Mireille

I'm outing us to the world. Well, Jenny outed us on Facebook about a month ago, but this post makes it official - we are in the process of adopting a little girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In fact, we've been matched with our daughter for 18 months, and are in fact her legal parents by that country's laws. In a very strange combination of power plays and international politics, however, we are unable to bring her home to the United States. What's worse, we still have no idea when it might be that we will be able to bring her home. That aside, she is already starting to provide for some fun stories, which I always like to share.

On September 9, Mireille (that's her name) turned 2. 4 months prior to that she was relocated to a foster home in the capital city of Kinshasa in the western region of the DRC. On various occasions we tried to send things over to her; shoes, dresses, toys, but the shipping to the DRC is prohibitively expensive. I tried to send a small package, about 12 inches square on the top and 5 inches deep, it weighed no more than 8 pounds. Fedex was willing to ship it for $250. To get around that, we rely on people who are visiting the country to mule trinkets over there for her, which happens from time to time. For her birthday, however, we wanted to send her a present that actually got to her on the day.

Jenny played with the idea of just biting the bullet and sending something. We also looked into the possibility of there being an internet commerce site that had local shipping in Africa, but alas, we found none. We finally came up with the idea of just wiring money over and having our lawyer or one of his assistants help us out and get her a gift locally. So that's what we did.

Now, one would think that, of all the places in the world, you would be able to find a black doll in the center of the continent of Africa. Well, apparently not. What our lawyer managed to find was perhaps the creepiest, whitest doll that I could imagine.

It's good to find out that our daughter has some taste, however, as she clearly wants nothing to do with this doll. In fact, the whole series of pictures says to me that she'd rather mess around on her phone than have anything to do with that doll! Oh, she reminds me of my stateside kids already!

We're happy she at least likes the purse!

 

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The Great Mouse Caper

History

Quin loves pets. Ignore the fact that Heinz is our pet and he rarely is very nice to him. In fact, the nicest he typically is to him is when he ignores him. But if he finds a toad in the yard, or a stray bug on a window, he gets his ice cream pale, fills it with a little water and some leaves, and puts the poor thing in there until we force him to release the poor animal before they become a dead animal.

Mice!

Every autumn we get an influx of visitors. These are the types of visitors that we don't really welcome. We knew they were around one night a couple of weeks ago when Jenny woke up in the middle of the night to hear scratching on the insides of the walls. Mice...

So I did what I typically do - I set old fashioned, cheap, spring loaded, wooden traps. Baited with peanut butter, I've never had a problem eradicating the population in the past. And indeed it appeared it was going to work again. On the first two nights I was able to eliminate two of our guests.

The third night, however, I placed traps in the usual high traffic locales. When I checked them in the morning, the traps were still set, but there was no peanut butter on the tripping mechanism. So I reset the traps, and again in the morning, no bait. These were some talented mice... Deciding that I was going to have to bring out the big guns, I set another trap next to the existing traps, thinking that the mouse might accidentally step on one of the traps tripping mechanism in order to get to the bait on the other. Apparently they were too smart for that as well!

So the boys and I went to the hardware store to procure some glue traps. I'm not a fan of them, but we'll get to that in a minute. My thought process was to put the glue traps out next to the two unsprung traps without bait and wait for the mayhem to ensue. Imagine my luck, the very next day we had netted two new guests, one on one of the wooden spring traps - he was dead, and another in the glue trap - he was alive. Crap.

Now, I am a man, of course, but when I deal with mice, it takes every ounce of energy I have to muster up the courage to address what I know has to be done. I like the wooden traps as it kills the mice for me and I can just put a plastic bag around it to transport it outside - no rodent/human contact required. The glue traps, however, simply trap the mice so they can't get away. You have to wait for nature to starve them out or you need to address it yourself...

So, Quin and I discovered the mice the next day. I actually only saw one, and Quin went directly in to check it out. It was he who discovered that we had trapped another one in the mayhem device as I had hoped. When he saw the one mouse looking at us, alive in the glue trap, he immediately went and got his ice cream bucket. I explained to him that we weren't going to keep the mouse, but we had to take care of them and get them out of the house, so I got a plastic bag and started walking toward the mice.

As I walked toward it, the live mouse started FREAKING OUT, looking like he might even be able to escape the glue trap without some of his limbs and skin, and crawl away to die and rot somewhere in the house. Knowing that wasn't a good option, and not wanting to get bit, I knew what I had to do, but I also knew that I needed to get Quin out of there. Trying to be as calm as I could be, I asked him to leave. I wasn't very savvy, however, because even though he left, he immediately started sobbing uncontrollably. I took care of the situation, reluctantly and with as much dignity as I could muster, then got our guests out of the house as quickly as I could.

When I found Quin outside, tears were rolling down his face. "Is he dead?" he asked me. I said he was. I tried to smooth it over telling him that mice outside are great, but mice inside are dangerous to us. He seemed to accept that, even stating that "Heinzy might eat one and get sick, right?"

In the end, I'm still a little creeped out by having to whack the mouse over the head to put him out of his misery. But it makes me happy that Quin was upset by it. It means he has some grasp of the finality of death, and that he is likely not a sociopath or a psychopath, which I find endearing.

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Quin Quickies

The Circumcision

This weekend, my brother-in-law turned 50 and we were invited to his party. On the 30 minute drive to his house, Jenny and I were behaving like the good parents that we are and allowing the kids to listen to the Comedy Central channel on Sirius Satellite Radio, something of which we are currently enjoying a free trial. The content on the station isn't all that, well, appropriate, but we count on the kids not listening much like they don't listen to us - ever.

At one point during the programming, they broke away from the usual stand-up commedian routine and inserted a funny song. This particular song was a parody to Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls." It was titled "God Hates the Tips of Little Baby's Dicks," a song about circumcision, obviously. Of course, Quinton and Ethan were listening, and Quin reacted to the rest of our cackles at the lyrics of this very funny song. Ethan was a little embarrased, but Jenny asked him if he remembered when Quinton was circumsized, something we were unfortunate enough to walk in on during the early days of his life - something that Ethan wasn't on board with at the time to be sure! Quinton heard this conversation and asked what we were talking about and we told him we were talking about when he got circumcized as a baby. He asked, somewhat aptly, "I got Super Sized?" I'm sure there's a racial stereotype that makes that funny, but I probably shouldn't write about it.

Poop

Being that I have the sense of humor and maturity level of your average 6 year old, there are few things in the world that I find more hilarious than jokes and stories about pooping or farting. This story changed that a little for me, and I died a little bit inside when I realized it.

Jenny was away on business as she does maybe once or twice a year, leaving the boys and I to fend for ourselves for a few days. It was mid-June and we were trying to get some landscaping and yard work done before we were hosting a party later in the summer, so I elected to take the day off on this particular Thursday to get some things done before needing to deal with the kids' schedules. This was the day that Jenny was schedule to be home, so we were all excited and relieved.

The beginning of the day was easy enough - rides to summer school with lunches in tow, pick Ethan up around noon, then go get Quin at 4:00, get him changed, fed, and ready for baseball at 6:30. After picking Quin up, I quickly fed him and sat him in front of the television to unwind from the day by 5:15. I figured I had just enough time to complete digging the 14 inch deep hole I had been excavating in the back yard where our patio would eventually live. I figured I needed to be in the house by 5:50 in order to get Quin changed and ready in time to get to baseball by 6:20 or so. By the time I finished digging the hole it was 5:40 - I was 10 minutes early! What on earth would I do with all of this extra time? I was about to find out...

I went inside to clean up and asked Quin to go upstairs and change into his baseball uniform which I had laid out earlier that day. He immediately complied, which should have had me wondering, but I was already riding the high of having extra time that I didn't think anything of it. After washing up and changing my clothes, I went upstairs to see how Quin was doing getting into his uniform. I found him naked in the bathroom where he handed me his underwear and said, "here dad, you better take care of this." The underwear were completely covered in crap. It was so much that my brain couldn't really process it adequately, but what I figured was that he went to the bathroom at school and forgot to wipe, something he's famous for doing. So I asked him, "did you forget to wipe at school today?" "Yes," he said plainly. OK, no problem, I sent him into his room to get dressed and I took the underwear to the toilet as my mother had taught me to do when we were dealing with the cloth diapers of my younger siblings and I rinsed them out and left them to dry in the bathtub.

After having dealt with that, I went into Quin's room, and he was standing behind his bed, something he typically doesn't do. That got me to wondering, but still didn't think much of it. "What are you doing back there?" I asked him. "Getting dressed," he told me. That was when I observed the state of the room and found the brown colored footprints leading all the way through his room, around the bed to where he was sitting. Finally aware of the full breadth of the situation, I asked him to walk around the bed where I noticed that his entire leg and backside were covered in human fecal material. Well, I guess I knew what I was going to do with my "extra" 10 minutes!

"Aw man, did you have an accident?"

"Yes."

"Are you feeling sick? Did you have diarrhea?"

"What's diarrhea?"

"When your poop is all runny."

"No, it was a big log!"

In the end, it didn't turn out to be too big a deal. I cleaned the footprints to eliminate the evidence and we found a pair of black sweatpants to replace the ruined white baseball pants that he was intending to wear, and we still made it to baseball on time...

I was REALLY happy for Jenny to come home that night!!!

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Older Kids...

It's been awhile since I've written anything about Ethan. He's getting older, as you might guess. It's actually been quite shocking of late. In a year's time he passed his mother up in height and weight and his voice has reached a near approximation of a man's voice - a small man maybe, but a man's voice nonetheless. His shoulders and arms bear resemblance to the Tibbett side I can only assume since they have grown muscular despite him not really doing much in the line of working them out, and he can grow a fair mustache. Sure it's a little thin, but it's facial hair. Not sure how I feel about our baby getting so big so quickly - he promises to pass me up in the next couple of years. I keep joking that I need to find ways to scare him in case he one day realizes that he could take me in a dual.

It's also been nice to have a "built-in babysitter." It sure would have been helpful 3 years ago as our prospects for getting out of the house were much more frequent in their calling in those days, but it is really nice to know that he is a fairly mature, reasonable, and responsible person with whom we can leave Quinton and the dog.

That's not to say he doesn't sometime lack good judgment. A couple of weeks ago, just prior to our summer party, I introduced Ethan to Zombieland, a rated-R movie (yes, judge me all you want, but Ethan watches rated-R movies). I suppose it is one thing for me to let him watch it, but he thought it a good idea to watch it with his little brother. I didn't know this was going on until Quin came downstairs and informed me that he now knew a new naughty word. Knowing his version of what naughty words are, I figured he meant something like "hate" or "stupid," so I asked him what his new word was and he responded, "f*cking @ss." There's something hilarious about hearing those words coming out of Quinton's mouth, but knowing it wouldn't be wise to encourage him, I managed to stay straight faced and told him that it indeed was a naughty word and that he should never use it in front of his grandmother...

 

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Big, Fat, and Stupid

A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from an old co-worker who still worked at my old place of employment. It was a complimentary e-mail, fairly light in nature, which made it all the more mysterious why the e-mail header on my iPad read, "To: Big, Fat, and Stupid - From: <name omitted>". Hmm... I asked him why that was what he had called me in his address book and he claimed innocense. I figured somebody at my old job was probably playing a funny joke by getting one of the IT guys to mess with my name on the company mail server.

I didn't think much more about it for a couple of weeks until I found myself in the car with the whole family in tow. We were contemplating going to a movie, but didn't know what was playing. Since I was driving, I enabled my iPhone's digital assistant, Siri, and asked what movies were playing. As happens from time to time, the voice recognition didn't work so well and Siri responded to me, "I'm sorry, Big, Fat, and Stupid, I don't know how to do that." The car erupted in a fit of laughter and things started to come into focus.

Two years ago when I first got this version of the iPhone, I remember showing the kids the Siri feature and how you could get her to call you different names just by talking to her. To demonstrate I said to her, "Call me Big Sexy." After that, I left it like that. There seemed no reason to change it, afterall. Over time, Apple rolled the nickname feature out to other apps, including Mail. So that explained why my coworker's e-mail was addressed to "Big, Fat, and Stupid." What it didn't explain was who perpetrated such a heinous joke on my person!

I addressed the car, all of whom were still laughing. I first looked at Ethan who said, "That's hilarious, and I wish I had done it, but I didn't..." I then turned to Jenny who simply stated, "You know I didn't do it - I don't even know how to do that!" Which left me with the only person I knew who had the gumption, know-how, and inventiveness to commit this crime. He was smiling to himself with his eyes focused intently on his iPod screen, playing a game. I asked him and he fessed up. Still not wanting to believe he did it, I asked him how he managed to do the deed. He calmly explained, "you were in the shower, and your iPhone was in the office. So I went in there and said to Siri, Siri, call me Big, Fat, and Stupid, but I said it soft so you wouldn't hear me."

To me the most impressive part of this joke is also the most frightening. Quin clearly did this several weeks prior. He somehow, as a six year old, managed to resist the urge to force me into immediate discovery, instead opting for the far more potentially devastating punchline of me discovering it on my own at a later time, wondering what had really happened...

 

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Summer Vacation 2014 - Day 5 - Saturday

That's right, we're going a little Tarantino here with the time jumping and what-not. By now it's been nearly two weeks and the scars are just starting to form. This will be a blissfully short retrospective on the fifth day of our summer vacation, lest it is lost for all time to the memory of the harrowing experience of the trip home.

Saturday was not at all unlike Friday in most regards. A quick breakfast at the hotel, stop at Starbucks, then off to Regis University for our second and final full day of camp activities. The format was much the same as the previous day - we dropped the kids off into their age banded groups then headed off to our adult talks.

In the morning were a number of panels, which were quite informational. The first one was staffed by three adult trans-racial adoptees, one of which has gained quite a bit of notoriety in the area through the documentary her husband made of her and her search for her birth family. If you ever are. interested, Closure is a wonderfully filmed story of Angela's story, growing up as a black child in a white family, and her curiosity and ultimate search for her birth parents. Check it out at http://closuredocumentary.com. There were also two others on the panel, both college students. All three were very thoughtful and provided the attendees with a lot of insight into what types of things our kids might be thinking. Man - being a parent is hard...

After that we sat through a forum with several local members in the black community, one of which was the great grandson of W.E.B. Dubois. These folks, though none had great insight or experience in the adoption community, all had first class insight into what it was like living in America as a black adult. So many fun stories, like the myriad times they've been pulled over by the police, or had things thrown at them while walking down the street... In the end, they had very positive messages and it was good to hear their perspective.

Lunch today was Haitian, which I think included chicken... It was hard to tell. Mainly lunch was for Quin to get together with a bunch of other kids and play soccer...

After lunch Jenny and I split into groups and followed separate tracks. I got a lesson in Hip Hop culture and how it affects the teenage mind, while Jenny learned about trauma and the adopted child. I then sat in on a history of Ethiopia while Jenny went to a session called Hart talks (or something to that effect). The history of Ethiopia was really fascinating, actually. I didn't realize what a big role it has played in a lot of other world histories, particularly religion. Apparently if it weren't for Ethiopia, the Muslim religion may have ceased to exist when they were ousted from Saudi Arabia. It was and is also a Christian stronghold, center of the Ethiopian Orthodox sect of Christianity. They even claim to have the Arc of the Covenant hidden away somewhere in the country, which after I heard it, I remembered reading something about that on CNN at one point. Probably the most interesting thing I learned was about Ras Tafari, a long time Ethiopian "emperor" who had many progressive views on African freedom and their place in the world, and who the Rastafarian religion of Jamaica is centered around. Fascinating!

After class, we picked up the kids and went to Golden for an evening at the water park. After getting a quick dinner at a local pizza joint, we congregated at Splash where the entire park was reserved for our group. The park was pretty small, but had all the highlights that you require from a water park - a couple of slides, a big bucket that fills with water and dumps on the kids, and a diving board. Ethan had a great time with his new friend Luke, and Quin had fun floating through the water and occasionally paying attention to the girl that claimed him as her boyfriend - perhaps the cutest 5 year old girl I've ever met... We may need to move to Colorado just so Quin has a chance at being friends with this girl!

It was a long day, so after almost 3 hours at the water park we eagerly drove back to our hotel and went immediately to bed. With the thought of the long trip ahead of us the next day, sleep took us (well, me for sure) quickly.

As we didn't attend camp on Sunday, a couple of parting thoughts about the camp, in no particular order:

• Jenny likes to point out that we are nowhere near the oldest people, or even among the norm of the aged among adoptive families. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it makes her happy.
• It's always good to go to these things to remind us how to be a little more understanding as parents and people. I swear, for several days after this camp we were much better parents. We've reverted back to our nasty selves now, but it made a big difference for a couple of days. I'm sure they taught the kids to be better kids during their sessions, too.
• Denver is a beautiful place with a seemingly vibrant African American community, though the statistics tell a different story. I imagine our perspective was skewed since we were at an African/Caribbean Heritage camp!
• We met some very interesting people, and hooked up with one guy (one of the counselors) that was from DR Congo. In fact, we've been in contact with him already several times since camp and he promises to help us out should we ever make the journey to Kinshasa to pickup Mireille.

Summer Vacation 2014 - There and Back Again

Introduction

9:30 on Monday, June 30, 2014. We're all showered, Quin is in bed, Jenny's powering through another bout with Facebook, I'm watching The Wolverine with Ethan... It's easy to forget about the events of the last 36 hours. It's taken me an hour to type up the summary on this page, so I can only imagine how long the actual account will take me. This will be an epic, to be sure. It will only cover about 36 hours of actual time, but I fear it may take me almost that much time to condense my thoughts into the written word. I can promise you intrigue, adventure, horror, romance - well, maybe not romance, but it is quite a story. It will be long. I feel like Tolkien sitting down and recounting Bilbo's trip back to The Shire. This could take a while, but hopefully it will not bore too much.

For those astute readers (dear reader - sorry, I've been listening to a lot of Steven King on the trip), you will have by now recognized that there is a gap in the retelling of our vacation. I found the first two entries of this year's trip to be limp and boring. I feel like today's offering has the right components of a good story, and as such, I wanted to ensure I put it to paper as soon as I could so I didn't forget what I wanted to represent here. I promise I will circle back and summarize the last day of camp for those that are keeping track and are interested. Consider this entry a more secular version of our vacation. OK, I'm going to start now, I promise. You might want to get new reading glasses and freshen up your drink.

Sunday Morning

It's Sunday morning. We have developed a bad habit of sleeping through the alarm and sleeping a full 9 hours on most of our vacations rather than doing the right thing and getting a run in at altitude. We finally come to around 8:00 AM Mountain Time to get our day started. The camp is not yet ended - there are the closing ceremonies and clean-up yet to occur. We've decided to forego these ceremonies and instead get a head start on our 15 hour drive.

Once the kids were finally up and showered, we finally took off by 9:00 and headed down to Denver proper to say goodbye to Maylee and Steve, our hosts from a few nights prior. After a quick breakfast at Einstein's Bagels, Jenny, Maylee, and Ethan went to Albertsons to procure snacks for our drive while Steve, Quinton, and I went to Lowry Liquors to fill the spot emptied in the car from the donation we made to the camp for the silent auction. Quinton was a big help. Walking into the store, he immediately went to get a cart. I want to think it is because he likes to push carts, but I think it's because he knows that I typically need a cart when I shop in a liquor store. Colorado has a wonderful selection of beer, many of which I can get in Wisconsin, but many I cannot. For those in the beer nerd crowd, Colorado has moved past the IPA craze and is now brewing and enjoying beers across many different styles! I intended to get 4-six packs, but ended up with 5 and a four pack to boot. Quinton was right. He pushed the cart along with Steve and I while I traded and re-traded selections several times and to the front of the store once I ultimately settled on my final selections. Once at the checkout, the proprietor packed my selections into a box that Quin offered to carry. The proprietor said he could not take that, but asked me if it was OK if Quin had a lollypop instead. Once I said yes, he set an entire bucket of lollypops in front of Quin and said, "here you go," surely expecting Quin to take one and move along. Quin, somewhat predictably, instead grabbed the entire bucket and started to walk out. He confidently smiled at the owner and thanked him before Steve and I convinced him that he only really needed one...

To go a little Tarantino for a second, Quin's behavior and confidence at the liquor store reminded me of something I've been noticing in Ethan of late. It's happened on several occasions lately, but it was quite pronounced on this vacation. There were several occasions where Ethan was hanging around with Jenny and I while we were talking with new people that we had just met. They were addressing Ethan directly, asking him questions, as is polite to do, though teenagers seem to dread it and often shy away from that sort of contact. Lately, however, Ethan has been showing a lot of confidence in these dealings, looking people directly in the eye, smiling confidently, and actually maintaining a solid, enthusiastic conversation with them. I've been very impressed by this of late. If I don't get to the topic in tomorrow's post about the last day of camp, Ethan was also very impressive in this camp by his ability to hook up with and meet new friends. He made a couple of solid acquaintances on this trip that I'm sure he will maintain contact with either through his various social networks or through Xbox live. Isn't the future great!??! OK, enough of the distraction...

By 10:30 Mountain, the closing ceremonies were most likely in full swing, but we were on the road, on our way through Eastern Colorado toward our home in Wisconsin, which we hoped to reach sometime early on the subsequent morning. Eastern Colorado, or the Colorado Desert is, in a word, boring. If it wasn't for the mountains, Colorado would be a painfully boring place. Good thing they have the mountains, I suppose! We powered through the 2 hours of 76 in short order, stopping at the end for subs and gasoline. Quin was pretty cranky by this point - having been off his schedule for almost an entire week by this point, but we ate our lunch and powered on through Nebraska - wonderful Nebraska!

The day portion of the trip went on without a hitch. Quin napped a considerable amount, which boded well for his mood later in the day. Nebraska during the day looks much like Nebraska during the night. In fact, there's little to distinguish between the two. It's LONG! Along the way we stopped at Hastings at perhaps the most glorious truck stop I have ever encountered. They had a couple of food places, an arcade with a full size replica of Predator, foot-long roller dogs, and actual ice cream shakes which were pretty good! They were even building a Quaker Steak and Lube there, which should be opening sometime this fall. I may actually want to go back there sometime!

We spent 6 solid hours in Nebraska before we finally got to Omaha, which marked the finish of the first half of our journey. Along the way I encountered what may have been, in retrospect, my first omen of what was to come. I've had a problem with my van in the past where the condenser drain backed up and started emptying in the car cabin. Sometime in central Nebraska I started to feel a cool drip of water on my bare feet. I knew at once what it was, and it only got worse as the day waned and the A/C ran... My second omen was, again in retrospect, encountered while listening to a book on tape by Michael Crighton called Pirate Latitudes. It was one book that I hadn't yet read from Crighton, and it proved to be pretty good, though Jenny wasn't wild about it. The ending was pretty terrible in my opinion, however - I suspect that Crighton either lost interest or died before he finished the book, but they published it anyway... Anyway, at one point during the eastern part of Nebraska, the protagonists encountered the Kraken, a bad omen for their journey. I thought tacitly to myself that this could be an omen for myself as well as for the crew, but I did so jokingly...

Anyway, we passed through Omaha and stopped just across the Iowa border in Council Bluffs where we enjoyed dinner at Perkins, a perennial favorite (and also one of the only places open at 8:00 on a Sunday evening). There was a feeling of relief in the air. There was a definite anticipation for the trip to be over and for life to normalize again - most of all, everybody was looking forward to sleeping in our own beds in 7-8 short hours! Mother Nature, as it seems, had a different plan for us.

Lightening scarred the sky while the crew of "El Trinidad" encountered the Kraken for the second time. Western Iowa was getting some weather, it was clear, though we didn't really see any significant rain. Des Moines proved to be quite the tease on this leg of the journey. The map said something like 125 miles, and we were averaging around 75 miles per hour, so we figured on getting there some time before 11:00 Central. Somehow, though, the miles kept lagging behind as though we were only averaging 60 miles per hour. Ultimately it took us 2 full hours to get there, though admittedly we did stop once to go to the rest room.

As we pass Des Moines, I begin to get hopeful that we might make it home by 4:00, thinking (wrongly) that we are only an hour from Cedar Rapids, then another 4 hours from home. Cedar Rapids, though, is nearly 2 hours from Des Moines... I was getting a little despondent as we stopped another time, this time to allow Jenny to get a towel to cover herself so I could continue to run the AC and to have its condensed water drip on my feet, keeping me alert and awake.

Monday Morning

The hours passed slowly, the lightening continues uninterrupted. We pass the Highway 151 exit and I briefly consider taking it instead of taking the more traveled interstate toward Cedar Rapids, but I quickly dismiss it. I was tired, the gas tank was getting to the point where I needed to fill it again, but the family wanted to get home! At 12:30, we finally reached I380 and turn north. A short 12 mile jaunt north and we turn off onto Highway 151 to start the last quarter of our journey, the most difficult quarter behind us. I put off gassing up until I'm on the 151 bypass of Cedar Rapids, looking forward to taking on a Red Bull and a water and staying plenty alert for the last 1/4 of the journey. That proved to be a fantasy, however...

Splashdown

I380 passes over Highway 151/30, so the exit winds down and to the east at a somewhat sharp curve. We took it at the suggested 30 MPH speed. By this point I am bleary eyed, but hopeful of making the next 10 miles go quickly so I can stop, gas up, and clear my head. As I round the curve toward 151 I notice that the road is covered in water. I didn't think much of it, but as I hit the water, it crashed violently over my windshield as the tires on our car stopped responding. I slammed on the brakes and the car stopped... We were obviously in deeper water than I had anticipated. The car was lilting toward the passenger side, where it came up above the floorboards. The driver's side wasn't quite as bad, perhaps only 12 inches deep there. There was mass hysteria. I calmed myself as quickly as I could and tried to calm Quin and Ethan (Jenny was going to have to fend for herself). I quickly got out of the car and coaxed the kids out as well. Quin wanted to make sure that his Furby was OK - we had won it in the silent auction at camp. Ethan yelled that the water was coming in the car! It took about 30 seconds for the reality of what had happened to sink in. We were stuck!

The whole family got out but the water was rising somewhat (I may have imagined that). We moved to higher ground and assessed the situation. My next thought was for our stuff, particularly my electronics (stupid westerner!). I went quickly back to the car and checked the situation with our luggage and was satisfied that it was safe and dry for the moment. A moment later, a car came speeding down at us from 380 which was the first reminder that we were standing on a freeway in the middle of the night, and that was scary! He saw our flashers and stopped, luckily. He was from Wisconsin as well, and managed to not get his car stuck, but stopped and asked if he could help us (a trend we would see throughout the evening). I took him up on his offer and between he, Ethan, Jenny, and myself, we managed to push the car out of the 18 or so inches of water toward the high side of the road.

Several other cars and semis came speeding around the curve. Many of them stopped and asked if we needed help. Not knowing what to do myself, we told them we were OK and they should continue on themselves. An eastern European couple came the closest to hitting us, and also had almost as bad a luck as we did. I tried briefly to converse with them as they stalled out about 50 feet in front of us, but quickly found it was pointless as they neither wanted nor were able to communicate effectively with me (nor I with them), so we left each other to our own devices.

On a couple of occasions I tried to start the car. The power was still working, but when I tried to turn the ignition it behaved as though I needed a jump. I didn't know if it was going to dry out at some point and I would be able to move on, or if we were in real trouble. As Jenny and I were arguing over whether we should walk to a gas station or some other place (there were none around), Jenny dropped her phone in 6 inches of standing water... The dollar signs were starting to add up for me in my head and I got despondent for a brief moment. Getting over it, I decided that the modern day savior, the cell phone, was our best course of action.

I first called the police, thinking that they might want to get somebody there to warn people from running into the same ordeal we had run into. For the first time in my life, I dialed 911 confidently and was answered in 30 or so seconds by a clearly frazzled dispatcher. I tried calmly to tell her where I was and that there was a lot of standing water that was dangerous to the public there. Of course my situation was the most dire in the area at this time!!! She excitedly explained to me that there was major flooding all over Cedar Rapids, and to please hold. She moved away from the phone and was talking to somebody else in the room who was trying to get a boat to perform a rescue at the HyVee. At that point I realized that we were very small potatoes in the grand scheme of this storm. Like a good dispatcher she got back on the phone and asked me to continue to hold, trying to reassure me that I was important, but I convinced her that I could handle it myself and she should attend to the real emergencies - I think she was ultimately pleased. I'm probably on the NSA's radar now, though, having called 911 for real...

My next attempt was to get a tow truck. I tried the first one that came up on Google only to be met with an answering machine. The second one got me to a dispatcher that informed me that the average wait time right now was 3-4 hours. Aw crap. I hung up and explained it to Jenny who was unimpressed...

During this time, no fewer than 5 cars and many people on foot had stopped to inquire as to our wellbeing and to see if they could do anything. I'm very impressed with the people of Cedar Rapids, for the record! As I tried to come up with another idea, Jenny started talking to four guys in an extended cab pickup truck who said they had a tow-truck they could go get and help us out. She came over to me and told me to go talk with them. As I started to negotiate the deal, a truck from the company that I had called came rolling by and was apparently impressed enough by our situation that he stopped to help us - this was 10 minutes after we were told it would be 3-4 hours! Our luck was improving! To boot, Jenny's phone was still working - maybe this wouldn't be all bad!!!

As Pat is assessing our situation, he is preparing us for the worst. I explain what is happening and he told us that we are likely looking at a new engine or new car entirely. First thing's first, though, he wants to get our car off of the freeway and get us somewhere we can stay the night. Since he had a long night in front of him, he squeezed us all into his cab and dropped us along with our car off at his parent company where they will hopefully be able to address our car in the morning. As we drove there, we had to drive through another section of 2 foot water before finally arriving at a desolate truck repair center near the ethanol plant in Cedar Rapids.

Pat convinced us that we should just call a cab and even wrote down the address for where they should pick us up. I agreed and he left to what was sure to be a long, long night for him - he had diverted from a call to get us to where we were at that point, which was better than drenched on the side of a soggy interstate! He even thought to call us back 10 minutes later to remind us to keep the keys in the car so the mechanics could assess the damage in the morning!

We called a cab, which showed up about 20 minutes later. I had found a hotel, which in my exhaustion I thought was the Comfort Inn, and asked him to take us there. He took us a very nearby cluster of hotels, but there was no Comfort Inn. For some reason it took about 3 minutes to figure out that any hotel will do, just drop us off at one!!! I said if they didn't have rooms we could just walk to another one. The cabbie would have nothing of it, however, as we were in a "bad part of town" and we "shouldn't be walking around there." He meant well, and we appreciated it, but that part of town didn't seem all that scary to me... Perhaps my central Iowa folks can contradict me...

We checked in and got 4 hours of death-like sleep. At 7:30, Jenny was ready to get on the road again, but we had no idea what we were going to have to do. Would we need to rent a car? Could they fix ours? If we rented one, when would we be able to drive 4 hours back to pick ours up? Or would we ever be able to? All questions that we couldn't answer until we talked to the mechanic, but first I needed to figure out the insurance thing. Acuity is NOT a good company when you are in a crisis. They are well setup to accept payments and file claims during business hours, but in an emergency, you are on your own. In the middle of the night, that's a little scary, especially with all of the Progressive commercials that were playing on the TV. By 8:00, however, I was finally able to get ahold of my agent who wasn't much more help anyway - telling me that we were covered for the tow, but didn't know what else... I thanked him and realized that we were on our own... Time to grow up, I guess!

By now the kids had awoken and the TV had come on where National Lampoons Vacation was on. Hmm... Another omen??? Perhaps it would have been if it hadn't happened after the fact, but certainly coincidental! I called the repair place who had just gotten around to looking at the car. I was annoyed, but I later found out that the shop had 3 inches of standing water in it when they arrived and they spent all morning and much of the afternoon cleaning up and making the place functional again!

By now the family was at a bit of a low point. Jenny desperately wanted to be home, or at least at a Starbucks (the nearest of which was 3 miles away). So the kids and I went out and got breakfast to pass the time until we could talk with the mechanic again.

30 minutes later, I called to ATC once again who informed me that they were able to start the car and we might have gotten lucky! Finally, good news!!! Of course, they wouldn't know for sure until they changed the oil and spark plugs and were able to test it some more. This raised the spirits considerably, but now we had to wait the prescribed 45 minutes before we called back. So we went for a walk!

There's not much to see along 33rd street on a humid Monday morning, but we walked nonetheless... When we got back an hour later, I called again, and they continued to be positive, thinking now that they would know for sure if we could drive the car in the next 15 minutes. Knowing Jenny and the kids were at their wits' end, I asked if he thought it would be OK if we just headed down there and waited for it. He said that would be fine, and if we could not ultimately drive it, he would give us a ride to the rental car place. Like I said, the folks in Cedar Rapids are quite friendly!

I tell the family that we're going to the car place, and there was much rejoicing. I called a cab and headed out to the lobby to check out. There I found out that we were REALLY small potatoes in this whole thing. There was apparently a hospital that had to evacuate one of their low-lying floors to another area, and the manager of the hotel awoke to find her truck submerged up to the windows! I started to feel a little badly, but got over it as the cabbie arrived to take us back to ATC.

After spending 90 minutes at the car repair place, outside, where they had setup their soaked lobby furniture while they mopped the whole place out, we paid our $400 bill (tow included) and were finally on our way again, delayed by almost exactly 12 hours! I discussed the situation with some of the employees of the auto repair place and they were very helpful in finding us a safe way back to Dubuque and the lands beyond. They mentioned that they were expecting more weather that afternoon, and quicker we got out of there the better. That turned out to be true as we were made aware of a tornado touchdown from one of our Facebook acquaintances that afternoon!!!

We drove straight through to Dubuque, about 70 minutes, where we got gas and lunch, and most importantly, Jenny got some Starbucks! The world looked normal again.

We made it back to the Oconomowoc area just in time to pickup our dog, who had apparently barked his fool head off the entire time we were gone. The boarding house lady was VERY pleased to see him leave... Not sure what to do with him. I was glad to see him!

Home

It's 6:00 - we are finally home! We had spent several days putting together a gazebo for our deck prior to leaving on vacation, and we were worried that bad weather might have affected it while we were gone. We were pleased to see that it was unaffected by any weather the entire 6 days we were gone! There proved to be some weather coming in, though, so we quickly unpacked the car into the garage to beat the rain.

Jenny had packed pretty efficiently, so the unpacking was going fairly quickly. Quin was working on connecting up to Netflix again, something he had missed on the vacation, and Ethan was busy evacuating his bowels, something he had not apparently done properly for the prior 6 days since he was never afforded the requisite 30 minutes to do so. Jenny and I busied ourselves unpacking and we put a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven so we could get a quick supper. That's when the thunderstorm hit. The lights flickered 3 times - each time we heard a "come on!" from the bathroom. On the 4th time, they went out "for good." It was at that time that we heard the gazebo get blown off the deck... I guess the Kraken had more for us after all!!!

The severe thunderstorm lasted about 10 minutes, but it did some damage, and our power was still not coming back on. Nobody had the chance yet to shower or eat, the pizzas had been in the oven for only 8 minutes, only about 2/3 the time required. As I busied myself looking for flashlights (all of which seem to end up in Quin's room), Jenny finished unpacking. Ethan finished his business in the bathroom, and Quin desperately tried to watch something on Netflix!!! Foiled by the power! Also, the wind had blown the gazebo apart and pieces of it were lying on the ground out back...

On a whim, we decide to call Jenny's sister who lives only 3 miles away to see if she has power. Oh, the power of the cellular telephone! They did have power, so we quickly brokered a deal to shower over there and hang out until our power was restored. When we got there, they had no idea of any of what had transpired over the last 18 hours. When they asked how our vacation was, Quin quickly exclaimed, "I won a Furby!!!"

After an hour of waiting, drinking their beer, and using their shower, my rudimentary sleuthing techniques informed me that our power was back on, only 2 hours from when it had gone out. We headed back home, thankful for the company and the accommodations, but yearning for HOME!!!

So that's where we sit now. I completed my shower once we got back, Quin quickly went to bed, Jenny started the prodigious job of catching up on the laundry, and Quin was able to finally download the Furby app and feed his now hungry little stuffed animal while he was finally able to watch Netflix!!! Life is back to normal - sure, we're 15 hours late, tired, have missed a day of school and a day of work (I wouldn't say I missed it), but we still have a roof over our heads and our power hungry appetites are satiated once more.

It was a nice vacation, but it's REALLY good to be home!

Summer Vacation 2014 - Day 4 - Friday

Friday started our first full day at camp. We had hoped to get a vacation run in this morning, but alas, it was not meant to be. We were able to get moving in time for our 8:30 breakfast meet-up for new families. New families were quite the thing this year with the camp doubling in size or so over the last couple of years.

After breakfast we dropped the kids off with their age appropriate groups, each color coded by shirt color. Quin's group, the first graders, were colored red, and Ethan's group, the middle schoolers, were colored tan. The separation ceremony was done in the gym along with some African dance being taught to us by a local troupe of African dancers. We, and most others, were predictably inept at dancing, though Quin made up for the rest of us. Ethan didn't care to have any of us around him for the separation ceremony, but we could see him from across the gym and he looked typically uncomfortable, though he was trying, it was clear.

After dancing, the kids were off and we went to the auditorium for the adult program. The morning program involved "heritage camp speed dating." The room was split into four sections and each section was assigned a topic. If the topic applied to you, you went to that area. Jenny and I made a point of splitting up and took part in topics like "kids in middle school," "kids that have spent time in the foster system," and "kids that have spent time in orphanages." It was interesting to talk with people that were in similar situations to us. We found out pretty quickly that there was a very large contingent of people here that had adopted from Ethiopia. We also quickly established ourselves as some kind of minor celebrities. For one thing we had adopted domestically - that was pretty common. But very few had adopted domestically and were also in the process of adopting internationally. But what really set us apart was that we managed to drive 15 hours from Wisconsin to attend... In other words, we learned that most people at this conference were "locals."

Jenny and my programs were quite interesting, and I'd love to blog at length about them, but the topics are likely pretty dry for the rest of the considerable leadership, so I'll skip the gory details. Lunch on Friday was catered from a local Ethiopian restaurant, which was delicious. Quin had a meat and cheese sandwich while Ethan got to got white water rafting with the other middle and high schoolers. All on-camp meals were served on an open field on the campus, and there was never a time when there wasn't at least 10 kids playing soccer. There also was never a time when Quin wasn't one of those at least 10 kids!

After lunch was much of the same as the morning. Quin went back to his programming, we went back to ours. The afternoon programs ended up at 4:00 at which time we collected Quin and waited around for Ethan. The rafters didn't end up coming back until close to 4:30. Apparently Ethan had a great time rafting and wants us all to do it again sometime. Quin met some good friends throughout the day as well, but it was time to get away from camp and do something else for awhile.

After camp, we went back to the hotel to swim a bit. I used some of my newly learned child psychology to have some fun with Quin in the pool while Jenny and Ethan rested in the room. After swimming we got ready and met my cousin, Caitlin, and her fiancé at the Bull and Bush, pretty much my favorite place on earth. Bull and Bush is an English style pub that brews their own beer and has better than average pub food. Caitlin and Paxton moved out here only a month ago after Caitlin got a job at a nearby museum. It was nice to see them. The most interesting part of the dinner, though, was how Quin literally slept through the entire meal and then some. The week's activities and messed up schedule had him completely wiped out, and he caught up on 3 hours worth in the car and on my lap around dinner time.

After dinner we met Maylee and Steve again at their floor hockey game in Parker, just south of the city. After a couple of drinks and appetizers afterwards we finally went back to the room but didn't get there until 11:00, late once again! Looks like Quin is going to continue to be off schedule at least another day!

Summer Vacation 2014 - Days 1-3 - Tuednesday and Thursday

This year's edition of summer vacation is to the Mile High City where we are attending an African and Caribbean Heritage Camp. It's been a few years since we've been in Denver in the summer, so we were pretty excited to get things started.

The plan was to make the 15 hour drive from Tuesday through Wednesday morning. After 2/3 day of work, we packed up the car and... waited for Target to deliver some new patio furniture. That could have probably been planned better. They gave us a window from 2-6 on Tuesday. Luckily they turned up at 5:00. It seemed a little sketchy - they showed up in a Penske rental truck and had the back full of stuff. I don't recall if they had uniforms on. Very strange.

We got on the road by 5:30 PM and started the trek, but first we had to drop Heinz off at his resort for the week, Nature's Touch Pet Boarding near Watertown. They were very excited to find out that Heinz would be spending the week with them (insert sarcastic look here). When I called them to make the reservation, they took my information and finally asked for my name. When I said "Grady," the woman said, "Oh great, Heinz." He is notorious for barking the entire time he stays there, so they will have had their fill of his annoying, high-pitched bark by next Monday! The road to the boarding house is a bit out of the way and on gravel roads. After the 25 minute drive we turned off on the last gravel road to deliver him, only to find that there was a bridge out right before the drop off. Ethan suggested that the owners might have destroyed the bridge instead of taking Heinz on as a tenant for the week. He might be right...

After about a 6 mile detour to get back to drop Heinz off, the kids were getting hungry, so we stopped immediately at one of our favorite Culver's in Johnson Creek and had supper. Short story long, we were finally on the road for real by around 6:30 on Tuesday evening. No problem - we were planning to drive through the night anyway.

And that's just what we did. We split the trip up into quarters. Quarter 1 was to Cedar Rapids - we arrived there around 10:00. That one wasn't too bad - everybody was awake for all of that. the next quarter was to Omaha which we arrived at around 2:00, and most everybody was sleeping by then, including the driver. The third quarter was the roughest. I pulled over around 3:00 to let Jenny drive for a spell. After 2 hours, she had had enough, so we pulled over at a beautiful Nebraska rest stop and did just that, rested. After an hour break, the car windows were sufficiently steamed and we continued our journey, ending the third quarter near North Platte, NB around 7:00 in the morning.

After some Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks we hit the road for the final quarter of the trip, the final drive into Denver, where we arrived around 11:00.

Tuednesday - felt like a single day, even though it was two, technically. Quin and Ethan got a decent amount of sleep on the trip, but Jenny and I were pretty cached. Our friends Maylee and Steve offered to let us stay with them for the first night of the trip, which was awesome. The first order of business, their awesome apartment pool, where we spent a couple of hours, after which we got some lunch and relaxed for the afternoon while taking in the World Cup.

The evening went by in a blur. We walked to get some dinner at the Lowry Beer Garden, then walked back, and Quin and I fell instantly to sleep. I had heard the phrase "as soon as my head hit the pillow," but this was the first time I experienced it myself. I agreed to "put Quin to sleep" that night, but I think it turned out the other way around. I'm not sure how Quin fell asleep that night, but Jenny assures me that he was sleeping when she got up there. 10 hours later I'm feeling mostly OK, but it's still hard to believe that 3 days occurred - it only felt like 2!

Thursday was a mostly lazy day as well. Some more pool time, some lunch, then check into our hotel in Westminster, CO, near where our camp was taking place at Regis University, Denver, CO. The camp started at 4:30 where we checked in and took in the opening bar-b-que and social hour. It's always fun to go to these things and see other families that "look like us." Quin took off and played soccer for 90 minutes or so with a bunch of other kids while the rest of us mingled. We met some interesting people, most of which were from the Denver area. One couple we met was from Kansas, and turned out that the father does voice work for cartoons, and even voices some of my favorite characters! Always fun to get out and meet people!

Anyway, the evening ended at Dave and Busters with some video games. Tomorrow the camp starts in earnest - Ethan gets to go whitewater rafting with the high schoolers. Jenny and I will be in different talks throughout the day. Quin will be doing some age appropriate games and other stuff. I'm sure there will be more interesting things to blog about tomorrow, but for now, it's sleepy time. I'm guessing it's going to take a few days to recover from that 2 hour sleep night that was Tuednesday.

Spring Break 2014 - Home!

Raining again this morning. As we were packing our room, I was thinking on my post from last night and how I had forgotten to put some important color on it. After the mall, the three boys (Ethan, Quin, and Loudon) and I went swimming in the pool. After we had swum for awhile, a couple of young girls came in - I would estimate they were around 10 or 11 years old. At one point they went to sit in the hot tub, where Quin followed them. I didn't even notice he was gone... I was hanging with my nepphew, trying to show him how to float. A couple of minutes later, Quin comes jumping into the regular pool and asks me, quiely, "dad, where do we live?" I told him Oconomowoc, and he got out of the pool and went back to the hot tub. A couple of minutes later he did the same thing, this time asking what state we lived in... Then went back... It was kind of spooky how natural he was at working these two girls - I was at once impressed and taking notes.

This morning we got up, packed up, then went to Al and Araceli's house for breakfast with them and my parents. It was a wonderful breakfast and nice to spend time with the family before we headed home. The funniest part of the morning by far was when Quin asked Araceli, "Are you a Mexican?" She responded that she was, indeed, Mexican. He then asked her, "how did you get here?" I was somewhat mortified, but at the same time wanted to see where it went. She patiently explained to him that Mexico was just south of the US and even tried to show him on the globe that was handy. I think he lost interest... Still, it was pretty funny.

Fast forward 5 hours and we're home. We've been making a tradition out of saving the last day of vacation for when we get home. It's just more comfortable here and sometimes it's nice to pretend that you don't have a bunch of stuff to do but still be comfortable. So that's what we're doing now. No laundry, no cooking, just relaxing with our own stuff. We even went to a movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which I found quite entertaining. Might have been a bit much for Quin...

So that's it for this year's spring break. Tomorrow we're back to almost normal. We have some work on the house to do, need to pick up the dog, and then it's on to a weekend full of soccer, the first of MANY weekends like that. It's been fun, but now life must go on.

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Spring Break 2014 - Mall of America

The day started REALLY late this morning. The plan was to meet Uncle Bryce and Loudon at the Mall of America (MOA) at 10:00 to do rides and other fun stuff. When 9:00 rolled around and we were still having difficulty getting Quin out of bed, we knew we were going to have to delay a bit. It seems that vacation finally caught up to the 6 year old, who went to bed at midnight the night previous and hadn't slept much to date. He sure made up for it last night!

After a shower and a quick breakfast in the atrium (our hotel is pretty nice), we headed out of the room to travel to the mall. Not before we stopped in the lobby for some Starbucks, a vacation staple. While Jenny was procuring the sweet caffeinated beverages for us, the boys and I sat at leather chairs in the lobby having a quick business meeting where I insulted, fired, rehired, and ultimately praised them for their parts in our bunny business. It was a weird morning.

We got to the mall a few minutes early, so Ethan shopped for and purchased a new Jerry Garcia tie (he's obsessed), then the four of us hung out at the Microsoft store and played some XBox ONE. The hope was that we would ultimately convince Jenny that it was time to buy one of our own. Not to spoil the surprise, but we still do not own one...

At 10:30 we met up with Bryce and Loudon and took in the rides at Nickelodeon World. Loudon is a natural and loves rides, and it turns out Quin is as well! He's now tall enough (50 inches) to go on all the rides himself. Ethan was a very good big brother and older cousin today and went on all of the rides with his younger proteges.

A bit of lunch and more rides later, we were thinking of leaving. The kids convinced us that it was a good idea to go on the log ride one more time. We had gone on earlier and Quin and I had gotten REALLY wet - well, Quin got completely soaked, and I got really wet. Since I had gotten so wet the last time, I gave my phone to Jenny to watch while I rode this time around, which was good since we went on it twice in a row (it was a very slow day at the park). Jenny took some video of us on the ride, and once we were done, I found that my phone had completely discharged again. Luckily there was an Apple store only about 100 feet away, so I went there to find out what was wrong with my phone, only to find that I needed a new battery (I really need a new phone, the iPhone 5 is NOT one of Apple's best products, unfortunately).

After dropping off my phone, we took Loudon back to the hotel with us to take in some swimming, then we headed back to uncle Blaine's house for some home-made supper made by Grandma and Grandpa, who we haven't seen for quite some time (a correction from yesterday, we have seen them since November, in fact we saw them in January at Vince's baptism). It was quite a nice dinner and good to see the grandparents and Araceli again.

So, how here we sit again. A pretty low key evening. Quin's still up at 10:00, probably because he got 12 hours of sleep the night prior. Ethan and I are watching Friends while Jenny is watching something while "encouraging" Quin to sleep in the other room. Tomorrow is the last day in MN for us - we will be heading back home to WI for the final days of our vacation. Friday will be a vacation day despite the fact that we'll be home.

 

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Spring Break 2014 - The Museum

Ethan and I knocked one of our meager goals for this vacation off this morning, we had breakfast at Taco Bell! Yeah, we have lofty goals. We piled down a couple of waffle tacos and breakfast burritos each and headed into St. Paul to take in the Minnesota Museum of Science.

The MMS is one of the better science museums I've been to, quite honestly. We easily spent 3.5 hours there without even doing a movie! This included the dinosaur exhibit, which was very cool. I learned some interesting new things, in fact. I had no idea what a rennaissance of dinosaur discoveries we were in lately! I don't think I recognized a single dino in the exhibit, they were all new discoveries in the last 10 years or so. My favorite was an entire new class of dinosaurs, the "titanosaurs." Very cool name.

We spent the better part of the day there. Around 1:00 or so we decided we should eat something. Since it was nice outside (well, sunny at least), we walked around downtown St. Paul in desparate search of something to eat. I suggested we take on one of the hotdog vendors in the square, but Jenny insisted we find something else. After strikingo out at Paluzza (or something named similarly), we finally ended up at The American Burger Bar. After a quick round of drinks, a vacation necessity, conversation switched to more esoteric topics. One such topic was that of ninjas (of course). Quin stated that he was, in fact, a ninja. Ethan said that ninjas don't talk, so there was no way he could be one. I stated that there could be some such thing as a "verbose ninja." Ethan asked what that was, and without hesitation Quin told him, "A ninja that talks but just doesn't tell his secrets." I wrote that one down because, dang, what a great and accurate description!

Our original plan was to go to the zoo after lunch, but after eating, we decided we'd rather drive around a bit and hopefully get Quin to take a quick nap - he had gone to sleep at midnight the night before! So we tooled around Minneapolis for a bit, looked at all of the new sports arenas, saw the hole in the ground where the Metrodome used to be, and generally just farted around.

After an hour or so of that, we finally headed back south and checked into our hotel. Well, we first went to the wrong hotel, then checked into the proper hotel. Dinner plans were with the Johnson's, one of the girls we grew up with and her family, at a Brew Pub like place in Apple Valley. Though the service was slow, the beer and the food were good.

We transitioned back to our hotel for an hour or swimming, which brings us up to the present. Now, Ethan, Jenny and I are watching TV in one room while Quin finally sleeps in the other half of the suite (yeah, we went all out). Tomorrow promises rain and cold, so our plans have us inside most of the day at the mall. Hopefully Ethan and I fulfill the remainder of our meager goals, to see Captain America. Then it's off to see Grandpa and Grandma Grady for the first time since November as they stop off on their migration back to Neillsville for the summer.

 

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Spring Break 2014 - Minnesota

We departed Neillsville sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 AM, right on schedule. Jenny's plans didn't have us overtaxing ourselves today. The plan was to hit a couple of tourist stops south of the Twin Cities, then drive up to spend the late afternoon/evening at Blaine's in Inver Grove Heights.

Our first stop was at LARK Toys in Kellogg Minnesota. This was not our typical drive for a vacation as it involved ZERO interstate time. Highway 10 to Mondovi, then meandered south to the river, across the river, you get the picture. It was picturesque, or would have been if there had been any leaves on the trees. We stopped in Mondovi for a soda as we were parched, and were surprised at how WARM it was outside! I think it's been so long since we've felt warm air that we didn't know how to respond, but the day was beautiful!!

We pulled into Lark Toys around 11:15, parked, then went into the building. Quin still hadn't quite recovered from the prior evening's festivities, what with the tick and all, so he was cranky to say the least. What we found, however, was a nice toy store with a bunch of non-typical toys - things you can't find at WalMart! There were also a fair number of antique toys behind protective glass that was pretty neat. I had read the reviews the night prior to see what we were getting into, and the reviewer couldn't say enough about the carousel and how much fun they had having a "tea party" after riding the carousel. Well, I promised the boys that we would have an epic Tea Party, and Quin and I had that indeed. He was disappointed that there was no real tea, which he doesn't like anyway, but he was disappointed nonetheless. The reviewer said they spent 5 hours there and planned to come back 4 times a year. It was fun, but I guess if you don't have girls that appreciate the British afternoon custom for playtime, it might not be quite the same.

After "tea time" and purchasing some novelties that we didn't think we could find anywhere else, we got some lunch and officially started "spring break" with some umbrella drinks (as seen below). Ethan and Quin also got to ride the carousel, which was actually pretty cool, all of the animals were hand carved at the toy shop, and they were quite impressive!

We left Lark toys around 12:45, just shy of the 5 hours the Google reviewer promised, and headed north to Wabasha for the National Eagle Preserve on the river there. After paying our admission price, we were told that we could still get in on the 1:00 "show" where they told us all about their eagles and even fed one of them. We got in there just in time to see Angel, a 10 pound female Bald Eagle with a 7 foot wingspan, power her way through a raw rabbit carcass. Pretty cool.

Quin was pretty cranky by now, and we had seen enough eagle stuff - including a huge nest on the bridge crossing the Mississippi on the way over. So we decided to head north to Minneapolis, our ultimate destination for the evening. We arrived around 3:00 and had some time to burn, so we just drove around, a time honored tradition in our family. By 5:00 we called Blaine and hooked up with him and had some dinner at Ruby Tuesday, a fine establishment indeed. Blaine then bonded with his nephews while I took Jenny to a planned workout with a friend up here in the area - yeah, Jenny plans out workouts with friends in distant cities... While she was there, I headed up and visited with Bryce and the family - his boys are getting pretty big! In fact, Vincy is already 17 pounds!

Right now we're huddled around the TV in Blaine's living room watching Rush Hour (Quin is still up, Jenny's asleep, Blaine is in bed). Tomorrow we go to our hotel where our "real vacation" begins according to Quin. We're also looking to hit the Science Museum, the zoo, and a brewpub before we get the kids into the pool to burn off some much needed energy.

 

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Vacation - "The Emergency"

Vacation just isn't vacation until there's a trip to the E.R. So today officially started our vacation!

This afternoon was pretty nice outside. It was around 60 degrees, not too much wind, so the kids went outside and played baseball. They were chasing the balls all around the property, including through some longer brush and what-not.

After a long day of playing, and a long night the night before, Quin was pretty tired. So around 7:30 we decided it was time to start what we thought would be a quick descent into sleepy time, starting with a bath. It was your typical bath, even though it was in a strange tub. Once he got out and was drying off, Quin was feeling around and discovered something strange on the underside of his "special purpose." He showed it to me, and I confirmed - a tick!

I gave it a couple of quick tries, not knowing what the protocol was for a dad to be messing around with his 6 year old's nether regions, but giving it an honest try. It wasn't long before I admitted defeat, however, and called up his more nimble fingered mother. Jenny worked at it for a bit before she, too, admitted defeat, and resorted to using tools instead, so she employed a tweezers. That's when things started to go downhill!

She managed to get the main portion of the tick removed with the tweezers, but this little guy was in there pretty good! There were a LOT of waterworks, a lot of screaming, and a lot of convincing him that we needed to try to get the head out of this. It was a mess! We tried pretty much everything, but after all was said and done, Quin looked at us and said, "listen to me! You're hurting my skin, and you're hurting me! Please stop!"

So we started talking through what we should do next. Should we call the doctor? What did the internet say? Was it a deer tick? Was the head really in there (it was)? Quin didn't much like listening to all of this - he didn't want to go to the Doctor! Of course, after a bit of digging around, and telling him that it wouldn't hurt to go to the doctor, he WANTED to go to the DOCTOR, PLEASE!!!

We gave up. We got him in his jammies and I fetched my cell phone and called the number I remember so well from my youth - 715.743.3101. I asked for the nurse on call, then I'll admit, I through my name out there expecting some special treatment (I didn't get any). The nurse informed me that she thought we should bring him in so the doctor could look at him.

Being Neillsville, we weren't expecting this to be too big a deal. It is only about a 10 minute ride to the hospital from pretty much anywhere in the zip code. Once we got there around 8:45, the parking lot was a bit fuller than would be expected. We checked in and were informed that it would probably be awhile - things were kind of busy. The waiting room had 2 other groups of people sitting already. We were lucky to have a television and remote to keep us company, and there was a baseball game on, so that worked out OK.

About 45 minutes later, we were the only ones left in the waiting area. I mentioned to Jenny that, unless there was an ambulance, we should be in shortly. It was quiet there, so we could hear the page coming in that the ambulance was inbound, something about shortness of breath, etc... Yep - bad luck!

Despite the ambulance's arrival, we got in around 9:45 and they started taking vitals, height, and weight. Quin is 50 inches tall (something the tech was unable to figure out, unfortunately) and weighed 60 pounds! After a couple of minutes, Dr. Stanga came in and was able to confirm the existence of a tick head on the underside of Quin's penis.

The doctor gave some orders and left the room. After numbing up the area, we were left alone with our little boy who had lots of questions. "Is it biting me? Why's it in there? Is it moving around?" At one point during our attempts, I explained to him that ticks had teeth that bit so hard that they wouldn't let go, to which Quin informed us that we should just "knock out it's teeth." "That would only hurt the tick, not me!" He continued on that line of thought at the doctor's office as well.

By 10:30, tick head, along with just a little bit of Quinton's tender bits gone, and with antibiotics in hand (they treat for Lyme's in all cases, I guess), we were on our way back to the Tibbett's. Quin took his medicine and he and I went up to finally go to sleep - he did manage to sleep for an hour while we waited to get into the E.R. Of course, he was a little charged up now, so we had some interesting conversation while he tried to fall off to sleep:

"Why is my penis so special?" he asked me, referring back to when I was explaining to him why we had to go to the doctor's. I told him that every part of us is special. Conversation averted, or so I thought. "What do we use our penises for, just peeing?" "A few other things," I said. "How many?" he asked. "Oh, I don't know, six-or-seven." "Well, which is it, six or seven?" This went on for a while...

"Why did they say that's a bad place to get a tick?" he asked me? I explained that there are a lot of nerves in that area, and that it typically hurt especially bad. That got us into a whole discussion about nerves and what function they served to the body.

After many more gripping questions (I'll include more if I remember them), he finally asked me, "can I mess around with my penis?" I told him maybe not tonight. Tomorrow would be OK, probably. "Well, tomorrow's kind of busy," he said. Never too busy to mess around with your penis... Maybe I shouldn't have said that to him, but I like to make a point of not lying to my children...

 

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Spring Break 2014 - Happy Easter!

Welcome to Grady Spring Break, 2014! The itenerary is quite extensive, to be sure, and the destinations exotic!

The trip started yesterday where we left the house in the van around 9:00 AM, heading north! Yes, you read that correctly, we headed NORTH for spring break. Didn't say we were all that bright! The first stop was probably just off of MTV's list of destinations for this year's spring break, Neillsville, WI.

OK, so we're sort of mailing in Spring Break this year. Rather than doing something exotic with lots of driving or flying, we're going to hang out with family near places that we know and enjoy. This weekend we'll be staying with Jenny's family. In fact we just got back from Easter Mass this morning, and got to spend several hours with Jenny's siblings last night where we ate too much and got some outside time (it's above 50 degrees, which means outside time in Wisconsin!).

Today promises to be a nice lazy day. It will be just the Grady's and Tom and Shirley, something that rarely happens. Tomorrow we head to Minneapolis by way of Waubasha, MN, where some gigantic toy store and some eagle place are beconing us. Tomorrow night we'll be staying with my brother, Blaine, and then heading to the real highlight, Embassy Suites near the Mall of America. Should be a hoot.

Ethan and I have two goals for this vacation. First, we want to eat breakfast at Taco Bell. Second, we want to see the new Captain America movie. Yeah, pretty ambitious. I hope we are able to pull it off!

Until then, I'll share pictures as I get them. I'm sure we'll be putting something together for more mass sharing as we get back and synchronize up from our big, non-internet connected camera. Below is a sample of what we're doing today - playing on our devices... That's kind of what we do these days...

 

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6 years ago today...

It was Saturday. I don't remember many of the details of the day, unfortunately, but what I do remember is that we got the call that the birth mother had finally completed the harrowing experience of giving birth to who would come to be our child through the institution of domestic adoption. Over the years we've found that we've been given the gift of a wonderful, healthy, smart, and strong boy with whom we get to spend time with, learn from, be perplexed and frustrated by, and love on a day to day basis. It's been a wild ride and I can't wait to find out what's next!

Today we will celebrate his birth, a delivery story that matched Ethan's almost to the detail save for the fact that he had a different birth mother! We'll start out by going out to breakfast - a buffet at the local brewpub. Quin would have rather gone to Noodles, his favorite, but we convinced him that their breakfast wasn't very good... After breakfast we'll go to the Lego Movie, then home for some sledding as the weather is continuing to cooperate with the winter outdoor enthusiast this year! Finally we'll retire to the home for some spaghetti and "mozzallalla sticks" with some friends. It should be a rollicking good time, to be sure.

Beyond birthdays, Quin continues to keep us on our toes. I've told the story of how he frequently tells us about getting a new mom whenever he sees a lady that he finds attractive (I still can't believe that's a thing for a 5, well 6 year old). Lately he's switched this up by simply saying something like, "Ooh, there's a sexy lady!" He also likes to tell us that he knows how "sexy ladies dress," after which he will lift his shirt and show us his midriff. And if I haven't blogged about the "big long boobs" story yet, remind me to tell you the next time I see you. I think I did write about it, but it deserves multiple mentions... All of this may be an indication that he's starting to have some empathy, however. The other morning he started saying that he wanted a new dad, but caught himself mid sentence and amended his statement to say, "Dad, I don't want a new dad, but I wish God had made you so you didn't fart so much." See? Empathy...

It's not all about the ladies, though, he's also quite curious and thoughtful. I believe I've discussed his deep questions about how remote controls and light switches work. His latest query was asking how puddles disappear. That's one benefit to having children that I never would have thought of - they actually force you to relearn and understand the things that you had cursory knowledge of in the past. I'm actually embarrassed how little I knew the first time through school, but am happy for the opportunity to go through it again through my kids' experiences.

Quin certainly appears to have an interesting inner dialog going on at all times. He's very much enjoying playing sports video games (FIFA 14 is his favorite right now - thanks uncles Blaine and Bryce), his 3DS, and Floppy Bird (sadly he was able to download it before the developer took it down). Yesterday when he was playing Floppy Bird and trying to beat his record, he kept chanting "Believe in yourself, Quinton!"

I'm also fairly convinced that Quin may be the black Bart Simpson sometimes. Last week he was doing some homework while Ethan and I were tossing a ball back and forth (yeah, I'm a good roll model - tossing a ball around in the house). Jenny helped him get started on the assignment which was to copy four new sight words which were provided on the left into a space on the right. Then below those words he was supposed to write out four sight words that he had learned in the past. As an aside, it constantly amazes me what Kindergarteners are doing now versus when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure the most complex thing I did in kindergarten was to cover a pinecone with peanut butter and roll it in bird seed. But anyway, Jenny left for a couple of minutes and came back to check up on Quinton's progress when she exclaimed, "Butt!!?" I looked over at the page and all he had accomplished to write in the provided spaces was "butt," a word that one of his buddies had just taught him to spell the day before. Being the good father I am, I managed to almost make it out of earshot prior to cracking up so Jenny could dole out an appropriate response.

Lastly, this one just cracks me up so I need to put it in here somewhere. I get a kick out of people that mess up the lyrics to songs. One of my favorite ones was from Tim Z's brother who used to sing "Big Ole Jed Left the Light On" instead of "Big Old Jet Airliner." Quin has his own version of Maroon Five's "Move Like Jagger" where he sings "Move My Pajamas."

Well, he's up now, so I must close this out. More updates on "big meathead" and on our continuing attempt to get Mireille to the states in my next installment. Peace.

Quinny Quickies

Welcome to the new year! With a new year comes a renewed hope that I will actually keep this thing up to date. Here goes this week's attempt!

Quin continues to grow up fast. Despite that, he still has the occasional accident at night where he wets his bed - and when he does, he wets it epically (his word). So we typically put him in a pull-up in the evening, which he takes like a good sport. A couple of mornings ago, I had just gotten done going for a run and was getting ready to take a shower. In our house, modesty is laughed at, so I was trekking from my bedroom to the bathroom, where Quin was using the toilet, without any clothing on. Since I had just gotten done running, I had the imprint of my elastic band shorts around my waist. Quin took a look at me, unfazed by the fact that I was completely nude, and gave me a concerned look. He pointed and said, "that hurts, doesn't it!" I didn't know what he was talking about, so I pressed him for details. He pointed at the imprint of my elastic band shorts and said, "there, where your pullup was. That hurts. I know!"

We're also trying to do our best to provide Quin with some positive black role models. It's no small feat living in an area where the school system boasts a 99% white population and 1% "other." But Jenny is quite determined, so she found a class that taught Hip-Hop Dance that had an African-American male teacher named Paul. We kept asking Quin if he wanted to try it out, but he continually said no. Finally, being the good parents we are, we tricked him and took him there anyway. Upon arrival at the studio, Quin finally asked where we were. We responded that we were at the dance class. To his credit, he didn't lose his cool - he just stated plainly that "I don't want to show off all my moves here..."

For those wondering, we're still working on our adoption of Mireille, our daughter in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have completed most hurdles, but the final ones are eluding us due to various circumstances. I will blog at length about them in coming weeks, particularly if the logjam clears somehow. Just know that we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our daughter on US soil, and are starting to feel the need to learn French.

Peace.

Couple of Quick Updates

We just got back from a vacation in our nation's capital. This post is not about that, however, but I wanted to warn you that an update's coming about that in the coming days/weeks.

A couple of quick ones, though. First, Ethan has had a couple of milestones in the last few weeks. As a seventh grader, Ethan decided he was going to run for his school's student council as the vice president. At first he was quite excited as he thought he was running unopposed. In the days after deciding to run, however, he found out that he would have an opponent after all - and worse yet, he was running against an eighth grade girl. Undeterred he crafted a speech and started a social media campaign (OK, I'm exaggerating about the social media campaign, but that would have been cool) and ended up winning the post.

Ethan's other big accomplishment is that he has finally won the costume contest at his school's harvest dance. He's always had a thing for dressing in costumes. Typically he starts planning his Halloween costume on November 1. This year he went as a convincing Napoleon Dynamite and was finally awarded best costume. Personally I didn't think it was quite as good as his Weird Al costume last year, but he does have many of Napoleon's tendencies... Just now he asked me for some chapstick because his "lips hurt real bad!"

Lastly, a continuation of the updates on Quin's obsession with the fairer sex, and yet another indication of how nurture might play a big part in a child's upbringing (I'm getting in trouble for this one I think). Quin's main female influence is Jenny, his mom. He also has a good eye for pretty girls. So many times when he sees a pretty girl he says that he wants her to be his mom... We've explained that he already has two moms, but he just insists that he'd now like three moms... Anyway, the other night Ethan was watching Saturday Night Live (yes, the bad parenting continues) where Katie Parry was the musical guest. Quin was enamored, staring at the screen for the entire performance. Afterwards when Jenny was putting him to bed he told her that he wanted another mom, a really "beautiful one with big, long boobs." I have no idea where he might have gotten that, I swear!

Too funny to pass up...

I haven't blogged in awhile. Part of it is sheer laziness. That compounds on itself in that there are just too many things to blog about so I just can't find the time to get it done. I'm in that situation right now. But something happened a couple of weeks ago that was too funny not to document - so here goes.

We went to Noah's Ark - America's Largest Waterpark - last week for a last ditch summer celebration. To set the tone (since I can't tell a short story), I am building a deck, and had the guy coming out to auger the holes for the footings in the morning. My assumption was that he was going to be there for about an hour, from 8:00 until 9:00 or so, then we would leave after that. Well, that didn't exactly happen as planned. He was there for almost 2.5 hours, and the fun vacation day to the Dells started out with one very angry wife.

No matter - we got to the park just in time to meet our friends and consume our picnic lunch that we had packed to save on money inside the park. As we were setting up our feast, Quinton and I went to the gate to purchase our tickets. As I was waiting in line to pay for and retrieve the tickets, Quin was watching all of the people walk by. At one point he said, almost under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear, "wow, there are a lot of pretty girls here." Later in the day he lost the shyness and started addressing people directly by saying, "Hello pretty girl!" to whoever he deemed worthy as they passed him in the park. Yes, funny and cute now... I'm not sure at what point it turns creepy, though. I told Ethan that he had most definitely crossed that line.