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!)