Memnison Journal

We spent all of Saturday being very quiet around the house; everyone was very very tired from the bustle of the holidays, and Susan’s knee was swollen and painful. (She’s been fighting off this arthritis stuff a lot, and things like walking a lot or shoveling snow have just been killing her.)
 
So we declared the [...]

Day three of the Sissy visit: pictures at Susan’s photo-blog.
Susan:
Today was the American Girl Place shopping spree. The girls got up and showered. Dash was a happy dog since she got to shower with me and then with the girls. I poked my head in the bathroom to see if everything [...]

From Susan’s photoblog (Sunday)  (picture links here):
Earlier tonight we picked Meredith Ellen up from the airport.  Sissy is here for the next 6 days.  We’ve got manicures and pedicures, American Girl Place tea parties, New Years Eve Parties to cram into the next 6 days.
Meredith Grace was barely able to contain her excitement in waiting [...]

This was a very odd Christmas for me; some really high points and low points. Some old traditions unexpectedly brought back, and some things mucked.  Julbord and full holiday report after the cut:

Went out and got prescription reading glasses today; my prescription is +1.75, and they work very nicely.  Worst part was slipping and falling HARD on the slick tile floor just inside the Vision Works store; as I’ve said before, with my cruddy balance, I learned long ago to fall down the best way I can [...]

Now comes the rush to the holiday…to children, it seems like it takes forever until Christmas, but I got news for ya, Kids - it’s a whole lot busier for the grownups, who have to make sure that everything gets done in the process…like fixing up the house, or shopping for presents, or hoping that [...]

Mere’s top wish for Christmas is a Mere-sized laptop, Ubuntu Linux only, please.   We know that her own laptop is something that she’s wanted for a while; the PC she ‘owns’ is my old one, and it’s a little slow in spots.  I’m not sure if we could gas it up with some RAM and [...]

I’ll sit down and go over the Presidents Thang in a day or so.  Right now, I’m busy fishing the big Digital Organization, to be followed up with more organizing tricks tomorrow.  So I’m Really Busy As Heck with that stuff. 
Meredith had a good deal from Sinterklaas, with lots of pepernoten / kruidnootjes and [...]

I have one of these at home.

Meredith stayed home from school on Monday (her birthday) sick, and we were nervous - she’d reported a tightness and pain in her chest, and THAT got our attention in a major way.   Luckily, though, she perked up considerably, and she’s doing much better.   She walked to school with her pals Melody and Cheyenne (twins, [...]

Silly daddy collects all sorts of pictures of Meredith’s past birthdays.  Meredith - happy ninth birthday, sweetie!
And for Meredith Ellen - just wait till we can all celebrate together later this month:

(the twins celebrating their 4 1/2 birthday together)

I’m noticing that a lot of my friends-list and others online - and the few I talk to on the phone (man, I am so housebound) - are going to take the holidays easy, cheap and local this year.  Our household will, as usual, trot out to Susan’s aunt Marlyce’s house and do the holiday [...]

Meredith in my lap at Windycon, being vivacious - courtesy of Lisa Ragsdale:

Notice the lack of beard, of course.

Meredith’s 1st trimester in 4th grade just ended up, and she did very well.    She had a rocky spot with her advanced math class in regard to a few things - most notably statistics, my absolute downfall in math.  (My Eyes Glaze Over on that sort of thing, and I did wretchedly in a college [...]

The ‘audition’ stuff, much as I had expected, turned out to be a situation where they were willing to take on Mere as a student, with a $2300+ fee for the acting lessons, etc.  Plus running her back and forth for all sorts of lessons quite some distance away.
The answer is:  we can’t afford it.  [...]