The Lindenbergs

Before I last went on the road, I bought a web cam to take with me. In the evenings we'd all catch up over web video. Pierce and Anna like the novelty of the experience but it wears off pretty fast. They have a hard time staying still and within range of the camera, so I end up seeing a lot of the top of their heads. I took the Harry Potter book that Anna and I have been reading together at bedtime with me and was able to read it to her from the road (she liked that a lot).

Valentines Day was nice. Nora and the kids were very excited to get the day started, with Pierce and Anna coming into our room early (around 7:30) to give us cards they'd made. Nora picked up on their momentum and started distributing cards and gifts too. Now, of course, my gift to Nora was still in an unwrapped state (I had assumed we'd trade gifts over dinner). No harm done of course, I just grabbed a recently emptied gift bag and put her new jewelry in it...

Nora's parents watched Pierce and Anna while the two of us went out for dinner and a movie. I tried to make reservations about 10 days before Valentine's Day, but I was too late -all the restaurants were fully booked. We ended up having an early dinner at Old Chicago's... not bad at all. We went to see the Liam Neeson flick, 'Taken'. The theater was very full, so we were happy to get decent seats movie just 'ok', nothing light our fire, but Nora andI enjoyed spending time together.

After the movie we went to Starbucks for a cup of coffee and some desserts. The store saw a rotating cast of characters coming in for a Valentine's Day coffee and we ended up visiting with many of them. The stand-out couple was a very nice woman married to the biggest whiner Nora and I have ever encountered. It was pretty funny.

Anna's have had several Daisy Scout events over the last 2-3 weeks. Unfortunately, Anna seems pretty lukewarm to the whole concept. She's a grudging participant but would rather be spending her time on more self-directed activities. I get the feeling she's not much of an "organized activities" type. But we'll see.

Our local cable provider sponsored a free movie, Bolt, on Saturday morning. We'd seen the movie before, but the kids are both huge fans. Its got enough vehicles to satisfy Pierce and the main characters are a dog, cat and hamster, so Anna was in heaven. The morning included donuts and juice, courtesy of Surewest. I was expecting that we'd have to listen to some type of obnoxious sales pitch and was pleasantly surprised when that was not the case. They had drawings for free Target giftcards and Nintendo Wii's, but no wins for the Lindenberg family. When we got home, Anna spent a considerable amount of time drawing and studying Bolt. She made a huge list of all the Bolt-related items she thought could be manufactured and that she'd like to own.

On Sunday Nora and Anna went to a Daisy Scouts Thinking Day event. While they were gone, Pierce and I went to the Toys and Miniatures Museum. Pierce had been lobbying to go for a few weeks. There's a miniature house, with multiple classic cars as part of the display, that he's very interested in. 

Since we had a lot of time and no sense of urgency, Pierce acted as our tour guide. He did a pretty good job with no corner of the museum let undiscovered. The museum is stuffed with classic toys, doll-houses, trains, cars and miniatures dating from more than 200 years ago. We'd been there as a family about a year ago and had all enjoyed the visit.

I'm staring to get calls from brides looking for wedding videography services. So hopefully Nora and I will be good and busy this spring filming weddings. We had a pretty good first year last season, so hopefully we'll do even better this year.

-Eric (Dad)