Longhorn in Paradise

Surely you have seen Office Space. That classic movie from the 90s that was shot in Dallas and followed the life of a typical cubicle farm desk jockey. Well, as a refresher, the boss in the movie was named Bill Lumberg. "Did ya get the memo about the TPS reports?" He was known for his failed attempts at being diplomatic as his tone belied the words that were coming out of his mouth. Quite humorous.

As you all know, I travel quite a bit. My job takes me on the road Monday through Thursday about 9 months out of the year. As Liska is getting older and smarter and starting to read and write, I thought I would start leaving her notes on Monday mornings so she could read them with her mommy. She loves notes. She is writing them all the time. "Dear Daddy, thank you for the big hug. I love you so much. Love (actually a heart) Liska" Very sweet and very impressive. So, I thought she would love to get them from me as well. More on that later.

In June, we bought a Wii for Kat's birthday. Neither one of us are big video game people, but her brother had brought one over one time and the kids loved it and it seemed to be something we could do as a family and it was a more active game (i.e. not sitting on your butt doing it). Well, Liska has turned into an amazing bowler on Wii. Her high score is 280. Quite remarkable. In addition to the real bowling game, there is a training game that is called Power Bowling, but Liska refers to as "Crazy Bowling". Basically, there are increasing number of pins that you try to knock down. First 10, then 16, then 24, etc etc. up to 91 pins. Its quite humorous to watch and play. When you get a strike, they put a checkmark up by the number of pins and the high score wins.

So, last weekend, Liska had her paper and markers out and was sitting on the stairs doing her thing and I walked over to her and she said "look daddy, how many check marks did I get?" I looked at the sheet and could not believe it...she had written down each of the pin counts in order and put check marks by the ones she had gotten strikes on before...but that wasn't the amazing part...next to it, she had written "craze bolen". I couldn't believe it! She had sat there and sounded out the words without asking us for any help! I mean, I don't know much about childhood progression with reading and writing, but this daddy was impressed as hell!! So, I of course told her that and she asked what impressed was and I told her it meant I was mad at her for misspelling two commonly used words and I told her to go to her room. Well, actually I told her I thought she did great with her spelling and I was very proud of her. She beamed with joy.

The following Monday, I wroter her a note telling her I was going to Chicago and was going to miss her and I told her again how proud I was and how brave she was for spelling words on her own without asking for help. Such great confidence. I put the note on the counter and left for the week. Her mother read her the note and reported back to me that Liska loved it and appreciated it.

Fast forward to this past Sunday evening. As I was tucking Liska in and talking to her about my week and how much I was going to miss her, I said "Would you like me to write you another note?" And her response was "Daddy, I write the best notes. Why don't you just let me write all the notes ok?" I couldn't help laughing as her sincerity was that of Bill Lumberg saying "Yeah...right...how about I write the notes from now on...mmmkay? Great" She is a hoot.

So, here are a couple pics from Labor Day weekend in Austin (first Longhorn game) and this past weekend. Hope you enjoy them. I know you are used to me not posting much, but get your asses back on track with reading this thing and commenting or you might just lose me again. :-)