Juvenile Jokes

A seal walked into a bar and the bar tender asked him what he wanted to drink.
The seal said, " Anything but a Canadian Club."

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A man asked for directions from a stranger on the sidewalk: "What's the quickest way to Ann Arbor?"
The stranger replied, "Are you walking or driving?"
"Driving" said the man.
"Well, thats the quickest way."

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A little boy was crying on the way home from his baptism at church. His parents asked what was wrong.
In between wimpers the boy said, "The priest prayed that I would grow up in a christian home...but I want to live with you guys."

Thanks to Garrison Keilor and the Prairie Home Companion, where there's more where that came from.

Standing Still at the Home Depot

This is a really neat YouTube video created by a HUGE group of people that all freezed at the same time at the Home Depot. They never really explain on the video why they did it...maybe they were just really bored. After looking on their website it appears they are just out to have some good clean fun. Enjoy.

Clay-mation from kids

Claymation has aways seemed like a lot of fun to me. These kids look like they have some talent and a good sense of humor.

Check out this video at rocketboom.com

Three Strikes

Most people can open a can of soup and warm it up. Yummy. Condensed soup is probably the most difficult variation of canned soup, because you have to mix the right amount of water into it.

Well, let me tell you, warming up a can of soup will not prepare you for making soup from scratch. Anna and I have tried half a dozen times, usually starting with the remains of an organic chicken boiled in water for a base. Our results have been far from perfect; three of the soups ended up being dumped, while the others actually turned out really good. But I wanted to point out the ones that turned out bad, because they each have a story.

The first time we made chicken and barley soup, I poured in half a bag of barley, and Anna said, why not just put in the whole bag. I knew that barley expanded, but didn;t realize how much, so I poured in the whole bag. We could eat that yummy soup with a fork.

The second time we were making chicken noodle soup using a slow cooker. We added all of the ingredients together all at the beginning...including the noodles. We were under the impression that the slow cooker would make sure they all the ingredients would cook properly. Well noodles don't do so well being simmered all day. Needless to say this variation of Chicken Noodle Soup wasn't too popular.

Well today's soup tops the rest. While picking the ingredients for the chicken noodle soup at the local fruit and vegatable market I saw other people eagerly picking through the Okra. I had heard that Okra was a neat and healthy veggie so I got a dozen or so for our soup. We chopped it up and tossed it into the boiling broth. Guess what okra does? It releases a thick mucusy substance. The result didn't taste bad, but the entire mixture looked like snot soup. It felt so slimy and gross that we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat more than a few bites. (Click on the picture for a close up).

After learning from all these mistakes surely next time we'll do better. Would to like to come over and sample our next soup with us?

Neglected Children

Maybe it's not nice to joke around about this type of thing...but Anna was scrolling through our pictures from vacation an she laughed out loud when she saw this picture. Don't Josh and Maria look like the poster children for neglected and abused kids? I caught their expressions at just the right moment, they both look so dejected.


Just in case you are wondering, we do feed and care for our kids. We don't lock them in cages at night very often and we do bath them annually.

31 Different Ways to Tie Your Shoelaces

Wow, somebody really likes shoelaces. Ian liked them so much he created an entire site about various ways to tie them, with pictures, instruction and even ratings! It's neat check it out.

Everything is Illuminated

My dad cannot sit still through a movie very often, he always is doing two or three things at once. But every once in a while, I'll find a movie that I know he'll sit through. Everything is Illuminated was one of these movies. Indeed I was right, he really, really enjoyed it. And you will too.

It blends humor at the beginning with mystery and emotion at the end. You'll love the bit about the seeing eye #itch whose name is Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. It is definetly a premium movie.

Mammatus Clouds

Mammatus Clouds look like something from a science fiction movie. I think I'd be hiding in the cellar if I saw clouds like these approaching
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Other Related Rayclan Posts
Lenticular Clouds

Joshua is at it again

We were driving this evening and the kids were looking for the moon, but it was nowhere to seen. Maria said, "the moon went to bed."
I asked the kids, "does the moon have a pillow and a blanket?"
Joshua said "it doesn't."
So we asked him how he knew. He said, "because I'm smart and I know."
We told him he was smart and funny too, to which he quickly replied, with a serious tone, "I'm not funny. I know funny, and I'm not funny."
This had us in stitches laughing so hard. He continued insisting that he was not funny.

Later we discovered that the "I know funny" line came from a line in the movie Finding Nemo, which Joshua skillfully wove into his jest.

One mile

My Cousin Julie who is about a decade younger than me, thinner, smarter, and better looking, can run fast. Her dad, my Uncle Bill, runs marathons, so it must be in her blood. She is trying to get down to 5 minute miles to qualify for a scholarship to Purdue.

So speed is the key. That's the measure for performance.

Ever since I started running last year I have had the goal to run long distances. But I was just thinking, just about anybody can run a distance (even slowly). The challenge most people struggle with is speed. "How fast can You run that long distance?" Well, I ran 13.1 miles in 2:09, which is about 9:48 minutes per mile...not bad, but not great either. I ran 6.2 miles in 54:17, which is about 8:45 minutes per mile. So how fast Could I run a just one mile? I just wanted to find out.

Well, I ran one mile this morning and finished in 6:55 pushing Maria and Sammy in the Chariot. Does pushing two chubby kids slow me down? Maybe, I'll find out for sure next time.

Emily did great!

She even felt like she got a second wind as we got close to finishing. We finished the 4.8 mile race in around 50 minutes.

I took this picture with Anna's camera phone while running along side her.

Just before the race

My sister Emily took up running this summer. This is her first race, and it is in Hell, Michigan. So now she can say "I ran through hell."

Strongest Dad in the World

Read this amazing article first and then watch the video at the bottom.

From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I stink.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.''

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care)and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

Have you ever seen Unicycle Dancing? Wow

This little girl has some really crazy talent. But I'll be she doesn't have any friends because she spends all her time practicing.

Have you ever heard of a lenticular cloud?

These amazing clouds have been mistaken for UFO's or UFO "cover" because of their smooth saucer-like appearance. Learn more about them on Wikipedia.

Spinners

We put up a new hanging seat in the basement for the kids. It is a cool chair from IKEA and the kids love to swing and spin in it.

Notice how Joshua continues to giggle, but Maria gets a frightened look on her face until they slow down and change directions.

Joshua says the FUNNIEST things!

In the last few days Joshua has spoken some very hilarious words. Most of the time he does not intend for them to be funny, but his matter-of-fact additude makes his innocent comments quite amusing.

Earlier this week, while on vacation, Anna and the kids spent a lot of time swimming. Maria was exceptionally adventurous in the water, fearlessly trying new things like swimming with her ring into the deep water and jumping off the platform into grandpa's arms. Joshua is much more careful in the water, he has an innate sense that there the water is dangerous. One day, when maria was crying, Joshua was trying to help solve the situation said, “Mom, just put Maria in the deep water, and then she’ll be gone.”

While playing with the sword, crown and shield that Grandma and Grandpa Ray gave to him, Joshua was fighting the dragons and saving Aunt (Princess) Theresa from the danger. After the battle was finished Princess Theresa asked Sir Joshua, “So do I give you a kiss now?” Joshua responded, “No, I don’t have any boo boos.”

After coming back from swimming in the lake, Joshua’s hair was exceptionally curly. They passed by a lady who commented, “Joshua, where did you get your curls?”
Anna said, “His daddy.” But Joshua, with a puzzled look on his face, corrected Anna and said, “from the water.”

Another Good Movie

We just watched this new movie and enjoyed it immensely. It was very edifying and entertaining. The performances are all excellent and realistic, and the direction is great. It moves a little slow at times, but it should be because it is a "real" movie, not a typical hollywood flick. Worth the price of a rental!