Christmas Time Too

Ok you have seen the pictures. Now a couple quick stories. This is like my Christmas letter to you all. You know the one where people tell you how great their life is what has been going on all year.


First of all, I am going on a diet in January. I have gotten to the edge of the jean size so I must scale back. When the jeans are too tight, that is my barometer. So until January, I plan on eating like a friggin machine. So to help me in my endeavor, my local McDonalds has brought back the McRib. You can just never get enough McRibs. I had four the first weekend. I plan on a few more before the year ends.

Before Christmas, we had the baptism for our latest. It is too hard to remember names, so we shall just say number seven. The Hawkmen came up from NC to be the Godparents and didn't even bring an illness. So we have invited them back for New Year's Eve. I am sure there is a disease waiting to happen here soon.

Christmas went off without a hitch. We had Christmas at my parents, then Christmas at the wifes grandmothers, then Christmas at home, then Christmas with the wifes parents. I think the kids got enough. I got my jersey. And some of these. Nice.







Here is a picture of me and the wife at church on Christmas.






Here is a picture of me and little number seven in D.C. at the National Christmas Tree. What a wonderful father I must be to take my kids to one of the worst crime cities in the county, at night.







Number seven still doesn't sleep much at night. I have been off work most of the month so it hasn't bothered me that much. Next month I might be getting grouchy with no sleep and no food.

The dog is still alive. She hasn't escaped the house in the last month, but not because she isn't trying.

So everyone have a great New Years Eve and I will write much more often in 2009.

Christmas Time

I know I am worthless. I haven't updated this in a month. Would you believe I have been a little busy? So here are some quick Christmasy pictures and stories.

This first one is little Cecilia with her new best friend Brobee. It says stuff when you touch its hand, like 'I'm Brobee dammit.'




This next one is what happens when you let old people touch electronics. The picture is only half as funny when you can't see her holding the digital camera above her head and moving it around trying to get us in the viewfinder.







This is me with my smooooth Ovechkin jersey.




This is me with my sister and parents. I am the fat guy on the right, as opposed to the fat guy in the red.





This is the rough draft of our Christmas card. If you got a card, you will notice the diaper rack and other useless items have been removed. I guess I could have just moved them before I took the picture but then how would SteelerFanBoy practice his Photoshop skills?

The Power of the Blog

Sometimes things just turn out well. And I am not talking about my fine post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. Although that was delicious. I didn't even make potatoes. How about that.

No, I am talking about the fear of bad publicity. Just yesterday my sister had a birthday party for her son. He turned one. What was her biggest fear on party day? That no one would show? No. That someone would spill something on the carpet? No. Her biggest fear was a bad writeup in the blog. She couldn't have family and friends reading about no food or subpar beer.

I have to give her credit for a fine showing. Plenty of food. Actually had some leftover ham and turkey thrown in. She even showed me some leftover potatoes she had in the fridge. They had more leftovers than I got offered on Turkey day. And plenty of beer was flowing. Good work sis. She supposedly has pictures of the food. I will post if I get them.

Updated Baby Pics

Here are a couple new pics of the baby. The first one where it looks like she is smiling. It is either her knowing that she has an awesomely cool dad OR she has gas. The second is her sleeping. Obviously that one was not taken between 3 and 7 AM on any day I have been home this week.

Drastic Measures

This is what it has come to. I have been craving turkey ever since the Thanksgiving Day debacle. (See below) So I had to take matters into my own hands. I will be having a little mini bird party tonight at my house. AND there will be enough potatoes for everyone. See, one of the bad things about not hosting Turkey Day is no leftovers. Problem solved. Fresh bird from Bloom and now I have turkey sandwiches and turkey soup. MMMMMMM. Turkey.

Day of the Bird

You know how there are a couple of days you look forward to during the year? Christmas, The Superbowl, your birthday and Thanksgiving. Well I might have to cross off the day of thanks from my list. We celebrate the day at Nosaj's house. This year was a little subpar.

First I get the call that Nosaj has provided a weak imitation of beer for the festivities. Just because he has no taste buds, does not mean I want to drink Miller Lite. You can see one of them in the picture of the sweet potatoes.



Just wait till he sees what the guest beer is at Christmas. It will be something from the other end of the beer shelf at the grocery store. Not the end where they have real beers. More like a Schmidts or a Red, White and Blue. Stay tuned for that.

So back at the big turkey day. We are told that we will be eating at 4. So I get my green bean casserole prepared and I take it Nosaj's house to cook. We arrive at 3 and now dinner is at 3. Guess what. The green beans aint ready. So then we see the potatoes. Keep in mind there are 15 people here. It looks like granny brought enough potatoes for herself. I have seen more spuds in a small side from KFC.




Then we see what was supposed to be stuffing. It seemed to have more of a stuffing soup consistency.


So, on the up side, at least I didn't ruin my diet with all the food. Maybe that was the plan. Thin me out by starving me. So then we went outside and played some bags. It was Nosaj's kind of weather. Cold. You know Syrians don't do well in the cold. The highlight of the afternoon/evening was Nosaj throwing the fourth ringer in a row and start his premature dance as I tossed my fourth in a row right on top, cancelling out his points. Needless to say, I did a little victory dance in the street. I don't think his neighbors like us much.

Not enough work for SteelerFanBoy?

Obviously SteelerFanBoy needs some extra work. He has too much Photoshop time.

Number 7

Kateri Joseph (still no middle name) was born this morning at 4:40am. She was 6 lbs 14 oz and 19 3/4 inches long. Here are some pics. Baby and mommy are doing fine. Daddy is unshaven and still in his clothes from yesterday AND very tired. Don't these kids ever want to be born during the day??

Recent Pics

Here are some Halloween, pumpkin patch and apple picking pictures.

Nosaj's boards

Nosaj gets a bum rap on this blog. He is described as lazy and as a mooch. Well, he is both of those things. BUT, he can also make some nice boards. I will post pictures of my free Redskins boards when he is done with them.

Outhouses

This was a weekend of outhouses I suppose. Friday I dropped the wife and kids off at a park with their friends and I went and got a haircut. Then I had the major decision to make, go back and play with the kids or shop for a while until they were done. Surprisingly I went back to the park. Silly me. I was being goalie and playing soccer with a bunch of kids when I made an awesome save. Unfortunately the County provided goals were suspect and the friggin crossbar fell on the back of my neck. Well this hundred pound steel pole staggered me until I realized what it was. I managed to pull it off my spine and jam it back into place. So I gimped over to the wife and told her I was ready to go. A night with the heating pad and I seemed to be back to normal.

Also at the park, all of you that were worried about me sheltering my kids by homeschooling them would have finally been justified. One of my little darling daughters went into the County provided Portajohn. After finishing her business, she washed her hands with the soap. That ain't soap. Urinal cake maybe, not soap. After half a bottle of antibacterial hand soap, she was as good as new. See by having a job and being a little high maintenance myself, I have sheltered my children. I have sheltered them from using portable toilets and thus have scarred her little soul. Or at least given me the creeps. Needless to say, I wore those hands out with the soap at bath time.

So Saturday I spent making my yard look like a park again. Cutting grass (actually the boy did that) and weed eating, picking weeds and crab grass, trimming bushes and shrubs and taking stuff to the dump. AND waiting for Nosaj to come home from visiting relatives at the zoo. He bragged about his super, duper, greatest ever, new boards. He decided it was best not to play against me and waited until dark to come home. Weak.

Then Sunday brought apple picking. I drove the brood further out into the country past many orchards to get to the very one that 100,000,000,000 other people decided to go to. So went with our friends that own a farm. Once I spent two hundred dollars on fast food for a picnic out there and navigate the mountain and setup camp and steal a couple picking poles, ole farmer tells me he can get us apples real cheap by the bushel. So I am here for what, exactly?? Oh the experience. The experience fell during a Redskin game people. Is this not America?

My second outhouse experience came as we were heading back home. All the kids had to go potty before we left. My same little princess didn't want to go into the portajohn. See she is scarred. So I help her out. I go in with her, line the toilet with some toilet paper and tell her to do her business. She says there are too many bugs in there. I smack a couple nasty, juicy bugs dead and then she still won't go. Then after some gentle encouraging by me, she starts crying. Finally I make the call that this particular child will just have to piss herself in the car on the way home. I escaped the death pod and used up whatever was left in our car bottle of antibacterial. All during a Redskin game.

Bags and Burritos

Friday at the beach was Burrito day. We had been planning it for a year, ever since last year's Burrito day. This year we were going to play bags all week and the winning team was going to eat free burritos and drink free beers. Well Nosaj got a little worried about his skills so we changed it to fifty cents a game. Regardless we whomped him and he still didn't pay his bet. What a horrible loser. He whined when we played, he cried forfeit on the nights we didn't play and then got super cocky for the five minutes his team actually went on a run, only to see the dominate squad beat him back yet again.

So we defeated him and got no reward. Other than the joy of seeing the defeat in his heart, knowing we had broken the man. You can see some of the pics of the Bad Bean, our Burrito hangout.









On our way back to the house we noticed some fellas also playing bags at another beach house. So I challenged the gentlemen to a friendly game or two. Actually I ran drunk through the bushes and called 'Next'. They were a little shocked. But we got along swell. I teamed up with Nosaj this time and we crushed these guys spirits. They might go home knowing they were the best of their group. But they weren't the best of the beach. (We are the paler looking guys). I asked the gentelmen about their Virginia Tech boards since we had a VT grad with us. They just got em cause they matched one of the guy's initials. Nice.

Back from the Beach

So another year at the beach is in the books. We stayed at the same the house for the third year. I asked the FatherInLaw what time it was on the first day down there. He told me there are only two times at the beach. Day time when the sun is up. Night time when the sun is down. It seemed to make sense to me. Until I saw this guy who obviously was working on a different time.



SPEEDO TIME.



There was plenty going on at the beach. I will have to break this down into a couple different posts. But I have to get this out there first. We had asked the Hawkman and his family to roll with us but they declined. I think they got booted from the invite list. Hawkman and family are great, but my new best friend and his family came this year instead. Mr. Beer Guy is a nice enough fellow. He just takes vacation to the next level. He came equipped with multiple kegs of beer. Time to step up Mr. Hawkman.





And every year we pass Gravedigger the monster truck. I always want to stop but we are usually in a caravan of family. This year we left early by ourselves and we visited the monster truck land.

Tennis and Bags

So you saw my melons. Awesome right? Here is what has been happening on the home front. I haven't heard from the Hawkman lately so his old lady must have found out he spent $75 on Washington Redskins remote control. (It really wasn't anywhere near that much, I just want to add fuel to the fire.)

We had our Fantasy Football draft on Tuesday. I am sure I managed to pick a dozen or so players that will be injured this year. I tried to limit the amount of Skins I picked so at least they won't get hurt. And it is not true that only homos and geeks play fantasy football. Sandwich Artist is by no means a geek. Oh wait, that means.... Forget I said anything.

I played tennis last week with Nosaj. I was rusty if rusty means fat and out of shape. He took the first set and then started talking smack. There was so much gibberish coming out his pie hole, you would think Nadal just took me out. So I beat him like China man only winning a silver medal. I took the next two sets and there wasn't much noise coming from his yap then.

Then last weekend we played cards at the Nosaj crib. His old lady was out of town with some guy at some seminar. So he had a poker game. He insisted on a Holdem tournament. Of course I objected and then beat them all down. I took first and then we played regular poker until 2:30 am. Then, of course, him and his Detroit buddy started talking smack about Bags. So we set up the spotlights and played Bags until almost four in the morning. I smacked some ass in that too.

Which brings me to the most troubling part of my story tonight. My father came over this weekend and we played a little Bags. He had never played but he is pretty good at horseshoes. So he played my son for a little while and beat him. Then he started getting cocky. I proceeded to beat him down twice. Then latter after he trounced my son again, he somehow got a win from me. You would have thought he won the synchronized diving award or something, the way he was dancing around and so full of himself. I think he has turned senile. Come to think of it, I am not even sure he won the game.

Melons

Here is some stuff the kids and I pulled from the garden today. I thought the watermelons would eventually turn light green with stripes. They never did. I guess I bought a different kind of seed. The other pics are cherry tomatoes, habaneros and okra.
I am an awesome gardener.

Are you ready for some........

Look what came in the mail today.




Now while you all are watching your standard definition tv with your weak plain remote, I will be watching Sunday Ticket with my Redskins remote control. I know the Hawkman ordered one too. So he will also be enjoying the privilege of superiority. Steeler Fan Boy was on the verge of getting the yellow and black of his home team but the ordering process confused him. Alas he will be watching with a Plain Jane remote. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Old School

I need to take you back a little bit. Back before I had 100 kids, I had 100 roommates. There was always some randoms moving in and out of my townhouse. Some paid rent, some didn't. One particular one has hit the big time now. Here is a video of a lady you all know. When they get to her significant other, that is my old roommate.

A month

I know, I know. It has been weeks since I last updated all of you. Would you believe I have been a little busy? Let me try to update you on what I can remember from the last month.

First of all, some of you know, some of you don’t, but I am sure you all suspected that the wife is pregnant again. I guess six little demons was not enough. So come December we will have number seven. Donations are always being accepted.

I am being evicted from my cushy commute and being thrown back into the big city. One good thing is I will be carpooling with the Ebone again. One huge bad thing is I won’t be sleeping in until 6am every day. I like Ebone and all, but damn, sleeping late is soooooo nice.

The garden is doing marvelously this year. The kids pulled more cucumbers yesterday than we got all last year. And the tomatoes are growing like crazy now too. We have corn, beans, hot peppers, onions, potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, okra, carrots and watermelons all doing nicely. I just can’t get green peppers to grow to save my life. Oh and friggin cilantro won’t do crap for me either. I planted pumpkins a week or so ago which I heard is still late but about a month earlier than I planted them last year. So instead of small jack-o-lanterns we might have medium jacks this year.

Bags or cornhole has been going well. On the Fourth of July I put the super beat down on every one. But then the other day Nosaj came over to my crib and put the beat down on me. Now there is a Beach Week challenge. Nosaj is bringing some random family with him to the beach this year. The dude, we will call him Corey, is going to be Nosaj’s teammate and I will have the father-in-law weighing down my team. I won’t say the father-in-law is holding me down but my back usually hurts after the game from carrying his ass.

The mutt is surprisingly still alive. She had been good for a while. She got out on the Fourth of July night. It was my fault. I was a little tipsy when I took her out and she managed to escape. I was tired so she spent the night running around the neighborhood. I woke up at 4am and let her back in. Then she went almost a week without escaping. Until Sunday morning when I had to track her down before church. She was just hanging with my worthless neighbor who couldn’t seem to be bothered enough to grab her. I chased her in my car to the neighborhood pool and then she chased my car back home. Oh how it would have been understandable if I somehow just clipped her with my bumper. But no. Then yesterday she bolted again. Unfortunately she keeps coming back.

I switched over to satellite tv from cable. Comcast kept screwing me so I had to finally cut them loose. I did keep their Internet service since I don’t want to change my email address AND they matched the Verizon DSL price. So now if you need to see an out of market football game, come on over. For just a nominal fee, I am sure I can hook you up.

I can’t really remember anything amazingly stupid that the kids have done. I get the every day color yourself with markers. Or the constant messy rooms. The most annoying thing recently is the fact that the youngest can open up the fridge by herself. She is ALWAYS getting in there and just helping herself to snacks. Her big thing is yogurt. It is like her pacifier. She falls down she starts hollering Yobaby. She wakes up in the morning and the first thing she wants is Yobaby. She craps bricks from all the dairy. I told the wife to stop buying the yogurt so she would stay out of the damn fridge.

Lastly, they opened up the neighborhood pool I will never be swimming in. And we are on the waiting list to join some other pool too. Although, I don’t plan on ever swimming in that pool either. I just humor the old lady by letting her put our name on the waiting list. She has taken the kids there three times this year and TWICE some other kid has puked in the pool and they had to shut down for like an hour to clean. PUKE. You know what? I will just stick with the in-laws pool. Sure I have to put up them and there is always the chance that Nosaj will be there too, but the pluses outweigh the minuses. Oh I forgot. Public pools equal horrible. I just established that. Now imagine me at a public lake. EWWW. We went for a picnic last week at the local state park. I don’t know if I have ever enjoyed a shower more than I did when that trip was over. It is like a public pool with a side order of boat fuel and animal waste and fish waste. I think I need another shower.

Hawkman Bday

Happy Birthday to the Hawkman. His birthday is today, Sunday. Since it is already almost 11pm, most of you will read this tomorrow. Then he will be just another old man, balding, getting rounder in the middle, and still wondering where most of his life has gone. But he did get a new Webkinz for his big day so life isn't all bad.

We called the Hawkman on his big day and sang him Happy Birthday. It wasn't as happy for him as it was for us since we were eating crabs and drinking countless Coronas. But such is life when you are pushing 45 or whatever he claims he is now.

Here are some pics of our big Hawkman Crabfest celebration. Thanks for having your birthday on a weekend man. We appreciate it.

The broken chair is from Nosaj trying to put his fat ass into it. I don't want to spread tales but this is the second time he has broken a chair at the inlaws. Time for some Jennie Craig lardo.