Today was the Halloween Parade at Leah’s preschool. As per her request, she was a bird. She was also the ONLY child there (that I noticed, but I was looking) who was wearing a homemade costume. I know parents in DC tend to be busy professional types, but I figured they’d put in a little effort.

I think letting this much time pass after beach week before writing the blog was a bad thing. Now that it has been a while it feels like it was a good vacation. It wasn’t. Everyone got sick, it was fairly cold, and I never ate an actual burger form dune burger.

Well, about halfway through the week I started taking score. This pretty much sums up the week.

Beach week score

• 1 – 102° fever
• 1 – Vomit covered couch
• 1 – Diaper rash so bad it bled
• 1 – Not quite severed finger
• 5 – Peoples less than healthy
• 2 – Trips to the doctor
• 1 – Rescued frog from the pool
• 2 – Not quite so rescued crabs from pool
• 0 – Nights of solid sleep
• 5 – Trips to dune burger
• 3 – Trips to Kitty Hawk
• 1 – Never ending smoke alarm
• 1 – Foot splinter the size of a tooth pick
• 0 – Drownings
• 3 – Lbs of bacon
• 3 – Sub par offers on our house
• 1 – Termite damaged bath room (@ Belgrave)
• 25 – Muchkins
• 1 – Gate injury
• 1 – Fence Injury
• 1 – Poo stain on the carpet
• 1 – Case of vertigo
• 1 – Fly up the nose
• 1 – Cube of beef in the ear
• N – High centered senors on baby gates
• 1 – Cat unresponsive to antibiotics
• 0 – Exploding oil pans on I-295

Clearly there is plenty to be grateful on that list, but plenty that made for a less than ideal vacation.

Still, it is nice to have a photogenic set o’ kids:

Lars going eagle style on that shell.

Lars and his pops on Life is Good shirt day

Convincing grandpa that Hawaiian shirts are cool

Leah found some shells and they are pretty

Taking her brother out to the lighthouse

Nene with them kids on Life is Good shirt day

Busted!

This is Leah’s first real school project.

It has been stressful, exhausting and all around crazy, but it seems like the hard parts are over (knock-knock). We have the inspection and appraisal on Ft. Truxion have worked out in our favor, and our offer on Mayflower was just accepted.

And the kitchen that my wife has told me she “will live, die and sleep in”:

Apparently the cover letter Kelly composed was instrumental in swaying the owners in to accepting our offer over the competition, pasted here for posterity:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. ****, I wanted to take a moment to tell you first what a lovely home you have created and second how much my family is looking forward to the possibility of it being our new home. When my husband and I first walked into your house I could immediately see myself living there – the main floor, and kitchen in particular just felt like the perfect home for us. We have two toddlers – Leah who is 3 years old and Laurence who is 14 months – and I love to cook and entertain. Therefore, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen between keeping up with the kids’ growing appetites and cooking for friends and family when they stop by. In our current house that removes me from everyone and the way you have opened up that whole floor is exactly what I am looking for to be able to take care of my family and still be able to spend time with them. As at home as I felt in the kitchen, the kids were equally enchanted with the back yard. They were smiling and giggling as they ran all around “the park”. We are moving because we currently spend far too much time with the kids strapped into car seats during our commute up to McLean each day, and being able to get them home quickly and to such a wonderful place to play will make for much more enriching experiences and pleasurable memories. Again, I must say what a lovely home you have created – we feel as if we can move in and wouldn’t need to change a thing for it to be our home too, not just our new house. Interestingly, we bought our current house from The **** – we’d be thrilled to keep up that trend. I wish you the best of luck in your move to ****. Sincerely, Kelly M Sexton

Seems like all the little girls Leah’s age want to be princesses. Leah has decided she like ballerinas better, and considering how this is a more noble cause (pun intended) — ballet requires hard work, determination and flexibility (all things required for wushu, btw), I am encouraging it.

So in my recent trip to San Diego I bought her ballerina paper dolls. At a great little shop. She loves them, so much that I played too. Yeah, I said it.

Jorge, tell Karen she needs to open a shop in Northern Virginia. She would make a KILLING.

Hillside Artisans was teh awesome, I don’t think there was a single thing in the store that my wife would not like. And lets face it, when buying stuff for the kids the goal is to make the wife happy.

We were awoken last night around 4 A.M. by a couple of cats who seemed to be going berserk. The were maow’ing and scampering about. I heard something bumping into the celing fan, and assumed it was a bug. You could barely see the shadow of something go zipping across the ceiling. I heard a faint chirping sound, and remember telling Kelly that I thought it was a big insect.

I was wrong.

I had gotten up to go get a towel* to catch what ever critter it was and I hear Kelly shouting and came running into the bathroom.

It was a bat.

And my wife was freaking out. That made me even more spooked. I stood barricaded in the bathroom trying to figure out what I was going to do about the little guy. The best I could think of was trap him in something. So I decided I would go for a hamper. I slowly cracked the door and slipped out. As I was closing the door I heard kelly say “be careful, he could have diseases.

At first I just saw the cats looking up rotating their heads as they tracked the critter. The light was still off, so I had to go pull the string on the fan. Which was a little freaky with a bat circling my head in the dark. Once I got it on I went downstairs to grab a hamper. I returned with my new bat capturing device and stood in the corner observing his flight pattern. Luckily he circled in a very predictable route and I was able to swoop the hamper over him and catch him on the floor. Unfortunately the hamper made a very poor cage for such a little mammal, and he was able to easily climb out. And promptly flew up and hid on the back of the closet door.

I actually felt bad for him when I had him trapped under the hamper, he mad the most pathetic little chirps.

Now that he was on the back of the closet door I had to figure out a way to NOT loose him in the closet. So I wound up hanging a towel between him and my clothes and proceeded to try an convince him to fly up into a bag I was holding over the top of the door. He didn’t like that idea at all, and opted to fly around the back and resume his previous route. At this point I thought it only prudent to close my closet door and return to my corner to watch and think.

First I discarded the hamper with it’s bat-sized holes and opted for a rubbermaid tub with no holes. OK, first problem solved. Now I was back to figuing out how to get him out of the house. Then it dawned on me, open the window. I even opened the top half of the window in the hopes he would simply fly right out.

Roy (as I have started calling my furry flying friend) didn’t think this was a good idea at all. However Henry did. He got all excited and made a bee-line for the very high very open window. I actually grabbed his tail as he was perched on the top of the slide down window and yanked him back in.

The only thing that would be worse than a bat in your room at o’dark’thirty would be looking for a black cat in the dark after he had fallen 2 stories to freedom.

I took the obvious course of action and grabbed the cat, ran over to the bathroom, opened the door and shoved him in. Of course to Kelly this appeared as if the door suddenly swung open and a small black animal was thrust at her. She did not have a look of calmness about her.

Now I it was just me and Roy and I had devised a plan I knew would work. I would take my old trust tub, tubby, and scoop Roy towards the window to the sweet night sky.

This was not as simple as I thought it would be, and resulted in spiking the little guy against the wall on my first attempt. Luckily he landed happily in the soft cat bed to gather his witts before resuming his aforementioned flight pattern. The second time I gently lofted him into the window’s glass. But on the third time we had a charming success. And sent him right out the window. At least I assumed that is what I did, I know I had him in the tub as I thrust it at the open window and was unable to find him afterwards. So I am guessing he is a really good hider or actually escaped.

If anyone talks to Kelly make sure to go with the latter.

With that done, it was about 5 AM, and I then had to make the rounds to make sure there were no more bats, or racoons (don’t ask) in the house. I also wanted to make sure the kids were not vampires yet.

Roy mid flight

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta…wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat…wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes…any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it … win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

–Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

We had family movie night again tonight. It was our second. This time we watched Madagascar 2, which had plenty of inappropriate content that was very appropriately hidden from preschooler. Plus it made Neal and I laugh a number of times.

After the movie was over, Neal played us a song he ad been working on on the guitar. Leah danced ballet. They were both surprisingly good. I taught Leah how to do a scale and a pirouette and she was able to reproduce on demand. I think we need to take her for dance, and I need to keep telling myself that ballet is like pretty wushu in a tutu.

The real memorable moment of the night was when I went up to tuck her in. First she pointed out that I had whiskers that I needed to shave and added that she would kiss me anyway. At this point I was willing to buy her a pony. Second she pointed out that her little stuffed cat was very tiny. I told her she was tiny, to which she agreed. Then she added “but you are big, so I will give you a big hug,” and threw both arms around my neck. “And a big kiss,” where she grabbed my head with both hands and crammed her kiss into my cheek with all the force her tiny arms could muster.

She is surprisingly strong.

“You’re not my best parent. You are my dad.” –Leah

Lars has been playing nod and shake. If you nod he will nod in return, and if you shake your head he will to. The shaking gets quite vigorous, and can last for up to a minute.

I told Leah that she could have two, count ‘em, two pieces of candy if she was good for her bath. She asked if they could be green candies, and I agreed.

Story time, shortly after candy land. Did I mention I won this time? It was a first.