Dirkus Maximus

Yesterday afternoon we lost Kittywumpus! Someone ran over her in front of a bunch of school kids walking home and didn’t even stop.  By the time I found her she was already dead.   We love you and you will be missed Wumpus!

It seems that once again Albemarle Hospital has had to go out of their way to prove how bad they actually are.  I went up there today because I am having pain in my neck and back for no apparent reason.  I get up to the ER desk and they tell me they won’t treat me because I don’t have anyone with me who can watch my kids.  What kinda crap is that?  So if I had come in and was having a heart attack I can pretty much kiss my butt goodbye cause I didn’t drag a babysitter with me.  I ended up having to drive all the way to Chesapeake and go over to Chesapeake General to get treatment.    Chesapeake General does not seem to have an issue with patients that have children.  They told me that it appears to be a strained muscle and have me on muscle relaxers right now.  This hospital will be one more thing I do not miss after Dj finally gets done with college and we move from here.  Just a word of advice to all the N.C. folks out there, don’t waste your gas coming to Albemarle for anything. You will end up driving to Chesapeake for what you need in the end anyway.  Just go ahead and carry yourself to Chesapeake General, save yourself the trouble.

Well, Dj and I spent Sunday getting Andy’s big gift set up for him.  We decided Andy’s room seriously needed a make over this year.  I spent all day painting and getting new curtains and blinds put up for him. We also went and got him a new bed and mattress. His old one had seen better days many years ago!  We went with a loft bed with a desk under it since his room is so tiny.  I also went with a lighter color in his room so that it doesn’t look like he is living in a dark, walk in closet, anymore.  All and all it’s not too bad now.  He seems to like it too, he came home from school yesterday and passed out!  I’ll post some pic’s of the finished product.

Also I think we have finally decided that we will have his B-day at the place I hate the most on a weekend.  Yes, we are going to brave a Chucky-E-Cheese !  There is nothing I love to do with my weekend more I tell you, and his B-day falls on the weekend that spring break starts!  We will need prayers to make it out alive!  He’s gonna have a couple of friends go with him so it should be a fun time for the kids.  I’ll post pic’s when I get those as well!

Sorry, to anyone who checks this page on a regular basis for family news.  I have been staying pretty busy lately and in case anyone is wondering why Dirk has not posted anything recently it’s because he is busier than me.  We are both still working two jobs and Dirk is busy going to school right now.  He is doing awesome so far, all A’s for now.  He even ended up having to teach his class on Monday night.  The instructor was having a hard time explaining Trigonometry to the class.  After about 4 hours, Dirk asked if the teacher if he could give it a shot.  Got up there and sorted the class out in about 40 min.    As most of you also know by now, Dirk is not working as a trainer for Canon any longer.  He had to go back to doing tech support on the phones so that he can make it to school on time each day.  That new schedule started Monday and so far he hates the hours.  He’s not a big fan of getting up at 6am and not coming home till 1am.

As for the kids they are all doing well, the biggest thing going for them is we have Birthday’s coming up for Andy and Dirk.  I’m try to decide now what we will be doing for them, not real sure yet though.  If anyone has idea throw it out there for me.  I’ll consider it.

Lastly, I had a follow up yesterday with the Doctor after my surgery.  Everything is looking good and I have been given the all clear to lift weights again.  I’ll be starting back on that at the YMCA this evening.   Haven’t been allowed to do that for two weeks now.   Well I will end this here.  I’ll try to get Dirk to post something, if I ever see him again. 

Well I had my surgery today, so far everything is good.  I am hurting pretty bad right now but I’m hoping that will let up in the next day or so.  The doctor told me that they didn’t see anything to worry to much about, the tumor they removed was the size of a golf ball.  I should know more in about a week when they get the test results back from the lab about it.  In the meantime I am just trying to stay in one place and not move to much.  Moving hurts a lot right now!  Not an easy thing to do when you have 3 kids running around the house though.

Dj started school on Monday, so far things are going well for him there too.  He was out today at Hampton Roads Executive Airport, they where letting the class taxi airplanes around the strip there.  I am pretty sure Dj is gonna come home asking can he have an airplane now.  I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet, but from his posts on Facebook I would say he probably enjoyed himself.

The kids are doing well also.  It’s hard to believe that we are half way through the 3rd nine weeks already.  Addy and Andy both have some work to do on their grades.  Everyone has been keeping real busy though, the girls have been going to Enrichment Club every Thursday at the YMCA.  They get to swim, learn about healthy eating, climb the rock wall and other fun activities.  We are dropping them off on Saturday for Parents Night out as well.  The sad part is since I have to work tomorrow overnight and Dj probably needs to study, we will spend out parents night out with me sleeping and Dj buried in a book somewhere.  Oh well, gonna get off of here for now.  I need a pain killer and some sleep!  I’ll keep everyone posted on Dj’s schooling.

Well technically, today was not her birthday. It was on Feb 3, but since all of us are so busy during the week we decided to celebrate today. Dj the kids and I took mom out to her favorite restaurant, Cracker Barrel. She was fine with the meal until the part where the waitress came out and sang “Happy Birthday” to her with a hot fudge sundae. I thought for a moment there from the look I got that she was gonna beat my tail right there in the restaurant. All around it was not too bad. Leave her a message to say Happy B-Day! (more…)

Ok so besides the update made earlier I figured I would go back a add a post just to let everyone know what’s been up lately.  Dirk has not been keeping up with the posts to well lately.  But considering that both of us are working two jobs right now and he is in the process of getting enrolled to go back to school, I would say that is understandable.  As of right now he is supposed to be starting classes on Feb 22.  However, the enrollment process is being hampered by the fact that we still need our W2’s for 2009 in order to get this process completed and a couple of forms we are waiting on the Coast Guard to cough  up so that we can get the MGIB in place to pay for all this.  Dj is going to school to earn his Associate of Occupational Science in Aviation Maintenance Technology and to get his FAA A&P License, and maybe a private pilot license if he has time.  All this fancy talk basically means he will be able to repair and fly airplanes by the time he gets done.

Also, I had a Dr. appointment the other day. I found out that I have a tumor that they are going to have to remove.  So far they are not too worried about it being cancerous but we will have to wait and see.  They won’t be sure till they can get in there and take a look at it.  I will be having surgery on Feb 25 to get the tumor removed.  I’m really nervous but hoping everything goes ok.  I’ll keep everyone posted when it happens.

We have also manged to make it past another milestone, every year around this time something happens that I dread worse than anything else in the world.  The kids have science fair projects that are due!  This might not seem so bad to some people but I personally hate the science fair and wish it would die.  The only thing I can really see that they are trying to accomplish with these projects is to see how many forests one school can kill by using up a ton of paper.  Both Andrew and Ashley turned in the projects on Friday so I am officially done with science fair for this year.  Andrew decided to build a Mousetrap Powered Car this year and focus his project on Energy.  Ashley decided to go a little more simple this year and do her project on different materials and how they conduct heat.  But I am sure no matter how awesome the project we come up with, as in years past, the kids with the project about the moldy bread will win first prize.  Moldy bread is not first place material people, moldy bread is just gross!  Anyhow, as the moment that’s all we got going on around here.  I’ll be sure to post an update later in the month about the school situation and the Dr. appointment when we get more news on both!

I know that everyone today enjoyed waking up to the bit of global warming that we got overnight. We can all thank Ashley for that.  Ashley has been praying for seven months now that God would please send her some snow, if he’s not too busy that is.  Well, she didn’t get if for Christmas like she was hoping so apparently he must have been saving up for her.  We got about three inches around here and the roads are horrible.  I worked overnight last night and got to drive home this morning in it.  Life was all good until I hit the VA/NC state line, I was able to follow the snow plow all the way up 17 until I hit the state line.  The plow turned around at the line and nothing had been sanded or plowed on the NC side of the line.  Total drive home this morning was about 2 hours so  I was totally over the whole snow thing by the time I got home.  Of course the kids are just getting up at this point and are ready to go out in it.  The kids built a snowman and part of a snow fort and made a brief attempt at a snowball fight before deciding it was too cold to be outside anymore and heading back inside for some hot chocolate.  Got some good pic’s of the kids with their snow fort.

I’m trying to get the girls into model building, kinda like I tried to get Andy into it. I let them do all the painting on the big stuff, and I handled painting the tiny bits. Ash seems to like working on them, and wanted her F4U-1 Corsair hung above her bed. She did a lot of the assembly and helped with almost all the decals. Addy was kinda into it, but didn’t seem overly enthused with following through to finish her P51 Mustang. I ended up finishing that up and putting all the decals on it while she played on the XBox with Andy. She’s gonna let me have that one for work though, so I can’t complain too loudly!

I took the kids and Wes up to Fun Junktion today. It’s E-city’s version of Mt Trashmore. While the girls were playing on the playground, Wes and Andy and I went looking for geocaches.

Geocaches are hidden containers that are listed online by nothing more than the latitude and longitude of the cache. Think of it as a global-scale game of hide-n-seek. Most caches are just a waterproof container with a log book inside, but others have stickers and stuff. We only found one of the two geocaches we looked for, but it was still fun. I left my name in the log, and left a pen behind since there wasn’t one in there. The title of this geocache was “ChiaCache Lives!” I’d log onto geocaching.com and log my find, but they seem to have some issues with account creation at the moment.

I think the full version of the geocaching.com app may end up being the first paid app on my iPhone!

Happy anniversary to us! As of today, Wes and I have been married for 12 years.

I’d like to toss a HUGE thank-you out to Je’aime. He agreed to watch the kids for a little bit while Wes and I ran out to try and enjoy a little “us” time. YOU RULE.

So what did we do? Well, we started with a nice steak dinner at The Marina over on the Camden causeway right across the harbor from our neighborhood. I guess it was just too cold for anyone else to go out, as we pretty much had the entire dining area to ourselves the entire time. The food was good, the view was awesome, and the wait staff was on the ball. Dinner was great.

After that, we checked to see if there were any movies playing in the E-City area worth watching. Seeing as I wasn’t real keen on watching “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeekuel” the answer was “No.”

So what did we do? Well, I gotta tell you, I’m a real ladies man. I know how to really show my wife a good time. We went out to the Wal-Mart!

Seriously though, Wes had been talking about needing a new jacket and her gloves were looking pretty sad, so I got her one of each. We also went hunting for wal-creatures for peopleofwalmart.com, but we didn’t have any luck catching one with my camera. Maybe next time.

Second in a series of catch up posts, let’s talk about Halloween!

My family and I spent our Halloween weekend at Chippokes, working at that craftshow-turned-manhunt that I just posted about. We went out on Halloween night to raid the streets of historic downtown Smithfield.

Pro-tip; if you’re the first person on the street, DO NOT give out little smiley pumpkin toothbrushes as “treats” or you will get nasty, NASTY looks and comments from even the most gentle looking little witches and wizards. (Yes, this really happened.)

Over all the haul wasn’t horrible, and the variety was OK, and the houses looked pretty awesome. There was one house with a closed in haunted porch thing that Addy refused to go into. The other two went in there like it was nothin’ though. I’ll post some pictures after the jump… (more…)

Friday was Adriana’s 8th birthday, and we’ve been busy all weekend long. It started Friday afternoon with a little cookout at my house, with cake and presents. My mom gave Addy a DS Lite and a game for her birthday, and that was pretty much all she wrote. She was nose-down in that for the rest of the evening. To see pics from that, and the rest of the things we’ve done this weekend, click on through… (more…)

Cake and ice cream at Dirks house! I’ll update with pics later.

I took a week off a little while ago to decompress from work stress and come back to attack things anew (Can I have a new manager? Please?) so I had some time to play with the kids. I tried to get Andy to work with me to solve a simple challenge; build a bridge from the coffee table to the wood stove using K’Nex that would support Ashley’s barbie car. He of course tried to turn it into a competition, so he lost and Adriana and I won. After we stomped him in the initial challenge, Ashley then decided to help see just how long we could make the bridge. The final result was a bridge 11 feet. four inches long, that could span across my entire bedroom. It was actually pretty impressive. Of course, we then had to test it to see how much weight it could hold before shattering into a million pieces. (not a lot) Read on to see pics and video… (more…)

Here’s some pictures from Ashley’s 10th Birthday party, back on the 15th. I’ve been meanign to post these but just hadn’t had the chance. We went to Chuck-E-Cheez for lunch, then to my parent’s house for dinner and cake. Ash had Wes whip up one of her eclair cakes for her birthday, so you better believe that thing was gone in like 5 seconds flat. We got her an iPod shuffle for her birthday this year, one of the previous generation units that has controls that make sense and stuff. (Side note toApple: WTF, seriously? Why did you screw up the shuffle SO BADLY for the current generation of hardware?! Don’t do drugs!) She also wanted some Michael Jackson tracks, so we got her the itunes essentials collection, and preloaded that on there along with some of the music she likes from Wes’s iTunes library. You can catch a gallery of all the pics after the jump… (more…)

The kids and I finally visited a place we’ve driven past a zillion times and had always been curious about. The Recycled Reader is freakin’ awesome. If you’re looking for a good used book store, this is the place. It’s dirt cheap too.

I have officially made it so that my wife can no longer enjoy store-bought strawberry ice cream.

On a whim, Wes and I decided to try making ice cream in the ice cream machine we managed to get from Mark a while back. (THANKS MARK!) We’d already used it once to make grape slushie from koolaid, but we hadn’t really tried our hand at ice cream. I found a simple recipe for strawberry ice cream, since Wes had gotten a good deal on a couple tubs of big, juicy strawberries the other day.

Seriously, BEST DAMN ICE CREAM EVAR. Download the recipe card here.

I plan on making another batch Real Soon Now, maybe I’ll document and post the step-by-step here.

Happy 4th everyone! I hope everybody made it through another year with all 10 digits intact!

We went up to my parents house for dinner this year. We had some pork ribs and some fresh corn on the cob, good stuff! After that, we headed on home to catch the fireworks. We didn’t really do anything in the way of explosives this year ourselves, due to low funds, but the show down at the waterfront made up for it. We trespassed just a tiny bit and watched the show at the waterfront from right ON the water, a couple hundred yards from the barge they were using. The show was right over top of us, and they barely set the barge on fire at all this year!

After the show, we walked home while people in the neighborhood shot off their own slightly illegal fireworks and the guys on the bage fired off the few mortars that were too stubborn to fire off during the show and needed the “encouragement” of getting hit with a road flare. When we got home, we lit off a few dozen sparklers, and I tried to get everyone to write their names in the air with them on long exposure pictures. You can see pics of everything after the jump! (more…)

Since the fourth of July falls on a Saturday this year, Canon gave me a floating holiday to make up for having a “day off” when I would normally be off anyway. I took it today to get some things done around the house. I changed the oil in my car, pulled a nail out of one of my tires and patched it, gave Wes’ car a once-over, cleaned out our fish pond, and took care of a few other things around here. Then Wes and I stopped by some old fella selling fresh produce from the back of his pickup truck on the side of the road and got some fresh sweet corn (a baker’s dozen for $3, can’t beat that!) and had some steaks on the grill.

My car is still sporadically making that whirring, not-quite-grinding noise from the area of the alternator and idler pulley. I took it to toyota yesterday morning, and of course it stopped making the noise the second I headed in that direction. Seeing as there’s no way to diagnose a funny noise when there IS no funny noise, I had to turn around and go on to work with it anyway. And of course, it started making the damned noise again the moment I headed home. The really messed up part about this is that the only reliable source for parts is Toyota directly. Autozone et al don’t have the parts yet because the vehicle is fairly new and it isn’t being made in large numbers. This means I get shafted by Toyota for parts. Care to guess how much they want for an alternator? How about SIX HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS. I’m not sure how much an idler pulley is, but if the alternator is any indication, that wouldn’t be cheap either. Plus the bastages want an $85 diagnostic fee just to stand around point and grunt at my engine and isolate which of the two is failing, or if I’m completely off and it’s something else entirely. I have no idea where I’m gonna pull that money from, but I suppose I’ll just have to make it work. Wish me luck!