Catching Up with the Wilsons — Text Only

February 8, 2009

Our blogging has tapered wayyyyyyyy off, we realize. Partly, I think, that’s because we just haven’t been putting our cameras to heavy use of late, and we’d gotten to where we were relying on pictures for inspiration. That…and we’ve had quite a bit going on. So, in no particular order — not even sequential:

• My dad had open heart surgery (in Austin) and is recovering at the fastest end of the spectrum he was provided — was at home and taking walks five days after the surgery; the issue was aorta-related.
• We’ve made SIX round trips (28 minutes each way) to the Honda dealership in Marysville in the past nine days to deal with assorted electrical issues with our minivan.
• Julie is rapidly becoming a Facebook addict — not only is she now “friends” with most of the neighborhood ladies she hangs out with, but she has discovered some additional relatives and long-ago friends who are in the area (and isn’t feeling like that’s a bad thing).
• I’ve been on Facebook for a while, but, of late, there has been an explosion of Sour Lake connections cropping up there.
• While my dad was undergoing his procedure, Kim was in the waiting room getting my mom onto Facebook as well (she still lacks a profile picture and, I suspect, has not touched Facebook at all since then…but I will be in town for a visit in a couple of weeks, so we’ll see what we do about that…)
• Speaking of Kim, she has become a Twitter fiend…although the racing season just started, so we’ll see if that somehow slows her down a bit on that front
• We got tired of Benton rating every experience in his life as being either “good” or “fine,” so we now require him to rate experiences on a scale of 1 to 10. Today included a 1 (helping with cleaning up the basement), a 4 (shopping for shoes with Julie), and an 8.5 (playing with a neighbor this morning).
• The University of Texas baseball season starts on February 20th in Austin, and I’ll be there for it.
• We got two vacuum cleaners for Christmas (ya’ think our respective parents were trying to tell us something?) — the second vacuum got traded in for a keypad-driven deadbolt on our front door, which we finally got around to getting and installing this weekend. Everyone in the house is excited about it for a different reason:
  • Alana — because, in the process, I replaced the thumb-driven door handle with a lever, so she can now open the front door by herself
  • Carson — because he gets to show all of his friends how he can unlock the door (AND because he came up with one of the codes that is programmed in to work)
  • Benton — well…he was kinda’ lobbying for the thumbprint-scanning one, but we decided that really didn’t make much sense, and he’s pleased with the overall concept
  • Julie — because she can now start her car and let it warm up while she’s getting the kids scooted out of the house
  • Me — because it’s electronic and has buttons
• John Updike died — he’s in and will remain in my Top 5 list of favorite writers
• We got the necessary recipe of ice-then-snow-then-ice-then-slight-melt over the course of several days a few weeks ago that resulted in Benton and me spending 3 hours last Sunday busting up 1.5″ of ice that covered our driveway. Welcome to Ohio.
• Julie’s firming up our plans for spring break, and it looks like we’ll be making a trip down to see the Charlotte, NC, Brownlows

I’m sure I missed a dozen or so items of note here, but that’s just the way it goes!

Posted in Alana, Benton, Carson, Julie, Tim