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Yesterday afternoon (when it was a 4-degree windchill, as luck would have it) my new whitewater kayak arrived. I know this is of virtually no interest to anyone reading this, but I felt it was worth a photo -- especially since I won't be getting it on the water for the next few days. And on the subject of kayaking, in case any of you haven't already checked out the Up a Creek web site, you can find useless trivia written by a couple of us who actually continue this kayaking hobby right through the winter months. Go to http://www.upacreek.biz for the goods.

Hopefully the next photos I post of this rig will be on the water.

Seven kids and four adults -- there's something wrong with this ratio. Nonetheless, that's how we traveled to St. Louis this weekend... severely out-numbered by minors. Jeannie and I and the kids, along with Grandma and Grandpa Merritt and the Kough kids took the Amtrak train from Kansas City to St. Louis during our Winter break.

And much as I would like to spend time writing up something witty to accompany this event, as Andrew eloquently put it, "I have train lag". You'll find photos of this adventure in the photo gallery. Enjoy.

Only one Christmas-time arrival is as eagerly anticipated as Santa Claus: Aunt Kathy. The kids counted down the days for the past month and finally, Kathy arrived in Kansas City this week for an early Christmas with family. Lots of photos in the gallery. Just click on the photo below.

On a Saturday morning forecast with freezing rain, Lawrence residents gathered on Mass street (because really, where else would anyone gather) for the annual Lawrence Christmas Parade. This parade brings in hundreds of horses of every imaginable variety -- from Shetland ponies to Clydesdales and Belgians. Grandpa and I met early that morning in order to stake out a parking place on the parade route where the kids could huddle down under blankets in the back of the truck and watch the horses go by in relative comfort (complete with hot cocoa and home-made banana bread).

And in an unintentional means of making the weekend speed by even faster, we used Sunday afternoon as an opportunity to haul the Christmas stuff out of the boxes where they spent the last twelve months and proceeded to shrink our living room by at least a third. The kids hung ornaments and collectively placed the star on top of the tree while our ever-intelligent dog looked around confused and tried to figure out just why we were putting a tree in the middle of her living room.

So, as usual I took more photos than necessary, whittled them down to just a few decent shots and posted them in the photo gallery. They are here:

• Christmas Parade photos
• Christmas decorating photos

A two-day work week with my boss out of the office was a great preface to this 5-day holiday weekend. I took Wednesday off because... well, because Jeannie and the kids were out of school and I envied them. Glad I did because Wednesday turned out to be very busy getting ready for Thanksgiving.

And so Wednesday concluded with an overnight at a hotel in Independence. This turned out to be the highlight of the holiday for the kids -- okay, perhaps for me as well. For Jess and Martin, it was all about the indoor pool and hot tub; and let us not forget cable TV and the trance-like power it wields over them. Martin also took to creating his own house inside the hotel room, constructed of every pillow he could find.

Thanksgiving seemed much smaller this year, just 20-some people total, I believe. The "regulars" this year, and really that's about it. Great food, good conversation with people we don't see but once or twice a year, cold weather, general avoidance of conversation with the family patriarch. The women of the family held their annual passing of the quilt. This
tradition is still in it's first decade, but will surely outlive us all.

Friday (Black Friday) kept us at home because I'd rather eat dirt than venture into the world of retail on the biggest shopping day of the year. Instead, we began the arduous task of raking the leaves. Jeannie bought 15 extra-large yard bags for our raking efforts. All 15 bags are full now and lying in their place near the curb. With those 15 bags we were able to clear the smaller half of the front yard. That's all.

Today we woke up to the first snow of the year. Just a dusting, but it's finally here. Tomorrow, with the weather forecast at a high of 51 degrees, Craig and I are going to try to hit the river again. We'll see how well we can tolerate the colder weather and hopefully stay dry in the process. I guess that's it for now.

First of all, I promise to add photos to this post later -- right now I'm writing this on my laptop sitting in bed while Jeannie is sleeping next to me. Simple fact is that all my photos are on the computer in my studio downstairs and I'm too lazy to do any photo work right now. Now that I've gotten the disclaimer out of the way...

Halloween was fun. Martin was dressed as Diego, the animal rescuer; Jessica as a witch (with scary eyebrows but not a scary nose, because that's just gross, Daddy); and Andrew... well, Andrew was an interesting obstacle this year. Andrew broke his foot playing basketball about 10 days before Halloween. This presented a challenge for the typical door-to-door trick-or-treating. Not to be foiled easily, I came up with a solution. We dressed him up as Hannibal Lector, complete with mouth-guarding mask and straight-jacket, strapped him to a dolly and I wheeled him from house to house in search of candy. ...Okay, to some people this was confusing. Who takes their kid trick-or-treating on a dolly, right? But to those who have actually seen Silence of the Lambs, they thought it was hysterical. So bite me.

Jeannie has been working crazy hours lately with grad school occupying a chunk of her time and her teaching responsibilities have been happy to take up the remainder. She needs a weekend. Scratch that -- she needs a cruise. As for me, I'm just drudging through each day at the office right now. I like what I do, but given the fact that my company is in the midst of doing budget cuts and layoffs; and given the fact that some of the people I work with (read: work for) have as much tact as Archie Bunker, work is just pretty depressing right now and I'd rather be just about anywhere else than at the office. ...Okay, I'll still take my cubicle over the dentist chair, but that's really about it. Seriously though, who in their right mind tries to make million-dollar budget cuts but still feels it prudent to host an hour of E-mail Bingo for five straight days, a costume parade and a paper airplane contest all in the name of fun?

Never mind. I'm not going to touch that one anymore than I already have.

Octoberfest in Perry was a blast. The Halloween party at Mark and Katie's was a great time, and overall October has been a very fun month. Now if Craig and I can just get some more Wednesdays off work to hit the river...

Autumn is finally here. What does this mean for our household? Here's a short summary:

• It's too cold for me to want to ride the motorcycle to work
• The kids are cold and must have blankets around them at the kitchen table
• Jeannie is cold all the time
• We recently spent way too much money on Halloween costumes
• It's dark when I leave for work, and nearly dark when I return home
• The huge tree in our front yard is starting it's assault on the yard which will result in countless days of raking, only to find another layer of leaves the next morning
• Thanksgiving is way too close
• Winter break is too far away
• Kayak-friendly days are few and far between (keeping our fingers crossed for Sunday)

I'm sure it means many other things, but those are what come to mind at the moment. I'll be throwing more photos this direction this weekend after we attend a Halloween party, complete in costume. Later.

As in years past, we celebrated the Autumn season with our annual Octoberfest at the Pruetts Merritts. Photos are in the gallery.

Okay, so at least it's only been a couple of weeks since my last writing. What's going on now? Let's see... Logann's play (Tom Sawyer) is finally over, which means our schedules with him won't be quite so jacked up for at least the next 6 weeks -- until auditions for the next play begin. We've hardly seen Logann for the past month! Andrew has missed him a lot too, kindly waiting for his return before cracking open Halo 3.

Martin is his usual animated self. His most recent epihany dealt with Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider where it became obvious that Martin apparently has begun noticing some (*cough*) sizable differences between the male and female anatomy.

Jessica is her typical social butterfly self. She has enjoyed school so far, though like the rest of us she very much enjoys the weekends and the down time it brings. That said, there hasn't been that much down time lately. Our weekends seem as busy, if not busier than the weekdays, at least recently.

The river season is drawing to a close for Up a Creek -- the campout was a blast, and our last official group river run is this coming Saturday. It will be sad to see it go, and Jeannie has expressed a concern over how much of a pain I am going to be in the winter months when the outdoors are not as friendly as they have been.

Speaking of the campout, one cool thing was that the kids discovered
that a 40-foot movie screen is good for not only movies and gaming, but
also for making gigantic shadow puppets. Very cool.

Jeannie and I have been so busy with work and Jeannie with grad school as well. We're really just ready to collapse when Friday night rolls around. We have taken to playing Gin Rummy after the kids go to bed on Fridays. A couple of cocktails and deck of cards -- that's about all we have the energy for after the week is over. Not a bad way to start the weekend, however.

That's all for now. I'm off to watch "Heroes" with Jeannie -- one of our few bits of television entertainment. At least it keeps us somewhat entertained until Lost Season 4 begins.

It having been over a month since I posted anything of substance, I thought I'd test this new format with a briefing on some seemingly major events in our home:

We totaled the van -- goodbye, Party Wagon. You will be missed. On August 26, someone thought it would be wise to cut across two lanes of traffic that she couldn't see and brought both her car and my own to a permanent halt. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the van is no more. It has been recently replaced by a Honda CR-V, which is not quite as adept at carrying children (it's only a 5-seater), but it does seem to do much better at carrying kayaks!

Andrew brought home his first progress report from Junior High -- 5 A's and one B+. We only grounded him for a week. No seriously, Andrew has been kicking butt in the academics at school.

Jeannie is knee-deep in school stuff, both as a teacher and as a student. She has threatened me within an inch of my life that I cannot post any cute little stories about her students and the strife they cause -- nothing quite like the fear of litigation to serve as inspiration. Soooo, not much to report there, except to say I'm glad people like Jeannie can do the job they do because I'd quit or be fired in 30 minutes if I had to do what she does day in and day out.

Logann is busy with rehearsals for Tom Sawyer, which is in just a couple of weeks. We're trying to work w/ his schedule and squeeze in some camping w/ Logann, Andrew, Grandpa and myself before it gets too cold.

Jess and Martin are spending lots of time on the trampoline as the weather has been beautiful lately. Funny how the only injuries we sustain on the trampoline occur right after we put up the safety net that has been in the box in the back yard for months!

As for me, I'm still shooting almost every day (have to cheat once in awhile w/ my daily photo flickr album). Much of my free time has been spent w/ Craig and "Uncle Ron", trying to figure out how we can make enough of a business out of this "Up a Creek" thing so that we can quit our day jobs and get paid to kick back in a kayak on the river.

So, I guess that's it for now. More later, I'm sure.