Weekend Update: Narnia!

Saturday Cathy and Mikey and I went to see Prince Caspian with our friends John and Sheri. We loved it! The scenes seem visually bigger, the battles are more exciting without becoming gory, and the themes are a bit more subtle and grown-up, just as the children are more grown-up. I found it a tiny bit distracting that the child actors are clearly more than one year older than they were in the first installment (the story happens one year later), but that's how movies work. It takes time to make the movie, and you can't ask kids to quit growing up!

I posted some thoughts about the movie's themes on my "Christian Stuff" blog (if you weren't aware, this is the "family stuff" blog, although there is often a little bit of overlap).

Caturday 5/17/2008

This one was also captioned here, but I think mine is TONS funnier, don't you? I even downloaded a special font to use! (Don't forget to click on the picture and rate it five cheezburgers!)


moar funny pictures

Mother May(fest) I

Yesterday was the first day of Tulsa's Mayfest, which is basically an arts festival in the middle of downtown Tulsa. I had actually never been to it before last year, but the office building I work in is pretty much smack in the middle of it (in fact, the festival's headquarters are in the first floor of the building I work in!) so last year (my first year on this job) was actually my first Mayfest experience. I enjoy it quite a bit; there's plenty of fair-style food, of course, and there is quite a bit of local music and tons of artist booths. The only problem is that one of the stages is on the Williams Center Green, with the speakers pointed directly at my building. Not a problem unless, as yesterday, a band with an undeservedly high opinion of their own prowess is playing... loudly.

Yesterday just after 11am a band called "Eric and the Blasters" started playing for us. They're an oldies cover band... they played Johnny Cash, some rock & roll stuff (I remember hearing "Roll Over Beethoven", for example), that sort of thing. For about the first 45 minutes or so I found their antics amusing. After that point the one out-of-tune guitar and the two out-of-tune vocalists started to get to me a little bit. And I wasn't the only one... one coworker commented to me "I wish I was the guy he shot in Reno!" (So I didn't have to hear the music) and another person said that she was having trouble working because of the noise level. She said she kept making typing mistakes for no discernible reason. Personally I just got a headache... although the headache may have been partially because of being hungry for lunch! Anyway, they played until about 12:15 or so and then I left the office for the afternoon (I had an appointment to be at), but looking at the schedule it looks like the music was there for the lunchtime only so I guess it was quieter the rest of the day.

I notice today that Eric and the Blasters are playing again 11-noon... D'OH! I wish they would get a band called "Eric and the Highly-Proficient Musicians" instead! Fortunately I happen to have a set of those earplug-style earbud earphones in my pocket... around 11am I may plug those in and just hope I don't miss any important phone calls.

It's better than a headache!

Mouse Dignity

If you don't get it, you might check out this page. Or just read the last chapter of the book!

(Don't forget to click the picture and rate it five cheezburgers!)

You a winna... ha ha ha!

Cathy just won some free Golden Corral buffets from CW12... hehe! (I wonder if that makes her feel a little better about the weird Mother's Day she had this weekend?)

Mother's Day Weekend 2008

What a crazy weekend!

Saturday Mikey had an 8am soccer game... Cathy and Hannah don't do 8am if they can help it so it was me and him for the game.
Mikey's team: THUNDER!My brother Kevin and his family had come in the night before, but I was pretty sure they would still be sleeping so we didn't bother them that early (Kevin knew about it, so if he had been awake he could have come out... but I think he was wiped out). After the game Mikey and I stopped by Wal-Mart to see what we could find for Cathy and for my mom for Mother's Day. We got Cathy the new Bo Bice CD (she loves it... it's pretty close to classic Southern rock, kind of Black Crowes-ish) and the Randy Jackson project (which is kind of a mixed bag of pop, R&B, and the odd token rap song and country song thrown in for good measure... I don't know yet how she likes that one), and my mom got the movie Game Plan which she really loved in the theater. Mikey picked out a pair of earrings for each, and we were all done with our shopping.

So then we went over to Mom's house, where my brother and his rather sizable family were hanging out.
The oh-so-photogenic MackieWhen we got there we found my mom & dad, Kevin, his wife Candi, their five girls Elizabeth, Emily, Eden, Eliah, and Evonleigh (yes, they do get harder to spell as you go along, and no, I'm not positive I spelled the last one right!), mom's dogs Caesar and Sky Captain, and my brother's dog Mackie. Needless to say, it was either a party waiting to happen or a disaster waiting to happen! Add me and Mikey into the mix and that makes it that much more interesting! (Later that afternoon another guy with a few more Afghan Hounds arrived... talk about craziness happening!!)

But we weren't there too long at that point, because, we decided to take the kids to go build a project at Lowe's. We took them to the location where we usually take Mikey... 15th & Yale... but we hadn't pre-registered and they didn't have six projects available; they only had three. So Kevin and Dad stayed with three of the kids, and I took Mikey, Elizabeth and Emily down to the 71st Street store, where they had plenty of kits and where the store employee really went above and beyond the call of duty to make it fun for the kids. Everybody got to make a "Memory Box" for Mother's Day (a little wooden box with a slot to put in movie tickets or pictures or whatever other scraps of paper that'll make Mama cry when she opens the box and looks at them later!) and we went back to the house.

I called Cathy, who was still at home, and she got ready to come over. Candi wanted to take her shopping and buy a birthday present for her. Mikey played with his cousins and I hung out until Cathy called, then I went over and picked up my two girls and we came on back. Candi and Cathy went shopping and everybody else just kind of hung out...
Mikey's new game & DS gearMikey got a new Nintendo DS game from Kevin & family for his birthday, so he was alternating playing that game and playing with his cousins, who he adores. The grown-ups mostly kind of sat around in various states of almost-asleep and totally-asleep for a while (Kevin went back to bed), until I realized it was 15 minutes to 4. Mikey had a birthday party to go to at 4:30 on the other side of town at Incredible Pizza... and Cathy was out with our car! We tried to call her cell phone, and we tried to call Candi's, but neither one answered. Girls and shopping, SHEESH. When I saw Cathy, I was like, HEY didn't get that cell phone for EMERGENCIES? But it turns out the girls were already watching the clock and they got back at just the right time.

So my three and I took off for Troy's birthday party at Incredible Pizza. They've changed the party deal a little since we had Mikey's birthday there a couple of years ago... now instead of kind of doing party games and stuff with the kids and then turning them loose with a $5 game card, they basically rent you the room for an hour, and then they turn each kid loose with a game card good for one hour of unlimited games! How cool is that? Mikey played and played and wound up earning like 840 tickets, which is enough for a pretty respectable prize. He got this unusual triangular single-strap backpack thing, and a little UNO game with these tiny little cards, and a little blue WWJD bear and a red mini frisbee.

When we went back to Mom & Dad's after the birthday party,
Hannah and her brother (via
video) at the same age!nobody was there... they had gone shopping or something... so we went on home. Hannah had at some point come down with a low-grade fever which was a job for baby Tylenol or something (Cathy called the doctor and got instructions) so we didn't have to bring her in, but it's probably better that she got home and got to bed. Because of singing in the 8:30am service every Sunday, Saturday nights have a bedtime like school nights anyway.

So all night Saturday night, Cathy was up and down with Hannah, dosing her with medicine as appropriate and comforting her as needed. In the morning she decided to stay home with the baby, even though it was Mother's Day... so Mikey gave her the gift and we went on to church. Worship was awesome, and Robb, guest speaking in Pastor Bob's absence, was great as always. My mom picked up Mikey after the first service (I stayed on for the music in the second service, as we usually do) and he went with the whole crew to Fish Daddy's. After church I went home to get Cathy and Hannah, and we went to pick up Mikey, who was now at my mom's house, so we could go to dinner with HIS mother! We went to The Cheesecake Factory and got some dinner (we went around 4 or so, and it really wasn't crowded at all when we got there, although by the time we left it had started to fill up a bit), and then after that, since the fam from Texas was on their way home, we went home and played some Disney Scene-It, pulled out some video of Mikey as a newborn (in honor of Mother's Day, of course!), and then crashed.

WHEW! What a weekend! I think I need a nap.

Caturday 5/10/2008

moar funny pictures

(If you don't get it, then you weren't born yet in the '80s and you should read this Wikipedia article.)