"All Good Things..."

...should keep going on forever, right? Well, some should. Seinfeld marathons on TBS, Friends marathons on TBS...you know, the important things? But, mercifully, Zach and Emmy's soccer/volleyball seasons have come to a close. Now I enjoy going to them mind you, but it's all day Saturday (and some Sundays) and it seems like no one ever gets any time to themselves unless they get up at 6:30am and goes and works out at the YMCA. But I enjoy that time in the morning. I try to sleep in Sundays but Saturday if I sleep past 7 it's a miracle. I have a certain set of machines I will use religiously such as the ab cruncher, lateral press, bicep curl, and hammer press. As always, I am sure to leave a day between using the same machine twice. I'm giving up my steak & egg burrito from Jack In The Box for one month to see if that makes a difference. There's got to be 800 calories in that combo meal. I don't think I'm doing myself any good by having that every Monday. So let's see what happens, right? Here are a few pix from Saturday:


Emily: "Hey Dad, who do I look like when I stand like this?"
Me: "Um...Mickey Rooney?"
Emily: "Huh? Who's that?"
Me: "WHO's THAT!? Only the greatest volleyball player ever back in 1939!"
Emily: "Way to be relevant DAD..."


What happens when you give a 5-year old a camera? Um...this.


I think our camera has had it. Now when it turns on I have to pull the lens out a little more to get rid of the unfocus. Grrr...

We also celebrated Easter!:


Seriously. doesn't that boy know how to wear a shirt when we take pictures? They both got $10 Target gift cards from the Easter Bunny! Zach already knows what he wants to buy...weights! He wants muscles just like his dad heh heh.


Man, how rare is that! The two of them not trying to rip each other's head off.

I think we have enough candy to start a sweet shop.


Hey, that's a pretty good family shot. I know, I wore the same shirt in this picture that I wore in last year's Easter picture:


Hmmm...do I look any different? As always, the hair is a little less thick than the previous year...(sigh). I do look a little thinner though...more built...glad to see the YMCA is serving a purpose for my $58 a month.

So now that sports are over for a little bit, how do we fill the hours of the weekend now? I want to go to a Ranger game one of these days and there's like four people who want to go see one with me. I also want to go see a movie...or a bunch...as soon as they all come out. Plus Navid and I haven't seen each other in like 2 years. Now that he has Facebook we can try and communicate a lot more...but it isn't the same. His hours and mine are very different. Hopefully good friends don't need to be around each other constantly. We text sometimes too. Never thought I'd be a texter...who knew?

Wondering how Emmy got that big bandaged hand? Saturday she was playing soccer and a kid kicked the ball right into her arm! She was playing goalie and even though she stopped the shot, she fractured her arm! Poor kid. She was crying from the pain. Now I know all kids cry when they get hurt, but Emmy isn't all kids. In fact, the last time she cried from any kind of pain was about 5 years ago when she got a terrible stomachache. The doctor said it was some kind of constipation...but really...how many kinds are there, ya know? She cried for three days and three nights on that one. She's getting a cast Wednesday which she has to wear for 4-6 weeks, which also means she's going to miss her field day next month! Geez...some people just seem to have bad luck when it's most inconvienent, ya know? I was planning on taking a couple of days off to watch the festivities too. I still may. If nothing else I can have lunch with Emmy one day and Zach the next, right? I'd better have lunch with them while I can before they get too big and embarassed anytime I'm near. Honestly. I'm surprised thay aren't more already lol.

"I'm So Funny..."

Why do you say that, Mike? Well, calm down and I'll tell ya! Last Friday, as with all Fridays, we keep it pretty casual around here. Jeans and sneakers make it really the only day of the week worth getting excited for. So one of our managers wears this very loud red and white striped shirt. Well, my mind starts to imagine what I can do with this as she looked just like Waldo from "Where's Waldo?". Well, a co-worker who sits behind me hanneded to have this big black glasses that Waldo wears so she asked her to wear them, which she did. She also had a camera and said "Cheese!" and took a perfect picture of her. When she e-mailed it to me, I went and made it a real Where's Waldo? game by superimposing some other people in Waldo costumes behind her. Here is the finished product: Tell me that's not genius! The tricky part was shrinking the background people down so everything looked proportionate. The guy on the left looks like he's standing on a chair kind of. Ah well. It got a tremendous reaction in the office AND on Facebook. I should be a publicist, I swear. So, about an hour later, I e-mailed Kelly:

Me: "Say Kelly, do you know of any good framing places around here? Preferably a place that can do life-size shots or maybe bigger?"

Kelly: "As a matter of fact, I do not!!! I don't have any pictures that I would need framed in that size!!!! And....I am quite sure that you do not either!!!!!!!!!!"

Me: "Well I have to say I am more than a little disappointed. I thought our management team was here to assist us with urgent issues."

Kelly: "We are here to assist with urgent issues, however, this does not appear to be one of those types of issues!!!!!! "

Did I go too far? She seemed to have a good sense of humour about it. Even when my co-worker printed up 8"x10" glossy photos and passed them out around the office...now that's a trooper.

I can always count on Uncle Dean to send me interesting e-mails when he gets them. Hey, remember the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of weeks ago? Well, it turns out that it kind of turned the ocean upside down and a lot of fish and sealife that are not ordinarily seen were discovered. Here are a couple of examples:




Ugh...any craving I had for Red Lobster just went out the window.

Work has actually let up a little. We are actually getting a lunch break from time to time. I guess Februrary was just a bad month since we only got an hour lunch 3 times. In April I think we've gotten 8 or 9. Good times.

We got Zach signed up for Kindergarten on Tuesday! While the school was talking to us parents, the kids went on a tour of the classrooms and what was in store for them. Well, each classroom has baby chicks that they hatched and are monitoring their development for the kids to see. Zach was just in love with them. We had a heck of a time getting him away from them. I can't believe he's about to start school. He didn't have the best week this week. First, he drew on our couch with a Sharpie. THEN, he used a glue stick on Emmy's glasses. I asked him why he did it and he said, "I wanted to pull a joke on her." I guess he thought enough glue would cause them to be stuck to her face. OMG that is so something I would have done if my sister had worn glasses. Then, when he doesn't get what he wants he flies onto our bed and buries his head in the pillows and sticks his butt up in the air and cries about it for what seems like forever. I can usually manage to calm him down but it takes about 30 minutes. We talked last night after he got in trouble. I think slowly but surely he is getting to the point of maybe giving his actions a little thought before just blindly doing them. I don't think I thought about anything until I got to high school. Man...I hope it doesn't take Zach that long. Patience is a virtue and I have a lot more than some people, but my kids stretch it pretty thin sometimes.

"One Productive Week!"

Well, not productive in the way that you think it would be. Since I can use Flickr at work now, I have been going through every picture and "tagging" everyone in them so that when I'm searching for someone specific it might not take as long. Hopefully it works the way I think it will. Plus, now that someone has knocked off my picture frame that I worked so hard on back in 2008 off the wall, breaking the frame but somehow not the glass...I will just have to make another one. Remember the one I made?:


I'm not sure if I should keep this and just buy a new frame or just chuck it and make a newer one with much newer photos. I already know I want to make a new one, but shouldn't I keep the old one? I mean, I put a lot of work into it while I was home alone back in 2008, so maybe I should. We shall see.

Hey, it's our anniversary this week! Wednesday to be exact. We had a romantic dinner at Taco Cabana ("the sexiest restaraunt in Arlington!"), then I stopped at Kroger's for some flowers for Cari. She even got me a card that perfectly summed up how she treats me . Hint: it wasn't positive lol. Maybe we'll go out this weekend but Zach has another birthday party to go to, so...probably not. Ah well. All part of the package sometimes.

The Rangers are on a bit of a skid lately. We lost the last 2 games against Detroit of all teams, now we have to go to New York for the first time since embarassing the Yankees in last year's ALCS. Out of curiosity I searched "Texas Rangers" on Flickr and came up with a few neat shots. Unfortunately, everyone locked them up so I could not get the HTML code. So, here are a few that I took:


Real good action shot and no blurries!!


One of my faves. So glad I have kids who like going to the BIA.


Nice outdoor shot on a perfect sunny day.


Love when they have fireworks at night.

Here's Emily when she was 6 months old:


I know, I have some editing to do to make the background all one colour. Very time-consuming, ya know. Why do my kids have such big heads when they're young? Is that really necessary?

Here she is in a recent photo:


I tell you, it is the fastest 9 years of any parent's life sometimes. During the spring our weekends consist of volleyball games, soccer games, and more soccer games. And now she's going to be ten this year! I don't post as much on here about her as I do Zach, and I should remedy that. Here are some pix of our Saturday mornings together before her brother came along:


This was actually on Martin Luther King day. I had the day off work and Emmy was off school. I remember the weather was just perfect for going outside.


This was a day when Cari had to go into work so the two of us hit the road. I love that big clock. A wonder of the world I think.


This was my Blogger profile picture for a long time. Look how innocent she is.

Went to Half-Price Books yesterday and scored a plethora of items!:

INXS Live CD
Concentration computer game
Justice League comic book
Book of trivia questions

I tried to read the comic book to Zach last night and the story was so far over his head, even when I tried to dumb it down it still didn't make any sense to him. But we looked at the pictures and talked about who was tougher, the Green Lantern or Superman. I think we agreed to disagree. But he's really starting to take after his old man. He got his first baseball cards recently and now wants to get them all the time. I feel it is my job as a good father to indulge him in this hobby as much as possible ha ha. I remember back in 1988 when I bought my first cards. Topps still made them out of that thick gray cardboard stock where the corners would get damaged almost instantly. I collected them all the way through...August 12, 1994. Yep, that's when the players decided to strike and baseball was cancelled for almost a year. It took a while, but now I like ocllecting again.

Big movies coming out this summer!! Here are a few:

Captain America


Man oh man Zach and I are seeing this one no discussion needed!

The Green Lantern


This one Zach is VERY keen on seeing!! Still his favourite superhero.

Transformers: Hunt For The Moon


To be honest I enjoyed TF2 a lot more than some people. Some felt that the story kind of got pushed aside to feature more action, but every time I watch it I can't look anywhere else.

Then of course there are the Pixar movies that will also be everywhere, but too many Youtube clips spoils the broth, knowhutimean?

"One Bittersweet Day"...

Maybe it's just the sentimental part of me, but I really try to enjoy every day that my kids are still kids. For the most part it's been an enjoyable time in my life, making sure they understand just how short being a kid is and to appreciate every day. But, every now and then, there comes a day where something changes and things are a little different going forward. Take Monday for example:

I guess Mondays are a universally bad day to get kids out of bed and get them to school. Emmy's been doing this for a while so she shows a little more get up and go, but Zach...I swear, every Monday is an absolute struggle to get him to do...well...anything. I manage to get him dressed and to the table. Emmy called Lucky Charms so I made Zach Honey Nut Cheerios. Well, since he didn't get what he wanted, he decided to grab her bowl and caused a big mess. (sigh). So you better believe he got a pop on the butt for that one. So then I asked him to brush his teeth. He comes back and something isn't quite right so I ask him to show me which toothbrush he used. For some reason we have like five open toothbrushes. Ah well. So he points to one and it is very dry. So he got another pop on the butt for lying to me about it. After we drop Emmy off at school we head over to his. Neither one of us said anything on the way there. When we walked into his school we had to wait until they unlock the doors to the classrooms and he wanted to sit on the front desk. So I picked him up and set him on it. Then, in a sweet but totally unexpected way, he wanted me to sit with him. So I did. And he gave me a big hug in a kind of "I'm sorry I was such a piece of work this morning". Then they opened the doors and we walked right in all by himself as if to say "I got this". I hadn't felt like that since the day Emmy was in pre-k and I had t tell her I couldn't wait with her in the cafeteria anymore. She looked at me and said "Okay, bye Daddy..." and I knew she was on her way to being her own person.

Speaking of Emmy, she went a-campin' about 3 weeks ago. She even took her own camera! A chip off ye olde block yes? Here are the ones that actually indicated she was outdoors:



And finally...what camp would be complete without a friend:


Aww...

Will try to get some pics of Emmy plaing soccer one of these days. I try to get some from each season but for now I can watch about half of her game then I have to take Zach to HIS game since his game starts at 3pm and hers starts at 1:40. Gotta love the YMCA's scheduling department right?

Found this on YouTube:



Gaw that's hilarious.

Oh, and did I mention the 2010 AL Champion Texas Rangers are now 6-0!! No losses. Now I'm sure as the season goes on there may be a loss here and there, but right now we are just clicking awesomely on ALL cylinders. I'm currently in the market for a t-shirt and a ballcap. I saw some cool ones at WalMart so I may have to get them...soon...for you see...I'm a patient person when I have to be...but when I don't have to...then I'm not! So there! Okay I'm better. But I do want it before the month is out. Oh, and I also found my gym bag! It was in the garage. I get the feeling Cari hid it out there but I can't prove it. I thought someone stole it out of my car. I mean...who would steal someone else's gym bag, ya know? Sick sickos, that's who.

"Soccer Time...Is Here..."

Yes, after many weeks of hemming and hawing, young Zachary has decided to play soccer this spring! If you've ever seen a five-year old hem and haw, you know it ain't pretty. But so far he has shown a lot of hustle to not only run after the ball, but to also kick it! Here are a few pix from his first game:


My gosh he looks so big. Compared to the other kids, I mean. When we stand next to each other I tower over him. But that's probably normal.


Zach: Hey Dad, I'm intentionally not tucking my shirt in as a way to rebel!"
Me: "Um...that's...great?"
Kid on left: "What does intentional mean?"
Kid on right: "What does shirt mean?"

Went to Winstar Saturday night for Jerramy's birthday. First we went to Catfish Sam's for dinner. They have these rolls...baked with honey and light...mmm...after we were all done there was still a basket of about 6 of them. Well I turned into Frog and Toad and kept telling myself, "Just one more roll, and then I will stop". Well, I fisnhed off the whole dang basket. Cari was like "You had ANOTHER one!?" And I was like "Well...yeah..." and smiled sheepishly. Then at Winstar, I found a Goldfish game that I won $130 on last time and really tried to do the same but this one wasn't giving it up! I did manage to play the same $20 for 2 1/2 hours and really lost track of time until the rest of the gang showed up behind me TAPPED OUT and ready to go. Ah well. Can't win every time I guess, which is why they call is gambling and not wineverytimimg. I did leave with the $20 I didn't bet with.

I managed to "geotag" all my photos during work now that I have my Flickr page back! So now I know where each photo was taken. Does it help me enjoy them more? Probably not. But it does give me something to do when it is not so busy. Hey, when they tell me to find something to keep myself busy, I listened! Now I'm finding even more things I can do with my pictures. I'm ordering some for Dad so that people won't think Zach is two and Emily is six.

YAY we get to wear Rangers t-shirts this Friday!! And now that we can wear sneakers on Fridays this could be a great weekend. Emmy liked NorthEast mall near my office so much she wants to go back. Now that I'm feeling much better than last time, I think that would be a lot of fun. I say we go to Chisholm park first, then the mall, then maybe to the Rave movie theater and see a movie! Looks like "Diary Of A Wimpy Kid 2" and "Rango" are the family choices. Ehh...maybe.

Someone at work sent me an e-mail of this tree in Africa:


At first you doin't really notice anything unusual about it. But, when you look closer...





Isn't that something else. We had a tree in our front yard in Duncanville and one day I thought it would be cool to carve a picture frame in it. Of course, being a kid, I had no pictures, so it was really just a big hole. The tree then proceeded to die...slowly...ah well. All in the past now. Great thing that all lousy things get left behind and never worried about again. If only the really great things didn't get left behind too...