KerryAndGabe.com

We’re hosting two yard sales to benefit the National MS Society. The dates are Saturday, August 8th and Saturday, October 17th. We will donate 100% of the sales to the National MS Society. Leftover items after October 17th will be donated to a worthy charity that takes item donations (probably one that picks up the donations).

We would love to take your junk! We can provide tax receipts (just like Goodwill) for your records - you determine the value of your donations as you would for donations to any other charitable organization. We are accepting item donations now through the beginning of October (preferably before the beginning of August). We will accept almost anything - clothing, toys, kitchen and other household items, books, furniture, etc. We can take smaller items anytime - larger items will need to be donated closer to the sale dates.

We could also use volunteers to help us with the day of the sale (and possibly to help organize and price things in the days leading up to the sale). And, of course, cash donations to the National MS Society are always accepted! I can give tax receipts for those, too. For those of you not in the area, we might be able to arrange something.

Thank you for your support!

Others writing The Sunday Somethings: Audrey

Something that made me smile this week: When some of the neighbor kids entertained Maddie while the adults watched from the driveway while drinking beers. It was nice to spend some time with the neighbors.

Something I’m thinking: I should really write Maddie’s 16-month letter…or resign to doing it every 3 months now. With each passing day, that option is sounding better and better! The next letter would be at a nice, even 18 months. Sounds like good timing?

Something I am hoping: I hope that Maddie’s tubes surgery goes well on Thursday. This Mommy is a little nervous about it, but I’m sure it will be fine.

Something happening around the house: We swapped out some of the toys between the bonus room and the living room for a change of pace.

Something I’m reading: I finished Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella while in Cincinnati and started Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult. I didn’t get a chance to read at all this week.

Something tasty I ate this week: We had chocolate chip muffins on Saturday and waffles this morning. I love weekends at home!

Something Maddie did this week: She finally cut her 4th tooth! She was a bit fussy and sensitive for a few days.

Something I struggled with this week: We’ve all been a bit sick this week. Maddie and I had a stomach bug, and Gabe had some sort of sinus thing. I’m looking forward to us all being well again.

Something I’m doing towards my goals: We finished watching the first season of Dollhouse! We enjoyed it and are glad that they are going to continue the series. I also checked “Attend a home baseball game for the Cincinnati Reds” off my list.

Something I learned this week: I was surprised to learn that some cereals have high fructose corn syrup!! I would expect that from something like Fruit Loops or Frosted Flakes (oddly enough, Fruit Loops do not contain hfcs, but Frosted Flakes do). Cereals that surprised me were Raisin Bran, Corn Flakes, and Rice Krispies. I’m sure that there are many more. I guess I’ll have to be checking the labels more frequently. I’m happy to report that Cheerios do not contain hfcs. I would have been devastated.

Something I’m looking forward to next week: We’re going to visit my parents in Davidson and family in Athens, Georgia over the July 4th weekend.

Something random: I haven’t felt like blogging much lately…I scheduled a bunch of posts about a week before our Cincinnati trip, so I had been relaxing while posts were automatically published each day for about a week and a half! That was nice…wonder when I’ll get the energy to do that again.

Something I captured: This morning, Maddie wanted to put on this dress. At some point, Daddy made a visit to the bathroom. Maddie’s such a Daddy’s girl these days and couldn’t wait for Daddy to return and play with her. She waited not-so-patiently by the door and even brought over her toy drum to use as a stool while she waited. Hilarious.

I love Google Analytics. I had prevented my site from being in the search engines for a while, but I couldn’t resist finding out how people would find me. I allowed my site back into the search engines and installed Google Analytics nearly a year ago.

I check it almost every day, though I’m most interested in seeing what searches land strangers on my page. These searches have resulted in a ton of hits for some posts. I’m not saying that these are my best posts by any means…just the ones that get the most hits.

Here’s the top 10 blog posts (from least popular to most popular):
10. Changes in Girl Scout Cookies - I received a good number of searches around Girl Scout cookie time for things like “changed tagalongs” and “did the girl scouts change the recipe for tagalongs” and other similar searches. I wonder whether I’ll have similar searches around Girl Scout cookie time next year.

9. Maddie’s cute little feet - I’m not sure why I waited so long to write a post about Maddie’s underdeveloped left foot. I know that I personally spent HOURS searching the internet in the hopes that I would find similar abnormalities in other children to help me understand. I did not find much. I get searches for this one at random times for things like “underdeveloped feet baby,” “child with different sized feet,” “underdeveloped feet in young babies,” and “will different sized child feet even out.” I hope that some other parents can find a little of what they are looking for in this post.

8. How many of these children’s books can you name? - I created a quiz for my friend Melisa’s book themed baby shower. It turned out nicely! I get some searches like “book quiz with answer.” I don’t see a ton of obvious searches that would land people on this page, so it is surprising that it was so popular. I think I had more of my Facebook friends and Twitter followers following the blog link than usual, perhaps.

7. Maddie’s Birthday Party at Daycare photos - For some reason, I get a lot of hits for “daycare birthday party” and similar. I guess that people are looking for ideas of what they can do at daycare for their child’s birthdays? At any rate, I get a good number of these searches, making this post the 7th most popular one.

6. My first big lesson in parenting: never say never - I get some searches for this one about co-sleeping, but I think most of my traffic came from my friend Ann’s blog when she referred to my post. This is the post where I admitted that I was NEVER going to have my baby in the bed with me. How wrong I was! The weirdest search that landed someone on this page was “dairy-free breaded chicken.”

5. Concert Review: Mannheim Steamroller - I decided to do something different and post a review of the Mannheim Steamroller show that I saw as part of my annual Christmas date with Audrey. I had no idea that so many people were interested in it! Around Christmastime, I had sometimes a dozen searches with people looking for reviews on Mannheim Steamroller shows. I’m wondering if this post will be just as popular around December this year.

4. Maddie’s Hives - This one could end up being the most popular post ever, considering how recent it is and how high it ranks already. I get numerous searches involving hives, including things like “102 fever and hives,” “hives in the morning,” “hives with fever,” “penicillin allergy hives pictures,” and “pictures of penicillin allergy hives.” A few searches on “cefdinar” show up in the logs as well.

3. Melisa’s Baby Shower photos - This one is a bit surprising. Many people find it with generic searches such as “baby shower photos,” “my baby shower photos,” and “friend’s baby shower photos.” Maybe these people are potential shower hosts and are looking for ideas. I’m really surprised, however, by the number of people that have searches containing Melisa’s name (considering the unique spelling). I have seen searches such as “melisa shower” and “melisa baby.” The funniest that I have seen are “melisa archives” (they were probably disappointed considering that it is probably not the archives they were looking for), “melisa babe” (I’m starting to think she has a secret admirer), and my personal favorite “melisa in the shower” (now I KNOW she has a stalker).

2. Animal Crossing: City Folk - These searches have been getting less lately, but for a while I had a flurry of activity with people wanting to know all sorts of things about Animal Crossing. I’m planning to write a separate post eventually to serve as a sort of resource (mostly linking to legitimate resources). People want to know tips and tricks with the game, but my post was more or less a review.

1. 25 Random Things About Me - And the winner goes to…the Facebook viral activity. Around the time that the list was really popular, I got tons of hits daily. Interestingly my follow-up post didn’t receive quite as many hits. These searches started the day after I posted it and continued strongly for a few weeks. It tapered off gradually after that. I would expect this post to fall in the ranks eventually, but for now it has been the most popular post on the blog. The searches in this case were quite obvious, all variations on “25 random things about me.”

We accidentally didn’t depart with our assigned group when leaving the Grandeur of the Seas last month. We had a few delays given the usual challenges of a one year old plus getting everyone breakfast in the dining room (which is not always speedy) and resolving our bill. We were supposed to have our statement in our room by the morning, but it had fallen off our door and had been tracked down the hallway somewhere. I had to wait in the long concierge line to request a copy. Everyone on the bill looked correct, except for the total! It was right, but I had a little bit of a shock when I saw it. The onboard expenses really add up!

So with all of this, we headed to the family lounge a bit late. When we arrived, we asked if our group had already been called, and it had. So we headed to the gangway and exited the ship. The exit was fairly speedy. I’m guessing that they were between groups, so the line wasn’t terribly long. It didn’t take us very long to get off the ship. I’m guessing that getting off late could have worked to our disadvantage, but it didn’t!

This is what the luggage area looks like when you get off with the rest of your group:

This is what it looks like when you get off after the majority of your assigned group:

Considering that four out of the six remaining suitcases were ours, it took us all of two seconds to find our stuff. Ah, the advantages of not following instructions.

Note: this is not necessarily a serious “tip,” just a fortunate mistake for us!

On the first night on our cruise, we decided that we would split the night and each of us would attend something by ourselves. I was going to go to the Finish the Lyrics game show and Gabe was going to attend the comedy show. We were each going to spend a little time in the casino playing video poker.

So the first part of the evening was mine. Gabe was trying to get Maddie to sleep in the pack-n-play, and I headed to the casino. Almost immediately, they made an announcement that the poker table has open seating and the game was $1-2 no limit! I did what either of us would do when hearing the announcement and headed directly to the poker table. I was excited, and I knew Gabe was going to be excited when I came back and told him that instead of going to the comedy show he’ll probably want to play poker!

Our Alaskan cruise was never able to get together a poker game. The demographics were a bit different with less potential for a Hold’em crowd. This cruise had *just enough* players to keep a game going in the evening hours past 8 or 9pm. Aside from the interchangeable Gabe and me, the table consisted of pretty much the same 5 people plus one or two strangers at any given moment.

We had not planned on bringing a poker bankroll on this trip. Our random gambling budget is a bit different than a poker budget. One needs money to make money when it comes to poker. Fortunately, everyone, with the exception of one or two young hotshot players, was buying in for the minimum of $100. I don’t mind playing a shorter stack (when everyone else is short-stacked). I tend to do better this way than I do with a large stack, and the lower risk suits me when I am on a tight budget.

I was ecstatic to be playing “casino poker,” even if it wasn’t an ideal game. All of the players were more or less like us. They seemed to know what they were doing and had spent a decent amount of time playing live casino poker whether it was in Vegas, Atlantic City, or Connecticut. Almost everyone at the table knew more than most of the dealers since this cruise was the first time that they had offered hold’em. They made a few mistakes, but the table was quick to correct them. I cut them some slack, knowing that they did not have much experience dealing.

While Gabe and I collectively came out ahead, it was not a good money making table. On my first night, I cashed out $26 richer. Gabe played the second night, and he lost $26. So we were even on the first two nights. On the third night, the casino was closed since we were in port in Bermuda.

The fourth night was mine, and it was awesome. One of the young hotshot players was a few spots to my right, and he was bullying the table. I was annoyed that he kept raising my blinds, but I waited for the right moment. I limped in with pocket 8s under the gun, and he made a small raise from the button. I called as did several others.

The flop came 88J. Holy crap. I tried to keep my composure. I checked. Bully bet, and I smooth called. I think everyone else folded, though we may have had one caller on the flop. Turn comes, and I check and he bets again. I just called. I knew he was going to stab at it every time. Same thing on the river, except this time I obviously went for the check-raise. He bet $25, and I decided that $50 (total of $75) was a good raise. It was. He declared, “I don’t believe you” and called. Mission. Accomplished. I loved the reaction from the table when I turned over my quad 8s.

The funniest part is that a few hands later, he almost was caught in a similar situation. I had AK, and he was again in the hand. He was still bullying and raised preflop. I just called. Flop comes AAQ. He bets, I call. Turn comes and it creates a flush draw, so I bet out and he thought about it and folded. I still took down a decent pot from the preflop and flop action. I didn’t let him know what I had, of course, but I laughed on the inside. I have been in this situation many times before, and it’s rare for the right cards to come out to take advantage of this type of bully. You really have to pick your moments (or hope you can bully him at the right time). This time I waited for strong cards, and I can’t believe I got them!

I cashed out that session $230 richer. I forgot how much I love playing this game (of course, quad 8s never hurts and getting paid for them is fabulous).

We were walking around with Maddie on the last night, trying to get her to sleep in the sling. Gabe urged me to play for an hour while he gets her to sleep, and then he played for the rest of the night (he could stay out much later than me since he didn’t need to be in the room when Maddie woke up to join us).

This night didn’t go so well. I ended up in a hand against the type of player that I hate to play against. I don’t get intimidated often, but some players I do dread getting into a hand with. I raised preflop with a decent hand but completely missed the flop. I threw out a few continuation bets and then gave up on the hand. Lost about half of my stack on that mistake. I ended up losing around $60 or $70 and wished either I hadn’t played or that I had more time to redeem myself! Gabe didn’t have much better luck when he picked up where I left off. He ended up “cashing out the easy way” by losing his buy-in. Oh well. Overall, we were still slightly profitable! And we both had a great time playing poker after not being able to do it for so long.

We knew better than to play in the tournament on the cruise, and I’m glad that we avoided it. First of all, I hate that the tournament is structured as a shoot-out. Theoretically, they have 7 tables of 7 people each. Each table can play at a different time as every table plays down to exactly one player. Then all of the champs from each table play at the final table. Considering that a heads up match is such a crapshoot, I prefer to not need to do that more than once in a tournament! It’s just not my type of tournament. Plus, we had heard from players on the other cruise that the payouts are horrible. They were again on this cruise. Only 14 people played, so I think they may not have played shootout style. They only paid the top 2, despite the fliers saying they would pay at least the top 3. At least 25% of the prize pool went directly to the house, maybe more.

The guy who got 3rd place made his fair share of rants about the tournament. He ranted quite a bit on the last night, so both Gabe and I got an earful. He was angry about the tournament payouts. He was angry about the dealers in the cash game. He was angry about Royal Caribbean in general and swore to never cruise with them again. He claimed that he inquired about the poker on the cruise before booking, and they mislead him. He had a lot of complaints.

My thoughts are that you do NOT book a Royal Caribbean cruise if your goal is to play poker! First of all, you’re not going up against that many people who are just playing poker to gamble. You’re going up against people like us who are at least semi-serious about it and know what they are doing. The house takes a staggering 10% rake. The game is played on a modified blackjack table with a maximum of 7 people. There are so many reasons that poker is not optimal for poker players on this cruise. I doubt that it varies that much on the standard cruises, though maybe you’d have better luck on a larger ship.

The tournaments are pretty crappy and they were horrible about giving information about payouts and structure. We learned this on our last cruise, and that’s one of the reasons we declined to play. They lacked information beforehand. They either know it is a horrible deal and are intentionally withholding information from the players in the hopes that they will play or they don’t realize that most of their customers are people who actually play poker. This isn’t a slot tournament where everyone is just playing to gamble. Poker is a different beast. I think that the issue is that they just don’t realize this fact, though it may also be a lack of organization as well.

I’m happy we played. My expectations were exceeded in that I didn’t even expect any hold’em tables to be running during our cruise. I knew not to expect any more than that from a cruise ship!

Bottom line: If you want to play poker, go to a real casino. If you want to get a little poker fix, sit down and lower your expectations.

I’m writing this one a few days early as we should be in Cincinnati enjoying the baseball game today!

Others writing The Sunday Somethings: Audrey

Something that made me smile this week: We put up one of the things that we got from Catherine on our wall this week. It’s a 20″x20″ collage of photos of Maddie from her first year. I love it!

Something I’m thinking: I’m thinking that I need to start soliciting item donations for the yardsale(s) that we are having later this year to benefit the National MS Society. We are having one in August and one in October, I think…

Something I am hoping: I’m hoping we get a lot of donations! Have I mentioned that your donations will be tax deductible? Instead of bagging up your items and taking them to goodwill, take them to us! I can give you a receipt. We’ll even come and pick up items, if you prefer!

Something happening around the house: We hosted our first poker game in a while. Gabe didn’t get to play as he entertained some extra guests, and I was out of the tournament before Maddie was in bed. At least Gabe saw my graceful exit with my pocket Aces and agreed there wasn’t anything I could have done!

Something I’m reading: I finished Kira-Kira and enjoyed it. It was a very quick read. I plan to take Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella to Cincinnati, though I’m not sure why I keep reading Kinsella. I like it well enough, I guess, but all of her characters are all the same and I can’t identify with them for the most part.

Something tasty I ate this week: I tried using the food processor to finely chop broccoli and sneak it into spaghetti sauce. It wasn’t too bad, but next time I think I’ll steam the broccoli first. That would have probably been better. I am not sure if this qualifies as “something tasty” exactly, but it wasn’t bad.

Something Maddie did this week: She went to the doctor where we discovered her ear infection had not responded to antibiotics. It looked really bad on Wednesday, and we’re hoping that the antibiotics have time to work somewhat before our flight to Cincinnati (which by the time you’re reading this should have already happened).

Something I struggled with this week: This week was busy - I struggled with getting everything done that needed to be done including packing for the Cincinnati trip. It’s challenging to bring everything we think we might need with Maddie while trying to pack light!

Something I’m doing towards my goals: We watched a few more episodes of Dollhouse and have just two left! I finished Kira-Kira on the Newbery Award Winners list. I also checked out a few more winners from the library. Oh, and our will is officially completed!

Something I learned this week: I learned that Maddie’s antibiotic didn’t work, and that we may need to get tubes for her. We’re talking to an ENT soon.

Something I’m looking forward to next week: It’s hard to say what I’m looking forward to the most this week. It will be an eventful week.

Something random: After I give Maddie a bath, I often have a nice bubble bath. In the past month, I have started reading in the bath! This is a first for me, and I love it. Surprisingly, my books have not been in danger. I have always thought that it would be a risky maneuver, but having beat up library books helped get over my fears.

Something I captured: We got our 2008 photobooks this week! We’re forming quite the collection of our books - I love how they are looking together on the shelf!!

We’re headed to a baseball game today - Maddie’s first major league game. Hopefully the Reds will win. Gabe’s major Father’s Day gifts this year are the trip to Cincinnati and the baseball game. I hope we’re all having fun! And when we get home, Gabe is excited to get his Father’s Day power washer (I’m not kidding, he really is excited).

Happy Father’s Day! Maddie and I are very lucky gals. We love you!

About a week or two ago, I decided that I was going to start writing Maddie’s letter less frequently. I felt like I wasn’t going to have enough material to fill her 16 month letter, so it seemed like a great time to maybe switch to every 3 months for a little while. Turns out that I have plenty to say about this month, but her letter will be delayed again since we’re in Cincinnati for Father’s Day weekend! By the time that this publishes, Maddie will have experienced her first plane ride. I hope it went well!

Happy 16 months, sweet “baby” girl.

Gabe and I managed to convince Aunt Kristin to babysit for a few hours, and we headed to see Up. We opted to see the non-3D version as neither of us are extremely impressed with 3D effects. I mean, it’s cool and all, but wearing the glasses for an entire movie is a bit of a pain and literally gives me a headache. Just wearing the glasses and looking for the effects makes me far too aware that I’m watching a movie. It’s more difficult to immerse myself into the fantasy this way. So while I didn’t see this movie specifically in 3D, I will claim that I prefer the plain old-fashioned movie viewing.

I knew I had to see this one. I haven’t missed a single Pixar film in the theatre. We have missed some movies that we really wanted to see, but I made this one a priority. Shockingly, we saw it during opening weekend. This was just a coincidence as it was one of the only times we could arrange to have Kristin come over and babysit.

The short before the movie was Partly Cloudy about storks delivering various types of babies created by the clouds. It was cute and quite amusing in places. It didn’t skyrocket to the top of my favorite shorts, but it was still pretty good. Cute.

I’m amazed at Pixar’s ability to put out quality films every single time. I keep waiting for the movies to disappoint, but they never do. Up did not disappoint, though my expectations about an old man who ties a bunch of balloons to his house and flies away were a little low. I wasn’t sure how I was going to like it, but I loved it.

I didn’t know very much about the movie going into it, and I was delighted to find the talking dogs. The dogs were equipped with a collar that translated their thoughts into speech. The movie has some very funny bits with the dogs!! Something tells me that the DVD will have at least one bonus short featuring the dogs.

The movie took me through an array of emotions. It has parts to make you sad, parts to make you happy, parts to make you laugh, and parts to make you angry. I enjoyed the roller coaster of emotions.

I am definitely putting this movie on my Christmas list! I thought it was great!

We had heard about Royal Caribbean’s partnership with Fisher Price and Crayola and were excited to try out the Royal Babies and Royal Tots programs on our cruise in May. Maddie fit into the Royal Babies age group which contained babies 6-18 months old. I’m not sure that the two groups vary that much in activity as we accidentally attended one of the Royal Tots (18-36 months) sessions. I think that she may have liked it even better, but I don’t know if it varied at all from that day’s Royal Babies session.

Royal Caribbean makes the program sound more organized and educational than it really is, but we expected that going into the trip. The ship provided 3 activities for these age groups each day. In the morning, they had an hour long playgroup. They had a stroller walk late morning. In the late afternoon, they did a combined art session (Crayola Beginnings) followed by a story time.

Other Babies on the Cruise
Five other babies were in Maddie’s age range and five babies were in the Royal Tots age range. I believe that we saw many more younger children on this cruise than we did on our Alaskan cruise, which is not surprising. I was excited to meet the other babies through the Royal Caribbean organized programs.

Playgroups
We attended two of the playgroups - the ones that were offered on the “at sea” days. I think that the playgroups were offered each day, but we didn’t have time on port days to attend. These sessions consisted of the Adventure Ocean counselor providing toys which seemed to fit into the same theme.

The first session’s theme was animals which had toys that I felt were still good for Maddie though more suitable for younger kids. This makes sense since the starting age range is 6 months. Four total babies attended this session, and Maddie seemed a bit overwhelmed. She mostly sat in my lap and watched the other kids. The counselor would try to get the kids involved by showing them a toy and telling the kids about that toy. She did a pretty good job with that (and apparently they are required to have degrees in childhood education or similar). Maddie was the oldest in this age range and the only child walking.

The second session that we attended was in the Royal Tots slot, and she had a bunch of Little People in a sort of travel theme with airplanes and campers and such. None of the Royal Tots showed up for the session, but one of the other Royal Babies showed up. Maddie played a lot more this time and seemed to have fun with the familiar Little People toys.

Stroller Walk
This session is clearly intended to be a workout. Gabe and I were thinking more along the lines of a social visit with other parents. Only one other family attended the one session that we tried, and the same counselor had us “race” on the track on the 10th deck. Needless to say, we didn’t mind that the other “team” won. The race was only one lap, which I think is a quarter mile, but we all opted to go a second lap. I guess it’s fair to say that this wasn’t what we expected and it was a little disappointing. We didn’t get a chance to really chat much with the other parents, which is what would have been more interesting to me.

Crayola Beginnings
We attended both sessions on the at sea days. On the first day, Maddie was the only one who attended. She seemed to have fun playing with the Crayola Beginnings stamps and the crayons. They had butterflies for the kids to decorate. We had to help her do most of it as the stamps are a bit difficult for a one year old to press onto the paper. Lots of kids attended the last session! Some of the older kids were in attendance as well. This time they had some other shape (I think a ship) for the kids to decorate. I guess they also had some sort of postcard type thing with places that the kids could color in the lines. They had a few other art supplies this time, including these paintbrushes that had paint in the “stick.” Pretty neat, but much more suitable for older kids! The babies kept trying to eat the paint or got it all over their hands. The stuff is washable, but only to a certain extent (and I’ve seen firsthand that washable markers do not come out of clothing). I was irritated that it seemed like Maddie had another marker or paintbrush in her hand every time I turned around. I even snapped at Gabe and said, “don’t let her have the marker!! Geez, how hard is it to keep it from her!” Poor Gabe. Turns out that the counselor had given it to Maddie. I felt a little embarrassed later when Gabe told me what had happened, but I also felt like the counselor should know that markers and one year olds do not mix!

Story time
After the Crayola Beginnings session, the counselor would read one “bedtime” story. I can’t remember the first book, but the second one was I love you, Stinky Face. It was cute. The only problem is that the counselor had an accent, so even I had trouble understanding her sometimes! It didn’t really matter - the kids paid attention as best as one year olds can.