Monday, January 26, 2009
icicle
We met at Bethany's house to head out to the candy factory, and Cole was kind enough to help Liam get a giant icicle. Liam is very into learning about icicles lately, and he was awfully impressed to be presented with such an excellent specimen.
candy factory
Saturday was family field trip day around here: Bethany, Janis, and I all decided to take our kids to tour a nearby candy factory. The boys were terribly excited by the chocolate fountain coming from the ceiling, and by watching gummi worms come off the assembly line. The "tour" itself was pretty disappointing; it was just a peek through some windows at the people working in the factory below. But the candy store itself was like heaven for little boys and girls. Bethany, of course, immediately bought the boys 36-inch-long tubes to fill up with flavored sugar (basically, giant pixie sticks), which they did with glee. After that, we all split up to look around. I was clutching a boy in each hand (it was crowded in there!). For their part, the boys took everything in, and begged to take everything home. We ended up with some gummi snakes and rings, some old-fashioned candy (Charleston Chews, Slo-Pokes, Bit o' Honeys) for my dad, and some hard candy for my mom, which was fun for the boys because they got to fill up the bag themselves. Overall, I would say the trip was a great success from the boys' perspective, but maybe not so much from mine. It will be a fun thing to do again when they're older and I don't have to monitor their every move (also, we'll go on a weekday to avoid the crowds).
Friday, January 23, 2009
earache my eye
As I may have mentioned, we've all been sick. Last week, we took Max to the doctor for suspected pinkeye. It turned out he had an adenovirus. And then it turned out that we all got it. We were all achy, coughing, feeling miserable. So a few days ago, when Liam told us his ear hurt, we didn't think much of it. ALL of us had earaches. But Liam's earache didn't go away, and yesterday morning, I finally got a flashlight and looked in there. Yes, I do know that you can't see an ear infection that way; I mostly just wanted to make Liam feel like I was doing something in the time we had before the doctor's office opened. So imagine my surprise when I looked, and found that his ear was swollen shut. Yikes! We took him right to the doctor, who had to numb his ear to even get him to let her look at it without screaming. He has the normal eardrum infection, but this time he had the added bonus of having an infection in his ear canal, most likely caused by something getting jammed in there, whether intentionally (a charge Liam denies vehemently) or unintentionally. So he's got two different types of antibiotics for the two infections, and he's feeling much better.
Which brings us to tonight. At dinner, I caught Max sticking a grape in his ear. With probably more anxiety/sharpness in my voice than I should have had, I said, "Max! We do NOT put grapes in our ears!" So my little angel smiled at me, dropped the grape ... and reached around his head to pluck out the grape he had already hidden in his OTHER ear. Oh, dear.
Which brings us to tonight. At dinner, I caught Max sticking a grape in his ear. With probably more anxiety/sharpness in my voice than I should have had, I said, "Max! We do NOT put grapes in our ears!" So my little angel smiled at me, dropped the grape ... and reached around his head to pluck out the grape he had already hidden in his OTHER ear. Oh, dear.
Monday, January 19, 2009
buh-bye
Here at circus forticus, we've started off the year with the unfortunate combination of rampant illness and extremely tight work deadlines. It hasn't left much time for eating/sleeping, let alone doing anything exciting enough to blog about and then finding the time to blog about it.
But today marks what I'm hoping is a turnaround. The boys are back at school, and Mike and I are still feeling crappy, but it's a manageable sort of crappy. But the most exciting part is that the on/off/oft-stalled bathroom renovations upstairs are underway! We finally got wise to our limitations and called in the expert (my aunt Laura's husband, Jim, who owns a construction business). We're only two hours into it, but already the yucky toilet and tacky vanity are gone. And I just wanted to share, because I looked out the window and saw the toilet by the side of the road, looking for all the world like it's trying to hitch a ride to someplace warmer...
Saturday, January 03, 2009
in case you thought your 2009 started off badly
on the way home from chicagoland and the winter classic this morning (actually, now that i look at the clock, yesterday morning), i was greeted by this tragic scene:
a house two blocks from ours caught fire and was gutted (preliminary reports: a malfunctioning furnace/boiler). the entire neighborhood was fogged by the smoke.
the fire reportedly started around 11:15 a.m., and these pics were taken an hour and a half later, so you can imagine how long the fire was going and how bad it was to still be putting out this amount of smoke. note the yellow fire truck (plymouth's are red), so they apparently had to call in reinforcements to battle the blaze.
this is terrible, and please don't think i'm making light of the situation. no one was hurt (as far as we know), thankfully, but let's all hold these residents in our thoughts and prayers.
a house two blocks from ours caught fire and was gutted (preliminary reports: a malfunctioning furnace/boiler). the entire neighborhood was fogged by the smoke.
the fire reportedly started around 11:15 a.m., and these pics were taken an hour and a half later, so you can imagine how long the fire was going and how bad it was to still be putting out this amount of smoke. note the yellow fire truck (plymouth's are red), so they apparently had to call in reinforcements to battle the blaze.
this is terrible, and please don't think i'm making light of the situation. no one was hurt (as far as we know), thankfully, but let's all hold these residents in our thoughts and prayers.
Friday, January 02, 2009
the winter classic, or why mike was up at 5 a.m. on new year's day
why was i up at 5 in the morning on new year's day? because it was time to head to chicago for the nhl winter classic, of course. duh. in an annual event dripping with tradition and nostalgia cultivated over its extensive history (the first was held last year, hahaha) [UPDATE: actually, there was a regular-season outdoor game in 2003 called the heritage classic, and it was held in edmonton between the oilers and the canadiens. however, this is the second official "winter classic"], the nhl stages an outdoor game on nyd, allowing thousands of local season-ticket holders, nhl bigwigs and their handpicked friends, and a few lowly average fans (like me!) to watch a game while simultaneously freezing to death. last year, the game was sabres-penguins and held at buffalo's ralph wilson stadium (where the bills play football), and this year's hawks-red wings game took place at wrigley field (which is home to no professional team of consequence). thanks to holli's fine online-ticket-purchasing skills, i was able to get my hands on a pair of late-release tickets. excelsior!
so anyway, after dragging my carcass up before a lot of people even went to bed, i hit the road and drove the empty highways and byways to my friend brian's house in the northwest burb of buffalo grove (all that's changed since i lived in that town, as brian pointed out, was that there was a new fence over there and that car-wash place next to dunkin donuts got a new coat of paint). here's what we look like. cute, huh? actually, we're not that big, as we both have 79 layers on:
brian's totally amazing awesome wife melissa (shout-out, you owe me five bucks) drove us to the purple-line stop in wilmette (motto: here we jog in the middle of the street, and damn the traffic). brian and i rode into the city to wrigley field. let the madness begin!
so after looking at some of the pregame sights, which included lots of people wearing hockey jerseys, angry cabbies laying on their horns, a news van from every possible tv and radio station (and network) imaginable, and a large area featuring kids activities, bad music, and really lame karaoke starring even more people wearing nhl jerseys, brian and i decided to find a bar.
yes, it was only 9:30 in the morning, but it was new year's day, the winter classic won't be held in chicago again for a long time (if ever), and it was happy hour somewhere...so why not have a few bass ales? to be honest, i can't remember the name of the bar, but it had friendly and prompt service and two empty bar stools.
around 11, we decided to head for the gates. here's a pic of wrigley from the corner of clark and waveland. unfortunately, this picture does little justice to the insane scene (and no, that honda is actually stopped and is not about to mow over all those people):
i doubt i could properly describe the incredible environment and palpable energy inside wrigley, so i'll just give you some pics. the second is our view of the ice (that pic is during the national anthem, and if you've never been a part of a national anthem during a hawks game, you've never been a part of a national anthem), and while there is a column in the way, it didn't distract a bit from the game. because we could lean.
at about this point (except for a few short warmed-up moments later, as you'll see), my camera crapped out, so i don't have in-game pics. thankfully, brian's camera had better batteries, and when he e-mails his pics to me, i'll post them too.
the fans around us were great, including the very hockey-knowledgeable couple to my left, the drunk psychos to brian's right, the very friendly man and his young son in front of us who had to endure the epically foul mouths of the two psychos, and the drunk guys behind us, one of whom insisted on slapping my hands and pounding my back every time the hawks scored, had a good hit, or apparently took a breath:
but the highlight was the 74-year-old woman (chaperoned by her daughter) sitting in front of brian. this rabid red wings' fan was very vocal and full of favorable (for the wings) statistics, and she was talking TRASH! her daughter told us that the cops had been called to her mom's house in the past because the neighbors thought the old lady and her husband were fighting, but it turned out that they were just yelling during red wing games. this classical bird got into it with the psychos (and us, to a certain extent), and i won't repeat some of the things that were said back and forth, as this is a family blog. believe me, she gave as good as she got. let this pic tell the story, when she tried to grab my camera when i aimed it at her:
interesting moment: from our seats, we had a clear view of the catwalk that leads to all the skyboxes. the box door over our heads just to our right bore the sign "the wirtz family" (if you don't know, the wirtzes own the hawks), and at one point, i looked up to see a bunch of people emerging from the box. i tapped the hockey genius next to me and said, "isn't that balding guy gary bettman?" as in nhl commissioner gary bettman. hockey genius said, "yeah, and that tall dude next to him is rocky." as in hawks' owner rocky wirtz, the guy who finally put hawks' home games on tv and has led the current blackhawks renaissance. we all began to loudly praise rocky, and he then showered us with a rain of hundred-dollar bills. actually, he just smiled and waved, but it was still a cool moment.
of course, even after a blistering first period, the hawks lost, which sucked. but the final outcome didn't diminish the truly amazing day, which ended with us riding the red line to the loop and catching a metra train back to the northwest suburbs. i took this quick pic as we were walking from the monroe street stop to union station, just for kicks. i love this city.
so anyway, after dragging my carcass up before a lot of people even went to bed, i hit the road and drove the empty highways and byways to my friend brian's house in the northwest burb of buffalo grove (all that's changed since i lived in that town, as brian pointed out, was that there was a new fence over there and that car-wash place next to dunkin donuts got a new coat of paint). here's what we look like. cute, huh? actually, we're not that big, as we both have 79 layers on:
brian's totally amazing awesome wife melissa (shout-out, you owe me five bucks) drove us to the purple-line stop in wilmette (motto: here we jog in the middle of the street, and damn the traffic). brian and i rode into the city to wrigley field. let the madness begin!
so after looking at some of the pregame sights, which included lots of people wearing hockey jerseys, angry cabbies laying on their horns, a news van from every possible tv and radio station (and network) imaginable, and a large area featuring kids activities, bad music, and really lame karaoke starring even more people wearing nhl jerseys, brian and i decided to find a bar.
yes, it was only 9:30 in the morning, but it was new year's day, the winter classic won't be held in chicago again for a long time (if ever), and it was happy hour somewhere...so why not have a few bass ales? to be honest, i can't remember the name of the bar, but it had friendly and prompt service and two empty bar stools.
around 11, we decided to head for the gates. here's a pic of wrigley from the corner of clark and waveland. unfortunately, this picture does little justice to the insane scene (and no, that honda is actually stopped and is not about to mow over all those people):
i doubt i could properly describe the incredible environment and palpable energy inside wrigley, so i'll just give you some pics. the second is our view of the ice (that pic is during the national anthem, and if you've never been a part of a national anthem during a hawks game, you've never been a part of a national anthem), and while there is a column in the way, it didn't distract a bit from the game. because we could lean.
at about this point (except for a few short warmed-up moments later, as you'll see), my camera crapped out, so i don't have in-game pics. thankfully, brian's camera had better batteries, and when he e-mails his pics to me, i'll post them too.
the fans around us were great, including the very hockey-knowledgeable couple to my left, the drunk psychos to brian's right, the very friendly man and his young son in front of us who had to endure the epically foul mouths of the two psychos, and the drunk guys behind us, one of whom insisted on slapping my hands and pounding my back every time the hawks scored, had a good hit, or apparently took a breath:
but the highlight was the 74-year-old woman (chaperoned by her daughter) sitting in front of brian. this rabid red wings' fan was very vocal and full of favorable (for the wings) statistics, and she was talking TRASH! her daughter told us that the cops had been called to her mom's house in the past because the neighbors thought the old lady and her husband were fighting, but it turned out that they were just yelling during red wing games. this classical bird got into it with the psychos (and us, to a certain extent), and i won't repeat some of the things that were said back and forth, as this is a family blog. believe me, she gave as good as she got. let this pic tell the story, when she tried to grab my camera when i aimed it at her:
interesting moment: from our seats, we had a clear view of the catwalk that leads to all the skyboxes. the box door over our heads just to our right bore the sign "the wirtz family" (if you don't know, the wirtzes own the hawks), and at one point, i looked up to see a bunch of people emerging from the box. i tapped the hockey genius next to me and said, "isn't that balding guy gary bettman?" as in nhl commissioner gary bettman. hockey genius said, "yeah, and that tall dude next to him is rocky." as in hawks' owner rocky wirtz, the guy who finally put hawks' home games on tv and has led the current blackhawks renaissance. we all began to loudly praise rocky, and he then showered us with a rain of hundred-dollar bills. actually, he just smiled and waved, but it was still a cool moment.
of course, even after a blistering first period, the hawks lost, which sucked. but the final outcome didn't diminish the truly amazing day, which ended with us riding the red line to the loop and catching a metra train back to the northwest suburbs. i took this quick pic as we were walking from the monroe street stop to union station, just for kicks. i love this city.
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