SteveMart.in

I’m not really sure how it happened but I have become the resident finger and toenail painter in our house. Abby knows that if she wants her nails painted she should come to me and not to her mom. Mom just doesn’t have the steadiest of hands and ends up painting just as much skin as she does nails. She will claim that it is because of her lack of coordination.

One time Abby had a friend over and they grabbed a bunch of “The Friend” magazines and came up to my office and made my office their salon. They would sit and “read” their magazines while I painted their nails for them. So, if my day job goes bad, I guess I could open a salon and paint nails. I already have a great clientèle of 6 year olds. They don’t pay much and I’ve never gotten any tips. But they sure are a couple of silly kids.

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We are on our way up to Idaho for the 4th of July weekend. My wife is driving and her sister Jessica is sitting shotgun. The kids are watching Alvin and the Chipmunks for the 1,000th time with their headphones on. I am in the back with Abby trying to get some work done along the way. I put my headphones on and set Windows Media Player to random. It randomly picked an album that I haven’t listened to for many years. It is the album “Love Among the Ruins” by 10,000 Maniacs. This was their first album after Natalie Merchant left them.

Anyway, listening to it brought me back about 10 years and flooded a bunch of memories into my mind of Europe. While attending college, some friends and I took about a week off and headed to . Germany and France. The trip was awesome. We rented a little VW Jetta wagon which held the four of us and all our gear just perfectly. We brought plenty of tunes including this album. I think it was fairly new at the time and so we listened to it a lot. Hearing it now is like going back in time.

It makes me realize that this life is short and we should try to create lasting memories and make the most of each day. Back then I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids so it was easy to make sure I was having fun and making my own memories. Now that I am married with 3 kids, I want to help my kids to have fun experiences that they can look back on throughout their lives. It’s funny because in the process of trying to create these lasting memories for my kids, I find that I am having just about as much fun and that I get to keep the memory too.

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That’s right, this is my SON, not my daughter. I thought it would be funny to put Makenna’s headband on him. He thought it was funny too and even posed for a picture. Isn’t he pretty? Tyler is crazy. This weekend he and I went to “Fathers and Sons”. It wasn’t anything fancy but he sure did have fun. Any time we went anywhere, like to the park, to the bathroom, to the car, etc. He would say “Let’s hold hands” so we walked everywhere holding hands. I think it helped him to like his Dad a little better as he has been a little poo lately and testing his boundaries quite a bit.

When we got home, I set the tent up in the basement to let it air out a little before packing it away. They have had fun playing in it and last night, Abby, Tyler and I slept in it together. I love my kids.  (Update – I guess I left the tent up a little bit too long. Tyler decided to try to climb on top and broke one of the poles. Now I have to try to find a place that has replacement poles or repair pieces, fun)

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