Proof that Superheroes like bluegrass

Well, it's all down hill now. I just have to make it through the rest of today and tomorrow, then Faith will be here on Saturday. I'm going to pick her up in Spokane Saturday morning, they fly in Friday night at 1200, so they're getting a hotel room. Her friend wants to stay and shop in Spokane on Saturday, but as this is my last weekend at home until April, Faith elected to have me pick her up. The true test of this whole adventure will be tomorrow when I attempt to take the boys grocery shopping, something I have never attempted. It should be interesting. I've been thinking of ways to keep them calm and not fighting while they're sitting in a shopping cart, and so far I think my best bet is P-cord and duct tape, but that might earn me some weird looks in the local Omak Wal-mart. Although, it is Omak, and it is Wal-mart, so maybe not. We haven't done much exciting since the last post, it snowed a couple inches the other day, so the boys helped me shovel the driveway, then we built an awesome tunnel through one of the snow banks next to the driveway. Today is the kid's dream day, they get to play Wii and watch Star Wars so I can clean the house with few distractions. So far Simon's beaten me and Dylan at bowling, Dylan schooled us at tennis, together we've beaten three levels on Lego Batman, and Faith will have something to do when she gets home on Saturday. Faith is still feeling the bad food they ate on their first day there, so she hasn't been able to eat or drink a whole lot, but she's been having fun all the same. She went parasailing this morning, went on a tour of the city yesterday, and went on a cruise the day before. Here's the proof, by the way.

Well, we're starting day five with no Faith and everybody's still alive. We haven't done much of anything, I wanted to go snowshoeing the other day, but Simon wanted to go sledding in the backyard, then he wanted to go snowshoeing, then sledding in the yard, then...you get the idea. It culminated with Simon screaming it was too hard a decision make, laying on the floor screaming and kicking, then getting up, slapping me in the face (because I was laughing, I think) then running to his room. I wanted to get outside today, but looking out the window right now it's snowing sideways, so hopefully it clears up by lunch. Faith's having fun, they went to a time-share sales thing, I don't know, but they got free hot-stone massages for listening to it. They didn't do anything yesterday, because they got food posioning at the time-share listening thing buffet and spent the whole day in their hotel room taking turns throwing up in the bathroom. Today Faith said she thinks they're riding horses out to an island. Well the boys just came and grabbed me and said it's time to play bowling on the Wii, so I better go. Melanie, I don't think there will be any footage of us hula-hooping, I tried to bust out the balance board the other day and they didn't want anything to do with it. I'd put footage of myself hula-hooping, but apparently my considerable hula-ing skills transfer rather well to the Wii, so I don't think it would be as funny as you were hoping. Seriously, though, I kick a$$ at hula-hoop. I'll get some video of the boys bowling today, it's generally pretty funny. Later.

I saw this the other day and it cracked me up. Faith left today for Old Mexico. Things are going alright now, but it's really only been like 3 hours. It should be interesting. I'm not sure what we're going to do, I might take the boys to a gun show at Cabela's in Post Falls on Saturday, but I'm not sure if I want to yet. In other news my continuing fight with multi-tools is still being won by the multi-tool devil. It all started this summer, when I lost a Leatherman tool on a fire. I had gotten the leatherman as an award when I worked for the BLM one summer, and it retails for about $120, and had an engraving on it, and I was pretty bummed that I lost it. So I bought a new leatherman, a different model, that I actually liked better, but I lost that somewhere during our Tucson trip. So I bought a new multi-tool made by CRKT, which is a knife company whose pocket knives are the only kind I've owned for the past several years, they make great knives. Yesterday I was getting out of a pick-up at work and apparently hooked the pocket clip of the multi-tool on the door or something without noticing and I heard a loud PING! and I looked down and saw I had busted off the pocket clip for it. So I cursed. Really loud. In the Forest Service office parking lot. Then I cursed again. Even louder. And kicked a snow bank. And looked up and saw the UPS guy staring at me with big eyes. And he said "Sorry, wish I had package for you." The best part is I had just gotten that multi-tool about 6 days ago. Luckily the company guarantees all its products for as long as the original owner owns it, so I just have to ship it back and they'll fix it or send me a new one for free. I expect my day is about to rapidly descend into madness, I told the kids they could have some Valentine's Day candy after they ate lunch, and they just finished lunch and are eating chocolate something. Speaking of Valentine's Day, I hope everybody has a good one, I will be spending it alone because my wife ditched me to go to Mexico.

Hi everybody. We went to Spokane for Dylan's cardiologist appointment for his new heart murmur on Thursday. Before the appointment we decided to go to Target. We've been thinking about getting a new TV for awhile now, so while we were at Target I wandered over to electronics to get a Wii game (we'll get into that later) and saw a 32" Magnavox flat panel TV for $200 less than it normally cost, and about $100 less than the other TV's we had been looking at doing price comparisms. So I went and grabbed Faith, who can apparently spend 45 minutes picking out two shirts, and told her about the TV and asked her to come over and look at it. So 30 minutes and 1 shirt later Faith shows up. She likes the TV, I like the TV, so we load one onto the cart and buy it. Whoo-hoo! We get it home, and get to hooking it up. We get the satellite box and our DVD player hooked up, go to turn everything back on and our DVD player won't turn on. So we spend the next 30 minutes switching which outlet it's plugged into, moving extension cords all over the house, and listening to me curse. We can get it to come on for a minute, then it goes off again. Faith starts laughing and I ask her why she's laughing and she says guess what brand of DVD player we have? It's a bleeping Magnavox, just like our new TV. We bought that DVD player less than a year ago, and it already broke. Great. So the next day Faith calls Magnavox and they pretty much say sorry about your luck, go buy a new one. Jerks. So we take the DVD player apart, I mean at this point it can't anymore broken, and don't see anything obviously wrong, but what the heck do we know about the internal workings of a DVD player. I find a fuse, pull it out, clean it off, put it back, and the DVD player starts working. So we put it all back together, plug it back in, and turn it on. We put a movie in to test it, and it won't read the movie, then it starts making the most horrible noise I've ever heard. So we're like crap, guess we get to buy a new one. Back to the Wii really quick, part of the deal with Faith going to Mexico is that I get a Nintedo Wii. So before we go to Spokane I call every place I can think of and nobody has one in stock. So I order one off the internet, paying about $20 for shipping, it should be here next week. So yesterday we go to Walmart to get a new DVD player, but we change it up and go to Omak instead of Colville. We get a new DVD player, (another Magnavox, I swear my brain just turns off when Faith starts trying to convince me of something) then stop at Starbucks so Faith can get some coffee. Right next door to Starbucks is a game crazy with a big sign that says "Nintendo Wii: In stock!" Crap. I mention my inability to catch a break, and Faith says "I didn't want to tell you but I saw a few people with Wii's in their cart in that Walmart." I never called anyplace in Omak. Crap. Oh well. Faith's leaving in 12 days, which means I get a whole week off work in 12 days. Hope everyone's doing well.