Many of you have asked for details about my mom’s memorial service. We finalized plans and will be having a small service Saturday, September 27 at 7:00pm. More information can be found here.

My mother, Pam, passed away this past Wednesday morning. She fought for over three long years after she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer over Labor Day weekend 2005. Her fight came to an end on September 17, 2008. It’s a testament to her strength and will to live that she surpassed every expectation doctors had for her survival.

Even though she did not get to spend as much time with her grandchildren as she wanted to, I know that she loved them with all of her heart and more than anything. She was a wonderful mother and made me the man that I am today. I hope I make her as proud as she made me.

The twins didn’t get to spend enough time with Grandma, but they have great memories of the times they did share with her. Both still talk about “Grandma’s Beach House,” which was really a condo where we stayed for only one night in Ocean City with her back in May. It was their first beach trip, and it made quite an impression on them. They drive their couch pillow cars there, push their strollers there, and even occasionally ask with a hopeful tone if that’s where we are going when we get in the van. It’s a shame there won’t be any new memories to be made, but we will make sure the kids know her through stories and pictures as they get older.

She will be dearly missed by everybody and will be in my thoughts every day.

We’ll miss you grandma!

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In an effort to keep friends and family informed about details regarding a memorial service, I have setup a page on this site where I will post all of that information. Please check back there if you have any questions regarding a memorial service, any donations, etc.

http://www.kitchenfamily.org/pam

Apparently, there’s a learning curve to this game that I just never knew of until now. The twins LOVE the idea of playing hide and seek. But no matter how many times I try to explain or show them how to play, they just haven’t quite nailed the concept yet.

Today we were playing outside and took a walk down to their tree, which is at the far end of the yard. Someone mentioned the game and I decided to take another stab at it. I told them I could count and they should go and hide so they thought Mommy couldn’t see them (and all the while I am thinking in the back of my head that someday in a store I’d be cursing the day I ever taught them this dumb game because they’ll finally get it and make me have a panic attack by actually hiding.) Then Adam and I would try to find them. I covered my eyes with my hand and counted to ten. I opened my eyes. They were standing about 3 feet away from me with their hands over their eyes.

So I tried again. I told them to hide and gave them some ideas, like behind tree trunks. I did the eye cover and count again. I peeked while I counted and they did both run to the nearest tree and “hid” by standing directly next to the trunk on the side nearest to me. So I kept counting and turned around so at least they’d be behind me and I could pretend to look for them at another tree first. I called out the whole “Ready or not, here I come!” thing and as I turned around, Alex came running toward me. Avery stayed put at the tree but was in plain site giggling like crazy.

I thought maybe it would work better if Adam and I did the hiding. So the twins counted and I hid on the far side of a tree trunk from them. They got to 19, 20, 19, 20, 19, 20 and came running for me. With their hands over their eyes, of course. Strike three.

I decided to go back to them hiding. We played about four more rounds of the version where they stood next to a tree on my side of it and then came running at me as soon as I said “Ready or not, here I come!” They don’t get the game AT ALL, but they were laughing, happy, silly little things and we were having a blast, and that’s what matters most.

So I packed up the kids and drove to the local party store today hoping to find two cute cow costumes, since that’s what the wondertwins have declared they’d like to be for Halloween. (Well, first Avery wanted to be a giraffe, but a cute giraffe that looks like a giraffe costume is even harder to find than a cute cow, so I nipped that in the bud.) And on the way to the store, we passed by a new Mexican restaurant where we ate last weekend. The food there was awesome. I had steak fajitas. The twins had a chicken quesadilla, some tortilla chips with guacamole, and several bites of a seafood paella they begged from Daddy. Adam just had a bottle of milk. The building for the restaurant is sort of distinctive, but I never would have thought they would recognize it after only one visit. But sure enough, when we were driving past, Alex pointed out the restaurant and we had a fun five minutes of them asking what everyone ate and trying to pronounce foods like fajita, guacamole, quesadilla, and paella. Fast forward a couple of hours to when we got home and I asked them what they’d like for dinner. Of course, his very serious sounding reply was, “Paella.” Clearly he doesn’t know who he got for a mom. He got leftover chicken and scalloped potatoes from a box! Yesterday we were at Uno’s for lunch and Don asked Avery to eat a pepperoni on her pizza and she looked at him and said “Actually, Daddy, the pepperoni is kind of spicy.” We both cracked up, and Don had to ask me if he had heard her correctly! Do normal 2 year olds speak like these two???

Oh, and the party store had no cow costumes in their size. I’d very much like this one but it doesn’t seem to be available in their size, and I don’t really like either of the two that do seem to come in their size (2T or 3T,) so if you happen across a cute one somewhere, please show me!

As you’ve noticed the site has a new look to it.  What you may not notice at first glance is that our photos page has changed.  I’ve changed out the underlying functionality that pulled pictures from our photo sharing site.  The new version will be much faster, more stable and just plain cooler when it comes to looking at the photos.

I am still in the process of uploading older photos to our new image sharing site (Google Picasa).  So hang in there as I get them online.  All the photo gallery here on the site does is pull in the images from my Picasa web albums (RSS feed for you geeks) on our blog.  This saves you from having to remember to check here for posts, there for pictures, etc.

For those of you that are interested in going to our photo sharing site directly, there are some cool things that you can see there that you won’t see there.  For example, as my buddy Bill explains, Google has recently added some very cool face tagging technology where it picks up on who is in your pictures via face recognition technology.  As you can see here, you can browse my albums by who is in them (again, as I add more pictures this will become more useful).

Anyways, I figured I’d share some of the details on the new stuff here.  Stick around, I know we’ve got a few good posts that we’re working on and lots of fun stuff to share!  Hope you all had a great holiday and are ready for another football season!