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The Promised Land

dpal — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:06:58 +0000

I guess I forgot to mention our little scheme. Our trip to Best Buy to purchase the Lego SW game(Wal-mart didn’t have it yet), was dependant upon the boys’ behavior for the week. They had to be on their best behavior at school all week. You heard me, that’s 5 straight days of either Smiley faces(Brian) or Green cards(Will)!
Impossible task? So it would seem – but the boys managed to accomplish the unfathomable and we were off to Best Buy on Friday. The remarkable thing about this past week, was not that they were able to attain good behavior marks all week(Though that is quite incredible). What I found more interesting was the fact that both of them had a (somewhat) long-term goal and stayed focused enough to reach it. I must say that I was highly impressed.

Lego madness

dpal — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:58:28 +0000

It has begun again. With the release of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, my household has become a chaotic mass of twirling lightsabers and wookie noises. To be honest, I like this game better than the original. LucasArts has added more variety in the mix by including rideable creatures and buildable and rideable vehicles.
The boys are hooked – I guess it’s really my fault. Who would’ve guessed I was going to create two little yoda-sized monsters by just introducing them to a movie?

It’s alive, It’s Alive!!!

dpal — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 16:47:18 +0000

I’ve created a couple of tiny Palomarestein Monsters! Back in the late 70′s when the first Star Wars movie came out, I was enthralled by the story and wowed by the special effects. I immediately became a fan of anything sci/fi related. Don’t get me wrong, I never went to a Star Wars convention. I never dressed like a wookie. I didn’t even have any of the little Star Wars figurines – but I was still a fan. When George Lucas released the three prequel movies, I was eager to watch and thought it would be neat to share something I enjoyed as a kid with my own kids… Looking back, maybe that wasn’t the best idea in the world.
My boys are obsessed with anything Star Wars. So far, they have watched(and they also own) All of the movies, including both volumes of Cartoon Network’s series, Star Wars:Clone Wars, a minimum of 5 times each. They absolutely had to dress as Star Wars characters for Halloween(Darth Vader and Obi-Wan). And it is an absolute necessity that they play a Star Wars video game of some type daily.
This leads in to their obsession with video gaming. Again, I take full blame for this. Everyone that knows me, knows that I’m a gamer. I’ve been a gamer since I was a kid. My love for games started with pong and expanded with the advent of the Atari 2600. When the Atari 800 PC came out, I learned to program games in BASIC with the help of COMPUTE! magazine. To this day, I still try to put in some nightly gaming time(usually after 10:30 PM). So when Grady decided to let us use his xbox about a year ago, I thought, why not? We could get a couple of video games geared for kids and we’d have fun… Another boo-boo.
Now Brian plays Lego Star Wars on his GameBoy daily, and Will is currently trying to finish Ty the Tasmanian Tiger on the xbox. They both completed Lego Star Wars for the xbox just before Christmas. It would be ok, if they didn’t spend every non-gaming minute talking about the games.
As much as I loathe to say it, I may end up putting them(the games, not the boys) away for a while so they will stop talking about it so much.

Weekend Update

dpal — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 04:04:41 +0000

Really sorry for the lack of updates, but things get so busy during the holiday season.
We have yet to put our Christmas tree up… I know it’s slack, but we just haven’t gotten around to it. I’m hoping we can get to it this week…

Yesterday was Victoria’s winter formal at the High School. Some of her friends came over to our house to get themselves all gussied up for the big dance. My job was to get the boys out of the house so that the girls could concentrate on looking beautiful instead of constantly getting hounded by two boys that think all of Victoria’s friends are their girlfriends and should spend all of their time paying close attention to them. So, I packed the boys up and we took a trip to the beach. We went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was a very good movie. I’ve noticed as the kids(in the movie) mature, each movie has gotten slightly darker. Anyway, I got the kids a box of their favorite candy each(malted milk balls for Brian and sour gummy worms for Will) and we all shared a large popcorn(no butter) and a large (pink)lemonade. Will is beginning to learn that he needs to whisper when he’s at the movie theater, and I only had to take him to the bathroom twice. Brian was completely absorbed in the movie, so all-in-all, it was a good trip. After the movie we, stopped by Wally-World so the kids could look at the toy section. While there, we picked up the Fantastic Four and Star Wars:Clone Wars VolII DVDs.

We got home just before the girls came home from the dance. Will had passed out in the van, so he was asleep when they got home. I really can’t explain to anyone the many emotions that go through the father of a teenage daughter. Those that have been there know what I mean. Victoria was so beautful in her dress… hopefully someone took a picture so I can post it later. Of course, she didn’t notice that I was bursting with pride over how much she’d grown in the past seven years. They had just gotten home from the dance so they were hot and hungry and eager to talk about whatever teenage girls like to gossip about after these events. In any event, each of the girls were absolutely stunning and I’m sure their parents would’ve been just as proud as I was.