The Rabid Paladin

We’ve been rocking out with Rock Band for over a year, now. It’s fun for the whole family, or at least, those of the family who manage to secure a fake plastic instrument. There are advantages to being the largest member of the family, and one of those advantages is that I can generally snag the drums.

Well, our drum kit has been showing its age. The pads are all scuffed and puffy in places and I’m afraid I’m going to do permanent damage eventually. Playing on expert means moving with enough speed that it’s kind of hard to tap lightly. You can see in the picture above that we’ve already modified the pedal with an after-market metal overlay to help it withstand the stompin’.

Anyway, I wanted a new drum kit for Christmas, but Santa refused to pony up. The jerk. So I waited. On my birthday last week, I asked for a new drum kit. I told myself no, but I just couldn’t resist that sad look I was using to persuade myself that I really need one now. And hey, it’s the big 4-0 so as midlife crises go, this one is… recoverable.

Isn’t it cute?!? We’ll get those unsightly wires tucked away shortly with the little plastic ties Ion included in the packaging. Long story short, my fake plastic rock is now just a smidge less fake now. Initial experimentation turned out well. It’s a ton quieter and the rebound action makes a bigger difference than I even thought it would. I’m still getting used to the changes in position. I’m trying to play the cymbal lines on the actual cymbals, but the game itself doesn’t detect the difference. And I can tell you right now that the optional third cymbal is going to be a rather urgent addition soon (hitting that blue rhythm cymbal line just feels unnatural on the pad, particularly when all the other lines have been cymbals, too).

Here’s an action shot for your enjoyment with Teleri and Aerin accompanying (Melissa is off camera singing). I assure you that we’re all smiling on the inside. Rhys served as photographer.

Another boring Christmas post. I know! I'm doing these for the benefit of sharing Christmas with my mom while she is in Germany and anyone else who wants to listen in.

We had an awesome Christmas this year (not that any of our Christmases suck). The weather outside is extremely blustery.

If you click for the larger picture you'll see that the snow is coming down almost horizontally. Ugh.

Our little family has internalized and formalized the Christmas tradition of the older kids filling the stockings for mom and dad. This year Cordy got to join the fun. That means we no longer have any illusions about Santa Clause. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

And just to be controversial, I had the us all show off our favorite presents this year.

Cordy loves her Playmobile.	Rhys is excited about his pocket knife.
Aerin giving astonish-face with her new DS game.	Teleri gushes over her hat and clogs. (who is by far her favorite Bleach character.)
No surprise that Melissa's favorite is a book...	Even less surprise that my favorite is a katana. (!!!)

Here are some pictures from our Christmas Eve. They're hosted on Ovi again, so you can click them for larger versions.

Making Deliveries

Every year Melissa makes goodies of some kind that we can deliver to neighbors and friends.

Plates ready to go.

All the kids are there, but you can only really see Teleri with her cowboy hat.

Aerin, Rhys and Cordy deliver to our bishop. Teleri is the teen not appearing in this picture...

Watching a Christmas Movie

Each year we watch a Christmas movie on Christmas Eve. It's generally either A Christmas Story or White Christmas.

Watching A Christmas Story while eating snacks.

Ralphie and family.

Christmas Trappings

We aren't terribly good at decking the halls, but here's what we have.

We have a Christmas Advent each year—usually by Playmobile. This year it was a pirate themed advent.

Here's our humble fake tree. We've had it forever and it still looks pretty nice. Best Christmas purchase ever.

The stockings are all hung with care on... the piano? Yeah, well, we have no fireplace and the piano works as a substitute.

Opening a Present

On Christmas Eve we pick one present to open.

Everybody has their present all ready to go.

Everybody showing their one present.

Well, that's all I could cram in here. Have a very Merry Christmas!

I was relating this in our Elders' Quorum meeting yesterday and it occurred to me that this would make a good holiday blog post. For once I'll do something Christmasy before, you know, Christmas.

Anyway, a stroll down memory lane.

This was in the house on Christy Dr., probably just after the twins had been born, but maybe the year after. I finally noticed one Christmas that Mom and Dad's stockings weren't being filled by Santa. I remember asking Mom about it and I believe that the official excuse was that Santa had enough to worry about what with filling the stockings of eleven kids without having to worry about the parents.

That didn't sit well. I'm not sure which of us thought of it and approached the other, but history suggests that it was probably Jannalee who came to me with the idea. Jannalee thought it'd be a good idea if the older kids, the ones who knew about the Santa thing, anyway, got together and filled the stockings for Mom and Dad. I thought the idea was awesome so we started planning.

For this post, bear in mind that pretty much anywhere I say “we”, it probably means Jannalee with possible assistance from me (and more likely hindrance). Jannalee is as organized as Mom. I was lucky to remember to wake up most days. Anyway, I know for certain that Jannalee was in charge of the stocking stuffer idea list. I might have been the only one of us that could drive, I forget, but I remember that we not only parceled out the gifts we'd get personally but also the siblings we would help get their stuff. I'm pretty sure I was the only one with an actual job, though I forget if I was working at Wendy's (now apparently a Mo's Pizza) or the Mall.

I remember that I was in charge of getting Dad some new dress socks (probably on the dubious theory that as a guy, I'd know were to get them). Besides the socks I remember that we got pistachio nuts (a family favorite, but particularly loved by Mom) and we got Mom some of those pantyhose that came in plastic eggs. Jannalee was assigned those as the complimentary theory to me getting the socks. I only just now became aware of the irony of our choosing socks for stocking stuffers. We risked an infinite loop if the Universe had been poorly programmed.

I remember being truly excited on Christmas Eve that first year. I've always been a night person and my bedroom was right next to Mom and Dad's, so I was supposed to make sure we got up after they were done with their bit. I'm pretty sure that my services in this regard weren't required, though. Jannalee may even have come to get me when they were done, I don't know. Anyway, Once they were finished, we got the stocking stuffers together and we filled those two stockings until they were bursting—a fitting match for the others lined up on the fire place (which we did not rifle to see what we were getting. I don't think it even occurred to me to do so).

I remember how excited I was the following morning. I made sure that I was in the living room before Mom and Dad were—I wanted to see their faces as they realized that Santa had filled their stockings. And it turned out to be everything I expected it to be. They were surprised. Shocked even. The very best part, though, was watching them realize that they couldn't say a thing about it—not in front of the other children. Oh man that rocked.

Filling the stockings for Mom and Dad became a yearly tradition from then at least until I left for BYU. Probably then, too, as I'm sure I came home for Christmas.

I'm not sure why Mom and Dad weren't filling their own stockings on Christmas. Things were pretty tight with dad beginning his second career and with the twins filling the family out to an even baker's dozen. Whatever their reasons, I'm glad that they weren't. I was given the opportunity to experience what Christmas really is and, with Jannalee's help, learned to ask the questions that lead to gifts that have more than their intrinsic value.

One of our Thanksgiving Traditions involves hanging out with friends and playing games. We play RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, console games like Tetris, and board or word games (this year it was Boggle). We hooked up Rock Band 2 briefly this year.

One of the interesting features of Rock Band is that they release new songs you can download every week (generally for a small fee, but sometimes free). Last week saw the release of some Yngwie Malmsteen songs, including the second song ever to be released without any vocal track at all. Our friend Jay is a fan of Yngwie, so he had the new songs and told us that one of them, Caprici di Diablo, was a real killer on guitar. Jay, being the kind of friend who likes to share the pain, invited us to check it out.

We nominated Teleri to give it a try—she thinks she's getting pretty good on the ole plastic guitar. I snuck into the back with the camera, but I'm afraid that the pictures turned out pretty fuzzy. At any rate, here's some of the better pictures (click for larger image) of Teleri discovering how very hard Yngwie can be.

Don't let her stance fool you, she's intense while she's playing.

That's a perfect score on the final solo of the song. I really wish this had been one of the clearer pictures.

Her final score. This is an awesome score for a first time play through on that song.

When she was done, Jay asked Teleri what she thought. Her response: "That was fun!"

It's been a while since I gave anything of a personal update and there have been some fun events you've missed out on so I'm going to shove a bunch of stuff into a single post. It's shotgun blogging in advance of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. (Some of the embeds won't come through on an RSS feed, so be aware that you may be missing stuff if you're reading this in a blog aggregator.)

Salt Lake City Anime Convention

Melissa took Teleri and Aerin to the Anime Convention October 25th. They have been planning this convention outing for months with their friend Rowan. Melissa and Rowan's Mom, Julie, went with them along with a stray cousin or two. Julie even dressed up (which is apparently the custom at these things). Best of all: Melissa brought the camera. As usual, I've uploaded the pictures to Ovi where you can see them with captions and tagging. I think that Melissa captioned them...

Highlight of the event was that Melissa convinced Teleri to enter the Dance Dance Revolution Competition. Anyone who knows how shy she is in person will understand how much of an achievement it was just to get her to enter the competition. She ended up winning first place! She even journaled about it (but then, she's not nearly so shy online).

Here she is with her first prize loot.

Kung Fu (without the Panda)

The next day I went up for my Orange Sash. Successfully. Oh yeah, did I mention that I've begun taking regular Kung Fu classes?

Halloween

Melissa was also sharp enough to catch Halloween on camera. By the time Halloween rolled around, Aerin managed to get herself so grounded she's still trying to dig herself out so you'll see that she's missing from these pictures.

Road Construction

November has been mostly pretty quiet, though they've torn up the street near our house. This morning I was woken by the house shaking. The whole house. That was entertaining, let me tell you. Just for kicks, I took pictures of the guys doing real-man work in the cold early hours.

Side shot along our house	That's our back fence

Twice a year, the LDS church holds a world-wide conference. The talks are awesome, but since there are four general sessions, we like to break them up a little bit. We have a long-standing family tradition that we drive up to Cascade Springs between the morning and afternoon sessions on Saturday of the fall conference. It's a beautiful interlude. The advent of conference reminds us that Fall is in full swing and we'd better get up there if we want to catch the colors in the mountains.

This year, we were a might over-scheduled on Saturday, so we went up between the Sunday sessions. My Mother and Grandmother went with us, though MamaGinger couldn't walk the trails. It was a great day for walking about. It had just stopped raining and was still lightly clouded. This made it just cool enough that walking was a pleasure.

And, since I brought my camera, I've post new pictures to Ovi. I've commented them there so if you want the full story you might want to hit my Cascade Springs channel.

I gripe about it enough that most people know that Melissa and I are not fans of camping. Unfortunately, we are a small minority with our family and friends so we end up doing our share of it. This year, we’ve managed to keep our camping commitments to a single outing to Cherry Campground near Springville, UT.

I brought a camera. As has happened in prior posts, I choose to share. This time, I’m using a photo sharing site so that you can click the images and choose how big you want to see the photos. Not many photo hosting sites would actually give me access after the fact to my originals, but Ovi turned out to have the right mix of utility and price (uh, free).

You can check out the whole channel if you’ve a mind (if you’re a member, let me know and I’ll add you as a "participant" to the channel so you can post comments, your own tags, view the original high-def images, and even upload your own photos to the channel). Below is the embedded slide show version of that channel (click on a picture to view it in full).

We had a family dinner/weblos activity tonight. Since I had my new toy, I thought I'd share the results. The kids were completing their Outdoorsman Badge or something and that involved putting a pack together and putting up a tent and cooking an outdoor meal. I arrived late, so all I really have is the tent stuff.

Starting Out

Spreading Out

Leaving them to it (this is not me)

Staking

Threading the Poles

Consulting the Expert

Progress Inspection

Setting the Awning

Enjoying the Results

Packing back Home

I take a risk in posting this because I don’t want it to get back to Cordy and I know some of my older kids might see it. I rely on their discretion. I hope they have some.

At any rate, inspired by the book Dear Tooth Fairy (and largely copied from it), Cordelia decided she had found a great idea and wrote two letters she dutifully gave her mother this morning. I share the results with you here. (Clicking them will bring up a larger version.)