Just me being retarded..........

I was sitting in a meeting the other day, and I started to doodle a little picture. It started out as just a picture of a nose, but then grew into pretty much the ultimate 'I Love You' greeting card. I was going to give it to Rach, but I wanted to make sure I had the perfect caption first. So if anyone can beat these, let me know.

And by the way: No, I'm not an artist. And, Yes, I somehow remain gainfully employed.

"Everyone nose that I picked my one true love"

or how about....

"It 'tissue who gives me something to run to"

or maybe.....

"God bless you for being nothing to sneeze at"

And P.S. How about that tuxedo t-shirt? I've never been more proud of a piece of artwork.

A King-Sized Christmas.......

Okay, so I know what you must be thinking: What on earth is going on with the King clan? Is everything okay? Did their life quiet down to the point that there is nothing left to write about? Is Jeff just lazy and keeps forgetting to write a blog? Has there been so much traveling that Jeff couldn't tell you what state all of his kids are in at any given time? Did everyone get sick to the point that the Publix pharmacy people yell out, "Jeff!" every time he walks in like he's Norm from Cheers? Did Jeff gain so much weight that he's starting to resemble Norm from Cheers? Did Rach go completely crazy and stash the bodies somewhere? Did she at least go crazy enough to make Jeff pull up more carpet? Is this intro ever going to end? Will he please stop writing in the 3rd person?

And the answers: Same old, same old. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Pretty much. Not yet. Absolutely. I think so. And, Oh, alright.

A couple of months ago, Rach and I were thinking about what we could get the kids for their big combined present. Rach wanted a trampoline, but I narrowly and luckily convinced her otherwise since the slope of our backyard would consistently catapult the kids over the fence into the woods. Not so surprisingly, though, the trampoline would be a smidge safer than last year's gift, a zip line that the kids ride that shoots them through the backyard directly into the wooden fence. I'm not even joking.

Our next and only other idea was a trip to Disney World. A brilliant idea. We figured that the kids would, for the first time ever, unanimously agree on something. Wrong. When we told them that we wanted to take them to Disney World, but that this would be our only present to them, four of the kids excitedly screamed for joy (even Jaxon got in the mix), while Gavin just sat there and said, "Naw man, I want my presents." We didn't even get a chance to convince him before Tori chimed in, "Gavin, we'll still get presents from everyone else, like Maw-maw and Paw-paw and stuff." Then Cole added his two cents, "Yeah, and we'll still get presents from Santa Claus!" Ummm, wait. What? Then Rach and I had to clarify, "Umm, well actually, we'll have to send Santa an email and tell him to buy you your tickets to Disney World for us. And then we'll pay for us to get down there and get a place to stay." Phew. That was close. Thank goodness for technology. When I was little, we had to hand write letters to Santa Claus and pay for postage. Not to mention the fact that you'd have to wait up to two weeks to get a response. Now, all we have to do is just post a message on Santa's wall, or send him a tweet. I don't understand how people managed to live before the 90s.

Anyway, Gavin conceded, and Yay! We're going to Disney world! But not yet. We're not going until next week, to give us time to get all the reservations and details ironed out. But it should be fun. We're getting a house down there. Check it out.

But before we do all of that, we had to make it through Christmas. We had to get all of the kids back down to Louisiana, and like always, there were logistical issues. Rach and I brought Gavin, Scarlett, and Jaxon early last week. But Cole and Tori couldn't miss school, so they left with Maxine two days later. Then, when we got down there, we didn't know where we were supposed to be, which grandparent got which kid, who was staying where for how long, etc, etc, etc. As soon as we get down there we kind of get hit by one of those cartoon tornadoes that leaves us standing there burnt and alone when it leaves.

But the kids definitely made a good decision. Sure, WE might not be getting them any presents, but they still got presents from grandparents, step-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles, lousy-aunts, lousy-uncles (Ba-dum SHA. Thank you. I'll be here all week), friends, neighbors, pen-pals, homeless people. They made out like bandits. They've been opening presents for 2 weeks straight, and we still get to go to Disney. They got an Xbox360, or as I like to call it; The Ultimate Bargaining Chip. "Boys, go clean your room, or no Xbox......Boys, brush your teeth, or no Xbox.....Boys, go mow the lawn, or no Xbox.......Boys, go finish digging that moat around the house, or no Xbox. Boys,.....Well, you get the idea. Scarlett got 2 mp3 players (one for each ear, I guess). Tori got a new phone. Jaxon got a bike and a scooter. And he also got so many presents that, at one point, when I told him he had more presents to open, he let out a huge grunt because I was taking him away from his new 'Ramp Romp Car Set'. (Quick note: Jaxon is so completely obsessed with cars right now. Any kind of car, it doesn't matter. His favorite game to play is the punch buggy game. He constantly asks me what NASCAR number all of his cars are. The ONLY movie that he'll watch is the movie 'Cars'. He's obsessed. So you might be thinking that I'd be sacred that he'll grow up to be a NASCAR crazed redneck. But then you don't know me too well. Although it's true that I'm not much of a NASCAR fan, I am a fan of comedies about NASCAR. So his new nickname is El Diablo (It's, like, Spanish for a fighting chicken). We're gonna watch The Highlander together. And I keep telling him that if he's not first, he's last. This is gonna be awesome!)

Anyway, the point is, everyone had a real nice Christmas. And we still have Disney to look forward to. Which means that things won't be quieting down anytime soon. But who would want that anyway?

Things that happen when Racheal gets bored..........

I know I've written about this before, but it can't be overstated. Racheal is crazy. I mean really crazy. Let me explain.

I enjoy Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They're probably two of my favorite days of the week. Not only because Racheal is off of work and we generally get to spend more time together, but also because of how interesting it is when I come home from work. I have absolutely no clue what I'm going to come home to. No idea, whatsoever. Trying to predict what I'm going to come home to see would be like trying to guess what kind of diseases the cast of MTV's The Jersey Shore was carrying. It could literally be anything. Maybe I come home and she ripped up all of the carpet out of a bedroom. Maybe I come home and she painted the bathroom. Again. Maybe it's something simple and I come home and she hung up life-size pictures of the kids in the front hallway. Maybe it's something outlandish and I come home and she made homemade meatballs. Or maybe I come home and she moved all of Jaxon's stuff into the boys' room, and moved Tori's stuff into Jaxon's room. (Which actually makes sense because Jaxon spends exactly zero minutes a day in his room. He sleeps in the boys' room, plays in the boys' room, makes messes in the boys' room, etc. And since Tori and Scarlett are basically reincarnations of Racheal and Maxine, I'm sure we're only about six weeks away from one of them poisoning the other. Anyway.) Maybe I come home to Racheal sitting on the couch in her pajamas surrounded by a sea of Laffy Taffy wrappers. Maybe I come home and everybody's gone. (At which point I usually panic, because it opens up the possibilities of what they could be doing to all of planet earth.) Or maybe I come home and she's rearranging the kitchen cabinets for the 11,000th time. (All of those things have happened, by the way.) But maybe, just maybe, I come home and she's done something completely indescribable. Something so ridiculous that I'm still having trouble putting it into words. I guess I'll just show you:

When I first saw this, I thought maybe that Chuck E. Cheese
had some sort of new Photoshop ride. I was wrong.

Yep. You see that correctly. That's my blond headed baby. With black hair. Looking like a baby Wayne Newton. Except Jaxon still has all of the skin left on his face, of course. But wait. It gets worse. When I got home, I made a comment about how he looked like Eddie Munster, but that the curtains didn't match the drapes. (Meaning that his hair and eyebrows were different colors. Get your mind out of the gutter.) Anyway, big mistake. That prompted Rach to get out her makeup and go to work. She drew him some black eyebrows. Then she painted his nails. Then she gave him some guyliner. She said she wanted him to look like a little baby rockstar. Think Bret Michaels without the hair plugs and do-rag. So she put him in a little shirt and tie to make him look Emo. Sadly, he went from looking like Eddie Munster to Adam Glambert. It was terrible. I'd show pictures, but I couldn't bring myself to take any. Keith tried to make me feel better by saying, "You know, if you take away the fingernail polish and the makeup, and put some glasses on him, he kind of looks like a baby Clark Kent." Thanks Keith. Nice try.

And now, it's Wednesday afternoon, and who knows what I'm going to find when I get home. Come to think of it, I'm starting to hate Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Driving, Gobble Gobble, More Driving, and Miley

Mimi canceled her decorating plans for this picture

Three weeks ago, we had our whole Thanksgiving planned out. We were all staying here in town, and we were going to cook Thanksgiving dinner at our house. End of story. Well, actually, we had thought about going to eat dinner over at a friend's house, but bringing our tornado of a family to a Thanksgiving dinner would be a HORRIBLE idea. I mean horrible. We might as well bring Colonel Frank Slade with us (That's Al Pacino from Scent of a Woman for all of you people who were living under a rock during the early nineties - Whoo-AA!!). Anyway, my grandma has been in and out of the hospital for a few months, and on the Friday before Thanksgiving, my mom called and said that she was back in the hospital and not doing so well. So my original thought was that I could head back to Louisiana that weekend, spend some time with my Maw-Maw, and come back in time to spend Thanksgiving with Rach and the kids. Rach wasn't going to be able go with me because she had to work all weekend and couldn't take off since she was already off Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And she was taking off the following Saturday to take the girls to the Miley Cyrus concert in Columbia. Keith wanted to go see Maw-Maw too, but he was already planning on going back to Louisiana the day before Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with his mom since his mom was going to be by herself. She was going to be by herself because my mom had already made plans to go visit my brother in Washington DC to help him decorate his new house.

Quick side note: The idea of my mom helping my brother decorate his new house is absolutely hilarious to me. I could just imagine the conversations between the two of them:

B-Lo: So do you think I should hang up this giant LSU blanket on this wall? Or this wall? What about this 1995 Intramural Runner-Up Trophy? I should put that by the doorway so people can see it when they walk in, right?

Mom: But if you put that blanket there, you won't have room to hang up all of these fake floral arrangements! And where are you going to put the 17 life size photos of Jaxon?

But I digress. My mom had decided to go to DC because my dad wasn't going to be home anyway. You see, he was flying to Minnesota to have much needed surgery on his back. Why is he flying all the way to Minnesota to have surgery? Good question. And the answer is: My dad knows a guy. He ALWAYS knows a guy. Always. I think he knows at least one person in the New Orleans area in every profession that exists (except back surgeon, apparently). And I don't think he ever paid for anything either. Need your brakes fixed? Dad knows a guy. Need a haircut? Dad knows a guy. Need to get bailed out of jail again? Dad knows a guy. I remember going fishing with my dad when I was younger, and if we happened to come back with a boatload of fish, we'd have to make about 15 stops on the way home so my dad could stay in good standing with all of these people that he knew. I guess it was sort of like the seafood mafia.

But I digress again. So instead of Keith and I driving to Louisiana separately, we decided to wait until Wednesday and take Cole, Gavin, and Jaxon with us for a boys Thanksgiving. I was kind of excited about driving down there with Keith, since normally, Racheal's version of helping me drive is to keep me awake by talking on her cell phone in the passenger seat.....When she's not sleeping, of course. Which, coincidentally is just about as helpful as Keith's version of helping me drive, which included buying me energy drinks and watching movies on my laptop. He drove for exactly zero minutes on the entire trip. In Keith's defense though, he did offer to drive every time we stopped for gas. After we were all back in the car. And I was in the driver seat. And we were getting back on the interstate. But he did ask, though.

All in all, it was a good trip. I'll go into more detail tomorrow, but everyone got to do something special:

Keith and I got to see our moms and our Maw-Maw.

Jaxon got to watch the movie 'Cars' 27 times. (He would not let us change the movie. At all. For 27 total hours of driving. Same movie, over and over. Then when we got to Louisiana, my mom DVR'd the movie off of the Disney channel so he could watch it on loop some more. If you want to get punched in the face, just walk up to Keith or I, and say, "Ka-Chow!")

Keith was actually trying to shake the

'Cars' movie demon out of Jaxon

Gavin got to shoot a hog on a hunting trip with his dad. (Which now puts Gavin in the lead in our 'lifetime pig shooting contest'. He's winning 1-0.)

Cole got to go to an LSU game in Tiger Stadium. (And he got to see the Les Miles that gets ridiculously lucky at the end of close games. And not the Les Miles that treats the end games like it's opposite day.)

Tori and Scarlett got to see Miley Cyrus in concert. Rach took them to get their hair done and got them sassy new outfits to wear for the concert. (Mark my words right now, Miley Cyrus: If you turn my daughters into mini-Britney Spears's, I will hunt you down and force you and your dad to listen to your own Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana songs for weeks on end. Without the benefit of radio commercials. And don't think that you can hide from me by wearing a blonde wig and slapping a mustache on your dad. I won't fall for that.)

And best of all, Rach got 4 days without my retardedness. Which, from what I've been told, is priceless. (Just kidding. She loves me. And she happens to be a bigger Miley fan than Tori and Scarlett put together. And something tells me that she wasn't exactly miserable while she was shopping for outfits for the girls. And although I have no evidence of it, I'm pretty sure she got something for herself).

So you see, everyone wins. Even my parents' dog Cassi:

The funniest part was right after this picture was taken,
my Maw-Maw woke up from a 7 hour nap and said,
"I KNOW that that's not MY hat on that dog's head!"

My nanny's dog was not as lucky:

That may look like a hug, but it'll
turn into a headlock REAL quick