So, we got down to business watching the series from episode 1 (which, by the way, explains a lot of stuff about the series). The kids and I giggled and cackled and have been singing the DoH song at the top of our lungs.  It has been a great trip down memory lane.  I distinctly remember playing the Dukes in second grade.  Mrs. Kuhn’s desk made for a great General Lee and her yard stick was a perfect bow for me to shoot my dynamite arrows.  It was an awesome time to be a kid.  I guess it is posible that any time you are a kid, it’s an awesome time…but seriously, I had the Dukes of Hazzard to grow up on!  My best pal at  the time acquired a generic tv guide that had Daisy Duke on the cover.  You know Daisy, the prettiest woman ever (aside from my lovely wife)!  Anyhow, we knew we had something special but we also had enough information about the birds and the bees to know we couldn’t just parade around with the thing either.  Brainstorm…we found an old plastic lunch box my uncle gave me and gently laid Daisy into the box and set to work digging.  She remains buried somewhere in my parents’ yard to this day.  Anyhow, Isaac started talking about shooting a  yard stick bow and arrow and I knew we’d started a proper education for our kids.  Here are some things I learned: 

- The good guys win…sometimes it’s hard to know who the good guys are at first, and they don’t always wear a white hat (or drive a Cadillac with horns).  They almost always have a dynamite tipped arrow and a bow on hand though.

-A lady is to be respected and treated right. The extent of her lady-likeness is inversely proportional to the length of her shorts.

-A properly waxed hood is important for proper aerodynamics and fuel efficiency and is properly buffed with one size too small Wranglers.

-I married WV’s finest Duke girl.  She was cute then and is even cuter now!

So, I learned some lessons, but I am left with several questions, namely about how the human species propogated itself through the 1970s.  I think I first mentioned this question after seeing Soylent Green.  Hair styles and clothes, and goofy come-on lines should have excluded most people from spreading their DNA.  Even if folks somehow got around that problem, I cannot imagine how the men had sufficient “swimmers” to make the trip.  I saw way too much of Bo Duke, if you know what I mean.  The Duke boys wore jeans that were at least two sizes too small.  Well, I don’t want to say too much more to embarrass myself so I’ll leave the rest to you.  ”I may be crazy, but I ain’t stupid, this is crazy Warren, over and out!”

Apples to Apples - holy moley, this is an awesome game! Basically, each person gets 5 cards, each with a word. Each person puts down their card that most closely describes the “target word”. It’s a lot of fun…especially with small kids. For example, once the target word was cuddly. The submissions were basketball and lobster. As the judge, I had to decide which was most cuddly. Interesting game for sure!

Guess Who? - sort of like Clue with out the murder. You get 25 people and have to eliminate faces based on characteristics like eye color, beards, etc. We’ve had a bunch of fun with this one.  Abigail is a master!

Life, Pirates of the Caribbean edition - If you know the regular game of Life, you pretty well get this edition…just add a parrot on your shoulder and say “arrrrr” a lot more.  You pay in dubloons rather than dollars!

Dominoes - this has been our big time winner. We’ve played just under one million rounds of Mexican dominoes in several different variations over the past week. The kids have a fun time playing this although I think the adults (we’ve played with everyone) have had the most fun. I had no idea dominoes was actually a cool game!

We are working hard to institute a regular family game night.  We play games a lot but I suppose as the kids get older that it will be more difficult.  I figure we’ll start a tradition now if we can and hope it sticks.  Do most people have a family-something night?

We all stayed awake until after midnight to ring in the new year! Isaac had to endure watching me smooch Emily so my evening was made! We played dominoes and Life and watched movies. It was a good time! I am a bit too tired to type any more. Happy 2009!

I gathered a few of the recently deceased bees and dissected and mounted various parts that I thought would be cool.    It took some messing around to get the focus right, but I was able to hold the webcam to the eye piece and capture some pictures.  Have a look at the shots and see if you can figure out what the parts are in each picture.  The answers are at the end.

pics from top to bottom:
-bee knee (a joint on the bee’s leg)
-bee toes (the very end of the leg)
-bee tongue (they have several)
-bee stinger (I have seen this after being in me…you can see the barbs then)
-bee wing
-girl hair (yeah, not a beepart , but a hair from Emily…she conditions!)

So, yesterday, I mentioned that Isaac and I got Christmas presents that were bruise-causing.  Awhile back, Isaac mentioned that he wanted to try skateboarding. A friend of mine is big into skateboarding so I consulted with him to find good starter skateboards and pads for Isaac and me. My friend skates with his sons and has a lot of fun. I figured that as Isaac and I age and we have our times where we don’t see eye-to-eye, we’ll need something to do to burn off some energy.

So, Isaac and I got set up with new equipment and headed to Cookskin Park’s skate area.  It was 75 or so degrees and really beautiful so there were a number of people there to watch the noobs try not to break bones.

Everything started off pretty well.  I got a somewhat effective set of sea-legs and was able to handle most of the ramps (read: I could skate down them without falling….no tricks of course).  Isaac had a smarter approach.  I asked him if he wanted to try a ramp.  He said, “Dad, you know I am not a risk taker!”  He tooled around on the flat surfaces learning to coast and balance…bright kid.  Abigailsurprised me though and grabbed her scooter and follwed me on all of the ramps.  Anyhow, I was starting to feel like quite the skater so I started talking with one of the teens there and he suggested a different way of getting on the board to ride down the ramps.  I had made 30 or so runs with no problem.  Atop the highest ramp I had skated, I decided to try the new method.

Skating Lesson 1:  Never take skating advice from a teenager.

Skating Lesson 2:  Never ever try a new trick on the highest ramp around.

Skating Lesson 3:  Always wear a helmet, knee and elbow pads, and wrist guards…absolutely no one else in the park had any safety equipment.  Mind you, this safety equipment is partly for show as you will still get an awesome bruise…but you’ll look good when you hit the deck from 5 feet in the air!

Abigail was the only girl at the park which I thought would intimidate her. She was also the youngest. My fearless daughter was awesome though. She cruised around like an old pro! I think that scares me…a lot!

We surely had a lot of fun and I even earned this trophy!  It’s actually much larger than it looks but I don’t think you could handle if I showed any more leg!  It’s already turning a wonderful shade of yellow on the edges…sort of like a bag of Skittles exploded and tatooed my leg!

Abigail had strep for Christmas but she is now mending (after 4 days on an ineffective antibiotic, she got a new type which worked).  I only mention it because we had to wake her up on Christmas morning.  Isaac was eager to open presents and we knew Abigail would be mad if he didn’t wait.  So, we woke her and the kids started opening stuff.  By the way, motrin is magic - it makes the most awful strep/sore throat/fever bearable for everyone!  Anyhow, I loved how our Christmas morning this year.  Rather than just fly through all the presents, the kids stopped and played with each gift before moving on to the next.  We didn’t prompt them to do so, but it let us know that Santa had done good research.  It took us 3 hours to open all the gifts (and there weren’t that many)!  We were exhausted by lunch time!

I’ll post some more pics tomorrow of one of the gifts that Isaac and I each got…but I need time for the bruise to properly finish developing before I show it off!

We are still goofed up from too much eggnog and sugar cookies.  I love too much icing!

Anyhow, we goofed around a lot this weekend. I think we’ve been clowns for about as long as I can remember. We are both professional adults and lead fairly adult lives…except when we get together. I won’t detail much of the tom-foolery that went on, but rather, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…but honestly, red suspenders need to be snapped.  My parents (who were present this weekend also) got them for my brother who recently bought a firetruck from my home town.  I think my brother intends to use the truck to get groceries and for the occasional powerwash of the driveway.  Anyhow, he couldn’t have a firetruck without red suspenders…and I couldn’t see red suspenders on my brother withought snapping them…and he couldn’t let me snap them without bear-hugging me until my ribs cracked!  It was great fun!

As we’ve aged, we’ve grown separate in some of our interests and thoughts and discovered other areas in which we agree.  

We still burp at the table and stuff, but since we are adults, our parents can now join in.  I mostly feel like an adult, but hanging out with my brother takes me back a little.  I get a little less serious (hard to imagine you say?) and a little more annoying to my wife.  It’s sort of funny how brothers work I guess but since I can’t (er…I mean won’t) trade mine in, I suppose I’ll keep the one I have!

So, I guess we had pretty high expectations of the display at the Clay Center (I don’t know if it was advertised as such, but we assumed the display had simply migrated to the Clay Center when they closed Sunrise), but we were pretty disappointed at the time with what was showcased.  There were only a few fairly simple trees and a few model railroads set up.  Now, don’t get me wrong…I absolutely love the Clay Center and am thrilled that we have such a place in WV.    It just wasn’t what I expected.  

In a way, though, maybe it was ok too.  As I think back on it, the trees at the Sunrise museum were over done and unlike anything normal people would have.  Christmas has been about “bigger and better” for a lot of people for a long time.  I doubt it was intentional, but I think the Clay Center display sort of captured the mood of lots of folks in the country this year.  Maybe overdone isn’t such a good thing.  I know we have scaled back on hoopla at our house this year.  It’s not necessarily for economic reasons, but more for general mood reasons.  I know others are doing the same.

Well, so as to not make introspection the only theme of this post, we enjoyed the huge bronze(?) scultpure in front of the museum.  The kids jumped into the “parade” and marched in time…very slow time.  It was the slowest moving parade I’d ever seen…almost like they weren’t moving at all.  

Anyhow, I think we are settling in to a different Christmas this year.  I don’t know if it is just part of my growing up or the times, but Christmas is different this year…and probably better than ever!