The Hippos win the pennant! The Hippos win the pennant!

I play Fantasy Baseball. The format is a game called Baseball Manager. In fact, I first played this version back before the internet was big and it was on the Prodigy Internet service in the early 1990's.

In 1998, I joined a league of managers who needed a replacement for someone who elected to leave the league. That league was known as the Highlander League. 10 managers, selecting players from the American League only.

I started as the Buggers (named from Ender's game).
I changed my name to The Matrix (named from the movie).
Then in 2001, I changed team's name to the Gauchos. I even had a guy create a logo for me:

Finally, I settled on the Hungry Hippos for the 2004 season. I had the same guy at Geeklogos.com create another logo for me.

From 1998 to 2007, I made the playoffs once. In 2001, I placed 4th in the league, and went on to lose in the first round of the playoffs.

However, this morning I woke up to the news that I won the 2008 Highlander League Regular Season! I managed to win the title by one game, and feel pretty good after wallowing in abject failure all those years until now.

As for my fellow managers, there have been some who stayed, and some who have left and been replaced. There are still 4 managers from when I joined the league in 1998. I have never met any of the 9 other managers in the league, but I've known some of them for over 10 years. You couldn't ask for a better group of guys.

So here's to the BBM AL Keeper Highlander League! Tigers, Yankees, Rabbits, Vipers, Lobstermen, GodKings, Rascals, Warthogs & Sharks! Well done guys, and thanks for your friendship!

Dinner time

You would think we didn't feed them! I made homemade pizza the other night, but Luke had already had his dinner earlier that night since he goes to bed early. Maybe he was still hungry, or maybe it's because lately anything we have he wants but he was right there hoping to get some! So was Ender...notice the lifted paw in the first picture, he thinks that if he does a trick that he will get whatever he wants!

Random pictures of Luke

Luke is 11 months old today! I can't believe it!

His next doctor appointment is at 12 months, so I have no idea how much he weighs now or how tall he is. I remember at Luke's 9 month appointment I would have guessed he weighed more than 19 pounds, he just feels heavier than he really is. He is close to walking and will randomly let go of things and take 3 or 4 steps but prefers still to crawl. And when we stand him up and try and have him walk while holding onto our fingers, his legs turn all limp and he won't do it! Luke and Ender really love each other, and I love it when Ender makes Luke laugh. Just the other day as I was unloading the dishwasher and I had Luke in his highchair eating dinner, and as I was turning around to see what Luke was laughing at, Ender had his two front paws on the counter trying to reach the plate of Luke's food that I left to close to the edge. Apparently Luke thought that was hillarious because he was really laughing! It was cute!

We got Luke his new carseat, but he can't go in it yet...one more month. He weighs enough, but he has to be 1. We got it early because we had coupons! Yeah coupons! And a refund from the bassinet, yeah refunds!

Luke also likes to crawl while he has things in his mouth, I guess since that's the way Ender does it, that's the way Luke is going to do it. Someday Luke will have human friends he can play with!

Meet my flat brother...

The last time I went up to Washington I spent some extra time there. At first I wasn't planning on even going up there, but we (mostly Michael, bless his heart!) thought that it would be a good idea if I went and spent some family time. This trip was planned around the time that my oldest brother Jared would be getting ready to deploy to Iraq for a year. My brother and sister in law have three kids, a 6 year old, a almost 4 year old and a 1 year old. To keep Jared involved in family outings, events, soccer games, and family time they decided to get a Flat Daddy. The kids are having a lot of fun taking Flat Daddy everywhere they go and getting pictures of all of their adventures and doing all of the things families do together. They are even keeping everything documented in a blog called A Year with Flat Daddy. Flat Jared even made it on the local news where they live see the news clip here. These are some random pictures from my trip. Top left picture: me, Joel (almost 4) and Jeff (6). Right picture: Luke (9months) and Mira (1) inside the house and Joel outside the house. Bottom picture on the left: Jeff hanging off the couch! I am linking A Year with Flat Daddy on the side of our blog under the family blogger section swing by every now and then and leave a comment, the kids love it!

I think this year for Christmas the one gift I will give myself is a donation to Flat Daddies.

Maybe I'll make one of these for Luke

Over at Make and Takes I found this idea for a do it yourself color book! I like it! And you just use things from around your house! I can do that! I really can! Just when I'm done doing all of the other projects that I have going, or want to have going....man, my list is long!

The other night

Many of you may or may not know that Michael has RLS. He has had it for years now, how many, I don't know. And when we were living in Idaho, he finally went to see a Doctor about it. The nights he has it or can feel it coming on he takes medicine for it. He can go weeks without needing to take something, and then some weeks he will have RLS a few times in a week. Well, the other night he could feel it coming on early in the evening so about 8pm he took his medicine for it hoping that if he took it early, by the time he was ready for bed it would have kicked in and he could get a good night sleep. He got a terrible night sleep. He couldn't figure out why what he took didn't work. I thought that maybe what he was taking just wasn't working anymore, that can happen, so that's what I thought. So then the next night he could start to feel symptoms, and asked if I would get him his meds. I go to the cupboard where all the meds are kept, and sitting there on top, was not his meds. so I asked him if that was what he took the last night. As he read the bottle, he now knew why it didn't work. What he took the other night was for something else, not RLS. No harm was done in taking the wrong medicine, good thing, but we realized how important it is to read the bottles of any medicine each time you go and get something. Especially with having kids, you always have to double check. I at times have had RLS too, but I haven't ever had it like Michael has it.

Luke and Ender playing

Luke and Ender play pretty well together. Most of the time. There are those times when Ender takes a toy away from Luke and Luke will go crawling after him with a sad little whine. And there are the times that Luke takes toys away from Ender, and Ender doesn't really seem to mind. Of course, there are toys of Ender's that Ender really hasn't touched since we got them (like the one in the video, we got it 1 1/2 years ago), but now that Luke is playing with them, Ender has decided that now he has interest in them. We were watching this video and we aren't quite sure what Luke is doing at the end. Perhaps dancing?

Our straw man!

We decided that we wanted to teach Luke how to drink from straws instead of sippy cups. So while we were in WA. I did just that. It took a couple of different kinds for him to pick it up. I finally got him cups that had lids and straws that I could squeeze a little like a juice box, and then he figured that he had to suck to drink! So now we have the toss and take ones from the first years for at home and only home because if you squeeze they get everywhere, and when we go out he has the playtex sport cup that has the straw! It's just so cute to see him sucking and his little cheeks pucker while he drinks with a straw! So cute!

He's so close...

...to walking! Ever since Luke took his first steps while we were visiting my family in WA. he hasn't bothered taking any more than 2 or 3 steps at a time, and then it was few and far between.

But tonight, he walked about 3 feet...which to him was 7 or 8 steps!

How do you ruin a rice cooker?

Well as I am sure that there are many ways, the way I ruined mine was to put it away after using it one time WITH THE LEFT OVER RICE STILL IN IT! I went to cook rice one day and opened it up, and then closed it as fast as I could, which wasn't fast enough! I will spare you all from seeing the picture I took, why I took one I now can't recall. It was gross, believe me, or ask Michael. I was trying to remember the last time I used it.... when was it....was it when...hmmm. The closest I can come up with was I used it when a friend had a baby and I took dinner to her.....4 months ago. I'm surprised I hadn't smelt it before that, I guess it had a really great seal! It was beyond cleaning, so we will be getting a new one. So if you are at our house, and we are having rice, I either cooked the rice on the stove, or we got a new cooker!

Problems, and solutions

This is the problem.....

Yes, those are teeth marks, underneath was worse. Well, atleast the crib was gently used and we didn't spent the money on a nice new one only to have Luke eat it!

The solution!.....

I know somewhere on some blog I have seen custom made thingies that you can make yourself to put on your crib just for teething purposes, but I couldn't remember where, and my sewing skillz are really poor. So I decided to buy a bumper and cut it to pieces, and then tie a piece of batting or felt around every other space! It worked, I can tell because now when I go to get Luke, it is all wet on the bumper where he tried to chew. Although now he has moved to the right side of the crib, so I will have to cover that too!

Recalled...

No...not the baby or the dog... the bassinet.


I got an email from Babies R Us and then went to the store site to view this. I guess just because we have owned this bassinet for over a year now, and used it for 4-5 months doesn't mean that we were in the clear if they are recalling ones from 2001 through August 2008. I'm just glad that things were okay while we used it. We got one of these recalled bassinets for Luke, and Luke loved it, and it was the one I really wanted...and Ender loved too! Now it has been RECALLED. I thought I would post this just in case anyone else has one of these, or know anyone who has one of these. You can look for this recall as well as recalls for many other things being recalled on the recalls.gov web site.

So I guess now we will be taking it back to the store, we even have it in the box it came in being stored for any other children we were to have, I guess any other babies will have to sleep in something else. We should be getting our money back, or store credit, which is fine because now we will add that to the money we were going to spend on a car seat for Luke (yikes, he will be one soon, and forward facing!) and that will give us a little bit more money for a car seat.