Say Uncle

Six Word Saturday time.

Uncle for ninth and first time!

I was on my way out to take my kids to see a play Thursday Morning. My SIL was trying to reach my wife at work, because her water had just broke. Early Friday morning she gave birth to Connor Mark. Amy was able to participate in the birth and Mom, Dad and Baby are doing fine.

I am now the uncle of nine children. Connor is a little different as he is my first nephew by marriage rather than blood. This is generally not too great of a distinction. However, being related to me by blood is not exactly a picnic. Sure I have my rugged good looks. I have no allergies and I am of pretty healthy stock. The problem is if being a goofball is hereditary, than you don't really want to have me swimming in your gene pool. Puns, parodies, crazy ideas, not to forget my scary math skills. Let's face it, Connor has a definite advantage of not having genetic predisposition to my random thoughts and nut job tendencies.

The flip side is that he is related by blood to Amy. Amy may well be every bit the lunatic that I am. After all, we did co write the song I'm insane, your insane, who's gonna win?

So, if 12 years from now at Grandma Kayrene's birthday bash Connor writes down the first thing that comes into his mind during a spirited game of Balderdash, we can know for sure that Amy's influence (nature or nurture) is to blame. Katie, Danny you knew what kind of relatives you had and you chose to continue those blood lines anyway. I say to you congratulations and good luck!

Head on over to Show my face dot come for more Six Word Saturday.

Next Time: C+H Book Review

Lucy, Bears, and Meat Loaf. Oh My!

Time again for things this Thursday.


1. Lucy the Artist.


















We had a piece of saran wrap like packaging material around the house. Lucy wanted to make a project of it. I taped it up to two pieces of construction paper so it wouldn't rip. Lucy proceeded to make the design pictured here. I removed the tape from the construction paper and displayed it in our room.















2. Lucy, the graphic novelist.

The same day all the kids were working on some school work. Lucy was drawing pictures. Sometimes she likes to write words on the pictures so she asks me how to spell the words. On this particular occasion she asked: "Dad how do you spell " a long time ago in Mexico in a library that was far away from Carpentersville? She then proceeded to illustrate and dictate narration to a ten page story of kitties in a Mexican library.



3. TV


I don't regularly watch the show House. Amy watches it sometimes and I have sat down and watched it with her. A recent episode entitled 5 to 9 followed the day of the Hospital administrator. Even though the focus of this episode was not House and his antics, I found that it did a good job of grounding the new or infrequent viewer into what the Show is about. You can watch the episode on HULU by clicking here.

4. Dinner











Last week I made meatloaf for dinner. I used a traditional recipes that uses tomato soup. The only significant departure I made was to substitute oyster cracker crumbs for bread crumbs. I even put whole oyster crackers on top. It actually turned out to be very good. Better than the after picture shows.





5. Polar Bear backwards is Polar Bear.

I took the kids to the zoo last weekend. We always try to go see the Polar bears. A few years ago Amy and the kids saw one of the bears do this.


On Saturday we watched a polar bear doing this

over and over again. I took 4 separate videos of the bear walking on the ledge

and then backing up.

So those are my things this Thursday. Join in by clinking on Mr. Linky below.

Next Time: Six Word Saturday

Wordless Wednesday: The Z Double O

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Next Time: Things This Thursday

Video Shmideo

I am putting off my post about our recent trip to the zoo to share a few links to videos.

The son of an elder from my church, a home school student, has entered a contest that is hinged upon how many views his you tube video receives. This is an excellent video entitled Let's revolutionize higher education!. The idea presented here is revolutionary, and presented very ably. I encourage you to watch it and tell others about it.



The movie Star Trek Generations was on Hulu this week reminding me that I have it on videocassette. Charlie watched it last night and absolutely cracked up at a scene, that I had almost forgotten. We showed the scene to Emma and she just loved it as well. In the movie, the android Data is experimenting with an emotions chip. In the scene my children enjoyed he is asked by Commander Riker to scan for life forms. Here is the result.

Speaking of movies, I was reminded on the radio that today is the thirtieth anniversary of the miracle on ice. Yep, thirty years ago Herb Brooks and his US Hockey team defeated the Russians in the Olympics. Prior to the game coach Brooks gave the team a pep talk. Here is a rendition of that pep talk from the movie Miracle.


You may have already seen the you tube video of a 4 year old giving the Brooks speech. It's worth watching over again if you have. I really thought that was impressive until I saw him on Ellen. It is one thing to quote it in your living room, but something else entirely to recite it in fromt of t.v. cameras and a live audience.

Well that's all the footage I have time to present today. I hope you enjoyed it all.

Next Time: The Z Double O

Six Word Saturday

Haven't been posting for a while. As my lovely wife shared in her recent guest post, I have been busy living. Today was no different. We had a Cub scout meeting tonight. Charlie is in the same cub scout den as his cousin who is 9 months older and 1 grade ahead of him. Charlie should really be a wolf bus since Bobby is a Bear, they are both Bears. We drive about an hour each meeting to get into Bobby's town and then an hour back. It makes for a long day and Charlie has not been too keen on all the travel.

But tonight was a little different. Tonight's pack meeting was the meeting where the Webelos kids become boy scouts. It was a 3 hour dinner/ceremony with entertainment afterwards. During the celebration all the Webelos's kids crossing over to Boy Scouts got to shoot an arrow into a target. Charlie loves archery and took some videos of it with my camera. Here is one of them . . .

After the shooting is over, the kids get to keep the arrow.

So I know that is a lot of talking before I get to my six words. SO here they are.

Charlie wants to get an arrow.

This means that Charlie doesn't want to quit Cub Scouts at the end of the year like he's been talking about for a while. I am not sure exactly what that will mean because the travel is exhausting. Perhaps we will switch him to a local pack next year. I will keep you all posted.

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Next Time: the Z double O