Hello, I must be going

Two hours were scheduled. We took nearly four. And yet, "Hello, I must be going" seems appropriate in many ways.

Saturday was a mini-reunion of friends that graduated from Pius XI High School. Many of us brought spouses, a few didn't make it, and it was a positive time. But a Groucho Marx song fits the bill since it has been many moons since many of us had spoken last.

I am part of the class of 1988, so the starting point for some of these folk is twenty years. Mind, there were people that I had seen since then, but in the time we had on this post-Thanksgiving weekend there wasn't a chance to truly catch up on where we had been. Instead it was a little bit of falling into old habits from long ago.

One of the neat habits from that time was that it was okay to be in each others personal space. Some of us exhibited that tendency again. We fell into certain grooves or patterns that were probably odd for spouses to see.

But we were all different. Heidi and Sue were two people that I never talked to much at Pius or post-Pius. But we all have younger kids, so we shared and chatted more than I can recall doing before. And that had more meaning than perhaps the idle prattle of teenagers.

Meg probably has a more interesting life than many, having become a citizen of Germany. But beyond the odd story about William Shatner and a little chat about her sister, Jane (who couldn't make it) I never got to ask those question about what life is like now. Again, Hello I must be going.

Adam and Tanya are a couple of friends that I was happy to see again. And I'm ashamed to admit that I never took the time to talk to Tanya when I worked for the same company as her for three years. Adam and I got the chance to do a little family recap, which is good. Better is that we both agreed to make it a point to meet up again. After all, we're all in the same city so there's no reason not to do so. It's a good thing.

Colleen and I didn't talk too much either, but I was happy to see her and know that she has a family that's doing well. It'd be the right moment to make a crack about her husband being a Bears fan, if I cared about football that much.

David was there to make a liar out of me. But since we see each other far more frequently, it was not a problem at all. Besides you cannot begrudge the person that takes you home, right?

Yet even with seeing David a couple times a month, we still ended up talking well into the evening after the reunion wrapped up. And after six hours of conversation, I felt like we were honestly up to date with each others lives.

Ann did most of the work in putting this event together, and she deserves major props for making this happen. It takes a caring spirit to start a process for getting old friends together, and that quite possibly isn't appreciated enough these days.

Some event stick in the mind as "historic" or "monumental". This one falls into that mental drawer labeled, "What took you so long".

Be seeing you,

Jon

Groucho Marx - Hello, I must be going

Turkey and Travels

"Hola! Soy es Dora!"

Okay, not really. I'm actually Jon, but Alya was playing a Dora game on the laptop two minutes ago, so that phrase is currently stuck in my head.

I hope that everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving. Our's was filled with travelling and fun. We actually started out our holiday on Tuesday. Sasha made the corn bread stuffing Tuesday night and then prepared the apple pie.

And I'm going to tell you Sasha's secret to making yummy corn bread stuffing. It's apple chunks. Yep, little bits of apple in the stuffing lightens the dish and adds that nice touch of sweet. For the meat, she put in chorizo this year. That made it a little spicier than usual, but only a little. For me, it is the stuffing of choice. Leave your stale wheat bread. Discard those loaves of white. Give me that corn bread stuffing, and Thanksgiving will be alright.

But don't use those gizzards and livers. That's gross.

---

Wednesday was our first travel segment. After getting the okay to leave work early, I flew home so that we could hit the road and head to Sasha's mom's place. It is a good halfway point between our destination and home, so we were planning on staying there overnight and finishing any prep work on our foods.

The kids fared well in the car, so we were able to zip down and see Grandma Susan and Uncle Marty. Both Marcus and Alya enjoyed running around in a new environment. Alya's favorite thing was to bounce on the leather recliner, sending it rocking back a far as it could and then jumping some more. Climbing the back was also a fun time for her.

Marcus really enjoyed the presence of Andi, one of Susan's cats. Andi had no fear of the kids and liked getting petted no matter who was doing the giving. For Marcus, it was exciting to have a kitty hang around without taking off at the slightest squeak. But while Andi enjoyed the kids, he seemed to prefer draping himself over Marty.

Once we got the kids down (and both of them slept like a rock) the cooking began. Sasha and Susan put together the sweet potatoes, while I made the pumpkin pies. First time for me, but I have to say it's a pretty easy deal when you use canned pumpkin.

Nice side note, we managed to catch the episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay where they go to the Elegant Farmer here in Wisconsin. Flay was challenging their apple pie in a bag with his own little fried apple pie. It was fun to see a place we've taken the kids to every year on the Food Network. Oh, and the Elegant Farmer won the throwdown, which made it all the better.

Thanksgiving Day consisted of lot of travel, lots of good food and even more good family. We went to Sasha's cousins Jeff and Patty's place location in the middle of Northern Illinois. The house is a beautiful old farm house, with dogs on the inside and cats all over outside.

Sadly, Alya really is terrified of dogs, so that made things rough for her in the beginning. Things improved as Alya got to play with her cousin Elliott the entire day. Elliott is five and saw Alya as the baby she could play with.

The food spread was fantastic, tender turkey, sweet honey ham, and Sasha's fantastic stuffing. What more could an omnivore ask for? And this omnivore ended up eating more than a standard portion. So delicious.

Oh, and people liked the pumpkin pie, although I believe that the Apple Pie was better. Not very juicy, but with thin and tender apples. We finished off the last of the pie over a game of cribbage last night, and holy cats was it so good. I could go for another one right now....

Anyway, it was a fun time with family, and while the drive back was long it was well worth the time.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Elegant Farmer - http://www.elegantfarmer.com/

Kids and Reunions

I was looking for a picture to put up for my Facebook profile and I found myself lost in the pictures of my children. They are both so beautiful and amazing that it takes my breath away frequently.

"They're based off of a part of me. I can't believe it."

The feeling of being a parent is so overwhelming. All becomes secondary to the emotion generated by their simple existence.

Tonight I had to pick them both up from daycare solo (not really a big deal) as Sasha was doing volunteer work at the end of the day. That first hug I get from Alya I cherish every time. Marcus is so happy when he sees me and is so elated to be held by Daddy. These times are very precious and I love it all.

[music background is the theme song from the new - and quite cool - game Mirror's Edge on repeat loop. It fits the mood rather well right now.]

So you want to hear about crazy? How about over 30 adults and children in the BSer basement watching the Packers whomp the Bears. That was a crazy scene indeed. That is a fantastic way to give a boy a first birthday party.

As you can see from the photos (link here) that kid made the best of his day. Eating hot dogs, playing with the smash cake, and showered with generosity from family that drove two hours or more to be here. Thank you all for coming up to Wisconsin.

Instead of going into all the details, I'm going to relate the story of the smash cake.

His daycare teacher, Miss Debbie, made a football cake for everyone else and a green and gold smash cake in the shape of a number one for Marcus. So we loaded the boy up in a booster chair, put the cake in front of him, and stared waiting for him to dig in.

Naturally, nothing happened.

After all, he had 30 pairs of eyes trained on his face and cake. Slightly uncomfortable, I believe.

So Mama stepped in and got his spoon into the cake, to transfer some of that yummy frosting into Marcus's mouth. And that was the trigger to a sweet feast for the little man. He dug in with the gusto that he has with nearly all food. Scoops of green on the shirt, the face and into the mouth.

However, he didn't take his eyes off the crowd. I think Marcus wanted to make sure no one tried to make off with his prize. No worries though and he had a grand time with the smashing and the smearing.

Such a cutie.

---

On a different note, some of you may know that I often call Alya "Squirrel". When Marcus came I wanted to nickname him "Moose" because I could put on my worst Russian accent and ask, "What about Moose and Squirrel?".

But he was such a cute little baby that there was no way I could give him that nickname.

Well, Marcus isn't so small now. And when my Mom brought over a new pair of overalls for him that had a moose embroidered on the front, the nickname came back and feels okay now.

The questions is: Will it stick?

Time will tell, my friends. Time will tell.

---

Speaking of time, I forgot to mention that next weekend I'm going to an informal high school reunion. The big worry used the be that question "What have you made of yourself?" And at one point, I wasn't comfortable with answering that question. But now things are much different and I'm doing pretty freakin' well, thank you very much.

However, I still need to get a "brag book" together with pictures of the kids. Oops.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Mirror's Edge - http://www.mirrorsedge.com/ls/us/index.asp

Photos are up!

Real quick post here.

Just got some of the photos up from Marcus's first birthday party. Enjoy!

Marcus's Birthday Pictures

Be seeing you,

Jon

What a week, what a weekend...

Okay, it looks like I managed to not post a second update in the past week.

Ouch.

At least I got pictures posted.

Oops.

So let's get into the whys, as they're pretty cool in my book.

First off, Sasha and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary this past Tuesday. Quite the day for both of us. Sasha, as always, opened up with a couple of cool and sweet cards. (No, I'm not sharing the contents.)

Then I quickly snagged a bouquet of flowers before we left work. Since we generally carpool to work, I thought to surprise her by having the flowers sitting on her seat right after work. Well you know what they say about great minds....

So when I climbed into the driver's side, there was a gift on the seat for me! Fallout 3 for the PS3! Now that's a wife who knows her husband, or at least knows how to find out what he wants without asking directly.

For her, it was a variety of products from Bath and Body Works as well as a very nice bottle of wine that I had assistance in picking out. It was a Syrah/Viognier blend made through the collaboration of a French grower and an Australian grower, with the grapes grown in Australia. Excellent, was Sasha's assessment. Hopefully I can find it again for her.

Dinner that evening was at the always tasty Crawdaddy's Cajun/seafood restaurant here in Milwaukee. Some deep conversation to accompany the excellent food. We opened up with some spicy crayfish on their fresh baked sourdough bread. Then Sasha had a light salad with a very good Cajun ranch dressing as a prelude to her 4 oz blacked fillet that joined with a large shrimp resting on top. Very yummy steak that had the "melty" quality that I really appreciated in steak.

I had the baked halibut that was filled with a fantastic crab stuffing. While bites were exchanged, we really dug into both of our meals with enthusiasm. Normally, we have their key lime pie, but this was a time where we had eaten so much that exploding would have happened next.

One topic of conversation was the writing of our family trip list. Locations/cities in the United States that we feel the kids need to see at some point to get to know their country. Now some cities did not make the list as they are a given. Disney World covers Orlando and Florida. We'll visit Phoenix to see Grandpa John and Grandma Louise. And Chicago will be a frequent trip due to the amount of family in the area.

Other cities on the list: Washington D.C., Los Angeles, New York, the trip through the Northwest to see Mount Rushmore and other such sights. Toronto is also on the list, even though it is in Canada. San Francisco and Boston are on the list while San Diego is not, but will be visited due to the fact that we like the city so much.

It was fun to discuss the various cities we want the kids to see. Some of these places we haven't been to ourselves, so there will be much excitement for all of us.

After Tuesday, we moved into prep mode for Marcus's first birthday party on Sunday. Wednesday, was quiet as we just did some planning and I put in a bunch of time on Fallout 3. (Any game where Liam Neesen voices your father has got to be cool.) Thursday, Sasha had the kids for the day and we got the tables opened up.

By Friday, the basement was mostly arranged and all the non-food items were purchased - decorations, plates, etc. (More Fallout 3 for Jon.) And then Saturday kicked things into full gear.

Sasha stepped out right away to hit WalMart for the metric ton of food that needed to be acquired, while I stayed with the kids. And what a trip she had - 11 pounds of ground beef, 10 cans of crushed tomatoes, five cans of beans, and I don't know how many packets of chili seasonings. Weight-wise, it was around 35 pounds of chili pre-cooked. Somehow, it all managed to fit into our incredibly large stock pot, but it was a worry that we went a little too big for our own good.

Once that was cooking, it was time for the cornbread muffins. I have no real idea on the total number of muffins made, but I'd hazard a guess of over fifty. That was a lot of cornbread!

Meanwhile, the beverage fridge was filled to the brim with soda, beer, wine and juice boxes. Quite the combination.

Then the kids were tucked and the final round began. Streamers in the green and gold of the Green Bay Packers went up, as well as blue and orange for the Chicago Bears. Table covers, chairs arranged, leaves in the tables, various hanging decorations, and at 11 pm, the house was ready for the arrival the next day.

Which will have to be another post.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Who's One? Marcus is!

That's right folks, my baby boy just reached his one year mark! While the party is next week, we've had a celebration for him already.

Since his birthday fell on a Friday (thanks leap year) and Sasha had the day off, she started planning stuff out. One thing led to another and Marcus was being taken down to Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois for lunch by his mother and father with sister in tow.

We had a delicious lunch at the Red Robin with (deep breath) Grandma Mary (who got the ball rolling), Grandpa Mike, Grandma Susan and the Fran-pa! Marcus had a fantastic time with all his grandparents as well as grilled cheese, cheese burger and a birthday Sundae. Yes, pictures will be going up on the web album soon.

After a long lunch it was off to the mall, cause my baby needed his first pair of shoes! While Marcus hasn't quite gotten to walking on his own yet, that moment is coming real soon. So some spiffy new Striderite sneakers were required. Blue and brown with a single Velcro strap makes some function and stylish footgear.

Then he got to take them for a spin at the new kid's play area they installed at Woodfield. It was a bunch of Looney Toons character in a molded foam that looked like hard plastic, but actually was soft to cushion any falls that might happen.

He and Alya had a great time running/crawling around Tweety Bird, Yosemite Sam, and the rest of the gang in the cartoon playground. Now that's a birthday celebration.

Next weekend, we are having family over for his birthday party. Smash cake pictures will be seen soon!

Until then, be seeing you,

Jon

Egg Rolls Radio Away!

Mellow. That's a good word for where I'm at right now. Both kids are sleeping. Sasha's out with a friend. I just had some awesome Cheeseburger Pie for dinner (it's a Bisquick recipe), picked up a game on the major-cheap, finished watching some of my shows...

Yeah, it makes me mellow.

BPM is on again in the background, but I'm going further back. Somewhere around 1980.

The first time I remember eating Chinese food was at a restaurant that went by the name of China Palace. I remember it being a dark restaurant, with low lighting. The occasion is forgotten to me, but I was allowed to choose what I wanted from the menu. The dish of choice? Lemon Chicken.

Lightly breaded, with bits of lemon peel as garnish. Then a delicate, sweet lemon sauce coated the chicken breast. When eaten with rice it resulted in a wonderful flavor that filled my little 10 year old taste buds with joy.

Later, it was the Mu Shu Pork that was a favorite. This was eclipsed by the hot and sweet Spicy Beef. The Hot and Sour soup at China Palace was something to enjoy in it's savory sinus clearing goodness. But then there was the Egg Roll.

The China Palace Egg Roll was a constant through out all my dining experiences there. The thick won ton wrapper was always a rich, golden, crunchy shell that held a mix of cabbage, pork, shrimp, and that extra bit of juice. Their homemade sauce for the egg roll was not a mere sweet and sour, but shades of the Lemon Chicken sauce that complemented the heavy, hot egg roll's contents.

When I worked at Manpower from '00 to '03, we would go there for the lunch buffet fairly frequently. One of the servers eventually assumed I would have that second egg roll that came with the buffet. No, it wasn't good for the waistline, but it was a damn good egg roll.

I have never found a restaurant that topped the egg roll that was served at China Palace. There were times when I would swing by there just to pick up a couple egg rolls to go with my dinner - which often was not Chinese food. For a brief time period, I would call in for fried rice and an egg roll for dinner.

As you can guess by all the past-tense, the China Palace has closed down. Several months ago, they closed their doors, as a developer offered the owners enough money for the building to allow them to hang their aprons and retire. The florist across the street had heard they were getting tired of the business aspect, and having watched them in action over the years, I could certainly believe it.

I wish them well in their retirement. The Egg Roll will be missed.

Something that won't be missed is the old format of WKTI 94.5. They underwent a massive format change this past Friday, and are now known as 94.5 Lake FM. This is a good change to me, as I rarely tuned into their station except for Casey Kasem and the top 20 on Sundays. However, it is a source of memories that stretches back nearly as far.

They had a morning radio team, Bob Reitman and Gene Mueller, that were the funnest guys on in the mornings back in the 80's. I remember them being casual and friendly. They had "Coach Ed" who was television news man Ed Hinshaw, who would speak the lyric to songs current at the time in a dry voice. The biggest hit was Coach Ed doing Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. It was the funnest thing in the world for a 12 year-old boy.

Now the are no personalities on the station at all. Just an announcer letting you know that you're listening to Lake FM and who know what they'll play next. It's an eclectic jumble of songs that all made the top 40 at some point in the past 50 years. I've heard early Beatles and Pink on this station, so it will be interesting to see how they pan out.

Tonight will be a double-post night. Understand that Marcus just turned one yesterday, so he deserves the top of the blog page.

He tops in my book in so many ways anyway.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Milk, Presidents and Movies

Sorry that my blogging speed has slowed down. Naturally, as more and more holiday events happen, the more "spare" time will dwindle. That is until we reach the new year, when all goes quiet again.

Right now I'm looking at Marcus's first birthday tomorrow. The poor kid is already 365 days old, but thanks to the leap year, it's not enough. And I know that the new teeth coming in are not helping his attitude either. However, he is off the formula and that is the biggest leap in terms of groceries that one can hope for.

Although our refrigerator is much more amusing these days. Sasha is a skim milk drinker, Alya is on the 2%, Marcus is naturally starting on whole milk, and Mr. Lactose Intolerant is on the soy milk. So after Sasha went shopping last night we have five gallon containers of milk, along with three half-gallon containers of soy milk. (8th Continent rocks with Raisin Bran!) Somewhere is farm with an extremely tired cow marked "BSer family cow". All I can say for that cow is, "Moo-moo, moo."

Regarding cash cows, the presidential election is over and my mail carrier can breath a sigh of relief. No more fliers going straight into the recycling bin. No more recorded phone calls on the answering machine. And we will finally be back to our regularly scheduled commercials encouraging us to spend money we don't have. I'm good with that.

One other political note, Sasha and I did stay up and watch the results and the speeches. Both speeches, I felt, were very good. McCain was a class act every step of the way, although I felt he didn't have to try to take all the blame. Obama's speech was fantastic because not only was he grateful, but he also didn't try to sugar coat the times ahead. For me that was very important to acknowledge that his winning wasn't a magical fix to all the woes facing Americans.

Shifting once again, last evening two of my friends came over to hang out. The original thought was to play a few games, but that changed to watching movies. An activity that we haven't done in a long time.

First up was an independent production of a horror story called The Yellow Sign. Fans of H.P. Lovecraft-style stories will appreciate the suspense and creepy facets of this production. Fans of film will be annoyed by the male lead attempting to channel John Malkovich. Mind, when I say horror, it is the vein of eerie and chilling, instead of gross and scary. As a fan of film and H.P. Lovecraft I enjoyed the short film, but felt that a lot could have been done to make it better without a budget increase.

After viewing a couple of short-short films that were on the same DVD, we switched genres in more ways than one. First change was from live action to anime (Japanese animation) and the second was from horror to a story that was romantic at heart.

Yeah, three guys sitting around watching a romantic cartoon. How weak-sauce is that?

(The answer is, "At least we don't live in our parents' basement with Geddy Lee of Rush!")

The movie was Millennium Actress, an animated film directed by Satoshi Kon, who did the thriller Perfect Blue, comedy Tokyo Godfathers, and the surreal Paprika. The story of Millennium Actress is that of a documentary maker who finally got a chance to interview his favorite actress, who tells her story crossing between her actual life and the films she starred in.

The clever bit comes in that the interview and his cameraman find themselves in the movie scenes as observers of the events. Eventually they become involved in the scenes as well, which makes it all the more touching.

It's a film that is supported by the viewer's knowledge Japanese cinema, but still stands as a sweet romantic film with lots of humor and fun dialogue. We watched the movie in Japanese with subtitles, but I suspect that the English dubbing might be a better way to watch as you can pay better attention to details on the screen.*

Be seeing you,

Jon

* Yes, anime viewers, I just stated that the dub might be a better way to watch anime. Until I know Japanese, I think that will be my point of view from here on out. (For non-anime watchers, dubbing versus subtitles used to be a matter of great debate and I had sided on subtitles for a long time.)

Links
H.P. Lovecraft's Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.P._Lovecraft
Millennium Actress IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291350/

Halloween and more...

Wow, it's been a busy weekend - and a busy week leading up to it too. Fortunately, pictures were taken and therefore it is not only easy for me to relate events, but it is also easy for you - the reader - to understand the goings on. Oh, and those pictures I said would be up Monday, well, they're only six days late at http://picasaweb.google.com/BSerHome/HalloweenAndFallPictures

First off, this year was the first time Alya understood the concept of Halloween. Now you might see her in the cheetah outfit that we thought would go over great. Well she only wore it to her school/daycare this past Friday when Sasha took them both in for a little "Trick or Treat" action.

Once Alya saw all the kids in their full body costumes (like Marcus's penguin outfit) she decided that being a cheetah wasn't a real costume, so she had to wear the penguin outfit. Being wise parents, we actually had a back-up zebra outfit in the wings for Marcus. But such was not to be.

Friday evening, Bayshore Towne Center (formally Bayshore mall, but now a heck of a lot nicer) held an excellent event. They had Trick or Treating for kids in costume from 5 PM to 7 PM that evening at all participating stores (they had signs if they were taking part) as well as a pumpkin patch, a hay ride, and they were showing the kid's movie Monster House in the outdoor plaza at 7:30 PM. A safe night for the kids to dress up and have a good time in an environment that is controlled. The only thing I would like them to change is to close off the streets that go through the center of the mall.

Attendance was through the roof, but Alya was dead tired and Marcus was sleeping through most of it. She walked like a little zombie-penguin holding her pumpkin bag out for bits of candy. We didn't spend a lot of time there, but I believe she enjoyed it.

Saturday night, on the flip-side, was for the adult BSers to dress up. A bunch of people at my work decided that since Halloween was on the weekend this was a chance to get out and do a Halloween pub crawl in Germantown.

Yes, this is not Jon's cup of tea normally, but since I work with a good group of people and Sasha knew them as well, why the heck not!

Our costumes are both up in the Web Album. Sasha's is the good one, Static Cling. Mine is the dumb one with weird inspiration. I saw a costume on the TV show The Big Bang Theory where one character dressed as the Doppler Effect. So I took it a different direction and went as Pi. Yeah, a white t-shirt with black marker is a really poor costume. It would have been better if I managed to do something with a pie plate or a Baker's Square box. Better luck next year, eh?

Meanwhile, the crawl itself was something else. A new experience for me. First off, you get to see all these people dressed up in various costumes, which is fun to watch. But then they all load up on a yellow school bus to travel from bar to bar. Oh, and they can bring their drinks on the bus.

So, imagine a crowded subway car, where everyone is drunk, in costume, and there is a complete lack of hand holds. With each stop there is a rotation of passengers, with the new group getting more and more drunk with each stop. Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

Our last ride of the evening started with me standing with my keister up against the emergency exit door at the back of the bus while holding an extra large double-shot Captain and Diet Coke that wasn't mine. Drunk, smoking leprechaun to my right yelling out two different songs at the top of his lung. To my left, a full bodysuit wolf telling racist jokes between joining the leprechaun in song. (Oddly, he was undecided on who he was voting for on Tuesday.) It was 2 AM.

Eventually, I was able to sit next to my wife and get back to the first car where we sat for a moment to let the drunks drive off and me to switch to glasses before heading home. My consumption of the evening, a Sprecher Root Beer and a single sip of that monster rum and diet. A very memorable evening - but it wasn't over yet!

It was around 2:30 when we finally came through the door. My mom was kind enough to watch the kids while they were sleeping that evening, so I fully expected her to be either reading a book or taking a small nap when we walked in. Not sitting on the floor playing with Alya in the family room!

Yes, the picture of Sasha and Alya each with a pair of glazed eyes was taken at two-thirty in the morning. Alya has all four of her molars coming in, so sleep has not been good around the house lately, and so she woke up and mom couldn't get her back down to bed. Sasha said she has never sobered up that quickly before.

We got the squirrel to bed, and then washed up and went to sleep as well. It's one of the things I hate about going to bars, my body smells like cigarette smoke and I want to take a scrub brush to my lungs. To me, it's one of the nastiest things in the world. I can only hope that someday Milwaukee will go smoke free like Chicago has this past year, but I won't hold my breath on that one.

I am writing this Sunday evening. Behind me I've got the XM Radio channel BPM playing and I'm oddly feeling awake. Alya woke up two more times last night and Marcus had an early wake up thanks to daylight savings ending. But it was such a pleasant day, that I'm not feeling dead on my feet. The kids never took a nap at the same time, so I wasn't able to get more than five minutes of shut eye.

Sasha got to sleep in this morning, so she did a lot of the work around the house while I kept the kids in check where I could. Apple cake was baked, gutters were cleared, leaves gathered and moved to a mulch-like location and the kids were kept in good shape. Alya was incredibly tired - no surprise there - while Marcus was his excitable self.

You know what? The kids and I didn't do much, but we had a good time and lots of laughing. So I call it a good day. And a good weekend, too.

Be seeing you,

Jon