Some of you may have wondered at my absence from the family photos that were posted yesterday. Let’s just say that I came to the negative attention of the Blog Taunting Police, whose authority is much more far-reaching than you might suspect. Kathy and I agreed not to further aggravate the matter by posting any pictures that featured me; I didn’t want to come across publicly as defiant or unrepentant, after all the wife- and blog-reader taunting that transpired.

Based on advice from legal counsel I have retained, I may further jeopardize my precarious standing with the BTP (Blog Taunting Police) unless I am very careful with any public statement. Suffice it to say that it is now permissible for me to post one of my favorite pictures from the CD, if only to prove that I did, in fact, attend the photo-shoot:

As you can see, all was forgiven, at least by my daughters.

You’ll just have to take it from me that my ‘interview’ with the BTP (let’s just say they didn’t offer me any Nutella) has produced in me a sudden desire to cater to our discerning blog readers. I heartily repent of my evil and ill-conceived picture-posting-post (PPP).

As Kathy mentioned, I was very pleased with the CD of pictures we received, and was forced to eat some humble pie after all my swaggering statement: there is no way I could have taken these pictures (especially since I was, in fact, in several of them.

Today we had the privilege of lighting the first Advent Candle at church — we all wore red shirts and many of us dressed in black pants or skirts. (To clarify, Kathy wore a black skirt and I wore black pants, not the other way around.) We read a passage from Isaiah and related one of our family Christmas traditions. As we sat down, I felt vaguely disappointed … we dressed up all ‘matchy-matchy’, but nobody took hundreds of pictures of us! Gone was the happy chatter of camera shutters … how fleeting was our fame!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this. Isaiah 9:6-7

Tim

Tim and I spent hours (okay minutes) reviewing the family pictures we received yesterday from the photographer, once the Blogosphere Taunting Police (BTP) finished questioning him, and reluctantly released him on his own recognizance.

“Let that be a lesson to you, Mister,” they warned him sternly. “Some of your blog readers don’t take kindly to that kind of taunting, and one or two of them have friends in high places.” Tim was a little shaken by the hours he spent under the interrogation lights, down at BTP headquarters. But I digress.

The pictures are GORGEOUS!!! Can I say that when it’s my own family? Is there any possible way that I can be objective?

Well, I take a LOT of pictures of my beautiful family and I rarely (okay never) call them GORGEOUS. Cute, sweet, dear, fun maybe, but not GORGEOUS.

I have to put in a huge plug for our photographer, Crystal. She did an outstanding job on our family portraits. She is currently working part time for a professional photography company while establishing her home studio. Crystal is offering a pretty fair deal for an hour-plus sitting ($75 plus tax). She works with each family, taking the pictures and poses requested, and then mails out a cd with ALL the photos. From there families are free to pick the ones they like and have them printed anywhere (Costco, Kodak, CVS, etc) they choose.

Even Mr. Cynical (”I don’t like to waste my time sitting in a studio when I can take pictures myself”) was truly impressed. Have I already stated that the shots are GORGEOUS? Just wondering.

Now we’re all fighting over which one we like best.

Too hard to choose - there are so many! Wow.

Crystal’s home studio is in the Puget Sound region, and I can’t recommend her services highly enough. If you are local and in need of a photographer, contact us for recommendations.

The only problem we had at our studio appointment was getting Joshua to smile. The rest of the crew was susceptible to silly jokes and the playful attitude of the photographer. Not Joshua: he was a rock. A pleasant, smiling-because-I-have-to, grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it, kind of rock.

Joshua’s tendency to bang his head against the side of the wall when I announced we had forgotten to take one last round of pictures was a bit distracting, but we managed to ignore him. I’m afraid all my blogging and extensive picture taking have completely exhausted his patience.

Next year (can you hear Joshua’s groans from where you’re sitting, when I say the words “next year”?) I’m going to come armed with a list of key words that will extract a natural smile (maybe even a wry chuckle) out of Joshua.

Cephalopod
Stanley Leonardo Sappovitz
“Oh wait, we left Jimmy!”
“You take care of your noof spiff, I’ll take care of mine.”

Maybe I’ll prepare a flashcard for each of the children.

Kathy

We recently had a photo shoot, about which Kathy wrote: Why Models Never Smile. It was quite the family outing, right up there with cutting a Christmas Tree or going to the Pumpkin Patch, but with none of the fun.

Actually, the photographer was pretty funny, working hard to get us all to smile or laugh, bossing us around in fine style, and keeping a running count of the number of times Joshua rolled his eyes. She tried to steal my Diet Coke, though, which was not quite so amusing — photographers need to know where not to cross the line.

Today the disk with the pictures arrived in the mail. Kathy saw the mailman coming (and even tried to wait for him) but had to go out, and so the disk was left for me to discover. “It’s a good thing Tim isn’t tempted by that sort of thing,” she consoled herself. “He’ll have no trouble waiting until I come home, so we can look at the pictures together.”

I called Kathy as I ripped open the envelope and slapped the picture disk into the CD tray — I was redirected to voicemail, since she apparently screens her calls. “Hey, Sweetie, just wanted you to know that the photo disk arrived today — I’m just loading the images onto your computer … ”

As I tell my boys, wife-taunting is a major perk of being married.

I received a call back almost before I had finished leaving the message. “What?” shrieked my bride, as I hurriedly adjusted the volume controls on my phone. “You had better just walk away if you want to see another sunrise, or whatever they call it when the sun comes up in the, er, ‘morning’.” (My beloved doesn’t really believe that there are two 7 o’clock hours in each day.) As threats go, it wasn’t particularly articulate, but chillingly effective, nonetheless. I backed slowly away from her computer, leaving the mouse pointer poised suggestively over the ‘OK’ button on the Image Loader wizard window.

I guess I’ll just have to wait until she gets home. Unless I were to pop the disk out and load them on a different computer, and then put it back …

Nah, she’ll ask me point-blank if I looked at ‘em, and then I’d dig myself even deeper. I’d better just wait …

What if I only looked at one picture, would that count? I could then ‘honestly’ say, “No, dear, I didn’t look at the pictures!”

Oh, I can’t stand it. I’ll just have to post a picture, so you can all enjoy. Here it is (scroll down):

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Keep scrolling …

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There. I shared the whole disk with you. Nobody can say I’m stingy.

Tim
Project 365, Day 334

Our family likes to laugh. I’d go so far as to say our family loves to laugh. We might even be addicted to laughter. It’s a sickness but we’re getting help. One source of help is a Christian comedian we recently discovered by the name of Tim Hawkins. He has several cds and dvds for sale on his website. We watched all the clips and then searched for more on youtube.com and godtube.com. He has some hysterical songs online including, Things Not to Say to Your Wife, Kid Rock and Parents are People.

Disclaimer - humor is a personal expression and people differ on what they find amusing, appropriate and relevant. Tim Hawkins material is relatively family friendly and from a Christian source, but it is humor and therefore might benefit from previewing.

Pop over to Rocks in My Dryer for other Works for Me Wednesday ideas.

Kathy

For the past two years and more, my beloved Kathy has carefully regulated the foods she eats. As with many frothing fanatics enthusiasts, it wasn’t long before her critical attention fastened on those around her with less healthy eating habits.

While I’m not quite in Scott’s league with his love for Cheese, I certainly enjoy food a lot more than is good for me. I almost never wake up hungry, and I’m often at work an hour before my thoughts turn to breakfast. At the office, culinary options are minimal, and I often settle for Diet Coke and Pop Tarts, known in Olympic circles as the Breakfast of Also-Rans® ™.

It didn’t take long for Kathy to suggest that I eat some of her healthy pancakes for breakfast, instead of my sugar-saturated fare. Her pancakes come fortified with egg, blueberries, steel-cut oats, and a variety of other complex grains which defy the body to metabolize them in less than five or six hours.

I tried ‘em:

“Hey, these are like hockey pucks made out of sawdust! Who ruined these poor blueberries?”

It is these little supportive comments that set me apart from other, less sensitive, husbands.

Kathy’s beloved grill and waffle-maker

Kathy was unamused. Craftily balancing the oat-to-sugar ratio, and adding pineapple or mandarin oranges as available, she came up with a delectable recipe that I can eat without complaint, and which is filling enough to last me the long, weary hours until lunch. (This was a significant improvement over the Pop Tarts, which stave off hunger for about 15 minutes).

At first, Kathy pain-stakingly grilled my pancakes on our griddle, but she soon found a quicker way to make them: the delightful George Foreman Grill that her Mom sent for her birthday. These days she usually makes a large batch of the pancakes on Sunday nights, and freezes them the rest of the week, for the days I don’t work from home. Each morning, when I get to work, I pull them out of my lunch bag happily and reheat them, chortling gleefully in my cubicle, to the general consternation of my co-workers.

Today, the chortling was cut tragically short. As I examined my pancakes (actually now in the form of waffles), I realized that the re-assembled shape of the tasty jigsaw was incomplete — someone had eaten one of my pancakes. I present Exhibit A below, with the missing piece carefully highlighted, for your consideration:

Who could have done this dastardly deed?

Here I was, slaving my little fingers to the bone, rising well before there is anyone around to call me blessed, sacrificing my time and energy to support my little family; yet someone, probably a trusted member of my own household, was guilty of this vile theft. My blood boiled and epithets formed on my lips: Pancake Purloiner! Waffle Weaseler! Flapjack Finagler!

I called my carpool buddy, who I assumed must have ‘liberated’ one of my pancakes while my attention was on the road: “Al, how dare you eat one of my pancakes?”, I shouted into the handset. (I’ve often been praised for my diplomacy and tact.)

Of course, Al denied the theft, and our company physician staunchly and uncharitably refused to stomach-pump him for evidence. As I filled out the Crime Complaint Form on the Washington State Patrol forensics website, I sadly checked the theft by persons unknown box.

One jar to rule them all, one jar to find them …

There was really only one thing I could do that would console me in this bitter loss: I turned for comfort in this dreadful hour to a birthday present I received from a good friend: my faithful jar of Nutella.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t how Kathy envisioned her pancakes being eaten …

Tim
Project 365, Day 319