Visiting Family and Friends

It's Monday.. it's been a week since comic con and it's time to get my butt back into gear. I woke up early and started working on my next MASH 4077 Podcast. I also did a little bit a yard work before stopping around 11am and heading out to visit family. I haven't seen my family in over three weeks which is a long time for me. Because of all the stuff I was doing around the house I was late on getting to my brother's house. I got there around 2pm. Planned to have lunch with Dad and then come back and hang out with my sister-in-law, nephew and niece.

But when I got to the house my nephew heard me and came down all shy (which is unusual, so I knew he was up to something). And to my surprise my niece came down stairs and came over to me and wanted to play.  If you've kept up on my blog you know that my niece and I haven't really bonded. She use to freak out and cry if I looked at her but the past few months she's been warming up to me and now she wants to hold my hand and give me hugs.. so I'm a happy uncle.

Back to Kenobi... he asked me to go upstairs and play cars with him but I told him that Grandpa and I were going to lunch... he asked in a very quiet voice.. "can I go". I didn't quite hear him so I asked what.. that's when my dad said.. he wants to go. At first I thought I don't have a car seat so of course he can't go but then I asked Lora if I could use one of theirs.. if it was easy enough to remove from her car and put in mine.. and sure enough it was. So I said of course you can go with us. And he was so excited.

Come to find out later from my Dad, Kenobi always asks if he can go with us when we do lunches together. But this is the first time he has asked me (hence the shyness). He's now 4 years old and 41 lbs so he can use a booster seat which I plan to buy so he can come with us more often.

We went to a local burger joint (Kenobi is a very picky eater). He was very well behaved.. moved around a bit and played with the pepper and salt shakers but he was very good for a 4 year old.  We ate our burgers, Kenobi had seven bites (he enjoyed counting them) and then headed over to CVS for my Dad.. again Kenobi was great. He walked around the store with us with no complaints.. he tried to have us buy him some candy and silly puddy as any 4 year old would do.. but I was good and resisted.

We got back to the house and I hung out with the rest of the family. Molly was being very attentive to me. She wanted to watch Yo Gabba Gabba with me.

About an hour later my brother got home from work and wanted to show me his new stilts for his Transformer cosplay. And of course me being me.. said.. let me give them a try. So we headed outside to a wall that I could get up on so he could strap me in. They are two feet high, which doesn't seem like much... but when you're up there with the potential to fall.. it's pretty high.

At first I was wobbly and the stilts felt like a ton of weight. But after a few minutes you get use to them and you learn very quickly how you're suppose to walk. There were a few moments when I thought I was going down but my brother was next to me for a shoulder to lean on. It was actually alot of fun. And man is it a good workout for your ankles.. I was feeling the burn only after five minutes of walking in them.

After my stilt walk I hung out with my family another half hour before heading north to hang out with my buddy Josh. Josh and I haven't really had any one on one time in quite some time (many months). So he was off work and I was in the area I figured we'd spend some time together.

We hung out in his room for about an hour or so just catching up. He had some new and really cool Lord of the Rings/Hobbit things in his room. Around 7:30pm we headed to dinner to a local Italian restaurant. The food was very tasty and it was reasonable priced.  Afterwards we headed back to his place to watch a movie. He has a handful of movies that I've always wanted to see but never had the chance. We choose Rent for tonight's viewing. I've listened to the soundtrack and have wanted to see the stage play for years but never got around to it.

So we sat down to watch Rent. I've heard so many great things over the years that I knew there was no way it could live up to the hype.. And to be honest it's what I expected, it was fun, entertaining, sad, motivating and the music was amazing. I can see myself buying it on blu-ray, not that I would watch it all the time but if the mood struck me I'd like to be able to put it on. I'm glad we watched it and I can finally say that I saw it.

It was now 11:30pm and I said my goodbye and made my long (hour and a half) trek home. It was a long but fun day.