Lately (for the last couple of month-ish) Taven has been waking up in the middle of thie night crying… I’ll go in there, hold him in the chair for a minute or two. Some nights he’ll raise his head and say “Ready go nite-nite”, other nights I’ll ask him if he’s ready & he’ll say that same phrase.

Anyhow, the other night, he woke up crying pretty loudly. When I went to get him, he said his usual “a-chair, Dadda, blankey, pillow” (meaning he wants to sit in the chair with Daddy, his blankey on his back, and leaning on his pillow… It really is quite sweet…) Anyhow, as soon as he laid his head on the pillow, he lifted his head back up & said “Logan walking Wall-E!!!”

The day before, we celebrated Christmas with the Hodge & Choate families… Logan got a neat little wired, remote controlled Wall-E robot that motors around with his head twitching and arms flailing about. I’m sure the motion was simply meant to make him more animated, but it ended up making him look like a freakish little zombie robot. Anyhow, Taven thought it was really cool & even enjoyed making him move around… Unless it was headed straight for him. Then Taven got a little freaked out & would run as far away as fast as he could saying “no! no!” in that sweet little scared voice of his. You wanted to laugh & cry for him all at the same time.

Anyhow, apparently he was having nightmares of a freakish Wall-E zombie robot being controlled by Logan chasing him that night… Poor kid…

Wow, we feel very blessed, but at the same time a little ashamed…

Christmas is an awesome time of year if for nothing else, than for the “spirit of the season” that you can sense in most people. People you run into tend to be a little more friendly and cheerful. You’ll always have your Scrooges, but they seem to be fewer & farther between this time of year.

We woke up Christmas morning to open our presents to each other (Thomas, Melisa, Taven, Bradey). We decided we’re not going to “over-commercialize” Christmas in our house. We got 1 main gift for the boys, and had a rather low $$ limit on our presents to between Melisa & me.  It made things a little more personal and made us really think about what the other person would enjoy. I got Melisa a digital photo frame & a gift card to Hobby Lobby, and she got me a Superman T-Shirt (because, after-all, that is my secret identity… Awe Crud! I guess it’s not so secret anymore…) and a new wallet because mine was literally falling apart.

Taven got a cool new Aqua-doodle and Bradey got a cool new teething giraffe (all natural rubber, organic paint, etc…) I also snuck in a few different Matchbox cars for Taven. My & his favorite being the Trash Truck!

We spent the rest of the day at my parents’ house opening way too many gifts! Don’t get me wrong! It was awesome & we love every bit of it, we just weren’t expecting so much!

Taven didn’t know what to do with all the gifts… He just wanted to play with the first one he opened (a large truck with rubber tires). As we put more gifts in front of him, he just kept asking for his truck.

Bradey didn’t know what was going on, so he juct chewed on whatever we put in front of him (including the wads of gift wrap that landed near him.)

We spent Saturday @ the Hodge House with Melisa’s parents and her sister’s family. Another great day, Taven still just wanted to play with the first toy he unwrapped. Logan was there to push all the unopened presents in front of Taven to get everything unwrapped. It was kind of amusing to see how excited Logan was for Taven’s new toys. I guess Taven will be that excited in the next few years as he really starts to realize what’s going on.

We crashed on Sunday and tried to take care of getting things cleaned up & straightened up. We had fallen behind on laundry & keeping up with the kitchen this week because Melisa and the boys have both been sick for a little over a week. It appears to be a random viral thing that just ran it’s course & I think they’re all pretty much in the trailing end of the battle, but it’s been a tough week.

Back to my opening statement… Why would we feel ashamed? I guess I’m looking around at our American society and seeing how we blend in a little too much. I don’t really know the point I’m getting at, other than to say I want to be more of a “stranger & alien” in this town. I want to stand out as a family that has something different about them. I feel “dirty” for commercializing the celebration of Christ’s birth so much. Maybe dirty istn’ the right word, but it’s the closest I can come up with… I’m not sure what I’m going to do about all this, I just know I have a lot to think about.

I suppose I’ll leave you with these thoughts/questions…

• What is Christmas to you?
• Why do you celebrate? (is it because you’re told to by stores & advertising?)
• How do you celebrate?
• What kind of traditions do you do to keep your focus on “the reason for the season”?

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Cheese!

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This last weekend was 121cc‘s Men’s retreat. I had a pretty good time! Sadly not quite an “awesome time” though. I was a little put off by the speaker at times, and I guess I was just having a hard time REALLY getting into the worship. This was all stuff having to do with me, so this isn’t to say that the retreat wasn’t awesome for everyone else, just sub-par for me personally.

That’s really a little disappointing for me because I had been praying that God would move me a little. Maybe even shove me down. I’ve been a bit of a brick wall lately & haven’t really felt much emotion on either side of the spectrum. I’m not depressed, or “down” about anything, just melancholy, heh, after actually looking up that definition, I guess it’s more of a soberness (definitions 3 & 4).

Eh. Who knows. I’ll keep praying about it & see what happens.

On another note… The kitten’s did make their way into the corner of the cat house made for them (see here for the initial story). Momm’s been feeding them under the front overhang & they apparently cuddled into the corner during the cold the other day, so I’m very glad I made it now.

Ooh! I finally put my new computer parts together right before I left for the Men’s retreat! We finally have our very own computer in the office again. I’m pretty happy with it so far, but I need to put if through the paces to make sure it’s good to go. I think I may have to stay up late a few nights playing my puny old versions of Halo, Unreal Tournament, GTA3, or SimCity 3000… Hm… Maybe those won’t quite excersice the new PC much… (2.5GHZ Dual Core, 2GB DDR2, a few hundren GBs of space,  DVD Burner, XP Pro [Just say no to Vista])… It should be fun either way! hehe…

I’ll have to put together a list of all the software I installed on there… Maybe some of it would be handy to some of you (or maybe you’d have some other suggestions). I’ll try get on that this week.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention… OUCH! I’m SO very sore from the activities Saturday afternoon…

• Ultimate Frisbee for over an hour,
• Jumping & wrestling with some high school kids on a bounce-house type pillow for a while
• Wrestling with a Jujitsu Instructor for all of 60 seconds before I petered out
• Canoeing for about 20 minutes
• Then standing around a fire for 30 minutes before diner

The Ultimate Frisbee & Canoeing did the most damage… We were canoe racing about 200 yards & my left arm & chest muscles hate me for it… (But we won of course!)

This is really just a long boring story of how our trip to PA went this last weekend… Just don’t say I didn’t warn you that it’s a long… Boring… Recount of events.

We went to visit Melisa’s Grand Parents last weekend (Tim’s Mom & Dad) in Pennsylvania. They had a 60th wedding anniversary party on Saturday night & there were around 100-150 people there!

Anyhow, it was the first trip for us to take since we’ve had kiddos & boy was it a learning experience. We brought one large bag to check, 4 bags to carry on, 2 car-seats, and an “umbrella stroller”, one Taven on foot, one Bradey in the stroller or in a “front-pack”, strap on, crazy contraption to allow hands-free carrying of a child…

Luckily, when we got there, I saw we could check one bag per person for free, so I went ahead & checked one of the 4 planned carry-ons so we could eliminate some of our weight on & off the planes.

We gate-checked Bradey’s car-seat & the stroller & had Bradey strapped on Mommy’s chest while she dragged one carry on. I carried Taven (he dropped to the floor when we got close to the plane & wouldn’t even think about getting up due to the loud noise of the plane’s engines), 2 backpacks, and his car-seat.  Taven was fine once we actually got on the plane.

Every flight, we ended up being the last ones to sit down (trying to find a place for one carry on, buckling in Taven’s car-seat, getting myself situated, getting Bradey out of the contraption so Melisa can sit down, & all of us getting buckled in. Oy…

We had a 2 hour flight to Detroit, MI, then a one hour flight on to Erie, PA. (And the same in reverse coming home… Duh…).

Anyhow, Taven slept (well, attempted to sleep) on a comforter folded up on the ground in our room, and Bradey slept in a pack-&-play in another room and Melisa’s Aunt’s house. (Nice house by the way, 13 Acres, large pond, good-sized work shop, great house with 2 patios/porches.)

We spent Thursday crashing & getting settled in, Friday with the Parents (Tim & Penny), Grand Parents, and the Choates (Justin, Brooke, & Logan), and Saturday was getting ready for the party & partying.

I haven’t had a chance to pull the pictures off of the camera (see the previous post about computer problems for a clue as to why…) But when I do get the pictures off, I’ll post a little gallery for you all.

Welp, I gotta scoot.