We're still here!

Wow... like four LOLcats in a row, with no real posts in between! Well, the Joneses have been really busy, and we do have the pictures to prove it. Hopefully in the next few days I'll have the update with pictures from Hannah's birthday, then Christmas, then our visit to Shreveport last weekend. Heck, we may even go ahead and snap a New Year's Eve picture or two, I don't know. Anyway, if I don't get the pictures posted before the end of today... happy 2009 to you!

Caturday 12/27/2008

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Merry Christmas 2008 from the Joneses

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Here Comes Santa Claws!!

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Caturday 12/20/2008

What LOLcats want for Christmas:


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Hannah's birthday party, pharmaceuticals, etc.

On Hannah's birthday, Meme and Papaw came over to our house and we ate some pizza and she opened her presents (very slowly!) I have pictures, but they need some tweaking... the room was a little dark so the pictures are too. Cathy was having an allergic reaction to some medication, so she was feeling pretty bad, and actually I was faghting off the cold that I'm still in the final stages of shaking, so we weren't really in the mood for partying, but it was Hannah's birthday, so we did the whole "give-her-her-own-cake-and-watch-her-make-a-mess" thing, the whole bit.

So like I said, I have pictures on the computer at home, but they need some tweaking, and although it's not terribly hard to do it does take some time. I'm fighting off a cold, so I've been spending as much of my free time as possible sleeping. Cathy is finally coming off her extended illness; we went to the doctor's and got her a shot and some more medicine and the hives from the allergic reaction are clearing up really well. We'd better get right quickly... Sunday night we have tickets to The Christmas Train! The forecast for Sunday shows a low of nine degrees... leave it to us to pick the coldest day all season for our Christmas Train experience! We're praying for the weatherman to be wrong!

Anyway, I'll get the pictures of Hannah's birthday party up as soon as I can. Hopefully it won't be Easter by then!

Happy First Birthday, Hannah!

I can't believe I waited until lunchtime to post this. Hannah turned one year old today! The above picture is one I took on Thanksgiving... it's a silly picture and it's out of focus, but just LOOK at those eyes!

To read all the posts about Hannah this year, click here. If you'd rather look at about a million pictures of her, click here. Or if you just want one single super-cute picture to look at, what about this one?

Caturday 12/13/2008

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Can you forgive me for the moldy Kid Rock reference?

Michael's Office Tree 2008

Sometime in the last few years of the 1990s or the first few of the 2000s, I brought a little artificial tree with me to work and put it up with some old glass ornaments my mom had given me years before. I've kept up the tradition through several workplaces. and on Tuesday I decorated it for this year. Click the thumbnails below for some highlights, or go straight to the set on Flickr to see all of my pictures!

       

Next year for sure

Rehearsal ran long and we didn't make it to the Walk to Bethlehem. Rats.

What a weekend!

Saturday we all got up early (for a Saturday)... Mikey and Hannah went with Meme and Papaw just before 9am to Home Depot to make an "art easel". Cathy and I arrived at church at 10 for a choir rehearsal until noon. We're getting ready for our Christmas production on the 13th and 14th. After choir we went to Toys backwards R Us to get some presents for the kids... for Hannah we got a __________ and a _______ ________ and a ___ of ______ _________, and for Mikey we got a __ _______ and a _____________ and a ___ of _______ for his ________ (actual names of toys removed because, you know, Mikey does know how to read!) After we left TbRU we dropped the loot off at home and picked up the kids, and then I dropped all of them off at home and went straight to drama rehearsal for the production! After that I came home and had a little bit of down time... Cathy had been getting Hannah ready to go take Christmas pictures at Sears. That appointment was at 6:30... after trying to get a almost-1-year-old to smile for about a half hour or so, we were all pooped.

Today after church Cathy has grocery shopping to do, and then we're going to go to Bass Pro Shop for some kids activities they have this month... rumor is that Mikey will be able to make a reindeer hat today! Tonight I have another drama rehearsal, and also tonight if I get done with that in time, I want to take Mikey to the "Bethlehem Walk" that the church around the corner does every year... they have a huge field behind their church, and they set it up with live animals and stations and the "audience" actually walks through the drama, the story of Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem for Jesus to be born. We discovered it 4-5 years ago when I drove by there one weekend and saw a CAMEL out there! It's a little bit campy (these are just volunteers from the congregation after all, not professional actors) but it's a lot of fun for kids. Hopefully we'll have time for that!

I'd better put my necktie on for church... the game's about to begin!

Caturday 12/6/2008

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Now THIS dog had a rough night

Have you ever sat down outside on a cold day?

A really cold day?

Did your butt freeze to the sidewalk??

Forcing you to spend the whole night there???

If so, you know exactly how this dog felt:

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - A dog weighing more than 120 pounds survived being frozen to a sidewalk overnight, probably because he was insulated by layers of fat, authorities said.

The Sheboygan County Humane Society says the "morbidly obese" dog, an aging border collie mix named Jiffy, froze to the sidewalk when he was left out overnight Wednesday. Shelter manager Carey Payne says few dogs could survive the single-digit temperatures, and it was probably the fat that made the difference.

The rest of the article is right here. I guess the moral of the story is, if you're a big fat dog, try not to sit down outside long enough to stick to the ground when the temperature is in the single digits.

Sheesh!

Happy Ninja Day!

Happy Annual Day of the Ninja!


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Christmas Tree Decorations 2008

Tonight rehearsal for the Christmas program was canceled, so I got to stay home and we put up our Christmas tree. Last year on Christmas day Hannah was only nine days old, so as you can see, this whole Christmas tree thing is news to her. We'll see what she does tomorrow... she's crawling pretty well now, so she may well get into it pretty quickly!

At our house, traditionally it is the daddy's job to put the lights on the tree. And also, if possible, to get hopelessly entangled in them. No, I'm just kidding... actually I think the worst thing that happened this year was I dropped a green bulb by accident so until I picked it up and put it back in the light string, we had no green lights. The horror!!!

This is Mikey trying out some of the settings on our string of lights. He didn't know yet how particular Cathy is about exactly how often and how quickly the lights blink. Now he does... he was down there for a good 5-6 minutes saying "This one?" and Cathy saying "No!"

Mikey mentioned days and days ago to me that he couldn't wait to read The Christmas Lizard this year. I'm not sure why he was quite that charged up about it, but as soon as he got a chance he read it to Mama! I even got some video of him reading it to her... sorry, no way to scan it into the computer. take my word for it, it's very sweet. Mikey has a pretty entertaining fake Russian Nutcracker accent. hehe


It's late, so I'm going to post and go to bed... but here's a picture of the finished product. And there are a few more pictures of the evening here. Merry Christmas!

Shag Marry Dump

I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted this in an ad (from a nationwide chain store) which appeared in my mailbox:

It's bad enough that "Barbie" is listed next to "Bratz"... both of those kinds of dolls are found objectionable by certain groups of people, and although I don't have a problem with Barbie I do have a problem with Bratz...but do you notice the game right next to them? In this ad that is clearly targeted at little girls? It's an age 18 and up "adult" game called "Shag Marry Dump!" For those who haven't seen any Austin Powers movies and don't know what "shag" means, click here only if you do not offend easily. This is apprently a board game version of a party game that people play where you are presented with the name of a member of the opposite sex, and you have to spill the beans on whether you would rather "shag" that person, "marry" them, or "dump" them. Apparently, "dump" is a mild version of what you do to the people you reject... usually it is more like dumping them over a cliff than dumping them as a significant other.

Anyway... I couldn't believe the placement of this game in this particular ad for dolls and plush toys. I've never even heard of the game before, but just from the title I could tell it wasn't for kids. But what about a parent who thinks "shag" is just a style of carpet or a really furry dog? What if they buy this game for their kids, not paying attention to the age rating, and find their children facing rules such as: "Watch out for those Same Sex Spaces. There's only one agonizing decision to make...who to Shag." I know parents are supposed to pay better attention than that, but my goodness. Couldn't they have put that game in a separate block or something?

Tracies

Sunday some dear friends of ours from way back visited our church... Tracy and Tracie! Yep, both husband and wife have the same name, except they spell it differently (I hope I got them both right!) Cathy has known wife Tracie almost since they were born, so they've been friends almost literally their whole lives... for example, when Mikey was being born, Tracie was the only other non-medical staff person in the room with me and Cathy. Needless to say, we were really excited that they were going to come out for a Sunday service! They seemed to enjoy it, although being from a Baptist background they might have been puzzled by a few things in our non-denom church... hopefully we didn't totally scare them off! We love those guys, and we hope to see them again sometime. (Maybe the next time we'll be able to have them in Sunday School... this week we had choir practice during that hour to get ready for our Christmas production in two weeks!)

53 WOW!

 

I've been watching gas prices now for about 4 years, ever since I discovered TulsaGasPrices.com (I'm "gtpmj", MJ from A Guide to Petra).Months and months and months ago the price went down temporarily to $1.53 or $2.53 or whatever it was, and on a Sunday morning on the way to church I spotted it for the first time. Without explaining what I was talking about, I said, "Fifty-three, wow!" and we continued on to church. When I realized how random it sounded I explained what I was talking about... but ever since then "53-wow!" has been a running gag between me and Mikey.

I took this picture Thanksgiving evening on the way home from Kevin & Theresa's house. Since then it's actually gone down several pennies!

Thanksgiving with the Joneses (and Angels!)

We spent the first part of the day at my mom's visiting with my brother and his family, in from Texas, and then we went over to Kevin and Theresa's house for the evening. Mikey didn't come to Kevin & Theresa's... he loves them, but it's pretty hard to tear him away from his cousins!

Here are the pictures we took (not a lot of them, but some pretty good ones anyway).

Caturday 11/29/2008

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Happy Thxgiving!

Soccer Tournament Fall 2008

What a day we had last weekend!

Saturday the 15th was Mikey's soccer tournament. We were lucky enough to get the first game at 8am. And it was COLD! It was in the 40s all morning, and VERY windy. Good thing Mikey got in a hearty breakfast first! (Notice the filled water bottle in the foreground... got to stay hydrated! ...and the vitamins in the background... got to have plenty of energy to win a soccer game!

As I mentioned, it was REALLY cold out there. Everybody was totally bundled up... even the kids (and Cathy!) You could barely tell which team was which, since most of the kids had jackets on over their uniforms! But the parents were all in good spirits and ready to cheer. The kids played a great game, and won the first game pretty easily!

Coach White had brought a ton of hot dogs, and all of the parents had brought stuff... chili or chips or drinks or plates and cups. Our second game was at 11, so we had a couple of hours to wait, so we froze for a while and drank hot chocolate, and then Coach White and one of the dads grilled the hot dogs. The kids weren't probably getting that cold... they were kicking soccer balls around the entire time! One of the families had brought a big blue tent with a "wind tarp" but it was so windy that the tent was in danger of blowing away, so we wound up taking the wind tarp down!

After we had lunch it was time for the next game... the kids played great soccer, and again won easily. Everybody was charged up and ready for the next game! Unfortunately, the next game wasn't scheduled to start until much later, so Coach told us we could go home and rest if we wanted to and they would call us with the final time later.

Cathy was a trooper through the whole thing... she had been having some back trouble the week before, but she wanted so badly to be there that she came out and sat in the camp chair anyway. We picked up Hannah from Meme's (where she had gone to stay warm and out of the wind) and went home to rest, and Cathy didn't come out for the late game.

Mrs. Coach White called us and told us that the game was scheduled for 5:00! We knew that sundown was around 5:30, and so we knew that we were probably going to finish the game in the dark. As you can tell from the picture at left, which I took at the beginning of the game, it was after 5 and it was twilight when we started playing! Here's an action shot from the middle of the game. The soccer ball was dead center in this shot:



Can't see what's going on? Neither could we.

The kids played hard, but they were out-played and lost this third game. The tournament was double-elimination, though, which means that they weren't out of the running yet! In that kind of tournament, you have to lose twice to be eliminated. So we had another game to play the next day!

Fortunately for us, we did not wind up playing the first game the next day, or even the second or third. Our game was scheduled for 1pm, which meant that we would be able to go to church for one service and still have plenty of time to get out there for the game. So that's what Mikey and I did. The kids played well in their game, but ultimately they were eliminated. They finished in fifth place out of a league of 14 teams. Not too shabby!

Here's a picture of the Foot Action Soccer Fall 2008 league Outlaws:



And here's Mikey with his medal:



See pictures from the whole weekend here!

Caturday 11/22/2008

Guest cat from Mikey:


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Jelly Telly

I'll have a post about the results of last Saturday's soccer tournament soon... I didn't want to post it until I have the pictures uploaded. But I did want to share something with you. A new online "TV network" for kids called JellyTelly. It's the brainchild of Phil "Bob the Tomato" Vischer. Here he is, explaining what JellyTelly is all about:


Visit http://www.jellytelly.com/grownups for some more info about it. There is a subscription cost, but it is VERY small and the shows are terrific. There's science and there's history and there's Bible and then there are fun things like GodRocks. There's a kid named Michael who does movie reviews, and when he tells you the plot of the movie he always gets it mixed up with Star Wars! Fun stuff like that. Sign up for a month free and check it out!

Soccer on the Tundra

Saturday. It's 6:46am. It's 37 degrees outside. I've been up since a little after 6. In one hour, we will be out at the soccer fields, and at 8am Mikey's team will be playing in the first game of the championship tournament for the fall league of Foot Action Soccer.

Why we were so blessed as to get into the 8am game, I have no idea. Needless to say we're going to dress warm and bring blankets. Hannah is going over to Meme's house, so she won't be out in it. The tournament is double-elimination, so we may be out there for much of the day... we play until we lose twice (if we lose at all!) The coach wants us to just hang out at the soccer fields pretty much for the day, because after the first game we don't really know when we'll be called to play our next game! It's not supposed to top 50 degrees all day long.

Pray for us. Pray hard. :)

Caturday 11/15/2008

Guest cat from Mikey:


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Another Soccer Win For Mikey!

Mikey's soccer team, the Outlaws, won again Saturday! Next week is the season tournament, and our first game (of at least two, and more than that if they win!) is at 8am. It's going to be CHILLY!!! The regular season games don't really affect the tournament; everyone starts out with equal chances, and the best teams should float to the top. If the Outlaws play their best, they have an excellent chance of winning!

Caturday 11/8/2008

Guest cat from Mikey:


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Weekend Notes

Friday night was Halloween... we went to the dollar movie to see WALL·E. Mikey really loved it! I thought the first act went kind of slow for small children and I could see how it might lose their interest. Mikey loved the part where WALL·E ran over his cockroach friend, and then the cockroach popped back up with a squeaky sound. That and the part where the babies were learning their ABC's with corporate brainwashing made the movie for him. Go figure! After we went to Baskin-Robbins and ate ice cream so we could be sure everybody would go to bed with a sugar rush and nobody would get any sleep. So that was awesome. (It's Halloween... if your blood isn't like 85% glucose, you're not doing it right!)

Saturday Mikey's team did not win their soccer game; they lost 0-2. The game was in the morning; that afternoon Mikey and I went out to the place we call "The Big Circle." Take a look at this map to see why we call it that:


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Anyway, he and I went out to The Big Circle, which is only a couple of blocks from our house, to shoot a little air-driven rocket that Meme and Papaw gave him on his birthday (yes, we're REALLY behind on trying out birthday presents!) and (no pun intended) we had a BLAST! The rocket shoots with nothing but air power, provided by a motion that is pretty similar to clapping your hands once, and it shoots way up there into the air. The rocket is made of foam rubber, like Nerf stuff, so it's perfectly safe to try to catch it when it comes down or on the first bounce. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we had a lot of fun.

Sunday was "Super Sunday" at Grace, the one Sunday a month when we have a guest speaker. This month it was Dennis Burke, a guy that hasn't spoken to the congregation at Grace before although I think he's spoken at a minister's conference. Cathy didn't go; Hannah had a little bit of snotty-nose going on and they couldn't keep her in the nursery (which is exactly how I would want it to be, because if it were someone else's baby that looked sick, I would want Hannah to not have to be around the other baby and get sick. Church shouldn't be where your baby gets an infectious disease! ) I told Cathy I would stay home so she could go, but she wanted to stay. Anyway, it was a great message, and I hope she'll listen to it online when it goes up within a few days! (She tried to stream it live, but there was an issue with the streams yesterday and it was unwatchable.)

Caturday 11/1/2008

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happyhalloweenboo

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Hallelujah Party 2008

all picturesTonight was the annual Grace Church "Hallelujah Party." We have it every year to give the kids a place to go and get some candy and not have to go door to door wandering around in the dark. This way they get to dress up, there's no danger, they're in a well-lit area, there are lots of fun things to do, it's not scary for the little ones, and there's no doubt that they're going to get TONS of candy! Hannah is still too little to be able to do very much, but as always, she just enjoys watching the world go by. Next year she'll be all OVER that action! We got to see some friends that we don't get to see often: Mardy and Jamie Lange, Jeremy and Samantha Conn... and lots of friends that we sometimes miss just because it's an awfully big church and often we are up on the stage singing in choir and just don't get to see people. Anyway, it was lots of fun... and we have pictures to prove it!