My son woke me up several times last night. Around 6:30 this morning he just wouldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up to make him some breakfast. Before I could have my morning tea he decided that he needed to tell me a few things. I set up the recorder so that I could share my caffeine-less conversation with my 2 year old(s). He did most of the talking.

We had a fantastic President’s day weekend - definitely nice to have that extra day. On Saturday we went to our church’s pot-luck, on Sunday was church and naps, and on Monday we went roller skating with Rachel and the kids. All of the kids started off pretty shaky, but by the end they were doing amazingly well. Especially my son, who ended up falling asleep on his Aunt even with all the crowd noise and loud music.

This weekend was a little over the top with birthday parties, and I only saw half of them. Friday afternoon there was one at our friend’s house, then the kids schlepped over to the mall for a build-a-bear party. I caught the trail end of that, showing up just after work. Saturday was fairly low-key, no party until 6pm - but it was at Teamworks, the local in-door sports place. The kids were crazy, running around for an hour, then pizza, screaming, cake and more screaming. Today was the last party, after church we ran back to the mall for another build-a-bear. My daughter managed to score two bears this weekend. I felt bad for my son, so at Job Lots I got him this awesome, uh, thing. It is kind of a frog with bad teeth and a helmet and goggles. He is kind of a back-pack, and makes this awesome noise.

In December I did a self-cleansing. This second week in January I did a pre-spring house cleaning - about 2 years overdue.

Our house was almost unlivable. Around 2 years ago we had some guests over, so we cleaned up - stashing everything in our master bedroom. This remained the “storage” room for the past 2 years. About 1 year ago we shuffled around our upstairs bedrooms, moving out of one so that each of our kids could have their own rooms. This left my wife and I the living room. We set up on the futon, and have been staying there until last week.

So, to realize my New Year’s resolution, I spent about 10-12 hours each day, Monday through Saturday (6 days), working on cleaning out our house. I sorted out about 14 large contractor bags full of clothing, 6 bags of paper recycle, 4 bags of garbage, and 3 bags of toys/knick knacks.

We still have more work to do, but our house is now livable and presentable - we actually had some friends over for dinner! Our main task now will be to keep up, and slowly continue sorting and organizing.

So, I went through the Clutter Hoarding Scale from the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, here are the results:

It’s January 6th, 68 degrees outside in New England, what shall we do? Shall we think about greenhouse gases, the polar ice caps melting, rising sea levels, floods, droughts, heat waves, tornadoes and hurricanes (more about global warming at wikipedia)? An Inconvenient Truth is next on my netflix queue, but I managed to put all this aside, and go for a bike ride! Whoo hoo!

I biked from Marlborough to Maynard to meet up with Bill and Ken. We did a 14 mile cut of Bill’s century ride, basically the beginning and end chopped together. Together we averaged probably about 14 mph, by myself I averaged 17. My total trip was 36.5 miles. My legs have got 4,567 miles on them since July 2005.

When I got home I found all three kids playing in the yard with our neighbors, so we and the neighbors all set out to go to our local playground. Apparently that was what everybody else was thinking too, because it was swamped! We had some good fun there, then headed out to Chuck E. Cheese for some barftastic pizza and partying. Chuck E. Cheese is what it is. First you get your tokens, then you play the games and go on rides, which in turn give you tickets. You put the tickets in a different machine which gives you a receipt voucher. You then trade that in for a plastic ring that looks like a bug. The kids had a great time. We thoroughly sterilized them when we got home.

I took tons of pictures as usual. I also got a few videos, one of this guy that looked like DJ Qualls leading the kids in some birthday dancing with the big scary mouse.

We had a very busy weekend with lots of driving, seeing family, eating, celebrating, eating, opening presents and eating.

It all started last Thursday. Took my daughter to go see “Happy Feet.” It gets my vote for most craptastic movie of the year. Even more craptastic than “Eragon.”

On Friday I drove both kids to Hartford to meet my mom. We had a nice lunch at the Corner Pug, then she took the kids to NY for a few days. That evening Erica and I went to see “Night at the Museum” at the Jordan’s Imax. It was awesome! My vote for un-craptastic movie of the year.

On Saturday we packed, wrapped and I even got a bike ride in. On Sunday morning we left for Long Island. We arrived for the party and had a great time. The last time I was at my Aunt’s house I got there by bike. After the party we went up to Nyack and prepared for the big day. Had a nice dinner, made a ginger bread house, and managed to get the kids to bed. After they went to sleep I got all the presents out of the car - enough to keep us unwrapping most of the morning.

On Christmas Monday, the kids woke up, saw the note from Santa and all the presents. Had a quick breakfast then opened all the gifts. The favorites were of course a barbie for my daughter, play doh for both, and a buzz lightyear for my son. We played all day.

On Tuesday we got packed, made a stop at the mall, then headed home. Lots of yucky traffic, ended up taking around 4 to 5 hours (usually 3).

If you want to see all the pictures go to BushelAndAPeck - requires a username and password, contact me for yours.

Oh, and, some info about Festivus at Wikipedia.