How I Get My Kids To Sleep When I'm On The Computer And They're Cranky...

For Thomas when he was a baby, I would put on "Tale As Old As Time" from Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Window's Media Player with the Ambience/Water visual. And now for Alexis, this was the first time and I tried that - didn't work. Put on "Beauty & the Beast" by Celine Dion and the Musical Colors/Colors In Motion and she was out before the song ended.

Not sure if that helps anyone right now, but something to keep in mind for the future....

A Weekend Of "Firsts"....

Yesterday we hosted our first halloween party at our house. All of the usual crew showed up: grandmas and grandpas from Teaneck, all of Jen's sisters and their respective families and my sister. We also had Jen's cousin from her mom's side, Martin and his family attend. He's got three kids very close in age to my own three kids. Everyone got along great and had a good time.

Yesterday was a first for Thomas. All week we had been sending him to school in underwear instead of pull-ups. He had a few accidents (which was expected) and yesterday he pooped in the toilet for the first time!

This morning was Alexis' first time helping me make pancakes. Granted, she didn't do much, she sat on the counter and tried to eat the batter and chewed on the spatula.

That's it so far, but there's still some time left in the weekend. I may win the football pool for the first time this season. I've come in second 6 out of 7 weeks so far. Keeping my fingers crossed....

Googlism....

"Googlism.com will find out what Google.com thinks of you, your friends or anything! Search for your name here or for a good laugh check out some of the popular Googlisms below."

Some of the results when I looked up "who" for "Dabney"

dabney is notorious for being hard on his equipment
dabney is keeping his truck really secret until completion
dabney is an associate in the intellectual property department
dabney is the 4
dabney is the vice president of the 2
dabney is interested
dabney is not much impressed
dabney is not pleased with the idea
dabney is a qualitative researcher
dabney is charged as an accessory to the murder
dabney is in great spirits and i will have to try and have the same optimistic attitude

Can A Basketball Team Go 8 Games In A Row.....

....without calling one single timeout?

Yes, according to Jackie MacMullan at the Boston Globe:
(In reference to Russ Granik's recent resignation)

Granik's shining moments included his role in the formation of the Dream Team, a
collection of future Hall of Famers (Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson,
and Charles Barkley, to name four) that stormed through the 1992 Olympics
without losing a game -- and without coach Chuck Daly ever having to call a
timeout.

There's gotta be a site somewhere to cerify that statement. If true, that's pretty amazing. I checked the homesite of USA Basketball and all I could find was a summary of the olympics. Some fo the final stats for the team are very interesting. A team made up of Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, John Stockton, and Christian Laettner had these intriguing stats...

• Barkley shot 71.1% and was 7-8 from the 3 point line.
• Everyone on the team shot better than 50% except for Laettner (45%) and Jordan (45.1%).
• The highest rebounding average was 5.3 shared by Malone and Ewing.
• Jordan averaged 4.6 steals per game.
• Pippen (47) and Jordan (38) led the team in assists.

My New Favorite TV Show Is....

The Adam Carolla Project on TLC.

The premise of the show is that Adam Carolla bought a house and is going to totally renovate it in an allotted amount of time and try to sell it for a nice profit. Everything is paid for with his own money and he's got a bunch of his buddies to work on the house. He hired an Architect/Engineer to design the addition/renovations but the rest of the work is done by himself and his cronies. Make for very entertaining televesion. Much better than Monster House because on Monster House, those guys are all professionals and "know" what they're doing.

Check it out if you get the chance. Tuesday nights @ 10pm on TLC.

Lessons I Learned Over The Weekend....

Lesson #1: Fixing a dryer is not that difficult. (Once you figure out what you're doing.)

A little more than a month ago our gas laundry dryer stopped drying. Everything else worked. The lights would go on, the drum would spin, the clothes would tumble. But there was no heat. Meaning that either the gas was shut off (not the case) or something inside wasn't feeding the gas or burning it to create heat. A pretty common problem but one I had never tackled before so I called one of the manufacturer's authorized service dealers. I told them the problem over the phone and the servicemen showed up at 9:30 the day they were supposed to. That's where it all went wrong....

I brought the guys downstairs to the basement where the laundry room is. The first thing the main guy did was turn on the washing machine. It took only 2 or 3 seconds to realize his mistake but in my amazed stupor it felt like 2 or 3 minutes. Granted the two machines look alike, but there is a door on the top of the laundry machine that covers the inlets for the soap, softener, bleach - and this is a guy who works on these brands all the time. WTF?

So after turning on the dryer and letting it run for ten minutes, he confirmed that it wasn't working and that the ignitor and/or gas valve had to be replaced (all of which I told the woman on the phone when I made the appointment). He then told me he would have to go back to the shop and order the parts then come back the following week to replace them. I asked him how much it was going to cost and he said he wouldn't know until he got back and actually placed the order. He figured it would take an hour to replace the parts and put the machine back to together. I asked him to give me a call before he placed the order so I'd know how much I'd have to spend beforehand. "No problem." he said.

Fast forward 3 weeks and numerous unanswered phone calls.....

I called several other places to get a price quote on replacing the two parts. I told each place I called the model number and exact parts I wanted replaced. Not one single person would give me a quote until they came to our house to look at the dryer. And I thought politics was corrupt... Not only did they not give me quotes but two of the people I called would call me at 8:30 in the morning, while I'm at work, and ask if I'd be home between 9:00 and 11:00 that same morning. This happened three times by two different people. I finally got sick of them and we ordered the parts directly from the manufacturer. The company policy is to only sell to authorized servicemen but after we had called to complain about the lack of service from one of their own, they relented and sold us the parts. The parts arrived as scheduled and we were ready to tackle the job Saturday afternoon.

Once we realized that you didn't have to take the back panel off and only had to remove the front face it was smooth sailing. There aren't very many parts inside the machine so finding and replacing the necessary parts was pretty simple. We just wasted time trying to remove the back panel then putting all the screws back in. All in all, it took about 2 hours to fix.

Lesson #2: The door to my basement steps does not close all the way unless you pull it shut and Alexis can open it by herself if it's closed completely.

I had gone down into the basement Sunday morning to check on the progress of something on the computer and Alexis had seen me. So she decided to follow me downstairs. I had pulled the door behind me when I went downstairs, but obviously (obvious now) not hard enough since Alexis got the door open and tried to crawl downstairs. All I heard was a couple of thumps and then crying. I immediately realized what happened and ran over to the stairs. There was Alexis sitting on her butt facing the stairs. I scooped her up and checked for any breaks and after a few minutes she had calmed down and was laughing. She was shakened up a little and had a couple of red marks from her fall, but otherwise she was alright. Next time I'll be sure to either take her with me or make sure the door is closed fully.

Lessons learned.

Toy Recall....

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) wants a Taiwanese toy company to stop selling their newest toy in Australia. Why? Because it causes blindness.

Family Vacation 2005, Pictures....

Since it was a lot quicker to upload 100+ photos to Yahoo! Photos, I put them there. You can check them out here. If that doesn't work, go to http://photos.yahoo.com/mjdabney and click on "Disney Vacation" album. The pictures are in chronological order, starting at the car ride to the train station to the last night at the house.

Family Vacation 2005, Final Thoughts....

I could not live in Florida. The weather is way too humid for my liking. It was in the 70's and 80's the week we were there, I can only imagine how much it must suck in the dead of summer when it's in the 90's and that humid.

Thank goodness that Disney has a deal with Coke and not Pepsi. I couldn't drink Diet Pepsi for a whole week straight. On the bright side, if it had been Pepsi and not Coke, I would have drunk a lot more water than soda - that would have been a lot healthier.

The Disney theme parks were great. Everything about them was so well done. Any time you were supposed to be in a different part of the country, world, time, they did a great job of creating the illusion of being in a different place. From the buildings, costumes, plant life, light fixtures, doorknobs, etc. Everything was done just right.

I didn't come across one single employee that had a sour puss on their face or was unhappy (except for those playing a role). Whether it's the employee training or something, every employee looked like they enjoyed doing what they were doing and made it a very pleasant experience.

Taking Nicky on roller coasters might have been a bad mistake. Now every time we're in the car driving up or down a hill, he'll have his two arms up in the air and screaming "Wheeeee!!!"

Spending 24 hours a day for a whole week with my wife and kids was awesome. I got a better appreciation for how great they all are. I'm going to miss seeing them that often. My favorite memories will be seeing my boys' faces as they watched the parades and saw all of the things that really excited them.



(From the left: Veronica, Grandma, Jennie, Alexis (in back), Jeff, Vincent, Mickey, Joseph, Nicholas, Grandpa, Geralyn, Jeff (in front), Ellen, Thomas, Daniel, Matt (me))

Family Vacation 2005, Day 9....

We got to the DC area around 11:00 am and by the time our car was off-loaded and we got on our way, it was around 12:00. There was continuous rain on our ride back to NJ and we passed by a bunch of accidents on the way. We got home around 6ish and unpacked the car (mostly). Grabbed some Chinese food for dinner and then unwound a little. Put the little ones to sleep and hit the sack. Our vacation was over....

Family Vacation 2005, Day 8....

Last day in Florida.

Grandma, Grandpa, Veronica, Joey, Geralyn, Jeff, Vinny, and Jeff all packed up their cars and headed to breakfast early. Grandma, Grandpa, Veronica, and Joey were driving the whole way back and not taking the train so they needed to get moving fast. There was nothing but rain in the forecast for the drive home. Ellie, Jennie, and myself finished clearing out the house of all the stuff we had left over and packed up our cars and checked out around 10:30. We stopped by Universal on our way to the train station and got lunch at the NBA City Restaurant (per my request of course). It was pretty cool. You walked thru "the tunnel" on your way into the dining area. There were two large screens and a bunch of tv's all over the place. The walls were covered in photos of players and coaches from the league from all different eras. There was an upper dining section which was on a balcony that circled around the lower section. The food was pretty good and reasonably priced (not as high as I would have thought). The theme of the restaurant even continued into the bathrooms. Over the waste baskets there was a rim w/net. The boys had fun slam dunking their used paper towels. After lunch we played a couple of the games they had. Jennie and I faced off in a one-on-one shooting game. One of those games with three balls and you have 30 seconds to make as many shots as you can. They had a scaled down version for little kids which Nicky and TJ played a few times. Since we had to get moving and didn't want to be late for the train, we didn't spend any time looking around the place or stopping in the gift shop. We got to the train station only to find out that the incoming train was late (again) and we couldn't check our car in yet because they were busy unloading the train that had just arrived. So all of us who were in line to get in parked our cars and headed in to the terminal. We finally got our car checked in and boarded the train about 3 hours later than scheduled. The train was less crowded than on the ride down to Florida and in our half of the train car there was a family of 7 and our group of travelers. Plenty of room to spread out. And this time we were smart and brought along a power strip and an extension cord so that all of the boys could watch their dvd players and not have the batteries run out. On the trip down to Florida we found out that the information online was a little misleading and instead of there being an electrical outlet for every seat, there was one outlet for the entire car. The good thing is that if you know about that, then you can request the outlet seat - which we did. Nothing else too exciting happened on the train, and thankfully there was no screaming baby on this train ride.

Family Vacation 2005, Day 7....

Today was supposed to be a "relaxing" day before heading back home. After breakfast, Geralyn and her crew of 4 headed over to the Kennedy Space Center to check out the museum and stuff. The rest of us hopped in the pool and played until a little before lunch. Then we got dressed and headed out to do some shopping. We hit the $0.99 store right down the block from our house and made out really well there. Then we took a ride to Downtown Disney and parked at the opposite end than we had parked the previous time we went. We got to walk by and stop in a few different stores that we hadn't seen yet. Spent the afternoon walking around and had a good time. I went on the little horse carousel ride they had there with Thomas, Nicky and Joey. Nicky and Joey sat in one of those little teacup type things with the round disk in the middle that you can use to spin the cup around. They had a blast spinning around as fast as their little arms could make it go. Got some cute pictures of the kids, so keep a look out for when I post all of the pictures on line.

Family Vacation 2005, Day 6....

Today's 2 stops were Epcot and then back to the Magic Kingdom. There weren't that many *rides* at Epcot, but there was plenty to see and do. There were a bunch of slow moving informational type rides that had no height restrictions, so everyone went on. After checking out stuff at The Spaceship Earth , The Land, and getting a bite to eat we headed over to the different nations section of the park. There were about a dozen different countries represented and in each section the buildings, streets, and vendors were all replicates of actual things in those countries. It was pretty cool. We were hanging out in Italy and caught a street performance of "Romeo and Edna". A very loose interpretation of "Romeo and Juliet". There was a lot of crowd involvement which made for a fun experience. We didn't have the time to check out every nation and we actually ran past a couple of the areas. It had been drizzling on and off all morning and in one instance the skies just opened up and poured. We had to run to find shelter. Didn't help. Jennie and I had to buy new t-shirts at the gift shop to replace the drenched ones we had on. Not a bad deal so far. I've gotten a whole new outfit so far on the trip. On our trip to Animal Kingdom on Monday I got new shorts and socks, and today was a shirt.

Around 6 we headed over to the monorail to head over to the Magic Kingdom. We were there yesterday and arrived too late to Main Street to check out the parade. There was no room for us to watch so we decided to head over early today to make sure we got a good spot. We claimed our 15' section of the curb around 6:30. Laid down ponchos (served two purposed - held our spots and kept our butts dry) and parked the strollers. We all took turns walking around Main Street checking out different shops and getting dinner. The parade started at 8. The lights on Main Street were mostly turned off and the floats and characters started down the street. The main theme to the parade was lights. Every float, car, and character was draped in different colored lights. A lot of characters were present in the parade and the boys had a blast seeing everything. The only dissapointed thing was that there wasn't as much character-fan interaction as the parade at MGM Studios.

After the parade we got back on the monorail to head back to Epcot where our cars were parked. Most of the kids passed out in the cars on the way back to the house. A nice quiet evening at the house......

.....until they all wake up and start running around the place tomorrow morning :-)

Family Vacation 2005, Day 5....

It was finally time for the main event - Disney's Magic Kingdom. There were a bunch more rides this time for the kids as compared to MGM Studios. But once again, Thomas was too short for a lot of them, although we found plenty for him to do. We all went on the Haunted Mansion ride which had no height restrictions. That ruined the rest of the day for Nicky and Thomas. From then on, any ride that got dark at any point, they got scared.

We also got to see more characters and got to take more pictures with them (once again, when I get back to NJ I'll upload a ton of pix). TJ got to take a picture with his favorite character - Ariel.

Unfortunately I'm too tired right now to remember all of the names of the rides that the kids went on, so I'll have to refresh my memory by looking at the camera pix and writing them down.

After a long day at the park, we're going to bed now. More to come tomorrow....

Family Vacation 2005, Day 4....

Today we spent the morning/early afternoon at Disney's Animal Kingdom. The animal kingdom is basically a large zoo with some rides and attractions thrown in. The first thing we did was head over to the Kilimanjaro Safari. They used these big old beat-up safari jeeps to drive folks around the safari. We got to drive through a bunch of areas where the animals and jeep shared the same space. Obviously the dangerous animals (lions, cheetahs, etc.) were safely caged in by the moats (well hidden and disguised). It was very cool to see some of the animals that close up. It's definitely the closest we'll ever get to going on a real safari.

After the safari we headed over to the Kali River Rapids. It's a big circular raft that seats 12 along the perimeter and it travels along a man-made river. There's one steep incline that creates a large splash at the bottom. It also soaks the (un)lucky person(s) situated at the bottom of the raft where it impacts the water first. That lucky person was me. Thomas was on one side and grandpa and grandma were on the other side of me. We all got pretty wet. Not one dry spot on us. So bad that as we were leaving the park we had to buy a new pair of shorts for me and Thomas to change into.

After the rapids we hit a couple of other attractions. The Dinosaur ride was pretty cool. It was very dark, loud, and had lots of mechanical dinosaurs moving around. Definitely not a ride for the little guys (we learned the hard way).

After lunch we left the park and headed over to Disney-MGM Studios. We got there about 1/2 hour before the daily parade was scheduled to start so we grabbed a spot on the curb and waited. The parade was nice. They had a lot of characters drive by in cars and a bunch that danced in the street that came over to the kids sitting on the side and gave hi-fives.

The underlying theme to the day was that Thomas was 2" too short for most of the rides. Nicholas and Joseph (who are both the same height) got to go on a lot more stuff than TJ. We took Nicky and Joey on the Star Tours ride which was a flight simulator and we got to blow up the Death Star. After that we headed over to see the Playhouse Disney performance but were dissapointed to find out we missed the last showing. Instead we went next door and caught the last showing of The Little Mermaid. (Note to anyone planning on going to see that - you get wet sitting in the front row) We were told by Jennie's friend Vanessa (who had gone to Disney about 3 weeks ago) to make sure we went to see Fantasmic and to arrive early to make sure we got seats. So we headed over to the ampitheatre at 7 for the 8pm show. The performance was good but we missed about 1/2 of it. The stage is set in the middle of a large circular lake with seats spanning about 120 degrees. During the performance there are large walls of water sprayed straight up and moving images are shown on the walls of water with a movie projector. There are three such projections shown during the show - one for the middle section, and one on each of the sides. We happened to get the side with the broken projector. The basic premise of the show was that Mickey fell asleep and had a nightmare that all of the evil characters were trying to kill him. Then he fought back and defeated them. Most of the story was portrayed via the projected movies which we missed. It was difficult for the little kids to follow along because all they experienced was noise.

So far, that was the only dissapointed experience on the trip. The kids (and adults) have been having a blast and just watching the kids smile, laugh and get so excited is so worth it.

Family Vacation 2005, Day 3....

Today I got my first taste of Disney World. Most of the crew, except for Thomas, little Jeff and myself, went to Sunday mass. Ellie cooked up some pancakes, sausage, and bacon for breakfast when the returned. Good stuff. After breakfast, Geralyn and Jeff took their kids over to a water park for the day. The rest of us hopped in the pool for a couple of hours. Grandma and grandpa even joined in on the fun! After a couple of hours in the pool we got dressed and headed over to Downtown Disney to the market place. Since I've never been there or did much research about the place, I had no idea that Disney World took up so much space. It's basically a city all by itself.

We walked around a little bit of Downtown Disney and hit a couple of the shops. The Lego store was pretty cool. Well, not really the store, but the huge sculptures made of legos that were on display, both inside and out. (Unfortunately since there's only dial-up service, pictures won't be uploaded online until we get back to NJ). Next up was a huge Disney store. There was room after room after room of different themed merchandise. After that we got some pretzels and ice cream. Thomas, myself, Jennie, Joseph and Veronica all got temporary tattoos. Then we headed back to the house for some more pool time.

Thomas got his first vacation boo-boo in the pool. Nicholas pushed him into the pool and while falling in TJ tried to catch himself on the edge, but instead wound up turning himself around, scraping his chest on the edge, hitting his chin and in turn, smashing his teeth together. Lots of blood. But a tough little guy. He was back in the pool within 5 minutes.

Tomorrow we're off to Animal Kingdom and MGM Studios....

Family Vacation 2005, Day 2....

Today we arrived around 10:30 at the Florida terminal for the Amtrak Auto Train. We were out of there by 11:00. We got lucky that out of the 208 cars on the train, our 3 cars were in the first 15 taken off. It took about an hour to get to the rental agency office and get the keys and directions to the rental house. The house is located in a gated community in Kissimmee. It's a gorgeous 7 bedroom house. We unpacked the cars and Ellen and Geralyn went to the supermarket to pick up lunch and food for the week. After lunch, everyone went into the pool for a couple of hours. Everyone took a bath or shower after the pool and now we're relaxing waiting for Veronica (Jen's sister), Joseph (Veronica's son), Helen and Vinny (Jen's parents) to arrive. The Amtrak train is not pet friendly and since Helen wanted to the bring their dog with them, they were forced to drive down. They left Teaneck around 7 am yesterday and stopped overnight at a motel.

Enough for now. More to come later (or probably tomorrow)....

Family Vacation 2005, Day 1....

Yesterday, a group of us boarded the Amtrak Auto Train in Virginia. It was me, Jennie, Nicholas, Thomas, Alexis, Ellen (Jennie's sister), Daniel (Ellen's son), Geralyn (Jennie's sister), Vinny and Jeff (Geralyn's boys). The train was scheduled to leave at 5:30, however the train was delayed coming into the station so we had a very long wait in the terminal. Oh well...

About 90% of the passengers on the train were snowbirds. A bunch of old retired folk heading down to Floriday for the winter. There were only a handful of folks with children and we all got thrown into the same car. Not a bad deal until it came time to sleep and some kid wouldn't stop crying and woke up a couple of the kids from our group a number of times.

Dinner was in the dining car, about 4 cars away from ours. The food was better than I expected. The women had roasted chicken and I had baked cod. All of the kids got the "Choo Choo Chewie" meal: chicken tenders, macaroni & cheese, and veggies. Vanilla ice cream all around for dessert (except for the women who had cheesecake).

The seating arrangements were nice and roomy, however, sleeping was a whole nother matter. There was a large padded footrest that folder up from the bottom of the front of the seats and actually rotate up above the height of the seat to form a nice barrier. It worked great to lay one of the kids sideways across the two seats. The footrest prevented them from rolling off. The train car wasn't full so we were able to spread out. We didn't want to leave Alexis all by herself so I took her for the night. I'm a pretty big guy, and trying to find a comfortable position to sleep must have been amusing to watch. The seats only reclined back a little, but definitely not enough for my liking. I'm not looking forward to the trip back home in a week.