Say Cheese!

or is it The Stinky Cheese Man. I guess we'll never know...Buttercup bit his head off before I could ask him his name.

He Stole My Corner!

...and Baby Bean!  I mean, I know he fixed the roof, but don't you think this is taking it a bit too far?  Baby kitty stealing?  Look!  I know she seems relaxed, but she is clearly under duress!  Mr. R. is obviously using undo force. 

Okay, not really.  She eventually rolled over in her sleep and slid off to his right side, where she remained asleep on the couch next to him.  She didn't even wake up when she fell off.

P.S.  Obviously, Bean thought "Earth Girls Are Easy" was boring.  Go figure?

Fun and Games!

Who says kids need video games to have a good time?  Valiant and Buddy played Risk all weekend.  They finally roped Mr. R and Charming into the game, too.  (Mr. R. says kids cheat and he needs you to come home.  The kids say Mr. R. is old and they need you to come home.)

Father's Day 2010

We missed you so much on Father's Day, but Grandpa John and Nana kept us occupied.  First we made pizza, then we ATE pizza.  After that it was talk of crochet and politics and everything in between.  The high point?  The Wii!



Grandpa John showed Valiant why we think he's so cool.

He said he wasn't very good at the Wii, but I'd have to disagree. Not only can he fix everything and argue proper toilet installation with Steve, but Grandpa John was willing to do Wii Boxing and Wii Bowling. Boxing wasn't his thing, but Valiant says Grandpa John "owned" him in Bowling.  (I think that means the old guy kicked the young guy's butt.)

Pretty Fly for An Old Guy!

Homage to Coffee

By Buttercup

Father's Day

Flashback: We lived in Glendora, CA. It was a morning in late 1997. Valiant gave it his all and vanquished the pesky French fries. Now that same little warrior is taller than I. Where does the time go?

I love you. Happy Father's Day

Blanket Baby

Bean will be 8 weeks old tomorrow.

Day 153: The World of Solitaire

Dear Family-

Today I spent a considerable amount of time online researching the game of Solitaire.  As you know, Solitaire seems to be the game of choice for people with ADD these days.  Well, there were a lot of websites that tried to tackle the problem by demonstrating the how the win/loss ratio could be shown through equations.  What I found was a lot of confusing math surrounding the problem.  It comes down to the fact that there are three classifications of games: Playable Winnable, Playable Not-Winnable, and Not Playable.  Looking at the raw math was kind of boring, but I found a site where a guy with too much time on his hands wrote a program to run the game of Solitaire over and over again.  He found that after playing 10,000 games the following would hold true: 

Out of 10,000 games, 861 could be played all the way through.

Out of 10,000 games, 554 had no moves at the start of the game. (Before playing the deck)

Out of 10,000 games, 23 games had no moves even playing the deck.

Out of 10,000 games, 45 had all black or all red at the start of the game.

So, what does this all mean?  It means that a winning percentage of 14% is not bad at all, but according to the math, your percentage will continue to go down the more games you play.  Sorry for the bad news, but you can still have fun!

Love you all!

Life at Home - The Unfair-ity-ness of It All

You think roofing only pays with cash?

First Camping Trip of the Season

The good weather seems to give the camping bug to EVERYONE. Marissa and Josefina have been enjoying the first camping trip of the season after a long winter packed away in storage. As you can see, they're ecstatic to spend time out of the box (and in a tent, no less!).