A horse is a horse, of course

Anticipating that school vacation boredom would set-in sometime this afternoon for Eli, I picked up some DVDs while I was at the library this morning working on a project. I happened upon a collection of episodes of Mr. Ed, the sixties TV show that I used to watch on Nick At Night. We've tried to give our kids enriching experiences and broaden their horizons, and one thing that's been missing is a talking horse, of course.

I came downstairs to see what they were up to, and Eli and Nate had put in the disk and were glued to the screen. Mr. Ed was babysitting an infant while Wilbur was upstairs working on something. Wilbur came down, thanked Mr. Ed for his help and then walked him back out to the stable. On the way out, the baby started crying, and Mr. Ed said Wilbur needed to "hold his horses" while Mr. Ed changed the baby's diaper. [insert pre-recorded audience laughter] Wilbur said not to worry about it, that he would take care of changing the baby.

Eli, with a puzzled look on his face, turned to me and asked, "Dad, can you believe Mr. Ed thought he could change the baby's diaper? Horses can't change diapers!" Apparently the fact that the horse was talking in the first place was no big deal to him.

Excuses, excuses

Just so that Jenny doesn't give me a hard time for not blogging in nearly a month, I figured I'd post. She was actually counting down the days a while ago when Tom went almost a month without a post - she was going to post a Congratulations on Your Month of NOTHING message.

We're back in business now that we replaced the keyboard Liam ruined by spilling water on it. Ok, so that just happened this morning, but it's the closest thing to an excuse I have for not blogging.

I have read several books lately, though. The Good Earth by Pearl Buck and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. The first one is a classic 20th century fiction...about a Chinese peasant's life. The second is a non-fiction work relating the author's experience climbing Mount Everest in 1996 on an expedition in which 12 people died. I had read an article in Outdoor magazine that peaked (pun intended) my interest in Mount Everest. It was really a good read (finished in a day and a half). I then started one today called Touching My Father's Spirit written by the son of Tenzing Sherpa, the first man who reached the summit in 1953 with Sir Edward Hillary.

Speaking of reading, we went to story time at the library with Jenny, Nate and Liam yesterday (since I'm on vacation this week). Jenny and I had to laugh because it was at the library in our old neighborhood in Prairie Village. That's not why we laughed; PV is a very wealthy part of town and we got a kick out of watching all the sorority girls turned soccer moms and eavesdropping on their "keeping up with the Jones'" conversations. It made us realize again that we made the right choice by moving to the area of town we did. We feel much more down-to-earth here.

I'm growing my beard out this week since I don't have to shave for work. Coming along very nicely. That coupled with reading about conquring the highest place on earth have made me feel very tough. Maybe I'll go look for something to build, or just settle for hanging Christmas lights.