Our buddy Moose has been helping us bury some cables in our walls and installing a couple new electrical jacks.

I say Moose is helping, but really, he’s doing the whole thing and I get to work the drill every once in awhile and pick up a pencil if he drops it.

Moose rocks. So does his coffeehouse.

New experiment: Photo taken during Today’s show!

Inbox zero!

Our friend Maria had a fun little meme activity on her blog today. Maria, for those of you who don’t know, helped us write all of the episodes of our That Catholic Show video series.

Apparently, Maria got the rules for the game from Zina, another podcaster we know. She and her husband do a Battlestar Gallactica podcast that looks at the religious elements of that series.

Anyway, the rules are below. If you happen to do this, why not post a link to your blog so we can all get to know you?

Pretty cool how this Internet thing works, eh?

Here are the rules:

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair – just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with the picture.

Sadly, my photo looks like pretty much every other photo of me: sitting at my computer with a blank stare, wearing a Rosary Army t-shirt, and still bald.

Saturday was a day someone should have said, “Excuse me, bald man, but today would be a good day for a little SPF 50.”

I had no idea my scalp was a neon red until I walked into the bathroom a minute ago and looked in the mirror.

Ouch. Where’s the aloe?

On Friday’s show on The Catholic Channel we talked about the massive amount of stuff we were going to sell in a garage sale but have recently decided to just donate it all to charity.

We’ve been cleaning out just about every closet, attic, nook, and cranny in an effort to simplify, simplify, simplify,

If we haven’t watched a DVD or listened to a CD in over a year, it’s gone.  Gone are just about every VHS movie we ever bought.  Gone are books and clothes and knick knacks.  Gone are the 10-year-old computers and three kids tables that we never quite knew what to do with them, or where to put them.  Gone are things that we don’t know why we bought them, and gone are things that we don’t even know where they came from.

We want space back in the house, and it’s space we’re getting.

We’ve been using the garage as a staging area for the past couple of months as we’ve cleaned everything out.  As I said, our hope was to do a garage sale.  But after going through the amount of work it took just to get the stuff to the garage, we were totally de-motivated about the idea of organizing and pricing all the items to make them ready for a garage sale.

And in all honesty, someone else could benefit from this stuff more than us.

We plan on donating some heavier pieces of furniture to a charity that will come pick it up, but today we took the time to itemize everything we have to give away and it ended up being over 300 items!  Instead of waiting for the next scheduled pick-up, we decided to just load everything we could into the van and I ended up taking two trips to Good Will today.

And we’ll still get a tax credit.

In the meantime, we’ve managed to raise about $550 selling stuff on Craig’s List, and we came up with a few more Craigslistable items today that could bring in a bit more cash.

Our goal is to save enough money to buy a new sectional for the living room that will replace the two run-down couches we currently have.  One of those couches we’ll be giving away, as well (or trying to get $25 or so from Craigs List), and the other will be going to Rosary Army’s office.  But when we get a sectional, it will also free up a lot of space and make our living room look a lot roomier.

The photo below is of Jennifer sweeping out the middle of the garage after we loaded all of the stuff to give away into the van.  You can still see a lot of stuff on the left that we’ll be tossing somewhere, but we actually got to park in the garage again tonight.

We’re hanging out at a local food fest. Spent $20 and have only eaten 4 olives.

Yes, it’s true. We’ve been taking dancing lessons.

And furthermore, it’s true we have a secret soft spot for High School Musical movies.

In fact, we’re talking about camping out just to get tickets for the new High School Movie Part XIII.

We’re certain it’s going to sell out for weeks.

And now, for the first time, we display for you our hard-earned dancing skills.

Enjoy.

Sam and Walt have somehow come down with strep throat – AGAIN. I think we just need to give Walt antibiotics every day along with his Flintstone’s vitamin.

Unlike when I got strep as a kid and felt completely miserable, Sam and Walt somehow always feel great when they get strep. I don’t understand it.

We refused to let them spend the entire day watching television or playing video games, and they’ve read just about all the comic books they’ve got, so somehow they got on a kick of playing with LEGO bricks.

Usually, this is Ben’s thing.  As a matter of fact, we just keep most of the LEGO bricks in his room, and that’s where Sam and Walt spent most of their time today while Jennifer were broadcasting the show.

Did they make super fast cars like I did as a kid?  No.

Did they make uber cool space ships?  Actually, Walt did (with Sam’s help).

What did Sam spend most of his time on?  Very well designed weapons, of course.

If he doesn’t become a priest, I think engineering is in his future.

On Friday’s show we said that we hoped to get photos and mirrors hung in the studio, brining the studio that much closer to completion.

Well, we did it! Unfortunately, it also made us realize that there are still several walls that now look even more bare now that we hung stuff on the other walls. So…still work to do.

But the photos look really neat on the wall. It’s been a long time since we hung updated photos of the boys, and in fact, I don’t think we’ve ever hung a picture of Tommy. Sad.

Anyway, below is the completed project hanging on the studio wall, behind where Greg sits.

Below is a picture of SAM. He’s our oldest son and is still wanting to pursue a life in the Priesthood. He’s our natural born runner and family artist.

Coming in at 2 years younger than Sam is our next son, WALTER (pictured at the right). He loves all things electronic and is our little tennis player.

Our third son, pictured below is our lovable BEN. He is a master at building unique LEGO creations. He also loves trains and cars.

Two years behind Ben, we have our 4th son TOMMY (pictured below on the right). He is full of life, incredibly bright and absolutely loves DC superheroes – much to his father’s delight.

Below is the only picture we have of our highly anticipated DAUGHTER. She is due for arrival in late January of 2009. Everyone is thrilled to meet and welcome her into the family fold.

Well, you know this picture 🙂 But you haven’t seen us in BLACK and WHITE!

Oh and we can’t forget the beloved family dog, JODY. She injects a lot of fun and silliness into this house and we’re so glad we adopted her almost 2 years ago.

We’re still not 100% done with the studio. This weekend we’re hanging photos and some mirrors in the room.

Jennifer is still looking for one of Walt. Here are the others. We’ll post another when the wall is complete.

Our friend Luis Escobar has worked on over a dozen (thirteen? fourteen? a whole lot) seasons of The Simpsons television show as an animator. A couple years ago when we were visiting California he took us on a tour of the studio, and it was the coolest part of the trip. He’s a dedicated family man, Catholic, and overall great guy.

Luis also also a blog that I check quite frequently and he’s surprised us on more than one occasion by doing a cartoon just for me and Jennifer. Once again, he drew something on his blog that got a great big belly laugh out of me last night.

Luis always draws people as short little stubby people, but he always draws me as this huge towering giant.

I never get tired of the gag.

Check out Luis’ blog and look back in the archive for other drawings he’s done, including one when I finished my marathon last Thanksgiving, and when we hung out at the Podcast and New Media Expo last year.

And thanks, Luis, for the awesome new drawing (see below)! We really need to get these framed!