Ringing out the old

Let me be the last to say that I hope 2006 was a very good year for all of you and the first to say that I hope 2007 will be even better.

I am leaving this year as a slow dial-up user and will shortly usher in the new year as an always-connected user. Erika and Gretchen went through the order process for me when they were here and ordered ATT Yahoo DSL. The box of stuff necessary to implement the turnover arrived and is sitting by my front door. Whoever loves me the most or gets here first will hook it up.

Adrienne thought I should be brave and open the box, but I am pretty sure that the installation will involve pulling out the CPU to connect something at the back and that is beyond my ability.

I am seeing in the new year by watching a marathon of the 2006 main event of the world series of poker.

Wasn't that a party

Wow, what a gathering. We had 17 for actual dinner (not counting the birthday boy) and then 8 more came over later. I hope Erika will be posting a picture of the snowman cake that Gretchen made. Jackson was very excited. We lit the candles and started to sing. So of course it was time for him to hide behind his mother's knees. He came back out in time to blow out the candles and stayed out long enough to say "Let's do that again." So we did.

Pots and pans were cleaned last night. Dishwasher was run today. Rita just picked up her dishes and silverware that we borrowed and Gretchen's family just picked up all the extra cake, cookies and pop and they are heading back to West Branch. Erika should be on the plane right now and winging her way to California. The house seems very empty.

Steak and Shake

Erika mentioned to me on the phone how nice the lights were at the Toledo Zoo. However to a three year old boy the word zoo does not mean lights it means animals. Luckily there were enough animals visable and available to make him happy.


Gretchen's family will be in town tonight when Erika and Jackson get here and we will all go out to dinner. Megan and Melody are really looking forward to going to Steak and Shake and it occurs to me that we had better call it something else in front of the three year old or else he will be expecting to have steak. Which, of course, they don't serve.

Disregard previous post

Not the happy birthday part. I still want Marcel's birthday to be happy but I'm afraid I added a year to his age. He is bringing up the rear in the odd numbers department.

Even numbers

Happy birthday to Marcel. This year he drags us all back into the even number category. Yesterday we were all odd numbers starting with 67.

Two Down, One to Go

I have already seen two (count them, two) dentists this morning. The first one cleaned my teeth and it was just as horrid as I expected, but I am done with her for another three months. The second one was the guy at the other end of the building that will get the tooth I broke in California fixed. That was just as horrid as I expected. The good part is I just leave them my store-bought teeth and I don't have to sit in the chair while they fix it. The bad part is they needed to take impressions; top, bottom and bite.

Now this was the interesting part. I don't know if I have just never had a bite impression done before or if they changed the way they do it. The girl came at me with what looked like a caulking gun and squeezed some ooze on top of my bottom teeth and told me to bite down. We held that position for a couple of minutes and then she removed a cute little rubbery bite impression.

The tension of sitting in those dentist chairs for so long has my back hurting like I have walked a couple miles. Anyways, I have to go back at 4 pm to pick up my fixed teeth.

Christmas in the air

I went to a marvelous Christmas Dinner Party last night. From the lucious ham, prepared in accordance with an Alton Brown (Food Network) receipe, to the magnificent christmas tree, Martha would have been proud. Stephi, take a bow.

Unfortunately, Jackson showed signs of a slight fever in the afternoon but took a good nap. He was in a funk at the party but Jeff still managed to get smiles and giggles out of him and helped coax him to drink a little juice and eat some yogourt.

When we got home, Erika tood him right to the rocking chair and managed to get his coat off but not hers. He was really hot. We force-fed him some childrens ibuprofin and that made him cry hard enough to throw up all over Erika's coat and clothes. Erika calmed him down and managed to get out of the yucky clothes and throw a load in the washer. About an hour later he was willing to take a bottle and watch a video and go lay down in the bedroom. About an hour after that he was back in the living room and ready to play.

About 11:30 PM Erika gave up on getting him to sleep and decided to head for home. I'm afraid they left in a little of a hurry and I saw a barrel of monkeys still on the floor in Gretchen's room this morning. I hope they are both feeling OK today.