We Are The Littles

Justin turned 8yrs old yesterday. Happy birthday Justin!!!

I was on hand to capture the 3.5hr party on video. I’ve condensed it to about 4min worth of edge-of-your-set nail-biting excitement. I’m not sure which was the worst part. Was it when MBM gave the kids PAINT & different shaped sponges at the kitchen table to make things on paper or when 15 of the little monsters started playing hide & go seek in the downstairs portion of our house. I think the paint was worse… My heart skipped a few beats during that little activity.

Anyway, they started off playing outside until it got dark. Then everyone came inside and ate mini corndogs and taquitos. After that they got after the pinata that I hung from the rafters in the garage. Next up was cake time, followed by more screaming & screeching, an attempt to make them watch Horton Hears A Who? and finally the awful game of H&S.

By the end of the night MBM & I were pretty much dead. Luckily the house is still in one piece and Justin made out like a bandit.

Yea, I know. I’m late on this one too. It’s not entirely my fault though. I’ve been trying to get the videos converted for the last 3 or 4 days and only managed to get them done and get them done right last night. None of my converting programs wanted to work and my Mac is at home so I was S.O.L.

Anyway, Savannah’s acting debut is below. She played the Little Mermaid’s sister in the play and did a great job. Don’t tell her I said that though or her head will probably explode.

The video is a little under 5min in length. Grab some popcorn and a drink, sit back, and enjoy the show!

Ok, so I’m back home and we’ve been busy. Very busy. Extremely busy.

The day I landed we had to hit HEB to grab some groceries since all of our food was lost during the hurricane. We didn’t have power at the house for about 4 days so the stuff that didn’t get taken and used by our friends had to go to the dump. HEB was the only store in the vicinity that had grub.

Sunday we went to church.

The kids finally went back to school today. They were out for more than a week. We noticed that we did get some water damage in our kitchen on our lovely hardwood floors. Gotta get the insurance folks involved in this one. We’ve cancelled our Comcast high-speed internet service and cable since they are awful. The internet only works when it wants to and it gets really old when your 6,300mi away and trying to talk to your wife and her internet keeps going out. So, AT&T will be out this Thursday to hook us up with better internet and cable. Hopefully better. We got free installation and all that jazz and the monthly charge is about the same for more services. Comcast bites. 

I also switched our home phone service from Comcast (they bite) to a VOIP line from Vonage. It’s only $25/mth and we get unlimited local and long-distance calling to anywhere in the USA and some other places we’ll never call. 

Then I got a quote on a fence to keep Rocky contained. It’s not cheap. Hopefully I’ll get that done before I leave again. 

Today we went to IKEA to get furniture for the boys room since they have virtually no place to put their clothes and toys. We walked out of there with two dressers, one big multi-drawer thingy for their toys, and a couple of cool lockers for their room. Now I have to put them all together! That’s not the worst part though. The worst part is that IKEA had no air-conditioning so we had to shop in the 90deg heat. I was not happy. Not only that, the store is laid out in such a way you have to walk down every single aisle to get to the check-out counters. EVERY SINGLE AISLE and the place is huge. The prices might be right but the layout pretty much stinks when there is no A/C. I understand their selling tactics but I don’t like’em.

Gabby is being Gabby. Pretty and prissy and happy more often than not. I’ve taken a few new pics that I’ll put up on her site tomorrow (hopefully). In the meantime, you can see a silly video I took by clicking here.

I found a tiny little snake outside last night. Picture below. 

Carolina is at her latest cake-making class at Lonestar College. The class was supposed to begin at 6pm and the instructor is nowhere to be found. It’s now 6:21pm. There are other people there waiting with her so she has the right day, time, and class location. Lonestar College bites too!

And… We’ve started our running routine again. We ran last Friday and today and plan on running 4 days a week for 3 to 4mi per day. Hopefully I’ll get it back up to 5 or 6mi again soon. I need it. 

O’yea, the boys have also started back with Karate and Savannah is rehearsing for her play after school. The play will run from Oct. 15 - 20. Expect video of that when the time comes. I’m hoping to embarass her royally when she gets on stage.

Ok, baby momma is away so baby daddy has to go scrounge something up for din-din. Poor children don’t know what they’re in for with my cooking!

We’ll start posting regularly again… Assuming we can find time!

From POTD's

This is what happens when the boys feel like being mischievous!

Ok, it rained again today. I mean really rained. I mean sumthin’ fierce. Not all was bad though because we left work 30 minutes early so we wouldn’t get bogged down in traffic. If you think people can’t drive there when it rains (especially Houston) you should see them here. It’s utter chaos. Anyway, there isn’t much chaos in the video below but I think you’ll find it interesting nonetheless.

It’s another boring night here. Only a few more to go. My relief still doesn’t have his visa which is a little troubling in my otherwise bright & cheery future. He’s supposed to be here Friday so we have time to go over everything. Only problem is I’ll have to do my real job all day and going over everything is going to be almost impossible. Good luck new dude. Sink or swim is what I always say.

Other than that, all I’ve been doing is downloading new software to try out. All freebies of course. I got iTunes 8.0. I’m not all that impressed. It’s not bad, just not an evolutionary step forward. I got the new Google browser called Chrome. I am impressed with it. It’s super fast, nice and small, and doesn’t get in your way like so many others. I also downloaded the Opera browser, which is what i’m using right now to create this very post. It’s similar to FireFox in some ways and has a few bells and whistles I wanted to try out. Finally, there’s Picasa3. I might have said this before but just in case you missed it… IF YOU’RE NOT USING PICASA & YOU HAVE A DIGITAL CAMERA YOU’RE MISSING THE BOAT.

Anyway, that’s about all I have for today. Over & out.

So, I pulled out my camera the night before last to make sure it was charged. I haven’t touched it since I got here which is rather strange. Anyway, the batteries were dead. I charged it over night and then headed out the next day to the mud plants. On the way there I turned it on to make sure everything was in working order and I found a bunch of pictures and video from the trip Justin & I took to the Houston Aquarium. We went the day before I left to come back to Nigeria and I never downloaded them.

I made the video below using the brand-spankin’ new version of Picasa from Google. I’m a big Picasa fan. You should all go download it now. It’s free. It works great. It’s the software that should have come with your camera in the first place.

Anyway, check out the video below. It’s a combination of the pictures and video. However, the pictures and captions are too small so go to the the Houston Aquarium Gallery to see the full-size version of the pics. Oh, and stay tuned for the entire video because there are a couple of them that are pretty cool.

Now I have to go pick my nose or something.

The pictures and video say it all.

Pictures here. Video below.

Way to go Justin!

Who needs Snakes on the Plane when you have snakes at the library?

The pictures, found here, and the video below were taken at the Harris County Public Library when we went to see a real-live snake wrangler. Justin was sure he would be from Australia, but it turns out he was from Texas and sounded a lot like Jeff Foxworthy and not Steve Irwin.

So, check out the pics and video below to see MBM and Justin playing interacting with the slithery creatures.

The videos I’m uploading on this site and on Gabby’s are in High Definition. That means if you have a fast enough connection (cable, DSL, or T1) you can watch them in HD and in full screen. Want to know how?

Look at the picture below. See the two orange boxes? When you see a video, click the box that says “HD is off” & then click “Watch This Video in High Definition.” The video page will load then click the second box that is outlined below in orange to view it full screen.

There is a new video of Gabby up on her site. Give the HD full screen video a try and let me know what you think!

Below is the video I put together from our little bowling outing last night. If you’re patient you get to see Weezer’s first attempt at bowling in more than a century (maybe a decade, but who’s counting?). POTD coming up a bit later.