Where do I begin?

Man, this blank Windows Live Writer document looks blank! What do I fill it up with? Jean was right on the money when she suggested that I was using a picture of the kids as a "return strategy". Yes, I meant the well wishes and all - and I hope you all had a great holiday season! - but I couldn't really type more than a title and caption. The white space scared me. It felt like my first entry. Might have even been worse - people might be reading it this time! So just leaving the post with a picture of the nice smiling kids (a moment which took nearly an hour to "capture"!) seemed like the easiest thing to do.

But where do you begin after a 3 month absence? It's not like I don't have stories to tell. I ALWAYS have stories to tell. But which ones are "blog-worthy"? Which ones are of general interest? Which ones can I tell succinctly (couldn't do it before - don't know why I think it could happen now)? We'll, here's my attempt to tell the highlights from the last quarter of 2006:

• The Cardinals are World Series Champions! No, I didn't believe in my team. I thought they were lucky to win their division. And they were. I thought they'd get by the Padres, just because the only division weaker than the NL Central was the NL West. And they did. But I was sure they'd lose to the Mets - even without Pedro. But they gutted it out - something they hadn't done consistantly since 2005. Yadier Molina hit the homer that quieted the crowd and Adam Wainwright made the Card killer Carlos Beltran look like a high schooler with hi s nasty12-6 curve ball. Its a game that will go down as one of the greats in Cardinal postseason history. But I thought that was it. There wouldn't be enough gas in the tank to take on the Tigers - especially after they man-handled the A's in 4. One sportswriter even said that the Tigers would win the Series in 3 games. And I believed him. But the Cards didn't. Jim Edmonds started giving out a game ball with each win in the post season. That single act brought the team together in a way no one could predict. That, and the fact that the Tigers' pitchers couldn't field their way out of a paper bag didn't hurt. Yeah, there are a lot of excuses for why the more powerful teams didn't win. But I'm tired of making excuses for why the Cardinals won. This team won 105 and 100 games the previous 2 seasons. They were a good team that finally pulled it together when it counted! And "we are the champions, my friend! And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end!"
• CPAP spells good sleep One of these days I'll chronicle the whole sleep apnea ordeal. But suffice it to say that it's bad when I'm falling asleep during World Series games in which my team is playing - and winning! Come the end of October, I was nearly worthless after 8pm. It wasn't uncommon for me to come close to dosing off at my desk and behind the wheel driving home. Mornings felt like I had just gone 15 rounds with Muhammed Ali. And I wasn't a pleasant guy to be around. On October 23rd I visited with the pulmonary doctor who could refer me to a sleep clinic. Because I have an awesome wife who is always thinking ahead, I already had an appointment scheduled November 1st for a sleep study. The first half of the night they monitored my sleep. During the second half I slept hooked up to a CPAP machine. I didn't notice the dramatic change that Prudence did during her test, so I thought there might be something else wrong. Boy, was I surprised to hear from them 2 business days later with a prescription for a machine! November 7th was my first full night on it. I didn't see a change until about 2 weeks later when I noticed that I wasn't tempted to pull a Costanza and take a nap under my desk. After a month I felt like my old self - for better or worse. Sure, its weird getting hooked up like I'm diving off the Great Barrier Reef and its as unromantic as it gets with both of us looking like intensive care patients. But we have our lives back, and that counts for a lot!
• It was such a good Friday... The Friday after Halloween started off to be a great day. Work in the morning was really productive. At lunch, we saw the van for a local radio station parked at Krispy Kreme giving away free gas cards (worth $10-$200 in gas - you wouldn't know how much until you filled up and checked the balance) and 2 liter bottles of cola. We were the last ones to get cards. Mine was worth $20 and almost filled up my car. After work I stopped by Walmart to check out the prices on leftover Halloween outfits and supplies. Picked up $100 worth of stuff for $30 - including something I hope to use in a post soon! My SIL and her family was going to visit for the weekend and bring pizza from our favorite Chicago pizza place (a mom & pop place called Dominic's). So life was good. That was until about 10 miles from home. Prudence called and said Lance had an accident in the house. We were out of carpet cleaner, so I needed to stop by the grocery store before coming home. When I walked in, the smell hit me immediately - and I was on the opposite end of the house from the mess. Walking into The Boy's room, I found a crap that could have easily been a 3-D map of the Phillipines! Pooh everywhere! An hour later I was finally eating pizza, although it seemed to have a "wang" to it. I'm sure it was just me...or should I say Lance.
• Pork Loin for Thanksgiving Anyone? Thanksgiving had a completely different feel this year. My sister who normally hosts a gathering for my side of the family couldn't get her kids together on a date, so we meet and eat. On Thanksgiving day we were to travel to Prudence's sister's house in Lombard. But at 8am we received a call from her stating that her 5 year old daughter was still sick with the flu from earlier in the week. We had just finished a 2 week pukefest in our house and were still feelin' a little puny. Had it been an adult, we might have been able to avoid contact, but with our little ones playing with her, we figured the odds were stacked against us. Didn't need to do that again, so we stayed home. But SIL was providing the meat - we were just bringing a side dish and dessert. What were we going to do about food? Fortunately we had a pork loin in the fridge ready for the weekend, so we had that on the grill. Delicious! The weather was also spectacular for late November (in the 60s!), so I put up Christmas lights on our roof without a coat. A rare treat - especially when the next weekend brought a big ice and snow storm. Late in the afternoon we went to see "Flushed Away" and filled up on the butteriest popcorn you'll ever find. Black Friday brought another challenge. Prudence and I usually hit the stores starting at 4am with the kids home with a college age kid staying with the kids all day while we finish about 90% of our Christmas and birthday shopping and also take in a movie. The girl couldn't make it this year, so the plan was to leave the kids with SIL in Lombard and pick them up on Saturday. Now with a sick cousin, we had a quandry: could Panda take care of the house and get along with little bro and sis for the morning? She felt as if she could, but we had to get buy-in from the rest of the troops. So Thursday night after the movie we had a family pow-wow about Friday morning. Everyone seemed agreeable to the terms, so beginning 8am on Friday, we started calling about every hour or so to check on things. We arrived home at 12:30 with pizza. Everyone did a great job, so I think we have a new babysitter for Black Friday and potentially other date nights!
• Finally, a snow storm to talk about! December 1st brought a big snow storm to Illinois. The big stuff didn't start until the early morning hours. 40 miles east of us, it was all rain. 20 miles away had mostly ice followed by 4" of snow. Power was out to a number of communities. Hundreds of power lines and poles were down. Trees were down all over the place, including at my buddy Bill's house. We had some ice and a little more snow (6"-8") and fortunately never lost power. It was enough for my work to close its doors. So we watched it come down all morning, ate lunch, then went out as a family to clear drives and sidewalks. The kids and Prudence tried to make a snowman, but could only make a snow pyramid. At about 6pm we called it quits and came in to warm up. We were tired, but it was a good kind of tired.

Christmas and New Years were fairly uneventful. 100+ Christmas cards were mailed (thank goodness for address databases and mailing labels!), many presents were wrapped and exchanged, plenty of Lego Star Wars and ATV Offroad Fury 2 on the Playstation 2 was played, and we watched the ball drop in Times Square from the comfort of our living room.

That about brings you up to speed on the 3 Hour Tour household. As you can see, I got over my fear of the white space:) Hopefully you can use this post as a sleep aid - its much cheaper than a CPAP machine! And if I learned anything from writing this post, it has taught me is to never be this tardy again! 3 months is too long. More to come soon. Very soon!