80's on the (2)8th

Well considering today is the wife's and my 14th wedding anniversary I figured I better give that a shout out right off the bat. And who would of thought 14 years later she #1 hasn't killed me in my sleep and #2 I'd be doing this blog post through my blogger-droid app on my phone. Back to the 80's it's hard to believe my wife and I never met considering we grew up on the same street and she was pretty much just down the block from my grandma's house. I used to ride my bike by her house on my way to mow my grandma's lawn since I was the only grandson in town I was given that job. Now eventually my brother came along but I'm fairly certain he didn't take over mowing after I left and stuck my dad with that duty. Now the fun part of riding my bike to my grandma's was getting to go down Main St hill. It took me years to get up the courage to go down it because you really get booking going down it and you could coast up the other side and then all the way down the super long block to the stop sign that was across the street from what was my wife's parents house. What was so great about going to was quite the opposite going fro. You see the hill was much steeper on the south end so going home was impossible until I got a 10 speed. For years I'd take a longer route just to avoid the workout up the hill. Now the good thing about not meeting my wife in the 80's was that she didn't know me as a kid. Because most likely if she would have known me she would have never dated me. So luckily we never crossed paths...though who knows. Maybe we did at the skating rink and thought it was like one of those movie moments where strangers meet and never get each others name and spend the rest of their lives searching for each other. But most likely I pulled on her ponytail and she slugged me.

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80's on the (1)8th

Well considering we are exactly 1 week away from Christmas I figured I should probably focus this addition of 80's on the 8th on something Christmas related. I thought about some of my favorite Christmas movies from the 80's but considering Cousin Eddie is on the run and is somewhere in Canada and Santa hasn't brought me an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200 shot, range model  air rifle the past 27 Christmas despite repeated trips to his lap and a couple hand written letters pleading my case along with statistical data backing up my claims it was more likely to shoot ones eye out with a rubber band than a BB gun but alas I am still without that famous rifle even with the special 70th anniversary model being available so I figured I'd stay away from the cinema and go a little more personal.
You see when I was a kid the week before Christmas meant practicing....practicing coming down the steps to sneak a peak at the haul that Santa brought. By the time Santa got to our house he must have always been pretty tired from putting all those toys together because the presents were never wrapped. Or he was just lazy. Which could be the case because I think him and the Easter Bunny went to the same school and had the same teacher who didn't instill a good work ethic because they had the same hand writing with block capital letters and appear to not have good time management skills because they were always in and out while pretty hastily completing their jobs.
Let me explain why practice was so important. I grew up in an old house 2 story house with my bedroom upstairs and old houses are creaky. And considering we had a 7am rule that I set my alarm too. This was instituted after an extremely early Christmas morning that may or may not have coincided with the 1 & only time I remember going to midnight mass. Regardless this meant we had to sneak ever so slowly avoiding all known noisy stairs.
After much trial and error I learned the quietest way was to basically walk down the railing without socks (one of those errors) while holding onto the upstairs railing until you were in a position that allowed you to lower yourself onto the railing shimmy down the rest of the way to the end of the banister all while holding a flashlight in your mouth. Didn't do much good if you go down there and couldn't see. Had I been thinking I would have asked Santa for a million candle watt power flashlight or just one I could hand around my neck or just think how handy those ones that clip onto your hat would have been.
We still use that 7 am rule in our household today because sleep is precious and I think I'm going to ask for a night vision spy camera to see if any of my children are following in my footsteps in attempting to gain an advantage in scoping out their presents. And why might I need this more than a BB gun??? I've come to find out that Santa gets very tired with all the last minute things like putting together little kitchens, racetracks and various other 1000 piece toy sets that are all twisty tie wired in place because Santa doesn't wrap here either.
Have a Merry Christmas and enjoy the memories that come with it.

Sleeping Snuggly Snoring

Those would be the words describing the not so little anymore bundle of pink snoozing on my shoulder as I attempt to type today's entry. I figure I better cherish these chances as they are becoming fewer and farther in between occurrences and soon enough they won't be happening at all anymore. You see, my little princess is slowly becoming a little girl. These last few months it's become apparent that she is has grasped the English language as she's had a word & sentence explosion and can carry on quite the conversation.
I have also become quite adept at painting tiny little finger and toe nails pink, shiny pink and glittery pink all in different shades too I might add. But I won't be opening my own nail salon anytime soon because I haven't mastered the little flowers and pictures I see my wife come home with on her toes.
So Christmas is really fun this year with this 2 year old who is super excited at all the colorful lights and pretty trees with shiny bowed presents under them. She has even seen Santa like 3 times and must really want a Dora doll so if you happen to see him remind him again because I think she's afraid he'll forget. But what really is great is that she gets what Christmas is about. To help explain, here is my wife's Facebook post this morning. "Elli just took an ornament off the tree that Zack made that has a baby Jesus in a manger with a snowman angel and she said “this is baby Jesus. I love baby Jesus. It’s my baby and your baby Mommy”. Awwwwwwwwwwww… heart melting into a puddle. ♥"  This after weeks of her teasing us that it was Halloween again just to be funny.
So I'm going to enjoy these fleeting moments because I won't have them again for quite some time when my kids start bringing home grand kids. Since there's going to be a big gap in there; I'll just continue sharing with with them year round "The reason for the season". Those Awwww moments will continue to happen for various reasons through all the kids, but if my littlest one is beginning to understand who Jesus is and was and always will be then we must be doing something right. 

80's on the 8th

Well for many people (mainly if you are older than me) December 8th is a day of sadness so I'd be remissed if I at least didn't mention that on this day 30 years ago John Lennon was murdered. Most of the nation learned of this while watching Monday Night Football. Considering we didn't have Facebook let alone the Internet, 24 hours news channels or twitter most people would not have found out possibly for days because newspapers were already on the printing press and morning news shows were in their infancy. Howard Cosell broke the news to the country during the Patriots vs Dolphins game because coincidentally an ABC employee happened to be at the same emergency room Lennon was rushed to.
Growing up I wasn't a huge Beatles fan; sure I know all their music now but as a kid I used to listen to my dad's records & 8 tracks so that included a lot of Buddy Holly, The Beach Boys and Cheech & Chong. My first real recollection of a Beatles song was in a Nike Ad back in the 80's when they used "Revolution". Which in many ways was historically significant. Not only was it a ground breaking Ad but it was also the 1st time a Beatles song was used in marketing and they were none to happy.
Fast forward to this past month and most people when you mention The Beatles they'd say oh  yeah they just became available on iTunes which is also extremely historically significant. Most people are unaware of the back story to the bad blood between iTunes (Apple Computers) and The Beatles but since I work with a huge Beatles fan I was filled in on this info a few weeks ago. Most people when you hear the word Apple you think Apple Computers & the iPod well a funny thing happened across the pond back in the 60's. The Beatles were huge and had a ton of money and nothing to do with it so they decided to start a company which they called Apple Corps Ltd...pun intended. It had numerous divisions but mainly was a music company.
Several years later the Steves started a computer company and they just so happened to call it Apple. Well word got back to The Beatles and they filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in 1978. It took 4 years to settle but part of that settlement was that Apple Computers would not enter the music business and Apple Corps would not enter the computer business. Simple enough right...wrong. Computers advanced and Apple Computers added audio recording capabilities. Enter lawsuit number 2. Jump ahead a few years and this time a big settlement of lawsuit #3 that involved Apple Computers own pun intended system sound to their operating system....they called it sosumi (so sue me). Again they agreed that Apple Computers had rights to goods & services used to play content and Apple Corps had rights to the creative content....i.e. the music.
Things stayed nice for over 10 years then in 2003 iTunes as we know came into existence. The lawsuit lasted several years focusing on the Apple logo. We now see that logo splashed on everything because the Beatles lost this battle but the war wasn't over in their eyes. The following year in 2007 Steve Jobs ended the feud by buying out Apple Corps trademark on the apple for roughly $500 million and as of a few weeks ago The Beatles have the number one album again via their emergence on iTunes.
Now back to the Nike Ad. See like most people of the 60's & 70's The Beatles were about peace, love, counter culture and weren't exactly concerned about the rights to their music just the rights of the people. Which ended up costing them a lot of royalties they were due for their music and eventually they lost the rights to a bunch of their songs. Which is where Michael Jackson gets involved. You see he bought the rights to 200 Beatles songs and some 4000 others back in 1985 so Nike paid EMI records and Michael Jackson an equal sum to be allowed to use the song for 1 year which was an absurd amount of money at the time for a commercial but it was obviously a good decision as it was ranked as one of the top 100 business events that shaped the 20th century.
Hope you enjoyed the Beatles/Nike/Apple/Apple/Monday Night Football history lesson that has culminated into how The Beatles ended up with 17 of the top 80 (mostly in the top 30) downloaded albums on iTunes and this is some 45+ years after they held the top 5 singles and 2 top albums in the USA all at the same time.

A year ago today....

After much hope and lots of waiting we boarded a plane in Kansas City to take a special little girl on her 1st special trip. You see we are a Disney family through and through. My wife has been a fan of the mouse as long as I've known her which has rubbed off on me. She used to be a travel agent, graduated the Disney College of Knowledge and was director of The Disney Club (when it was around) for Norwest Corporation (now Wells Fargo). I didn't experience Disney World for the 1st time until I was an adult with her and considering how hot and busy it was it's surprising I ever wanted to go back. Since then the trip planning baton has been passed on to me as we've put together a "book" of our suggestive plans. We have also created so many great memories after numerous trips with our families, our boys and even a friend that screams like a girl but this was going to be different. We were finally getting the chance to take our own little girl to see the castle and the Princesses and this was going to create a whole new set of memories filled with pretty dresses, hair bows and matching shoes.

Now generally it takes us several years to plan a trip to Disney...well to save for it but it's actually gotten cheaper to go since they instituted new ticket pricing options and are more frequently offering deals to entice you to come to sunny central Florida. The greatest of these deals comes in the form of free dining because if you've been to Disney or any amusement park then you know the food can be the priciest part of the day. Figuring out where we want to eat is a fun part of our planning and now that we have a little girl in our midst that meant getting to eat with the Princesses. My parents had been to Disney World one other time and that was in 2001 when a large group of us went and even though we have been several times since then  it was them that received one of Disney's secretive random email offers with free dining and a hotel discount that enabled us to book this trip with my parents & little sister, my other sister & her family and my wife's parents.
Now as with any vacation there are a few hopes. 1. the weather is perfect 2. everyone stays healthy & safe 3. everyone enjoys themselves 4. the travel to & fro goes smoothly...but when it comes do Disney World and you are traveling with a young child a new hope/wish/prayer needs to be added to the list. That addition is that your child is not afraid or even worse scared to death of Mickey Mouse. Having taken all 3 of our boys to Disney when they were 1 or 1 1/2 we knew of this new added possibility because we had experienced this parental nightmare first hand with our middle son Luke. Our only hope now was that this wasn't an every other child phenomenon and it would hopefully skip our own little princess. We found out soon enough on our 1st night at the Magic Kingdom eating with Winnie the Pooh and friends and the answer wasn't what we hoped for.
Having been through this before we knew the drill. We would just have to make sure Chip and Dale didn't sneak up on her and we would wave at Buzz from a distance before attempting to move in closer and someone would have to accompany her to meet the Princesses. And they eventually warm-up to Mickey you just have to hope it's not until the last day. With having previous Disney experience and 3 boys who know Disney World like their own backyard it makes it very easy to plan our days around the things we most want to do on every trip like our favorite places to eat, fireworks, parades and special shows. Plus we discover new things every trip like the boys partaking in the pin trading craze. With Cole being the oldest he always got to experience the big kid rides first. Luke has got to go on his 1/2 birthday and he loves the food. Zack got his 1st haircut at the Main St Barber shop. Elli helped us all meet the Princesses. 

Looking back through the nearly 2000 pictures makes me look forward to the next set of memories and getting to see Elli's face as we stand in line to go on Splash Mountain just like I can picture each of her brother's as they did the same. We'll also look to find something new but I'll always look towards getting to enjoy the evening activities with my family.

People have asked me what's the point in taking kids when they are so young when they aren't going to remember it. I always say when they are little it's for you; the parents and the grandparents. The memories aren't just for them they're for the family. Taking a child to Disney for the 1st time when they are 2 is quite a bit different than taking them for the 1st time when they are 13. So we will continue to make our pilgrimages to Disney World and partake in our family tradition of eating with Mickey & his friends at Chef Mickey's, we'll stop in EPCOT at Club Cool and drink Beverly even though we know we shouldn't, the boys will grow their pin collections, as the kids get tall enough (with out stuffing paper towels under their insoles...oh yeah we've done it) I'll take them on the new to them rides, we'll cross another hidden Mickey off the list then we'll sneak a Dole Whip before mom gets a chance to and I'll still hold my wife's hand the last night of fireworks when no one wants to go home. You see each trip is special and unique in it's own way and the life time of memories they create are worth every penny. So if you need help planning or just have a question....I'm full of random and helpful but sometimes quite useless Disney knowledge.

Ahh it's finally that time of year.....

December has snuck up on us and another year has almost passed us bye. It is truly my favorite time of year. The weather has officially changed (for those of us that live in a 4 season region) and it's dark by the time you get off work so you can see all the festive houses lit up on your drive home.
Now if you were expecting me to continue waxing poetically about our family tradition of the youngest child putting the final touches on the tree with the star we searched the world over for (Disney World that is) or hanging the stockings by the chimney with care you will be sorely disappointed and possibly quite angry with me. :-)
You see to me December means Fantasy Football Playoffs. Yep you heard that right and it is for that reason alone I think that my wife extremely dislikes football. I have been playing fantasy football since before it became mainstream and the focus of countless websites, magazines, radio programs, radio stations-sirrius/xm has a fantasy sports station, ESPN shows and now a sitcom. Long enough ago that we actually had to rely on the newspaper to get all our player stats and manually figure out our scores. Eventually we upgraded to some software we got at one of the 1st fantasy football conventions (they are huge and currently held  in Vegas) but nowadays everything is done exclusively on the internet. OK guess I better back up here and fill some of you in on what exactly fantasy football is. Here is a definition that sheds some light "Fantasy football is an interactive, virtual competition in which people manage professional football players versus one another. Fantasy football allows people to act as general managers of a pseudo-football team...generally given a quirky funny name. The different actions people are able to make are: drafting, trading, adding/dropping players, and changing rosters with games taking place each week vs opposing manager's teams with the outcome determined by how the players on their fantasy team do statistically in their real life games".
Some of us have been getting together each fall for the past 17 years to eat, drink and make fun of each other for an afternoon to kick off the season. The Draft which other than the actual Super Bowl maybe the biggest sporting event of the year for a lot of football fans. My kids have joined the fun now too...from assisting Grandpa draft his team and helping lead him out of the perpetual losing that leads to the Toilet Bowl (this is bad don't want to win this trophy) to owning their own teams in a league with their friends from school. I could continue on and on and on about every little detail but I only have 1 male follower and he's already in the know so I'll try and sum up a few things. Fantasy Football is not relegated to just men. Women are more than welcome to play and have owned teams in our league in the past. Rumor has it 2 women who shared a team actually won the league I am currently the commissioner of but that was before I was allowed in. Supposedly they drafted players by how good their butt looked in their uniform but this could have been a ruse so the guys didn't think they knew anything about football. In the Central Iowa Fantasy Football League i.e. CIFFL we play for pride and glory that comes in the form of Championship bragging rights and a trophy to remind everyone of your dominance or more accurately your luck of making it to and through the playoffs to be the last one standing...oh and a little cash. My goal is always to make the playoffs though I should raise my standards considering I've played in our Super Bowl 8 out of the last 16 seasons.
So if your spouse, dad, brother, mom or some other relative is a little too preoccupied to open their gifts this Christmas season chances are they are in the playoffs of their fantasy football league and are obsessing over every possession in every NFL game. And if they refuse to watch any football the Holiday weekend then chances are they didn't make the playoffs or have already been eliminated. Because even though the Cowboys vs Cardinals game on Christmas Day is an atrocious match up; every game is now made relevant because of Fantasy Football.