Stardate 59122.2
Rachel is 10. Wow, I’ve been a dad for a whole decade now. We joked about her being double digits or two handfuls now. As our first child, I think we made more mistakes with her, especially being over protective and wanting to have exact control over everything in her life. Over the last ten years I’ve learned to loosen up, much to the relief of both of us. We have involved conversations on diverse subjects including George Washington, governments, and the latest, static electricity. The next ten years will probably be far more interesting and challenging.
Rachel’s birthday party was described by her as the best ever. April organized an American Girl Hawaiian party. Six other girls came over to our house: Audra, Shelby, Sara, Fiona, Liz, and Rachel S. They did a treasure hunt, limbo, had pizza with pineapple, and made monkey tails (bananas with pudding). My only job was to take her brothers away. Patrick wanted to see “Yours, Mine, and Ours”, but the only show time in Layton was 11:40 A.M., which was too early to go and keep them out of the way. So we went to the Nickelcade. This gave me a sense of deja-vu, and another reason for doing blogs. See the 1/4/2004 entry, third paragraph. I thought I was simply repeating what I did last year, but this was TWO years ago. Patrick is not as interested in the arcade anymore, more than likely because he has better games on the P/S2 at home. Nobody was interested in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.
After a few weeks of temperatures in the teens and single digits, it snowed last weekend. The snow did not stay, because it warmed up into the 40’s and 50’s. After that kind of cold, it seems almost balmy now. Rachel went to stay with her Aunt Susan, and the boys and I went to Kaysville’s Ponds Park to sled. They had fun, but in about an hour both of them were huffing climbing the hill. They’ve been playing a lot of P/S2 lately, but since the neighborhood kids are still in school, they can’t think of what else to do. They did go out and build snowmen, and we’ve had a couple of snowball fights. Rachel and her aunt went to see the Chronicles of Narnia, which they both liked. Rachel had read the book already. She told us she saw the trailer for the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean.
The van went into the dealers on Monday to check out a squeal in the braking system as you back up. April talked to them over the phone, and they told us it was a bad hose, and it was covered under the warranty. When we got it there, they tried to tell us it was the pads, and not under warranty. They called in the afternoon to tell me it was a cracked seal, and that was covered. I thought it was strange one guy was adamant the problem was the pads. It didn’t fit from what I was seeing.
Christmas is almost here. The arguments over how to greet people seem silly to me. Yes, Merry Christmas is Christian in origin, but I think most mean it more as a have a good time, without the religious overtone. Christmas itself is based on replacing pagan rituals, and many of the traditions are borrows from pagan time, or recent commercial inventions. Happy Holidays is more generic. Personally, use whatever greeting you would like, I’ll take it as wishing me well.
Favorite quote: “Only you would remember the band Quiet Riot” - April
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