Roblog

We had an eventful weekend. Here's a rundown (long).

Our power went out this morning. We wouldn't have known if Amanda hadn't woken up at 5:00 AM crying (we don't know why she woke up early). In fact, I likely would have slept right through my 5:30 wake-up time, since the alarm was without power. Good job, Amanda!

Our whole block was without power (the electric company said 36 residences were affected), but the houses across the street were fine. Power was restored at about 6:00 AM, after what we estimated was a 3-4 hour outage.

Elena really liked the candles that we had lit all over the house (she woke up at 5:45 AM). She continued to point at the candles (long since extinguished) throughout breakfast.

We went to Dallas this weekend to spend Donna's birthday weekend with her parents. It was a very nice weekend there, as always. We also took advantage of the free babysitting to go to a movie. Donna and I went to see Finding Nemo. Most adults we've told are amused by our choice of movies to see when we're without our kids, but I'm very glad we went to see it. Pixar movies are always ones that deserve to be seen on the big screen. The animation was flawless, and I loved the character of Dory. I thought the part were she was speaking whale was extremely funny. I look forward to owning the DVD someday.

During my recent vacation up to Pennsylvania to let my Mom visit with her granddaughters, we finally got official word that my sister is engaged! Her fiancee, Brian, proposed in Savannah, Georgia, on their way back up from Florida with a moving truck filled with stuff from my grandmother's house.

One surprise was that they asked me, Donna, and the girls to be in the wedding! I'll get to be a groomsman, Donna will be a bridesmaid, and the twins will be two-and-a-half-year-old flower girls. My sister, Rebecca, is a kindergarten teacher, so she has realistic expectations of how they will be able to perform in their role. She has insisted that all she expects from them is to look cute in their flower girl dresses. That, I am confident, they can do.

Coincidentally, Dave Barry just had a column about his daughter being a three-year-old flower girl. I'm going to send a copy of this article to everyone in my family.

I am so exited about the wedding! We all like Brian, and the wedding will take place in a very pretty valley at my (and my sister's) high school. We may decide to drive to the wedding instead of fly, since we want to get our daughters used to long driving trips as a family. Someday, we'll drive to the northeast to see the trees in the fall.

I must have been very asleep. That's all I can think of.

Last night, I woke up as usual on a weekday. I pressed the button to turn off my clock radio. I got myself out of bed and took a shower. I returned to bed to rest a few minutes.

It was then that I realized it was 12:45 am. My alarm doesn't go off until 5:30! I was befuddled as to why I would have gotten up when I did, when my pager buzzed its little reminder buzz. My pager had gone off at 12:30, but in my stupor I thought it was my clock radio!

I felt rather ridiculous, especially since I was now awake enough to start the day! I refused to get up, though, and soon enough went back to sleep. The only side effect was that my hair dried kinda funny since I was sleeping on it wet.

I think I have bruxism. There was an article in the Houston Chronicle today that described the condition of "involuntary teeth gnashing". I usually wake up with my jaws tightly clenched, which sometimes makes my jaw ache. I don't think I do much gnashing, just clenching.

My dentist asked about it at my last appointment, so there must be some evidence on my teeth as well. Actually, he asked my wife (instead of asking me) if she noticed if I ground my teeth. She didn't, but that means this has been going on for a while now. I have my next dentist appointment next week, so I'll ask about it then. I may have to start wearing a mouth guard. Ick.

It happened again. For the second time in three visits to the eye doctor, I passed out. Just as before, it was just after I had received eye drops. The first time, I thought it was from the "numbing" eye drops, but this time it appeared to be caused by the "pupil dilation" eye drops.

I played golf this past Saturday. I play about once a year; well, I've played twice in the past two years. Before that, I think it was around 1990 since I had played.

The cost to repair my damaged Nikon Coolpix 885 camera is $180. That's substantially less than what I bought it for a year and a half ago, but more than I had hoped the cost would be.

In the mean time, I'd like to find a way to get a copy of the pictures I have trapped on the CompactFlash card. Maybe I should splurge on a $10 CompactFlash card reader.

We got an artificial Christmas tree last night. I always resisted getting fake trees because I remember selecting a "live" tree as part of the Christmas tradition. In particular, I remember going with my Mom during a vicious cold snap (in the teens!) to a tree farm in Pennsylvania. I was down on the ground using our hacksaw to cut the tree among the cold, wind, and snow. The breeze stung my face, but afterwards decorating the tree I cut down was such a Christmas experience. But now that I live in Houston and have two toddlers running about, getting a real tree is too much trouble and not cost-effective.

It was a surprise to find a tree we liked last night. We took our $50 coupon to Michael's just to see if anything caught our eye. We wanted a fir tree (not pine), about 8 feet tall, and not pre-lit with white lights (multicolored lights would be OK). We happened to find an un-lit 7.5 foot fir that looked good. With our coupon, it was $100 - less money than we expected to spend.

It took some doing to fit the tree in our car, since we hadn't really prepared for bringing it home. We had to fit the twins stroller folded up down the middle of the car between the two carseats, while the tree box was secured in the trunk with bungee cords.

Now all we have to do is decorate it!

We're looking at some big purchases in the next 6 months. One would be a new computer. Our existing computer is almost 5 years old, and it has some annoyances that I'd like to eliminate, including its speed, it's lack of DVD burner, inability to use my external CDRW burner in Mac OS X, and its cumbersomely large monitor. I really like the current iMacs, but since Apple released a new processor, its always a worry that I may buy the last of the old line. We'll buy one early next year regardless, I think.

Our other big purchase will be a new car. Our remaining 1992 Saturn is on its last legs, and without air conditioning, I doubt we'll be able to keep it through next summer. We'd really like to get a hybrid vehicle, but they are still several thousand dollars more expensive than other economy cars. Hopefully, that decision is still several months away, though.

This weekend has the 9-3 Eagles playing at home against the 8-4 Cowboys. This is a game I'm really excited about. This is one of the few times in recent years where both teams are good (playoff-bound) this late in the season.

To celebrate, we are making homemade cheesesteaks, a Philly specialty. It's hard to find a place that will slice the meat (rib-eye, ideally) thin enough, but our local H.E.B. has done it for us before. Donna has invited her bother's family over to help us eat them and watch the game. So it will be me as the lone Eagles fan (unless I can get my daughters to root for the Eagles) amid a sea of Cowboys fans.

I can handle it. Especially if the Eagles win their 8th in a row!

Ahhh! I indeed went to bed at 8:05 last night, since Donna generously offered to take the early shift if Amanda woke up. She did at 8:45 and needed some holding and some water but then did not wake up again until 2:40 AM! I got up then, gave her some medicine for her stuffy nose, gave her some water to sip, walker her around for a while, and put her back to bed.

My previous entry is amusing to me now, because I was literally in the middle of writing it when I got a call that started some very busy few days.

Slow, slow, slow at work, so I'm completing my Christmas list (just sent it off to Donna for review). I'll need to go shopping tonight so that we can get stuff in the mail with enough time for them to reach their destinations by Christmas.

Amanda's doctor appointment yesterday went fine. She has been cranky and has had very light poop (almost white). Since this can be indiciative of liver problems, we brought her in. No serious problems were seen, and her poop is slowly getting darker.

I can't keep from getting excited about the Eagles any longer. The last two games of their season are against below-.500 teams, so these are games they should win. But even if they don't they're still in the playoffs and have a decent chance at a first-round bye. If they win their final two games, they will have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs! Whew ... deep breath ...

I'm also looking forward to seeing Return of the King. I'm going to wait until after Christmas to see it, since I want to see the The Two Towers again, which I will hopefully get for Christmas. And if not, I'm buying the extended edition on December 26.

Having completed practically all of our Christmas shopping, we decided to go to the mall just to walk around and see the people and decorations. Wow! What a mass of people! It was difficult to park anywhere at the mall, and inside I felt like our double stroller was an icebreaker, carving out a path to walk through. We did end up buying a few things, but all for ourselves: a hanging bamboo curtain that replaces the door to our toilet room in the master bathroom and two coats from Baby Gap that the girls can wear next fall.

And the Eagles lost yesterday. Now they won't have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, and are still not assured of a first-round bye. Oh well. If they can use this loss as a reminder that every game has to be won, then maybe it will serve them in the playoffs. Or maybe that's just the optimist in me talking.

It seems like I've been having to exercise my mostly-atrophied handy-man muscles recently. Mainly, that involves my finger muscles when I dial various service companies to come fix our stuff.

We had our three main trees pruned yesterday. We were worried that the large Silver Maple in the backyard would have to be removed, but the tree pruners thought it was worth a shot to try to trim it back.

At any rate, the trees in the front look much better. I've got some animations that contrast the before and after pictures of the trees. Click on them for a larger version of the animation.

I got back on Friday from my family's 2-week driving trip up to Pennsylvania for my sister's wedding (which took place in Delaware). It will take me a few days to post the pictures from all the goings-on, but they'll be up there soon. In the mean time, a few notes from the trip:

• The girls did remarkably well in the car for 2-year-olds. Granted, we never had more than 7 hours of driving in one day, and we stopped at least once every two hours (unless they were asleep) to give them a chance to run around. It took planning, but it bodes well for future car trips.
• The wedding was beautiful, just like the couple. Although we had rain the days before the wedding, the threatened rain on the day of the wedding never came, and the valley was a gorgeous setting.
• I forgot to bring the USB cable to download the pictures from my camera to my Dad's laptop, so I had no easy way to off-load some pictures from the camera's memory card. As a solution, I stepped-down the image quality, which allowed me to store enough pictures on the 128 MB memory card so that we didn't have to keep from taking pictures we wanted to.
• It's wonderful to have a three-day weekend at home to settle back in before I head to work. I really should go in and get a head start on my emails, but I may not.
• The grass was very high after three weeks of growth. Apparently, it rained a lot in Houston while we were gone. The lawnmower just did get through it all.

I finally got the pictures from our trip up to my sister's wedding in Delaware posted (it took a while to title them all). I split the pictures up into three sections:

• Trip to West Grove - June 2004: from our car trip going to and coming back from West Grove, Pennsylvania.
• Rebecca's Wedding: any goings-on while we were in West Grove or Delaware (there are a few non-wedding related pictures, but not enough to warrant their own section)
• Visit to NJ - June 2004: from our visit with by brother-in-law's (Richard) family in Newark, NJ

Looking at the pictures section, I also notice I didn't post any "twins" pictures for June. But since I posted 4 other picture collections since May, I'll wait and post the June and July twins pictures together.

We have a gas fireplace that we have never used. Being in Houston is part of the reason why, and now that we have toddlers that's another good argument against it, but mostly it's because it seems like too much work for it being so messy.

But we've smelled a small gas leak coming from the valve next to the fireplace from time to time. Somedays the smell is stronger than others, but Donna smells it much more often than I do. We even had the gas company come out a few months back to check it. They didn't find any leaks.

Well, last night, it was quite pronounced. We called the gas company and, at 10:00 PM, they came by. Their little gas detector wand started clicking. The technician said it was a small leak.

He also said we have two options:

1. He reports the leak, at which point we'd have to schedule a city inspection after repairs were made to confirm the leak has been fixed.
2. He shuts off the gas and pretends we weren't there, while we get a plumber to shut the gas off to the fireplace. Then we can call the gas company back to say we missed the technician and to come turn our gas back on.

I'm tired, but I'm going to try to stop complaining about the amount of time I'm having to devote at work.

My very first eBay seller's auction has started. I'm selling a pair of Cowboys/Lions tickets. It's sort of exciting to have it out there waiting to be bid on. I don't know if we'll get the final bids other similar-value tickets are getting, mainly because I have no seller history out there yet, so people will not have the same comfort level buying from me.

My daughters also celebrated their 1000-day birthday Saturday. We were going to make a cake, but we didn't. We had some coffee cake left over from the previous night for breakfast which seemed to be a hit. The counter on my web page needs a little help now that we've rolled over into four digits, but it won't take too long to fix.

My iMac is also about to celebrate its 20th day in my house.

We completed our annual Cookie Baking Party yesterday. We ended up with 781 cookies, which is quite a bit more than we had aimed for. Although we had just one family stop by to help, it was a fun but tiring day.

The girls wanted to help bake the cookies and help eat the cookies. They actually did save some time during one part of the process, when they were able to unwrap Hersey kisses by themselves. I discovered, though, that they could not do this unsupervised if I wanted the kisses to stay uneaten.

Our focus was on the Mounds Bar cookies this year, since that tends to be the most-requested. We ended up with an even 200 of those, which is plenty to be able to distribute them liberally among our friends and coworkers. We also made Snickerdoodles, Molasses Crinkles, Chocolate Dipped Orange Melts, Spritz cookies, and a new recipe: Buttermint Sugar cookies. We were finished at about 11:15 last night.

It actually snowed in Houston. On Christmas Eve, a few times during the day I could see sleet falling from the sky. With the temperature never getting above the mid-30's, the ground was too warm for the sleet to stick, but the little balls of snow did manage to survive on plastic and metal items in our yard: patio chairs and a child's slide.

This was the first time I had ever seen anything other than rain fall from the Houston skies.

That evening, though, it started actually snowing steadily. The snow managed to stick on the grass and plants; the roads were just wet, although some overpasses did manage to ice over and were closed. By the time we returned home from the church service, our car had about half an inch on it, and the yard was lightly dusted with snow. The girls had a fun time among the snowflakes, having almost as much fun as I did.

The snow stopped that evening, and mostly melted overnight, although small puddles of snow could be seen in shady areas of roofs into much of the day. It was still a remarkable experience.

I was a little embarrassed to realize that after two months with my new computer, I had not uploaded any pictures. I had developed a really cool way to get my pictures out of iPhoto and onto my web page, inserting all the picture data into my MySQL database in the process. The problem was that my iMac G5 did not have all the extras that the method needed to work: jhead and ImageMagick.

But I was putting this off because I ran across some information that seemed to indicate I didn't need ImageMagick now that I had Panther (Mac OS X v10.3). Although I still needed jhead to extract all the EXIF data from the pictures I wanted, this means I could eliminate one external tool from the process. So I couldn't bring myself to get my process running on my new computer without tweaking it to take advatage of this.

I finally found the time to do this in early December, and posted new pictures then. Now the AppleScript uses Image Events to resize the pictures. It definitely is much faster, although I can't say how much of that is due to avoiding ImageMagick and how much is due to my new, speedy computer.

I also added some information about the .netrc file that this process depends on. I did not have that documented before in my AppleScript, which I found out when I went to try to run it on the iMac. The .netrc file contains both the password to my FTP site and the macro I created that finds the picture to upload in the appropriate directories. Thankfully, I was able to retrieve a copy of it from my old computer rather than have to figure it out again.

Here is the announcement for all the internet to hear - my sister is pregnant! She was married in June, so I am impressed with her efficiency, but mostly I'm excited. She's really looking forward to motherhood, and I know my mother will be thrilled to have a grandchild within an hour's drive from her house.

I actually already have 2 nieces and 5 nephews (not to mention several half-nieces and nephews, but I don't know them), but these are on my wife's side of the family. Genetically speaking, Rebecca's child should be about 25% Rob.

I have posted the December/January pictures to the Pictures section of my website. I plan to have the February pictures posted soon (this week).

We ate at the Burger King in terminal D at the Philadelphia airport before we boarded our plane to go back home. The receipt says "Hope you enjoyed your stay in Philadelphia."

This seemed at first a strange thing to put on a receipt on the airport. After all, half the people in the airport are arriving and not departing. But of course people don't hang out in Terminal D if they've just arrived. They're on their way to get their luggage and leave the airport. When my family and I travel, we often stop at that Burger King when we arrive at the airport to try to arrange all of our stuff (and perhaps get a snack) before we lug everything to baggage claim.

I wonder how many of the customers are really arriving passengers? 5%? More? Less? I wonder if Burger King cares or is just satisifed that the number is low?

We have our dog Foxy a bath today. I tried to think back to the last time she got a bath, and I think it actaully might have been three years ago since her last bath. That sounds pretty disgusting, but she's actually a very clean dog, in general.

Recently, though, with the onset of summer weather, she has been getting itchy. We couldn't pet her without her back legs going into massive convulsions (why do dogs do that, anyway?). And now that it's getting hot, we can hose her off outside without it being too uncomfortable for her.

This time, things went much better than they had before. Perhaps Foxy is just older now and less prone to trying to wriggle away so vigorously. Or perhaps it was because Donna and I switched roles: I was the Foxy-holder and she was the Foxy-douser. Whatever the reason, she was washed and rinsed in about 5 minutes. She spent the next 10 minutes running around like a mad dog trying to dry off.

Now, she is extra fluffy and clean. Her itchiness is much less, although I can still get her leg to go crazy if I want. She just seems so much more relaxed now that she is not in a constant state of itchiness.

All of a sudden, on my way back from the park-n-ride yesterday, it just hit me: I'm going to miss my family these next few days. I had been paying so much attention to what I could (or should) be doing while they are away, I neglected to realize how empty the house will seem.

As I left for work this morning, I left knowing I wouldn't see my wife and kids until Friday evening. I'm eager for Friday to get here.

Today is Donna and my 99-monthiversary (3,014 days). That is, it's been 99 months since we were married. That means that July 1 will mark 100 months of marriage. That should warrant some sort of celebration. At least we'll have 30 days to think about it.

Sunday, I thought it would be fun to setup the sprinkler and let the girls play in it. I helped get their bathing suits on and we went to got outside and it was raining! I hadn't even realized it. It was a light summer rain and it hadn't rained for many weeks, so it was quite a shock.

I went out and turned on the sprinkler anyway. Amanda wanted to wear her hat so the water wouldn't get on her face. Elena didn't care as much until it started getting in her eyes. They both enjoyed it, though.

I got some really adorable pictures from the event, so I'll be posting them sometime soon.

I have uploaded a new set of pictures to my website today. It's been a long time coming, so it reflects three months' worth of pictures, including some pictures I alluded to in earlier posts.

My sister's first child was born yesterday morning at 3:15 AM: Molly Elizabeth. Almost one month early, she was already a healthy 6 lbs 12 ounces. It sounds like she was just ready. Her Daddy was kind enough to send some pictures out already - seeing the cute, tired baby made me realize how hard it is to be born.

We can't wait to see little Molly in October!

Yesterday was a busy day, but in an unexpected way. We had a big list of activites to accomplish. I wanted to paint the final part of our bedroom and cut the grass. Donna helped me by taking the girls on several errands, including stopping at the bank, post office, grocery store, Office Depot, a teacher supply store, and a grocery store.

Our water heater is old. It showed its age yesterday when it broke. I'm still not sure how it broke, but it couldn't be a coincidence that it happened after a gas utility worker came by to investigate a strange smell.

I actually saw two movies in a 5-day period this past week.

The first was March of the Penguins, and it was the first movie we took the girls to go see (they have been to other movies, but they are of the kind for mothers where the infants are supposed to sleep through). I enjoyed it, and Elena watched it for the most part - the times that she didn't she practiced getting out of her seat. She stayed quite the whole time, though. Amanda stayed quiet, too, but that's because she slept through the second half of it on my lap.

The second was War of the Worlds. It was actually a good movie, but the first 3 minutes of it soured it for me...

Spoilers in the extended entry...

We had our closest brush with a hurricane this past weekend with the sequel to Katrina: Rita. It was looking pretty perilous for a while, but after several discussions, we decided to stay in Houston and ride it out.

I was getting all prepared to document the event: I was downloading satellite imagery to assemble into a movie of the storm's progress; I had the video camera charged and ready to go; I had our digital audio recorder available. I'd made recordings into all of these devices leading up to the Friday night landfall, and then...

...we all went to sleep. The next morning, we saw some strong winds still blowing, but minimal rainfall and just a few downed branches. We still had electricity, cable TV, and our internet connection. Except for all our preparations, missing three days of work because Houston was closed, and a surreal trip to SuperTarget the day before the storm (SuperTarget.mp3, 3.4MB, 7.5 mins), nothing really remarkable happened.

But I think we learned a few things. I learned that the general rule is "run from water, hide from wind." Based on that rule, we handled the approaching storm correctly. I also learned that putting together the plywood window barricades this winter is a must-do project, regardless of our access to a truck to get the plywood here.

Our big trip of the year ended a week ago. It was a wonderful trip to the northeast to see the fall foliage ("leaf peeping" as it is known up there). The fall colors were late in coming this year, so that meant our time on the coast of Maine was devoted to coastal activities (the trees were almost all green). We saw some beautiful colors in New Hampshire, but since peak was yet to arrive, we had the treat of seeing the colors change perceptibly during our two-day stay there.

Our "scrapbook" for this trip will be almost all electronic this year, somewhat as an experiment. We did create a small (24-picture) photo album that we could show around, but that won't be the final product. I'll post some of the 500 pictures we took to my website, and I'll also probably upload the audio journal entries we recorded during the trip.

But the ultimate goal is to use the photos we took, along with the audio entries and our own narration to produce a short trip summary on a DVD. It will be the first time I'll use the "Ken Burns effect" in iMovie. It will be a challenge to make this glorified slideshow short enough to not be boring, but long enough to highlight all the great things we did on the trip.

I have recently uploaded 84 pictures:
- New set of pictures of my daughters: July - September 2005 (26 pictures)
- The best 10% of the pictures we took during our Fall Foliage Tour 2005 trip (58 pictures)

Elena got sick at school last Thursday. I got a call from the school saying they couldn't get a hold of Donna (she was in meetings and has no cell phone). They got a hold of me, but I take the bus and so had no way to pick her up. As it was, Donna got there in an hour or so. Elena was asleep in the school office. They stayed there while Amanda went to dance class and then went home.

Elena's recovery has been slow but steady. She never threw up again (just once during recess at school), and her symptoms have not been severe. She has had a fever off-and-on for a few days, and at times had a cough bad enough to wake her up. Now, she has some lingering coughing and a runny nose. Otherwise, she is fully recovered.

But her illness had caused some changes in plans. We put our car shopping on-hold, after having only test-driven two cars. We also did not participate in the last soccer game and the end-of-season soccer party. That was no big loss, though. The girls never really enjoyed the soccer games (they never got the hang of not being able to take turns), although they liked the practices just fine. The soccer party is also when the trophys were handed out. We chose not to get the girls a trophy, so it's just as well we weren't there.

This weekend was a perfect storm of nice (un-hot) weather and no commitments, so we spent some of it re-doing a plant bed in the front yard. It has been an unkempt mess of asparagus fern surrounded by decaying landscaping timbers.

Over the past month or so, I'd been ripping out the well-established carpet of asparagus fern. That was a big job in itself, since the plant is a little prickery, and the root system is thick. With that done, we went to a garden store to get some flowers that would do well in that shady area.

We got some purple Verbena, pink Vinca, and two other kinds of flowers whose names I can't recall. The whole family had fun planting them in the bed, which we then covered up with some cedar mulch, which tends to last several years, as well as smelling great while it's fresh.

We kept the landscape timbers to save some money, but I did remove a whole section of the bed. There used to be three trees in the raised bed, but when we bought the house, two of the trees had been cut down and were just stumps. The bed was shaped like a "U" to encompass all three trees. Now, though, the two stumps have decayed enough that they can almost be planted on top of. But regardless, we certainly didn't need all that bedded area, so I removed several timbers and cut some that remained so I could take an arm off of the "U". I like the space much more now, althogh I still have yet to seed or sod the newly-exposed area.

Since then (Saturday), we've been watering it every day, with the hopes that at least half of the plants survive and spread. I'm pleased with the way it looks, and if the plants survive, it should look even better as the plants spread.

We were at Glen Rose this past weekend for the biennial Roden family reunion.

As we were leaving Big Rocks Park after having played and waded in the shallow water, a man with a camera asked if he could take Elena and my picture. We were scrambling on the rocks, and I was lifting her up onto a large one. I repeated the feat at his request. He took another picture of Elena climbing on the rocks as well.

My "parental radar" never went off during this. Perhaps it was because the photographer asked me directly about taking pictures. Perhaps it was because he did look like he was taking pictures of the site rather than trolling for little kids. Whatever the reason, I felt fine letting him take a few Big Rocks shots of Elena.

He then gave me a copy of his card, and he asked about setting up a blog, once I told him I'd link to his site from mine. I looked at the site, Texas Outside, and it looks pretty nice. I'm not sure what he'd use a blog for on that site, but I'll email him to see if I can help.

We had an eventful Sunday. After the normal Sunday morning activities (church and yardwork), we caught a 1:10 PM showing of the new Pixar movie Cars. It had gotten mixed reviews (stunning visuals, but hackneyed plot), but with a G rating and the past Pixar films among my favorites, it was a good opportunity to take my daughters to the movies.

They liked it, I think, although they were a little squirmy towards the end. I thought it was much better than some of the reviews it has received. It was visually breathtaking (the race scenes are spectacular), and the story was entertaining. We'll own the DVD shortly after it is released (just in time for the 2006 holiday season, I should think).

After the movie, we stopped at Old Navy to get some light sweaters for the girls, and then to Toys R Us to buy a bicycle for Amanda. We had gotten a really nice girls bicycle from a friend, so we got helmets and training wheels on Saturday. The bicycle fit Elena better, so that became hers, and she loved zooming up and down the sidewalk on her bike. We got a slightly smaller one (already assembled) for Amanda. She picked out a My Little Pony bicycle.

We then went to Sweet Tomatoes for a early dinner. It was just before 5:00 PM when we left the restaurant. The girls fell asleep on the short car ride home. I carried them in and let them continue their nap on the couch. But at 7:00 PM, an hour before their normal bed time, they were both still asleep! I gave them the carry test: if when I carry them to their beds and they continue to sleep, I consider them down for the night. That's just what happened to Elena - she got 13.5 hours of sleep last night. Amanda woke up twice (at 9:00 and 10:00) but both times not for very long. She got nearly 13 hours of sleep.

Today, it appears that the pre-assembled bike was not assembled correctly, as the training wheels are too low, causing the back wheel to not touch the ground (we haven't yet decided if we'll ask for our $10 assembly fee back). I'll fix it when I get home from work, but I hope Donna was able to survive their enthusiasm for a bike ride (they were asking about it even before I left for work this morning). I suspect fixing Amanda's bike will be the first thing I do when I walk in the door.

My alarm clock didn't go off this morning, even though I set it correctly as far as I can tell. It's a new clock radio I got for Donna for her birthday, but she had very specific requiremtns for a clock radio that this one did not meet. So, I replaced my own aging clock (with lighted blue digits) with this one. I felt a little guilty about keeping it for myself, since it was a present I bought for Donna, but I justified this by saying that Donna didn't like my clock radio anyway, and the digits on this one are big enough that she can see them without her glasses from her side of the bed.

So perhaps it was karma that prevented the alarm from going off at 5:00 AM this morning. As it was, I had just enough time to shower, get dressed, and leave to make my 7:00 AM meeting. I didn't even have breakfast. I never skip breakfast. At least I have a free lunch out today, so I can fill up then.