Last week we left the kids with my parents and took a cruise to the Bahamas.

It was my idea and a fabulous one at that.  Amanda and I drove down to Charleston, SC and got on the boat.  On the way, we visited Pinehurst, North Carolina which had just had a massive snowstorm– all of 2 inches. The entire county was closed. We were lucky to find somewhere to eat.

Overall, the trip was very relaxing, which was goal one.  We enjoyed the time on the road to and from SC (listening to podcasts, chatting, and playing the state license plate game.  It also only took 16 hours on the road before we stopped talking about the kids).  We also enjoyed the time on the boat.  It was like a little city (that was 12 decks high, a couple football fields long, and has a staff of people that wait on you day and night).  The part that we enjoyed the least was the ports.  We were dropped off in seaports where the only objective was for you to buy their stuff.  If we were to cruise again, we would map out each port ahead of time and make full arrangements for the day.

Every day I come home from work to find some new stack of books, Jonathan using new words, a new toy, newly painted artwork, or a house full of children running and screaming together.

Last week, I came home and there was some new artwork on the wall.  It was more of the impressionist type art work.  It was very good for his age category, I’m sure.

Later that evening I sat down on the couch and began watching a TV show and then realized that there was some weird bluish blob on the ottoman.  After a couple minutes of discussion with Amanda, we pieced together the day of activities which included the artwork which was created by dipping balloons in paint and then rubbing the balloons on the canvas.  Well, apparently, one of the balloons wasn’t totally cleaned off and Jonathan strolled off with it to the ottoman, and voila, I now have a brown ottoman with a dash of blue!

The day has finally come.  Jonathan has his own “safety blanket” for when he’s upset or a little uncertain of what’s going on.  Surprisingly it’s not a blanket or any physical item.  I finally noticed it tonight.  Everytime Jonathan gets upset or just is uncertain of if he’s in trouble he goes into the chorus of Old MacDonald.  He says as best as he can… E-I-E-I-O.  When we figured this out tonight, Amanda and I just started to laugh which made him smile and thus he started another line of E-I-E-I-O, which led us to laugh even more.

We started Christmas morning by walking downstairs to the family room.  Everything was in the family room and Amanda and I were so excited to see it all again after wrapping presents that evening.

We wanted to start the morning by using the nativity that we had set up in the family room to retell the story of Christ and his birth.  Trying to tell the story in the room with several hundred presents with a little boy was a slight oversight on our part, so most of the story got told in a “hurry up” fashion.  We will try this again next year in a room that is different from the room with the presents….

So we started to bring the presents out to Jonathan one at a time.  The first present was actually a toy that was passed down from someone else a couple days before.  We decided to give him the hand-me-down toys on Christmas so it was all on one day.  Well, Jonathan decided he liked some of the new toys a little too much.  We couldn’t distract him from the toys to his actual presents until I started to open some so that he could see that the presents were also toys.  In all, there was probably a 30 minute delay to opening the real presents.

At the end of the present opening for Jonathan, there was almost no floor in the family room that wasn’t covered with toy or wrapping paper.  I was impressed.  And I think that Jonathan gave equal time to each new toy or puzzle.  It was a lot of fun.

I made cinnamon rolls and coffee cake and both were exceptional.  We decided that all breakfast items should be made the night before.  It was a lot of running back and forth.

Finally, Amanda and I opened our presents.  Amanda got some amazing cookware and a cookbook that I had successfully hid from her for more than a month.  I got a puzzle, wii game, under armour and a football.  I did not get the football fully unwrapped before Jonathan’s eyes lit up and he said FOOTBALL! and took it from me before I could get it out of the package.  The rest of the day and all this week, when I’ve gotten home from work, we have run around the house with Jonathan running with his smaller football and me with my big football.

We also Skyped with my family and Amanda’s family which made the day feel a lot like a normal Christmas even though we are far away.  Our families got to see the carnage of the day and watch him run around.

It was a fun day.  Grace had no idea what happened.  

In October, I purchased a lenovo nettop for our entertainment center:

It is actually a Christmas present for later, but it’s up and running today… 

So, you might think, why would someone go out and buy a nettop instead of just using an old desktop?  Well, for me, I didn’t have an old desktop to use, although prior to the nettop I was using my laptop to do the same functions, but in using my laptop as our media center, I lost the use of my laptop for myself, it wasn’t always the best picture, I had to replace a battery once already ($80), and it sucked more power than I would have liked.

With the nettop, it plays netflix, hulu, and I can do skype pretty well.  I can’t get the Windows Media Center to work well.  With every patch or update, I have to reload hulu and netflix to get them to work without skipping again, so I only use the browser versions of hulu and netflix.  But, it’s a lower powered computer, it goes into power save mode automatically and can restart in the the time it takes me to push the on/off button, find my remotes, sit down, and turn on my TV.  It also came with a pretty neat (and small) wireless keyboard and mouse.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the nettop, but I wish that Windows Media Center would work better with it, so I could use 1 application to run everything.

About 2 weeks ago we purchased the ooma:https://web.archive.org/web/20130719035307if_/http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=kunzeman-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&asins=B002O3W4LEIt’s a VoIP phone that uses your internet provider to create a landline for you.  You can either plug it into your phoneline system of the house and use any phone jack in the house, or you can just plug a regular phone directly into the device itself.  You also get a phone number and it only costs you the government fees every year…. ~$12/year.  There is the upfront cost, but in reality the cheapest monthly phone price I can find is $10 + govt fees and taxes/month.  So it should pay for itself in the next year or so, but with Jonathan now we feel that we will probably always have a landline so that there is always a phone in the house even when we’re not.So far we’ve used it a couple times and no one is the wiser that we’re using a VoIP phone.  And another cool thing that I thought of was that as long as I go somewhere with an internet connection, I can plug this in and make calls for free with my number.  And, I assume that people can call to me…. If I want that.It’s my new toy of the week, that will hopefully save us millions!ck in …

Blacktopped the drive last weekend….and the weekend before……Let me tell you what I have learned.

#1. If you buy the cheapest sealer, you will use twice as much to surface the same area that the sealer that costs 5$ more per gallon costs….

#2. Don’t think that you can seal on two separate days and the two won’t look exactly like you sealed on two separate days.

#3. The cheaper sealer takes more time to seal and doesn’t apply as smoothly.

Also, it took me 6 – 5 gallon buckets to finish my drive and family sweeping it for me and it looks beautiful!