80's on the 28th.....25 years ago today

Generally I try to keep my blog postings light hearted and funny (well funny to me) especially with my 80's on the 8th portion. Also I never know what I'm going to reminisce about until the moment I actually log in and start typing. But today when I saw a bunch of tweets about what happened 25 years ago today I knew I had to touch on this subject. A lot of lives were changed January 28, 1986. I know my wife had wanted to be an astronaut until then and what little kid didn't. A nation full of students were going to live out those dreams as we were all going to be a part of this mission because of Christa McAuliffe and the Teach in Space Project.
That day I was probably more concerned about what I was getting for my birthday in a few weeks rather than witnessing history. But as our own teachers were turning on the TVs and telling us how big a moment this was actually going to be and then all the lessons from space we'd be tuning in for from the teacher on the shuttle the excitement was there. I can't imagine the number of students across the country in countless classrooms all participating in the countdown. Unfortunately a lot can change in 73 seconds.
That night I remember Ronald Reagan speaking as it turned out that was to be his regularly scheduled State of the Union address. It's probably the 1st time I paid attention to a presidential speech instead of throwing a fit because it was interrupting the A-Team or MacGyver and he closed it with this line from High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

We will never forget them, nor the last time we  saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.

Then a few days later he had this to say at the memorial :

Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain.

It surely doesn't feel like this event took place 25 years ago. I don't say that because I'm struggling with how old I'm getting but I think because in being a part of this generation we've seen more than our fair share of disasters take place. Generally these come in the natural category and affect people in other countries but as a generation of would be astronauts sat glued to the TVs in their classrooms a realization was thrust upon us that even our heroes are not Superman and indestructible.

With even more recent shuttle disasters it makes me not want my own kids to dream of being astronauts. But considering they've grown up with Buzz Lightyear I can only hope they like Woody better.
 

Backfired

I thought I had the perfect plan after so many had failed; I figured it would take my mere mentioning it and it would be implemented immediately and our worries would be over. You're probably thinking what line of business am I referring too and what model am I using as my basis and was I using Six Sigma as my foundation? Well not quite, no and no. You see I'm talking about potty training my daughter who through an ER visit and trip to the urologist we have found out she has an iron clad bladder and can hold it for just about ever. Now I will greatly appreciate this (and so will her future husband) on future vacations and road trips but right now I'd like to eliminate diaper costs.
Being a Disney family I figured I had the perfect plan. Elli had been to Disney World when she was 1 1/2 and we all had a blast. Her brothers even put up with the Princesses with minimal complaints. She loves seeing the Disney commercials on TV and we'll watch planning videos together and she's always in awe. So I figured I could combine her excitement for Cinderella and Mickey and channel that into a desire to use the toilet. So being the nonthinking but great dad that I am I explained to her that when she started using the bathroom and was bigger that we could go back to see Cinderella and the castle and see all the parades and fireworks. She seemed really excited and ready to give it a shot and we talked about how much fun she'd have. One little problem I forgot about...2 year olds really have no concept of time which I was not made fully aware of until mom got home. I was all ready for Elli to tell mom about her wanting to potty train but all that came out of our hours of talking about it was "Mommy I want to go see Rella NOW" followed by tears.
After feeling pretty confident..ok cocky; I had to explain/defend myself and my perfect plan which I thought would be the final piece of the puzzle that would get her to choose to potty train. But um yeah that didn't exactly work out the way I planned. So next time I'll remember not to use visions of grandeur to influence a 2 year old and I'll stick with candy.

80's on the 18th...A Toy Story

While watching Toy Story 3 with the family last night not only did I place an over under bet on the number of times my wife would cry but I also thought back on the toys of my childhood. While I had some favorites at various times I don't remember having any that I had with me my entire childhood. I guess partly because I was more like Sid than Andy. Not in the sadistic way of just tearing them apart and cross breeding them with my sister's toys to create new ones but I was essentially a toy surgeon. We had this huge rock garden on the side of our house that we used as our G.I. Joe battlefield and set up booby traps which as it turns out rocks don't mix well with plastic toys. Luckily my dad was a garage sale junky so he'd come home with all sorts of G.I. Joe accessories, vehicles and any duplicates would go in the parts bucket.

The great thing was that my buddy Mike (who still owes me his 1st born from a lost poker bet but that's a story for another day...didn't happen in the 80's) only lived a few blocks away and he'd bring over the heavy artillery and jets and we'd have this huge battle zone set up. We'd always use this same rock that was shaped like a sharks fin as the Cobra Command Center too. All these rocks were set to trigger avalanches and I can remember more than a few times getting a finger crushed in the mayhem too. Pitfalls with broken off sticks in the bottom were another key element in our battlefield strategy though mainly reserved for Zartan and the Dreadnoks. For those of you not up to snuff on your G.I Joe lore...Zartan was a master of disguise and leader of the Dreadnoks who were a branch of Cobra (the bad guys) that were a biker gang and I could go on and on but I'd lose ya. But the great thing about about Zartan the action figure was he changed color when exposed to sunlight and he had a thermal reactive chest plate. Sadly what made him so cool is also what made it so hard to return him to his original state. I'm not sure if Zartan was rare or people were hoarding him but I never could find replacements parts for him but in reading up on him today it turns out he was only made for a limited time so maybe that explains it.

I mentioned earlier that whole thing about rocks & plastic not being compatible well many an action figure lost limbs or worse being crushed between a couple rocks. Good thing is I became quite adept at dismantling and reassembling both G.I. Joe and Cobra guys and had this little tool kit I kept in my bucket of random parts. Now one of the more devastating injuries for anyone including these action figures were of the spinal variety which in their case is to the rubber O ring that connected the t shaped hooked looking thing that was essentially their hips to the spot in their chest where the screw held them all together. This was a problem because I could never find the right size/thickness combination in an over the counter/after market O ring. They would be too short, too long, too thin or too thick so I had to take apart a perfectly good guy to get the coveted needed part which then led to random arms and legs that went to supply other wounded soldiers. So I'd end up having Beach Head with Lady Jayne's leg or Destro with Tomax or Xamot's arm but it was always hard to tell since they were twins. I always made sure no intermingling of parts between the opposing forces didn't need Duke's arm to turn on him as he was about to take out Cobra Commander because Dr. Mindbender took control of Monkeywrench's arm which had been transplanted onto Duke after the flooded mine incident.

I'm fairly certain my old G.I. Joes are still hanging around my parents house waiting for their next mission that is unless my little brother did unmentionable things to them. Even though their battlefield has been transported away a part of me wants to go get them and bring them out of retirement when I see my boys playing with Storm Shadow & Snake Eyes and show them how a real G.I. Joe vs Cobra war should be done.

80's on the 8th

Winter in Iowa seems to last forever especially the older you get. As a kid though you almost never want it to end with all the snow ball fights to be had, snow forts to be built (and iced down) and sledding to be done.
We used to get a lot of practice in all of those categories across the street from our house. We grew up kitty corner to what was the high school at the time and it had a huge black top playground so when it snowed they had to plow it all off and they'd put all that lovely white stuff into one gigantic row of a pile along the furthest southern edge of the playground which had a hill to the other side so it made for some great yet slightly dangerous sledding because at after the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill was the street. Even better than the sledding there was the monstrous snow forts you could build by tunneling in and through these piles of snow.
We would get off the bus and race straight to our designated spot so we could defend our ground against other neighborhood kids. At times it seemed like a scene straight out of A Christmas Story. No not the one where they stuck their tongue to a metal pole...though I have seen that happen on the baseball backstop at that very playground but more so along the lines of the snowball fight and subsequent beat down of the bully.  There were many a day where we were probably minutes away from frostbite because we would stay out there so long and we didn't have any Under Armour to keep us warm or Gore Tex lined snow boots to keep us dry. We were men's men, hard core, die hard winter loving kids who nowadays hate these long winters with a passion. It's funny what a few years and a little retrospect will do for your perspective today.

Where did the year go??

I know I'm a few days late but I figure you probably had at least 2 or 3 other blogs to get caught up on and to find out all the new years resolutions they were looking at attempting to keep for at least a few weeks.
I figured since this blog wasn't in existence all of last year I'd take you down a little pictorial memory lane.

January in Iowa brings us lots of 1/2 birthdays but also lots of snow which is good because our boys seem to like it.

February brings snow and ice and more snow but also Valentines day.

Along comes March which springs forth with renewel.

In April Elli got to be a model and so began the hat frenzy

May gets us outside and every day seems to be filled with something....like weddings.

June is generally the epiphany our our soccer season.

But this year our season extended to July with Cole & Luke playing in the Iowa Games.

August took us to Colorado which brought us a lifetime of memories.

September again brings soccer into our lives but it's the little moments that can mean the most.

October was especially fun this year as Elli really enjoyed Halloween and pumpkin patches.

By the time November rolled around we finally had some downtime which meant family time so I showed off some of my old pizza making skills for the kids and let Luke take his hand at it.

What kid doesn't love December with Christmas and time off from school and snow and New Years Eve but most of all.....all the pretty dresses. Well for a mom of 3 boys to finally get a girl....dresses are a big thing.

I really feel like I did more of an injustice to my photographer wife by just picking and choosing a random shot for each month which may or may not have been properly edited. But in my defense if she didn't take so many than it wouldn't be so hard. I asked the boys their favorite things from this past year and it was a unanimous vote that Colorado was their favorite thing from the year and even ranked up there with Disney World as one of their favorite places they've been. Hopefully this year will provide some more memories for us to capture and talk about as the calendar changes over at the end of this year.