My Life Among the Women has never been a more appropriate title.  Seriously, I hear guys around this time of year talking about spending weekends in a deer stand, but me…it’s a different story.

“Oh my gosh!! Daddy!  Daddy!” CB was breathless last week.

“What?” I answered.  “It’ll be fine.  Don’t tell mommy, and I’m sure we can probably get the stain out. Eventually.”

“No. Daddy. Listen. Jason Castro is going to be at the Domain.  They’re lighting the tree.  The Big Tree, and Jason Castro.”  CB said.  “You know, he’s like, my all time favorite American Idol.”

“You mean the long haired Aggie with dreds?  High voiced and forgot all his lyrics?” I answered.

CB dropped the exaggerated eye roll on me.  I’m getting that a lot more these days.

“What?” I said.  “I loved his version of Hallelujah.  You know, Leonard Cohen is a musical genius.”

She could sense a lecture coming on and quickly moved on to mommy.

“Mommy.  We’re going to the Domain.  They’re lighting the tree and Jason Castro is going to be there.”

“Jason Castro?” Al responded.  “He’s really cute.  We’re there.”

So, you don’t have to guess how my Saturday night went.  A little preview.

There was a little more to it.  They did have the tree.

And Captain Jack…

Sure, it’s a little random, but he did sweet balloon animals.

MK enjoying the festivities.

The girls kicking it with the big man himself.  One of my favorite lines of the evening came from CB.  We were enjoying the show when this little boy perched on his dad’s shoulders next to us asked his dad why Santa was there.  CB never missed a beat…  “To see Jason Castro.”  The dad cracked up. “Can’t argue with that.”

Photographic proof that Santa is in fact a Castro fan.

The hippie did slip out amidst the fireworks, but not without Al displaying her mad paparazzi skills.

They managed to light the tree, eventually, and the girls loved it.  All in all, a pretty festive evening, and I will have to admit that even I left in the holiday spirit…and with Hallelujah running through my head until New Year’s.

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For any of you with kids, I’m here to pimp Boomerang from Cartoon Network.  We really don’t watch much tv at all around here, but we have fallen hard for Boomerang.  It’s the best of cartoons from the seventies and eighties.  The girls, notice how I keep saying the girls, because clearly, it’s not me watching it, especially around 11:00 at night when the girls are in bed.  We’ve now got a full diet of Wacky Races, Penelope Pitstop, Richie Rich, Thundarr the Barbarian, Tom and Jerry, and the Original Scooby Doo, or as CB refers to it…Old School Scooby.

I guess we’ve watched more than a few episodes of Scooby, or at least enough for CB to get the premise down.  The other day MK and I were watching the gang being terrorized by a frozen Caveman that had mysteriously come back to life.  At one point Fred has the Caveman in a wicked headlock, which is still impressive in my book for a man rocking the white cashmere sweater and orange ascot.  I told MK that it looked like Fred was about to rip the poor Caveman’s head off.  She agreed, she’s three.

CB hits me with the rolled eyes and says, “Of course he’s gonna pull his head off.  It’s a mask. “  CB finished, grumbling,  “It’s always a mask.  It’s probably that old guy from the beginning of the show.”

I was stunned.  I think this is one of those milestone moments, like baby’s first steps, or the first day of kindergarten.  My baby is growing up.  Fortunately, even though she’s got the whole thing down, she’ll still watch it.

“For you, dad. For you.”

Thanks…

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Baylor Homecoming has come and gone once more and it was great to be back.  We headed out Friday evening to the Bonfire festivities.

The pic captures it all.  How do you answer a ten minute chorus of “I can’t see daddy.  Daddy, what are they doing?  I can’t see a thing.”  Throw Miss MK on the neck and hold the other.  I’m now officially 2 inches shorter, but my right arm is three inches longer, so it all works out somehow.

I will have to say the highlight of the evening came on the way back to the car.  We left a little early and decided to head by the Bear Pit, always a popular destination with the girls.  We didn’t realize that because this was the 100th anniversary celebration for homecoming that they were going to top off the evening with an enormous fireworks display.  Apparently we weren’t the only ones in the dark on this one, because I’m pretty certain no one told the bears.

If you look closely, you’ll notice two things.  The fireworks directly over the Bear Pit, and the Bear’s eyes in the lower left corner.  Seriously, I’ve seen Meth addicts on a three day vacuuming binge that were holding it together better than those poor bears.  The girls have always complained that the bears are sleeping when we’ve been in the past.  They thought the action was great.  I did to, for the first few minutes.  Then I started looking at the actual enclosure itself and realized that this thing was built to hold in bears that sleep 22 hours a day.  I didn’t want to stick around and see the end.

Fortunately, we all made it out to the parade the next morning.  The Bear seemed ok, then one of the floats backfired and he attacked a hobo and mauled a traffic light.  Other than that, it was all good.

MK assuming the position.

Girls, girls knock it off.  I’m not Flash.

We did resume one of our favorite Homecoming rituals…watching the parade with the Braunsteins.

CB and Graham provide quite the running commentary.  This one brings back the memories, and the following photo is too good not to bring back for one more run…

Still waiting on the royalties from Baylor for the rights to this one.

I am getting old.

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We dressed them up, they were cute, and we shoved them out the door to beg for candy.  That about covers it for Halloween as far as I’m concerned.  I’m aware I could be treading on thin ice with some of you, but hey, it’s not the first time.

I will have to admit that it was pretty cute watching this one sprint from house to house, and when you’re that adorable it’s hard not to take in a pretty good haul.

CB confirming that, yes, that freak with one arm and a machete protruding from his scalp was actually a real person and not a statue.  Thank the Lord for high speed photography or I never would have gotten a pic.  Back to my original theme of Halloween.  Probably my least favorite holiday.  Fortunately, Al shares my opinion on this one.

I think it was the night of Halloween when we started making plans and Al mentioned that we had been invited to three or four different dress up parties.  She failed to mention any of that to me…wise woman.  The whole dress up scene is great, until maybe the age of 8.  Anything after that, and you’re pushing it.

I did have to put one up of my ballerina.  Look closely at the footwork.  I did that once, actually twice.  The first time I was on crutches for 4 weeks, the second was much worse.  Clearly, she doesn’t have her old man’s ankles.

The funny thing with our girls is that they’re picking up on the Halloween vibe as well.  I think next year we’ll throw four or five bags of candy on the table, let the girls dig through everything they want, and call it good.  Works for me.

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I’ve had problems…major problems.  Hard Drive failure kind of problems.  I’ve been buried in SATA ide cables, connectors, and every other futile data recovery option out there.  Let’s just say I’m on a first name basis with the neck-beards at Fry’s.  No luck.  I don’t mind losing anything… except the pictures.  As any of you that followed the blog for some time know, I’m a complete degenerate when it comes to pictures; can’t get enough.

I was smart enough to do a back up, several actually of all our photos – in the several thousand range, from the time CB was born until mid 2008.  That’s when it gets a little sketchy.  I had some others backed up to am external drive, that also had issues.  You know you’ve got problems when you backup your backup and still manage to lose something.  As my dad would say, I’m snakebit.

All that to say, it’s been awhile for the blog.  I’m moving forward now with a NAS box of over a terrabyte of storage as well as a pro flickr account that i’m currently filling with a few thousand pictures.

Swine flu, flesh eating zombies, armageddon…bring it on.  Sure, I may not make it, but hopefully my pictures will.

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