What Century Is This?

Over the past few days, there have been an uncanny amount of stories in the news regarding pirates.  No, not the kind that download music from file-sharing sites.  Real pirates.  The kind with wooden legs and parrots that poop on their shoulders.  As far as I can tell though, these particular pirates aren’t drinking rum and hooking up with wenches in the Caribbean, they’re hanging out in the waters off of Africa taking people hostage and demanding large ransoms.

For those who haven’t been following the news, let me catch you up to speed.  Basically some Somali pirates took over a Saudi supertanker.  Another band of pirates have hijacked a Thai fishing boat.  And a yet different band of hook-handed thugs had their ship sunk by India’s navy in the Gulf of Aden.  (I blame their failure on the fact that hooks don’t come with opposable thumbs.)

Remember Halloween?

If you were to walk into any store these days, you would probably think that the next holiday to be celebrated was Christmas.  Contrary to retailer belief though, we actually have two holidays, including one pretty major one, between now and Christmas.

In just a few short weeks, we will celebrate the end of the harvest by stuffing our faces.  This holiday is know as Hallowe’en or, if you’re not into traditional spellings, Halloween.  Ironically, we will not be partaking of the fruits of said harvest but will be gorging ourselves on sugary confections originating in Hershey, Pennsylvania and McLean, Virginia (home of M&M’s).

On Saturday, our ward held their annual trunk or treat. This is a safe environment where neighborhood kids can run around a parking lot and get candy from people sitting in and around their vehicles.  Normally, I try to encourage my kids to not take candy from people that are sitting in their car but for this, I made an exception.  We have about 4.3 million kids living within our ward boundaries so, as you can probably imagine, there were a lot of kids running around in costumes.

Happy Fourth Of July!

As a kid, whenever anybody would ask me what my favorite holiday was, the answer was obviously Christmas.  After all, what kid doesn’t like Christmas?  Free toys, lots of candy stuffed into clothing designed for feet, and did I mention free toys?

Now that I’m a bit older, I still love Christmas (I think it’s the free toys thing), but I’ve developed a deep appreciation for other holidays.  Thanksgiving is awesome but the Fourth of July holds a special place in my heart.  There’s something about seeing an American flag flying as a wing of F-16s fly overhead that makes me extremely grateful to live in this wonderful country.  Add to the the fact that we’ve developed some really fun family traditions, and you have a day that we all look forward to each year.

Happy New Year

I’m not big on the New Year’s holiday. I never have been. Celebrating arbitrary calendar events has never really been my thing. That being said, I wanted to wish all of our readers a healthy and happy new year full of much success.

As for your resolutions, hopefully they won’t be forgotten about within the first two weeks. If they survive through the month, consider yourself very successful.

Merry Christmas!

Well, the presents are open and the kids are playing with new toys. I thought that I’d take a minute as I rip Hannah Montana and High School Musical onto our computer for Emma and wish everybody a very happy Christmas.

The kids woke up bright and early today. Too early in fact; it was about 6:00 am. We opened presents and everybody seems pretty pleased with their haul. It was fun to see the kids so excited. We tried to take turns opening presents but things eventually broke down into chaos as the kids got tired of waiting to see what everybody else got before they could open more. Despite the mess, it was a lot of fun.

There were a lot of DVDs given today. I can’t wait to watch my copy of Weird Al Live. I’ll be fighting for the DVD player though with the kids. It seems like we have about 500 movies to watch now. It’s gonna be a busy week.

New Poll Time

I decided to throw a new poll up on the site for your voting enjoyment. For those who care, more of our readers like blue cheese than those who don’t.

This time, I’m asking if you’ve got your Christmas shopping done. For the record, we do. I think. I don’t plan on entering a store with the intent of buying presents until next year. Things may change but I think that we’re done. Now vote.

Halloween Pictures

A Letter To Santa

Emma recently wrote a letter to Santa in school. Actually, it’s not to Santa, it’s to Kristkindl. According to Emma, he’s Germany’s version of Santa.

Today Holly found the letter in the front window. I think that this German Santa enters houses through windows instead of chimneys. The most likely reason that he doesn’t do that here is because it’s called breaking and entering. I guess that it’s OK in Germany though. It’s definitely a lot easer to go through the window than down a narrow chimney. Especially if you’re a fat guy. I know that I wouldn’t want to go down a chimney when a window is readily available.

The letter was so amazing that I thought that I’d post it here for all to see.

Dear Kristkirol I was good all year. I would like a dog a toy tiger. If you see a little boy in the house, he was bad. I want a draw book. From Emma Zohner

Black Friday

I had a post all planned for last Friday but to be honest, I was way too tired to get on the computer and write anything. Unlike last year, this year’s Black Friday was a success… But just barely.

Everybody but Chelsea woke up around 3:00 in the morning and dressed for the cold. Chelsea never went to bed so she was awake and showered when we all got up. While I was getting coats, hats, and mittens on the kids, Holly made the traditional breakfast of Black Friday: leftover turkey sandwiches. Once those were done, we were off.

Holly dropped Chelsea and I off at Old Navy to stand in line for an hour while she went to JCPenney. It was cold. Somebody checked the weather from their cell phone and said that it was 9 degrees. Yeah. We’re stupid. But we got what we wanted.

Happy Halloween!

I’ve never done live blogging but I figure that now will be a good time to start. Technically it won’t be “live” since I’m not posting updates as they happen but I am writing as things are happening. So it’s kind of like a live blog recorded from an earlier performance like American Idol.

Right now, I’m at home watching television while blogging and running up and down the stairs to give candy to small people dressed like pirates, goblins, and who knows what else. Holly is with the kids going door to door, pillaging candy to bring home and reward me with. Why should I be rewarded you ask? Because I’ve run up and down the stairs at least 2.5 billion times. See, that’s what happens when you live in a neighborhood that has 8.2 trillion children in it like we do.