The Diaper Files

Good things happen to good people as the old saying goes. I’m not too sure about the good people part, as it’s my brother in law that this has been happening too (get my shots in where I can!)
The turkey has been on one heck of a run as of late. He has won a trip to Jamaica, has hit the longshot payouts at the casino and even found cash on the streets.
One of my favorite stories of his winnings happened only a couple months ago. He was driving down a major six lane road in Edmonton when he saw a piece of paper flutter by. He thought to himself that it kind of looked like money. He decided to pull over and (cue game music) proceeded to do a Frogger routine across six lanes of traffic as he collected over five hundred dollars in twenty dollar bills. I know what you’re thinking and my sentiments exactly.
The other day my wife called and informed me that I needed to hang out with her brother more. “What did he win this time?” was my reply.
My brother in law and his wife picked up a little scratch and win card and became the proud new owners of twenty thousand in cash. I had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard.
Good things to good people? I prefer to call it “Shmuckluck”.

Another great Eskimo season is upon us soon (competing with Oiler games which has not happened in many moons). We’ve had Mackenzie and Parker in their kid’s camp “Eski-mini’s”. It’s a lot of fun for the kids and they get to be in the half time show of the Eskimo game on June 9th.
Plan on it for next year for your kids and they will love it.
While I wasn’t too sure what to think about my son wanting to be a part of the cheerleading team, I am now quite convinced after attending one of the practices, that it was to be as close as possible to the Eskimo cheerleaders. Way to go son!
As we left the practice, my littlest guy Tanner succumbed to a wrong mommy moment. It brought back memories of when I was little and my grandpa Jim had taken me to see the trotters at the harness race (he used to own a stable). I was running around the grounds and seeing a jolly old fellow with the same colour sweater on as my grandpa, I decided to run up and give him the double fist rib shot.
As a startled, grumpy old stranger spun around, I thought to myself “oh, oh”. I then turned around to see my grandpa sitting in the bleachers with a look of wonder as to why on earth I would do what I just did.
Now back to Tanner. As I was herding the cats, I mean my kids, in the hallway of Vic comp, Tanner was annoyingly running ahead trying to avoid dad. He then proceeded to latch on to the leg of a lady dressed exactly as my wife (wrong mommy). With his head turned looking back at me and laughing that he was “getting away”, the startled lady was trying to shake this four year old off her leg.
As I yelled “Tanner, that’s not mommy!” he looked up and in a flash of horror realized just that. Head down, blushing face, he ran back in a real hurry.
The kid was quite embarrassed so I debated making him feel better by giving one of the Eskimo cheerleaders a big bear hug and then exclaiming “Hey! You’re not my wife!”

With three little ones in our home, each of them getting dressed each day is quite the experience. You try to let the boys (aged 4 and 5) break out on their own by selecting their own outfits. It can make for quite the colour clash.
The latest is Parker who has now insisted on dressing for school the night before. He is adamant that he can save himself a pile of time in the early hours by not having to be bothered with getting dressed for school. I suggested putting on five outfits and that way he could just peel off a layer each day and be ready for the next. Mom wasn’t too happy with that suggestion as Parker thought it was a great idea.
Tanner takes the opposite approach. He tries to stay in his pajamas all day so that he's not bothered with it come bedtime.
Our daughter Mackenzie has started a new dressing option. My little grade-two-goober felt that she was waking up grumpy each morning. In discussions with her little friend Edward, he suggested that she wear socks to bed each night and that she surely would not be grumpy in the morning. Not the best habit to develop when the temperature is reaching 30 degrees each day but she now claims to be grumpy-free each morning.

Heelies are pretty amazing shoes. There is no shortage of them around any school in the city. I’m sure if someone from fifty years ago managed to construct a time machine, travel to current day and back, they would be telling tales of how the children of the future have learned to magically float instead of walking.
Parker has become pretty good on the heelies. This was not the case in the beginning. Quite a few drops on his tea kettle represented the beginning of his heelie career.
But now I can’t get the kid to stop. Who needs a running start or a slightly downgrade hill when a pack-horse like dad is around. “Pull me dad” he’ll yell.
His cut-off factor has gone up incrementally with the heelies as well. As long as he has momentum and a straight line, it matters not who is in his way. We’re working on fixing that one.
The other day we picked up his grandma at the airport. He was quick to discover one of the best heelie-straight-aways yet, the pedway from the parking garage over to the airport. As he whizzed by, heading straight for the roadway, my heart gave way, but the kid had mastered the curving stop. Lighten up dad said the look of his sly-grin face.
“Ahhh to heelie with it!”

I believe I will have to resort to hanging posters of my wife throughout the city’s stores. The sign will say “Warning! This individual is a compulsive toss cushion purchaser. If you see this individual looking at, or worse yet, contemplating buying toss cushions, please ask her to leave the store immediately.”
I have instituted a toss cushion purchase ban in the past before but now it is being flagrantly disregarded.
This is starting to become a problem in our house as the “not currently good enough” old toss cushions are starting to pile up. Personally I was a big fan of toss cushion sets number 17 and 23. Of course, who could forget toss cushion set number 31 with all of those fancy tassels and such.
Even though they know her habit is going to get mommy committed into TCA (Toss Cushions Anonymous), the kids are big fans of her habitual buying as the toss cushions make great accessories to the furniture fort building in our house.

We've all had some good laughs on Christmas morning when the kids are really excited to open their gifts.
I laughed so hard when I first saw this video, that I had to post it in here. This one might take the cake for best response to one of Santa's gifts.

My wife has come up with a great new saying (or maybe someone else did and she’s just pawning it off as her own!). Seeing that we do not have a very exciting social life with our three little ones, she asks if we should go to Charles Fromage for an evening of hoity toity high class dining. I must admit, it sounds a lot better than telling people we’re heading to Chucky Cheese.
I wish I had begun the collection earlier. For those of you who have ever been to Chucky Cheese, you will know that they have a little vehicle where the kids can sit next to the Chuckster himself and get their picture taken with him. Had we kept them all over the years, I bet we would have around 73 pictures of Parker and the Chucky. I don’t know what it is, but the kid loves it!
We could make one of those animation booklets by flipping the pictures one after the other and I would bet the only change you would see is the clothes Parker is wearing. Identical pose in every single picture!

My dear wife and our three children took the Spring break week and headed to the left coast to visit our niece and nephew. I was left with very specific instructions while they were gone. Paint the house.
Now, some of you may recall a column I did some months back when I let you know that I had been sandbagged into painting just “one” wall in our house. I realized in horror once I had completed that one wall that many more walls were to come. And here it was.
From Tuesday to Friday, during our daily phone conversation, my wife kept asking me how the painting was going and how it was looking. From the Tuesday on, I kept telling her how hard I was working and it looked terrific.
As you are reading this now, so is my wife. I started painting around 8pm Friday night. There it is… the truth is out.
Mid-day Friday, I started to debate my options. Would she believe that I painted it all, didn’t like the colours, so I painted it back to the original colours? Most likely not. I even thought about hiring a painting crew but time was against me.
My procrastinating and daily lies had condensed my painting window to less than three days. Toss in a St. Albert Trade Show where Saint City News had a booth and it made for a busy weekend. I believe I painted for roughly 24 hours during that 3 day period. I have discovered muscles I did not know were there.
I think I could have done it in 20 hours were it not for two things. One being that silly, stupid green painter’s tape. There is a reason they claim it comes off easy. It doesn’t stick in the first place. As for the tape that did stick where it was supposed to, my cute little puppy Georgia was kind enough to rip off.
As I cleaned the last brush and put away the paint cans, in walked my family from their trip.
“Wow!” my wife exclaimed. I was beaming with procrastinator’s pride.
She then stood staring at the NINE walls I had painted and mumbled the most dreaded words that painting husbands fear “So…what do you think of the colour?”

I have always enjoyed the Simpsons on tv. I stumbled across this video that mocked the cartoon intro and did the REAL Simpsons. Check it out, it's good for a laugh!