Thanksgiving etc.

Since its almost Christmas I figured now would be a good time to finally post everything that happened during/since Thanksgiving.  :)

Jenny brought the kids down for Thanksgiving and we had a great four days together!  Carly was a little sick in the beginning, so we had to change a lot of our plans (no going to the movies, no playing at the park during the first two days, etc.), but we still had a good time.  In preparation for their arrival I had constructed several dozen Lego sets for them to play with.  Man, you should have seen their eyes when they walked in and saw all those Lego sets!  A lot of them they had never seen before.  And of course there were all of my personal creations (as seen on my website.)  They had a blast!  As you can see in these pictures:

Carly was very proud of her tower in that last picture there.  And speaking of pictures.  On the second day Carly was going stir crazy due to being cooped up sick, so I let her play with my camera.  She took probably around 50 pictures, probably about 20 of which were of her feet (she says that she has very cute feet), and another 20 or so were either very blurry or of less than interesting things (see some examples below).  But she had a really good time for several hours running around the apartment, taking pictures, and showing them off to everyone.  :)  Here are a few samples:

And of course, she wanted some pictures taken of her as well:

That horrible thing on her head in the last picture is the hat I was knitting for her in one of the pictures that she took.  She was very, very excited for it to be finished, so much so that I finished it sooner than I should have.  Oh well.

On Thanksgiving I prepared a couple chickens, cranberry sauce, stuffing, candied yams, and green beans... successfully.  I also tried to make rolls, which I've done very often very successfully in the past, but I was reminded of an old cooking proverb when I saw they "dough", do not EVER try to change half the ingredients in a recipe that you know that works on the day that you are having guests over you moron!  Sigh, oh well.  For our dinner we had our neighbors the Ku family over.  They have only been in the US a few months now, but William and Yungeun are already fast friends, and Michael and Carly love to tag along with the two older boys!  They even brought two Korean dishes with them!  Man, were they GOOD!!  We had a very nice meal together.  It was a little awkward for me when Ung Mo insisted on doing all of the dishes after the meal was over, but he really insisted.

William, Michael and Carly spent a lot of time with Yungeun while they were here.  Ung Mo actually came up to me and apologized for monopolizing so much of the kids' time during their visit.  I assured him that it was not a problem.  We were still having a lot of fun together as a family, and the kids really love playing with Yungeun.  When I mentioned this he said that he wanted me to know that he and his wife are very grateful for William.  Apparently William's friendship and kindness really helped Yungeun adapt to living in the US during those first few months.  Needless to say that they were really dissapointed when Jenny and the kids moved to OK.

As mentioned in a previous blog post, I had planned on getting the kids some Wii games and barbie-sized action figures/dolls.  Well, I got to thinking, hey, what if we get a 3DSXL instead?  So I proposed to the kids that we could all go to the store for a Black "Friday" sale (it started at 8:00pm on Thursday) and pick one up (they were 25% off at Target), and also they could spend their allowance money on some games at the same time.  I told them that if they decided to do this then this would be their communal Christmas gift from me for this year.  Well, they agreed, so we all went out to Target at 8:00 that night.  We got the 3DSXL and they each got two games each.  And they love it!  And the best part?  They played with it the whole 8-hour car ride when I was dropping them off with Jenny!  :-D  We had an agreement, if you were good during everyone else's turn then you got to play during your turn.  It worked remarkably well.  Now we'll just see how well it works during the four long car-rides during the Christmas break in a few weeks.

Also, when I was dropping off the kids we spent the night together in a hotel, and then went to Church together, before going out to eat with Jenny, at which point I returned the kids.  Anyway, during the breakfast at the hotel, Carly got a complement on the shirt that she was wearing that I had made for her!  I think I was much more pleased than even Carly was!

Well, since Thanksgiving I've been in kind of a rut.  Not getting much work done and watching a lot of Netflix.  But I'm starting to pull out of it.  Just in time for Christmas to throw me off again!  :-D  Okay, so I have been making good progress with the job market (I've had two job interviews that went really well, I have another interview next week, and I just applied for a position in a Department that the chair of that department herself had asked me personally to apply for.  (Okay, so she's a buddy of my dissertation supervisor who mentioned me to her, but still!)  And I've also been making excellent progress with the creation of my first multiplayer game.  And I have been working on my dissertation and teaching my class, I just haven't been working on my dissertation as much as I should have been.

Anyway, speaking of watching too much Netflix, I have a confession to make.  I got a wild hair and watched The Host on Netflix.  I don't know if its just the mood I've been in lately, but I really, really like that movie!  In fact, I even cried a few times (I've watched it several times now) at the part where Wanda is sacrificing herself so that Melanie can have her life back.  Of course, I also cried last night when watching the Hunger Games at the part where Katniss is mourning the death of Rue.  This is really weird, because I don't normally cry... ever.  And especially not for chick flicks.  (These are chick flicks, right?)  But it did feel really good to have those cathartic releases!  I've been slowly building up a DVD collection of movies that are dubbed in Spanish, and I look forward to adding these two soon.  Of course, I'm also looking forward to adding the Terry Pratchett films in Spanish as well, even though I have to order those from Spain.

Well, I should probably get to work on my dissertation now.  Best.

Amen!

I'm reading Jane McGonigal's book Reality Is Broken for my dissertation, and I love it!  she does an excellent job of putting into words things that I've been thinking of but haven't been able to put into words myself.  For example, I've never really like the concepts of "self-esteem" and "self-fulfillment".  In my opinion that's part of what has torn my marriage apart.  And here is what this book as to say on the matter:

"Jean M. Twenge, a professor of psychology and the author of Generation Me, has persuasively argued that the youngest generation today -- particularly anyone born after 1980 -- are, in her words, "more miserable than ever before."  Why?  Because of our increased cultural emphasis on "self-esteem" and "self-fulfillment."  But real fulfillment, as countless psychologists, philosophers, and spiritual leaders have shown, comes from fulfilling commitments to others.  We want to be esteemed in the eyes of others, not for "who we are," but rather for what we've done that really matters.
The more we focus on ourselves and avoid a commitment to others, Twenge's research shows, the more we suffer from anxiety and depression.  But that doesn't stop us from trying to make ourselves happy along.  We mistakenly think that by putting ourselves first, we'll finally get what we want.  In fact, true happiness comes not from thinking more of ourselves, but rather from thinking less of ourselves -- from seeing the truly small role we play in something much bigger, much more important than our individual needs."  (Emphasis in original.)

It has been my opinion for several years now that the more people focus on themselves and their self-esteem and self-fulfillment, the more they hurt themselves and all those around them.  Especially their families.  When you have self as your primary focus, as your god to be served, then everything and everyone else takes a back seat.  It's inevitable.  And so, eventually, you and everyone around you will be more miserable because you are working so hard to make yourself happy.

Busy, busy

I'm not completely sure where to start with this entry.

Let's see, on Friday I played Mario Kart Wii with the kids over the internet!  It was a lot of fun!  Carly is getting much better at it and can almost stay on the track about 50% of the time.  I'm still just a little bit better than Michael.  He would cackle with glee whenever he got in front of me, and then he would say: "Daddy, slow down!" when I got in front of him.  :)  Then there's William...  Of the four races I did with William I think I beat him once!  :oP  And believe me, I was trying!  He does have a slight advantage in that they have unlocked some better vehicles on their Wii, but really that's just an excuse.  But I'm using it!

Over the past several weeks I've also been making quite a few tshirts.  I'm getting better at it and really enjoy it!  So far I've made about 5 shirts for myself, a couple for the kids, and almost all the ones I need for Jessica and her brood.  :)  I've also been wearing my shirts to school on Fridays.  My students seem to get a kick out of them too.  I'm thinking of making one with a picture of Gandalf's face when he's facing the Balrog and have him saying: "You shall not pass!!!" and wearing that shirt when my students take their final exam.  Hee hee!  I'm thinking I might see if they have a bumper sticker like that too.  ;o)

But it hasn't all been soda and pizza.  I was just called as one of the Gospel Principles teachers.  I've subbed for the class several times and it has gone well.  This time I could really feel the Spirit helping as I prepared the lesson!  I was learning a lot and was very excited.  Then I got cocky.  Needless to say I was humbled and the class didn't go that well.  :op  But I did have chocolate chip cookies!

In other news, the dissertation is progressing nicely, as is the job search.  I just had my first preliminary interview via Skype today and I think that it went rather well.  Which was nice.  :o)  It probably didn't hurt that I had been praying all day that I wouldn't make a complete fool of myself.  It was for a lecturer position at North Texas University, which is a little under 300 miles from the kids, so well within driving distance, which is one of the main things I'm looking for.  Ironically, in the middle of the interview my phone went off!  I had it on because they had asked me to have it on before the interview in case they needed to call me, and then I forgot to turn it off.  So after my interview was over I checked my messages, and it had been a call from the University of Central Arkansas wanting to set up a phone interview with me!  So I'll have that interview this Friday morning.  This is also just for a lecturer position, but this one is even closer to the kids at around only 230 miles away!  I am being extremely blessed!  I hope you are too!  :o)

Recovery?

I've been sick for about four days now.  Not anything bad, but bad enough to be annoying.  I'm almost better, I think, the only thing left is my voice.  Of course, now that I've been sick for almost a week, I'm having to get back into a regular work routine again.  Have you ever noticed that it's a lot easier to get into a lazy routine than into a work routine?  <sigh>

In other news, here is a cute picture of the kids' Halloween costumes this year that Jenny sent me.  :)

Speaking of the kids, I've planned what I'm going to buy them for Christmas this year come Black Friday.  But don't tell them!!!
For William:
  
For Michael:
  
For Carly:
  

So that will be one Wii game and one Barbie-size doll each.  I'm hoping the Barbie-size GI Joes will encourage the boys to play more with Carly, who LOVES Barbies.  I do feel sorry for the Prince Ken guy though.  He's going to be living in a dollhouse with something like 14 girls, 8 or 10 of which are disney princesses and all of which enjoy running around in their undies.  I grew up with five girls, at least one of which seemed to think that she was a princess, so I can sympathize with him.  <<shiver>>  My guess is that the ninjas will just be occasional visitors.  I was thinking of getting them more legos, but, to be honest, I'm starting to think that we may have enough... for now.

Oh, and today my Telephonophobia was ingrained a little more.  I got my first bite for a job opportunity next year!  : D  North Texas called to set up a skype interview with me for next week.  The university is pretty darn close to the kids, so I'm hoping to do well.  The professor who called had somewhat of a heavy accent and I was nervous, bad combination.  Anyway, after setting up an interview for next Wednesday evening he politely asked how my dissertation was going.  Well, at first I thought that he had asked how my application was going.  Not sure exactly what he meant I hedged and said: "I'm not sure.  But I hope its going well."  He laughed, and then made a point of saying that the availability of this position hadn't been finalized yet.  Oops.  Or, in the words of my dissertation supervisor: "YOU SAID WHAT?????"  Anyway, now that I'm going to be starting job interviews, feel free to keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

Oh yeah, I've been stopping by Goodwill on occasion to see if they have any interesting movies dubbed in Spanish.  I've been watching such movies as well as reading books in Spanish to help, get this, improve my Spanish.  Which has suffered somewhat after doing almost all my graduate coursework in English and only speaking in Spanish on a regular basis with beginning/intermediate level Spanish students.  Anyway, yesterday I watched The Ring for the first time.  Now, I'm not normally one for horror.  Though I do quite enjoy several comedy horrors such as Tremors I, II, III, and IV, The Care Bears, and Poltergeist.  For those of you who aren't familiar with The Ring.  It's not a comedy horror film.  But I did manage to get some sleep last night.  :)  Which just goes to show that prayer works.

Change is in the air

Fall!  I love Fall!  I can actually open my apartment windows without worrying about whether my silverware will melt!

But that's not the only change that's happened recently.  Now that Jenny and the kids have moved to Oklahoma I find that I have a lot more free time than I'm used to.  Of course I mess them terribly, and this is also the first time in my life that I've ever lived somewhere on my own, but I've discovered that it's not the end of the world.  Weird.

Anyway, back to the free time.  Yes, I can and should use some of it to get more work done on my dissertation, but there's only so much dissertating you can do in a single day.  So in addition to doing a little more work, I've also been doing some more hobby things.  In the past couple months I've read 10.5 of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (I'm currently half-way through El Segador).  I really enjoy them a lot!  I've been reading them all in Spanish, but I'm sure that they are probably even better in the original English.  Not to mention a lot easier to get a hold of.  I've also been playing with the buckets of Legos that I have.  so far I've put together 30 or so of the sets using the instructions online so that the kids and I can have a lot to destroy when they come over for Thanksgiving!  I've also been designing and building some of my own creations.  So far these include a temple, a nativity, a cornucopia, and a minotaur.  You can see pictures of these creations on my website here.  I've also been having a lot of fun with my new silkscreen.  So far I've made 6 t-shirts for myself that you can see here.  I'll make a couple more for myself to make sure that I can consistently do good quality printing jobs, then I'll start preparing some Christmas gifts for Jessica and her family, since this year it is my turn to give them an exchange gift.  Of course, I won't be posting those pictures until after Christmas.

Another change that I've mentioned in a previous post is the fact that I purchased a car about two weeks ago.  I love this car!  And I'm not what you would call a 'car person' at all.  Actually, if I tell you that the car I love is a Prius then you can probably tell for yourself that I'm not a car person.

A final set of changes harks back to the living on my own for the first time deal.  Now first let me preface this by saying that I've always tried to be presentable, but I've never really gone much beyond that point.  But now that is changing.  This morning I shaved with an old-school shave set (August's idea, thanks bro!), you know the kind where you apply shaving cream with a badger-hair brush, I used hair gel, and I even used cologne for the first time in my life.  For those of you who know me you realize that this is definitely a new development.  But you know what?  I actually enjoyed it!  Weird.

But enough about me.  What's new in your life?

Car

Well, now that Jenny, the kids, and the car are living in Oklahoma I decided I should probably get myself a car.  For the longest time I've been wanting to get a Toyota Prius, but its been out of my price range.  Ironically, now that I'm a bachelor again I was approved to purchase a 2010 Prius with just 34,000 miles on it!  :D  It's a very nice white car with a gray interior.  I'm very happy with it!

Insight

Have you ever noticed that if you look hard enough you can always find an excuse to not work?  For example, right now my excuse is that I'm writing this blog post.

Life goes on

     The past few weeks have, of course been a little chaotic.  I helped Jenny pack up the house and the moving truck and she and the kids moved back to Broken Arrow to be near to her friends and family.  So far they're doing well, the kids have been driving everybody crazy and Jenny has gotten a sales job that she is very good at.  The kids have started going to their new school, though I have yet to hear a report on how that is going.  Jenny and I are still working out a regular schedule for me to video chat with the kids via Google Hangouts.  The kids really like doing a video chat!  :)  I miss them all very, very much, but the Spirit has told me (several times) that this is what we needed to do.
    Speaking of the Spirit, I really enjoyed General Conference this past weekend!  I felt so much more peaceful and happy after listening to the four general sessions!  There were a lot of good talks, though if I had to pick one that really stuck out to me it would probably be President Uchtdorf's Saturday morning talk.  It's been harder for me to sit still and concentrate on one thing, so while listening to conference I either played Minecraft or knitted (with the knifty knitter, of course).  An odd combo, yes I know.  But I got a lot of silly things done in Minecraft that I look forward to showing the kids when Jenny brings them down with her for the Austin Film Festival at the end of October.  :)  I also did finish knitting a normal-sized grocery bag which I'm pretty proud of.  It will be interesting to see what the grocery store people do when they see it.  Okay, its not perfect, but it works, dang it!  (I know because I tested it by filling it up with canned goods from my pantry.)
    In other news my schooling is progressing well.  I have completed rough drafts of my first four chapters of my dissertation, out of a total of five chapters.  I'm planning to get started on chapter 5 later this week after I get a little more feedback from a couple of my committee members.  But in any case, even with just four chapter drafts I'm already up to page 90, which is pretty good since dissertations in my field tend to end up between 150 and 250 pages.  I plan to finish up writing the dissertation before the Christmas trips start this December and then defending it in the spring.
    The other big thing going on right now is the job search.  The first application deadlines for Assistant Professorships in Spanish Linguistics are coming up on the 15th of this month, and there are a lot fewer positions being advertised than there normally are.  Fun.  But I have already gotten my curriculum vitae, cover letter, and teaching philosophy written and proofed, and I should be getting more feedback on them later this week.  Then I'll have a mock interview to help me get ready, and then it's show time.  I'm hoping that I can get a good position that is close to Jenny and the kids.  When I pray about it I feel peaceful, so I know things will work out, now I just have to wait and see how.  So the question is, what am I going to knit next?

Michael turns 7

So, as usual, less than a week after the new school year starts, Michael has had his birthday.  :)  To celebrate the five of us went to the Austin Zoo on Saturday.  It's a smaller, rescue zoo, but it was just about right for the kids.  Though the boys were disappointed that most of the big cats were passing the midday heat indoors and out of sight.  Carly had a blast!  Neither Michael nor William had the guts to feed the goats, sheep, etc., but after a little while Carly gave it a try.  She loved it!  She then ran around the whole zoo happily feeding any hoofed animals she could find.  :)  It was very cute!
Michael did really like the rest of his birthday celebration though!  Jenny made an awesome strawberry shortcake, I got him some used GI Joes, and he spent the money that he had received from Grandma Connie at the Lego store in the mall.  He was very happy and tired by the end of the day!  The GI Joes were an especially big hit with all three kids!  These are the first action figures that they've gotten, and they have been having a ball playing with them, throwing them around with grocery bag parachutes, burying them in the playground, and building Lego vehicles for them to ride.  :)  Ah, the memories!  I'm pretty sure we'll be looking around for more action figures in the years to come.  It's too bad that they're so freaking expensive!  One ninja turtle costs like $13!
The next night was Michael's turn to stay up with me for half an hour after the other two went to bed.  Well, he really wanted to play minecraft together, so we did.  :)  And consequently we both lost track of time and wound up staying up for around three hours, until it was almost 11:00.  We were both really tired the next day, but we did have a lot of fun together that night!  One of the highlights was the fact that we dug a long tunnel under the ocean, then dug a stairway up to the ocean floor, then built a shaft up to the surface of the ocean, where we built a castle in the middle of the ocean!  :)  Buddy, talk about a moat!
In other news, my school has started back up, and things are going very well.  I'm on track with my dissertation, and I've really been enjoying the group of kids I'm teaching so far.  :)  Also, my silkscreen for printing on tshirts came in last week, and I'm looking forward to doing my first shirt this week.  :)

Good kids

I felt really proud of the boys this morning!  And they weren't even there.  When I went out to catch the bus this morning our neighbor was there with his son waiting for the elementary school bus.  We got to chatting, of course, about our boys playing together and how we were both really appreciative of the other's offspring.  I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but our neighbors just moved to the US for school from Korea and their son knows very little English.  Anyway, their dad thanked me very warmly for the fact that my sons treat his son so well.  I was kind of surprised, since I've noticed frequent misunderstandings, miscommunication, and even a little crying (Michael) and yelling (William).  But he insisted that they were very nice and very patient with his son, especially in light of how the kids in his class treat him.  Apparently he gets teased and taken advantage of quite a bit there, and it's still the first week of class.  :(  That made me sad, but I still felt very proud of my two boys!  I love those little guys!

Whoo hoo! I'm still mostly sane! :D

For those of you who don't know, Jenny has spent the past two weeks (though it feels more like two months) in Scotland at a theater contest where one of her plays was being performed.  Well, I must say, I am ready for her to get back, like, yesterday!  Not that I haven't been having fun with the kids mind you.  Actually the opposite problem.  I've been spending so much time with the kids that I haven't gotten very much of anything else done.
But buddy, have been having a good time!  Me and the boys especially have been nerding it up!  I played Age of Empires II with William once, and now he and Michael ask to play it with me all the time.  They still are trying to master things like... well... the entire game, but they have a blast doing it!  I also finally bought another board game that I've been wanting to get for a long time.  One of the new Dungeons and Dragons stand alone 4th Edition board games: The Wrath of Ashardalon.  The recommended youngest age for players is 12, but Michael and William both love it!  This is only the fourth board game I've gotten where the kids have asked me to play it with them on a regular basis.  (The others are: Heroica, HeroQuest, and Munchkin.  All of which are table-top role playing games.)  But they especially love The Wrath of Ashardalon because of the highly detailed miniatures and the level of freedom of action within the game.  We've already played through the first five adventures and we just got it a week or so ago!  William's favorite character is the half-orc rogue, and Michael's is the dragonborn wizard.  I usually play the elf paladin so that we have at least a little healing magic.  Even if the boys make fun of me for playing a girl.  :P
All three of the kids have also really enjoyed the time they/we've been spending with others.  We had some new neighbors move in right next door about a week and a half ago.  They have just arrived to the US from South Korea and were very eager to get to know us and have William come over to play with their eight-year-old son so that he could start being exposed to English.  William had a blast!  Of course, it probably didn't hurt that they're son is also a big fan of Minecraft and Legos...  Well, since that first fateful day all three of our kids have gone over almost every day from lunch to dinner.  I'm not complaining, since it gives me a little down time, which is nice.  I'm just constantly paranoid that they might be wearing out their welcome.  I mean, when I'm taking a nap and my kids who are next door wake me up, I figure they're probably being a little rowdy.
We also went swimming with another family that we've hung out with several times, and the kids had a blast doing that as well!  Especially Carly!  She and Michael (but especially Carly) finally got up the nerve to jump into the pool if I caught them.  I had to remind them to not run along the pool after each jump when they were coming back to jump again.  William, on the other hand, tried to drown the son of the other family by playing shark with him.  :{
I also went and hung out with some of my friends at a game night.  The kids played with some of the other kids while five of us guys played Scotland Yard.  It's an older board game that has just recently been re-released.  It involves all but one of the players trying to hunt down the remaining player before the game ends.  We lost.  But we had a great time and enjoyed a healthy helping of unhealthy junk food.  :)  I also went to a birthday party for one of my professors.  I've been to their (very nice) house a few times before, and they have been to my apartment a few times when the kids were here, so I was hopeful that there wouldn't be any complications.  Well, they had a lot of friends, colleagues and neighbors there, and I was the only one with kids.  The kids did reasonably well for their first foray into the world of boring adult "parties".  Though Carly did scream bloody murder when their dog jumped on her, and it took constant reminders to keep William from exploring their house in the guise of a monster spy.  <sigh>  They had an amazing array of wonderful horderves as well!  Everything from goat cheese and salami on special bread to mushroom-filled little quesadilla-looking things.  All very delicious!  William ate salami and Michael and Carly cleaned out the fruit bowl.  <siiiiiiigh>
In other news, during the past two weeks I did find out that Angelo State University had given the instructorship that I had applied for to another applicant.  Oh well, it is actually kind of nice not to have to worry about moving again for another year or so.  I also finished collecting the summer data for my dissertation.  I had a pretty good response rate, so I'm very hopeful that I will not have to run my experiment a third time in the Fall.  Now if I could just force myself to sit down and work.  Well, maybe after Jenny gets back...

Age isn't everything

This past week I finally bought a game that I've been wanting to get for well over two years now: Munchkin.  :D  For those of you who aren't familiar with this particular game, it's kind of like an incredibly simplified version of Dungeons and Dragons.  The reason I had been waiting to get it was because it requires at least three people to play and the suggested minimum age is 10.  Well, I knew that William would be able to play it since he can already pretty much read at the level required, but I knew that Michael wouldn't be able to read the cards himself.  But I finally figured, what the heck!  Well, the three of us played a practice round where we could all see each other's cards and we were all helping each other.  Then we played our first real game.  Michael and I were neck and neck for the lead and I had barely helped him at all!  Then it got to the point where both Michael and I only needed to kill one more monster in order to win.  My turn came first, and I pulled... random junk!  That's right, I kicked down the door and there was no monster!  :(  Needless to say Michael got very excited!  Then his turn and he kicked down the door and found... a chicken!  That's right, a chicken.  A lousy, level 2 meal on legs was all that stood between Michael and victory.  Well, we couldn't have that!  So I used all of my formidable arsenal of spells and potions to beef up the chicken to a whopping level 19 monstrosity, which basically means that the chicken was now almost as strong as a dragon!  Michael kind of looked at me, then shrugged, and crushed the chicken into the dirt and won the game.  Meanwhile, I think William was still reading his cards.  Michael had played the game based purely on his memory of what the cards could do based on discussions from the first game, and from his ability to read the key information on each card, even if he couldn't read the blocks of text that described the nuances.  I was impressed!
Michael had another chance to be impressive this past week as well.  One of his front two upper teeth got loose.  Finally, he asked if I could pull it out for him so he could get money from the tooth fairy.  (He was very serious on this point and informed me that he knew that the tooth fairy was real.)  Then he stood there and just waited for me to yank the tooth out.  I did, and he handled the pain very well indeed!  Needless to say he definitely got his buck from the tooth fairy that night.  :)
One last note about Michael.  A few days ago I thought that I'd introduce William to Age of Empires (a real-time strategy game on the computer that I loved playing with my dad.)  Well, William really enjoyed it, even if he was having some difficulty grasping the strategy part (William, I keep telling you, you need more than 2 lousy villagers!)  Michael watched us play a couple games together very quietly.  Then, at the end of one game, where I was just waiting around for William to clean up the last computer player, and I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting...  I finally looked over at Michael and asked him if he'd like to take my place for the rest of the game.  He nodded, still not saying much.  A few minutes later I heard from the living room that Michael had wiped out the last computer player!  Then I thought, heck, let's see how good he can do, so I let him and William play a game on their own.  After an hour or so Michael had roughly three times the score of William and roughly 100 times the resources and military might!  The rest of that game set the precedent for each of the other games that they have played together so far.  Michael sits there quietly while William is continually yelling things like: "Hey Michael, can you wait for me?"  "Michael, can you leave the yellow for me?"  "Michael, slow down, my siege weapon can't move that fast!"
Both William and Michael both are really into Munchkin and Age of Empires now, and have even been asking me to play when I was doing other things (normally I have to coax them off the Wii or away from the Legos to get them to play one of my games with me.)  I've been very pleasantly surprised when Michael comes up to me now and asks: "Dad, can I play Age of Vampires?"  :)
This is not to say that William hasn't been doing remarkably well for an eight-year old playing games designed for teenagers and above, he has been doing really quite well!  Michael has just been doing freaking amazingly well!!
On another note, we went out to the neighborhood park one morning after a decent wind storm the night before.  And immediately William homed in on the branches that had fallen down during the night.  Now, those of you who know me know that I'm always a little more skittish than most people about kids swinging sticks around, so I tried to think of a way to convince William to not break his siblings' teeth.  After thinking quickly, I asked William: "How many six-inch sticks do you think you could get out of those big branches."  William looked them over carefully and estimated that he could get around 20.  I then challenged him to find out for sure.  So, he started breaking the branches into six inch pieces.  Soon Michael and Carly got into it too, though their size limit was about a quarter inch diameter while William was successfully tackling up to a half-inch diameter.  Pretty soon we had a nice pile of relatively harmless 6 - 12 inch sticks.  It was then, looking down at their handiwork, that the kids finally realized that they had just destroyed the funnest toy at the playground.  I felt a little sorry for them, so I offered to show William how to build a fire, and then, if he did a good job building it in the neighborhood grill, he could use a book of matches to try and get it to burn.  So, in about ten minutes I explained to William the basics of fire building.  About half an hour later William had constructed a fire that would have passed him on any boy scout fire building challenge!  I was impressed!  Even more impressive was the fact that just a few matches later, William had his first fire going at a nice blaze!  I'm pretty sure that I was a lot older than eight when I successfully built my own camp fire basically on my own!
Carly, meanwhile, has not been doing any of these crazy things.  But she has really been enjoying her own new distractors.  She got a lot of books for her birthday and has been spending a good amount of time each day flipping through them and coaxing me into reading some of them to her.  No small challenge given that I can now play to new games with the boys!  She also took the allowance money she had saved up and bought a Barbie car, which she has been immensely enjoying!  And finally, she has just been her usual, incredibly cute and loving Carly self!  As an example, today, when we got home from Church, she asked me: "Daddy, I saw that you have some cards left over."  "Yes."  "Can you help me write some letters for my Grandmas that sent me birthday cards please?"  "Do what?  I mean, uh, sure."  Usually when I get an idea to do something like that, I put it off until I forget about it.  But Carly was very persistent and there are now several thank you's in the mail.  Carly is very thoughtful like that.  Another example from this past week happened when I took her to pick out the ice cream for her birthday.  She stood in front of the ice cream selection at the grocery store for a good five minutes, thinking.  Then, she said: "Daddy, I want the  green one.  It is Mommy's favorite and you and William really like it a lot too."  I love that little girl!  I love all three of those kids!  I can't believe how fast they are growing up!

Life can be fun

Last weekend was pretty normal.  Not much to report.  One point of interest with Carly is on Friday night at around 2:00 in the morning she crawled into my bed.  This was somewhat unusual (it had not happened for over a year), so I was a little surprised, but I also wanted to go back to sleep, so I just went with it.  A few minutes later I woken up again by Carly who said that her tummy didn't feel good.  Okay, I was tired, asleep actually, so I just reassured her and went back to sleep.  Bad move.  The next time Carly woke me up a few minutes later she was throwing up all over my bed.  :P  Luckily she felt a lot better after that and no one has had any other problems since then.
The boys have started creating even more intricate Lego RPG games.  And they're actually starting to come up with rules for them!  Okay, so they were always coming up with rules... I mean always as in several times each turn during play.  But now they are starting to write down their rules ahead of time, and then work on refining them between sessions!  :O  So the next time I take them shopping with their allowance money I think I'm going to buy Munchkin and see if they that too.  :)
Speaking of fantasy stuff, I've been doing a lot of reading for pleasure for the past few weeks, which, of course, means fantasy books.  :)  In addition to reading even more of the Myth books by Robert Asprin, I've been reading more of the DiscWorld books by Terry Pratchett.  Both series are a lot of fun!  One of my favorite moments from the Myth books was when the team was trying to slow down the progress of an invading army, so Massha started distracting the lead general with her womanly charms, and Guido and Nunzio enlisted in the army to try to stir up dissent from within.  Well, as it turned out, having the general out of the picture was actually improving efficiency at head quarters, and everything that Guido and Nunzio tried to do actually improved morale and got them fast promotions!  For example, they tried to mess things up while assigned to a supply depot, but so that they wouldn't get caught, they decided to only mess up 1 in every 10 orders, and they worked to make the mistakes plausible (e.g. the wrong item had a very similar item number to the wrong item, they sent spring uniforms instead of winter uniforms, they broke their drill-instructor's arm, and they sent propaganda instead of toilet paper.)  Well, they got pulled into the office and were told that they were getting another promotion for their outstanding work!  Not only was their 90% efficiency a lot better than the army's average of 67%, but they were complimented on sending better things than were needed (e.g. the uniform order had been delayed, so the summer uniforms were actually what that group needed, breaking the drill-instructor's arm was recognized as an accident and demonstrated their impressive leadership potential, and the unit that received the propaganda leaflets had actually been suffering from terrible moral, which was happily reversed by said leaflets.)  Ah, I laughed!  As for the DiscWorld books.  Two of the many times I burst out laughing were: 1. when a guitar maker asked his apprentice: "where are those guitars you made when you were first learning the trade?" and his apprentice answered: "you mean the ones that you said sounded like street cats trying to take a crap when their butt is sewed shut?"  and 2. when death is riding his skeletal motorcycle and accidentally drives off a cliff and smack into the side of the adjoining cliff face in a fiery explosion, and the guy that he was after hears him, right before he dies, say: "Oh, shi..."  Oh yeah, I laughed at that one too!
Anyway, this weekend has been a little more notable in that we celebrated Carly's birthday!  To celebrate Jenny made an excellent cake and treated us all to a wonderful little kiddie amusement park (Carly was so excited she could hardly stay in her seat the whole way there, and was running around with a huge smile on her face giggling like a maniac the whole time we were there) on the outskirts of town which the kids immensely enjoyed (see pics).  Carly was also incredibly excited (jumping up and down like all over the place) to be getting presents!  The boys were excited as well, until they found out that the only thing she had received was books.  She got a couple Seuss books, Where's Waldo, a Disney story book with 55 stories, and Where the Sidewalk Ends.  We've already skimmed through the Where's Waldo, read one of the disney stories, read a few of the poems in Where the Sidewalk Ends, and read all of the Seuss books, and she just opened them up three hours ago!  Oh, and then I did cave in a little and get Mario Party 2 on the Wii Virtual Console.  Amazingly, Carly has won both games that we've played so far and that is without any help (and believe me, without any mercy from her brothers!)  Since this is the first game where she's been doing really well, she's been really excited about it!  (Again, jumping up and down all over the place.)  Yep, a lot of Carly smiles, hugs and kisses this week!  A special thanks to those of you who birthday cards with and without money!

The Summer has Begun

     Today is a relatively nice day, with moderate temperatures, rain, and cloud cover.  But in general the past few weeks have had nothing but blazing heat and clear skies.  Pretty much all the grass was brown until it started raining today.  It's just another reminder that eventually I would like to move somewhere with a more temperate climate.  Like maybe the inside of an active volcano.
      William Michael and Carolyn reported having a very good time visiting with their Nana and Granddad a couple weeks ago.  Apparently during this trip Jenny also discovered a new way to control William.  It's called MineCraft.  That's right buddy, William is now an official MineCraft aficionado.  He introduced me to the game when they got back, and now I confess that I enjoy playing it as well.  Right now I have a floating castle with a moat of lava.  It's not complete yet, but it already looks pretty darn cool if you ask me.
     In other news, last week I submitted my application for an instructorship with Angelo State University for this coming Fall and Spring.  I would be making a lot more money than I would teaching here at UT as an Assistant Instructor, which is nice.  It's also not too far away so I would still be able to commute back and forth when need be.  We'll see if I get the position.  I'm not wild about moving again.  Especially as it would more than likely only be for one year, but there are definite advantages to moving out there.
     This past weekend I was going to take the kids swimming, and they were really excited about that idea!  They burst through my apartment door carrying a huge bag of pool stuff, smiling at me with their bright red faces.  That's right, they were very sunburned.  (See picture of William's back).

Needless to say I decided not to take them to the pool this weekend.  Needless to say they were not pleased with this decision!
     We did have a good time though playing MineCraft, Legos, Blokus, and Wii together... inside... with the air conditioning.  Carly's favorite activity is still sitting in my lap and having me read her books, which we usually do several times a day, but she is also getting into Blokus and Legos.  Especially if she can make her brothers mad while participating in said activities.  She has also gotten into the habit of sneaking up on me when I'm not paying attention, usually because I'm reading a book for my own enjoyment, and then cackling maniacally as she tickles my feet.  She also enjoys hitting me with pillows, but this is somewhat more difficult since the pillows are not allowed to leave the bedroom.  The kids have also been enjoying the Ward we're attending now.  Here's a picture of them ready for church.

     Well, I think that's about it for now.  I've had a few requests to have the rss feed from this blog feed into my facebook account, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it.  If anyone knows how to do it please let me know!

When in Rome...

I laughed a lot with the kids this week!  Unfortunately, my memory is terrible, so I only remember a few of the things that the kids did that triggered my laughter.
The first one has to do with William.  Apparently during the past school year he was fascinated watching several of his friends playing the Pokemon card game with each other during recess.  So, he finally saved up some of his allowance and bought himself his own deck, which means, of course, that I had to buy myself a deck as well.  We played quite a few rounds this weekend, and I must admit that I am very impressed with how well William took repeated defeat!  Of course, he was pretty gracious in victory as well, but we won't talk about that...
Anyway, William is getting really good at reading as well!  Though he still hasn't mastered all of the nuances of English (who has?!)  So, several times he'd be reading something from one of his Pokemon cards to me and I would have to stop him and have him show me the word he had just read, because I couldn't quite make it out.  Anyway, one of my favorites was when he was telling me that he was attacking me with his "pissy bolt".  Buddy, it took a while to recover from that one!  :)  And it was even funny the second, third, fourth... etc. time as well!  (Even though I tried to explain the fact that the p was silent in the syllable 'psy', he continued to bring out his 'pissy' pokemon, and have them use their 'pissy' energy to attack me with their 'pissy' attacks.
Another funny thing happened when we went out to the park on Friday morning.  The kids got bored pretty quickly and wanted to come back in.  I wanted them to stay out for a good stint since that meant that they would go down better come bedtime.  So, I busted out the secret weapon that Mom had suggested, three paintbrushes and a small bucket of water.  Buddy, you should have seen their little faces light up when they realized that I was giving them permission to put graffiti on the wooden playground!  After they got going on that, they were very contentedly happy... at least until William thought it would be fun to dump the water down the slide, and then they found out that I would only allow them one bucket of water per week.
This week I also introduced the kids to some more important culture-type things.  That is to say, we watched Earnest Scared Stupid, Earnest Goes to Jail, and Earnest Goes to Camp together (in that order).  They loved those movies!  Though I must admit that I had enjoyed them much more when I was younger than I did this time around.  But I did get a big kick out of watching the kids watch the movies!  They were literally rolling in the aisles!  So I thought that I'd see how much they enjoyed some movies that I still enjoy.  We watched The Gamers (which they loved) and then The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (which they loved even more).  They were particularly fond of the many ways the Bard died, over and over again, in Dorkness Rising.  Of course, Dorkness Rising has some stuff I don't really want the kids to be exposed to, such as some foul language, and the very horny bard.  But we talked about how in some movies they use words that are bad and we shouldn't use, and I didn't hear them use any of the said words after watching the movie so hopefully that worked out.  And when they looked at me with puzzled expressions on their faces when the bard would lead giggling damsels off to some back room, I explained that he wanted to kiss them even though they weren't married, and they seemed to accept that without question.
For some reason I sang the first verse of "you are my sunshine" to Carly this weekend when she was cuddled in my lap.  She really liked me singing that song to her!  So much so that she came up to me three times after that throughout the weekend and asked me to sing it to her while rocking her in my arms.  I almost cried.
I did cry a little this morning in the car when we were getting ready to head out to church.  Michael asked me: "Daddy, when are you coming back to Mommy's house?"  I was a bit surprised, because I was pretty sure we had explained that we would not be getting back together again to the kids.  So I replied: "Probably never Michael."  When I turned around to start backing out of the parking space I noticed that tears were streaming down his face.  I quickly parked the car and had him unbuckle and crawl into my lap.  I rocked him as he sobbed into my chest for a few minutes.  I could feel his little heart breaking!  I cried with him and told him that I was so sorry, and that Jenny and I both still loved him and William and Carly very, very much, and that I really wished we could have worked things out so that I could come back.  Surprisingly this episode seemed to affect me more than it did him.  After a few minutes he gave me a hug, then crawled back to his seat and started acting like Michael again: smiling and making jokes.  I guess he just needed a good cry.  I was very happy to see that he was able to be so happy again so quickly after crying, even though I'm sure the hurt is far from over.  I haven't been able to get over it that quickly, that's for sure!
Well, sorry to end on kind of a low note this week.  But there it is.

Where did the Easter Bunny come from?

Okay, I should probably jump right in to explaining the title for this post.  At church on Sunday Carly was sitting in my lap.  Then, during the Sacrament, she started singing Little Bunny Foo Foo, with the hand motions and everything.  She was pretty quiet, but I decided that it would be a good teaching moment, so I leaned down and whispered in her ear that during the Sacrament we're supposed to think about Jesus Christ.  She got still and thought about that for a second, then she turned around and whispered back: "Daddy, Little Bunny Foo Foo helps me think about Jesus."
William was remarkably well behaved this past weekend!  Just to give you an idea, usually William needs multiple reminders before he will grudgingly do something.  Well, while at his Nana's last week, he got hooked on MineCraft, and he really wanted to buy a copy of it for my computer.  As it turns out, a desktop copy of MineCraft costs about $27, and he only had around $10 saved up from his allowance, while Michael had around $15 saved up.  Well, now William has $24 saved up and Michael is lagging behind with just $21.  Why?  Because William tried very hard to remember to clean his spot on the table without being asked, being good for bedtime, and being good in the mornings and just in general.  If you know William, you know that this means that he must really, REALLY, like MineCraft!
Returning to the topic of Church.  William outgrew the church shirt, that we got him about 8 months ago, about one month ago.  Michael, on the other hand, is just getting to where the hand-me-down church shirt he got from William is getting to be a little snug, after something like two years.  So, in celebration of this fact we are getting them both new shirts and ties!  :D  When I had them pick out their own ties they were totally stoked!  Of course, Michael tried to get a Christmas tie, but he settled for a less exciting tie after we talked about it a bit.
As for me, I'm doing pretty well.  My dissertation work is progressing slowly but steadily.  I'm a little disappointed about how little participation I'm getting this summer.  I emailed over 110 universities asking for their participation, and so far only about six have responded, and they all responded saying that they couldn't help.  :P  Well, at least I am able to run it here at UT and again at UNM.  Hopefully I'll get enough data that I won't have to rerun the darn thing a third time in the Fall.  I've also gotten down to 211 lbs!  :D  That's the lowest I've been in probably a decade!  I've been eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, but I've also been eating a LOT of (homemade) bread, as well as a goodly amount of chili and rice.
Speaking of which, the kids were not to keen on my idea of black olive pizza and general tso's asparagus and mushrooms on rice, but they ate it pretty well anyway.  We also did baked beans, and William, as is his custom, started pretending to gag as soon as he saw that we were eating something new.  Michael and Carly, on the other hand, both scarfed down their baked beans and then had seconds!  When William saw that he grudgingly tried them, then he cleaned his entire plate, though he did remember to whine about it every once in a while.  :)
Last thing, for those fantasy readers out there.  Have any of you heard of Terry Pratchet's Discworld books?  If so, shame on you for not telling me about them!  They are awesome!  Mort and The Night Watch are two of my new favorite books, and The Color of Magic is pretty darn good too.  Even though I did have some difficulty understanding a little of the Spanish (it didn't help that good ol' Terry was frequently making up words).  (Not to worry, they were originally written in English, I just bought them in Spanish for kicks.)  But seriously, these books are very good reads!  They are also hilarious!  I can't remember how long its been since I've laughed out loud while reading a book, or even watching a movie, but I was bursting out in laughter at least several times while reading each of these books!  I highly recommend them!  I'm looking forward to saving up some of my own allowance so that I can buy some more!  Even if that means that I have to clean off my spot on the table and be good for bedtime.  ;)

More travel

This past week Jenny took the kids to visit with her family and I went to Fort Lauderdale Florida to attend another conference.  So obviously I don't have anything to report on the kids and Jenny, other than the fact that I was assured that they got there safely.  As for my trip, I had a great time!  I actually didn't do anything other than conference stuff.  Mostly because I had just done the tourist thing in Hawaii.  But the conference was really great!  The project director I work for had asked me to come along as a last minute thing because the presentation for our project had received an award and been bumped up to a plenary talk!  (There were only two plenary talks at the conference.)  So this was another of those all-expenses paid trips.  And this time they put me up in a Sheraton.  But the Sheraton looked like a dump compared to the school where the conference was held!  I heard varying figures, but the general consensus was that tuition for this K-12 school is between $20,000 and $40,000 a year! The place looked like a really, really nice college campus!  Even the playground for the younger kids had astroturf!  They had awards for more different types of sports than I've ever even participated in during my entire life!  And not just that, but everyone was very friendly!  They had a bunch of student volunteers with uniforms made specifically for this conference all over the place just helping us poor old folks not get lost.  And you know what else?!  This one K-12 school has over ten foreign language teachers!  :O  But the best part was the food!  They provided breakfast and lunch each day, and the food was prepared by the school's personal gourmet chef!  I didn't even know what I was eating half the time, but it was goooooooood!!  So, back to the conference itself.  Our talk was the first talk of the second full day of the conference.  We presented it in a room that looked like a $15 per ticket movie theater room.  The screen was, well, huge!  And there were at least a hundred people in the theater seating.  So, as you might imagine, the two of us were a little nervous to say the least.  But the presentation went really well!  There were even collective gasps of amazement and we were actually interrupted with cheering and applause at one point!  (Not to mention that they gave each of a check for $166.66 as part of the award we had won.)  Okay, enough self-aggrandizement.  I also really enjoyed the talks I was able to go to.  The presentations at this conference were a lot different from the ones at the conference we presented at in Hawaii, and it was really interesting to see their different point of view!  Well, okay, maybe a little more self-aggrandizement.  Normally at these conferences I make a couple new friends and make contacts with a couple of important people.  Doing this usually takes some effort on my part to overcome my natural inclination for shyness.  Well, after our presentation I actually had people coming up to me and wanting to introduce themselves, give me their business cards, asking me for my 'expert' opinion, and inviting me to join them at their table for the banquet!  (Boy did I have them fooled!)  Okay, I'm really done this time.  Time to reign my ego back in and get back to real life.  <sigh>

Hawaii: The Conclusion

     The past couple of days have been very busy, and I am very tired.  Let me see if I can remember everything that happened.
     Saturday was the last day of the conference, and my supervisors were actually encouraging me not to attend, but to go out and have fun instead.  :)  Well, there were a couple of presentations that I wanted to see, so I went ahead and did the rest of the conference, which went through lunch time.  I was glad I did!  I really enjoyed three out of the four talks I attended, and that ain't bad!  One of them in particular stood out in my mind.  An academic is (finally) taking a look at Rosetta Stone to see whether it works.  The jury is still out since the group that used only Rosetta Stone, the group that only went to class, and the group that both went to class and used Rosetta Stone had statistically similar pre- and post-test scores.  However, anecdotally, she mentioned that when she did the final interviews, the two groups that had been in class could actually formulate sentences, while the group that had only used Rosetta Stone could not.  Something to think about.
     After the last talk I went to lunch with the five new friends I had made the previous night at dinner at the aquarium.  We had a great time chatting and joking for over an hour.  Then I got ready and finally went to the beach to swim!  :D  Man, it was great!  The water was the perfect temperature, the beach wasn't too crowded (especially when it started to sprinkle a little) and the waves were a lot of fun!  And what's more, I got to see a real-life, wild, sea-turtle!  I was kind of out by myself and then suddenly, not more than ten feet away, I see a sea-turtle's head poke out for a quick breath!  But that's not all, I stayed there and kept an eye out for the next half hour or so, and I saw it come up six more times!  Each time it was between 10 and 30 feet away from me.  Even without my glasses on I could clearly see the color patterns on its head!  It was very beautiful!  And I could even see its body underwater when it came up to breathe, it must have been at least two foot long from the tip of its tail to the tip of its nose!  I've been informed that having a sea-turtle come up by you is good luck.  So guess I've been blessed with seven-times good luck!  :D
     When I finished swimming, I went and got cleaned up and then went out to dinner with the rest of the COERLL people and their loved ones.  Carl treated us all to a wonderful (and expensive) meal at a Japanese restaurant.  The food was AWESOME!  True, some of it was still moving, but it was soooo good!  After dinner we walked around the main strip in Waikiki for a while, and then we split up to go and get some sleep.
     Sunday was another fun day!  As soon as I got ready I headed out to Diamond Head to hike the famous trail.  I was a little burned from swimming without sunscreen the day before, but it was worth it!  The view was amazing!  The hike was exhilarating!  And chortling to myself when I passed people on the way up and when I overheard people on their way up while I was on my way down encourage each other with things like "Don't worry, this is the hard part" ... priceless.  :)  A lot of people seemed to have been under the impression that the paved sidewalk leading up to the steep hiking trail carved into the side of the old volcano was the hike.  Buddy, I wish I could have seen their faces when they hit the cave leading to the stairs leading to the cave leading to the stairs!  :)  I had heard some stories about how difficult the hike would be, but I must admit I didn't think it was that hard.  Sure, I started panting a little after the long set of stairs, but on the way down I had to keep myself from running it felt so good to be alive!  They suggest you allot at least two hours to go up and down the trail.  I went back and forth from the main street (pretty far from the trail) in almost exactly an hour.  Okay, I'll stop bragging now.
     After the hike I went to Sams Club.  Yes, I'm not a big fan of WalMart and Sams Club, but I had gotten the membership when Jenny and I got separated, and when I checked online I found that they had the best deal as far as chocolate covered macadamias, so went there and got a big ol' box of them!  I carried around that big box of chocolates the rest of the day, and during the entire trip back to Austin.  I got quite a few laughs and smiles...  they were all so jealous!  ;)
     The trip back was better than the trip there because I didn't have any long layovers, but it was still a long trip.  Usually on planes (buses, sidewalks, elephants, etc.) I pretty much keep to myself.  Especially when I'm as tired as I was during this trip back (my internal clock didn't like the 5 hour time difference between Austin and Hawaii.)  But when I got on the last plane and sat down I noticed that the young lady next to me was crying to her mother on the phone.  I could feel that little voice inside me telling me to talk to her, but I really didn't want to.  Well, the feeling persisted so when she hung up with her mom I asked how she was doing.  As it turned out she had just had a pretty terrible day.  So, naturally, I offered her some of my chocolate covered macadamias (which until this point hadn't even been opened.)  We enjoyed chatting throughout the flight, and I even got her to laugh a few times.  I hadn't gotten anyone to laugh besides family and friends in quite a while, and it felt really good.  Anyway, we were both feeling much happier by the time the plane landed.  I was glad that I listened to that little voice.  I hope that everything works out for her!
     And now I'm back!  Well, that's about all I can think of to write right now.  Here are the pictures I took in case anyone is interested.  Hope you are all well!
     Oh, and I just realized that my entries are a lot more boring when I'm talking about myself instead of about the kids.  Sorry.  :)

Some more Hawai'i

     Today was a pretty normal conference day.  I spent most of the day either attending talks or helping man our booth.  One of the talks was very interesting!  It was about how to use Minecraft as a language teaching tool.  I've never played Minecraft, but now I have an excuse to start.  :)
     I've had this perpetual headache since arriving here, probably due to a lack of sleep.  So around lunch time today I took a stroll around the Koi Pond behind the building where the convention is being held.  It is very beautiful and relaxing there.
     After lunch I decided to take a nap.  It almost felt like a crime.  Here I am in Hawai'i at this conference that I've wanted to attend for several years, and I'm taking a nap?  Well, when I woke up two hours later, I felt much better and my headache was finally gone.  :)  And it was time to go to dinner at the Aquarium.
     I had a very nice time at dinner chatting with Doug Nelson, a game designer, and two European ESL instructors.  One of them, Rose, was very disappointed that there was no alcohol at the dinner.  And to be honest I was quite surprised myself!  But it was a very nice dinner and we had a great time just chatting for over an hour.  They had very good food, we got to watch the fireworks a little way off in Waikiki, and we got to watch a hula dancer perform to a live band playing Hawaiian music.  But by far the best dancer was this adorable little girl that was trying to copy the hula dancer!  She was so cute!
     After dinner we looked at a few of the animals in the aquarium before they closed for the night, then everyone else headed off to a bar while I came back here.  I am pretty tired.  It's only 10:00 pm local time, but it in Austin its 3:00 am.  So, off to bed!
     Oh yes, one more thing, when I got off the bus I walked past a parking lot that was filled with feral cats.  There were at least 20 and probably more like 30!  They weren't aggressive at all, but it was quite a sight.  I have never seen so many cats, let alone feral cats, in one place at the same time.  I tried to take some pictures, but I don't think they came out really well.  Many of the cats were in  the shadows and my phone's camera doesn't have a flash.  Oh well.

Hawai'i

     Yesterday morning I got up at 4:30 so that I could quickly get ready, then catch the bus, that took me to where I could catch another bus, that took me to the airport.  As recommended I got to the airport about an hour before boarding for my flight was to begin.  And thank goodness!  The line to get through security wove through all their fancy little marked off paths, then went across the room and behind a row of seats.  Fortunately it moved pretty fast.
     My first flight took me to Salt Lake City.  When I got on the flight they were completely out of room for carry-on items in the overhead compartments, so I had to store my under the seat in front of me.  Now, you wouldn't think that would be a bad thing.  However, it meant that I had even less room than is normally provided in coach.  I was happy when the flight was over!
     I was also happy when the flight was over because I had a four hour layover, which meant I got to spend some time with family!  :D  Mom and Anna where there to pick me up, and we went to Jessica's where I got to chat with her and watch Liriel and Derrick try to kill themselves by falling off of their bikes onto the pavement.  It was a lot of fun!  Then Mom and Anna took me to Marriott, where I got to talk with Emma and Cassidy for a good while.  We had a lot of fun there as well!  Then it was time to go back to the airport. It was sad, as goodbyes always are, but since this is already the third time a conference has taken me to see family in Utah, I'm fairly hopeful that this will become a not too infrequent occurrence.  :)
     After waiting in another long security line, I finally got to my gate and then started boarding the second plane.  They informed us that it was a full flight, so they wanted volunteers to check their carry-on items.  I decided that I would like all the leg room I could get this time, and they said that they would return the bags too us at the gate as soon as we got to Seattle.  What they failed to mention was that in order to do so, we had to specifically request a pink tag for our bag.  I didn't request a pink tag, so that meant they put a white tag on mine.  It was a nice flight, but when we got to Seattle, the nice man told me that since I didn't have a pink tag, I would need to go pick up my bag in baggage claim.  I did so, and then waited in the security line for the third time that day!
     Fortunately I made it to the gate on time again, and was soon on a flight to Honolulu!  The flight took quite a while, and by now I was pretty tired.  I tried to sleep, but I have always had difficulty sleeping on cars, trains, planes, etc.  Anyway, by the time I got to Honolulu it was around 9:00 pm local time, which meant it was like 2:00 am the following day in Texas.  So, needless to say, I was ready for bed!  Since that was the case, I decided to forgo the hassle of trying to find a way to get exact change for the bus, and took a taxi instead.  Um, it was expensive!
     But at last I was going to be able to go to sleep!  Well, not quite.  I'm staying at students dorms at the University of Hawaii in order to conserve money, and the dorms are great.  But the electronic key they gave me didn't work, so I had to go back down from the 9th floor to the 1st floor, and wait another 10 minutes or so as they tried to isolate the problem and fix it.  Which they did.  Then I was able to go to bed!  :D  Of course, these dorms don't have AC, so although I slept, it was a rather fitful sleep.  And my internal clock would not let me sleep past around 4:00 in the morning, no matter how much I begged.
     So, I got up, went and took a shower in the communal shower place (luckily it was so early that there were no other guys or girls in there, so I was able to enjoy some privacy.  Ironically, this is my first time in a dorm, and definitely my first time with a public bathroom shared by males and females.  Well, so far so good.  After showering I decided to walk the two or so miles down to Waikiki beach.  There they have a store where you can purchase a 4-day unlimited use bus-pass, so I wanted to pick one up.  No more taxis, thank you very much.  Well, I got a little lost on the way, so instead of walking for approximately an hour, I wound up walking approximately two hours.  But I did find the store and get the bus pass, and I also stopped by a well-known local chain and picked up a couple masaladas (sp?), which are basically Portuguese doughnuts.  They were very good!
     Then I hopped the bus back to campus, changed, and went to help out with our booth.  As usual, we had quite a bit of interest in our booth, which was great!  Then we had a nice boxed lunch and then it was our turn to present.  There weren't as many people in our presentation as I was expecting, but it went very well and everyone seemed very interested.  Then I went to a few other talks, two of which I really liked (they were about using video games in the language classroom). When I was manning the booth and after one of the talks I even had a lot of people come up to me who wanted to hear about the work I'm doing with gaming, so I was able to have several nice chats on the subject.  Then I changed and hopped the  bus back to Waikiki beach.  There I went to a little arts and crafts farmers market type place and browsed around for an hour or so.  It was nice and relaxing and actually reminded me a lot of Germany for some reason.  I found gifts for the kids and some Hawaiian candies for myself.
     After that I grabbed the bus back to campus because by now it was dark outside and I didn't want to go swimming with the fishes in the dark.  And now I'm here.

Doing what's right.

     When Jenny dropped off the kids this weekend, Carly was very eager to tell me what had happened on the bus.  Apparently the bus driver had given Carly and a little boy lollipops because they are always so good on the bus.  We know the bus driver, she is a very sweet lady who adores Carly.  Anyway, then Carly said, in a very serious tone, "She wasn't supposed to give us candy Daddy, because it can ruin our lunch."  I asked her if she had told the bus driver thank you.  "No, because she was bad and gave us something for being good."  I tried to explain that as long as her Mommy said it was okay to accept the candy, she could eat it, and that she should tell the bus driver thank you.  I asked what she would do differently next time to see if she had comprehended my message.  Her response caught me a little off guard: "Next time I'll be bad, so that she isn't bad and gives me more candy."  Well, I suppose that is one potential solution...

     I tend to have a hard time motivating William and Carly (not Michael, he always does what he thinks is right) to do chores when they're here.  Like putting away their dirty dishes and cleaning up their toys.  So I've started giving them an allowance.  Before this weekend it was kind of at random, but one of the first things we did this weekend was sit down and agree on a list of chores and how much money they should get if they do the chores without being asked or reminded.  We came up with a list of around three chores for which they could receive one dollar each time.  William immediately latched on to this idea.  As soon as we finished he asked if I would help him look up prices for some Lego kits online so that he could see how much money he needed to save to buy them.  Buddy, I haven't seen that boy so excited to do chores since he was a toddler throwing blocks into a bucket!  He was practically shaking with excitement whenever it got close to meal time or clean up time!  I'm not sure how long it will last, but so far this is working out great!  With William, that is.  Carly still doesn't really give a hoot and happily watches her brothers try to do their chores as best they can.

     Michael is such a sweet boy!  Usually at least once each weekend the kids and I will all take turns picking one thing to do together.  The boys always want to play video games or watch Pokemon, and Carly always wants me to read her a book.  Well, this weekend I asked the boys if they could possibly think of something that didn't involve the use of the TV.  William looked at me like I had lost my mind, but Michael immediately got pensive.  When it was his turn, he said that he wanted us to all draw a picture and then tell a story about it!  I was really impressed!  For those of you who don't know, Michael has become quite the little artist!  He practices a lot, is very serious about it, and plans to become an artist when he grows up.  William just moaned.  But Carly was pretty excited because she knew that meant that she would be able to use the pencil sharpener.  So we all sat down around the table to start drawing.  Normally I just doodle, but this time I decided to actually try and draw some of the things I used to enjoy drawing when I was a teenager.  So I drew a picture of a demon preparing to hurl a large boulder.  All three kids were very impressed!  They even immediately recognized what I had drawn.  :D  I don't think any of them had seen me draw anything more advanced than a stick figure before, so they were all excited and all started working hard on their drawings.  Carly soon got frustrated though, so she asked me to draw a horse for her.  Well, that's not exactly what I used to draw when I was a teenager, but I figured the anatomy couldn't be too different from that of a dragon, so I gave it a go.  Well, my horse looked like it was suffering from Elaphantitis, but Carly was overjoyed!  I was pretty pleased myself, so I decided to try something else new.   I drew a ballerina!  And they all recognized what it was!  Well, I was pretty pleased with myself.  By now William was really getting excited, and he was drawing a boulder-hurling demon and a horse as well.  Michael, though, kept his cool and instead drew a furry short demon with long arms.  It looked pretty nice!  Then all three of us guys had fun drawing little stick figure stories.  You know, the kind where you draw a man and say "This is a man", then you draw a tank and say "This tank is shooting the man", then you draw lines from the tank to the man and scribble all over the man, then you draw a dragon breathing fire on a castle with a princess screaming in it and say "This is Carly."  Well, we had a great time.  And Carly quite contentedly ignored us while she colored in her horse and ballerina.

     One other anecdote from this weekend occurred when we were all watching Brave together.  For anyone who doesn't know, the protagonist for this Pixar film is a skinny, fiery, red-headed teenage princess, with wild, curly hair.  Well, after watching for just a few minutes someone (I forget who) said, "she has hair like mommy!"  Then someone else mentioned "Her hair is the same color as Mommy's too!"  Then the third said, "All of her looks just like Mommy!"  Well buddy, if their mommy had overheard that conversation I'm sure she would have been very happy indeed!  :)

Quote of the day

This quote comes from Carly this morning.  "Dad, you're almost taller than the roof!  That means that you're not going to grow anymore.  Not Mommy, she's only halfway there."

Importance isn't funny.

     Michael was sick again this Friday and Saturday.  Luckily he was much better this morning.  That poor little boy seems to have all the rough luck when it comes to health.  And I just noticed today that Carly is almost as tall as he is!  Scary.  But he is such a good boy!  When I asked the kids to clean up their toys and other miscellaneous messes this morning, Michael got right to work and did pretty much all of it by himself.  William, meanwhile, pretended that he was trapped on a footstool and Carly went into the bedroom to take a 'nap'.  Which conveniently ended as soon as Michael finished cleaning.  I've been giving them a small allowance when they do chores though, so Michael was still happy because he got some and they didn't.  (William was NOT happy.  He said that he had picked up every toy in his reach and put them into the boxes when Michael brought the boxes to him.)
     Unfortunately, because Michael was sick most of the weekend, that meant we had to spend pretty much the whole weekend cooped up in this small little apartment again. This made the boys extremely happy, because it meant they could play all the video games they wanted.  Which also means that poor little Carly was bored out of her mind.  So I spent a good deal of time reading her stories, and playing various incarnations of games such as Slamwhich and tickle Carly.  At one point this morning she was curled up in my lap and said: "Daddy, you are silly."  So I asked if she was silly, yes, is William silly, yes, is Michael silly, yes, is Mommy silly...  And I quote: "No, Mommy is important."  Well, there you have it!

The beginning of the blog

While I was waiting for the bus to take me to the allergist this morning (I got to the bus stop 30 minutes early), I suddenly got the crazy idea of starting this blog.  I know that most blogs die within a few weeks, but I figure, what the heck.  And this way I won't have to bug my family by sending lengthy emails updating them on stuff.  Now I can send them short emails referring them to this blog instead.  :) Once I had made up my mind to do this blog a whole lot of ideas of what to do with it began flooding my mind.  In the past, when I've had these Eureka! moments, I've always thought to myself: "This is so awesome!  I'm never going to forget these thoughts/plans/resolutions."  Of course now I don't remember any of them.  :P  So this time I tried something new.  I wrote down my ideas as they came to me!  :D  What a novel thought!  I've only heard that as a recommended strategy pretty much all my life.  And what do you know!  After I got home the only thing I could remember was some vague notion of a blog.  So, the mere existence of this blog is a testament to the fact that this little strategy works.  Now, we'll see if I can keep this blog alive.  I tend to loose interest in projects after a few days, weeks, or months.