Renaissance festival

aka, cleavage festival. They should sell T-shirts that say "I survived cleavage festival 2009 at the renaissance!" We went two years ago and nothing has really changed except maybe there's even more cleavage and believe me, it's not the flattering kind.

I think it's really over priced. After you get in all the cool stuff still costs extra. It's a nice place to people watch though. It's like a 14th century star trek convention.

I did enjoy sitting in the shade eating my $1 pickle while listening to Sarah the harpist play. It was very relaxing.

Here is Daniel enjoying one of the very few free activities; he's riding a butterfly powered by some hapless woman walking in circles.



Here we are at the jousting contest. This was the last event we went to, everyone was tired. Daniel was getting obnoxious, hitting his water bottle on the bleachers annoying all the people around him, so I had to take him to the sidelines before the crowd could carry him off to the gallows.

Rylie loved it. She was as cute as ever.



We stopped to listen to the Mediaeval Baebes and Daniel had too much energy so he just ran in circles around me the whole time. The monkey pack/leash he is wearing is so he doesn't take off running and we lose him, which has happened before. We got quite the looks from people.

Malware gremlin

We contracted a nice virus on our computer last week. I'll give credit to the gremlin. This window would randomly pop up from time to time threatening all kinds of damnation if we didn't click the ok button to download their conveniently available anti-virus software to rid us of this maliciousness.

It effectively crashed IE and Firefox, disabled our TrendMicro anti-virus software and froze up other programs so we couldn't use the computer before rebooting.

Notice that the window looks like the screen you would normally see when you open up "My Computer" but it's really the Internet Explorer window that is made to look the My Computer screen with a bunch of bogus warnings on it.



Clever little bugger. But not clever enough.

So much for TrendMicro.... it not only didn't catch it to start with but it failed to get rid of it once it was there. I guess you get what you pay for because I didn't pay for TrendMicro, I got it free from a RealPlayer promo.

So, I uninstalled TrendMicro and installed Norton Internet Security 2009 which within minutes immediately found the problem and erradicated it, all on it's own. I didn't even have to tell it to search, it just automatically detected it and deleted it. I was impressed.

So that's my little plug for symantec.

Daniel The Terrible

Daniel The Terrible strikes again, with his trusty accomplice Orson. Don't let Orson's innocent face fool you in this picture. When these two get together they can bring the house down in seconds flat. They did all that in the picture in about 5 minutes while Heidi was tending to Rylie.

A Gremlin?

I think we have a gremlin that has taken residence in our house.

Our dishwasher, the "Quiet" Partner II model, is no longer quiet. It's been gradually getting noisier for a while now but on Monday night we finally had to turn it off. The 1 year warranty just expired so we'll be footing this bill ourselves. Great timing. Tuesday I went online and studied up some on how to fix a noisy dishwasher and actually took several layers apart, but after I got it put back together I think I made it worse. I have no idea what the problem is but if I were to guess I'd say it's the motor. It needs some WD-40 or flattery or just a good smack with a hammer or something.

Then our TV. Something funky is going on with our TV. Yesterday it suddenly started turning on and off over and over and over again in an endless cycle for no apparent reason. I couldn't manually turn it on or off or change the channel or do anything while it was doing this. I could unplug it which would turn it off, but when I plugged it back in it would immediately start again turning itself on and off over and over and over again. I called their tech support and learned a new trick that luckily fixed it. He had me unplug it again, then hold the power button in for about 1 minute. Then plug it back in and it suddenly worked again. Who knew. What caused it to do that in the first place I asked. Heck if he knew, that was weird.

While on the phone with the TV tech our phone was horribly noisy with crackles and static. I thought, after this I'll have to try and troubleshoot our phones. We have 3 cordless phones and I think there is a conflicting frequency somewhere in our house that is causing it. I don't think the actual line is noisy. I have to find out first at least before the phone technician comes out and bills us because the baby monitor was conflicting with our phones.

I look up to see what time it is and.... the clock on the microwave is out. Huh? I press the cancel button a few times, then press all the buttons a few times, nothing. It appears to not have any power. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON AROUND HERE!!!???? I go outside and flip the breaker labeled microwave. Nothing. I then flip ALL the breakers. Nothing. All of the surrounding power outlets and other appliances have power. It's as if our microwave suddenly died, with no notice. It's installed above the stove so I can't easily get to the power cable which I'll have to check next and the socket it's plugged into.

3 major appliances and 1 minor (phones) all having problems at the same time. We're either having the worst streak of bad luck or we have a gremlin living with us.

What will be next?

Most expensive Probably-Flu ever

We took Rylie in to the ER over the weekend because she had a temperature over 105. It actually started on Thursday with a fever and throwing up. We just nursed her like we normally would but then Friday night the fever shot up past 105 and her poor little body felt like it was burning on the inside. We were giving her Motrin and Tylenol but it didn't seem to be helping. Not sure what was happening and not knowing what else to do and because her temperature was at a dangerous level we decided to take her in.

By the time we got there she had dropped to about 102. They checked her ears for infections, found none and wanted to take blood and urine for more tests but by then it was after 2 in the morning and the danger seemed to have passed so we decided to forgo any additional tests and left.

Her fever continued over 100 all Saturday and again escalated to about 105 Saturday night. This time we were able to bring it down with Motrin and a tepid bath but were really concerned something else was going on. The on call nurse we talked to on Sunday spoke to the on call doctor who concluded that due to her fever remaining over 100 for four days in a row we should go ahead and take her back to the ER and let them run additional tests.

That we did. They took a blood sample, urine sample and an X-ray. Let me tell you it's the most excruciating thing in the world to watch helplessly as they poke and prod your little girl and she just screams and screams. 5 or 6 hours after we arrived, we got the results: negative for everything. She most likely has a type of virus like a flu or cold and it will just need to run it's course. So keep doing what we're doing with the Motrin and Tylenol until it passes.

Is that a $600 prognosis? It sounded like they weren't certain what it was, only that they were certain it wasn't anything that they tested for. I hate answers like "probably" or "most likely." For $100/hr do you think you could find out for certain? And then make it go away?

Sorry, discussion about medical billing procedures and insurance policies can really rile me up. All the nurses were very nice and very professional and I'm grateful they can do what needs to be done and still be so uplifting during the whole thing.

We're certainly glad that it wasn't anything more serious, but this is by far the most expensive most-likely-flu we've ever had to deal with. Our insurance increased our ER deductible this year to $200 so with 2 visits plus various tests, we expect a pretty hefty bill(s) in the coming weeks.

We didn't even get any free T-shirts out of it this time.

Our singer!

During preschool in December I taught the kids how to play to the beat with simple instruments. Daniel sure enjoyed playing to Jingle Bells and so this past week when he found my instruments he decided to serenade me with his best rendition of Jingle Bells. Enjoy!

Learning by Osmosis

It amazes us how children learn. Lately, Daniel has been shocking us with some of the things he had learned without us knowing it. Here are some videos of him showing what he has learned through Osmosis during preschool. He doesn't really join my preschool group for any lengthy period of time so I have no clue what he is learning if anything. Previous to these videos we had told Darin's dad that Daniel knew maybe 3-4 letters inconsistently. He sure proved us wrong-- he got about 75% of the letters correct with either their letter name or sound. WOW!


Just a few days prior to this I was reading a counting book with him and asked him to count for me. I thought he could count to 2 or 3-- but he just kept on going and ended up counting to 8 without a single mistake-- and had 1-1 correspondence down pat. We're so proud of our 2 1/2 year old!!

Cleaners

During the correct phase of the moon, Daniel takes an interest in cleaning. Or at least a curiosity about how things work. We have dubbed Daniel and Rylie our personal vacuum cleaners due to their helpfulness of always keeping things picked up (Daniel trying to be helpful, Rylie just mouthing everything in sight).

The cutest!

I'm not sure why these pictures were taken but I thinks it's apparent that Daniel and Rylie sure love each other. They've been best friends ever since Rylie was able to start crawling and follow around on her own.

I didn't do it

Daniel is always cute with Rylie, always playing with her and looking out for her and most of the time he is willing to share. So this particular evening Heidi had made us chocolate chip cookies. Daniel and I shared a couple and Daniel asked if he could have one more. There was only one left so I said sure he could have it.

I was reading a book and not really watching, I figured he would just go get the cookie and eat it. About 5 minutes later he comes to me saying something about Rylie, no, messy. I thought great, she's probably eating the fake grass out of the plant again.

But this is what I found:



That's a guilty face if I've ever seen one.

Rylie tried to give me a look that said "It wasn't my idea, I'm innocent. Go ask the boy!"

Daniel! Why is Rylie covered with chocolate?

Daniel, avoiding me from the other room shouts back, No Can't do it! Which is his best way to say: I didn't do it!

The only people that could reach the cookie on the counter are you and me bud, and I know I didn't do it.

He decided to share the last cookie with Rylie. By the looks of it there was more chocolate in it than there was cookie.

Being the little princess she is, I wonder how long she will be able to play that card "I'm too adorable and innocent to be capable of such things" to get out of trouble?

I guess that's a question for me huh?

Daniel sleeping

Daniel falls asleep how ever he wants. We decided to take a series of pictures of him at night or during nap time that illustrates how he sleeps.

He still sleeps with everything in his room. He has to take everything in his room and put it on his bed with him when he goes to bed. There is hardly enough room for him on the bed with all that stuff and it certainly doesn't seem comfortable. But I guess there are advantages to being 2 1/2 with still developing soft, flexible bones.



He insists on sleeping with this comforter. Sometimes he sweats because it's so hot, but he won't let us take it away without throwing a loud verbal protest.



This one is our room. Sometimes he'll sneak into our room so he can be close to us. We found him here one morning, still wrapped in his comforter.


We fought a huge battle with Daniel to keep him in his room at night, at least at bed time. We would put him to bed at 8:00pm but he would keep coming out of his room, playing downstairs or doing what ever he could to not be in his room.

Well this one is evidence of a battle we won. Notice he is as close to being out of his room as he can without violating parental law. It also shows his stubbornness and strong will. If he can be this defiant now, we fear for the upcoming years...


A bed is optional:




I don't know if he fell asleep next to his bed or fell out of his bed, but either way he is sound asleep.

My baby growls

Seriously. Lately Rylie has been growling as she canvasses our house looking for things to eat. Maybe she thinks she is a lioness.

I tried to get it on video a few times but of course as soon as the camera comes out she stops. I did get a few but these are mediocre. You should really hear her during a full fledged growl.