I'm saddened to report the death the rap star known only to a few as "Cubed Ice". No, I didn't take a bat to it; it died of natural causes. My guess is it had a heart attack as a result of  my hubby's attempts to fix it. About an hour after he tried to "fix it", Cubed Ice stopped its chanting and resumed working as it had in its golden days.  For an entire hour and a half, buttons worked as they were supposed to without endless prattle.   Then, sometime during the night, it did it's final shut down.

I'm almost sorry to see it go.  Afterall, we had built a relationship with our endless discussions. It would say "cubed ice ", I would say "Shut up."  It would say "cubed ice ", I would say "stop talking to me!" (Like most of my discussions with my husband really.) After several hours, I really had thought we had something; that we were connecting. But alas... 
                                                                       ...that and I can't get any damned cubed ice anymore.

Anyone who's been to our house knows that we have a stupid computerized fridge.  NO, I did not choose this fridge.  It has a computerized control panel allowing you to switch between water, crushed ice & cubed ice delivery options among other things.  And of course, it has the voice option so the fridge will talk as you press various buttons.    This is annoying in normal operating mode.  However, the computer fritzed out about a year ago.  We didn't bother fixing it since the important part (keeping stuff cool) still works.  The problem with the computer is that the panel is only operational immediately following a power surge but only for a few minutes. The kids & I have known this for quite sometime but apparently my husband was not in the know because... yesterday we had a power surge and he mistakenly thought the computer was fixed.  And he turned the voice option back on. And then the computer froze again locked in it last set state.  The problem is that part of the fritzing is that the fridge thinks the "cubed iced" button is constantly being pressed.  And so now the fridge is repeatedly saying "cubed ice","cubed ice", "cubed ice","cubed ice","cubed ice","cubed ice","cubed ice"...you get the picture.  Exactly 22 times a minute.  Yes, I counted.  Several times :(

And we can't turn the voice option off until the next power surge.  I predict I will take a rolling pin to the computer in 2 days which would be precisely 63360 mutterings of "cubed ice."


And yes we tried a hard reboot unplugging the fridge from the wall.

 

Soapbox is barfing on the video so I had to upload to youtube this time instead.

Anyone who gives you a Louisville Slugger as a gift is cool, particularly, if it's your manager.  You just have to love a manager who appreciates the value of keeping a bat in your office!!

Yep, another cheer video.  This time from the Sea to Sky International Cheer Championship in Vancouver, BC.  C is on two teams this year: Minis, which is 8 and under and Youth, which is 12 and under.  Both teams took first and both had their special moments.  For Youth, it was  overhearing one of the university teams, which had hung out just to see our youth team, remark, "It's a good thing we didn't have to compete against them.  We would have gotten our butts kicked by a bunch of 10 year olds."  For Minis,  it was seeing this team of 4-8 year olds, keep their heads and just keep going despite having their music fail not once but multiple times.  When the music failed the first time, the team hesitated briefly and several of us in the audience panicked that the team would just fall apart.  Showing cooler heads than us adults, they kept going.  Their older teammates watching in front of the stage begin to count it out for them and slowly the crowd joins in till there's a thunder of 8-counts.  They showed maturity way beyond their years and we couldn't have been prouder of them.

C's team was the first Washington team to be National Champs at the Cheersport Allstar Nationals.  We were hoping they would just make it to the top three so were ecstatic when they were in first place the first day.  They ended up finishing with an almost 50pt lead over the second place team. 

 

Here's the video of their winning routine from the second day.  The quality is poor so I won't bother editing it like I did the last one to point out C but trust me she's in there.  I'll have to pressure Cambler to pop the $55 for the professional one.

 

One of the best parts of the video is just watching the coaches in front of the stage with their coaxes and praying and of course seeing the parents go crazy when they nailed the final pyramid and just knew they had won.  Tears were everywhere.

 

  (Note for the low bandwidth people, if the video is choppy, let it finish loading before playing.)

Spent Saturday night at a Halloween fundraising event for Caitlin's cheer team.  As Caitlin puts it, we did an "ocean family theme".  Caitlin was a mermaid and Jason and I were pirates.  Pictures are up in the album section although neither do justice to the costumes.  Funny how photographer Chris gets pictures of everyone but his family.

 

Jason had a really cute dreadlock pirate wig and Chris taught him that he was a privateer so the entire night, everytime someone asked if he was a pirate, he would respond, "No, I'm a privateer." 

 

You can't see it in the picture but I had spent several hours stringing pearls into her hair and weaving in "seaweed" and her eyes had been done up with frosted eyebrows.  She won cutest costume that night.