Troublemakers

Kaelin is now 4, Dayne is now 2. (I'm now 33 and Carey is now *cough*) Time flies when you're having fun. I love you all.

Gencon

So I made a little trip down to Indianapolis last weekend. I've had periphery knowledge of conversions for various things, but never spent the time into learning more about them. Gencon is a gaming conversion primarily focused on non-electronic game systems. In particular the big hitters are Dungeons and Dragons and Magic. While there I did some dungeon delves with Tony and Brett, learned to play the board games Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan (thanks to Brett and Jeff) and sat in on a number of talks. Also it was fun to see one of the favorite authors (Tracy Hickman) in person, even if the show was not quite what I expected. These are some of the typical sites...





It was a fun time. I managed to be the odd man out two of the days by wearing Minnesota sports shirt (the Vikings were playing Indy while we were there), but then "fit in" by pulling out my Transformers tee shirt. :-)

Jeff Huebert, Stonemason

I look out across the fields. There are no signs of hoard. Regardless the wall must be built to prevent to keep the Mongols out. I place the cornerstone and wake...

So last year we had Sargents nursery draw up landscaping plans for our backyard. We had a general idea of what we wanted, but I like the nice warm fuzzy of getting a second professional opinion. One of the focal points for the backyard was a T shaped wall with planters on top, a build in bench and a circular firepit on the side. This was meant to be a project that would take a couple of summers to do and could be done in stages at my leisure. Things never go as planned and it turns out I have a hard time working "at my leisure". I initially purchased the circular firepit pavers as a kit when I noticed they were on sale at Menards. While digging up the area, I came to the conclusion that it would be harder to come back later and dig around this area to add the wall. So I dug that out as well and started buying/laying the block for the wall first. Since I planned on doing this later I hadn't done the calculations of just how many block it would take. As of now I have purchased 400 block and will shortly be done with 1/2 of the wall. The process of purchasing the block, loading them into the Pilot, unloading them into the backyard, chiseling the top indents off and gluing them into place is taking a significant amount of time. However it's strangely satisfying in that it feels like I'm building the pyramids or something. The chiseling, the sounds of stone scraping stone, it's fun. I just wish I could convince myself to take my time...

Big Brother Training Complete

From everything I can tell Kaelin has taken to the role of big brother to heart.

First, he makes sure Dayne knows what he should be doing and how he should be doing it. Dayne can be smiling and laughing but playing "incorrectly" and Kaelin will step in and correct him. Usually ending in a couple of tears of gratitude on Dayne's part.

Second, he helps educate Dayne on sports. He's shown Dayne proper hip checking techniques, how not to avoid tripping attempts and the basics of kickboxing.

Third, he shows Dayne how to interact with others. He'll take a toy away from Dayne and show Dayne how one's conscious (Carey or I playing the part of the conscious) tells him to give the toy back. And how after 15 seconds into another's turn, one can start stating to their conscious "Dayne's not sharing". Over and over and over until their conscious ensures equal time of sharing.

Fourth, he protects Dayne (at least from others).


Jokes aside, this all came from the other day while I was mowing the lawn. In the past I have told Kaelin to beware of the lawn mower while I'm mowing. This translated into "Stay on the deck at all costs" by Kaelin. So when Dayne decided he was going to go off the other side of the deck, nowhere near the lawn mower, Kaelin took action to prevent imminent danger. I looked up from mowing to see Dayne screaming with all his might as Kaelin has him in a bear hug and is dragging him up the deck's step and across the deck to a "safe" spot. This is with Dayne's belly exposed as his shirt lifts up from being drug over wooden deck boards that are prone to nails coming up and splinters. I flip the lawn mower off and go running over trying to get Kaelin to stop as at the same time Carey comes out of the house trying to stop it. In no time both Kaelin and Dayne are in tears. Dayne ended up with a red stomach and Kaelin ended up with a modification to the lawn mower rules. Kaelin is a good big brother, but I sometimes wonder how boys survive having bad big brothers... It makes me think that little brothers end up being tougher, but we'll see what time brings.

I am...

So the other day Kaelin, Dayne and I were at my parents house cleaning out their attic in preparation of some major construction. Since I was home, the target was to get down as many of the boxes of "stuff" related to me and my sisters as possible. About 25 boxes later we had the garage filled up with things to go through. About one box into this the boys had the contents of that box scattered around the garage testing the toys' quality. All in all we ended up finding up something like 30 various board games, Mr Pop, Crossbows and Catapults, Strawberry Shortcake and other stuff of my sisters (and thus not worth keeping), Lincoln Logs, Light Bright, a Viewmaster, and what I can only assume where the four most important boxes in the attic. One filled with GIJoe, one filled with HeMan, one filled with Star Wars and the last filled with Transformers. Being a good dad with a son who's very into Transformers I did the obvious, I quickly threw them into my car's trunk before they could be broken any further. Later when I was at our house I was able to go through these boxes and reminisce about some great childhood memories. There was Megatron (as the original gun), Bonecrusher (without the rest of the Constructicons which I so badly wanted), the Aerialbots, the Metroplex, Hound, Trailblazer and others. The Millenium Falcon, the GIJoe tower, surfboard, battle action HeMan, Skeletor. Most were in some state of disrepair, the GIJoes in particular because as a child I found by taking the one screw out of the back of each you can put different legs, heads, torsos, etc together and get uniquely camouflaged characters. Transformers still came apart to see how they worked, but most of the time I found the screws to get them back together correctly.

Looking over all the toys, I had to revise how deprived I was as a child. My parents didn't have alot, but they knew how to make a great childhood.

The Great Outdoors

Last night Kaelin and I went camping with some friends down on their land in Iowa. It was Kaelin's first camping trip and he did great. No problems sleeping in a tent in the midst of bear filled woods, completely entertained with throwing anything he could find into the lake, and ok eating not much other than hot dogs, smores and Doritos. There was some concern about his being able to handle using nature as a bathroom, but apparently it's great fun to 3 year olds.

Most of the trip down he kept asking "Why are we going camping?" but hopefully he'll understand one day...

Far, a long, long way to run...

Sunday I ran farther than I ever have in my life. I finished the Med City Half-Marathon. http://www.medcitymarathon.com/ My finish time was 2:25:10, which I'm quite happy with for a first attempt with minimal training due to life (family, work, travel, etc). My one regret is that I don't live in a flatter area, Rochester has far too many hills. I ran for the first half and split time walking/running for the second half. With about a half mile left my groin and calf started acting up and for the last couple blocks my hamstring shut down. I was thinking I wasn't going to be able to run across the finish line, but it loosed up enough to keep running. It was a very rewarding experience and I'm looking forward to the next one with a goal of not walking at all. Maybe in August...

Dayne is hilarious to watch dance these days. It's more of just bouncing up and down with all his might while a huge grin is on his face. It makes Carey and I laugh every time we see it. I'll try to get a video posted. He also seems to need less sleep than everybody else in the house. I can't wait until he can get up by himself...

Kaelin is into Transformers these days. He has Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee and Shockwave from the Transformers Animated series. Every night before bed he comes to the door numerous times to have them transformed back and forth. I'm very happy to oblige. :-) He's also very excited every time he gets to wear his Transformers big boy underwear.