We weren’t all in the best of health.  Some of that could be attributed to the over-indulgence in snacks, but we think Emily might have had a mild case of strep.  By the time we got home on Saturday, she was feeling much better and her fever was gone.  We expected to take her into the weekend clinic but she wanted to wait to see if she stayed better and we agreed.  By Sunday, there was little evidence that she had been sick at all.

On Sunday, while playing hookie from church for no good reason (shame on us!), we cleaned the entire house, room by room, starting in the back and working our way forward.  We did try something new this time, attacking each room as a whole, all five of us.  Usually we split up and each take a room.  This seemed to go faster in my opinion and you see progress a lot faster (snowball effect?).  

Once the house was clean, we started decorating for Christmas.  The tree is up, the knick-knacks are carefully placed (thanks to Lori).  I was in charge of grocery shopping during the knick-knack phase and it’s a good thing.  Everything is much more appropriately placed than I would have been able to accomplish.

I’m officially ready for Christmas Season!

– Scott

Here are a few pictures from the last day as well:

One could only hope.

By the way, I am posting this from my iPod touch. I’m still trying to get the hang of it. I mean I know how to do just about anything I want with it. The real question is whether any of the functionalities it provides can replace the way I used to do it. I spend so much time at a computer I wonder if I really need to be able to post blogs, check email, review calendars, fiddle with facebook, and chat all from the iPod. If there was anything besides music I might prefer to use this thing for, it would be the games, but I’m just not a huge gamer. I am trying…

Video:

Before half of you comment on how it didn’t scar me to be tortured as a child by my own sister, mother and grandmother, let me tell you that it is no consolation.  It is just painful to watch them both stroll in here dressed up as…  Even the words are hard to type.  They look like a miniature cabaret act. But even more painful is to watch the look on their faces when they are told not to do it or to take it off.  Even attempting to convince them to dress up as a fireman or a superhero solicits a response as though I had kicked them in the behind.

And no, you don’t get pictures.  I just had to pout a little.  You can all poke fun now.

I have decided to shut down my blog called Zone Defense and move all my posts to this blog, making it the central location for all things related to our little crew of five Franklins.

From now on my posts are going to be here and only here.  I posted a notice over at Zone Defense.  I am assuming, hopefully not too much, that if you are interested in what Lori has to blog about our family, you’ll be able to put up with what I blog about this family as well.

I have already moved my posts from Zone Defense so if you happen to read through the old stuff here, you’ll find all my junk mixed in.

We’ll be making a few collaborative adjustments to this blog to reflect this change (like adding author pictures, etc.) so bear with us during the adjustment phase.

By the way, if you happened to be following Lori on Facebook or Twitter, you may have accidentally been inundated with post notices.  For that I am sorry.  I take full responsibility for the mishap.

When the game was about to start we moved from the picnic tables over to where our seats were.  We all decided (our kids had already latched on to the Petty’s so this had to be a joint decision) to move up to the “nosebleed’ section and enjoy the game in the shade.  We would have cooked to a crisp in our original seats.  Fortunately it was not a sold out crowd so we had our pick.  Plus, I’ve never heard of the “seat police” coming to move someone from the worse seats to the better seats.

We left around the fifth inning because we had a long trip ahead of us.  Little did we know just how long.  We had planned to visit my parents in Canadian for the weekend.  After picking up all the pets from my grandparents house in Amarillo which we had dropped off before the game, we made our way toward Canadian.  Just about 8 or 9 miles shy of Pampa, disaster struck.  The front right tire on the Trailblazer had a blowout.  It didn’t shred itself but it went flat suddenly.  The first of the bad news was that it was well after dark, almost 11:00 pm.  The second item of bad news was that we never obtained our owners manual for the Trailblazer so we were left to figure out how to get the spare down from under the cab, where to find the jack, and how to properly use the jack.  Finding it was easy, lowering the tire took a while, and piecing together the various bars to make a crank for the jack was a long time coming.  But it all happened leading up to the real bad news.  The spare was flat.

At first, I thought it was only low and maybe I could drive it the next 9 miles into Pampa and fill it up.  This was a bad idea.  I managed to ruin the tire after a couple of miles.  At this point, I was at a loss.  I called up Dad and asked for some help.  I managed to catch him well after his bedtime so good ideas on my plight were not easy to come by.  Suspecting that the spare might still hold some air, he agreed to bring me a tank and an air compressor to see if we might be able to make it into Pampa and perhaps all the way to Canadian.  After an hour’s drive from Canadian, we quickly learned that the tire would not hold air. 

I finally reached the last resort.  I called the wrecker service and they sent out a tow truck.  He tried to air up the spare tire as well but to no avail. It had quite a large hold in the back, I am supposing from my driving on it.  He hauled the Trailblazer into Pampa, while all seven of us (Mom, Dad and my crew) followed in the Impala.  Now, the Impala is a spacious sedan but 7 plus three pets is probably beyond its specs.  The tow truck left the Trailblazer at Walmart at about 2:30 am and I wrote him a check for $115. We finally made it back to Canadian around 3:30 am. 

First thing next morning, I made sure the Wal-mart Automotive Department would be open all day.  Dad and I headed to Pampa, where I had them put two new tires on the front of the Trailblazer and move the extra tire to the spare.  This ran me about $285.  Add in the gas, and that made for a pricey weekend to see the folks.  The rest of the weekend was great, we took it easy, celebrated Mom’s birthday with some cake, and watched a few superhero flicks.  Kids had a great time as well and I just about caught up on the missed sleep by the time the weekend was over.

Lesson learned: When checking the pressure in your tires, don’t forget to check the spare!!!