The first bit of news is that the police report has been issued, and the other driver was cited with careless driving. I’m relieved, but I’m not all that thrilled. Don’t get me wrong — I’m glad the police officers on the scene rightfully sided with us. However, I feel bad that the mother of the teenage driver is now going to experience higher insurance premiums as a result of the mistakes her son made. That could be us in 10-15 years.

The second bit of news is that the Toyota can be saved, but it’ll take a long while to do it. Repairs will cost approx. $9,700, and take about three weeks to get the car back. Uh, wow. I was hoping they would be done in a week. Why will it take that long? Sigh.

The third bit of news is that the Ipes have been sick. Last week, I came down with a bad strain of the flu, which knocked me out of commission Wednesday and Thursday. I was feeling better by Saturday, but I think I relapsed on Sunday. Furthermore, the rest of the family isn’t feeling well now, especially my wife. They all stayed home, and I worked from home today, in order to take care of them.

[Note: I'm not going into all the sordid details of the accident itself, as I've got a open claim with my insurance agent, and am awaiting the final police report. I'm sticking to the simple facts.]

On Monday night, the whole family drove to visit some friends’ at their house after the kids got out of school. On the way home, it had started to snow, but it wasn’t sticking at all. Travelling down a well-used road, we entered a traffic intersection during a green light, and a car coming from the opposite direction made a left turn in front of us. As a result, we were involved in a pretty serious traffic accident.

Both cars were towed away as inoperable with the help of the local police department who arrived fairly quickly on the scene. My wife’s family lives nearby, so my sister-in-law was a big help in driving down to meet us, and ferrying my family and our belongings to their house. We later had take-out dinner, as the kids were starving at this point.

Some pictures are below. We’re currently waiting for the insurance adjuster to inspect the car this week, and I’m hoping the damage is not extensive, and the car is salvageable. In the meantime, I’m bumming rides off my thoughtful coworkers, and deciding between bad and worse car rental options. While I could say a lot about the situation, I have to pause to consider how this could have been much, much worse.

Based on our parenting experiences raising both a boy and a girl, I have many witty observations to share.  I’m not going to share them all with you now, because really, I need to save some material for boring dinner parties at your house. Yes, you. Don’t deny it.

I do want to pontificate on how children sleep. Notice that I didn’t do that arrogant self-centered thing where I comment on how my children sleep differently from your children, and how that’s more interesting. No, no, no. Plenty of self-centered parents out there, and I’m not one of them. My children don’t do anything better or worse than other children out there. They’re all different, and yet all the same. I’ve noticed that my children often sleep in odd positions, and yours probably do too.

Butts in the air, sideways sleeping, you name it. It doesn’t look particularly comfortable, but maybe it works for them. Recently, Lily has won an unofficial trophy for the weirdest sleeping position. Recently, my wife went to wake up the kids, and found my daughter in a particularly odd position. Sometime in the night, she had taken off her shirt. Furthermore, at the time of her wake-up call, she was sleeping with her hand down her pants.

It’s just odd.

Lily sleeping kinda like Al Bundy

Putting together the new play kitchen, and no plumber's crack in sight!

Kids being kids, they love to pretend to be superheroes or Vikings or anything fantastical you can imagine. Oddly enough, they also love to pretend to do mundane adult things like cooking and going to the DMV to renew their vehicle registration.  Frankly, I’ve never met any children who wanted to pretend to renew their vehicle registration, but I’m sure it must happen somewhere. Whenever our kids visit a children’s museum, we always see a mob scene at the play kitchen area.  I’m not sure what the deal is, but I suppose kids like to pretend to be grown-ups. My niece has a play kitchen, and all three kids love to pretend to cook eggs and boil potatoes.

For Christmas, my wife’s family got our kids the KidKraftplay Deluxe Let’s Cook play kitchen. It’s certainly been a while since Christmas, but I finally had a lengthy block of time to clear out some space and put it together early Sunday evening.  The instruction manual advised between 1 – 1.5 hours, but I knew that’s never accurate. From my experience, these projects often require you to tack on an additional 2 hours to any job. It took me close to four hours, as the kids constantly tried to “help” me. Still, I’ve realized that even though they aren’t actually helping, they need to feel like they are.

Josh and the new play kitchen assembled

The kitchen turned out rather nice, but I was a little surprised that no play food was included.  Luckily, my wife purchased some over a year ago from a KB Toys store that was closing up, and she held on them until she needed it. She’s good like that. Soon we’ll have to introduce the kids to diner lingo. That should be fun.

Saturday night, we returned from a whirlwind trip to Virginia.  Num’s friend Barb and her husband John welcomed their first child Jack earlier this year.  Months later, time for a baptism.  On account that we haven’t visited them in a while, plus with family in the area, time for a Virginia trip!

Friday

The plan was to take off Friday, drive down in the morning, and we would stay at a relative’s house Friday night.  The baptism was early Saturday morning, and we would drive back home Saturday afternoon. We would have liked to stay the entire weekend, but my wife was scheduled to work all day Sunday. Rats. At least we would see a few relatives, and maybe some sightseeing if we were lucky.

Yeah, not exactly according to plan.  Small scheduling snafu, and we found out early in the week that our relatives would not be available.  Instead, we stayed Friday night at the swanky Hotel Palomar in Arlington, Virginia.  We packed up the car (we packed light, which I found refreshing), and were on the road by 12:30pm.   I have found that driving to the Maryland/Virginia area sorta sucks, on account of all the traffic. Somehow, the trip to Maryland was smooth sailing, and we did it in 3 hours.  Josh chilled in the back, and Lily slept most of the way. 

Lily likes to get some work done while on the road.

We made it to New York Ave around 4pm, and the children were restless, as was my stomach.  We decided to postpone lunch and take advantage of the docile children by driving fast and hard. We had lunch @ 4pm at a Wendy’s in DC, and gave the kids a break for an hour.  Interestingly, it took us another two hours to make it out of DC and get to the hotel, because of all the traffic! Unbelievable.

Part of the delay resulted from our lack of quality GPS.  Sadly, we couldn’t find the DC charger, so we used my Blackberry Google Maps app, which I found out isn’t for heavy use. By the time we arrived at the hotel, we had 30 mins before we had to be back on the road to get to a relative’s house (Rami & Muni) for dinner. Again, traffic.

On the way home from Fri night dinner, we got lost driving around Arlington looking for the hotel, on account of Google Maps getting quirky.  All of a sudden, it told us to make a right turn, and I ended up the wrong way on a one way street.  Even worse?  A police car was sitting right there maybe 50 feet ahead (what luck), and stopped right in front of me to block me.  That’s when I realized that we were on a one way street. 

Could it get worse?  Yes.  I found out that my registration expired back in Feb 2009. Boy, I was surprised.  I later found out that Toyota transferred my new plates to the old existing registration.  By the law, the police officer said he was supposed to tow our car, but since the kids were sleeping, and we were lost looking for our hotel, he cut us a break, and….. gave us a warning.  Can you believe that? Expired registration, going the wrong way on a one way street in Virginia, and we got a warning.  Either he felt really bad for us, or that was divine intervention!

Saturday

I wish we could have stayed longer in the hotel.  It was really nice, but we still checked out in the morning before the baptism. Well, I liked everything, except for the fact that there were no vending machines in the entire hotel.  We were thirsty late Friday night, but if we wanted some water, our only choice was to buy heavily-marked-up bottled water in the minibar.  I even went down to the front desk to ask where the vending machines were. Minibar?  No thanks. Strange, right? 

Baptism

The baptism was short and sweet. I was a little surprised that it was a service with multiple baptisms. Thankfully, the Catholic priest kept the service short and sweet. The lunch was nearby at The Liberty Tavern. Unfortunately, even here, we got lost and late to the lunch, because of Google Maps. Argh!

After lunch, we went over to Barb & John’s home to change to our casual travelling clothes.  Again, we got severely lost trying to find the house, and we lost the GPS signal. Many times in that 30 mins, my phone told me we were driving in the middle of the Iwo Jima memoral.  I was pretty sure we weren’t. I never missed my GPS device as I did then.  Tech writers opine about the coming demise of standalone GPS units, but I doubt it.  Phone GPS is not there yet.

High school buddies Nums & Barb

We didn’t have much time at Barb & John’s house, as we were to meet another relative, Craig, at the Tyson’s Corner mall (in Tysons Corner) before heading home. Traffic again reared its ugly head.  My wife and I were never so disgusted as we were after sitting in traffic and at traffic lights in Virginia this weekend.  It was so frustrating.  We eventually reached the mall, but I couldn’t find parking. I dropped my family off, and I drove around for 45 mins looking for parking. We chatted with Craig while walking around the mall, and even though we were pressed for time, we made the effort to chat with him, and let the kids play in the mall’s play area, and even take a ride on a mini train. 

We eventually got on the road around 5pm, had a late dinner at a Waffle House in Rising Sun, Maryland, and got home around 9:50pm.  I gotta tell you, I’m glad we could be there for them on this momentous occasion, but I was exhausted by the time we got home.  It was certainly a whirlwind trip. I don’t know how the Virginians manage with all the traffic.  We spent so much of our time sitting on the Beltway, or sitting at long traffic lights.

What a glorious Thanksgiving. A four-day weekend to eat, play, and relax. Best of all? No long drives from one far off destination to another. For the first Thanksgiving in a few years, we opted to spend it at home. My wife and sister-in-law would host a Thanksgiving lunch at their parents’ house, which is a fabulous 15 min drive from our house. 15 mins and I could be home again, full of turkey.

Nums & Anju, chefs extraordinaire

The cooking and preparation started Wednesday night, but the planning started days earlier.  The full menu is below, and it was absolutely tasty. While a few others provided one or two items here and there, and my MIL cooked the turkey, my wife and my SIL did the bulk of the cooking for a grand gourmet feast. We got to the house around 1:30pm, and didn’t leave until sometime after 8pm. The kids ran around so much that they pretty much conked out after we got home.  Is there anything truly better than sleeping children?

Appetizers:

• Chutney, apples, and cheese
• Red pepper jelly, cream cheese, crackers
• Stuffed Mushrooms

Entree & Sides:

• Sage Butter Roasted Turkey
• Cider Gravy Gravy
• Carrots and Shallots with sage and thyme
• Brown Sugar Baked Sweet Potatoes and Acorn Squash
• Green beans and lemon vinaigrette
• Thyme Roasted Apples and Onions
• Roasted Potatoes with bacon, onions and sage
• Toasted Sweet Corn Pudding
• Cranberry Orange Relish
• Stuffing

Dessert:

• Flan
• Apple Pie
• Pumpkin Pie

The rest of the weekend (Friday – Sunday) was also relaxing.  After I ran a few errands Friday morning, such as getting my 30K mile servicing on the Highlander, we relaxed. On Saturday, we spent most of the day visiting Num’s friend Barb and her handsome newborn son Jack (and being stuck in traffic.) On Sunday, we did a huge autumn cleanup in anticipation of setting up the Christmas tree and all the decorations.  We didn’t get the tree up as originally intended, but I hope to have it up my Friday.

It’s like a dream come true. Joshua is, I think, officially a Star Wars fan. He’s only 4.5 years old, but I think I can get continue my corruption, er, I mean, nurture his budding love for geekiness.  We’ve been watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars (I did say that it’s been pretty cool.) As I understand it, it’s the highest-rated show on Cartoon Network right now, and for good reason. The latest episode, Landing at Point Rain, was a phenomenal, engaging, action-packed war episode. I mean, it was really good.

We’ve also watched Star Wars Episode IV (A New Hope) and Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back) which are slightly over his head, but he asked a lot of questions.  He obviously didn’t get it all, and I did some minor fast-fowarding, but I kept him engaged in the main storyline.  I also made sure he thought Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Chewbacca are all pretty cool.  I think he just likes R2-D2 a lot. He’s already asking when are we going to find out what happens next in Episode VI (Return of the Jedi.) I was happy that at a birthday party a week ago where they had a Prince & Princess theme, he was amenable to the idea his sword was a lightsaber. 

This year, I’ve been embracing my inner geek. All these years, I’ve been too self-conscious to admit to it, but it obviously often showed.  Now, I feel secure enough to let myself…. um, be myself, I guess. I’m a geek.  Nothing wrong with that.  Why be a half-ass geek?  Go whole-ass, I say. Be the techno geek.  The sci-fi geek.  Why not, after all?  There are others out there like me.  As a matter of fact, Wired.com has a Geek Dad column, written by someone just like me. Enjoy it. Love it. Live it!

If I can make my kids enjoy sci-fi too, hey that’s great.  Their journey towards the Dark side will be complete.  I just hope they can get still dates in 10-15 years.

Josh as Spiderman

One busy Halloween.  I spent most of the previous night up  uploading photos and trying to get my Adobe Premiere Elements software to recognize my camcorder (“Y’all better recognize!”), which hasn’t worked in a long while.  Still not luck today, even with a fresh install of Windows 7.  What the heck is going on?

I took Josh to another birthday party — the 2nd party this week, and there’s one more coming up Sunday. Since it was Halloween, it was a Halloween-themed party. Josh had a 2nd costume that we broke out for him — Spiderman. Kids these days — two costumes for Halloween?!?

What I liked about today’s birthday was the simplicity.  All of the birthday parties these days feel like large events, like renting a gym.  When I was younger, we just hung out at the basement, and we ate White Castle. This party was at a VFW hall, and the kids played games like musical chairs, Pin the Parts on the Mummy”, Hot Potato (or “Hot Gourd”), etc.  Traditional, and I liked it. Kids don’t always need all that fancy stuff. It felt refreshing.

My BIL is a scarecrow

After a short break at home, we made the trip to see my sister down south.  My BIL and sister were taking the kids trick or treating, and we would…. uh, hang out. Not much to comment on, except folks down there are really into Halloween.  House after house was decorated to the 9’s, and lots of trick or treating kiddies and teenagers. Kinda reminded me of my old neighborhood.

Nothing too fancy.  We watched Young Frankenstein while they went trick or treating.  After they came back, my sister cooked an excellent dinner, as well as baked cookies.  When did she start cooking so well? I think we got out of there after 10:30pm, got home uneventfully, and dropped the kids into bed.

I think we should do something more for Halloween next year. I’ve forgotten how fun it can be.

Josh at the Halloween Parade

I worked from home Friday, as we were expecting multiple critical packages in the mail today, as well as the kids’ annual Halloween Parade. You send the kids’ costumes in the morning to the daycare center, and the kids dress up and do a little parade outside (by class) for all the parents. So many parents show up with cameras and camcorders to capture the big moment, then each class has a party. Of course, you did your part by signing up for Munchkins, juices, cupcakes, etc.

Every month or so, the kids’ daycare hosts a “Friday Nite Out” event.  The kids get to hang out at school in the pajamas (the novelty excites them immensely), have dinner, and play from 7pm to 11pm.  Meanwhile, the parents get a well-deserved break to be a couple again. After an unusually long hiatus, they had another event, on the same day. Weird coincidence.  After the party ended, we took the kids home around 4:45pm, then they hung out at home, before we got them into their pajamas, and dropped them off to school around 7pm.

Sushi? Yes. Forehead? No.

My wife and I were in the mood for Japanese cuisine, so we made reservations at a new place called Sunny Garden in Princeton. One of the reasons we selected this particular establishment, is that I signed up for the Hilton HHonors Dining program. Now as a Hilton HHonors member, if you sign up (for free) and register specific credit cards, every time you dine at a participating restaurant, you earn 5 bonus HHonors points for every dollar you spend.  Recently, they have been running a promotion where, if you sign up and eat at one of those restaurants, you earn bonus 1,000 HHonors points, in addition the regular 5 points per dollar you earn.

What I like about the program is that I don’t have to remember to put in a code, provide my HHonors membership number, or submit any documentation.  I registered one or more cards, so whenever I use them at a participating restaurant, I automatically will get the points.  We made sure we at a HHonors Dining restaurant Friday night, as we wanted the promotion bonus points as well.

Win win, I think. You know who didn’t win? The fish who died to make my sushi. Sucker. The food was excellent. They offer Chinese, Japanese, and Thai cuisine.  Even more interesting was the fact they also offer free Wi-Fi. I come for the excellent food, but I stay for the free broadband.

This year, we Ipes were celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary.  What to do, what to do? After much soul-searching, researching in dusty European libraries, and verifying our hypotheses through frightening lab experiments that no man should do, we decided on spending the weekend in Atlantic City.  How did we come to this conclusion? My sister got me a gift card to the restaurants at the Tropicana casino’s The Quarter. It’s basically a large indoor mall that features shops and restaurants, and is connected to the Tropicana hotel.

Selecting a destination was one thing, but getting a room was another.  Even in this economy, with a downtrodden hospitality industry, and the general seediness of AC, the basic rooms were still expensive. I’m talking over $300-$400 a night on a Saturday.  I’ve never visited Atlantic City (and I’ve come close), but I couldn’t believe it.  We considered hotels just outside AC, but some room rates eventually dropped as we got closer to our big weekend.  The Tropicana itself was sold out, so we settled on the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort.

Uncle Robbie reads "Green Eggs & Ham" to the kids at bedtime

The plan was to drop the kids off to my sister and BIL at their place on Friday around 7pm, then drive off to AC. Murphy’s Law struck again, and neither of us could get the time to pack and stuff early enough in the week (and day), and still leave by 7pm.  We ended up leaving around 10pm, and hit major traffic down the Turnpike.  By the time we situated the kids, gave parting childcare instructions, and arrived in AC, it was around 2am.

The hotel was nice, but they gave us double beds.  Ah, the romance began already.  Luckily, we were able to switch the next day to a better room.   We had dinner Fri night a la room service around 3am, and fell asleep watching infomercials. 

Saturday entailed a late breakfast/lunch, spa treatment for my wife, and we rested some more, like God wanted us to.  Saturday evening, we had dinner at Cuba Libre over at The Quarter.  Excellent cuban food and 13 types of mojitos, btw, so I would highly recommend them. After dinner, we walked around the Tropicana, and my wife even won some money at the slots. She’s hot, the mother of my children, and she brings in the dough.

Our anniversary dinner at Cuba Libre

On Sunday, we slept in (what a glorious weekend!), checked out, and had lunch over at Il Mulino over at the Trump Taj Mahal.  Geez, what a gawdy hotel. No wonder all the Indian events are held at the Taj Mahal — it’s like coming home to India, including the elephant statues.  Il Mulino was a decent italian restaurant, but it was so busy/disorganized, we alternatively waited and ate our lunch over the course of 1 hour and 45 minutes. I noticed that all of the Trump descriptions plastered in brochures lauded how each Trump establishment (the restaurants, the clubs, etc.) were the best, or the finest, or the greatest.  I could actually hear it in Donald Trump’s voice. Although Trump is lauding his italian restaurant as “legendary”, it was anything but.

We eventually picked up the kids, and got home tonight around 6pm. The great anniversary weekend is over, and it was extremely restful. I generally feel pretty guilty and doubtful that sleeping that much, but you know, we really needed to recharge. It was also great husband-wife-and-no-kids bonding time.  Awesome and fun. Sometimes, you just want to eat your nice dinner, and not have to worry about cutting up someone else’s plate of food.