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This Friday before Valentine’s Day, let me just join PJ Mullen in saying ‘I hate Valentine’s Day!‘ That being said, I find myself this Valentine season thinking about how I went from a nerdy kid who hated Valentine’s Day because I couldn’t get (read muster up the courage to get) a girl, to a husband and father with four Valentines that hates being told there’s one particular day to celebrate your love. Although I generally do not enjoy planning the future further out than tomorrow, I find myself looking to the future for my 4 Valentines…

Tristin

It’s easy to envision a bright new world in the sparkling blue eyes of a nearly six-month old baby boy. Has it really been six months? It seems like I was just blogging his birth from the hospital room!

This coming week, Tristin will eat his first solid food, or as solid as baby food can get. The days of sweet-smelling yellow poo will be over, and soon will arrive the stinky poo. I can’t wait.

Although it’s certainly too early to see the interests that my son will have, there is a gleam of curiosity and possible mischievousness that I can’t wait to watch develop. Barely sitting up, this boy is already reaching and grabbing at anything that comes near him. Snatching the glasses off of my face is a favorite triumph, as well as grabbing at whatever food the person that’s holding him is eating. He’ll be a handful, but if I have survived his sister thus far, I think I’ll be alright.

Which brings me to…

Calli

If anyone can be described as a fireball, Calli can. Even while watching TV, this kid is on the move. We very nearly have to tie her down at night to get her to go to bed. (Not literally, please don’t call social services. I know how things posted on the internet can get…)

I have never met a more compassionate child. If one of us is sick or in pain, she is the first one there to offer condolences and see if there’s something she can do to help.

Nothing is more important to her than her family. In fact, as I’m writing this, she’s singing ‘One Big Happy Family!’ from a Winnie the Pooh DVD that she loves. She often reminds us that we are one big happy family.

Kat

Very rarely does the elusive Teenager allow her picture to be taken, so please excuse the reissue of her Halloween pic!

I find that it’s hard to convey what I feel about the Teenager. She’s a teenager, so she drives me crazy with the constant texting, IMing, Facebooking, and anime watching, often (literally!) at the same time.

But then she’ll turn around and say something that blows me away.

It doesn’t take much for us to push each other’s buttons, and my wife constantly tells me not to egg Kat on. But that’s just the relationship we’ve built, and I think it’s rock-solid.

Tomorrow we’re driving down to Denver to learn about the People to People program. They want to send Kat to Australia this summer. Her dream is to work with animals, so their brochure that claims you can ‘cuddle with a koala’ is just too irresistible to not at least go see what they have to say. I’ve heard these things are pretty expensive, but I can’t let an opportunity like this pass her by. Any ideas for fund raising is certainly welcome!

Which brings me to…

Bobbette

My wife and I celebrated five years of wedded bliss this past November, and ten years of being together. Did I mention time flying earlier in this post?

What can I say? I just re-read my Wedding Anniversary post, ‘My So-Called Romantic Life‘, and naturally, it doesn’t begin to encompass what I am truly feeling. As much as I love my kids, and as much as I center my life around them, Bobbette is the one I have made the conscious choice to be with, and she with me. Years from now, when the kids have grown and flown, we’ll have each other.

There is no one in the Universe I would rather have at my side. Quite literally, you would not be reading this blog if not for her. She provides me with daily inspiration and much needed encouragement. She instills me with the sense that I can accomplish anything. When I feebly make a mess of something, she’s there to pick up the pieces.

She’s strong when I’m weak, smart when I’m stupid, fearless when I’m  a coward.

I like to think that I do the same for her, but I am certain that I am getting the better end of this particular deal.

I have to work on Valentine’s Day, so we’ve agreed that, yes, we’ll contribute to the commercialism of the day, but we’ll do it the day after – at 50% off! Luckily, Calli, who is oh-so looking forward to it can’t read a calendar!

I’d like to take one final moment to thank all of you for sticking around and sharing this life with me. I suppose I could have said I have five Valentines, you being the fifth. Without readers, I would have given up on this whole blogging thing long ago. Without the community of friends that we have built, I’d think I was wasting my time.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about me and my family as much as I have enjoyed reading about many of you and yours. Have a great Fatherhood Friday, and a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

Kat’s birthday landed on Thanksgiving this year, so that always makes it hard to make it special. We wanted to make it very special this year, since she was turning sweet sixteen and all, so we let her have a party on Monday. Here was a snag, though: I worked on Monday. So she essentially threw her own party without the parents. She does a lot of activities at the library, so she got the librarian to allow her to use a room in the back where they could eat pizza and hang out. We set things up so that a friend of hers could take her up to Costco and get the pizza and cupcakes. She’s into manga and anime and overall Japanese culture, so when we ordered the cakes, I googled the Japanese characters for ‘Happy’ and ‘Sweet’ and Costco was good enough to oblige us and write ‘Happy Sweet 16′ in Japanese! Alas, being a teenager, she didn’t think to take a picture for her parents, but I digress, and she seemed to love it!

Then it was on to Thanksgiving preparation. We don’t have any family around us right now, so our Thanksgiving is just us. I enjoy spending that one day preparing a meal without shortcuts (I got to make bread!) and generally enjoying each other’s company. The night before Thanksgiving, I bought the Christmas tree. One of my favorite moments with Calli, my three year old, this year, was when she was in the garage with me while I attempted to cut an inch off the base of the tree.

‘You look kinda like Iron Man.’ She said.

‘Oh really? I look like Iron Man?’

‘Yeah. He’s my friend.’ She added, quickly changing her mind, ‘Oh, No! I talk to myself, and I’m Iron Man!’

‘You’re Iron Man because you talk to yourself?’ I chuckled.

‘YEAH!’ She was into it now. ‘I’m Iron Man, and I talk to myself!!’

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

Online, I can be anyone I want, so I will now tell you that the Christmas tree is beautifully decorated in our living room. I will not be honest and tell you I still have to finish stringing the lights and then put the ornaments on. I won’t tell you that the living room is still strewn with various holiday paraphernalia.

Of course, being a retail Assistant Manager, I also had to work extra this week preparing for blitz, Black Friday, the ‘Event’. I’d imagine most of you are in lines or shopping various retail establishments as I write this, hoping to get all the best deals. I happened to luck out this year, getting Thanksgiving off and not going in today until 8am. Of course, I have a list from my wife of what I should try to buy on the way in, hence my haste in throwing up this post in a hurry in order to achieve the ‘Honey dos’ before going into work.

I’d better get going, but I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Be safe today and be sure to appreciate that cashier/sales associate in whatever stores you’re in from now until Christmas. They’re working hard!

Although the winner was chosen through the use of Random.org, I would like to repost his comment here:

This is a great way to keep it going! I love the pay it forward idea. I’ve waited all day to post about this because I wanted to give it some thought. The idea that I came up with was to have my 3 year old go to Walmart and look for gifts to place in the local giving tree at the hospital for a child in need of a christmas gift.

What a cool idea. This will not only pay it forward now, but it will help instill in the future generation a sense of giving and compassion!

Jason said that he will post the result of his daughter’s Pay It Forward, and I’ll be sure to pass the link on here as well. In the meantime, keep your eye on The Devoted Dad!

Way to go, Jason! Feel free to spend the money all in one place!  ;)

1. Ramblings and Run-Ons (right back at ya, man!)
2. Me and The Blue Skies (Preston keeps me laughing!)
3. Ciara’s Ramblings and Whatnot
4. Clark Kent’s Lunchbox
5. Knee Deep In Kids
6. Jesus Has 2 Daddies
7. Mocha Dad
8. Surprised Mom
9. World of Weasels
10. Coupon Dad

All of the above add much needed information/entertainment/feelings of shared experiences to my blog-reading life. There are many more that I read on a semi-regular basis, it was obviously hard to narrow down the top 10!

OK, on to the keepsake…

In my post, ‘My Big Family Announcement’, I announced to my family and the world that we would be celebrating Christmas in July this year.

Well, as John Lennon brilliantly said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ To quote another lyrical poet, Paul Simon, ‘Believing I had supernatural powers I slammed in to a brick wall.’

I tend to leap before I look. I get all excited and impulsive and generally pay for it later. Christmas in July sounded wonderful until I realized we are on a very tight budget and Calli’s birthday is the 31st, sooo we should probably save a little moolah for that. A kid only turns 3 once after all, Christmas comes every year.

But I already blogged about my July Christmas. All those nice people commented and told me it was a good idea! I was told to take pictures! How can I let down my adoring public?

I stewed on this for quite a while before I just abandoned the idea all together. That is until…

I still got my vacation, this is day two, FTW! So the wife wakes me up and asks, ‘What’s going on around here? Anything fun?’

‘I don’t know, let me get online and find out!’ I reply, in the back of my head there was still a voice: It’s Christmas! What are you doing about Christmas?

So I sat down at the computer, pulled up the site for the local paper, the Vail Daily, and what to my wondering eyes should appear this event:

God bless us, everyone! And God bless the Turntable Restaurant, they were serving turkey dinner with all the fixins for $9.96 a plate! After my Jacob Marley impression and picking my chin up off of the keyboard, I realized this could do it! Like a TV special, my Christmas had been saved! My day of laying around in my PJs opening presents and stuffing myself had been thwarted, but here was a local establishment who shared my sentiments!

On our way there this afternoon, we had some time to kill, so I followed the arrow under a picture of a picnic table to a park we’d never been to. The Eagle River runs along side it, there are trees that shade the entire playground, there is a small stage with a grassy slope for the audience surrounded by flowers. Visions of Shakespeare festivals danced in my head. This place was perfect!

When we did arrive at the Turntable, it was right up my alley. From the name you probably guessed, but it’s one of those nostalgia greasy spoon places that’s plastered with Elvis, Marilyn, Barbie, and the occasional Mickey Mouse. Add to that the cheesey light-up Santa with accompanying reindeer, and this was definitely Christmas! ;P

We entered, and a man with a Creole accent said, ‘HO HO HO! Welcome to Christmas in JUE-LIE!’

Santa had left a bag of candy for Calli, and Kat got in for a reduced kids’ price. ‘You look young, you mus’ jus’ be tall!’ The Creole man said.

The turkey was moist, the mashed potatoes weren’t lumpy, and I even was able to eat the candied yams (I try them every year, but I never like them). They had brownies and cookies for dessert.

I tell you, it was just what I needed: time with family, good food, and awful decor. After dinner, we went back to the river and Calli and I skipped stones (or made a great attempt!).

This was, without a doubt, the Best. Christmas. Ever.

I leave you with a copy of the flyer from the Turntable and a picture of Kat in what appears to be a futon-shaped rock in the river…

Merry Christmas!