This year, like last year, Eric and Alex entered Munching In Marvin, a cooking contest that one of the towns near here holds every year.  Last year, Eric came in 2d place with his chill, and Alex got honorable mention.  This year, Alex came in third, with his peanut butter pie, and Eric got honorable mention for his 3 bean chili.

While I like both dishes, they’ve been working for a couple of months, perfecting the recipes, so I’m kind of tired of them now.  They both had a great time, and Jennifer and her mom had a good time helping them out.  They entered too, and WON their category, which is surprising, because they were against the fire department, who I figured would get the prize just for showing up with 20 people.

Eric went with the cowboy theme with his chili.  It was really good, to the point where I saw people walk away with their sample, and then turn around and come back after they tasted it to tell him how good it was. 

Alex was very nervous about his entry, because he spent a lot of time getting it right.  He was so happy to win 3d place too; there were about 20 contestants.

The website hasn't been updated with this year’s information yet, but it probably will be soon.  I wonder what they’ll make for next year.

Yesterday afternoon Jennifer called me and said that the school called about Eric:  he was sick.  So I went and picked him up, and he DID look a little peaked, so I gave him a Motrin and let him chill out for the afternoon in front of the TV.  He seemed OK last night.

This morning, Jake decided that HE was sick, and he felt a bit warm to me, so I let him stay home.  He was offended though, because I wont let him watch TV until after school.  If he ACTED sicker, I probably would let him, but he seems kind of normal acting to me.  I probably should make him go to school, but it’s kind of nice that he wants to hang out with me; it wont be long until he’s too cool to be seen with his dad.  I kind of dread that phase.

Doesn’t he look sick?

I think halloween is second only to Christmas in my kid’s pantheon of holidays.  I mean, FREE CANDY…you can’t really beat that.  This year, Eric was a whoopie cushion:

Alex was a Zombie (at least I THINK that’s what it is)

Jake was a soldier (or a hunter)

And Izzy was, of course, a princess:

We trick or treated for a long time, and Jake probably made the best haul.  He doesn’t really like candy all that much though, so he was really good about sharing his haul with everyone else (except Alex, with whom he has a love/hate relationship.  Mostly hate)

My great grandfather got off the boat from Finland, and went to Corning, New York, to make a new life.  A couple of years later, he went back to Finland to get married, and he came home a year or so later with my great-grandmother and infant grandfather in tow.  The great thing about having a messed up last name is that it’s really easy to track where the family has been over the years.

Ellis Island Records is cool.  You can see Matti Loytty’s passenger record, it shows that he was from Kymi, Finland, was 24 years old, and came over on a ship called the Teutonic. and arrived in the US 100 years ago today, October 28, 1909.

Have I mentioned that Eric is very smart?  He’s brilliant.  He reads everything he can get his hands on, has a really quick mind, and a very dry sense of humor.  He’s also kind of unorganized.

Yesterday, he brought his report card home:  Math, A.  Science, A.  Spanish, A.  Language Arts, B (lack of organization got him there….the B is actually an improvement, a few weeks ago, his average was 4.  FOUR.  Out of A HUNDRED.  Next grading period, that will be an A).  Finally, he got a D in gym.  GYM.  I lost the stern “you got a D, so you’re going to get a talking to” face and laughed.  Apparently, you get graded down when your  uniform isn't cleaned.  We wash it whenever he brings it home, but he seems to lose things.  He gets that from his mother.

I switched teams at work recently (they reorganize often…it gives them something to do).  Yesterday was my first team meeting, so I got there early, brought something to take notes with, and settled in, ready to be bored out of my mind.

The first order of business was them giving me my 10 year service award.  I had actually forgotten about it, because since I’ve worked at Microsoft twice, they adjust my “official” start date to something other than when I really started, to make the calculations correct.  In the 10 years I’ve been at Microsoft, I’ve had:

- 3 Jobs (VB6 Support Engineer, Solution Integration Engineer, and Application Development Consultant)

- 9 Managers (Max, Garrett, Cheryl, Karla, Tony, Maxine, Jim, Tom and now Mike)

- About 50 computers running about 15 or 20 different operating systems (from Windows 3.1 through Windows 7, but also Macs, OS/2 and even an AS400).

- Probably 15 or 20 offices and cubicles (over three buildings)

- Countless trips to various places, both cool (Seattle, Washington DC, Bangalore, London) and not cool (Richmond, Boston, Philadelphia).

- Met lots of fun people, played with some cool technology, and am still having fun.  It’s really great to be able to have your hobby and your job be the same thing, I’m a very lucky man.

I wonder if I’ll be here in 10 more years?  There’s a lot to be said about moving on after a while, but I’m still having a good time and working with great people, so I’ll stick for a while, I guess.

Look, they gave me a glass statue:

It weighs about 10 pounds and is real glass, with my name on it and everything.  Its nice, but they used to give out 10 shares of stock on your tenth anniversary.  I could spend that.  But this will be useful in case I need to break a toe or something.

Look for my 20 year anniversary post in 2019.  See you then :-).

One of the great things about working from home is that Izzy and I can spend some time together.  Sometimes, she can entertain herself, which is good…but she can get herself into mischief if she gets half a chance.  Last Wednesday, she found a set of scissors, and gave herself an impromptu haircut.  Then, she rolled around in something and got her hair in a big knot, and I had to cut it out.

Her mother took her to the barber and tried to get it all fixed up, and of course, she looks beautiful.  I feel sorry for all of the other kids, because they all look like old shoes compared to Izzy.

Tuesday was the first day of school in Union County.  Eric started 6th grade at the (brand new) Cuthbertson Middle School, and Jake and Alex are now in 1st and 4th grades at Kensington Elementary.  For some reason, I was a lot happier about it than they were.

Eric is really smart, I have no idea why they make him go to the “Slow Children” bus stop.

Jake and Alex still have to go to the bus stop very early.  They don’t like it.

And Izzy always likes to go to the bus stop with Eric, if she can.  She just adores him, its really fun to watch.

My kids never had a chance to be eyeglass-free.  I have glasses, Jennifer has glasses, my parents both have glasses and Jennifer’s parents both have glasses.  I’m actually pretty surprised that we’ve gotten this far without needing them yet.

Alex got to get them first, and I’m sure he wont be the last.

The glasses are Wal-Mart 50.00 specials, and I imagine he’s going to lose and/or break them a few times.  He’s concerned that he looks goofy in them, but I told him he looked pretty cool.  It would really help if some unbiased observers were to comment about how good he looks in them too…(hint, hint).

Anyway, I’m kind of glad that summer is coming to an end.  School starts on Tuesday, what fun that will be…

Yesterday my little sister got married up at my parent’s house at the lake.  It was nice to see everyone, and I got to take some pictures of the wedding for them.  She married a very nice guy, and I’m sure they’ll be really happy.

Here’s everyone on the Loytty side of the family while we were waiting to start.  Pat and Dave are the ones in the middle.  My hair is still growing back, I look like I’m just bald now, not a cancer victim.  I put some of the pictures I took up for the family (or anyone else) to look at here.

The boys were getting kind of shaggy, so it was HAIRCUT DAY.  For some reason, Eric and Alex feel the same way about haircuts as they do about other aspects of hygiene:  they are against it.  Luckily, I have the iron hand, so they got haircuts with a minimum of grumbling. 

Before

After

Now they look less like hoodlums, and more like fine young gentlemen.  Other than that, it’s been a calm weekend.  Eric had a nice birthday, and then went to a sleepover last night.  We’ve also cleaned up some and went geocaching yesterday.

I have no idea how things go by so quickly.  It seems as if Eric just turned TEN, and here is is turning eleven:

As you can see, he needs a haircut and a bath.  Yesterday we went to see the movie GI Joe, which was perfect for eleven year olds.  I ate some Milk Duds. 

After the movies, we went to eat at Fuddruckers, which is fine dining for kids.  Then, we went home and Eric and I worked on putting together the Lego set that you see in the picture above. Legos are a LOT different than they were when I was eleven.  For one thing, they come with little DOLLS.  Eric got mad at me because I kept putting the little Lego Jedis into compromising positions:

I am a weirdo.

A lot of time, I’ll fall asleep, and when I wake up, discover someone has climbed into bed with me.  Sometimes it’s Izzy, other times it’s Jake.  Jakes problem is that he brings legos with him, and it’s not very comfortable to wake up with a hard piece of plastic digging into your side.

One of the good things about Jake is that he wont wake up when the flash goes off, so I can take pictures of him while he’s sleeping.  The downside is that he’s a very mobile sleeper, so he tries to knock you off the bed all night.  He also grinds his teeth, which is a horrible sound to listen to.

My hair was getting too long, so I needed it cut.  Since Jennifer was gone, and I didn't really want to go to the barbershop with all 4 of them, I just did it at home.

The bad thing about radical haircuts is that when you get halfway into them and decide its not such a good idea after all, you’ve already gone too far and have to just keep going.

I was looking for “Bruce Willis”, but ended up with “Curley Howard”.

Jennifer was in San Francisco this weekend on a combination business/birthday trip, so we were left to our own devices again.  Usually, summer is easy for kid activities because I can take them to the pool and wear them right out.  Unfortunately, this weekend we had a lot of rain, so we had to stay in the house for the most part.

We did get out some on Saturday, we found a geocache and went to lunch at the Flying Biscuit, where we also got Jennifer’s birthday present.  One nice thing about the kids getting bigger is that its easier to take them places, without having to worry about them burning the place down or running in different directions.

I hope everyone has a good week, and that it STOPS RAINING.

Because I don't have enough to do, I’ve started geocaching with the boys.  Geocaching is kind of like a treasure hunt, except there’s no treasure, only small boxes with logbooks and junk.  You look up locations at geocaching.com, then use your GPS to find them.  So far, we’ve found four, all around our house. 

One of today's was found by Lauren, Alex’s bff.  Alex was very jealous that she found it and he didn't.  We had a lot of fun though, and its a good way to get out and be together for stuff.

I’m back!  Life has gotten in the way of me posting, but I’m trying to get back into the swing of things.  There are lots of things happening in my life now, and this certainly isn't the place to talk about most of it, but what this place IS for is writing about the annoying things that my kids do.

Since it’s been so long, I’ll just give a quick update on what each of the little monsters darlings are up to.

Eric

Eric turns 11 next month, and I have no idea how that happened. He’s had a great summer so far; he goes to lego camp with his cousin Will next week.  Lego camp, for the uninitiated, is where you go and build lego sets all day.  It sounds like it would get old after about an hour for me, but he seems to enjoy it.  He spends a lot of time at the lake with my parents and Will, they swim for hours at a time and have lots of fun that the rest of us just don't understand.

Alex

Alex has had an eventful summer too.  He spent last week in Missouri with Jennifer’s grandparents, and has had all sorts of other adventures.  A couple of weeks ago, Eric dared him to touch a red-hot stove, to see if it was hot.  Like an idiot, he did it, and got burns on his fingers.  I didn't have a lot of sympathy for him.

Jake

Jake is the way Jake always is: 100 miles an hour and totally sure of himself.   You have no idea how frustrating it can be to have a six year old argue with you about EVERYTHING.  When he’s not climbing up the walls, Jake is in a clingy phase now, he wants to sleep with me every night.  I usually let him.

Izzy

What can you say about the princess.  She’s the center of attention, she knows it, and she likes it. 

Hopefully, I’ll be able to update here more often…life keeps getting in the way though.  I have lots of stuff in the queue, I just have to type it up and post it. 

Jennifer’s sister Stephanie had a baby about last October, and this weekend Jennifer and Izzy went to Florida to participate in baby Sophie’s christening.  Since that meant the BOYS would rule the house, we moved the video games downstairs onto the good tv (as opposed to my late grandmother’s 20 year old console model in the attic), we ate pizza, popcorn and generally have had fun. 

(In the picture below, ERIC is actually playing H3 on the xbox360, Jake’s participating imaginatively with an xbox controller)

Note that Jake is wearing his Ninja Suit.  When he’s wearing it, he demands to be called “Ninja Boy”, not “Jake”.  I call him “Nuts”.  Unfortunately, the Curse of The Puking Kid struck again last night, with Jake coming upstairs to spew on me.  Luckily, he was fine this morning, so maybe it was just something strange he ate.  Then, this afternoon, Eric came home with a 100 degree fever, sniffles, etc.  Hopefully he’ll be better before Jennifer (and her parents) get home next week.

Why do the kids always get sick with ME?  I’m going out of town next time one of them starts feeling poorly.

I saw this over at my internet friend Carol’s space, so I thought I’d join in (it’s helping me to avoid work). 

I got this mug in 1995, when I was working as a programmer for a company called Info Systems of North Carolina.  My manager at the time was a really nice lady who would get kind of irritated at me every once in a while, because she said I was an “Administrative Nightmare”.  I have no idea what she was talking about.

Today was Young Author’s Day at Eric, Alex and Jake’s school.  Since Jake is in kindergarden, he didnt participate, but Eric and Alex did.  I got to hear both boys read their stories, and that was nice.  The not so nice part was having to sit through all the OTHER kids stories too, because while I like kids and they were all very excited to have the parents there…other kid’s stories just aren’t all that interesting.  I’m sure its because my kids are the smartest, most fun, and best writers in their whole class.

Eric’s story was about how he woke up one morning, and his bed was on Mars.  There were aliens.   Eric’s got the best imagination of any 10 year old I’ve ever met, and I would love to read his stories, even if I didn’t have to like them.

Alex’s story was about how he rode Mission:Space at Disneyworld.  Luckily, he didn’t mention the part about me almost throwing up.  While I liked that part, I noticed when he was getting up to read his story that he neglected to wear underpants (If you’re not a parent, you wont understand how I knew that, but if you are, you will, because you have “Daddy Radar” too (or Mommy radar, which is the same, only more attuned to uncombed hair and other fripperies)).  I almost stood up and said “WHY ARE YOU NOT WEARING UNDERPANTS???” in front of everyone, but I restrained myself.  I don't know WHY he hates to wear them so much.  He’s a weirdo.

Even though having to sit through all of the other kids stories was kind of lame, I love going to see them do well in school.  Now I just have to fix it so the Assistant Principal never has to call me because they get caught pulling shenanigans.