Startin to come together, Pepper....Startin to come together

I think I'm starting to feel a little bit better about things. Like things are starting to turn the corner a little bit. Like maybe the novelty of the new school year is wearing off, and we're starting to get into a routine that everyone can handle.

Or maybe it's because I got more than 5 hours of sleep for the first time in two weeks. (Jaxon didn't get up and get into our bed last night. At least I don't think he did. And if he did, Rach got him back into his own bed. But I'm fairly certain that didn't happen, because Rach didn't stab me in the eye this morning, or seem like she hated me even just a little bit.)

Or maybe it's because my brain is clogged with pounds and pounds of snot and dust boogers from the 22 hours of grout removal over the weekend. (Coincidentally, the grout removal marathon also caused my hands to cramp up so bad that I'm typing this with the dexterity of a muppet. I feel like Chris Elliot in Scary Movie. 'Take my strong hand...')

Maybe it's because the Saints are 3-0.

Or maybe it's because Jaxon came home with 1 smiley face and 2 ambivalent faces on Friday. (Which is the equivalent of the Detroit Lions winning a game. Actually, no. It would be more like Rocky I going the distance against Apollo Creed. Sure he lost, but at the end of the fight (when I pick him up).....and he's still standing in his daycare (and not sitting in his usual time-out spot)......and he shows off those normal looking faces (actually, the faces look kind of apathetic).......then he'd prove to everyone (but mostly just his daycare ladies).........once and for all (for this week, I guess)........that he's not just some bum from the streets (or Goose Creek).

Or maybe it's because Cole came home last week with 2 'good day' reports from his teacher, then followed that up with 2 'great day!' reports. (Although after playing a good bit of video games over the weekend, I noticed something different about him this morning. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, until Rach said, "Did you see Cole this morning? He had video game face...." And she was exactly right. That's the only way you could describe the look he had on his face this morning. Well, maybe not the only way to describe it. You COULD say that he looked at me the same way a dog would after it hadn't seen me in a couple of years. Kind of like, 'You look eerily familiar. I think I may know you, and something tells me that you're friendly, but I'm not quite sure. And I should probably know what to do in this situation, But I'm just a dog, so----Oooooh! I think I just saw my tail!" So I'm not holding my breath for a 'good day' report from the teacher today.)

Or maybe it's because Tori is bringing up her grade in Spanish. She's gotten 100s on every assignment since her progress reports. El espanol es dificil, mi culo! (On a much funnier side note, dangling Tori's carrot of a cell phone in front of her face has become quite an entertaining and effective form of punishment. Seriously, if you ever want your car waxed, or your shoes shined, or your taxes done; just let me know. I'll give you Tori's cell phone. They say the Egyptian pyramids took hundreds of years to build. Tori would have them done in a week in order to get her phone back. Of course the pyramids would look great from the outside, but there would be clothes shoved underneath them, dirt left in all of the corners, and they would fall over in a brisk wind. But she'd fool you long enough to get her phone back.)

I don't know, it could be any of those things. I'm not going to dwell on it though, because I know that this roller coaster doesn't just go up. One Jaxon poopfest, and this ship's morale is going down faster than Jenny Slate's career on SNL. But we definitely seem to be in a better place this week than we were this time last week. And I'm not sure why. Ehh, who am I kidding. It's definitely because the Saints are 3-0.

Welcome home, Daddy.....

Get used to that padded material.
It's probably gonna be your wallpaper someday.

In the last blog entry (Click here for a refresher), I outlined our new, fail-safe, fool-proof schedule. No problem, right? Umm.....Not so much. I left last Sunday to go out of town for five days, and left Uncle Saint Keith (That's his new nickname, by the way. Just get used to it.) in charge of making sure everything went smoothly. But me leaving Keith in charge was basically like having a guy come in to interview for a receptionist position at the Prison for Criminal Masterminds, and then having the warden say to him, "Ehh, screw it. You can have my job. I'm out of here." When I called him throughout the week to check on everyone, it kind of sounded like everything was going okay. Although it was hard to hear him over the sound of Racheal yelling in the background repeatedly, "Tell him I hate him for leaving us here. Just tell him. Tell him he's dead to me." My flight home on Friday wasn't supposed to get in until around midnight, but I went to the airport early to see if I could catch an earlier flight out of Syracuse to get back to my warm, loving family a little sooner. I managed to get the last seat on the noon flight out of Syracuse, which would put me in Charleston at around 5 pm.

When Keith picked me up from the airport on Friday afternoon, we had the following exchange. And since we're guys and we try to downplay everything, I'll put what we actually meant in parentheses.

Keith: How was your trip? (I couldn't honestly care less how your trip was. I'm just making small talk.)

Me: It was good. A little cold. We got done what we needed to get done though, so it was good. (I think I'm hungry. Wait.....yep. I'm hungry. I knew I should've asked for more peanuts.)

Keith: That's cool. (What? I wasn't listening. I was just trying to enjoy the first fifteen minutes of relative silence that I've had in five days.)

Me: Sooo, uhh. How was it here? (What level of horribleness did you have to endure while I was gone?)

Keith: Umm, well. It wasn't terrible. But I gotta tell ya. I was starting to lose my patience at the end there. (I was two seconds away from ripping my ears off, and sending them to you in New York. Rach was right, you suck.)

When I got home, a few of the kids seemed to be acting a little strange. (How crazy is it that I can say 'a few of the kids' and not even be referring to half of them.) It didn't take me long to figure out why they were acting strange, because Scarlett immediately told me that they had gotten their progress reports from school. Scarlett then shows off all of her check marks. (She doesn't get letter grades yet. She's upset by this. Because shoving check marks into her siblings faces isn't nearly as satisfying as shoving all A's would be. That's how we know we don't have to worry about her grades next year.) Gavin shows me his progress report, which included all A's and 2 B's. Both of the B's were above 90, and one of those B's was in the class that he got caught cheating on a test. Good job, Gavin. Then Tori showed me her progress report. A's, B's, and a low C in Spanish. Que? En espanol, por favor? Porque? Tu no quieres escuchen en la classe de espanol? Oh, Dios mio? So then we had this conversation:

Me: Sorry, but your grounded until you pull this grade up. And give me your cell phone.

Tori: It's not my fault. Spanish is hard......

Me: So who's fault is it, then? The Spaniards?

Tori: Nooooahh, I'm Seeeeeerious. It's haaarrrrrrd. (For some reason, she elongates words and adds syllables when she's trying to get something.)

Me: So when something is hard, you just roll over and die? Just accept what you get? And besides, It'd be different if I thought you were really trying, but I've never seen you open your spanish book. I've never even heard you say anything in spanish. I haven't even seen so much as you eating a taco this semester.

Tori: Yaaa-Haaaawwwww. I diiiidddddddd studyyyyyyyyy!

Me: Yeah, I don't remember that?

Tori: Rememmmmmmber? On our way home from school that day?

Me: Tori, it takes 9 minutes to get home.

Tori: Yeah, but I studied.

Me: Ohhhhhh. That's right! I forgot about that time! Nevermind, spanish IS hard! You're not grounded. In fact, here's the keys to my car and my credit card. Go buy yourself a poncho.

Unimpressed with her excuses, I turn to Cole's progress report. Here's how his grades played out.

Math 100
Science 92
Social Studies 75
Reading 89
English/Language Arts 76

And miraculously, his excuse held even LESS water than Tori's! Because below his grades was the letter grade breakdown.

93-100 A
86-92 B
77-85 C
66-75 D
<66 F

So Cole's explanation was: "But I really only got one bad grade because my English grade isn't a C or a D. It's somewhere in between. So you can't really count it."

What? Seriously? You had all day to think about an excuse, and THAT'S the best you could come up with? C'mon Cole, you're better than that. Blame Canada or something.

And all of this happened within the first 15 minutes of me being home. I think maybe I should've taken that later flight.

So let's just say that it has been a tumultuous couple of weeks in the King household. And I'm not even including the little ridiculous stories, like......

-Jaxon keeps biting kids in his daycare to the point that his class is starting to look like a Marv Albert hotel room.

-On Saturday, while I was upstairs doing laundry, Jaxon dropped a deuce in his drawws downstairs, and his uncle, Saint Keith, tried unsuccessfully to clean it up, but then came upstairs looking like he just swallowed a shoe and in a slow, somber voice, said, "Hey, man. I think I need your help." - (Which definitely happened) Judging from Keith's facial expression, I thought he was going to ask me to lend him a kidney.

- Every night for the past 2 weeks, Jaxon gotten up at 3:30, crawled into our bed, and kicked the living crap out of us. This is something else I'm going to do when he gets older. I'm going to go over to his house in the middle of the night, sneak into his bedroom, and just repeatedly kick the crap out of him until he wakes up. I mean, after I take a dump on his living room rug.

-Cole has been acting up at school so much that we've been getting daily emails from his teacher asking us if we have any suggestions on how to keep him on task. Rach's suggestion was to beat him with a wooden hanger. (That wasn't technically her suggestion, but we did set up an appointment with the principal to see if we could bring back corporal punishment.) And after talking with his principal and his teacher, we came up with a plan that I hope might work. We've given Cole a full pardon from being grounded. (If he were to serve out his current grounding sentences consecutively, he would be grounded until roughly 2087........And that's with good behavior.) Instead, we're going to go on a day by day basis. If Cole is able to get ready in the morning without us having to tell him 8.342 times to "brush your teeth, brush your hair, put your shoes on,- no wait. Put your socks on first-, get your bookbag, get in the truck", AND if his teacher gives us a good report from school that day, AND if he does his homework in a timely manner, then he will be able to play video games for an hour that afternoon. So far, so good. We've had 2 good days in a row.

-I caught Gavin taking $2 out of my wallet. When we asked him why he did it, he said that he was tired of Cole being grounded by himself all the time. And I half way believed him.

-We're trying to get Jaxon to be able to go to the bathroom completely by himself. So we told him, "Jax, go use the potty." A couple minutes later, I hear an excited Jaxon yelling, "Come see, Daddy. Come see. I poo-pood." And yep. Walk into the bathroom to see a big steaming pile of crap on the floor next to the toilet. But hey, at least we're getting closer.

-Despite the constant tattling and fight picking, I guess Scarlett has, by default, elevated herself into the 'most well-behaved' (that definitely requires air quotes) position. Her teacher had nothing but nice things to say about her, and she's making lots of friends at school, albeit stereotypical ones. We saw this on the wall outside her classroom.

The King-Sized Penitentiary........

You boys get used to wearing matching outfits............................

I have a feeling I know what I'll be doing from 6:00 - 7:30 pm every Tuesday and Thursday starting in the year 2029. At least that's what time I think prison visiting hours are. Hopefully, we'll be able to find a prison that will hold both men and women for all kinds of charges, including smuggling, fraud, grand theft, contempt of court, and assault. Because I hate to think that Rach and I are going to be stuck driving from prison to prison, all over the country, just to see our kids. That would just be horrible on us. Now yes, I'm kind of joking a little bit, but seriously, all of our kids are going to jail. Here's my predictions:

Tori

Prediction (2019):
At age 21, miraculously, Tori talks us into letting her to go to spring break in Mexico. (For the record, I can not envision any possible way that she can convince me to let her go. 2009 Jeff is saying 'Not in a million years!' But I think that 2019 Jeff will be so incredibly beaten down that he won't have the ability to make rational decisions. Just imagine a 39 year old with Al Davis' cognitive ability.) Not only that, but she even somehow convinces us to pay for it. I'm guessing that she uses some sort of Jedi mind trick. But she ensures us that she's not going to do anything wrong. Upon getting into Mexico, she's given a list of things that she's not allowed to bring back into the United States. She has this conversation with the border patrol agent:

Tori: But I really want to bring back some bootleg makeup and dvds and such.

Border Patrol Agent: Um, Really? Miss, that's definitely illegal.

Tori: But I really want to. Can I?

Border Patrol Agent: Are you being serious? No. That's against the law. It's a federal crime. If you get caught, you will go to prison.

Tori: So you're saying I'll only get in trouble if I get caught?

Border Patrol Agent: Um, well. I guess so. But I would strongly advise against it.

Tori: Okay, Great!

5 days later, Tori gets busted trying to 'sneak' 500 lbs of contraband back into the country, and gets sentenced to 3 years in federal prison.

Reason For Prediction:
There is a 'No Cell Phones' rule at Tori's school. In big bold letters as you walk in the school: NO CELL PHONES. We also have a rule in our house that you are not allowed to bring your cell phone to school. Yet right after Tori's school lets out, I get a text from Tori that says, 'Heyz! R U cmng to gt me? lol mk' So we take her phone away for a week. Then she tells us that her principal told her it was okay for her to bring it to school, as long as she kept it turned off and in her bookbag all day. Rach calls the school, and the principal says, 'No. I never said that. If she gets caught with her phone at school, it will get taken away.' Then Tori convinces me to call a school administrator who tells me that although cell phones are not allowed, it won't get taken away unless someone hears or sees it. The next morning I saw her principal standing outside as I was dropping her off. I asked him the same question, and he gave me the same answer. But Tori thinks that since she doesn't agree with the rule, and she really wants to bring her phone so that she can text us after school, that she should be allowed to bring her phone. Tell it to the judge.


Gavin

Prediction (2025):
As the owner/operator of a hugely successful custom auto shop (imagine the Pimp my Ride company), Gavin is making more money than he knows what to do with. He is approached by a seedy, greasy looking businessman who talks Gavin into letting him do the company's accounting. The swarmy businessman suggests some less than legal ideas, and Gavin goes along with it. Within a year, the IRS is raids the building and an unsuspecting Gavin gets 3 years for tax evasion and and fraud. He would've gotten a much longer sentence, but as soon as the IRS was investigating him, he turned himself in and admitted to everything that he had done. And luckily, Gavin gets out in 18 months due to good behavior. (See picture below for explanation)

Reason For Prediction:
Gavin got caught cheating on a test yesterday. His teacher, Mrs. Hale, called Rach yesterday afternoon, and told her the whole story. Apparently, Gavin and the other boy were looking off of each other's papers, and then handed in their tests at the exact same time with all of the exact same answers with all of the conspicuousness of a fart in a hot car. Mrs. Hale confronted the two cheaters, and Gavin immediately admitted to everything, while the other boy took the Barry Bonds/Roger Clemens plan of denial. Mrs. Hale was extra disappointed in Gavin since she gives out prizes every Friday to the week's best student, and that student was going to be Gavin right up until that incident. Getting a zero on that test would bring Gav's social studies grade from a 100 to a 50, and progress reports were due yesterday. So she allowed Gavin and the other boy to take the test after school. The sad part is, Gavin did better by himself than he did when he was cheating. I asked Gavin why he would cheat when he knew all of the answers anyway, and he couldn't tell me. I honestly think that he didn't know what to do in that situation. Mrs. Hale said that she could tell that Gavin was extremely remorseful, and almost in tears. So this morning, Gavin made this note to give to his teacher:

Gavin gets in trouble the least, yet he seems
to know the most about getting out of trouble

Cole

Prediction (2020):
As a 20 year old student at LSU, Cole offers to help an old lady across a busy Baton Rouge intersection. As the two get about half-way across the street, a butterfly catches Cole's eye. He stops to see where the butterfly is going, then notices a cloud that looks like a horseshoe. As he's staring at the cloud, a bird flies into view, and so he watches the bird intently. Between the butterfly, the cloud, and the bird, he barely even noticed that the old lady that he was helping was hit by a bus. From the bus passengers' perspective, it appeared that Cole pushed the lady into the street. So Cole goes to trial for manslaughter. There was enough evidence to get the case thrown out of court, but at the hearing, when the judge asked Cole how he was going to plea, Cole got sidetracked by a shiny nickel that someone had left on the floor. The judge assumed that Cole was being disrespectful, and threw him into jail.

Reason For Prediction:
Cole is a space cadet. Not like, 'Hey, Cole's gonna be an astronaut!' But more like, 'Hey, Cole's on another freakin planet right now!' To say that it has become an issue for his teacher would be quite the understatement. And this is a teacher who won Teacher of the Year for the whole state last year! And she's at her wit's end. She's had to email Racheal to see if she has any suggestions on how to keep Cole on task. She said she had to move Cole's desk right next to hers, and she constantly has to tell him, 'Cole, Do number 1. Cole, Do number 1. Cole, Do number 1. Cole, Do number 1. Cole, Do number 1. Cole, Do number 2. Cole, Do number 2. Cole, Do number 2. Cole, Do number 2. Cole, Do number 2.' I tell you what; If she repeats as teacher of the year, it would be more impressive than if the '97 Florida Marlins would've repeated as World Series Champs. She may want to lower her expectations a little bit. I would consider it a win if she didn't light herself on fire and jump out of a window after the first semester.


Scarlett

Prediction (2020):
An 18 year old Scarlett is driving home from school one day, when she is pulled over for putting her makeup on while she's driving. The cop is nice enough, though, and offers to give her a warning if she promises not to put her makeup on while she's driving anymore. Scarlett rolls her eyes, and let's out a frustrated sigh. The cop has no choice but to write her a ticket. At her court date, the judge decides to give Scarlett leniency, and reduce her ticket to a seatbelt violation. She tells Scarlett not to put her makeup on anymore, and Scarlett has the same reaction that she had with the police officer. The judge demands an apology, and upon Scarlett's adamant refusal, is forced to throw her in jail for contempt of court. The judge tells Scarlett that all she has to do is apologize and she'll be free, but Scarlett just glares at the judge with daggers in her eyes. Scarlett ends up staying in jail for the rest of her life simply because she is incapable of apologizing. Yet she offered up to disclose to the judge every crime that her brothers had ever comitted. And even some stuff that they didn't even do. She was even bringing up the stuff that I'm writing about now; which would make that 15 years ago. Now I'm officially confused. How did the writers of Back To The Future keep all of those facts straight?

Reason For Prediction:
Scarlett is just like her mother. The only thing that tops her beauty is her hardheadedness. She will not admit a mistake. She's like an incredibly cute version of Dubya. She would, no kidding, rather chew off her left arm than apologize to anyone. But she's quick to let you know when someone else is doing something that they're not supposed to be doing. 'Daddy, is Cole supposed to be eating with his fork in his left hand? Yeah? Okay. I'm just checking.....Daddy, Is Gavin allowed to ride his bike in the street? He's not? Oooh! Well I saw him doing that earlier!!'


Jaxon

Prediction (2025):
During his freshman year at LSU, Jaxon is fortunate enough to land tickets to the BCS National Championship Game to see LSU play Ohio State. As Jaxon is walking in, an usher takes his tickets to help him find his seats. Confused by this, and wanting to make sure he gets to keep the ticket stub as a souvenir, Jaxon headbutts the usher, punches him in the stomach, then laughs as he bites off the usher's nose. He misses the game, gets banned from the SuperDuperDome, and goes to jail for 7 years for aggravated assault.

Reason For Prediction:
Jaxon's babysitter had to move to Atlanta about a month ago, so he had to start going to daycare. Everyday when we pick him up, he gets a status sheet on how he did that day. There are three categories: 'I seemed happy today', 'I obeyed my teacher today', and 'I was nice to my friends today'. And there are three possible answers: Happy Face, Normal Face, and Sad Face. And pretty much everyday, he gets a Happy face for 'I seemed happy today', and sad faces for all the rest. It's even got to the point where they're having to find new places to write comments on the paper about what he did that day. Jaxon punched 2 kids today. Jaxon kicked someone today. Jaxon headbutted someone today. Jaxon gouged someone's eyes out today. (Other than the gouging, he did all of those.) This past Friday, they sent him home with a note that we have to sign and send back because he bit two other kids. And it seems like more times than not, it's because one of the other little rugrats took something of his. I kind of imagine the teacher saying, 'Jaxon, why did you do that?!' as he stands over an unconcious victim. He slowly turns to her, and in his 2 year old Clint Eastwood voice, he says, 'He took something that belonged to me.' Maybe that's not what actually happens, but that's what's going through my head.

Don't even think about taking these floaties from me.
I will gut you.

So that's where we're at right now. And if the kids want to go to prison, we're gonna show them what it's like. We're implementing a new schedule. And I mean a serious schedule:

15:00-15:15 Snack
15:15-16:30 Homework
16:30-17:15 Cel- I mean room cleaning
17:15-18:30 Recreation (As long as they are not currently grounded)
18:30-19:15 Supper
19:15-19:30 Female bath time
19:30-19:45 Male bath time
19:45-20:15 Teeth brushing and next day clothing preparation
20:15-20:30 Family Bible Study
20:30 Bed Time


We've had three weeks to get used to the new school schedules, so now we're ready. No more attitudes. No more 6 hours to do your homework. No more kicking the cat. No more arguing. No more fighting with each other. No more dirty rooms. No more standing around after we tell you to do something. We're cracking the whip, and we're doing it together as a family. Oh, wait. I've got to fly to upstate New York for a week for work. Ehh, I'm sure Rach, Max, and Keith can handle it. I've got Adirondack furniture to look at.

Ain't Technology Incredible?.......

I messed with some of the innards of my handheld people talking device (cell phone), so that I can record motion video clips on such device and send the motion video clips (through the tubes on the interweb) to your wife, who will then try to show these video clips to you on her computer box, even though you can't see anything, which will just require her to verbally explain what's on the screen anyway.
Level 2 - Tech Challenged
Example: My mom

Computer Knowledge Background:
She's almost computer literate. She can email, navigate through windows, get on the internet, etc. But she only knows how to do exactly what she knows how to do; no more and no less. Introducing new concepts is not an option. We've tried setting her up with a facebook account 13 times. But she's perfectly content as long as she can get to this blog website, upload pictures to walgreens.com, and send emails to everyone who will listen about how smart Jaxon is.

Explanation of Jailbroken iPhone Benefits:
I can now take videos of the kids and instantly upload them to either the blog or to the following website:http://www.qik.com/kingjeff1. Because apparently you aren't getting enough of a fix with just the blog alone. I'm pretty sure that in the not so distant future, you'll be able to virtually sit in my living room 24 hours a day. I imagine it will be a lot like the living portraits hanging on the walls in Harry Potter.



Level 3 - Tech Dangerous
Example: My wife

Computer Knowledge Background:
She knows just enough to accomplish day-to-day tasks, but is stubborn enough to be really, really dangerous. She still sends me documents to pdf for her, and uses me as her personal tech support, yet she won't believe any of the explanations that I give her as to why something won't work. She'll somehow get it into her head that some crazy impossible feature is actually quite possible. And she'll say things like, "I know it can be done. I heard the guy at the post office talking about it." or "Of course it's possible. I saw it on Oprah." These sentences are inevitably followed responses like 'I'm sorry, but we can't turn your laptop into a hovercraft!' and 'Do you understand how much work would be involved in installing a scratch and sniff monitor?'. Which is then immediately followed by her Googling the ridiculous idea, installing a bunch of unnecessary items, deleting a bunch of necessary ones, changing around the system files, then making me fix it.

Explanation of Jailbroken iPhone Benefits:
I can now set your phone up to serve as a wireless access point so that you will always have an internet connection for your laptop. So from now on, you can use your laptop to Google ridiculous things while you're driving, which will be much safer than having to focus on the much smaller iphone screen. (Did I mention how much I love my wife yet today? I'm feeling a very strong desire to profess my love for her right now. Not sure why. I guess this is the feeling that dogs get when they know a storm's coming.)



Level 4- Tech Sufficient
Example: Jaxon

Computer Knowledge Background:
Has known how to unlock my iPhone, and open the youtube application so that he can watch 'The Wiggles' videos for more than half of his life. He's recently learned how to play JellyCar, Bobsled Mania, Monkey Island, and NFL2010 on my phone.

Explanation of Jailbroken iPhone Benefits:
I fixed my phone so that I can save 'The Wiggles' videos from youtube, which means you won't ever have to angrily yell at the phone for taking too long to load ever again. It also means I can download more silly games for you to learn how to play.

As you can see, he's wide awake. That's because he doesn't actually
sleep in this bed. He lays in it until we fall asleep,
then comes and gets in our bed

Level 4- Tech Savvy
Example: Cole

Computer Knowledge Background:
When he was 5, Scarlett would get up in the middle of the night and turning the TV on. So I unplugged the TV. She got Cole to fix it (Remember, she's Racheal's clone). More late night TV. So I unplugged the receiver from the TV. She got Cole to fix it (I'm sensing a generational pattern). More late night TV. I completely unplugged everything from everything else; TV, cables, DirecTV receiver, and DVD player. She got him to fix it again. And I'm sure you can guess Scarlett's response when I asked her about it. Yep. "Cole did it!" (Seriously, evil genius) Of course, Cole had no idea what was going on. Never bothered to ask why everything kept getting disconnected. It's just like his video game skills. He might not know WHY he's doing something on that arbitrary video game level, but he knows that's how he gets to the next level. If Cole was playing a gene splicing game against a biomedical engineer (Doesn't that game sound fun?) he'd clone a human before the engineer could get a weird looking ear on the back of a rat.

Explanation of Jailbroken iPhone Benefits:
1100010111011011 10110111101010011111010101110110 110111011101001011011 1010111011 1011101 10110 1101111101 101101001011101 110111101 101111010101 1011011011101 011011 101101 1101010 01011000010 11 10101 1010011101110111 1011011010 101011 101 1011001 10001 11101 101 1101 10111 010101 1101 1101 10

If there was ever a list of acceptable things to do with your cousin
as a kid ONLY, I think this would be on it

So here's a couple of cutesie Jaxon videos to get you started. But I've been thinking. Anyone can post cutesie videos for people to see. Awww, look how adorable. But adorable is overrated. I think I might take the opposite approach. Because for every cute Jaxon video, there's a video of Cole and Scarlett arguing about who got the bigger piece of cake. Or a video of Tori getting her phone taken away. Or a video of Gavin doing.....ummm......uhh......let's see here...well, a video of Gavin doing exactly what we told him to do. (Gavin is seriously the only one that routinely does what we tell him to do. If it weren't for Gavin, Cole would probably be grounded for the next 832 years. I'm not even exaggerating.) But be prepared for any kind of video. It doesn't even have to be that interesting. Like maybe a video of Keith doing the dishes. Or a video of Jaxon eating macaroni and cheese. Trust me, watching Jaxon eat mac and cheese is more riveting than anything presently on TV. (Except for maybe Tool Academy 2 on VH1. It's by far the greatest show ever made.) Anyway, I've got to go. Rach wants me to get one of those Harry Potter frames installed for my mom. She's Googling it right now.

The King-Sized Bed and Breakfast.......

Can you hurry up and take that picture?
I think this thing's starting to smell my fear.

For those of you who are unaware, we have somewhat of an open door policy at our house. That's actually a bit of an understatement. (I wrote about some of our more noted house guests in a little more detail in this post, Click Here) Seriously though, we've had more extended stay guests than the Residence Inn, and yet we've got to be the absolute worst bed and breakfast to stay at since the Bates Motel. Because when you stay with us, there's a good chance that you might have one or two kids crawl into bed with you in the middle of the night; I wake up at 4:30 am and 'not so quietly' make a protein shake; and as far as breakfast is concerned, you'll be lucky to find a hidden Ego waffle in the back of the freezer. And don't expect a clean plate to put it on, either. Our house has gotten so crazy that Cato Kaelin heard we have a room available. But sorry, Cato, your room's been taken. It's been scooped up by my cousin Keith. Now for those of you who know Keith, you're probably thinking, "What? Keith? Moving into a house with 5 kids? A house that considers it late when the street lights come on? A house that's had the same 3 beers in the fridge for the past 4 months? A house where video games are considered a nuisance? A house where late night Doritos binges are discouraged?" But for those of you who don't know Keith, let me give you a quick wiki type description. He is the 25 year old son of my mom's twin sister, which technically makes him my cousin, although he's always been like more of a brother since our moms are twins and he lived next door to us growing up. But as close as we are, it's almost impossible to accurately describe him. Because he's really smart, but just did enough to get by in school. He's not terribly outgoing, but he has more friends than a Mexican with a pickup truck. He's pretty quiet, but yet one of the funniest people I know. He's somewhat lucky, but then never can seem to catch a break. He's great with kids, but he fears changing a diaper like Mel Gibson fears the Jews (Couldn't decide which way to go here with the fear jokes. Thought about maybe - like an Englishman fears the dentist? Like the girls of More To Love fear a salad? Like rational people fear Obama? Ehh, I'll stick with Mel. He's Australian. He can take it.) Keith is truly a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma......

When we were growing up, he was kind of wrongfully labeled as somewhat of the black sheep of the family. He was constantly getting busted in some sort of kakamamie scheme (Yes, that's how you spell kakamamie. I had our research department look it up.) I'm four years older than Keith, and the stuff that he was getting busted doing was usually the same stuff that I had been getting away with four years prior. But since my older brother never did anything that he wasn't supposed to do, and I rarely got caught (Just kidding mom, I was perfect, just like you thought), our parents kind of thought that Keith got into more trouble growing up than Lindsay Lohan. It seemed like once a week, he would get grounded, and my parents would send me over to 'talk some sense into him'. But in actuality, we'd have this conversation:

Me: Keith, I'm very disappointed. I can't believe you.

Keith: What?

Me: How are you constantly getting caught?

Keith: No. You don't understand. I had the perfect plan this time.

Me: You said that the last time.

Keith: No, but I mean it this time. This plan was perfect.

Me: (Feeling like Indigo Montoya in The Princess Bride) I don't think that word means what you think it means.

But to be honest, most of his plans were really good, and a lot more detailed and way more thought out than any of mine ever were. He just couldn't catch a break. One time, when he was trying to sneak out of the house, he made sure to turn off the beeping buttons on the alarm before his parents went to sleep. Then disarmed the alarm after they were sleeping, snuck out, then some freak lightning storm hit, lightning struck the house, his dad woke up, saw there was a power surge, turned the alarm back on (along with the beeping button feature), and of course, Keith set the alarm off when he came back inside. But even with all of the bad luck, there was a hint of good luck mixed in. When his parents came into the hallway and saw Keith standing there, confused because the alarm was back on, fumbling with the loudness of the buttons, and frantically trying to turn the alarm off; they thought they caught him trying to sneak out. Not sneak back in. They just assumed he was too retarded to turn the alarm off before he left. So since he didn't actually sneak out according to them, he got off easy. Every time he got caught it was the same explanation. "but I had the perfect plan."

For the past few years, Keith's been living in Louisiana, working at various places to pay the bills, bouncing around from Baton Rouge to New Orleans to Slidell, hanging out with friends, and just kind of getting by. We've been talking about him moving up here for a while now, as sort of a way to get a fresh start away from all of the Louisiana shenanigans. And until recently, it's always just been talk of something that would happen at some arbitrary date in the future; kind of like the same way Rach talks about buying a new dishwasher. (She's not too concerned with us not having a dishwasher for the past month. You know why? Guess who does the dishes.) Anyway, Keith recently lost his job and his place to live within a couple of weeks of each other, so now makes perfect sense for him to get out of the Louisiana quicksand, and come to sunny South Cacalaca. Hell take the top bunk in the boys room and they'll double up in the bottom. Just kidding. He's got his own bedroom and bathroom downstairs, we'll help him find a job, help him figure out what he really wants to do, and he helps us by closing the gap between number of adults and number of kids. On the surface, it appears that we're doing Keith a great big favor. And sure, you could look at it like that. But I say it's us getting more out of the deal. You see, it's hard raising five kids without any family nearby. Even if we didn't have the kids, it's still difficult moving to a new city by yourselves and establishing a home. So far, we've been able to get Maxine up here (Who has been awesome, by the way), but that's the only family we have here in South Carolina. And as of this past weekend, we've officially been here for over 4 years. And we really do like it here. We have houses here, we have careers here, we have friends here, our kids are rooted here; but apart from Maxine, we're on a family island. And I think the kids can kind of sense that too. They're far more excited than any of us to have Uncle Keith moving in. It's another grown up here to love them, help them, and give them more attention. And not to mention the added benefits that Rach and I get of having another grown up here to help out with day to day activities.

Keith, not only teaching Jaxon how to be really bad at Warshers,
but also teaching him how to be formal, and yet still like to party.

And from Keith's perspective, this is going to be like moving from Earth to Mars. And I don't mean the uninhabited, desolate, Red Planet, dusty Mars, either. I'm talking about the freakshow type Mars, like the Mars from Total Recall (minus the 3-Boobed lady, of course). This is not exactly the ideal living situation, and definitely not what he's used to. But Keith and I agree that this might be exactly what he needs. Because this is anything but 'the perfect plan'.