For your listening pleasure...

Today was "back to work" after a nice, long week off. As we often do, the children picked a CD to listen to over lunch. Only, they don't so much listen as they do try to out-sing one another. My favorite family moment is at second 15 on the second video, when Paul clocks his brother in the head for singing wrong.

Because yes, we are THAT AWESOME!

For those who have not yet heard, the Beckers will soon become a family of eight. Yes, indeed; this May we are expecting yet another offspring. As a result of this addition, our family will no longer fit in our (paid for, wonderful, easy to drive and park) mini-van. So, the time has come to upgrade to a MEGA-van.
This here green monster is a 15 passenger Chevy Express 3500. It's 13 feet long and 7.5 feet high. I'm more than a little scared of it. It makes our min-van look like a little toy car. But, it was either this thing or a limousine, and we couldn't find a good price on any used limos.
And just to quickly re-visit yesterday, we ended up with seven pies. Two pumpkin, cherry, triple berry, chocolate cream, pecan, and lemon meringue. Oh, mercy, they were good. We only have a few lonely slices left.

Pie.

Sideways pie (stupid photo uploader...) This one is pecan, if you couldn't tell. I like pie, probably as much as I like donuts, which is a lot. I made five pies for tomorrow- two pumpkin, triple-berry, chocolate cream, and Mr. Pecan up there. I'm feeling like I should make a cake or pudding or something, you know, to round out the menu. But I'm the cook, and I like pie! I have more dough in the fridge, so maybe tomorrow morning I'll whip up a lemon meringue or a cherry. Forget turkey; tomorrow is Pie Day.

May the Force be with you, son.

Joe has just informed me that Jedi knights can fight better when they are blindfolded. I suggested that since he is not, to my knowledge, a Jedi knight, that he might do better practicing the piano without his hat pulled down over his eyes. It was just a suggestion; I will leave it to him to explain his methodology to his piano teacher.

The Way Things Ought To Be

Monday through Friday, the children get up early, get themselves cleaned up, and start right in on chores and school work. Sunday, of course, we're out the door for church. But, O! To be a kid on Saturday morning! They stumble out from their rooms as early as 6 a.m., bleary-eyed and scruffy, to settle in for cartoons Three glorious hours of mind-numbingly insipid twaddle, interspersed with commercials for sugary cereal and overpriced toys. Bliss!

Remembered.

Usually I write about all the funny or naughty stuff the kids are up to, but today, I'll wax a bit more somber. Veteran's Day should be a bit somber, after all. It comes as a great disappointment, and really a dishonor to the meaning of the day, that there were no local services or ceremonies to remember our veterans. I remember looking for something like that to take the children to last year as well, and was not able to find any kind of public memorials. The store parking lots on Jefferson Road, however, were jam-packed. Therein lies the hearts of Americans.
So the children suggested we visit their great-grandpa's stone at the cemetery. We were very pleased to see that at least here, there were flags on all the veteran's graves. We walked around and looked at a lot of the other vet's stones, to see their dates of service and the other things that were listed. We even saw one purple heart recipient. The kids were all very interested, and had lots of questions, and shared lots of memories of their grandpa.

Sneak Preview and Editor's Cuts

Unedited, and in the raw. Our 2009 Christmas card photo shoot. Which looks very similar to our 2008 and 2007 photo shoots, only now with a dog.
We'd finally mastered the art of arranging children, running to push the timer button, then jumping into the photo before the timer went off. Then we got a dog, who is not the least bit sympathetic to the difficulties of group portraiture.
All that running, jumping, and shouting makes her a little jumpy herself. But, we got a few shots that we might be able to use, nonetheless.

Super Happy Crazy Funtasticness

Today, we went to the Strong National Museum of Play. As it turns out, they were inducting three new toys in to the Toy Hall of Fame (oh yes, there is such a thing!) Since we were there anyways, we went to see the "ceremony". The kids were hoping we'd get on the news- there was a lot of press there. Now that election day is past, they have to show something on the news, and this is probably as important as anything else they can think of to report on.
After the big ceremony, we hit the rest of the museum. Really, I don't feel right calling this place a museum. Museums should be quiet and dusty and full of cases of rock specimens and insects with pins through them. This place is more like Chuck E. Cheese on an acid trip. Everything is colorful, noisy, child-sized, gimmicky, and frantic. Up above is the miniature kid-sized grocery store experience.
They had a special display- a whole room full of full-size vintage arcade games. Joe liked Pac-Man. I tried to teach Naomi Frogger. Paul kept seeming to lose his tokens in broken machines.
This place is huge. Since we have a membership and can get in free anytime we want (normal admission price for our family costs more than buying a one-year membership), we didn't even attempt to do everything there. I'm now ready for a looong nap in a dimly lit room.

Today is Monday

It has been brought to my attention that I have not updated this blog in a few weeks. That is because, quite simply, things have been very dull.Of course, things have been dull here for quite some time, and it hasn't stopped me from posting about all of our glorious dullness.

This is what it looks like pretty much every day here. Eat, study, play, let the dog out; repeat. We've been getting lots of work done, much to the dismay of the children.

Every single morning, after breakfast, the children run off and hide in the far corners of the house. Every single morning, I track them down and round them up and start them on their studies. Every single morning, every single child lets out a long whine-"Awwww, why do we always have to do work in the morning!!"

You'd think they wouldn't be so surprised by this; like I said, we follow the same routine, every single morning. So, now you are up to date!

The only other thing we've been up to lately is buying a lot of stuff. This is my new oven, it arrived yesterday. I'm taking it for it's inaugural run with a Lemon Pudding Cake. The old oven (which was not that old, and quite expensive when I bought it!) was mostly broken for over a year, after having spent most of it's life mostly broken in some way or another. The plan was to sell this house, and let the broken oven be somebody else's problem, but since that is not happening as quickly as we'd hoped, and I absolutely could not live with the old oven for one more day, we got a new one.

This is my new guitar. My old one was not broken, but it was an entry level model and I was ready to upgrade. This one is pretty. I'm actually not sure yet if I like playing it better than the old one; I'm still working out some kinks in the set up, but it's pretty! I also got a pretty new strap and some other pretty new guitar accessory junk. Also in the new-stuff front, I got a new camera, that I've been wanting for quite some time. I didn't take its picture; I didn't want my old camera to be insulted by having to photograph its replacement.