Making It Up

For those faithful readers of this blog who were disappointed, heartbroken, distraught, or indifferent about the fact that we missed posting last week, we offer the following collection of posts in an effort to make it up to you with quantity.

Nathan: In Concert

For Christmas Megan got us a pair of tickets to see Van Halen in concert on February 22nd. Megan is, admittedly, not as big of a Van Halen fan as I am. So, my buddy Paul from D.C. came down to see the show with me. About 30 minutes before he arrived his boss called him and asked him if he had heard that the concert was cancelled. He hadn't. He pulled in and asked me if I had heard. I hadn't. We double checked and, sure enough, no gig.

The rescheduled concert was set for something like March 21st. But, by this time, I had sufficiently guilted Megan into coming with me. Sadly, the concert was cancelled yet again and rescheduled for this past Friday night, and it actually happened!

The show was amazing! Ever since I started playing electric guitar in high school and discovered Van Halen, I've been a fan. And, now I've seen them in concert fronted by both Sammy Hagar and now David Lee Roth. On Friday night they played only Roth-era songs (covering 1978-1984), of which Megan knew only one song. I, on the other hand, not only knew the words, but also knew the guitar parts as well; after the concert I felt like I had just played the whole show (although only on air guitar from 100 rows back). Edward is still an incredible guitar player and was totally fun to watch.

Megan's Marathon

So many people were so supportive of Megan while she trained for her half-marathon. Even more asked about how it went when it was all over. At the risk of having to post another recant, I decided to post a great picture of her during the race--which she finished in a little over 2 hours.

I'm so proud of her. She's an inspiration.

Alison The Genius

I was typing the title of this posting, and Ali requested that I add the "The Genius" part. Let's see why.

I've heard all this about how kids grow up so fast, and how technologically advanced the kids of today are. I've heard it. But, I didn't really think it applied to me right now. Let me share a conversation I just had with Alison.

I was sitting here at the computer and Ali walked in and said, "Dad, can I get on the computer? I need to post to my blog?"

"What?" I said, thinking that I must have mis-heard.

"Yeah," she said, "I need to tell everyone that my dad is crazy."

...

"I have my mp3 player."

"Do you even know what an mp3 player is?"

"It's like a music player."

"What is an mp3?"

"A little XBox?"

I don't even know how she picked up any of this terminology. She says she's seen us post on our blog, and Megan does have an iPod, and there is an XBox at Megan's parents' house. So, I guess it's not totally unreasonable that she's heard about this stuff before. But, wow.

Earlier this week Megan was doing her daily ritual: checking the Indiana real estate postings for any new developments. From the other room I heard her gasp loudly. I yelled to Megan, "What? What happened?" Alison was walking by and said, concluding what had happened, "It sold!?" Ali is incredibly perceptive.

Alison has been reading along as I've been typing. I now quote her:

"I know what you need to put now. Write: Alison is a real genius."

"I want to post a picture of me doing a genius pose."

Kaitlyn: Little Sister

Kaitlyn has been especially clingy to Alison this past week. She relies so much on her older sister. It is very cute. Today in Primary at church, Kaitlyn refused to sit with her Sunbeam class during Sharing Time. Instead, she insisted on sitting next to Ali with the CTR 6 class.

Here's a nice little video of Kaitlyn doing some crazy dancing, like she loves, to Alison, her sweet older sister's audio soundtrack:

As you know, we've been in the process of finding an buying a house for several weeks now. The other day we were asking the girls what they wanted in a new house. One of the homes we were considering had some smaller bedrooms and we thought we might have to put each kid in his or her own room. When we asked Kaitlyn about it she cried and said, "I don't want my own room!" I'm glad we're recording this now so we have it on record for future use.

Earlier this week Kaitlyn made a picture for her best friend, Blake. Every day she wakes up and asks if today is the day that she'll be able to give him his picture. Hopefully we'll be able to give it to him soon!

Max the Mover

Max is officially mobile. Sort of. He's able to push himself up on all fours into a crawling position. He then is able to move his arms and knees in a coordinated fashion provided he has a goal he's reaching towards--which is usually something that we have put just out of his reach that we don't want him to have. He reaches it. We repeat the process.

He is also starting to eat real food--if you can call baby food "real food."

He is such a happy little boy. Whenever we take him out he smiles at people. He is developing quite a cute little laugh. Megan is able to get him to laugh just by looking at him and starting to laugh.

Footnote

By the way, we bought a house.

What's that you say? It looks eerily similar to the first house we made an offer on--the house that I had posted a picture of and then had to post a recant because we didn't come to an agreement; the offer we made 2 offers ago. Well, it is the very same house indeed. We were negotiating on a third property when we decided that the one we liked best was the one we liked first, and we figured out how to make it work.

We are very excited.

Oh, and it's a long story...