"The Squeakquel" Did Not Disappoint

We made it.

We made it across the desert from LA to Phoenix on Friday. Left at 12:30 pm and arrived 8 hours later. A drive that should take no longer than 6 hours. That is, if no kids are involved.

But we had kids involved.

Three of them.

And that means stopping to "rest." More than once. And for longer than 5 minutes. Uh, much longer than 5 minutes.

But just as I predicted last week, I had something up my sleeve that would pull us all through beautifully. My ace-in-the-hole.

"Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"

Our brand-new DVD of Alvin and his crew was watched approximately 2 1/2 times on the drive.

And that means for approximately 4+ hours, the kids looked like this:

I'm not gonna say it was a perfect drive. Because really, is there ever a perfect drive? I'm just not gonna show you photos of the not-so-perfect stuff that went down.

Bottom line is - "The Squeakquel" pulled us through. And now I'm here in Arizona under sunny desert skies and I'm relaxed.

And because Easter was just so fabulous, I have decided to extend "The Squeakquel" giveaway for one more day.

So do you have a drive coming up? Or do you need some quiet time at home? "The Squeakquel" may just help you get what you need.

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment. And if you tweet about it (and include @leevandeman) you will get an extra entry.

As always, if your comment makes me laugh, I'll give you an extra entry too.

And if you've never commented before, this is a good time to do it. Just make sure you leave an email address so I can reach you.

Yay for Spring Break! My brain is already turning to mush.



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On the drive, I downloaded the Hipstamatic app to my iPhone and just wow. I'm having so much fun with it. Well worth the buck 99.

You Capture - The Shapes My Children Show Me

Many days I bustle along
Not seeing much of anything it seems
Seconds blurring into a frenzied time-line of my life
And did I really see anything at all today?

But then the stars align
For a moment or two
And my vision crystallizes
How have I never seen these things before?

My children have changed my sight
It's been blurrier and clearer than ever before
Changing instantly at times
The SHAPE of my life has changed too

In the last 7 days I have lived
a blurry time-line of my life
But I have also lived a handful
of crystal, ocean-deep moments in time

And these are some of the SHAPES that I have seen.




Looking at the squares and rectangles and circle eyes that make up this
family of Lego robots makes me really appreciate
that they are currently residing on the counter.
I'll be sad when they leave.




This imperfect Clementine circle is being saved by Phoebe.
She wants to bring it to her Irish dance teacher to see if she can
make the circle perfect again.





I've never noticed how cool this triangular shark fin looks
on a sunny February afternoon at the Long Beach Aquarium





And I definitely have never noticed how perfectly triangle-like
a seagull's wings look when they are being used to flee
from a 2-1/2-year old Tommy chasing that seagull with a plastic shark





And when my sweet Tommy boy makes me sit in the grass and pushes me down
to sit on my tummy so we can gaze up into the sky to look at
all the irregular interesting shapes that a sky holds,
well,
this is one of those moments when I see very clearly
how the shape of my life has changed.

And thank God.





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This has been an edition of You Capture over at Beth's I Should Be Folding Laundry.
The theme was "Shapes."
I'm getting addicted to this You Capture thing.

And tune in tomorrow for another edition of "Conversations with My Kid." If you're posting
a conversation you've had with YOUR kid, you can link up and join the fun!!