Abulsme.com: Personal

All Ready for Christmas Morning

Everything is ready. Sunrise is in just over an hour, although it will be a while longer before everyone is awake and ready to go. Alex will probably wake me up within two hours. Brandy may (or may not) get another hour after that. Amy will probably get another four before we wake her up. In just over five hours, Grandma Ruth is scheduled to arrive and we will start presents in earnest.

We weren’t ready before Alex fell asleep last night, so the usual tradition of everybody getting one present on Christmas Eve didn’t happen. Perhaps everybody will get one as each person wakes up. Or not. We’ll see how good Alex is at waiting once he is awake. We will distract him with food. :-)

Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it in one way or another! And happy Wednesday to everyone else. :-)

Santa Train 2013

As we did last year, we booked tickets for Alex and the family to the Santa Express run by the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad.

So we all hopped into the car on Monday afternoon and headed out to foothills of Mount Rainier…

Alex and Amy were ready to go…

This was going to be our engine…

And this was the train…

Then we watched the engine couple up to the train… or “buckle up” as Alex and I sometimes say…

As we got on, I noticed there was a second engine at the other end of the train, so right after we got on I headed to that end to get a quick picture…

G’ma Ruth and Alex got settled in at a table.

Amy put on her practiced sullen face.

I ate my popcorn.

(Picture taken by my mom)

Soon the train started, and Alex watched out the window intently while perched on my lap.

(Picture taken by my mom)

Only a few minutes later though, the conductor told us it was our turn for Santa…

And unlike last time, when I unfortunately his stop on the video right before Alex started to talk to Santa, this time I actually did get the whole thing on video…

Unfortunately, unlike last time, it was much noisier, and it was impossible to hear what Alex said to Santa. (Although, Santa said that Alex said “trains”, which of course would be what he would say.) Also of course, it wasn’t his first time with Santa, and it wasn’t nearly as cute. So I am still very sad about stopping the video early last year.

But we quickly moved on.

Through dirty windows we saw some scenery…

Last year, we had power outages and never got to the “destination” of the trip. This time we got to the end, which was a little train museum. We got out to look at some of the stuff…

(Picture taken by my mom)

We saw the engine that had pulled the train last year.

And a diesel engine with caboose.

And another old steam engine.

(Picture taken by Brandy)

We could have hopped inside that engine, but Alex just wanted to look through the window.

There were some old tanker cars too.

And a repair shed.

At that point, we went back into the train…

(Picture taken by my mom)

Right around then, we realized we had lost Brandy! We had no idea where she had gone. One minute she was with us, then the next she was not. We’d hoped she would be waiting for us at our seats, but she was not. For what seemed like hours, but was really only a few minutes, we sat there and wondered where in the world Brandy had gotten to.

As we sat in our seats Alex said, “I think Mommy will be lost FOREVER.”

But, of course, a few minutes before the train was due to head back, Brandy showed up at our seats.

As the train started heading back toward the station, like last time, Alex and I (and Grandma Ruth too this time) went to find one of the spaces at the ends of the cars where there was a waist high door with an open area above so that you could look out without dirty old glass in the way of the view.

Of course, by this time it was dark…

(Picture taken by my mom)

We could see the stuff right by the side of the tracks because of the lights from the train, and it was exciting when we passed level crossings. But of course I wasn’t going to be able to get any good pictures of that with very low light and everything going by quickly.

But Alex and I stayed, with me holding him up so he could see out, for the whole ride back to the station.

(Picture taken by my mom)

And then it was over. We headed back to the car for the two hour drive home, with only a quick break for dinner at an Indian restaurant on the way.

It was a fun time, although very different than last time. Will it become a tradition? Talk to us again next year. :-)

Alex and his Tree

We always do these things a bit later than many people, but this morning while Amy slept in, Alex, Brandy and I headed out to get a tree. Alex remembered the place we got our tree last year, and that we got it at night. He said we should go the same place… If it was open.

So we went to that same place. Selection was sorta slim. We told Alex he could pick the tree. He wandered around and looked at a bunch of trees, and was not very impressed. Until we got to one corner. And then he saw it. He knew immediately this was the tree he wanted. It was the SMALLEST tree they had left. But it was his. He had picked his tree. :-)

Next up… This year’s Santa Train. We are going the same place we went last year.

Playing in the Snow

Once he woke up, I showed Alex the snow. He was excited there would be no school and he wanted to get dressed as fast as possible so he could go outside right away.

He ran out ahead of me and immediately made a snow angel…

Then he explored the back yard.

Roscoe joined us right away to see what was up.

This year’s snowman was not quite as cute as last year’s.

Then we walked the dog. After about 10 minutes, Alex decided he wanted his gloves again even though he had taken them off earlier. But oops, they were not in my pockets as I thought, but we’d left them at home! He gave me the dog, put his hands in his pockets, and we walked another 15 minutes.

Once we got home, he decided the right thing to have as a snack in the snow was a popsicle. But after a minute or so of that he decided he was cold and he was done. He went in first to sit by the fire, but then decided that wasn’t working, and so instead he cuddled under a blanket with his mom until he was warm.

[Minor text edits 2013-12-20 20:23 UTC]

[Update 2013-12-20 21:40 UTC to add the snow angel video]

Oops

So, last evening as I do many times each week, I made sure Alex was hanging on to my iPad (which he had been using, as he often does) and I unstrapped him and pulled him out of my car. I completely forgot that the iPad had been low on batteries, so I’d plugged it in. So when I pulled Alex out of the car, since the iPad was plugged in, and iPads don’t have MagSafe like Apple laptops do, the iPad was basically violently yanked out of his hands. From there it of course went flying in a nice arc constrained by the cord, smashed against the side of the car, then onto the asphalt parking lot face down. Alex looked shocked. I said “Oh no!”. Then when I picked it up, of course the whole front face was shattered.

I told Alex it was completely my fault (it was) and that I was very sorry, but it was broken. He immediately started bawling inconsolably. For the next 15 minutes or so. It is “my” iPad, but he uses it all the time and loves it. I told him we would take it in right away and get it fixed or replaced. He was still inconsolable. He was worried that we might lose some of his games. Not just the games themselves, but the saved levels he has been accumulating. For the last month or so he has been carefully building new worlds and train arrangements in Trainz Simulator and saving dozens and dozens of them. I told him I would make sure everything was all backed up and that we wouldn’t lose anything.

Normally I would have been very upset myself about this, but he was so upset I didn’t have time to be upset for myself. So right now I’m going through the process of making sure I have triple redundant backups of the iPad (both on iCloud and a couple copies on my computer) so that Brandy can take it in to the Apple store later today, where it will get swapped out for a new one I am sure. Then when I get home from work I’ll do a restore from the encrypted local backup so that hopefully EVERYTHING will be restore to exactly the current state. (It is now on airplane mode to ensure nothing comes into it to change the state after the backup currently in progress.)

Thank goodness for AppleCare+. This is my second screen smashing incident in just under 12 months though, so I’ve used up my allowance after this time. Next time it gets smashed, the cost to deal with it will be just a TAD more.

Oops.

Last Day at his Old School

Friday was Alex’s last day at his old school. Those who listened to the November 12th Curmudgeon’s Corner know why we are changing schools. We had some issues with the school, but the problems were basically management problems, and Alex’s actual teachers were very fond of him, and he was very fond of them. When I asked him the other day if he would miss his teachers, he said “No. They will miss ME.” Despite that, when we were about to leave for the last time, he pulled me down close to him, and whispered, “Can my teachers come with me to my new school?”. Awww….

Today his teachers said he was telling them all about his new school (which he has visited twice now) and how it is close enough he can walk to school. (Although not by himself quite yet…) He has been telling them a lot about it apparently. He’s talked about it more to them than he has to us for sure! They also said he was more active and played harder today than he had for awhile. The last few days when we have been counting down how many days he had left at the old school, his resistance to going to school dropped each day. He had been so upset about school the last few months, it just started to melt away once we told him he was switching to a new school.

His teachers also mentioned at least one parent had said they were really sad when they heard Alex was leaving because their kid really liked Alex. We did leave a note with contact info for parents of kids Alex played with a lot. We’ll see if any of them contact us. The teachers seemed honestly sad to see him go to. They made him the goodbye thing above. In addition to the words, if you look closely you can see it had pencil drawings of some of his favorite things that he talked to them about a lot. His dog Roscoe, trains, and of course a Companion Cube from Portal.

The last few months had been tough for him there, and most of the time they didn’t have him in the right place, so we had to make a change. But it was still a sad last day. More for the adults than for the kids, but hey, that’s how it goes I guess.

Alex starts his new adventure at his new school on Monday. He won’t admit it, because he says he doesn’t like any school. But he’s actually been acting like he is a little excited about it. We’ll see how it works out soon enough of course. :-)

Alex decided I needed a sandwich…

He made it for me by himself (mostly). It was yummy!

And it came just when I needed a snack!

Edit 00:14 UTC: I should add, he does not like peanut butter. He made me a peanut butter sandwich because he knows I do! :-)

Casualty of the #windstorm

The power is out at our place. We left to find an electrified place to eat and work (and play).

Donaghy/Minter/Roney Halloween 2013

Alex had been insisting for weeks that he did NOT want to wear any costumes for Halloween, and he did NOT want to Trick or Treat. But we took his old Thomas costume from last year to school with him anyway, and right at the end of school, when I was picking him up, when a teacher asked he finally agreed to put on the costume, and was immediately happy with the positive comments he got.

But that was not the real event. When we got home, Alex went in to play with his trains, but Amy got to work decorating the house. (While I cleared away things that needed to be cleared away.) Amy made a little graveyard:

And I put out a handful of Halloweeny metal things:

And Amy finished up the porch:

But then was the main event…

On the 30th, when we were asking if he was sure he did not want to dress up, and if he was sure he would not want to trick or treat, Alex suddenly remembered something from many many months ago. It may have last been mentioned in the summer, but I’m pretty sure it originated last Halloween. Alex suddenly got very upset, because Mommy had said she would make a train out of his wagon, but she hadn’t done it.

So… that night, Brandy stayed up late with a bit of cardboard, tape, poster board and a utility light we had hanging around… and during the day picked up some appropriate clothes… and…

Alex had kept his reluctance to dress up or trick or treat until the first kids showed up at our door. Then he urgently wanted to get into the conductor’s outfit and get into his new train, and go out into the neighborhood. He was excited and thrilled.

Of course, he spent most of the time hunkered down and hiding a little:

The first few houses he absolutely refused to get out of the train. He had me ring the bells, then peeked out of the train when the people came out with candy. He got lots of complements on the train though, and eventually he worked up the courage to ring the bell himself.

After just a couple more houses though, and maybe a total of 20 minutes trick or treating, Alex was ready to go home. When we got there, it turned out Amy had added more light to our driveway to entice people in.

(Picture by Amy)

Amy had been giving out candy and glow sticks and rings that light up while dressed in her bunny suit:

Right about then, we suddenly had quite a line… more than you can see in this picture. Alex just wanted to sit in his train and watch them come and go.

I had forgotten to wear a costume up to this point, but this was a good time to grab one I’d found in the garage a few hours earlier. Alex fended me off with some of the candy he had acquired.

(Picture by Amy)

At some point Amy handed over candy distributer duties to Alex.

But he was getting chilly, so…

Alex would peek out when new people came by, while letting me distribute the goodies.

Meanwhile, he was in his train under the blanket gorging himself on candy.

It was a good Halloween.

Alex was very wired from all this of course. He was up for many hours. And very active. Finally, at about 1:30 AM, I got him to lie down with me in my office on his Thomas couch and watch a maneuver the Soyuz capsule was doing around the International Space station on NASA-TV. He likes learning about satellites and such, so he was enthralled… but 20 minutes or so of it finally did the trick…

Of course, then I stayed up to do this post. I need to be up in about four hours. Oops.

Hope everyone else had a good Halloween too! Goodnight! :-)

Amy is Eighteen!!!!

I screwed up and didn’t set up a post to go automatically at 14:07 UTC today (7:07 AM Pacific, 10:07 AM Eastern) when she was EXACTLY 18 years old… but in any case…

Today’s is Amy’s 18th birthday!!!! One of those “significant” birthdays. Happy birthday Amy!

Welcome to adulthood. :-)

(In the picture above, taken on September 7th, she is in the process of wrangling the soccer team she coached over the summer into position for the official group photo.)

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All Ready for Christmas Morning

Santa Train 2013

Alex and his Tree

Playing in the Snow

Oops

Last Day at his Old School

Alex decided I needed a sandwich…

Casualty of the #windstorm

Donaghy/Minter/Roney Halloween 2013

Amy is Eighteen!!!!

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