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I asked G what I should write about today, and he said that I should write that it's snowing again. So I guess this is going to be a weather blog for another day.

We've actually had much better weather for the last week. We've had a few days that were almost warm. The level of the snow in the yard dropped by over a foot - maybe closer to two. That doesn't mean that the ground became visible anywhere, but at least I know where my garbage can is now.

I had a fun week getting home from work. On Sunday one of my headlights burned out. On Monday I spent my lunch break looking in vain for an auto parts store near my work. That evening when I went out to go home I discovered that the other headlight had also burned out. It was very late and pitch dark at this point, so I wasn't sure how I was going to get home until I realized that the bright beams used the same bulbs. So I switched bulbs between the regular headlights and the brights and was able to get to the weekend that way.

Later in the week I forgot to turn my lights off when I got to work, so by the time I left late that evening the battery was dead. Fortunately I was able to get a jump start, although the first person I found wasn't able to help since he had a battery without normal terminals and we couldn't figure out how to hook up to them.

G and I have both been feeling under the weather lately. G started feeling miserable a week ago Friday and really only started feeling right over this past weekend. I started feeling lousy on Tuesday and also didn't start to feel good again until yesterday. We're both doing okay today, though, so we're about to take advantage of the latest addition to the snow pack by going sledding.

Back online

Yes, we're still alive here in the lovely town of Groton. I read Mom's list of things she's thankful for, weather-wise, and thought I'd help her with her gratitude. So here are some pictures I took yesterday. The first is G on top of the largest pile of snow by my driveway, the second is G in his snow fort. Of course, these are the more extreme piles, but even in the lowest spots it is nearly up to my waist. Yesterday afternoon and evening we had freezing rain to put a nice slick surface on everything. Today it's actually very warm - I think it's the warmest day we've had yet this year, by about 5 degrees. It must be at least 40 F. Of course, the forcast is for colder and more snow tomorrow and Tuesday.


As long as I'm I'm posting again, here are some pictures of G at his fall T-ball skills camp.

Birthday party

Yesterday G went to a birthday party for one of the girls in his preschool class. I'm not certain, but I think this was his first non-family birthday party. Here's a picture of him with the birthday girl (on his left):

Here he is with his girlfriend. He only recently told me that he has a girlfriend, but I'm reliably informed that they've been an item for a long time, and have even had their wedding all planned for months. It's going to be in a castle, and G is going dressed as a ghost.

Here's G on his way to church this morning dressed in his new coat and tie.

After I took a picture of him, he insisted on taking a picture of me. I think he did a pretty good job, other than his choice of subject.

Firetrucks

The Groton Fire Department had a safety fair this weekend, and as part of it they had all of their firetrucks out where the kids could see them. G is a big fan of trucks in general, and firetrucks in particular, so we went to see them. Here is G next to Engine #7.

We got matching Engine #7 tee shirts while we were there. Here is a picture of us later in the day wearing them. The color match seems much better than this is real life, I don't know what happened in this picture.
One more picture for today. This one is courtesy of G. I'm including it mostly so that someday, when he's a famous photographer, I can say I was the first person to publish one of his photos. (No, I don't have any reason to believe that he is likely to choose a career in photography. But you never know!) Anyway, I think this represents his view of the world whenever we go somewhere in the car.

For some reason I always seem to have G on General Conference weekends. If this continues, it will be a good thing when he's older and able to understand it. Right now, though, it makes it hard to catch the conference live. In fact, I don't even try. But even if it were more convenient, I have to admit I might not be too motivated to try to catch all the conference sessions live. Instead, I just download the sessions from lds.org and burn them to CD's so I can listen to them during my hour-long commute to work. It wasn't too long ago that people living in places like this were lucky to get one session of conference broadcast in their area, with no way to get any of the other sessions until the published report came out. I'm very grateful for the flexibility provided by modern technology.

Book fairs and pictures

This evening I got a text message from G's mother saying that she was at a book fair at the middle school and Curious George was there. So G and I hurried over. I got a picture with my new camera phone:

That's G's older brother D on the left. G may end up in the newspaper - a reporter was there and took a picture of him giving Curious George 5. G got his picture in the paper about 2 years ago at a book fair with Clifford. Here are G's big brothers M and D, actually looking at books. In this case its some sort of an encyclopedia of all things Pokemon, which from what I saw was probably the best seller at this book fair. D bought it.

I got the new camera phone in part because one of G's favorite things to do is look at pictures of his cousins on all the other family blogs, and I thought I ought to post more pictures of him in case some of his cousins like to do that, too. So here are a couple more. First, the Incredible Hulk gets ready for Halloween:

Finally, G and D swinging in the back yard:

As you can see, it's not a particularly good camera, but at least I (almost) always have it with me.

I took the day off from work today in order to fulfill an assignment working in the temple laundry in the morning. Because I needed to get to the temple by 8:00, I couldn't take G to preschool as usual. I told him last night that I wouldn't be taking him, and why, so this morning when his mother was explaining it to him he said, "Yes, I know. I want to go to the temple. Do they have rides there?"

GROTONFEST!

Yesterday G and I walked to our town's annual festival. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera. So no pictures of G in the ambulance or riding a horse. But thanks to the town electric utility I have a picture of G in the bucket of a truck used to lift people up to repair the power lines. This was the place where G probably had the most fun of the day, but also the site of his greatest disappointment. They had a drawing for a toy version of this truck, and G was heart-broken when he didn't win.

Arbeit macht frei

I spent much of Labor Day working, appropriately enough I suppose. Not so much on my paying job yet, although the night is no more than middle-aged and I do need to get some things done for that before tomorrow. Mostly it was yard work, attempting to tame the trees and bushes (not to mention some sort of vine) that are trying to overwhelm the house. G was outside at first as well with his mother, grandma and brothers. They were also working on the yard - among other things, they were planting three small trees, one for each boy. G started getting tired just about the time the preparations for planting the trees were finished, so he didn't really participate much in the planting. Turning the water on and using the hose to get the ground wet was interesting enough to hold his attention for a while, but the closest I could get to having him participate in the actual placing of the tree in the ground was to hold him while I did it. After that he came inside at my place and quickly fell asleep. That put an end to my pruning for a while, so I started cleaning the kitchen instead. While G was sleeping his grandma took his brothers to the movie and his mother went shopping, so I got to hang out with him all afternoon and into the evening. After he woke up I decided to fire up the charcoal grill and barbecue some pork for dinner. I asked G if he wanted to come help, but he was interested in a show on TV so he declined. Then as I was on my way to start the fire he asked me, very seriously, "Dad, is the house going to blow up?" It didn't, and the pork turned out great.