wisconsin school in 1998 to remind professors what cultural factors have gone into shaping the lives of their students.

While e-mail was revolutionary for their parents, today's college freshmen find it terribly slow, instead choosing to use their opposable thumbs to send dozens of text messages a day on their smartphones, which they use for telling time rather than strapping on a watch and surfing the web.

Home computers have always been a part of their lives, although the ones they first played on in preschool are now in museums. The PCs and Apples of the early 1990s had hard drives with smaller capacities than today's flash drives, used monochromatic monitors and were not connected to the internet.

Check out the Beloit College Mindset List

And technology is not the only thing that has changed, either.

In the world of entertainment, Snoop Doggy Dogg is just Snoop Dogg. Ice-T is an actor who plays a New York police detective on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," instead of a rapper stirring controversy with his song "Cop Killer."

And Clint Eastwood is a sensitive Oscar-winning director, not a tough-as-nails detective known as Dirty Harry.

The Class of 2014 now has hundreds of channels to watch with nothing on, while their parents had at most a few dozen when they were growing up. Nirvana is now classic rock. And their parents' favorite TV shows have always been showing up as movies -- "The Brady Bunch," "The A-Team" and "The Addams Family."

Beethoven has always been a big drooling dog, not a classical composer. Fergie is a pop singer, not a former English princess. Barney is a purple dinosaur, not a deputy sheriff in Mayberry.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been on the Supreme Court since today's freshmen started crawling. Bill Clinton was elected president the year most of them were born.

The Iron Curtain is something they know about from history books and Czechoslovakia has never existed during their lifetimes.

In the world of sports, Bud Selig has always been the commissioner of Major League Baseball. Tiger Woods has been golfing professionally since they were 4, and Michael Jordan is better known for his underwear commercials than he is for playing basketball.

And finally to the medicine cabinet, where the Class of 2014 can find toothpaste tubes that stand on end and bandages that have always come in multiple colors."

The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older," the college said in announcing this year's list.

The 2nd Day of School

I wasn't able to snap a shot of my two cuties on the first day of school because the prince had to be there about the time the princess was rolling out of bed, but I got this one on Friday. They are mighty handsome, if I do say so myself! Here's to a great year for both of them!

Maybe That's Why!

Thursday afternoon two "cool" 6th graders sauntered into my classroom. I started going over what the class was designed for when "John" says, "Why am I IN THIS CLASS?" He was clearly not happy to be there, giving me some attitude. So I told him his previous teachers had recommended it or his parents had requested it. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Did you have trouble getting your homework in on time?

John: No.

Me: Did your homework make your frustrated sometimes?

John: No.

Me: Are you absent from school a lot?

John: No.

Me: Okay, maybe you don't need this class. Work hard for the next few weeks and we'll see if we can get you out of it.

He wasn't happy, but we moved on. Eventually I asked if they had any homework.

John: No.

"Bob": Yes we do.

John: What?

Bob: Science.

John: We didn't get any in our class.

Bob pulls out the worksheet and shows it to John.

John: Yeah, we got that, but I didn't think we had to do it. I thought it was just for fun if we wanted to.

Bob: No. We have to do it and have it signed by our parents.

Me: (thinking silently to myself while trying not to roll my eyes or let out a loud sigh) MAYBE THAT'S WHY YOU'RE IN THIS CLASS!!!!

It's going to be a good year! ;)

By the way, John was absent from school on Friday!