Adventures of the Livaudais Family

Our little triathlete

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:46:00 +0000

This weekend Christopher became the second triathlete in our household when he competed in the Hill Country Kids' Triathlon. I *highly* recommend this race if you've got a kiddo who'd like to try something like this. The race director is awesome, the volunteers were wonderful, the course was great, and the distances are manageable even if a kiddo is still using training wheels.

Here's Christopher before the race, setting up his gear in the bike transition area:

Even though Christopher is 6, the USAT rules determine one's age by how old one will be on the last day of the year. So, Christopher competed in the 7-8 age group rather than the 5-6, which meant a 100m swim instead of just 25m. He and I went to the neighborhood pool a few times to make sure he could swim the distance. He could.

But wow, I was so amazed how he just blazed through the 4 lengths of the pool without stopping for a breather, and was out of the water after about 4 minutes. Here he is warming up for the swim:

Here he is shivering, after the 'warm-up', before the race start:

And here's him starting the race. They stagger the start so the kids don't jump on top of each other:

Here is our little tough guy in the transition area, getting his gear on. We weren't allowed to help him, but a volunteer helped him double-knot his shoes.

Because the bike portion was much farther than Christopher had ever ridden alone before (2.5 miles) Frank ran behind him. Several other parents did the same thing. We were really proud of him for riding his big boy bike, after only a couple days of knowing how to brake right and start by himself.

Here he is coming into the transition area again, after the completing the bike section.

Here he is about 20 yards before finishing the race (1k, or .6 miles) with a time of just over 35 minutes. He's clearly tired, but determined.

Here's the champ cooling off after the race:

And just for good measure, here he is calling Uncle Scott to tell him about the race, and to brag that he did a triathlon before Scott did:

The rest of the day was hilarious. Christopher kept asking for special treats & privileges, reminding us that, "Well, I am a triathlete." He can't wait for his next one (the Pirates Triathlon, at the end of September).

By this time tomorrow...

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:53:00 +0000

...we'll have two triathletes in the family. And he.is.READY.

(Extra points for cuteness: he's wearing Frank's IronMan belt, which is holding his number on.)

Perhaps it's time to play the lottery?

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:37:00 +0000

I'm having a run of luck lately. First, it was the fire rainbow. And on this current packages of hippie eggs (as Frank would put it) I've had double-yolked eggs on every single one. I'm 6 for 6.

Here's today's:

From what I've read, double-yolkers are pretty rare, though if a hen is predisposed to producing them, she'll produce a lot of them. Traditional egg companies use candling (shining lights at the eggs) to weed out the double-yolkers, but my hippie egg people apparently don't do that.

The eggs are good, but I'll need to buy another brand for baking since the double yolks will mess up my recipes.

Happy Birthday!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:12:00 +0000

Happy Birthday to 2 fantastic ladies, Aly (today) and Carla (tomorrow)!!

I'll let you guys guess whose cake is whose:

Changes a'comin'

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:09:00 +0000

You probably won't see posts from me for a few days, for the following reasons:

1. Christopher will be doing his first triathlon on Saturday!!! We are all very, very excited. Expect pictures galore on Sunday.

2. I'm finally buckling down to finish some lingering projects.

3. We're hosting our "annual" Thanksgiving in July with some friends on Saturday and I'll be preparing for that.

and:

4. We've almost got the new blog platform ready. Should be up this weekend!

Love note

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:53:00 +0000

Christopher: Mom, can I have another piece of cheese?
Me: No, because I'm almost done cooking dinner.
C: (exasperated sigh)
...
...
1 minute later, he hands me a folded post-it note with this on the outside...

...then runs off, cackling.

And what did the note say on the inside?

Surrender indeed.

Fun with words, part two

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:30:00 +0000

I overheard Christopher saying this to Frank this morning:

"So this bad guy (Lego) wizard? He has special books you have to be evil to be able to read. If you're good, the pages are blank. Yeah, so he buys them at Bats & Noble."

Awesome.

The Crazy Thompsons of Idaho

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:40:00 +0000

I've been doing some genealogy research - something I've been doing off and on for about 12 years now - and thanks to a new newspaper archive I found yesterday, I've discovered another funny story about a crazy branch of my family.

First, some background: William L Thompson moved to the Boise area from Philadelphia in about 1863. He had a huge homestead, and he and a guy named McClellan made the first ferry across the Boise river and apparently charged a fortune for people to cross. He also practiced medicine (though I've checked with the medical schools in the Philadelphia area and verified that he didn't attend medical school. Eh, no matter. In the wild West people tended to reinvent themselves, and he must've been somewhat skilled as he later married one of his patients, who he had treated for typhoid fever.)

WL Thompson was a generally* well-respected citizen. Too bad that didn't hold true for his kids, 5 troublesome sons and a daughter.

Here is a picture of the family outside their home in 1886:

So, the story that cracks me up is that the daughter, Lillian Thompson, married a criminal named William "Dell" Wolley (or Woolley?). He was a criminal before she married him and - shocker - continued to be one after they married. He eventually tried to forge his brothers-in-law's signatures on some checks and went to prison for four years.

Dell tried to commit suicide in prison by drinking carbolic acid, but I think he was just an attention-getter because the prison guard heard Dell scream "Well, here goes!" (He'd apparently sneaked the poison into prison, and after poisoning a prison cat to make sure it worked, he drank it himself.) He wasn't seriously injured, and still had to do his time. What a tool.

I'm sure the story wasn't funny for poor Lillian, but the idea of someone announcing his impending suicide with a scream strikes me as really immature. And funny. Really, really funny.

Stay tuned for more adventures of the Thompson Bad Boys.

* generally well-respected except for the time WL (at age 75) and his son Lafayette got arrested for killing some turkeys belonging to his old business partner, McClellan. It must not have been a big deal, though, because the newspaper filed the story under "Local Brevities".

Our little punner

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:19:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago when he had to get up really early for a swim meet, he was whining for a long time about how eeeeeeearly it was and how he didn't want to beeeeeee there. When I told him I only wanted to hear positive things coming out of his mouth, he told me "I'm positive I don't want to be here." I had to laugh even though his attitude was irritating.

Yesterday, I quizzed him about Harry Potter, asking him who Harry's friends were. He said, "Ron?" and then had trouble coming up with another name. When I prompted him with, "Her........" he replied, "Monica!" Yes, folks. Her-monica.

And today, he said, "If you're tired and then you take a nap and then you get tired again, you're re-tired!"

They're definitely age-appropriate jokes, but I love that he likes to play with words like his goofy mom.

Happy 4th of July!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:20:00 +0000

Well, we saw the fireworks on the lake last night, complements of Carlos & Charlie's. We anchored the boat in a cove and did some swimming, ate some Thundercloud, and settled in for the show.

We'll be heading over to Shelley's parents' house today for grilling, swimming, and probably a few drinks. I made a pie for the occasion:

Not quite as pretty as the one in the recipe, but it was easy & fun.

Hope you have fun today - nothing says Independence quite like bbq and sparklers!

Bounty, you're on my list.

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:55:00 +0000

It's no big secret that most commercials for household products involve women cleaning up the mess their hapless, helpless family members carelessly leave for them (except for one silly Hoover Floormate commercial involving bikers, but it was only novel/funny because it *wasn't* a commercial involving a women, hahahaa, ya get it? The man is cleaning, haha!).

Normally, I think these commercials are annoying to men as well; most portray a bumbling, clumsy but generally benevolent man and an efficient woman who solves the problem for him while rolling her eyes and smiling at the camera.

But this one sort of pisses me off and make me laugh at the same time:

This one makes me go, "Hey, a-holes! Why don't you sit there a bit longer guesstimating how big a mess it's going to make once it hits that rug. And hey, Doormat! Why don't you grow a spine and throw the paper towel roll at the a-holes who are laughing about how much work you have to do!"

And then I laugh at myself for giving the commercial more thought than it deserves.

THE END.

8 years!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:08:00 +0000

Today we have been married for 8 years.

We've been together for 12 years, more than a third of our lives!

Frank is probably still the funniest person I know, and he cheerfully puts up with all kinds of nonsense from me. Love you, honey!

And, Happy 8th birthday to Bacchus!

THEN

and NOW. (This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it.)

Overheard at the Airport

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:07:00 +0000

Here's a conversation Frank heard while waiting to board the Nerd Bird* this morning, in his words:

"Two guys were talking next to me:

Dork 1: You didn't take the Sunday night flight? [this should have been obvious since he was standing there on Monday morning]

Dork 2: Nah, thought I was going to have a mega hot dating weekend

Dork 1: Oh yeah?

Dork 2: Yeah, I didn't want to have to extract myself from some hottie just to catch a flight you know?

Dork 1: So how did it go?

Dork 2: Didn't happen

Me: really?"

I'm assuming Frank didn't really say that out loud, though I wish he had.

* the Nerd Bird is the nonstop morning flight from Austin --> San Jose, CA.

Fire Rainbow

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:06:00 +0000

I don't know why this makes me so happy, but it does:

While in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, we took a drive and as we went over a mountain, I saw this in the sky:

It was quite a bit more vivid than that in person, but if I adjust the contrast much it looks like we were driving through a storm. Below is the vivid color version, but again, the clouds are much more pronounced & ominous than in real life. They really were wispy little things against a blue sky.

We wondered what the heck it was. With the weird dips & jags, we knew it wasn't a normal rainbow and wondered if it might be some sort of aurora. Well, I found out today it's called a circumhorizontal arc - or, much cooler, a fire rainbow. (Here's a much cooler picture someone took in Coeur d'Alene two years ago.)

Apparently it's super rare to see one as they only show up under really specific conditions, in really specific locations, only around the equinox, and for short amounts of time.

I feel really lucky when I see stuff like this, like nature is showing me a secret :)

IronFrank

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:28:00 +0000

We're in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho for Frank's second IronMan Triathlon. So far he's been going about 7.5 hours, and probably has about 4.5 to go. I'm not sure why anyone would want to punish themselves this way, but I'm proud of him for doing it.

In case you're not familiar with the insanity that is an IronMan, it consists of:

a 2.4 mile swim,
112 miles on the bike,
and a 26.2 mile run (marathon)

Last time it took him just under 12 hours, and it looks like he's on pace for just a little longer than that today.

Here's the start of the race, 2100+ swimmers hitting the lake at the same time:

More updates soon!

Please forgive the mess

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:51:00 +0000

I'm trying to decide whether to stick with blogger or with a platform Frank and I made.

In the meantime, there will be twice as many ads as there should be, and the page will look ugly. Sorry - will be fixed in the next week!

Gotta love Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:42:00 +0000

Central Texas has all kinds of critters running around. We have tiny scorpions that blend in with our floors, millipedes that can outrun us, cute green lizards and black & white horned ones, tarantulas (which thank goodness I've only seen on the outside of our house), oodles of other spiders and bugs, and snakes.

I've read that Texas only has 4 types of poisonous snakes and a whole mess of nonvenomous ones. I don't really mind snakes a whole lot.

But I do mind going out to my garage, reaching for something on a shelf in the semi-lit space and hearing: tck tck tck tck tck tck.

At first I assumed it was because the shelf was swaying and something was knocking together, but the tck tck kept up even after I stilled it. So of course I froze in place and waited, and after about 10 seconds it stopped.

After about 10 more, I decided to take a step backwards, and sure enough - tck tck tck tck tck.

Rinse & repeat.

It didn't sound a whole lot like a rattlesnake, but I'm no herpestologist or whatever, so I was getting a bit nervous.

Eventually I got far enough away to walk back into the house, chat with Frank on yahoo messenger for a minute, and then go back out there and open up the garage for more light and for an escape route - for me or the creature, either way would be fine.

Well, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a four-inch gecko - which is like the godzilla of geckos compared to what we usually see. I dashed back inside to find my camera, and to google "gecko noises". Couldn't find a picture of him - the one here is what he looked like, though, minus the spider - but I found out that geckos are the only kind of lizards that make clicking noises. In fact, the name "gecko" comes from someone's interpretation of the sound he makes. (By that definition mine would've been named Ticko.)

Yay! They eat spiders!

You can listen to one here, if you're using Internet Explorer.

He said, she heard

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:51:00 +0000

While Frank was running the marathon this Sunday, Christopher interrupted my bath to tell me, excitedly:

"Wow, mom! This kid got Crocs for riding his bike with no hands!"

(What? What the hell kind of parent rewards that kind of risk-taking behavior? And what kind of commercial uses that as an example?)

Me: Crocs?!
C: No, PROPS!
Me (smiling): Ohhhhh. And what are props?
C: I don't know!! But I know they're GOOD!!!

OCD, Junior

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:57:00 +0000

I'm not going to lie. I have a few little quirks that might be viewed as slightly obsessive-compulsive. The only one that's stuck with me over the years (or the only one I'm aware of, at least) is my compulsion about the microwave.

Here's an example: I drink a cup of chai tea every morning. First, I fill a mug with either water or milk and heat it up in the microwave. Next, I get out a spoon and the tea powder. If I notice that the timer is close to zero, I have to run around like crazy to finish before the timer goes off.

Why, you ask? What will happen if I don't do that, you ask? I shudder to imagine.

I also have a weird thing about using repeating numbers when setting the cooking time. I almost always use 1:11 for my tea water.

Yeah. It's weird. I get it. But it doesn't seem to affect my life much, and it doesn't bother others though I do get a strange look from Frank occasionally (though he has his own rituals).

When I was a kid and noticed something off-kilter or out of place, like if someone accidentally skipped a belt loop or left a long strand out of their ponytail, it would irk me and I could feel my imaginary hands reaching out to fix it. I seem to have gotten over this type of thing (unlike my mom who I can gaslight by walking a few steps ahead of her in a store and surreptitiously arranging display items somewhat off-balance and then laugh as she unconsciously fixes them as she walks by. good times).

All this to say that I hope Christopher outgrows his own tendencies as well. He's had some strange ones:

For a very long time, he was afraid of the credits on tv shoes or movies. He would run to the TV to turn it off. In the movie theatre, once he could tell that the final conflict had been resolved and that things were starting to wrap up, he'd get all twitchy until he couldn't stand it anymore and demanded to be taken out of the theatre.

He also obsesses over whether the power is actually turned off on his portable DVD player before he closes it, lest the DVD player "watch itself."

Sometimes he shakes his hands strangely when he's excited, but thank GOODNESS that one is disappearing.

One of his cutest ones is more of a comfort motion than OCD; he has this puppy (below) that he's worn smooth over the years because he rubs it on his lips when falling asleep. Just the other day he told us that Puppy "doesn't quite feel the same anymore" on his lips now that the fur is pretty much gone. It's very, very sweet.

The most recent OCD behavior happened when I was flossing his teeth. I flossed them all except between his front teeth, which have a slight gap and don't need flossing. When I took the floss out to throw it away, he grabbed my arm and said urgently, "floss the front!" When I told him I didn't need to, he looked a little desperate and said "floss the front!" again. A little light bulb went on in my brain and I asked, "Is it because I started and now I have to finish?" and he sort of frowned and said, "I just need to feel it."

Poor kid. In so many ways, he's so laid back, adaptable and agreeable. I hope he's able to outgrow these little quirks like I (mostly) have.

American Airlines, again!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:08:00 +0000

Frank has to travel a lot for work, mostly to San Jose and mostly on American Airlines. And when I say a lot, I mean that he has almost 900,000 lifetime miles (acquired mostly over the past 4 years) and that in early January, American actually called us to ask if everything was ok with him because he hadn't flown for a few weeks.

He flies American in large part because they offer an early-morning nonstop flight to San Jose (dubbed the Nerd Bird because of all the IT-type people on the flight each day). Leaving at 7am here gets you in at San Jose around 8am, in plenty of time to make the day's meetings. It's a nice way for Frank to minimize his time away from home, when it works right.

Lately, though, American has been pulling some shenanigans with that early morning flight. A couple of weeks ago we got a 3am call from American telling Frank that his 7am flight had been canceled and that he would need to take a later flight. It caused him to be late for some important meetings .

Then this week, we were informed the evening before that his flight would be canceled, and they tried to book him on a much later flight. After a heated discussion, they booked him on another airline so he could make his meetings.

And then the final kick in the teeth: American called yesterday afternoon to tell us that Frank's flight home that night was also canceled. They had to rebook him on an earlier flight which, because it had a stop, got him home later than the original flight would have.

That's right. 2 cancellations in 1 day. When I gave the agent Frank's cell phone number and told her it was the second problem that day and to brace herself for a fun phone call, she sort of sucked in her breath and said, "Oh my. Twice in one day?!"

Yes, lady. Twice in one fricking day (and I can only imagine the colorful phrasing Frank had for you). This, plus the ridiculous inspection-related grounding of their fleet which caused me to reschedule an entire trip to DC, PLUS their ridiculous new luggage policy, means we'll be giving Continental Airlines a nice long look for our next flights.

Bring on summer!

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:44:00 +0000

Christopher has 3 days of school left before summer. Beyond trying frantically to get some work done before he's home full-time, I'm really pretty excited about summer.

I'm looking forward to having my little buddy to hang out with. I'm looking forward to having less of a schedule to keep up with. I'm *really* looking forward to a break from hollering "Hurry! Hurry!" every morning. I'm looking forward to us traveling with Frank. And I'm looking forward to lots of lake and pool time.

We'll be going to San Diego, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and Anchorage, Alaska - so far. I'm sure something else will come up along the way. I'm hoping we can also take a weekend trip to San Antonio for a little Sea World/Six Flags action.

What are your summer plans? Anything exciting in the works?

Ok, now I have to clean it

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:43:00 +0000

If you come over to our house you might think it's neat & tidy. You might also notice that the door to my bedroom is closed. This is why:

Also pictured, in the mirror: a small stack of clean, ironed clothes languishing on the back of a chair, waiting for me to put away.

I'm highly embarrassed of my dresser even if I'm one of only 3 people that sees it. I'm filled with self-loathing when I rush around, throwing crap on the dresser so the common areas will be clutter-free. I always tell myself, well, I'll put everything where it really goes later, when I "have time".

Well, today I'm coming out of the closet (dubious pun alert) and posting my secret shame for the world to see. Why? Well, I was inspired by Bossy, one of my top 3 most visited bloggers, and also I figured that if I showed the dresser to the public, I'd be forced to clean it.

I hope to be posting beautiful AFTER pictures later today. And if not, I'm considering a dresser with a top that's at a 45-degree angle so I won't be able to keep stuff on it. Or spikes. Spikes might work.

The Beginning of the End

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:33:00 +0000

Subtitle: Do I hear any nominations for parenting awards?

Christopher has had a pretty successful Kindergarten year. He's gotten high marks in reading, reasonably high marks in everything else, and most importantly, he really likes school.

One thing we've been told throughout the year is that he needs some work on his fine motor skills. For a while it was affecting his ability to finish his work on time because he had a little trouble cutting with scissors and doing other small physical manipulations. We joked that we were just paying the price for not introducing him to video games, since almost all of his friends are already playing up a storm.

So, we actually tried to engage him in games like Lego Star Wars and the Wii sports games, but he wasn't too interested. The strangeness of this scenario - that we, the "responsible" parents were pushing video games like his junior high friends will push cigarettes and wine coolers - was not lost on us, but we still tried. It didn't work until Boys' Weekend, when Frank finally got him to play Lego Star Wars with him.

Then, this weekend, I showed him Mario Kart on my Nintendo DS. He was quickly enamored and then asked me all afternoon if I'd let him play it again. When I finally relented, he carefully carried it while sprinting into my room to lay on Jax and play for a good 30 minutes.

When I told him that Mario Kart for the Wii would soon be out, his eyes took on a cult-memberesque shine and he danced for joy. I'm pretty sure I'll soon live to regret this move - especially 3 weeks before summer. Oh well, anything for the boys education, right?

2-week roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:44:00 +0000

Here's the latest with us:

Weekend One
I went to DC to visit Aly during the first weekend in May, and had a lovely time. Aly was a great tour guide and I got to meet some really cool friends of hers. Here we are in front of the FDR Memorial:

The weekend also held foot blisters, arm wrestling, leg wrestling, unsolicited beauty advice from strangers, dancing, shopping and haircuts. It was quite a physically demanding weekend. We muddled through:

But seriously: thank you, Aly, for spending your last weekend in DC with me! I had a great time!

More pictures can be found here, soon.

While I was gone, Christopher and Frank had a Boys' Weekend, which involved video games and football games, and resulted in pictures (and videos!) like this:

I'm sensing a pattern, here.

Weekend Two,
Then, on Mother's Day weekend we flew into Omaha (First Class, baby!), drove to Brookings, South Dakota for a marathon, drove to Ames, Iowa for another marathon, and then drove back to Omaha for the trip home. Frank describes the race portion of the trip on his blog here.

Christopher thought he could pull his usual shenanigans and scare me right before takeoff by showing me all of the possible survivable but harrowing emergencies we might face on the journey:

But I foiled his plans by taking advantage of a well-known perk of First Class: free beverages of all sorts. So I sipped my white wine, smiled, and had some of the most pleasant flights of my adult life.

Despite the constant rain, the threat of snow in South Dakota, and the hours of driving, we had a pretty good time!

Now we're back in town, counting down the "wakeups" until school is out and our reportedly very laid-back swim team season begins. I'm looking forward to the Christopher time and that we'll be able to travel without the pesky constraints of school. Yay!

Procrastination.

noreply@blogger.com (Shelley.Livaudais) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:47:00 +0000

This picture came from MSNBC.com (via my mom) with this description:

Hungarian Pulia Sheepdog, Fee, jumps over a hurdle during a preview for a pedigree dog show in Dortmund, Germany.

I'm speechless.

Ah, the joys of procrastination.

Incidentally, I think the fur on this guy befits a dog from Hungary, unlike the silky but miniscule "coat" on our Hungarian dogs.