Harlem Shake

I know.  The meme has passed.  But I wanted to get out the video we made for my nieces back in March when it was a bit more hip. It's sad you can't see more the horse mask Mean Mr. Mustard got me, but that's what happens when you have one tall family member and two short family members. If it were Klund or Tall Brad, they'd probably have to draw a face on their stomachs.

Little brother?

I walk past this picture at least twice a day on the fourth floor at work. The first few times, I had to stop because out of the corner of my eye it looked like my brother was walking past a creepy picture of Dexter.  This would be a very large version of my brother, but I think it still looks like him.  Looks a little like me when I was 285 and had glasses, if you topped the then me off with the current me's hair.

Skype-i-ness

My sister discovered Skype.  So I thought it was time I posted a few photos from recent Skype sessions:

Ming, trying to break the rumors/stereotypes about Malaysians.  This is his idea of "really really big".


My Dad.  Obviously unfamiliar with how Skype works.


e and daughter, e-jr.


Babies love the camera.  It's delicious and fun to smudge.


My niece, happy about her new shirt.


Her new shirt, a unicorn pooping marshmallows.


My niece, channeling Eric Conveys an Emotion.  I believe in this photo she's being a haughty, evil queen.


This is her crazy look.  She also had a big-pimpin look where she was showing me a roll of benjamins, but I lost the photo.


My sister and her girls, a totem pole of sorts.  Although it's more Mount Rushmore-ish.  But I can't think of a Mount Rush-blank joke that's funny at all and, even if I could, it'd probably end up being inadvertently racist.


LissyJo, NO DUCKFACE!!!  (alt. no duckface link at The Chive).

Single Ladies

Apparently I'm not following my sister's YouTube feed closely enough, because I entirely missed this:

Sitting

I'm at my sister's house sitting for the girls while she and her husband are out at dinner with some friends. When I got her Ame' was super crabby, and wouldn't even talk to me while Ceri was doing story time, even after I showed her the Dora purse and Mt. Rushmore book I'd brought her from Eryn and Pooteewheet.

LissyJo and Mr. LissyJo left, and there was a total meltdown. It went like this...

Cry (quietly). Cry (louder). Cry (really loud). Cry (excruciatingly loud). Next phase was, between crying, "Mommy. Mommy. Mommy!" Louder crying. Pause, seemingly for a reaction, then... "Ow!" Cry. "OW!!!!" I read my SCJP and drank the Dortmunder Gold I'd been left. Super loud crying and back to "Mommy", closer now, top of the steps.

Finally, "I....need....my.....mommy.....cuddle."

At which point I finally said something. "Mommy's not home, A. She's out for dinner with her friends. She won't be back for a few hours."

There was more sniffling and crying, and then finally A said, "I need a cuddle when I'm sad."

So I said, "C'mon down and sit in the chair and cuddle if you like."

So she did. And we talked about school and math (4 apples and 5 apples) and media class (singing only, no instruments), and Spanish after school (she had it today), and Eryn's homework (A says she doesn't have any yet). We talked some more and some more until she finally announced, "I'm tired now. I should go to bed."

As she walked upstairs, I said, "Night, honey. Thanks for talking to me about school."

"Night, night. Thank you for the cuddle. Love you."

Aww....sweet.

The Dangers of Extraneous Income

I should clarify. For my grandmother, this isn't extraneous income. She spent so many years working on the farm to make a living, that this just sort of allows her to enjoy her last decade (or so) without worries. Both my grandmother and my (deceased) Grandpa Harry have oil wells on what I believe is the same oil field in the MonDak area. Apparently they recently discovered a second oil field underneath the first one. For some reason, that immediately reminded me of Mr. Burns' slant oil company.

Ellen, being threatened by the oil well.

John being threatened. I'm pleased they're not wearing matching outfits. And that he got rid of that rat tail thing he used to wear when he thought he was haute couture Tucson so it's not hanging over his shoulder.

Larry Turns 60

My father in law turned 60 last week, and during the weekend there was a party for him at his art studio. Pooteewheet made the mistake of telling my sister we might be able to babysit - LissyJo, always check with me, I maintain a calendar. I've added an online Google calendar I can share with Pooteewheet and I'll get her to sign up for the daily dump, but it'll take me a while to move all my details out there - so we ended up taking my niece with us. She had a great time, except for when she tried to stop a larger child (Eryn) from running by just standing in front of her, and except for when she tipped over the cardboard wall and grabbed my leg and bawled, concerned that the wall police were going to get her. Also, she may have been a bit dubious about the book we were reading out loud in the car that involved dead pirates in cages who had rotted away to skeletons. And she wasn't too fond of the stomach ache she got after two pieces of cake. But she was ecstatic about the three (3) cups of meltimints she ate.

Anyway...I just felt bad my sister got stuck with her youngest when she was expecting a night of freedom. We're always happy to mess up both her kids.

Here's Eryn and my niece doing some painting. That's me in the back with the Blackberry. I would have you know that most of the night I was holding a beer (some sort of Goose Island) not a PDA. That's my nephew, between Eryn and me. Shortly before this he was eating meltimints with some paint on them (I think blue and pink). I didn't stop him because he only ate two. There's not a picture of my niece on his side of the family in this post. But I got to witness her looking for some attention, realize it wasn't coming, and then stomp faster and faster until her adrenaline was high enough that the crying was for real. My sister in law asked her "did you get hurt", to which she shook her head up and down vigorously. She's going to be a brilliant actress.


Child train. Woot Woot!


This is what happens when it's your 60th birthday, if the stock market hasn't taken away your entire life savings. I don't know if that's frosting in the middle of Ame's forehead. It was there when we picked her up, so probably not. But she's not Hindu and it wasn't Ash Wednesday (and she's not Anglican), so I don't know why she was dotting her forehead. Maybe they were having toddler bingo at school?

As an aside, my father in law had some very nice paintings he'd done in his studio. His very long mural (15 feet long, 9-12 inches tall?) of ticky tacky houses is something I'd put up in my own house.


This is where I wanted to be as the evening wore down. Upper Cut, next door, was having a boxing match. There were hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand, young people dressed to the nines, at least if you consider "the nines" to include dresses so short both your butt and breasts are falling out, despite your really tall boots, and gold lame' jackets. For a while the traffic was beyond the end of the block. The place was rocking so loud it was coming through the wall into the 60th birthday party. I'm not so sure I couldn't have just opened the gate from our side and walked over with a dozen bottles of beer and been the life of the party. I think boxing and drinking might have made for a perfect denouement to the evening.

For the Klunds - Rock Band II Fail

For the Klunds. The Scooter family fails at Rock Band II.

Holiday Photos

The holidays were busy. I was recovering from surgery, my folks were in town, and we had family pictures, Macy's, my niece's first birthday, Colin's birthday, other birthdays, Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon, New Year's... Nonstop festivities. So here are a few photos for the family.

I wasn't at this event. I was laying at home on the couch in a percoset fugue. Adele is checking out the sword I made for her Korean toll (?) where she picks an item and it determines her future. The sword wasn't the first item picked, despite my effort to make it very shiny and attractive to babies. Apparently I should have coated it with chocolate as well, because it doesn't look like it tastes all that good. I did send along some Hostess Cupcakes in case there was a repeat of the carrot birthday cake fiasco.



I can't believe my sword tasted worse than a used toilet stopper. Nasty.


We had the family photos at the Walker Sculpture Garden. Not in front of the big cherry, but in the arboretum area with the big glass fish. The photographer wanted me to help move some planters and I had to explain that moving concrete blocks was off my list after surgery. After the pictures, we went to Macy's to see the elves living in Santa's workshop display. Eryn and Ame' wore their matching dresses. However, Eryn later took a tumble on the escalator which ensured that her holey, bloody tights in no way matched Ame's.


Ame' doesn't get a lot of candy at her house. Grandma indulged her at Macy's. She's the Charlton Heston of candy fiends. You'd have to pry those bones out of her cold dead hands if you wanted to take them away.


Eryn at the company Christmas party meeting with the Clauses.


And one reindeer.


And getting her picture taken in front of the poinsettia tree.


Christmas before Christmas Eve. We opened our presents so we didn't have to haul them north of the cities and haul them back again. A good idea as the car was full on the way home. In this photo, Eryn is confused because she's just gotten a big bag full of rocks. Several of them.


Ah...a rock polisher. A real one that's designed to run forever and ever, not a Discovery Channel piece of crap which broke after three days and which my wife has hidden somewhere in the house so I don't have to look at it so there's no possibility of a divorce over my irritation with junk in the house and her irritation that I'm obsessed with getting rid of junk in the house, even that junk which she feels might not be junk.

All of which reminds me, it's (the new one) been running downstairs for a week and it's probably time to check the rocks.


Christmas Eve. My mother learning how to play Raving Rabbits on the Wii.


Ame's most hated game on the Wii. Raving Rabbits' pull the worms out of the rabbits teeth game. Only slightly less scary than Artie's new remote controlled brontosaurus.


A tap dancing fairy princess ballerina vetinarian. At least if you asked Lemony Snickett. Adele is somewhere under that pile of Jurassic Park.


Grandpa gets a hug for electronic battleship. And yes, my brother's tree does have some sort of problem that might best be solved by dropping some viagara in the water resevoir.


Artie wants to know where my face went. I'm wearing that hoody right now. It's creepy and super comfortable. If it were managerial, it would be perfect.


Christmas morning. Eryn is excited about the second part of the Lion, The Witch and Wardrobe series she got from Santa. She'd been wanting it since long before it came out. I don't believe, 12 days later, that she's watched it end to end yet.


Christmas afternoon. Cousin Max sporting his Obama shirt and talking to Santa.

Family Photo Blogging

I need to catch up on a few pictures of the kids for friends and family that read the blog. So today's post will be pictures from before the holidays and tomorrow's post will be pictures from the holidays. I'd have posted these some time ago, but the whole surgery debacle interrupted my normal picture commentary.

I could blog about the Vikings game instead, as I was there last night with Ming, Mike and Adam, but the less said about that whole mess the better. I should append that my favorite exchange of the evening was in the men's bathroom where an Eagles fan bellowed during a very crowded halftime, "The Eagles' fans are in the bathroom!" Followed closely by "That's where assholes belong." Followed shortly thereafter by the first voice exclaiming, "Hey, don't push me, I'm peeing!"

Ming and Eryn fighting after the pizza event. This is why there are video games. So no one loses an eye. Unless it's from a flying Wii remote.


Eryn, me and Colin at the Minnesota Children's Museum sorting food tiles. I was biking 30 miles a day the day before this picture, so I look pretty healthy. I need to get back in a groove, because I don't feel that healthy now.


Eryn got to take home the class mascot, Sparky. Sparky has a journal and Eryn filled several pages with pictures of Sparky's adventures. There was a previous picture of Sparky in a coffin at a geocache, but that was only part of his weekend. He also attended a birthday party and ate a donut.


And wrestled under the Christmas tree.


And listened to a book about sharks. Eryn has since had those bangs reduced.


And he rode a giant ant. If I was a giant ant, I'd eat Sparky. But maybe this isn't a bear eating ant. It's not a siafu as it has eyes.


Sparky gets a massage after a stressful weekend.


Sparky and Eryn listen to Pooteewheet read Harry Potter. They're now on The Halfblood Prince.


The wrestling over, it's time to pose for a Christmas picture. To everyone that was expecting a Christmas letter from me, this will have to do. I'm just not very good at Christmas letters, and there are almost 500 posts out here every year. If you haven't found opportunity to read yourself nauseous about my family, you're just not trying.


Conner blowing out the candles on his cake at the Children's Museum. I like this picture because just before it there was some concern that there were no candles for the cake. Conner's mom noted that this would result in a "pretend blow". I hate those.


Eryn playing Castle Wars on the computer. A very simple card game that works great for kids. Make your castle bigger than 100 levels. Or make the other person's castle smaller than 1 level. She goes back to it frequently, so it must maintain some of it's fun factor.

It's On

20 years ago...or more...definitely more, my mother asked me, Scooter, should LissyJo be able to go to the concert on Harriet Island to see The New Kids on the Block. Being wise beyond my years, I said the equivalent of "F-No. There are going to be 200,000 underaged girls (I didn't add, "in the pre cell phone era", it was just implied) and it will be a madhouse. If it was in an auditorium, then sure. But not on the island."

This screwed my sister out of getting to see TNKOTB live. Much to her benefit, as many children went lost that night, stole their parents' cars, etc.

But today, I made up for a little bit of that anger and sadness to which I subjected my sister. I won her TNKOTB tickets. Sure...she's in her early-going-on-mid thirties now and it's not quite the treat it might have been at 12. But they're FREE TNKOTB ticktets! When I asked her if she was going before I won tickets she said "no" and then sort of added "tickets are expensive". Now she has no excuse. She can go and spend no money other than what it takes to get drunk enough to pretend she's not a 30-something year old going to see TNKOTB just so she can hope Donny the Bad Boy accidentially flicks sweat onto her. Seriously - I hope she has fun reliving a bit of her past that might otherwise seem like a financial waste.

Hang Tough, LissyJo....Hang Tough!

There's P in the Pool (and Poo)

I noticed that Klund decided we should post pool pictures. There's no P or Poo, except in the word, but there is a Scooter with a Mad Hatter beer and a wizard shirt, which is almost as disturbing.

Is Ame OK?

LissyJo, is Ame ok? I hear she hurt her leg!

Fountain Duck

I was startled to find that the company store was selling rubber ducks. Not multiple kinds, just one kind, but one kind that does absolutely everything...including SPURTING. Eww... That's sort of disgusting - particularly given the graphic. But my mother collects rubber ducks, and if she wants a rubber duck that according to the packaging may have some sort of premature ejaculation problem well, she's old, I'll humor her. Unfortunately, my daughter is extremely jealous of my mother's duck collection and has been loudly pondering whether my mom might have some other duplicate ducks lying about. So I caved and bought two Spurting Fountain Ducks,one for each of them. It's a big hit, but I'd hate to try to relax in a tub full of the things.


Here it is in action..

Willy Wonka

I'm pleased that Klund invited us to the community production of Willy Wonka and not Wonka's Willy. I was worried - he has a strange sense of humor. The St. Peter production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was wonderful, and Eryn enjoyed it immensely. I did too - but I note Eryn's enjoyment because she was on the edge of her seat for almost the whole play. We've been worried she won't behave if we take her someplace like the Minneapolis Children's Theater - but those worries may be past. So here are a dozen pictures and even a few videos, because I don't want to disappoint Mean Mr. Mustard, who's latest post is about how the rest of us haven't yet blogged photos.

My wife took a lot more photos of our kid than the other kids. I guess that's just normal. But we have a lot more video of the other kids and the play than we do of Eryn. What's not so normal is that fully 50% of the pictures seem to be from the line before we got into the play.

Here I am, providing pre-play entertainment by giving rides to Kelson and Eli. The next day Klund gave kids rides by lifting them by their ears. I wonder if they fondly remembered my less-painful version.


Milena and Eryn trying to push me over onto my butt. I think my sense of balance is going away as I get older.


'Cause I've got a green ticket! 'Cause I've got a green ticket! I've got a green chance to make my way. And with a green ticket, it's a green day!


Emma spent the whole weekend avoiding our camera. At breakfast I tried to take a few, and each time she was gone before I could get the lens focused. Unfortunately for her, she was slightly less successful than Mr. Mustard, and I managed to grab half a picture of the back of her. I include it here so I can say I was successful. I think Mr. Mustard is avoiding my camera ever since the whole LOLMustard incident.


Willy Wonka telling Mary all about how he had to put down an Oompa Loompa before the show. Recommendation #1: Klund and Tall Brad should have starred as Oompa Loompas. Recommendation #2: the Oompa Loompas should have come running out wearing squirrel ears during the Veruca Salt scene and attacked her. My imagination isn't so good - I need visuals.


Who can take the sunshine, and sprinkle it with dew, hug a pregnant lady and a child or two? The candy man. The candy man can!


Deciding whether the birds in the yard behind the breakfast buffet were red wing blackbirds or turkeys. What's that one? A turkey. That one? A turkey. How about that one? Squirrel. That one? A male turkey, a tom. That one? Turkey.


So many birds to see in the book that aren't out the window.


Yum. Chocolate for breakfast. Charlie (aka Koleman) put Eryn's chocolate consumption to shame. He had a piece of cake, in pudding, with some chocolate sauce, and I think there was some other sort of chocolate-based dessert, all mixed together. Later, when he came down off the sugar high, he noted he was tired.


Hey. Who did you get pregnant? You know who I got pregnant? Oh yeah. I got someone pregnant. Someone right here in this full season porch. No less than six feet from TallBrad Ground Zero. Guess who. No, not you. But someone. Look at my face. You know this is the face of a guy who could knock someone up, the face of a guy who knows he knocked someone up. I'm going to be a baby daddy, and everyone will know it, because I'll be looking at them like this, with this look, and they'll think, "That guy either wants to get me pregnant, or he got someone else pregnant." And they'll be looking around, thinking everyone is pregnant, because I'll just keep looking at them like this with my sly I'm a Daddy-to-be look. Come on. Guess. Guess who it is.


And now...moving pictures! Where we finally get some pictures of the elusive Koleman/Charlie.
Ring Around the Rosie. I had two videos for this one. In one, Eryn is showing so much butt crack it's probably illegal in some states, like Louisiana or Pine Lawn, MO.


Ooompa Loompas celebrating the possible demise of Augustus Gloop, the great big greedy nincompoop.


Chocolate River. During the play, they pumped 50,000 gallons of melted chocolate through the audience to simulate what it was like to be Augustus. The Violet Beauregard scene involved blue food dye and air pumps - we've all agreed never to talk about it.


Introduction - Welcome to the Factory. Near the end, you'll hear a crazy laugh. That's Eryn - she has a Nelson Muntz-esque laugh going at the moment. Reminds me of a girl I wanted to date in high school who would laugh in the movie theater and everyone would go, "Hey, Kim's here."


Grandparents. Klund played Willy Wonka andone of the grandparents. There just aren't that many people in St. Peter.