Our son, the mathematician

A recent case of HL's ability to amaze us... A couple weeks ago, HL was telling me about a chess set we could get. "It would have policemen on one side and bad guys on the other. But there would only be four policemen on this side of the board and 1 on the other side. The bad guys would have three on their side and..." He went silent for just a moment, a look of deep concentration on his face. "..two on the other side." I was intrigued that both the policemen and the bad guys had a total of five guys and so I prodded him, "Why would they be set up that way?" I asked HL. "Because if the policemen have four and one, that's five. So if the bad guys have three on one side, they have to have two on the other to make it fair." First of all, I'm amazed that he was able to do that math in his head- no fingers involved. But most of all, I am pleased that he was concerned with having the showdown be fair to both sides. Now I know that life is not always fair, and I don't necessarily want him growing up thinking it is. But at the same time, I am proud to know that my four year old realizes what it is to be fair. Not to mention the fact that it takes compassion to want to be fair in the first place. So when my son is exhibiting the fact that he is a male, and males are, by instinct, aggressive, these are the memories I conjure in my head.

Angry

Here is a recent photo of HL's angry face. I know he's angry, but I just can't help but smile at this shot! Oh, and check the beautiful artwork AW left for us on the front door. Yep. Permanent marker. Good times.

What I learned

Over the course of moving my work, I learned something about myself that I find a little odd. I discovered that the busier I am, the more I get done. And what's even odder (I know, I know, it's not a real word) is that my sister, without prompting, said the same thing about herself to me the very same day I realized it. Huh. Must be a gene. The first two weeks of January, I was at work for over 70 hours per week- and I still got almost as much housework done as I do when I work 36. I think the problem is that, if I have time to sit down and get comfortable, I get lazy. Now all I have to do is somehow learn to not allow that to happen. If only it were that easy....

Moving day 1

Oops! Forgot to mention that, on top of all the other trials we faced throughout our move, the first battle was struggling through blizzard #2 of 2006. Here is a shot of the first day of our move. Lots O' Fun!

New Building

PHEW!! I (my work) is finally completely moved in to our new building and working efficiently. It was quite the task- let me tell you. I expected it to be incredibly challenging and to take a lot of time, but I didn't anticipate it being quite as arduous as it has been. But, I can now say that we all survived the transition, even though we still have a long way to go yet. The issue was that not only did we move to a new building, but we have brand new medical technology, added new staff (that worked at the new building previously), and converted to an entirely different veterinary software all at the same time! What were we thinking?!?! So anyway, I'm finally at a point where I have the time and energy to blog again- and oh, does it feel good.

Computer Time

There is one good thing about Our Eldest's passion for the computer. It has made a very effective threat, deterrent. He knows that if I tell him he won't get any computer time tomorrow. He won't get any computer time tomorrow. Our 4 year old reconsiders his behavior and chooses right. I don't break that one out often, but when I have, it's worked. Here are a couple of pictures from Christmas morn. Sure love my kids... Our Eldest with Santa's gift. More Sanata fun. There's my homemade Jer's Day pie on the table. Man was it good.

Christmas In Darfur

Here is something else that is not getting enough attention. Darfur. This bit is from a post on the blog of some gentlemen that spent Christmas in Darfur: Gathering statistics about Darfur has been a very difficult problem, owing to poor record keeping, lack of civil society, and ongoing insecurity problems. To some extent, this vagueness has made it a bit more difficult to provide a meaningful basis for discussion of the effectiveness of the government of Sudan in their ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur over the last four years. These numbers are most certainly approximate, and are intended to be illustrative... To date, the campaigns undertaken by the Sudanese government have accounted for about one in five of the world's "Internally Displaced Persons" - those who have been driven from their homes, most often due to conflict, but have not been able to escape to other countries. Of the roughly 5.5 million people driven from their homes in Sudan, a bit more than half are refugees directly associated with the ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur. The approximately 3 million people who have had their homes destroyed or have been forced in to relocation camps due to ongoing violence compares with the entire population of Chicago at 2,842,518. The total number of people killed in the genocide thus far has been estimated at 400,000 to 450,000. However, these numbers date back to about April of 2006. As 10,000-15,000 people are killed each month, current totals may range from 480,000 to a worst-case scenario of 570,000. These numbers are roughly comparable to the population of New Orleans (454,863) or Washington DC (550,521).

Play'n Cards on Christmas

Hmm... What should I play? Our Eldest had the best time playing games with the family on Christmas Day. He was quite adept at following the play of the game. He's got the bottle of wine, he's gambling,... Where's my cigar? And of course earlier in the day, my boys helped me celebrate Jer's Day by decorating my Jer's Day pumpkin pie and helping me blow out the candles. Awesome! (To the tune of Happy birthday) Merry Jer's Day to you... Merry Jer's Day to you...

Another Quiz

It's another political quiz. This one gives you a score between 0 and 40, 0 being most liberal, 40 being most conservative. I scored a 25... Take the quiz here.