For Father’s day the Fruit of the Murphy Loins gave me this wonderful glass 3-D picture/sculpture thingy. It’s just the neatest thing, and yesterday I was close to obnoxious showing it off. The two of them are side by side and not arguing (the pictures were taken separately to achieve that effect) forever caught at this age. When you look through the back, as you move they follow you – not the creepy way with just their eyes, but the cool way with their whole faces turning. The day itself was busy, with church, visiting both Fearless Leaders’ fathers, and a cub scout graduation ceremony in the evening (scheduling snafu two year in a row – next year will be different!).
Archive for category Family
Father’s Day
Jun 17
Happy Anniversary
May 15
My wife and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary yesterday. We had an elegant meal at The Seven Gables Inn. I’ve been taking a class in Clayton this week, and so we met at the Galleria, got some shopping done (the route to a woman’s heart, BTW), and then went to dinner. The food was excellent, the staff was helpful and friendly, and the company outstanding. If you’re looking for a nice place to go, you should try the Seven Gables Inn. And I recommend marriage even more highly.
It’s official – I’m not just a pretty good uncle, I’m a Great Uncle. Little Caleb Matthew Kinchelow arrived last night to great joy. Mother and baby are doing fine; no word on dad, but a great aunt and uncle are in shock. We’re not old, we just feel that way.
Whew!
Feb 14
I’ve been in all day class the last three days, and tonight we have 5 twelve year old girls for my daughter’s birthday party. Can you say head spinning? I though you could.
Our room annex construction continues. My wife has informed me that she doesn’t care for the term addition. It seems that her childhood neighbors had an addition that was never finished – the husband took off before completion — and served as a junk area. So I promised her I would call it the annex (somehow I figured festering sore was out of the question). When we started, the contractor said four weeks. In retrospect, that figure was unrealistic. But it set our expectations and we figured we’d be done by Thanksgiving even with inevitable delays, even if it took twice as long. When my daughter asked if it would be done by her birthday (in February), I asked which one. The whole thing started two weeks later than originally planned, we lost two weeks while we waited for new roof trusses because the architect got confused about inner and outer dimensions. We lost another two or three weeks (they all blur together after a while) because they didn’t leave provisions for the heating ducts, despite our repeated attempts to get them to explain how they were going to hook the new ducts up to the old. Finally they cut up the new floor slab to put in the ducts – which gave us a heavy coating of concrete dust throughout the house. And both these delays slowed the project down even more because the next jobs didn’t get scheduled until they were completed. And then the Holidays, which we were supposed to be done by, killed us. Firms wouldn’t ship materials. Contractors wouldn’t even start jobs if it meant they might have to work in a week containing Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years – three more weeks down the drain.
With the holidays over, we figured the pace should pick up some. Yesterday, my wife had told me the electricians had been there first thing in the morning, so I knew some work got done on the addition, oops, annex. But when I got home, I was overjoyed just to see that the lumber sitting in the front yard for months had finally been hauled off. And then to go inside and see that the painters had been there, and finished – that was heart attack material. Three tasks in one day – I can almost believe we’ll be done by the end of the week (the latest estimate). End of next week is more like it, but I can see light at the end of the surprisingly long tunnel. Why we only have the carpet, the bookshelves, trim and touchup, finish the siding (they ran out!), and rebuild the fence to go. Soon I’ll have a brand spanking new room annex, and a sea of mud to go with it. Oh yeah, once it’s done, I’ll have to go to work. Furniture, decorations, and this spring, landscaping. Maybe I shouldn’t be too anxious for them to finish.
And So It Begins
Jan 16
Last night we had our first intergenerational foosball game (I suspect of many). The Fruit of the Murphy Loins declared that their team name was “The Shockers”; the Murphy Fearless Leaders decided to remain nameless. Despite the confident predictions of victory by the Shockers, they in fact were the ones shocked as they went down to defeat. No victory dance took place as the victors were too old and tired to bother. Play of the game was characterized by observers, if there had been any, as extremely poor in every aspect but sportsmanship.
Yesterday had its ups and downs. Problems at my ISP knocked funmurphys offline. But back in the real world, they were working away on the annex. Jerry was restoring the fence and side yard to its pre-construction state, and freezing his feet off (thin socks); the unknown carpet installers were, well, installing the new carpet. So I came home not just to progress, but an inside that is almost done — done enough to move the furniture back out of the garage, where it has been forcing me to park outside in the cold of winter, and put together the Fruit of the Murphy Loins foosball/air hockey table they got for Christmas. So something for everybody. What did my wife get? She got to arrange the furniture at a 45 degree angle to the walls and stuff like that. The project is rapidly going from gigantic headache to party time. And the best part is, no more dust! Well, just the normal amount.
After the cost and delay of our room annex project, the thing that’s disturbed us the most is the trash. OK, dust ranks up there, but we expected it. What we didn’t expect was that nobody who has come to our house has felt the slightest need to clean up after themselves. The only guy who cleans up is the one who shows up in response to our complaints about the trash, and he doesn’t do a particularly good job of it. Old insulation lays where it falls. Spills of caulk, wall mud (I don’t know the technical term, sorry), concrete stay where it falls. You know somebody’s been there working by the pile of trash left behind. Soda cups from fast food places remain until we throw them away. Sometimes it seems like the workmen go out of there way to make a mess, and then ignore it. And it’s not like they’re working late and don’t have time to clean up; it’s simply beneath them. If the construction was self contained, it would be one thing. But we have to live in the other half of the room. Maybe next time, we’ll stipulate women workers and see if they are any better.
Merry Christmas!
Dec 24
Merry Christmas to one and all. I hope you get what you don’t deserve, have more fun than you ought to, do something for somebody else you wouldn’t otherwise do, and think about things you normally don’t. It’s a special time of year, after all.
St. Louis Christmas Lights
Dec 15
Our family enjoys Christmas light displays. In the Saint Louis area, there are three big displays — Winter Wonderland in Tilles Park (McKnight Road just south of 64/40); The Way of Lights at the Our Lady of the Snows Shrine in Belleville, off of highway 15 just east of I-255; and Santa’s Magical Kingdom which is on I-44’s north outer road just west of Six Flags in Eureka. We’ve seen all three and enjoyed them immensely.
But there are smaller displays put on by individual homeowners we like to visit, too. Some favorites have gone dim over the years, but we keep visiting favorites and explore looking for new ones. On Kinsale just west of Dougherty Ferry there is a very nice display – you can see it from Dougherty Ferry and there backyard display seen reflecting in the lake is pretty cool. A house on the corner of Oaktree crossing and Greenfield crossing (near the intersection of Big Bend and Sulfur Springs) is unlike any other I’ve seen. For one thing, they have their own radio station (101.5 I think); many of the light displays are synchronized with the music, and the guy makes his own unique light displays. A nearby street — Red Oak Plantation — is another annual destination for us. The houses all have big wrap around front porches and just about every house on the dead end street puts on an elegant light display. A house at the corner of Pierside and Morning Oaks (just east of Old State Road) puts on a display that’s over the top. Way over the top. This corner lot is packed to the gills with every lighted decoration on the market.
Please share any favorite St. Louis area light displays in the comment section — we’d love to check it out.
UPDATE:
It’s been a few years since we’ve had the time to drive around, so the information above may be out of date. I’m also including info from the comments from 2003 below, and this too might be out of date. So please feel free to share both your favorites or if any of the ones listed here are no longer on display in the comments section.
A big thanks to Linda Hansen for her list.
And Isiah Angeli left the following comment in 2007 on a different post:
wow there’s this house at on Starview Dr off of Kerth and (I-55 SOUTH ) butler hill and they put up joy they have a home made star a nativity set and lights every way you look.
