Posted by nathan on Oct 29, 2009 in
Eckenrode 
ZOMG! The time it is blurry. What is happening here?! There is no way I can keep up with all that is happening at this time of year. The leaves are turning brilliant colors, falling to the ground and rotting; which sends up mold spores that cause most of us to cough and expectorate phlegm in various ways. I think another side effect is that it manages to compress the fabric of time/space in such a manner that all knowledge of events that take place is dropped like water through a sieve. Or maybe its the incessant demand that I be outside during daylight doing one and only one thing, pushing a stroller. Whatever the cause, it sure is difficult to provide an update!
So, this week there have been doctors and dentist visits all over the place and yesterday was the six month check up for TheBubster. She has shiny white teeth and nothing to worry about on the horizon, unlike her father. That appointment was moved around the calendar several times and finally settled into a place where she was able to go to ballet class as well. She is really enjoying ballet, alot. There was a lesson about a month ago where she sat the whole time and decided it was best to watch, this made me feel as if we were going to be wasting our time but I did not want to let her drop the class, especially when I knew she would enjoy it. So I struck a bargain with her. If she went to three classes in a row, did everything the teacher said and afterwards I heard from her instructor that she was doing very good, then I’d buy tickets for her to see a real ballet concert with costumes and fantastic dancers and everything.
So she did this.
And I paid up.
I sent her off with her mother to enjoy the ballet on Sunday, they both had a splendid time.
Yesterday’s ballet class was invited to wear Halloween costumes. Since we had not one already selected nor did I feel comfortable that we could create one that would allow for actual dancing, we stopped at Family Dollar and bought a pirate costume and some make-up. You can see how she looked in the outfit and tell it was a wonderful costume for dancing. You can also see the shiner I gave her to complete the rough and tumble look of a really “Bad Pirate”. When I say “gave her a shiner,” I do not mean to say that I punched her in the eye, only that I applied the make-up in such a manner to make it appear that she had been punched in the eye. That is all.
Tags: ballet, dentist, Halloween, make-up
Posted by nathan on Oct 21, 2009 in
Eckenrode Somehow time has slipped into past and we are here now. Schedules click over, the sun rises and sets, the stars continue their paths around the sky, and this week the Orionids are making lovely meteor showers early early in the southern sky; not that we are awake at that time of day.
The leaves are changing, the chill in the air is coming and going; we had a hot day today of 55F. Which makes it pleasant to go out with LittleBud for an afternoon of exploring. He’s feeling a little ginger today and has had a crusty face all day. TheBubster has been exceptionally strong willed the last few days even defriending me out of spite over an ordered bath. We had to have a reset day, so yesterday I let her win the “I don’t want to go to school argument,” and stay at home with me, although I foiled her plan and took her to MIT; she loves several interesting features of the campus and the experience really engages her imagination.
TheWife is working hard, too hard I’d say if I were absolutely certain that I could get away with it. Sometimes she slips put in the morning while the kids are asleep next to me and gets home late after being in meetings all day so is offline from our normal communication channels. There is a new accepted level of stress in the air and things get a touch testy sometimes. We are working through it and comforting ourselves with the knowledge that this, too, shall pass.
Tags: update
Posted by nathan on Oct 13, 2009 in
Eckenrode 
So we had a great trip down to see the family. It was wonderful to get in touch with some of my southern accent, but most importantly having the family eat grits for breakfast for five days straight was a wonderful thing. One of the nice things about this trip was staying at the Benjamin W. Best Country Inn & Carriage House. We like having a little personal space for ourselves and we also enjoy seeing some interesting sides of life. As this was a working farm that was about forty minutes away from where most of our activities were located, it satisfied both criteria. It was also very good to see the family, and this time we were paced more adequately so that things did not feel very hectic or rushed and we were able to enjoy it very much. One of the really awesome things that happened over the weekend was being able to borrow my Grandma’s copy of the the Rackley book, which is a published family tree that I will be able to use to fact check my work at Ancestry.com. It is my intention to fill out the information that goes back as far as I can and provide photos for those that I can, basically I want to complete all the attribute fields within the database, which is awfully funny as I am taking a database management systems course at college right now, just as I have also started an inventory project that will list all the books we own and all the stuff we own; no I will not be including the loaned genealogy book in that inventory!
Anyways here are a couple of panoramic photos taken with my phone, one of them is from our Columbus Day outing to Atlantic Beach and the other is from the fields at the Country Inn.
Tags: Family, North Carolina, reunion, Snow Hill
Posted by nathan on Oct 1, 2009 in
Daughter,
Eckenrode,
Son 
Yesterday, King Open Preschool rented a big yellow school bus and went for a field trip. Parents were invited to attend, so LittleBud and I bundled up for some fun. It was so fun to watch TheBubster playing and interacting with her class on the way there, while I got an idea of how she fits into the group; pretty much right where I expected our child to be, of in her own world but happy to bring someone along for the fun of it.
Once there we waited for a tractor with a trailer full of hay bales to drive us around to a picking part of the orchard. (I have a panoramic photo of all the buses waiting below.)
Once we were all picking it only took fifteen minutes for all the kids to fill up their apple bags, so we caught the next hay tractor back to the bus and rode home. Bubby sat in my lap and we watched a movie on my phone while Bud slept. We all said good bye to the class at school and went home to chill out and relax before her ballet class.
Tags: apple, fall, New England
ZOMG! The time it is blurry. What is happening here?! There is no way I can keep up with all that is happening at this time of year. The leaves are turning brilliant colors, falling to the ground and rotting; which sends up mold spores that cause most of us to cough and expectorate phlegm in various ways. I think another side effect is that it manages to compress the fabric of time/space in such a manner that all knowledge of events that take place is dropped like water through a sieve. Or maybe its the incessant demand that I be outside during daylight doing one and only one thing, pushing a stroller. Whatever the cause, it sure is difficult to provide an update!
So, this week there have been doctors and dentist visits all over the place and yesterday was the six month check up for TheBubster. She has shiny white teeth and nothing to worry about on the horizon, unlike her father. That appointment was moved around the calendar several times and finally settled into a place where she was able to go to ballet class as well. She is really enjoying ballet, alot. There was a lesson about a month ago where she sat the whole time and decided it was best to watch, this made me feel as if we were going to be wasting our time but I did not want to let her drop the class, especially when I knew she would enjoy it. So I struck a bargain with her. If she went to three classes in a row, did everything the teacher said and afterwards I heard from her instructor that she was doing very good, then I’d buy tickets for her to see a real ballet concert with costumes and fantastic dancers and everything. 
