Longhorn in Paradise

As the 4th of July holiday approaches, the Natty Five 9s are getting back together for a return engagement. The birth of a certain young man has cut into our practice time, but we are going to do some jamming this weekend and then play a few songs on Tuesday at the sold out 4th of July "Blowout on Blakely." For friends of the band, please contact us for tickets as you won't be able to find them even on ebay.

Mom K is flying in tomorrow and will be staying through the 5th. It will be great to have her here and for her to finally meet Hagen. We don't have much planned, but I am sure we will enjoy ourselves.

It is bedtime for me and, hopefully, for Hagen. I just wanted to get some more recent pics on the page. I also wanted to give a shout out to the Regans. Tim and Jenny are the latest blog aids to donate to the Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric Aids Foundation. Much thanks to them. I am assuming that the rest of you are just taking your time or are offended by the idea of helping kids fight AIDs. :-)

Much love to all.

No pictures on this post as I am posting from work and have no access to the goods. Just wanted to update everyone on life in the Knight household since Kat's parents left. Well, life has ended..just kidding. Life has become exponentially more difficult for my lovely and talented wife and I have no free time to blog or play drums or (worst of all) drink with my buddies! All work and no play makes Jak a dull boy. I am hoping that will all change tonight as Annalee has her second piano lesson and we are talking about making her Wednesday lesson an excuse to have the Browns (who many of you know through their wit-filled commentary on my posts) over for some bbq or delivery and hanging out with them. We used to see them everyday, but now we see them so infrequently that we say things like "wow, when did Annalee get earrings?". Before, we would have known, we didn't see them yesterday, so she must have gotten them today. :-)

Hagen continues to be a pill. I wish my memory worked better, but I can't remember Liska as being anything but perfect. I am sure she cried like a banshee and screamed for no apparent reason and had to be held 20 out of 24 hours in a day and scowled at me whenever I held her, but I have just forgotten about it. Hagen is no different than she was and look how Liska turned out? I am quite certain that in about 2 weeks, Hagen, like his older sister, will be sleeping through the night. Last night he slept for 4 hours...oh wait, that was me. Kat will have to confirm how long he slept. What I do know, is that I put him down at 10pm...Kat indicated she fed him at 1am. I got up at 3:15 to his caterwauling and rocked him on the luxurious glider that Kat got for mother's day for an hour and then Liska started whimpering so I put him down and went to hold her and then he started screeching so I had to put Liska down (luckily she had fallen back to sleep) and go take care of the screamapillar. Then, I gave him to Kat for his 4:30 feeding and left to go work out. Apparently, both of them are being rather needy today. Kat is going to come down (yes, Greg..down!) to Glendale and have lunch with me. Good to get the kids out in the car for a drive and then have me around to help put food in their bellies. I am thinking CPK, but we shall see.

OK. Lastly, I have officially registered for a triathlon. I will be competing in this event on September 17 (right before the Knight clan shows up in SoCal). It consists of a half mile ocean swim, an 18 mile bike race and a 4 mile run. I'm sure I have sent most of you the link to my donation site...part of the cost of participation is a $125 donation so they help us go after our friends and family by providing us a site where you can easily donate your hard earned cash to a wonderful cause. The Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDs Foundation. My goal is to raise more than my buddy Nadeem. He raised $700 last year. So, as my e-mail said, Bust out those checkbooks! Patrice was first out of the gate with a very generous donation...Dave Mancuso was next with twice as much!! So, a donation will get you mention on the blog which equates to relative stardom!!! Here is the link in case you lost the e-mail or I didn't send it to you (if you didn't get one, you probably have already done too much for me or are not related to me). Here is the link: http://nauticatriathlon2006.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=156824&u=156824-137019843&e=655833650

OK. I hope everyone is doing well...not many responses to my Hagen history, so step it up people!

Very interesting how it all comes together...a Hagen from an ancient German epic was a Knight and married a woman from Asia..(cue twighlight zone music)

http://www.timelessmyths.com/norse/kudrun.html#Hagen

We did not know this when we named him, but I think it is about time to change the 'we pulled it out of a baby book at the hospital" story. haha

UPDATE: So, Kat has indicated that the attached story is probably too long for the collective attention span of the LIP Blog fan base. So, I will summarize here:

Hagen was the son of the King of Ireland and a Norwegian woman. He was snatched from his parents at a young age by a Griffin. He managed to escape prior to being eaten and hooked up with three other escapees (all girls). He ended up slaying the Griffin and its young using his superhuman strength (and a sword). He later became a Knight and married one of the girls (Hilde, an Indian princess) and his father abdicated the throne to him, so he became King of Ireland.

Like I said, much better story than the baby name book one.

Yes, it is that time of the year again...time for Kat to add another year to her storied life...as you can see from the pictures above, Kat has always been a great looking girl...but it was just recently that she added a little bit of style to her repertoire. :-) The big Three Oh! We got the annual "Super Terrific Happy Fun Birthday Weekend Celebration" off to a bang tonight as we went to Wolf Creek Brewery with the Browns and Renee. Good time had by all...we followed that up with a rousing tour around the Rite Aid as we mocked summertime toy packaging and checked our blood pressure. Fun had by all!! The festivities continue tomorrow with a family dinner and cake. Friday will be the Neko Case concert in Hollywood. Saturday is dinner and a movie and Sunday we drive her parents to the airport for their escape/return to Tulsa. They have been a tremendous help and we will hate to see them leave...BUT, my mom is coming in a few days later, so we won't have too much time with no help. :-)

So, if you get a chance, give Kat a call and wish her a happy birthday or just post your well wishes here. It is just that easy! As Kat is fond of saying, "I only turn 30 once." Of course, the same can be said for every age, but 30 tends to be viewed as a big one.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Here are a couple more pictures of my beautiful offspring. We have not been taking as many pics this week because it has been crazy...lots of work and lots of drama with the kiddos. Such is life.

The title of this post refers to a new quandry of mine. You see, I have been giving a lot of credit for my recent weight loss to a dedication to exercise. But, I was thinking about it today and the fact of the matter is, I have not only been exercising every day since March 1, I have also been eating at least one ice cream sandwich everyday since then. So, the question becomes, which one is more likely to have contributed to the slimmer version of myself that you see before you...well, if you have a good imagination. I think any scientist would tell you that it would be impossible to determine which of these two activities are more likely to have had the most effect. There is no control in this experiment. Imagine how this makes me feel? I assume that if I give up one of these habits, it could potentially make a greater impact on my weight loss program....but which one??? I think I am going to need some help on this one. If anyone out there has a hypothesis re. this, please let me know...maybe one of you has been in a similar situation. I don't know. What I do know is that the ice cream sandwiches are incredibly delicious. I'm just not sure what their weight loss qualities are.

Back to the family...Hagen is sleeping in his crib for the first time tonight. He actually lay there for 10 minutes without crying which was a record. I then shut off the lights and played some lullaby music on his little crib aquarium and he has been sleeping nearly an hour!!! Life is grand! Both Liska and Hagen asleep at the same time?!?!!? Now, I should be asleep too...but, alas, I know that my loyal fans could not go another day without hearing from me or seeing my gorgeous brood. Another factor with Hagen is that he may have acid reflux...we got him a Zantac prescription yesterday and he will be taking that twice daily. Hopefully that will help.

OK. I am off to sleep...btw, it is Kat's dad's birthday today. We celebrated with some chinese takeout. woohoo!

Much love to all!

It is late on Wednesday night and I am very tired, but wanted to get a post up of some great pics of the kids. The title of the post is one of my favority Liskaisms. It translates to "hold me" and I love to hear it.

Along those same lines, I wanted to share some of the other gems I hear every night when I get home from work:

"Hi Daddy!"
"You work good Daddy?"
"You need to change Daddy?"
"You want socks and t-shirt daddy?" (she helps me change after work by retrieving my clothes for me"
"Daddy is an elephant...Liska is a Lion!" Followed by her best roar.
"Hold you, hold you, hold you, achoo!"
"I want some Meeelk Daddy"
"I want to go back yow-ed" (back yard)
"Daddy lay in bed with Liska?" (yes, she refers to herself in the third person)

Just a sampling...when you see her next, you will get to hear her singsong voice and realize how very cute she is and how much I look forward to walking in the door everynight.

Hagen continues to grow like a weed and his appetite is growing too! Kat has to feed him every hour sometimes...he loves to be carried around and lets you know by screaming if you put him down for too long. Great looking kid and getting stronger by the day. He is already trying to crawl when we put him down for tummy time. Craziness!

OK...sorry for the boring post, but I figured if my last post about witnessing a near-death experience didn't get peeps to comment, why worry anymore? :-)

Much love to all!

So, I am at the gym this morning to play basketball and I am warming up with my buddy Adrian and I notice that a group of people is huddled around the top of the staircase looking down into the first level (it is an open atrium-like set-up). I walk out to see what the deal is and apparently, some guy has had a heart attack while running on the treadmill. It was surreal and made me realize that TV probably has desensitized my generation...here was this guy, laying there motionless and I and the others around me just watched in fascination. They brought out the defibrillator and started working on him...his limp body would jolt to the shock and then go back to being limp. Now, I am not sure if I could have written this if he hadn't, moments later, came to and actually stood up before the paramedics made him lie back down and got him on a stretcher...so, it looks like he is going to be alright. Which is great for him, but my time for ball in the morning is limited and his little 'charade' cost me at least one game of action. So, not cool, but I will cut him some slack this one time.

A ridiculously busy week at work...all-day meetings at the Pasadena Hilton on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, an all day Promotion Council Meeting today at the Glendale HQ. I was supposed to go to Vegas tonight, but skipped out on it to spend some quality time with the fam. I was at a supplier diversity cocktail hour with my boss and said "what would happen if I didn't go to Vegas tonight?". She said "I don't know." I said "If you don't know, then I am not going to go." She said fine. So, I can get some rest tonight. woohoo!

Alright, here is the information you have been waiting for...the Thursday weigh-in numbers. This morning, I weighed 229lbs! Felt good to see it below 230. So, only 29 lbs to go. I would like to continue on my current schedule of spinning and b-ball for the next 4 weeks and then start doing some treadmill work mid-July. I am trying to work a visit to Michigan around the time of the Crim so I can keep up that tradition...big difference from last year is that I will actually be in shape this time. haha

Enjoy the pics today...Hagen is getting cuter everyday and Liska is truly unbelievable. She lies a lot and has started smoking, but she is still my little princess. She brings me such joy.

one final note...my basketball team suffered in my absence this past Tuesday and lost by 5. Our last regular season game is next week and, if we win, we will be playing for the league championship the following week. So, think good thoughts and cheer us on from afar. For those of you in SoCal, come cheer us on at Crescenta Valley High!!

I was finally able to upload some pics!! I have a sleeping Hagen in my arms, so won"t type much...just will let you know that that is a pull-up diaper on Liska's head...she refers to it as her umbrella. :-)

Pics are not uploading tonight and I am too tired to post...was just hoping to get the pics up...I'll try again tomorrow night.

As I stated in the last blog, I am going to include you, my loyal fans, in my quest for 200lbs. I started at 250 on February 28, 2006 and am looking to shed those 50lbs of flab before I turn 34 on September 25, 2006. That equates to about 7lbs/month or .25lb/day. I have been averaging about that til now. I lost 18 lbs in the first 3 months, so I am behind my goal by 3lbs. I actually weighed 1 lb more this week than last. No big deal as I am quite certain the Memorial Day Weekend had something to do with that. :-) I had a great spinning class this morning and will be hooping on Sunday, so I just need to start paying closer attention to what goes in my body. I've been on this freaky Ice Cream kick lately where I get an Ice Cream sandwich almost every day or have a bowl of ice cream after dinner. That needs to get cut out...I should also start drinking more water...I have been sucking down the diet cokes to try to keep myself awake during the days. I could probably stand to not drink it so much at home. But, addiction is addiction right? Who am I to try to do anything about it? I am but a man.

Speaking of men, I had a heart to heart with my son yesterday. I told Hagen that I was, quite frankly, tired of all the screeching and crying and that the Knight men had a long tradition of not crying. As men, we feel it is most important to keep all emotions bottled up inside and only allow release in the form of aggressive, often illegal, play in sports. That is just the way we roll. I think he understood and he knows that when I am around, I am going to keep him on a tight leash when it comes to expressing himself in this manner. I know this may seem like harsh treatment of a boy who has yet to celebrate his first month as a member of the planet Earth, but this is the style of parenting that I have chosen and I am going to stand by it. (one of my favorite Simpsons lines of all times...Mo is reminiscing about the choice he had of getting his bar decked out in big screen tvs or buying a mechanical bull (pan to cobweb and dirt covered bull) and how it didn't really work out, but "I stand by my decision and probably wouldn't have done anything differently.").

So, still no response from any Knight family to the blog. I sent the link to a supplier of mine so he could see pics of Hagen and warned him just to look, not to read...he didn't listen and sent me an e-mail telling me he thought I was pretty strange. haha. But, he did send me a surfboard to use to decorate Hagen's room, so I guess I can handle having my oddity called out like that.

OK. Kat says noone will ever respond to a long blog with no pics of my beautiful family. I say who cares. It is not like I log in 20 times each day hoping that someone out there cares about what I have to say and takes the time out of their busy schedule to just let me know what they think about my ramblings. It reallly isn't TOO crushing to see the "0 Comments" under my labors of love. I mean, I'm sure I will get over it somehow...most likely through very hard fouls in my next basketball game. :-)