Abilene and Taylor County History Website

Well, one small step for man ... one giant leap for mankind. OK, so maybe its not quite that big of a deal. But, I wanted to let you know I FINALLY have a working version of the Abilene Texas history website going.

Go to http://www.abilenetexashistory.com/ to see what I have and please feel free to comment. It is a work in progress so your comments will help make the site better.

Dave

A Special Day for Jon-Jon

It has been a special day for Jon-Jon. To begin the day, the much anticipated doughnuts from AM Donuts were delivered and consumed with much enjoyment. I had promised the boys some doughnuts during the holidays and finally fell to the pressure. While consuming his third or fourth doughnut, Jonathan began feeling around the inside of his mouth for some foreign object that he initially thought was a piece of doughnut. After further inspection, he determined that it was a tooth from the lower, front side of his mouth. His first lost tooth and an the first visit from the tooth fairy.

Jonathan's excitement was palatable. He couldn't wait to show the grandparents. He called Granny and away we went to show the object d'art, the now emancipated tooth and talked about the visit from the tooth fairy. Well, once Granny was done, we were off to show Mahmaw and Pahpaw the tooth.

On the way to Mahmaw and Pahpaw's house, Jonathan began asking me how one learns to drive. I explained the idea of a driver's education instructor and how they help you learn to drive. After gaining a full understanding of the intracacies of learning to drive, Jonathan summarized my life as follows:

"Dad, first you learned to drive.
Then you met this pretty girl.
That was Mommy.
Then you got married.
So, you learned to drive before you got married."

I sure thought my life had been more complicated than that. Leave it to your kid to distill is down to a few basic facts.

Jon-Jon and I came back to the house. The next part of this story shows just what a good heart this little kid has. Before putting his tooth under the pillow in anticipation of money, glorious money ($2 is the going rate these days), Jonanthan got a out a piece of paper and penciled in the note below:

It never ceases to amaze me how often he thinks of others and giving back. Needless to say, the Tooth Fairy has quite a challenge tonight: getting a tooth in a plastic bag, eight quarters and a note out from under the pillow of a sleeping, little boy, write a "thank you" response on the note and get it back under the pillow with the appropriate amount of compensation, all without waking him up! Wish the Tooth Fairy, "Good Luck."

Its getting close to the end of the day. For some strange reason, Karen and I thought having two more boys over to spend the night would be a good idea. Like most normal people in the world, it took us about 30 minutes to realize how wrong we were! Be that as it may, there are five boys up in the loft watching Pokemon movies. I can't wait for 11PM to come around so I can send them to bed.

Fencing and Pokemon

Another day of hanging out the with Karen and the guys. Well, mostly the guys. Jonanthan and I spent a good part of the day putting the posts in for a new section of fence.

The fence posts are incredibly level and straight. One small problem is the big mesquite tree in the corner of the fence. I didn't account for the size of the tree and will have to do some "interesting" fencing to get around it.

The boys were patient while I put all this together. Karen helped by keeping the level on the posts while I concreted the posts in. Karen left early in the afternoon to work at the Christian Service Center. Her experiences there alone would make for an interesting blog ... much more interesting than this one, I suspect. As I said, the boys were patient all day so I finally quit working around 3PM and took the boys to Walmart and Game Stop so they could spend their Christmas money. I spent mine too. Jason and Jonathan bought Pokemon and Yu Gi Ho cards at Walmart and I bought a new wireless router for the computers were have here in the house. This Macbook Pro was not working well on the wireless router I had. It was too old and an off brand so it would render pages slowly at times. This new router is fast and keeps the connection.

After Walmart, I took the boys to Game Stop. Jonathan bought two new games for his GameBoy Color. Jason and Josh bought games for their GameBoy Advanced SP. We called Karen at this point and met her at LosArcos for dinner. The enchiladas and the chicken strips flowed like wine. We had a good time just eating and talking and laughing.

After dinner, we came home and the boys played their GameBoy's as can be attested to by the following video.



Karen made a really good Apple Pie. I ate and the world was good!

That's it for today.

Christmas Day 12-25-2006

We had a great day! The picture below summarizes the day for us. The boys received from Santa Claus a football uniform each. Jonathan also got a new bike. Guess he figured it would be fun to put the two together! So, here he is, peddling away on the driveway in about 32 degree weather.




The other boys got some gifts they were thrilled with. Jason got a Red Ryder BB Gun. All the boys had a good time shooting at the fence. Joshua got a Nintendo Gameboy Advanced SP. For those of you without little boys or girls and are not familiar with the latest kid-focused technology, that is a handheld game player. Josh has played with it most of the day.

Karen got a few gifts I think she enjoyed. One was a book on how to do eBay. She has been making stone jewelry (that's probably a terrible way to say that) for the past several weeks and wants to sell some on eBay. She also has a new stereo. She has been without one for awhile and now has a way to play and enjoy her music.

Karen and the boys got me a DVD series on the history of the Alamo (one of my favorite subjects) and a book I am looking forward to reading.

We spent quite a bit of the day at Karen's parents house exchanging gifts and eating.

Now we are home and are happy to be here. Its great to spend Christmas with family and friends but it is also enjoyable to be home with Karen and the guys. We are up in the loft right now. The boys are watching one of their new movies, Pirates of the Carribean II, while I, of course, type this blog.

We hope all of you have had a wonderful Christmas and that you are right now sitting in your favorite chair, comfy clothes on, doing something you enjoy.

Christmas Eve

An evening at mom and dad's church. Off to Granny's house for pizza and presents. The pictures tell the story better than my words...

Did I mention that my sister from Florida was here last week and that I didn't get to spend much time with her?

Merry Christmas to all ...

Christmas Holiday 12-23-2006

A fairly uneventful day today. The only thing of consequence we did today was we went out tonight, had a little dinner at Chilis and then drove around town looking at Christmas lights.

The Christmas lights at Hardin-Simmons University was quite pretty.

After hitting the usual suspects (Amarillo Street, the house on Sayles with all the dolls, and Fairway Oaks) we ended up at the Abilene State School and Christmas Lane. This attraction is getting more and more popular each year. This year there were cars both ways waiting their turn to get in.

We went inside the theater and saw a great train set and took this picture of the boys in front of the Grinch.

Looks like the boys are getting a little less interested in the annual drive around. That's probably normal for boys their ages.

After Christmas Lane, we came home. Jon-Jon and I walked around the block and looked at some more houses. We skipped down the street and gave Jon-Jon a piggy-back ride. After we got back home, the neighbors, who we saw walking around the neighborhood caroling at different houses, came to our house and sang a very nice song to us.

So, here we sit in the loft. I'm typing this stuff in the computer and the boys are watching Home Alone 3, a movie that I think jumped the shark in the second episode.

More tomorrow.

P.S. The Macbook Pro still rocks. Love having it to work and play on.

Christmas Holiday 12-22-06

Started Christmas vacation yesterday. Unfortunately, I have been sick most of the time. Just a cold but what a bummer of a way to start a Christmas vacation. Even though feeling a little under the weather, Karen and I managed to get out yesterday for a few hours, do some last minute Christmas shopping and have a lunch together. The lunch was nothing special but its always nice to spend a few minutes with your wife, stuffing your face and talking about whatever comes to mind.

I had an appointment with my doctor yesterday to see how things are progressing with my cholesterol. The news was very encouraging. My LDL levels went from 220 to 126 with just one month's treatment with an statin (or however you say that). Those kinds of numbers are terrific for me. When I have seen my LDL levels up to 280, having them at 120-something is like a miracle.

I came home, got a call from work to go there and pick up my new laptop computer. It is an Apple Macbook Pro.
A very nice box ... so far. Yep, its what I am using to type this blog. Hopefully, it will help me in my work and in some of my extra-curriculur computer activites ... that is making a podcast for Abilene Texas History.

OK, I have to make the shamful plug. If you want to hear one of the most exciting and informative history podcast, get onto iTunes and search for the Abilene Texas History Podcast.
The easiest thing to do is to search for Abilene on iTunes, go to Podcasts and you will see it there. If you don't want or like to use iTunes, go to the following address: http://abilenetexashistory.typepad.com. You can read the brief introduction for each podcast and listen to the audio file. If you want to subscribe and receive future podcasts, there is a subscribe button on the page. You will need a feed reader to plug the information into ... again like iTunes for your desktop. If all else fails, go to htp://www.abilenetexashistory.com. There you will find links to the podcast as well as the full text for each episode. This website is new so bare with me while I put more content on the site.

Well, back to vacation ...

My boys and I sat around last night and watched The Scrooge movie with Alstair Sims
and then watched Hidalgo. We all fell asleep upstairs in the loft.

Now for the 22nd. A pretty quiet day all-in-all. We mostly sat around. Karen fed me soup and tea to help get me over this cold. The boys watched The Mighty Ducks movie and then spent a good part of the afternoon playing hockey in the garage. Its great to watch a 6, 7 and 9 year old live out their sports fantasies. Yes, we have a couple of moments where we have to referee because they all get mad at each other but most of the time they get along well.

I spent most of the day playing on my new Macbook Pro. I also watched an American Christmas Carol with Henry Winkler.
I have always liked him as an actor. He does such good work with each part he takes on. Very believeable as the Scrooge character and I like the way the movie dealt with the decline of the relationship between him and his beloved. Actually more believeable than the Dickens version.

On to a little more padcasting tonight, another movie and then off to bed. Hopefully, I'll feel better tomorrow.