Super Bowel Sunday

Things were pretty good around here for most of the week.

Riley is singing along to lots of songs and can recognize songs within the first few notes in most cases. If he didn't get his mom's musical ability, I hope he at least got both of our good tastes.

On Monday, Riley used the big boy toilet on his own request. He has now used it every day this week. He still mostly uses his diaper, but if you put him on the pot, he'll make something come out.
He's still pretty early to be potty trained, especially for a boy, so we have no expectation of full success any time soon. But it is a positive first step.

He's also gotten into putting toys where they aren't supposed to be.
Many of his small toys ended up in his ball popper this week.






and he thinks he's funny.





As the week wore on, Saints fever took hold of everyone in town.
On Thursday, my office has Saints Day, culminating in some people parading around the office.






Friday evening, we ate at Pop's Black Pot with Joan's parents, Caroline and Liz.
If you haven't tried it before, they are off of Saloom road, kinda diagonal from Fresh Pickins, next to Oishi Sushi. They are open for lunch during the week and for dinner wed-fri.
Sandwiches, burgers, plate lunches and some fried seafood. Family owned and friendly.





Riley and Caroline ran around and played with one of the owners' daughters.





Joan and I split the Pop's crazy burger, which is really good. I tacked on a cup of gumbo, which was good, and, at 2.95, was a great value.




Saturday we had lunch from ________ (fill in the blank) and dinner at O'charley's.

All downhill from there.
At about 8, I started having abdominal pain like nothing I've ever felt before.
After becoming well acquainted with the cold floor in front of the toilet, it wasn't getting any better. So after reading up on the warning signs of bum gall bladders and appendices and a coupe of hours of internal debate, around 2 am, I headed to the LGMC ER.

After an hour and a half, I got called back and had an IV inserted (1st in my life).
An hour and a half later, I finally saw a doctor.
Fortunately the signs all pointed toward no major (read: surgical) problems.
Good news of course , but sometimes you wish there was an explanation for why you are in the most pain of your life. Doc said it could be anything: virus, food poisoning, bigger problems that had not yet fully manifested, or just random bad luck.

Oh well. I left 5 hours after getting there, and having not slept for 25 hours, with a script for an anti-spasm med. No real pain today, but lots of nausea. Couldn't even stay at my Mom's house to watch the game 'cause the smell of the gumbo was making me almost lose it.
And I haven't been able to eat any of the chocolate covered "Fleureos" from Cakes by Paperwings (look her up on Facebook) but everyone said they were really good.

But I'm not the real story.
How 'bout them Saints?
What a ridiculous game.
Right now I wish I owned a company that made black and gold icing for cakes. I'd be a millionaire, just off of the Saints' king cakes that are being bought up in this area.

We've only really followed the Saints since about 2002.
We started watching in law school and have been to at least one game every year since 2005.
I never, thought you would ever hear them referred to as Super Bowl Champions.

Lots of changes have happened for us this year.
Finally liking a winning team is one I can live with.




and since this is a blog about family and cute kids, yes, we were both holding back the tears with the shots of Breesus and his son on the field after the game.

Body Modification

Slowly returning to the new normal around here, which for you means that this page will be much less interesting.

We had fun this week though.

Our high school classmate Emily and her daughter Whitney were in from Japan again.
They came bearing gifts, again, of assorted Japanese gummy candies.
I love those things, and really want to go to Japan someday, mostly for that reason.





We joined them, along with Paul and Caroline for breakfast at Another Broken Egg on Saturday morning. (accidentally cut Emily out of the shot.)







One of the main draws was to try the restaurant's new dish, "Cinnamon Roll French Toast."
The description says it consists of slices of cinnamon roll, prepared like french toast, covered in cream cheese icing and then topped with whipped cream and mixed berries.

Here's the photo I was able to capture.




Oops! I guess I was a couple of minutes too late there, but trust me, it was good.
There are still a couple of other things I like as much, if not a little more, but I was actually able to walk away from the table without extreme discomfort, which is quite unusual for our visits there.


Riley wasn't too big on that dish or the "biscuit beignets" (yes they are as good as they sound) but he did thoroughly enjoy his lemon wedge and orange slice.





We then came back to the house, where Riley and Caroline played very well together and Paul continued, graciously, repairing our computer, often while holding two kids begging for Muppet You Tube videos.



(Riley wants me to thank Ms Nicole and Mr Harlan for stealing some of Garrett's outgrown toys and dropping them off here. dueling 4 wheelers should be fun.)


For dinner, we raided the prepared food section of Rouse's and put together a pretty good, fairly inexpensive meal. We fed five adults and two kids for less than 60 bucks, and we were all stuffed with: 2 large fried shrimp plates with fries, mac & cheese, shrimp pasta, 3 sushi rolls, bread, banana pudding, chocolate mousse, and strawberry shortcake. (that tasted like cough syrup, but everything else was really good).
Then, for dessert, we had Blue Bell Black Berry Cobbler and Blue Bell Mexican Praline ice creams. Portraits of health, we are.

Caroline, seemingly enjoyed herself.





and Riley put a hurting on some banana pudding, though it was quite inefficient to eat it using just the tip of his finger.





I guess the amount of food we eat kinda ties in with the title of this week's post, "Body Modification" but that was unintentional.

I've got some ink (and plan for more soon) and had my ear pierced when I was a young punk, but that is not hardcore.
The hardcore body modifier in our house is actually Riley, and unfortunately, that is our fault.

We've known from early on that he had wide feet, but we've always bought wide shoes and have been rapidly upgrading sizes.

Imagine my shock this week when putting his socks on and noticing that one of his feet now looks like this:






One of his toes appears to be crowded up, and it's only on one foot. The other appears to be fairly normal.


(it's like the first step toward being a Chinese lady from the 17th century)


I took him to Greenwood's and had him measured, and sho' 'nuff he was fully filling out his 5.5 wides that he's only been wearing for 6 weeks. He now wears the same shoe size (in a wide) as kids who weigh 10 pounds more than he does.

It fact, though he wears a 12 month shirt from Children's Place, we have to get him 24 month pajamas so that his feet will fit.

Maybe it will help him get a career as an NFL back up punter (league minimum is still a nice chunk of change.)

I would close with a big ole "who dat" but I don't want the NFL to sue me.
Riley wouldn't like that.





But let's see if we get a cease and desist letter for Joan's fingernails.

Better Late than Never ??

Ok.
For reasons that should be obvious, I was unable to post on Sunday night. But don't worry, not much to say this week anyway.

We are thankful that at least one thing has gone right in the first month of 2010, in that the Saints are in the Super Bowl.

Some may take that as a sign that the end times are drawing near, but we'll just use it as a little picker-upper.

Pretty slow week for us as to things you may want to read about or see here.

On Friday I picked up a bike for my Mom at Academy. Never being one to pass up a good impulse buy, I also picked up a little pop gun that shoots foam balls.
Riley and Anna immediately took to it.

They both know that if they stand against a wall, put their hands in the air and say I "freeze", they'll get shot. Kinda like real life. (low blow, I know.)
The best part is that they think picking up all of the balls afterward is half of the fun. Suckers!

Twice now, Riley has pulled me away from whatever I was doing, saying "daddy shoot me."
He goes to the end of the hall, closes the doors around him and waits.

The balls aren't hard and he hasn't complained even when one accidentally hit him in the face. (the accuracy of the toy and me are both horrible. Of the 10 shots per load, only 2 or 3 hit the perp)

But, we discovered yesterday that they do leave some pretty macho marks for a couple of minutes when they hit bare skin.



(Note of clarification , so no one gets the wrong ideas- We discovered the red dots after shooting one loading of the gun. The unraised red dots disappear in a minute or two, but, just in case, he now has to wear a shirt when we play with the gun. And I shot myself in the face, point blank, and it doesn't hurt. I know most sensible people would think nothing of it, but some sensible friends have pointed out that not everyone is sensible people)



Most of my weekend was spent on the installation of our new, custom entertainment center by Cajun Closets.

Here's a shot of the old one.





and what we started with Saturday morning.





and one step into the process.




Taking shape





We've still got another day's worth of work before it is totally done, but its in enough right now to be able to get our electronics set up and make the room usable.
Final product shots to come soon.

Riley got to play with Caroline alot as Uncle Paul spent most of his weekend trying to fix our computer that was decimated by a virus last week. No pic because I was busy constructing.


All work had to stop though for the biggest pro football game, to date, in Louisiana history.
We packed up an headed over to Anna's house.



We watched the second half at home which was a good idea, given how stressful it was.


Thats about it.

oh, I almost forgot...........WHO DAT!!!

Good from Bad

Now is where we start to move forward. Though the bad is still there, now is the time to talk about the good surrounding it.

On Monday, my Dad's services were held at Delhomme funeral home.
Between the Sunday visitation and Monday services, I know that at least 400-500 people came through.
For the services, all of the seats in the chapel were filled and there were people standing in the back. One of the directors told me that the seating capacity is between 300 and 350. It was an amazing turnout and we thank everyone who came.
I have never seen so many grown men cry at a funeral. I think that means a lot. Seeing the broad spectrum of people that my Dad's death affected was a great reminder of what a guy he was.

Seeing such a crowd made us a little nervous though, as Joan and I offered to have the traditional "afterparty" at our house. I told a few people, "Even if only a third of these people show up at our house, we're going to be packed."

Now, after making a list of everyone we can remember being here, our final guest count was 125 people.
And that was basically all in our living room, kitchen and patio.
It was so crowded you could barely move. People were passing trash around instead of trying to fight to the garbage can.
Here's a few shots from before it got really packed.









We went through so much food it was unbelievable. Two Hams, a brisket, a few sandwich trays, 3 or 4 chicken finger trays, a few fruit trays, big pans of side dishes, veggies trays and at least two king cakes. Food was disappearing as fast at it hit the table.

Family members who hadn't seen each other in decades were able to reunite. It was great. All of his surviving paternal aunts and uncles were together for the first time in a long time.

Over the last year or so, my dad had been talking about planning reunion with his cousins. That didn't happen, but a majority of them were here this week.
I don't think there is anything that would have been more fitting than what we had here Monday.

Best of all, the uncle that my Dad was closest to wore his overalls, just as my dad would have if he was here.





While the adults caught up, the kids enjoyed what ended up being a nice day.
We had a stash of foam swords that kept kids of all ages entertained until all of the swords were destroyed. (fortunately target had more and I restocked swords and foam battle axes.)





(yes, I was out of breath for at least an hour after 10 minutes of vigorous playtime.)



I know all of the family being here helped my Mom a lot.
Plus she got to see Riley, Anna, and Gabe for the first time in a few weeks.





Thursday and Friday we were at visitation and services for Joan's grandfather.
Riley proved himself to be surprisingly socially inclined and made lots of new kid friends.

As a sign that things are getting back to our new normal, we at Johnson's twice this week.

Once with Darren, Sangee and Hailee





and once with Shane, Tara and their dozens of kids whose names I can't recall (just kidding?)





Doesn't get much better that this plate right here. (L to R: country style ribs, boudin, mac & cheese, cornbread dressing and grilled hot wings. not pictured: bread pudding and Abita Root Beer)







Saturday, as you all know, the Saints put a whooping on the Cardinals, and Riley watched a lot of the game.

We figured out how to rig things so that he can play with the basketball goal Nonnie got him for Christmas.






Sunday, Riley showed us why he's not yet ready to be trusted for more than 2 minutes unmonitored.






But we took him to the park to feed the ducks anyway.






He enjoyed the sense of accomplishment of making a pretty difficult climb (to him)






And also learned that he's not quite ready for the big, bumpy slide yet.
Here's a shot right as he went airborne off of the second bump and probably made a little contribution to his diaper.




That's about it.
The weather forecast for next weekend is looking nice.
We could use some time out in the sun after the cooped up stresses of the last few weeks.

Again, thanks to everyone for their prayers, encouraging words, food, flowers and Lung Association donations. I hope it's a long time before our family goes through anything like these last three weeks again, but it has been a great reminder of what good people we have around us.