Dear Becca & Grant,
                  Happy Leap Day! Today was Papaw's very last day of work after 41 years of hard labor. He retired today. I'll certainly miss him at work every day and I'll miss being chauffeured to work and back every day by him. I asked him if he was going to still drive me to work every day and come back to pick me up. For some reason he said that he wouldn't be doing that. That means I'll have to be putting gasoline, which is at an all time high of $3.19 per gallon now, in our own vehicles. Papaw has been in a great mood all week this past week. Sunday afternoon Becca was apparently playing with my alarm clock and ended up changing the time on it so I over slept Monday morning. Dad had to come into the bedroom to wake me up. Normally that would earn me a royal tail chewing but all he did was comment on what a good night's sleep I must have had. Dad must have been riding high all week long. Thursday we stopped at McDonald's and had breakfast in the dining room. We have never done that. It was rather nice and I enjoyed it. Mamaw figured up that over the course of his eleven years working at Irvin Industries and thirty at General Electric she had made him 10,656 lunches. That's a whole lot of lunches. Papaw was a sewing machine mechanic at Irvin where they made parachutes and seat belts. I was just a wee lad when he worked there. The earliest I can retire is in fifteen years. I have to be 55 years old with 25 years of service. I will have 36 years of service if General Electric is still there when I am 55, which I highly doubt. I know Becca and Grant are really going to enjoy Papaw in his retirement.
      I know it's been way too long since my last post. Y'all know all of my excuses for not posting more regularly so I will not go into them again nor will I make any empty promises to do better because I probably won't. Mom hasn't posted since January. She really needs to post something. Her weekend job has been wearing her down. It's hard on her working 32 hours in a 48 hour time period. She's arranged to go on second shift starting the 16th of this month so maybe she'll be a little more pleasant to all of us. Of course that means that Becca is going to have to learn some hard lessons regarding going to bed on time and staying in bed. She's been having lots and lots of problems with that for quite some time now. We have even started bribing her into staying in bed by putting on a DVD for her when she lies down. I know it's an extremely bad habit to get into but when your nerves are frazzled to their whit's end you will resort to whatever works. She will be making a little more money because she will be working more total hours but of course that extra money will all be eaten up in gasoline. At least we will all have a few weekends together per month. Becca and Grant will hopefully be staying with Mamaw & Papaw from the time Mom drops them off at around 1:00 until I get there at 4:00. Of course with summer just around the corner and the super hot job I have now at work I will be more than happy to drive down there to pick the kids up because I can take a dip in the pool while I am down there and we'll all probably be fed a good supper on occasion. I can't wait for the pool to open. Grant will be old enough to enjoy the pool by the time it opens. We do have to get him an age appropriate float though.
      Becca is so smart. One day a few weeks ago she asked us as we were driving back from Mamaw & Papaw's if we knew what happened when someone killed you. THis shocked and disturbed us to no end. How did she know about someone killing someone else? We asked her what she thought happens when someone kills you and she answered back as slick as you please that when someone kills you you die and go to Jesus. Then she started talking about how Granny was a baby angel in heaven and when she got to heaven she would be a baby angel too and how if they didn't have baby angel milk they would have to go to Kroger and buy her some. Becca is such a cute and smart girl.
      Grant's getting bigger everyday. He is such a good baby; Always smiling and happy. Last week he wasn't his normal super grinning self but he wasn't fussy. He just wasn't smiling as much. We took him to the pediatrician and it turned out that he had an ear infection in both ears. I had ear infections when I was a child and I know that they are one of the most miserable and painful experiences of childhood and he never even fussed at all.
      He's six months old now but he's wearing twelve month clothes. He can wear nine month clothes but they are way too tight on him. We ended up tossing all of the smaller stuff in the closet in anticipation of the super baby themed yard sale we plan on having this summer. I think all of the proceeds should go to their college fund because it will be their stuff that we will be selling.
      The yard sale is a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace thing from the classes we have been taking. We have been to three classes now and both Mom and I are very excited. We have a budget drawn up and I was surprised at the amount of money we had to allocate. We just never watched or planned where our money went before so it went wherever. We have lots of disposable income in the budget we have drawn up and still have some to save and some to put back for purchases down the road. Dave Ramsey says that the budget will not work in the first month and it won't do much better the second but we'll start figuring it out by the third month and then we are on our way. We're not doing it exactly how Dave Ramsey says do it because we want to pay what we owe Mamaw & Papaw before we work on our baby emergency fund of $1,000. We'll pay them off and then do our baby emergency fund. Finish paying off our debts which were primarily taken care of with our tax return we got last week. Then we have to save three to six months of living expenses to have a grown up Emergency fund. I think we are going to do $10,000 to 12,000 for an emergency fund. Then it's time to fund retirement, fund college, pay off the house and then build wealth. Both Mom and I are excited about being good stewards of our money. We have never been great in that area.
      It's time I get a drink of cool refreshing water and go to bed. Can you tell I am thirsty? Daddy loves Rebecca & Grant!

Dear Becca & Grant,
                  It snowed this past week. Becca wanted to go outside and make Frosty and a snow angel. The snow angel really didn't turn out all that well because we also had lots of freezing rain and the snow was more or less frozen and she couldn't make an impression with her little body. We did build a tiny snowman though that turned out relatively okay. I would have liked to have made a bigger one but as with the angel the snow was frozen and you really couldn't work with it. Becca and I did have some fun outside in the cold though. Becca was excited to see the snow Tuesday morning. She said she could believe her eyes. I would have loved to see the look on her face when she saw all that snow but I was at work. Schools been out all week. I think that they might have school tomorrow because the roads seem to be okay now. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and Becca has a little party at her preschool.
      Papaw has twelve more days before he retires from General Electric with thirty years of service. He's excited to have Grantman ride the mower with him this summer and Becca is excited to get back in the pool this summer. Maybe Becca & Grantman can hang out at the pool more this summer now that Papaw will be home. I hope Grantman will enjoy the water as much as Becca does.
      Tonight Papaw took Becca and Grantman home with him. Mom & I went out to Mi Publito's or as Becca calls it, Mi Pupito's for Valentines. We would like to actually do something on Valentines but we had an opportunity and we took it. We then went to Versailles Baptist Church where we began a financial management course called Financial Peace University. It's a program they have in churches all over the country by a radio talk show host called Dave Ramsey. We had to pay sixty-five dollars for the materials but we got a bunch of stuff in the box. We got his best selling book, a class work book, the classes on CD, a CD-Rom of extra tools, his envelope system in a nice binder and some other odds and ends. Both Mom and I are excited about getting started on our way to financial freedom. Dave Ramsey's motto is "Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else", which means being very frugal so that later on in life you will have the money to have the kind of lifestyle that you want to have. We'd like for both Becca and Grant to be able to go to college and not have a huge student loan hanging over their heads. Mom wasn't really into it until we got there and now she's more gung-ho than I am.
      I'm totally recovered from my kidney stone now. I don't ever wish a kidney stone on anyone. They are probably the most painful things that can happen to a man. They tell me that kidney stones are comparable to labor pains that a woman might experience. I'm glad I'm not a woman.
      Becca spent Sunday evening and Monday with Mamaw. Becca was supposed to go to school Monday but Mamaw hurt her foot by ramming it into Grantman's bouncer so Becca and Grant just hung out with Mamaw all day Monday. Mom had the second shift Sunday and the third shift Monday so she didn't get home until after 8:00 in the morning on Monday. I had to be at work by 6:45 Monday morning so that's why they stayed with Mamaw. I think that's how we are going to do it when Mom has that schedule from now on. It's a good plan.
      Saturday I took Becca and Grant to McDonalds while Mom was at work. We actually left the house before she did. We went to the McDonalds with the nice play place in front of the Wal-Mart of Nicholasville Road. We got there at 12:30 and we ordered our food. I ate while Becca began to play. She played from 12:30 until 6:00. She only stopped occasionally to have a bite of nuggets or a sip of her orange drink. She also peed in the potty three times and pooped once. I was so proud of her. Grant was so good while we were there. He just laid in his stroller and looked around. I fed him two bottles and played with him awhile. He didn't cry at all the whole time we were there. He's as good a baby as Becca ever was and maybe even a little better. Becca was a fabulous baby and I was afraid he would be just the opposite but that's proven to not be the case. Even now while he has some little bug he is content. He doesn't smile nearly as much when he is sick but he doesn't fuss either. I am so proud of him.
      After McDonalds we went over to Wal-Mart and I spent about $82 that I probably shouldn't have. I had planned on taking Becca to get a frozen custard at Culver's and then to Toys "R" Us to look at all of the toys but she stayed at the Play Place too long so we didn't do that. We did stop at Fazoli's on our way home and got us some spaghetti to go. Becca was watching Bambi on her portable DVD player on the way home and I realized that I had never seen that movie so when we got home I took the DVD inside and ate my pasta and fed Grant and then I watched Bambi with Becca. I can't believe I've never seen Bambi. I just assumed that I had because it has characters I have always known. It reminded me a lot of another newer Disney movie called The Lion King. I enjoyed watching it with her, actually Becca was running all about being hyper like she does when she gets tired. I tried to watch the film in spite of her because I was into it. It was a good movie.
      Well, Grant is awake and I have to tend to him and then go to bed because I have to work tomorrow. Daddy loves Rebecca & Grant!

Dear Becca & Grant,
            I mentioned in my last post that I had developed a kidney stone. I had a kidney stone years ago but I passed it while I was at the emergency room so while it hurt like the devil for a short bit it was over relatively quickly. I kind of assumed this would be the same way; it wasn't. I didn't mention it before but early Tuesday morning your Mom drove me to the emergency room at St. Joseph's on Harrodsburg Road. They pumped me full of morphine and phenergin; morphine for my rather considerable pain and phenergin for nausea. Mamaw came to the house and sat with Becca and Grant. I was in rare pain. I woke poor Grantman up with my moaning and crying and when I say moaning and crying I am not exaggerating at all; I was actually moaning and crying. They gave me a prescription for a few percocets and some more phenergin which we filled at Walgreen's before we headed home.
      Mom made an appointment for me to see a doctor the next day. While I was waiting for my appointment I took a percocet without eating, I had absolutely no appetite the last few days, or taking my phenergin. Mom told me I would get nauseas but I didn't think it would happen to me so I didn't listen. I ended up running to the toilet and throwing up what little I had eaten. We to the doctor's office where Mom and the doctor wanted to admit me to the hospital. I wanted to wait a day to see if I would just go on and pass it. We made an appointment for the next morning. That night I took the doctor's advice about taking my pain meds at regular intervals to stay ahead of the pain instead of taking the pain meds just when I was in pain. I was pain free most of Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. I eventually dozed off and went past the time I was supposed to take my medicine and I ended up waking up in pain. I couldn't get this pain under control.
      We went to my Wednesday morning appointment and agreed to being admitted to the hospital. They filled me full of Morphine and phenergin and I felt pretty good. Becca and Grant were staying with Mamaw & Papaw while Mom sat with me at the hospital. I asked your Mom to watch some episodes of Dr. Who with me that I had downloaded onto the laptop. She rather enjoyed the show. I was kind of surprised that she did but I was pleased at the same time. We tried to watch the film 300 about the Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece. It was done in an action packed mythological style so it wasn't a dry old historical piece at all. Actually, I enjoy the occasional dry old historical piece but Mom doesn't so much. It was a real good movie but I had been so sleep deprived that I couldn't really follow the story. I tried to sleep while Mom finished the movie by herself. She tried to lay down on a sleeper chair there at the hospital but decided that her back couldn't handle it so she went home with my blessings. I woke up in pain but it wasn't time for my pain meds. I was miserable. Eventually it became time and I got a little relief. Just a little and I was able to sleep for about an hour or so. This went on all night. Eventually it became seven in the morning and I had a some pain medication. I asked if I could get a shower. They directed me to a room down the hall with a shower in it. I had a nice shower and walked back to my room. They served me a breakfast of a piece of toast, a scrambled egg, a sausage patty, a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, a half pint of milk, a cup of grape juice and a cup of coffee. I ate it all. It was the first time I had had any kind of appetite at all. While my side still hurt I was feeling much better. They must have noticed because they told me they were going to be releasing me around noon. I figured out that I wasn't in there to get my kidney stone treated but to have my pain managed. I was all for that. I really needed the super powerful drugs they were able to give me in the hospital. After I was released and was waiting on Mom to come and get me I passed most of the stone. For some weird reason that made me kind of proud. It was about the size of a BB pellet, brown and hard. It was an ugly little thing. I'm surprised it didn't hurt when I passed it. I could still feel there was more there but most of it was gone and the doctor told me that I would pass the rest a little at a time.
      I got home and went straight to bed. Mamaw still had Grant so Mom took Becca out for a mommy-daughter day. Becca got the cutest little haircut at JC Penney and then Mom bought Becca some new tennis shoes and a pretzel in the mall. Becca saw some hermit crabs for sale at a kiosk there at the mall and because she had pooped in the potty earlier Mom got her one. It's an ugly little cuss in a blue painted shell with a pirate on it. Becca seems to be tickled with her crab that she named Mr.Crabs Crabby Patty.
      Last night I was still in some pain, not near as much as before but still enough to keep me awake so I ended up working on the hard copy of the blog. I still haven't gone to bed so I had better do that now. Daddy loves Rebecca & Grant!