Why I will never buy a computer from anywhere but Costco again

So we got a family laptop from Costco in April '08. It worked without problems for as long time. Actually, about 18 months. The factory warranty expired at 12 months, but Costco doubles the factory warranty. In the last four months we have sent our computer back twice. The first time they replaced the hard drive and the cable/ribbon for the monitor. The second time they replaced the motherboard. It only cost us the time on the phone with Costco and HP, and the time to backup and reload all the data. We figure we're good for another 15-24 months at this point.

That is my plug for buying a computer from Costco. By the way, in 2004 or 2005, of Dell's $4 billion net profit, 25% of that was from the sale (and non-use) of extended warranties. Costco costs less and you can still use your membership the rest of the year.

Toddler's pants/shorts

I know there is not much of use coming out of DC these days. I think I may have found a task they could accomplish and one that I am comfortable with.

Is there a reason there need to be four different closing systems on the clothes? Here are the ones I can think of: snap, plastic button, the clasp (like on adult dress pants), the big button that they put on denim.

This creates almost too much challenge for me when Cole is jumping up and down in front of the toilet and I'm trying to figure out the closure design of the pants he is wearing and get them down without damaging them and before .... you get the picture.

I propose the simple snap for all their pants.

Hilarious

I find this character from the Ice Age movies hilarious.Also, the best post I've seen on facebook regarding curling at the Olympics: "To make Curling watchable, they should use feral cats instead of rocks."

Two more

I don't know what Cole is doing. He was in a grumpy mood, and he cut his lip in primary when he banged heads with someone.

One night I'm suckin' on lemons and spittin' out the seeds

Here is Cole helping wash the lemons. I went over the wall and took the stepladder with me. I heard a lot of noise and then Cole yelling in his funny way "Dad where are you?" He had pushed his car to the place where I went over the wall and then climbed on top so he could see over the top. Some of you saw the picture on facebook of him standing on top of the car. He took it to a whole new level of difficulty by doing it in the rain. Thank goodness for the reflexes of a puma.

New belt & the redhead funnyman

He is so proud of his belt. About 10 minutes into church Mindy informed me that Cole was wearing Parker's shirt. My defense: it was in his closet and it fit him. He didn't mind, but his feet must have grown in the last week because he was crying from the pain in his toes. Note how he tries to crowd out Parker.

Mindy's Christmas Present

You can play "Where's Jack?" in the third one.

The fun goes on

I thought I was going to bed after I posted the last one. Not so! Parker met me on the stairs. "Ice cream!" "No." "Mac and cheese!" "No." Then Mindy said he didn't eat much for dinner. So I heated up the leftover M&C from lunch and fed it to him. Now he wants to "go bye bye" and he has his crocs on and is trying to open the blinds to the back door.



This afternoon the boys threw a ball over the wall into the yard of the vacant house. I hopped the fence, threw the balls over and discovered a lemon tree with a whole bunch of ripe lemons. I picked a bunch, made homemade lemonade tonight, and will pick a bunch more . They're kind of a mix between an orange and a lemon, and they make a mean lemonade.

Another trimester done and a whole BUNCH of other stuff

Just a little intro - be grateful this isn't a huge rant. I went to save and post about 10 minutes ago and the website locked up and booted me out. At first I could only see the portion I wrote this morning. But then I got back everything except the pictures of Cole. Those were easy enough to add back in. Enjoy.

Two down. We just finished our paper that is due this afternoon. And I just sold back some textbooks - not to the bookstore where they give you 3% of what you paid for it, but through textbooksrus.com. I was pleased with the amount they paid for them, even if it was only because books are "included" in my tuition and fees and so I do not know what I was really charged for the books.

Earlier this week Mindy pulled the weeds in the front yard. Cole kind of helped. Mostly he sat under the oak tree (this is not an oak tree is the sense of the majestic oak that most people think of) and examined acorns and discussed their relative sizes. He was quite cute about it. Later on I pulled weeds while Mindy went through my test review.

The adult-sized hat worked really well. It shaded his entire face and neck.

I know I complain about the summers here, but the winters are incredible. It has been almost 80 all week and then cools down to 45 at night. We're really enjoying the time outside.

Parker now makes believe he is asleep. We need to get pictures of it.

I took Cole when I went to drop off my textbooks at the shipping place. On the way home we drove by the municipal airport (who knew there were still so many airworthy biplanes) and there was a helicopter flying toward us. "Look Dad, it is coming straight at us. Its white." He is quite observant. Sometimes in the late afternoon we are able to see 4-5 contrails at a time as well as the airplanes on approach to Phx and the small ones for the local airport. He will explain to me which airport each plane is going to land at. He explains that the jet airplane lands at the big airport and the small plane lands at the small airport. Yesterday I pointed out an airplane with a blue belly. This got him talking and asking about planes having bellies.

Later this afternoon I took Parker to Sam's Club. He didn't want to sit in the seat, so he sat in the back for a while. Then he wanted out and walked next to me until he got tired and then he did what Cole does, put his feet on the bottom rack and held on to the side of the cart. It reminds me of straphangers for some reason. Maybe Mindy will let me try it some day when we go to the store. I watched him closely, until I stopped and then I realized that the cart suddenly felt like it was dragging something. I was kind of dragging Parker along and he was trying to get his feet underneath him. It didn't bother him. He then helped put everything on the belt, and later at the car, handed me everything to put in the trunk.

Despite all this excitement, having friends over all day, getting 10 hours sleep last night and a one-hour nap, he is still awake. After leaving him in his bed for 2 hours we let him out a half-hour ago. He wasn't crying, just jumping up and down, taking his bottle apart, banging on the mirror doors (a mighty impressive sound through the monitor), and having many conversations with himself and his animals. He was quite pleased with himself.

This was dinner from a few Sundays back. It tasted as good as it looks.

Parker came downstairs a couple of weeks back really angry about something. Turned out one of his toy apples that is held together with velcro stuck to his diaper. At first I thought it was a piece of a Mr. Potatohead with the pointed end and understood why he was so angry, but it was just velcro. I promise that we sometimes put pants on him.

A kind of random assortment and weekend update

Cole found one of those measuring tapes that seamstresses use and was running around the house with it tonight. I decided to measure him. He is about 42" tall and has a 24" chest and a 10" neck. I don't know how you measure the size of a hand, but his are huge. They are like bear paws.

It is fun and scary to watch him grow up. He has started to take a lot more interest in his appearance. He will now let me brush his teeth to make sure they are not "yucky" and is so excited to wear his blue dress shirt, tie and Parker's size 10 (at least one full size too small) dress shoes. Mindy said that he is really good with his colors and almost always brings shirts and pants that match. She said he does better than I do. Oh well. He is also discussing a lot more things with us. In many ways he is becoming the better-behaved of the two, except that when he is on one, it is a whole lot of kid to wrassle.

We had a breakthrough yesterday. Some of you know we've had some challenges getting Cole to completely abandon the diaper. I was able to talk him into using his little toilet, and then he decided he wanted to use the big toilet. Anyway, without going into detail, we went to Sam's Club and got him an ice cream cup. He may just have a bicycle by the middle of the week.

We also took the boys to Borders and read books. Cole had a really good time. He read books for about an hour. Parker didn't do as well. After he got bored of reading, we went outside and he played in the amphitheater area and a little in the water fountain. It was 75 degrees and he had a great time.

Getting back to ice cream; Parker is on an antibiotic for his ears and dislikes (nowhere near a strong enough word) the stuff. We've had a tough time getting him to take it. We've tried it in milk, ice cream, yogurt in addition to the good-old-fashioned hold-the-kid-down-and-force-it-down-his-throat method. The boys have had a lot of ice cream in the last week. There was one day last week where they got it three times in one day. Unfortunately, Parker doesn't have the same insatiable appetite for ice cream that Cole does. We've found that if we wait until he is a bit hungry and then give him the ice cream he'll eat it.

Cats - we like ours, most of the time. They have made some arrangement with eachother about the food. Maya is responsible for begging for the dry stuff and Jack is in charge of begging for tuna. Maya loves to sleep on our feet at night. Jack enjoys being in the room for much of the night, but then he typically starts to do things like slapping the blinds, climbing on the dresser and knocking things off, walking around on the bathroom counter and knocking things into the bathtub or onto the floor. He had been locked out of our room at night for the last few weeks. On Saturday Mindy said he was looking and acting depressed and that we had better let him sleep in our room. We made some accomodations which primarily involved pulling up blinds so he could look out without waking us up. He did really well. Mindy said she woke up at some point in the night and Jack was sprawled out on her feet looking happy and content. He has been happier today. We'll see how it goes tonight.

Cole, Parker and the highlighter

I don't think the photos or the story ever made it to the blog. I got a call from Mindy one day saying that Cole had drawn all over his brother and the wall with a highlighter. She wasn't kidding. I was finding highlighter on Parker for a couple of days... in his hair, behind his ears, on his neck. But he was a good sport about it. Mindy said Cole was quite proud of himself, so she couldn't be angry with him. We called in the cat in the hat and he brought little cats A through Z (Z has the Voom in his hat) and got the highlighter off the cheap flat unwashable paint that this house has. Honestly, flat paint on walls? When Pulte switched to flat paint when I worked there I was appalled. The cost to paint a house two colors and to use decent paint are so minimal and if nothing else help the customer to feel that their builder was looking to increase the value - oh, and this is when homes were "appreciating" like a Saturn 5 rocket after launch. But alas, we have flat paint in this house and it looks like we've lived here for nine years and never cleaned the walls.


Enjoy.

Hot seat

This has been a busy week. Next week is the end of the trimester (at school). I clarified that because I posted something like "One trimester down" on facebook last fall after the first tri of school was complete and had several people ask if there was some news I had to share. There was not then nor is there now news to share. I've got a final on Monday and a project due Friday. I've also had two interviews, a dinner and possibly a fourth interview this week for internships. I doubt there will be a fourth interview considering how the third one went earlier today but either way I'm feeling fried.

The boys are getting over their coughs and that is nice. They've adopted a new schedule which I am not too fond of which involves going to bed shortly before I get home from school at 10pm. Both have gone back to sleeping through the night which is quite welcome.

Time to go grocery shopping...fun times.

The boys

So I went to church early today to get a bunch of things done. When Mindy brought the boys in they were both wearing blue shirts and ties. They were so handsome. Cole had his tucked in and with his new haircut looked like such a big boy. Parker didn't have his tucked in but was excited to tell me that he had a baseball tie on. Mindy said he threw a massive cow when she tucked his shirt in. Cole had on some dress shoes I had picked up for Parker at DI a few weeks ago. Cole told me his shoes were too big so he had on Parker's. I'm glad he can still walk. They looked really small on him.
As for Parker and throwing fits, the kid is throwing everything right now. We finally took him to the doctor on Friday after a month of coughing. They said he had infections in both ears and prescribed a steriod and an antibiotic. I really hope his behavior since early Saturday is a result of the drugs. The kid has been a complete terror. He has been throwing trains, cars, books, and food. He has brought Cole to tears a couple of times after thumping him with things. Last night at dinner Parker picked up his big plastic sippy cup and thumped Cole on the side of the head with it. It didn't seem to both Cole very much. Parker has been quite lucky that Cole hasn't responded in kind for obvious reasons.
Today after church we were making dinner and there was a lot of yelling coming from the boys upstairs. When I went up there Cole was in the hall holding the playroom door shut with Parker inside because Parker had been throwing things at him.
Cole is really growing up. He is calming down a lot, which is a real blessing considering Parker's recent behavior. The other night he actually said triangle, instead of tricycle. He is also learning the difference between two and three. The other morning I told him he could bring two cars with us, and he came back with three and told me he'd brought three. He also knows what an oval is.
That's about all. It is going to be a crazy week.