Merry Christmas. Here’s my father singing O Holy Night in Karaoke. LOL.

Untitled from Devon Adams on Vimeo.

I wanted an awesome Stillers (that’s Steeler for yinz who don’t come from the ‘burgh!) sweatshirt on Black Friday from Penney’s but they only had Cowboys (terrible!) and Cardinals (go figure, we’re in AZ!). I finally convinced catalog to order me up one, but the makers were gonna have to mail it straight to my house. This was fine with me since I live 10 miles from our local Penney’s.

After about 2 weeks I was pissed my shirt hadn’t come so I called to complain. Yesterday Penney’s catalog told me it was currently on the UPS truck to be delivered that day. My only package at home that night was a gift for a family member, so today while we were cooking dinner, I was complaining to Donna about Penney’s. I said something about the awesome Steelers sweatshirt for under $30 that I had ordered and hoped to wear to work while they’re in the playoffs.

She gave me this odd look and started laughing. Yesterday a package had come in her name. She’d opened it when I was out of the room and quickly wrapped it for me. She thought she had forgot and bought me a new Stillers shirt for Christmas!

In late May 1994 after I had just finished up my freshman semester of college at Penn State University, I’d planned on hanging around all summer. My bother, Jaime, and I headed to a party with these people we’d just been getting to know. At some point in the evening we played spin the bottle. A young woman with torn jeans, red wild hair, and glasses spun the bottle and it landed on Jaime; he kissed her. Later in the evening I spun the bottle and it landed on her. I moved in with all the charm I could muster. I reached forward across the center circle, and went for it. Needless to say we quickly forgot the bottle, but we never ever forgot that 14 years ago today my brother kissed my wife before I kissed her!

To keep the traditions alive, on May 20, 1999 I had just finished my Master’s Degree at Duquesne University and Donna had just now finished her degree in management from Lock Haven, and we had much to celebrate. I decided to pack a cooler of KFC chicken and a couple Sobes before driving Donna out to South Park south of PIttsburgh. We roller bladed around the park before heading up to the "Stone Shelter" where my parents always said they made out when they were our age. So sitting up there, I was very nervous, and eventually I just went for it. I leaned in, pulled the small box out of my pocket, tossed it into her lap and asked loudly "Wanna Get Hitched?" This proclaimant and several feet of green phallic graffiti behind us on the wall was I needed to woo Donna to marry me.

She said yes, and we moved to Arizona a few months later. We never looked back. Happy Anniversary, Honey!

Don’t know what to tell you. Here we sit in OUR OWN LIVING ROOM! Claire got so many presents from her family that we had 9 bags coming back from Pittsburgh today. Donna’s father just rolled his eyes and made his comments and moved on. This morning we had to take Danny’s 4Runner and Dad’s Jeep to the airport since we had so much stuff. One bag I had weighed 53.5 pounds and the other was 48 pounds. Danny & I stood there and took out piece by piece, weighing it by hand. Eventually both bags were 50.0 pounds and Danny had a handful of clothes and I had a few DVDs. We were proud of ourselves for figuring it all out, and then Donna showed up to check her and Claire in.

Once we made it on the plane (and yes, the new SOUTHWEST seating orders suck!) Claire fell asleep for 90 minutesl I got three magazines read cover to cover and Donna read her Reader’s DIgests. I can’t believe I took about 8 magazines home to read, and I read three ON the ride home!

Now we’re sitting here at home, unpacking, watching reality TV that we recorded while we were gone, and watching Claire be very attentive to the baby dolls that were sitting here for the last three weeks. She’s got a new babydoll stroller from Mimi & Pap Pap, and she’s been driving them all over the house in the stroller. Back to the grindstone…

2007_Dec_Christmas_7Springs_16.JPG, originally uploaded by nooccar.

Today we headed back to 7Springs, and Uncle Jaime skiied with Claire all morning. He’s a great uncle, and we all had an awesome time.

In freshman year of high school I went into the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, mostly because I wanted to see a friend who was volunteering there. This was 1989. Now, today, we took Claire there for the first time. My father-in-law thought it was a horrid idea at first and wanted to go somewhere he knew, but he acquiesced and we were off. As soon as we got there she was off and running. She dragged us through Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and into the garage (which I recall as the old Buehl Planetarium) and then up to the Water Works and down to the toddler exploration. She went all over that place for about 4 hours. She barely wanted to stop moving, and I think it wore us out more than anyone. She ran from room to room, and had a ball on the 45degree angle room and the slides, the garage where she built walls with plastic boards and wingnuts, and also the water room where she could soak herself through the provided raincoats. This was cooler for her than the aviary! We took her to The Getty when she almost 1 year old, and she was relatively quiet (for a 1 year old), and she through the Pittsburgh Aviary was cool last year, but the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum took the cake!

People look at me strangely when I say I have a friend who’s a bank robber. I think he’d prefer "reformed" bank robber, and since he can pretty much read this blog tomorrow (and learn what a blog is, since he’s been away for years) I think I’ll call him that – RBR. Sounds like Reebber, but not. Yes, he robbed a bank, and it’s a long story that’s for elsewhere. I will just say that I hope I never ever know what it’s like to get out of jail after so many years. I can’t believe he’s never experienced Web 2.0. No one text messaged when he was arrested, and Google was nothing. This whole blog thing wasn’t around really (yes, people like Wil were blogging but the rest of us weren’t). Anyway, he gets out tomorrow. In the morning. About 7 hours probably. Who knows. I wonder how he’s getting to his next destination. It’ll be odd going home for Christmas and seeing him. As far as I know, Donna and I are the only people who visited him while he was there, so this’ll be interesting. I hope he never goes back there, and I am looking forward to seeing him in December.

Yesterday was our last day in Pittsburgh, and my in-laws wanted to take Claire to South Park to play. South Park is … well, it’s a park. A huge park near my parent’s house in Pittsburgh. There are ponds, paths, and playgrounds. They have a "duck pond" which is a Game Reserve in the park, and you know when you return to something years later and it looks littler? Well, the duck pond was smaller, but it really was. It looks like they cleaned it all out, filled the bottom with rock and then made a new pond. They also put in a huge filter with a fountain in the middle. It was cleaner and had a guard rail around it, so you could no longer go down to the water to get attacked by the geese like Jaime did 15 years ago. And the chicken coop? Well, there was nothing there. Just an old beat up building boarded with nails. There were still a few sickly-looking peacocks, too. The deer were still there, but they were now through two fences and we could not get very close. Ducks & rabbits use to chase us around as children, but they were mostly gone, too.

Donna will tell you how proud she is that she got buffalo to come down to the fence to see her. She threw graham crackers at these 1/4 ton animals who slurped them up out of mud around the trough. Claire was most impressed by the geese who moved and flew and quacked. The buffalo bored her and she couldn’t see the deer and turkey well.

Today we flew home and Southwest was good to us, as usual. There were some rude ladies on the plane, and Claire didn’t want to sleep AT ALL but we made it. Ho ho ho…

Below you will see that we watched Superman Returns the other night, and you know what… IT SUCKED. I just wasn’t it to it, and yes, I did fall asleep. And yes, when I asked my dad if he liked it, he said "it sucked. I fell asleep after 20 minutes." Other than that it was horrible.

Now onto other stuff. Look for my post on dadbloggers in a few days here. It’s about Claire who is talking more and more in complete sentences (albeit incomprehensible sentences).

As for me, I’ve been sitting at this table for two days now on my laptop. Danny and Donna want to exchange music for Christmas, and we’ve been working on that. I am done, though. I am finished. Stick a fork in me. When I important a couple hundred songs, after a while my computer cries. So now I am working on my English 102 class that I am teaching online. I have several pages of developed curriculum to modify, so here I sit. I made a few new accounts recently on sites like pageflakes, del.icio.us and furl. Web2.0 sites are fun.

While in Pittsburgh for Grampap’s funeral, we often congregated at Grandma’s house with the family.  Little kids often lighten events like these, because they innocently are clueless to the gravity of the situation.

Claire was getting a kick out of running around to everyone in the living room and interacting on many levels.  At one point she stood up and ran about six feet – fast – right towards Uncle Ernie.  Now, Uncle Ernie is a big, shall we say teddy bear shaped man.  When Claire reached him, she immediately bounced off his belly and landed flat on her back on the floor.

After the initial daze, and as the entire room was cracking up, Claire stood up and stumbled back to the middle of the room.  As she gained perspective, Claire realized that we were laughing at her and that she must’ve done something amusing.  Loving the attention, Claire quickly turned and ran back to Uncle Ernie and, consequently, repeated her previous performance.

At this point, I’m laughing so hard that I’d damn near peed myself.  I think Uncle Ernie was a little embarrassed, though, because he got up a few minutes later and didn’t return to that chair for the remainder of the day.