Waits Family Annals

On December 10, Connor turned two. What was originally planned as a repeat of his first birthday (a nice dinner and chatting with friends), quickly became more. It was actually the most stressful and time consuming party I have done. Lessons I have learned are: never throw a birthday party on the same day I work; I don’t have to do EVERY home made craft created on the planet that fits a birthday theme.

Besides those things, I really had so much fun and it was great to see my son love everything so much and be old enough to get excited.

Understatement of the year: Connor Loves Angry Birds. He loves the music. He loves searching them on YouTube. He loves making angry pig noises. And, of course, he loves to play the game. He couldn’t care less about his score, even when it’s better than his parents. He just loves to fling those birds off the slingshot ASAP.

The trouble for me began when I started doing some research online for Angry Bird themed parties. Thank goodness for Etsy to help me along the way. We actually only invited five families, but that totaled 14 kids.

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Okay, surprise surprise, you guessed it right: Cowboy Boots! I love love love them. I made it through work, and a steampunk wedding. The awesome thing about charlie horse boots, is that they are wider than most boots, so really my feet didn’t hurt anymore than normal. They are slowly becoming easier to put on though, the left one gives me problems…. but I have a major bruise on that foot. Anyways, here they are:

These suckers are beautiful! Its is almost a shame they are on my feet.  They are lasered with black tulle, and of course nice and leathery!

Now, I have to add just two more top gifts of my 28th birthday.  I have to be honest, I have great family and friends.  All my gifts were awesome, but I just want to add two more goodies to this blog.

My mothers gift.  This thing is awesome and beautiful.  My moms best friends daughter makes these and sells them in a boutique in Arizona.  When my mom was visiting us this summer, she brought all of the fabric options and let me pick which one I liked. Even though Connor is almost sorta kinda 2, a lot of this gift will be saved for the next baby.  But I still need a big bag to fit all his food he requires when we are out and about, so here is the awesome handmade diaper bag set:

So that awesome flower thing, is not a clutch like I thought it was.  It is actually to hold your baby wipes! I am considering using it as a clutch though…..

Angry Baker and Marijuana Boy gave me the third gift I would like to share.

Here is some of what Angry Baker wrote to me in my birthday card:, “… you should know – the book is for real- she’s not joking around.” and my favorite line, ” I figure if you ever get around to reading, this would be a good one for you – maybe even work it into your sabbath scripture study!”

She knows me very well, I am a wannabe at many things, reading is one of them.  But I have already read the special bonus interview with Eliza Dushku, and I’m feeling a blog post coming on about that one! So more to come about this book. Angry Baker, yes you are right, she is a bigger fan than me.  I have read the intro, and I’m already wanting to put my dvd’s back on to re watch the clips she is talking about, I’m falling in love with this show all over again! I love this gift!

A consolation in turning 30 is that my siblings (except for one) are always even older than me! Celebrating the successful completion of thirty years (i.e. “I’m not dead yet“) was made more enjoyable by the deliberate planning of my wife. This birthday was particularly meaningful for me; I felt I finally had to face three facts:

1. I am not a fifth grade teacher.
2. I am not a famous doctor.
3. I am not a famous writer.

These were the three dreams I had in fourth grade. I thought I was so much fun to be around at that age, that it would be even more fun to surround myself with similarly aged children for a living. Of course, that was going to be my side profession after I became a famous (not a regular, normal, or average) doctor. Perhaps I would have grown to be a general practitioner. I don’t quite remember my exact goal. In my spare time, I was planning on writing books. Novels of adventure and heroics to match my favorite authors: Susan Cooper, Orson Scott Card and R.L. Stine. I have not done any of this. I also came to the realization I am not rich. I am not a rock star (not necessarily music). I am who I am. Now, instead of looking at the rich and famous 20-something phenoms, I am looking at those who started their ascension to riches and attention in their thirties. Surely that will be me. Right? Well, I think that was my realization. I’m not so much worried about that anymore. I now have three new facts:

1. I have a wonderful wife.
2. I have a fantastic family.
3. I thoroughly enjoy the adult I have become.

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A Christmas/Birthday present for my sister-in-law over at Waits4theBus– I decided to make an epic cross-stitch of Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After completing the Mega Man project in June, I started looking around for a video game based cross-stitch pattern. I LOVE Sprite Stitch and Stitch Please for inspiration. As I was looking through various video game patterns, I was leaning toward a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme. Rather than use a pattern created by others, I wanted to do a Todd Waits original. I started looking for sprites used in TMNT video games from the NES and SNES. I found a good resource that I have since forgotten, and found a sprite of Krang. I new exactly what I wanted at that point! I grabbed another sprite of a dialog box saying “Tonight I Dine on Turtle Soup,” and used Photoshop to combine the images. I then used PCStitch Pro to convert the gif into a cross-stitch pattern with corresponding DMC floss colors, and created what has to be one of the coolest patterns EVAR!

Before I even started working on the actual stitching in September, I knew that I was not going to keep this for myself. My sister-in-law loves the TMNT, and I knew this was going to be her Christmas/Birthday present (they are the same day) from me. The whole pattern came out to about 8 x 14 inches. It was big, but so much fun. I really slacked off in October and November. For the first two weeks of December, I essentially watched movies and cross-stitched in order to finish in time. Every time I would finish an identifiable section, I would get so excited and think how much Wendy was going to LOVE it. I also couldn’t wait to post it online, but had to wait until after Christmas otherwise ruin the surprise. So Christmas has come and gone. She loved the gift, and I quote from Twitter: “@DarkYodeler Wow. That’s all I gotta say. Cross stitch has made it to a whole new level for me.”

Enjoy a full res shot and printable pattern after the jump:

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Shock of all nations! We went to the beach again. We did much of the same… waves, sun, snacks, castles, kids, reading, etc.

After the beach we went to Steamers and ate a TON of crabs, shrimp, clams and oysters. Why, you ask?

IT WAS LIZ’S BIRTHDAY!!!!! She is a whopping 25 27 years old now. Way to go, Liz. (Stay tuned for updated pics later this week). It was a lot of fun, and definitely a new experience. We had to crack open about six crabs per plate. I ate some crab brains. A spider was in one of my clams. Did that get us a free plate? A discount? Special attention? No. Nada. Zilch. It was the first time we had to work so hard to get at our food. But, hey, it was worth it. When we got home that night, we had some delicious ICE CREAM CAKE. It was called Oreo Delight. Made up primarily of Oreos. And Ice Cream, of course. It was a nice way to celebrate Liz’s birthday.

More pics after the jump:

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Another all day beach day. Oh, and Connor decided to model for us the latest in baby swimwear. We found a tide pool where he could sit relatively undisturbed by the waves. He enjoyed the salt water, and eating more sand. I kept up my commitment to boogie-boarding. What fun! What sun!

It was Richard’s Birthday today. To celebrate, we went out to AJ’s Fine Dining Establishment (Popular since 1985). After our meal there, we went back home and ate Double Chocolate Extreme Ice Cream Cake. It was like that Ella Fitzgerald song… “Heaven, it [tastes] like heaven…”. Afterward, we watched Salt. Ummmm… all I can say about that is it prominently featured a character called the “Spy Master”. It was pretty lame. But we had fun laughing at the absurdities.

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