The Story of Heidi

Today was Julian's 8th birthday. Happy Birthday my son. May there be many many more.

We'll have his party on Sunday, so tonight was the meal of his choice (mamma's Beef Stroganoff) and some rock and roll in the music room. Did I tell you how great it is to have the 3 guitars hanging off the wall, like a shotgun rack, ready to be used in a split second. Ah music.

The kids seem to gravitate towards good music. It's nice to see. I was looking for some music I hadn't played in a while so I put a Bruce Hornsby CD in the spinner and one that Amanda and I got married to. It's a Rennaisance music CD played by a Toronto orchestra. The song that we played in our wedding is something about Barley Corn (getting drunk from barley corn alcohol). Thank goodness the kids don't know what that means. But the music is catchy and Julian likes it when I make up my own lyrics (trying to keep him from paying attention to the real lyrics).

There's also another song by LL Cool J that we love because it's so special for us. It's called Rub My Back. It's special because every night when I read a story to get the kids to sleep either Maya or Julian will say, "Dad, can you rub my back", so we sing the "rub my back, rub my back, rub my back" song.

So what does this have to do with Heidi. Well tonight the kids cuddled up on either side of me and I read them a book about a story that is over 100 years old. You know the ones that last have got to be pretty good. This one was. It's a story about a girl Heidi whose mean aunt Dete takes her up to the mountains to leave her with her Grandfather. We decided that if Dete was so mean that she should have a really dark mean voice. So every time she would speak we would growl her voice. It was funny. Don't you wish all evil people could be identified by their demon voice?

That's all I wanted to say. After a number of somber posts recently, it's just nice to return to writing about the cute things that the kids do.

Here's a couple of other things I wanted to tell you:

I was starting to enjoy Amanda's Kindle. Apparently we can read the San Jose Mercury News. I told Amanda that we should read it and then feel that we're right there with her dad in Livermore.

The second thing is Mars. Yesterday I read about some rich guy that wants to send a married couple out to circle around Mars on a journey that would take a year and a half. Amanda and I thought this was ridiculous, but I've been thinking about the practicalities of taking such a trip. No doubt it would suck, but there's something mesmerizing about being stuck with your honey in a pod blazing towards Mars with nothing to do for 1.5 years. It's good food for conversation. Talk it over with your significant other.

Good night.