I always get messed up when the week is shortened by a holiday:  I can never remember what day it is.  I woke up this morning thinking it was Thursday, and didn't figure out what day it really was until the big kids got home from school. 

Not a whole lot is going on, Jenny’s been in town TWO WEEKS in a row, so of course she’s leaving on Sunday to teach a class in Reston.  I think my computer needs a present… a new photo printer perhaps (so that's like buying my camera a present and my computer a present AT THE SAME TIME. woohoo!)

Here’s Al at the lake the other day.  It’s a “bad” picture, since it’s out of focus and all that, but it captures what its like to be 8 years old and jumping in the lake for the first time of the year.

The babysitter’s arm is still broken, and she doesn’t know when she’s going to be able to come back to work.  Our “backup babysitting” hours are about out, so we’re going to have to find a new babysitter, I think, unless the babysitter is ready to come back to work soon.  Luckily, we have a babysitter lined up for next week, when Jenny is gone, but after that we’re going to have to do something permanent. 

I also got a nice letter from North Carolina that they would really like me to get my car inspected.  It was due in December.  To help me remember, they are charging me $250.00.  (I can hear you thinking “why don’t you just go and get your car inspected, stupid”.  Whatever).

Memorial Day is over, and everyone is going back home or to work tomorrow.  I’m ready to get back to normal.  Here’s a picture of all the kids at the lake on Saturday:

I put some of the pictures at loytty.com.  I took about 1500 pictures, and I’ll put some more up later.

I know it’s cliche, but the older I get, the faster time goes.  I feel like I just took the Christmas lights down just a week or so ago, and now it’s Memorial Day already.  (I left the lights up at the office though, because at work, they get Christmas lights ALL YEAR ROUND, that’s just what kind of a great co-worker I am)

We’re not planning anything exotic, we’re just driving up to the lake, where my parents have a house.  Everyone on the Loytty side of the family is all going to be there, so it will be a mess…I have two sisters, and they each have kids, so there will be 9 grandkids (11,9,9,8,8,6,6,5 and 3) there.  It will be tons of fun.  Jenny and Izzy aren't coming up until Saturday, but the boys and I are going up tomorrow.  I’m taking the camera and lots of empty memory cards.  The picture is what the whole gang looked like a few years ago, I’m going to try to get a new one for this year…but sometimes it’s hard to get everyone to sit down at the same time.:

Because it’s a “Dad job”, I’ll make sure  to mention what Memorial Day is all about (other than marking the unofficial start of summer).  I’m sure they will all be thrilled to hear me talk about it.

I keep looking at the news, and see how bad it is in China:  now the death toll has risen to about 35,000, and it’s expected to go much higher.  I usually don’t get into news or politics here (because you can get that anywhere), but seeing all the news about the schools that were destroyed by the earthquake with kids in them really hit home. 

Look here for places to donate, we donated to the Red Cross’s International Response Fund

obligatory kid picture:

At 5:30 this morning, Alex came to find me so he could puke on me (he missed me, but he hit one of my books).  He was especially upset, because today was the Microsoft company picnic at Carowinds.  Since Alex couldn't go, Jenny’s sister and her boy came, so we had a fun time anyway.  Chris walked around with Eric and Evan while I went with Jake and Izzy.  They both had a great time, but were very active.  Their favorite ride was the Boots Ballon Race which I went on with them.  The spinning of the ride almost made me sick.  Luckily, the kids were having such a good time they didn’t notice. I’m glad none of my friends were around, because I would lose LOTS of manliness points if I puked on the kid ride.  It would have been kind of cool to throw up on the kids for a change, instead of them constantly vomiting on me.

I remember that when I was in high school, my senior year we went to Carowinds for my dad’s company’s picnic.  My friends and I were too cool to ride with our parents, so we drove from Hickory to Charlotte (about 60 miles or so), drinking beer and generally acting like stupid teenagers.  Once we got there, we wandered around the park for about 6 hours, riding every ride we could, eating as much food as we could, and generally having a great time.  I NEVER ONCE thought I was going to puke then.  I think they’ve changed the way the rides work; they shake a lot more now than they used to.

Here’s a picture of Jake and Izzy that I took before I had to put the camera down and work on not puking.  I’m sure that every parent thinks that their kids are the cutest in the world, but in my case they are.

I put more pictures of them over on smugmug.  I wrote an application that uploads pictures to smugmug, sets the captions and keywords, and then updates my family website to point at the new pictures.  I am king of the geeks.

Right after I uploaded that last post, Jake came up to tell me that he had lost his first tooth.  It won't be long until he goes off to college.  Now the tooth fairy has to find some appropriate stuff:  the other boys got silver dollars for their first tooth, but I don't know if I have any around.

(the mess on his cheek is FOOD, not blood.  He's not a very clean child.  We washed him before bed)

It’s been a long week, and I’m ready for the weekend.  The highlights of this week have been:

1. The babysitter still has a broken arm.  I spoke with her today, and she’s going to be out at least another 3 weeks.  We’re lucky that we have this backup babysitter deal going, but it’s getting to be a big pain in my butt.
2. Argument Boy (Eric) won a “most outstanding improvement” award for the whole 4th grade, and he has an award party tomorrow morning.  Yay Eric! (He’s kind of being a butthead today though, so I may have to sell him to the gypsies).
3. Tomorrow afternoon they’re having the company picnic at Carowinds..it’s an awesome deal, because the whole family gets to go for free.  Taking 2 adults and 4 kids to Carowinds to ride the rides and eat costs about a zillion dollars too. 
4. I finally met the neighbors who moved into the house next to us last June.  They’re very nice.
5. My in-laws came to town, and my father-in-law is going to work on our basement next week. I my father in law.

I hope everyone has a nice weekend! 

(Obligatory picture of a kid:  note the shoes with matching purse (or purse with matching shoes).  Girls are LOTS different than boys, even at age 2)

The year Eric was born, my wife was was pregnant on Mother's day.  She let me know at 6:00 AM mother's day morning that I was expected to get her a mother's day present.  My excuse of "I didn't get you a mother's day present because you're not my mother" didn't wash, so I had to run out to WalMart to find her something (walmart is the only place open at 6:00 on Sunday morning in my part of the world). 

This year, I've evolved.  I took the boys out today to get her presents from them, paid for by their allowance and chore money:  Starbuck's gift cards (you can't go wrong with that) and greeting cards.  Jake and Izzy got her a gift card from a clothes store (but since they didn't have any money of their own, I had to buy them).  I also got her a gift card, from Victoria's Secret.  I've decided that if I have to get her a gift for a made up holiday, I want to at least get to enjoy it.  I noticed when I was buying the gift card that they have non-slinky underwear goods for sale alongside the standard unmentionables.  I wanted to ask if I could get the gift card limited so she had to buy something to wear with it, but the boys were MORTIFIED by having to be inside a store full of nothing but GIRLS UNDERPANTS that I didn't want to traumatize them anymore.   I was glad that I wasn't the only guy in there with the same idea, because there were LOTS of single men with kids in the store buying gift cards. 

The other Mother's Day tradition that I've instituted is teaching the kids that "Mother's Day is the most important made-up holiday of the year".  Jenny LOVES that. 

I hope everyone has a good Mother's Day...don't forget to call your mom!

My internet friend Joelle tagged me with this:

Write a blog containing 12 weird, random facts, habits or goals about yourself.  Then, at the end, choose 10 people to be tagged, listing their names and why you chose them.  Don't forget to leave a comment (tag, you're it!) to come read your blog.  You can't tag the person who tagged you, so make sure you leave me a comment after you play so I can check yours out.

I won't tag anyone else, but I'll participate half-way (just ask the people I work with...I frequently do just part of tasks).  I’ll be interested to see if Jim participates, because he got tagged too.

1.  I always hated kids when I was growing up, which is weird because I'm really into being Mr. Mom now that I have a bunch of my own.  I try to talk my wife into having more babies on a weekly basis.  She always says no, and the joke that "my next wife will want to have some babies" is always funny, no matter how many times I say it.

2.  When I was younger, I dated a girl who had kind of a wandering eye.  It was weird kissing her, because if you opened your eyes, she'd be looking somewhere over your shoulder with one of her eyes. She was really nice.

3. I have rules about how to drink things.  Coke, for example, has to be drunk from a plastic cup.  Milk has to be in a glass.  Water can be in either, unless you have ice with it, in which case it has to be in a glass.  There are also assigned seats for dinner, and if anyone sits in the ‘wrong’ place, it makes me nervous.

4. When I was in college, I drank a lot.  A WHOLE lot.  I quit drinking in 1990 and haven't had any alcohol since then.

5. I smoked too.  I quit smoking in 1998 when my first kid was born.  When I'm 80, I'm going to start again, because I REALLY miss it.

6. I was in the Army from 1983 to 1992.  It was (mostly) great.  After 9/11, I found out that I could join the National Guard and get my old rank back, as long as I would finish my 20 years service before I am 60; so I could theoretically go back.  Sometimes I think about doing it.

7. I haven't voted for a winning presidential candidate since 1988.

8. I majored in History, and I buy lots of books.  Amazon.com loves me.  I would love to be a librarian, but I would hate having to talk to people.

9.  My wife is an extrovert, and I’m not. 

10. I talk to my father more on IM than I do in real life.   He was really smart until I was about 11, then he got really dumb for a while, but then he got smart again when I was about 23.  I fear that will happen to me too.

11.  I used to call my mother every day, but then she started traveling a lot, so I stopped.  I'm going to start again, because if I don't call her every so often, she thinks that I've gone insane or left the country or something.

12. I am deathly afraid of talking to groups of people.  I will go to almost any lengths to avoid doing it.

Don’t you hate when you work on something for over an hour, because you’re convinced that you’ve found some weird CLR error, because your accessors just stop working?  See if you can guess what my problem was:

   1: public string Category {

   2:     get { return _category; }

   3:     set { _subCategory = value; }

   4: }

Argument Boy brought his report card home today.  He’s really turned his grades around:  he got all C’s and D’s and an F up until last grading period, when he went to an A, 3xB’s and a D.  This time, he got an A, 3xB’s and a C.  Yay Eric!!!

(The C was in reading, down from a B.  The boy reads non-stop, and way above grade level too.  He got a C because he is unorganized, and doesn’t always hand in his homework (That I WATCH him do…he just loses it somewhere between home and school))