Wii Wish You a Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays to all citizens of Poogieville! Bear with me on a longer than usual post of photos and video.

Here's a quick recap of the last week, or so.

Erica was so proud of the girls' matching Christmas dresses that I wanted to make sure they got top billing in the Christmas recap.

We had the Rickons over for a pre-Christmas Amateur Hour. Henry (aka "December-Man") and Mason (aka the "Mountain Dew Sipper") warmed up the crowd. Caroline played the drums.

This is a little grainy, but prime footage of the show. Henry turned "Jingle Bells" into an intense dance hit. Caroline and Mason contributed backup vocals. I did most of the laughing.

On Christmas Eve, the kids made cookies for Santa. Caroline was the taste-tester, which was good. She sneezed on a few of her cookie creations and I was worried that Santa might take offense to "green" sprinkles.

She ate them anyway.

Did I mention she's tough?

Henry, on the otherhand, was ultra-clean with his cookie creations. In fact, I'm not even sure he ate his. His aversion to all things outside of the Henry Pyramid is amazing. For those that don't know, Henry's Pyramid consists of hotdogs, popcorn, Kraft mac and cheese, watermelon, Swedish Fish, cheese quesadillas, and baked beans.

Everything else is just a table setting.

Henry will be funny in his fat years.

What about Jo-Jo? Well, she's perfecting a bizarre-looking tripod soldier crawl. We captured her here before she opened the Hoffman Christmas gifts. Apparently, something they're getting caught her fancy.

Here's Joey and her cousin, Calle.


It was fascinating watching the two of them trade toys at Uncle Bob's Annual Christmas Eve bash. Baby communication among babies is hours of entertainment.




After the party, we arrived just in time to spread magic reindeer dust on the front yard.



Here's Henry doing his handy work with the dust.

After dusting the lawn, we sat for Daddy's renditions of T'was the Night Before Christmas and the Polar Express. Caroline took over for me half way through the former. I liked her version better.

Caroline was a little creeped out by Santa, though. I gauged her fear of the creepiness on the following unscientific Creepy Santa scale:

Funny creepy.

Hilarious creepy.

CREEPY!

Caroline was stuck at funny creepy. Hopefully, next year we'll be off the creepy scale and she'll be able to make her Aunt Kimmy proud and add to the Santa lap photo collection. Four is a good age for that, right?

Well, I'm going to go back to leading the Browns on their first NFL championship journey since 1964. That's what you do when the reality is too much to bear.

Mommy and the kids left daddy alone with a new Wii, a fridge stocked with beer and appetizers and nowhere to go until Monday.

And so I say, Happy Christmas to all and to all a good Wii.

Good night now.

The Prelude to Christmas

We start the Tour de Holiday Poogie with the above-picture of Josie meeting the Rip Taylor version of Santa Claus. Welcome to the flamboyant side of Christmas, Joey. Hopefully you won't confuse the center square with the North Pole.

Where's Uncle Bob when you need him?

The Crew helped Mommy and Daddy put the Christmas tree up and arrange the stockings. We're still trying to figure out what crude words you can spell out of R, H, C, E, and J.

I think we're cool unless there's a Croatian curse word that I'm missing. Right?

This one is simply entitled "4-12".

Poor kid.

Caroline was determined to place her ornaments at either 18 inch heights or the Daddy-assisted, top of the tree. Caroline's tree decorating is visually spectacular when viewed from a ceiling camera or lying prone on the floor. We fixed it, though.



And what would a Poogie post be without me ruining another sweet, color-coordinated Mommy/Daddy picture. They say my eyes are going to stay that way if I keep crossing them.

That's just funny.

Bienvenidos, Amigos!

Curiously, our site has been visited over 100 times by someone or some people from Madrid, Spain. I have completely neglected to recognize this amazing feat. In honor of our new (and as yet unknown) friends in Madrid, I think it is long overdue to formally welcome them to Poogieville and ask that they be gentle and kind as they plot to infect our computers with unknown viruses and other maladies we have yet to uncover.

I like Spain. In fact, I am going to honor my new amigos by eating at a Spanish restaurant this weekend.

I shall raise a glass of sangria (not even sure that's really Spanish) to each of you who find my family entertaining. Thanks for letting us enrich your lives with our lives.

Me temo que de usted.

Please don't kill us. (Wink)

BLOG UPDATE: The Poogie Crew is now officially bigger in Spain than North America. Yesterday, we went "Lizard King" and broke on through to the other side. Our amigos in Madrid, Spain have now visited the site more often than our own family in the States.

Madrid = 117 hits
North America = 105 hits
Australia (courtesy of our Sam Wiggle love-fest) = 2 hits

Apparently, the hat tip didn't scare off those crazy Spanish bastards.

I give us three months to live.

Dereliction of Duty

The crack staff at Poogie's Echo Chamber have fallen behind in their award-winning blog updates. For this, we apologize. We've missed a few important events, including Halloween, Caroline's 3rd Birthday Party, the first of two major snowfalls in NE Ohio and more gratuitous shots of Josephine. Perhaps some of the pictures will explain the problem.

Yep, that's the problem. That's our leader carving what turned out to be his brother's pumpkin. Thanks to Bill for swiping the $6.00 gourd and carving it up before realizing he had the wrong one. Judging by the look of the head Poogster, it would not have mattered.

That's Henry (above) at his preschool Halloween costume line-up. I dig Cooper's bear outfit, though. They tell me it was supposed to be Simba, but I'll call it like I see it. Cute kid and my future son-in-law (wink).

Our first trick-or-treater of the evening was none other than Mason as a warm and snuggly Elmo. We caught up to Jim aka "90" and Mason after a few houses and continued on with them during the evening. Mason had the good sense to drive to each house in his Little Tikes push car. Unfortunately, we had to abandon the car somewhere in the neighborhood in order to catch up with the older kids. Being the good sport, Mason and Caroline finished the night in the Radio Flyer and could not have been happier!

The Halloween crew sans Josie.

Cue the gratuitous Josie shot.

We received our first of two notable snowfalls in early November this year. Caroline, like her dad, loves the snow. We're readying for another Kendall Hills sledfest. Last year, Caroline was a good sport to head down the big hills with Daddy. She's been eyeballing the Wham-O-Boggan ever since.

Henry and Caroline in the backyard snow fort.

Caroline turned 3 on November 4th. We celebrated her birthday on the weekend after Election Day at Bear on the Square in Hudson, Ohio. Good times!

Caroline vs. three candles and ice cream. Advantage: Caroline.

A Beautiful Day for Baseball

On Saturday night, someone suggested we stop talking about taking a few hacks at the old ball yard and go out and do it. For the Holman brothers, beers were involved in the decision making process. That's usually a bad sign. On Sunday morning, we made the suggestion into reality.

Joined by our usual partner-in-recreation who shall be known simply as "90", we made our way in the drizzling rain to the ball fields at Barlow Farm in Hudson. It was a beautiful day for baseball. Then again, when is it not?

Ground balls, infield throws, Fungo, BP, soft-toss and the 90's one-man home-run derby show. As Brett Michaels would say, it was "awesome". (Does he know any other word?)

A couple of funny asides:

1. The Holman Brothers drilled "90" at least five times during batting practice. By all accounts, he was okay.

2. Billy "the Tasmanian Devil" broke two bats on successive swings, including my favorite El Cheapo Louisville Slugger which we finally discovered was a Derek Jeter model. So much for Derek Jeter.

3. I managed to bust a moob while "diving" (or collapsing) for a shallow pop fly. Note to self: there are no points for shagging the most pop flies when you are 33 years old.

4. Billy hit the base of the wall during his turn at home-run derby. I was nowhere near the wall and had limited swings with my broken moob. "90" managed to deliver a blast into the driveway of a home 350 feet from home plate. There were no other casualties.

Here's a picture of the Holman brothers at the conclusion of the day.

Good times.