Hogwarts Castle

Derek's been saving his money for quite a while to buy the Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle and a few weeks ago he had finally saved enough to get it. But we've been so busy that we had not gotten to the store. Thankfully, Derek had been pretty reasonable about pestering us - except for a couple occasions where he didn't have enough other things to do and I had to tell him to quit asking.

This weekend, we finally made the commitment to go to Target after Adam's soccer game on Sunday. Derek was so excited and told us that once he got the castle he was going to be in his room for days and no one was to bother him. As soon as we arrived at the store, Derek excitedly did a walk\run back to the toy section. The store was being turned into a Super Target so everything had been reconfigured and, at first, Derek couldn't find the Lego section and was getting worried that the store had quit carrying Lego's. We finally found the Lego's, but there was no Hogwarts Castle. Once we confirmed with one of the workers that there weren't any in the back either, Derek started getting misty eyed. He had waited patiently for weeks and the day had finally arrived only to be thwarted.

Adam was also caught up in the money madness and couldn't wait to dump his hard earned money on the Matchbox Shark Attack. But that Target did not have any Shark Attacks, either. So I proposed that if they were willing to combine their money then I would chip in the difference and they could get a Nintendo Wii. Derek gave careful consideration to the offer, but Adam wouldn't go for it.

Adam wasn't too upset, but Derek had lost all hope. We were beat from all the weekend activities and still had lots to do to get ready for the week, but we decided, since Derek had been so patient, that we would drive over to another Target to see if they had a Hogwarts Castle. Derek's demeanor quickly changed from mopey and sad to one of eager anticipation.

When we arrived at the store, Derek hustled back to the toy section where he found the last remaining Hogwarts Castle and as we rolled up with the shopping cart, he had the biggest grin on his face and quickly deposited his prize in the shopping cart. Adam also got his Shark Attack.

When we got home, both boys immediately headed up to their rooms with their new toys. It's been a few days and Derek spends any free time he can get up in his room setting up his castle. He gives his friends at school daily updates and pulls us into his room to show us how far he's gotten. Adam has his Shark Attack setup in his room and closes his door so nobody will bother it.

Soccer

Ryan and Adam pushing the ball

Adam does a face plant

A rare shot of Adam under control

Adam loves the slide kick

More ground time

Shaking hands at game's end

Derek moves on the ball

Derek gets in on the action

Derek hustles after the ball

Derek and Adam have started their soccer seasons. Adam is playing on the U-6 Storm and Derek is playing on the U-10 Rovers. They both seem to be really enjoying it. Adam was happy that Ryan, his neighbor friend, is also on his team. Adam hustles the whole time and is in constant motion, although he would be of more use to his team if he would stay on his feet instead of taking every opportunity to fall on the ground. Derek has really had to step it up with this being his first exposure to rec league. He played a couple seasons in a church league, but the field was much smaller and the players were not nearly as good. We joke with him that all the running is finally going to shrink his muffin top belly. He really likes defense - especially goalie. He realizes that he doesn't have the speed or ball skills to be a great offensive player, but he did get a couple shots at the goal in his second game.

Welcome To Moe's

Derek has soccer practice on Friday nights, so we've been going out to eat after practice. After the first practice, we went with Derek's choice of Dairy Queen. Our stomachs are just now recovering. I remember the "Brazier Burger" from my youth as being pretty good. Times have changed. I'm not sure what kind of meat (if it was meat) that was in the burgers.

This past Friday, I decided to go out on a limb and try Moe's. I like Moe's, but Helen's not crazy about it and the kids have never tried it. Derek always complains if it's not hamburgers, pizza, or chicken fingers, so we haven't picked it before. However, he didn't complain too bad when we told him that we were going to Moe's. He was familiar with the "Welcome to Moe's" greeting and I think he was curious to see what it was all about.

It was a rousing success and, in fact, the kids keep asking if they can go back. Helen even agreed that it wasn't too bad. The kids liked the silly names for the menu items and had fun ordering. Normally, we don't let them have soft drinks, but we let them that night and they thought it was big fun to fill their own cups with their soda choice. So it looks like Moe's will be another option for us.

Tallula

We just adopted a new miniature dachshund named, Tallula (or Lula for short). A lady at Helen's school had to give Tallula away and we volunteered to take her. She's 2 and 1/2 years old. Her coloring is called "dapple".

Before we had kids our pets were everything to us. Our 2 labs and our cat often slept with us in our big king bed. But once we had kids, everything changed. The pets were constantly annoying us to the point that there was definitely no more sleeping in the bed. We've been joking for years about looking forward to becoming "pet free". We even coined the phrase "Pet Free in 2003" as a hopeful wish for that year.

Over Christmas we got closer to the "pet free" goal when we had to put our black lab, Bailey, down. Although we made light of becoming "pet free" - when it became apparent that we would have to put Bailey down, we were all heartbroken.

We've always favored big dogs ("real dogs" as opposed to "shit dogs"), but we've always had a soft spot for dachshunds for some reason. We recently met a lady at one of my tennis matches who had the cutest little miniature dachshund and we thought that we could do a little mini dachshund - but later, after the kids had grown and moved out.

Then Helen got the email about Tallula. She forwarded the email to me at work and I replied that I didn't know what was going on, but for some reason I thought we could do it. A couple other people replied before us, but Tallula didn't work out for them, so we got her. Derek and Adam just love her. She's very sweet. Helen and I even agreed that having Tallula around has made us more accepting of our lab, Madison, who's got a lot of irritating quirks.

I Love My New HD TV

We finally purchased a new television. Our primary television had been a 20+ year old Sony 19". Recently, the speakers started rattling after watching some concert videos and the picture has had some permanent lines running through it for a number of years, so I finally decided that it was probably time to get a new one.

Luckily, the prices on TV's have been falling. As usual, I was obsessed with finding just the right "value" TV. Not top of the line, but one that's recognized as a good TV for the money. I finally settled on the Olevia 532H and, so far, I'm very satisfied. A couple nice undocumented surprises were that it came with 2 HDMI connections (the specs said 1) and a QAM tuner (so that it can receive unscrambled digital cable channels without a box from the cable company for when you want to utilize the picture in picture feature). I had read on some message boards that it had a QAM tuner, but that Olevia does not advertise it.

All I can say is wow! High Def television is incredible! I've especially been enjoying the US Open tennis championships and the boys never thought Cartoon Network could look so good. One of the reasons we kept putting off getting a new TV was that we didn't watch much. Now we know why - our TV was so crappy. With the new TV and high def I have a feeling there's going to be a lot more TV watching.

I even bumped up my Comcast service and got a HD\DVR box. I'm usually pretty big on minimizing recurring bills (we've still got $15 a month 25 minute cell phone plans), but the HD channels and the DVR are pretty sweet. We had also recently signed up for the Blockbuster movie plan and were watching quite a few movies over the Summer, but have fallen off lately. It looks like there's plenty of On Demand movies from Comcast, so maybe we'll drop the Blockbuster plan. So many things to watch and so little time.

I spent most of the nights last week staying up way too late playing, tweaking, and configuring, the tv, cable box, etc. - much to Helen's dislike. She especially didn't like when all those late nights led to me getting sick over Labor Day weekend. And then I played golf, which took even more out of me. I'm feeling better now, but sickness for us at this time of year is always scary. We've both ended up in the hospital around this time of year after coming down with what we thought were just colds.