Daley Ponderings

I don't think it has been said here, other than in small mentions here and there, that I joined our volunteer fire company in Middlesex Township a couple of months ago.  I am not sure of the exact number of incidents that I've gone out on, but the number is probably around 8 or so, though... (More)

Jon was with a bunch of people we don't see often last night, and one of the men mentioned that his wife was discouraged by all these homeschooling mother-of-many type blogs where everyone has all their lives together and nothing goes wrong.  So I thought I'd post how my life is not... (More)

I'd been having these strange contractions for a few days. Not the simple Brackston-Hicks that I have throughout pregnancy that feel tight but do not hurt. Not crampy labor contractions, either. They were very tight and they hurt. They came usually when I was sitting – on the couch or... (More)

Heather asked me to give her the monthly time logs for invoices today, so I took the opportunity to run my brand new script that shows how I've spent my time over the entire year. I averaged: 13.7 hours a week on directly billable work 7.6 hours a week on maintaining the company, phone... (More)

We bought a "new" minivan last year, and it had the lowest mileage, and highest cost of any car we've owned so far.  It is a 1997 Oldsmobile Silhouette, and it had 107,000 miles on it.  We did a lot of driving (I hit 135,000 today, after a year and a half).  Heather and I both... (More)

If Heather hasn't been writing recently, that means I'm not writing at all... First, the basement - after all of the ongoing water problems, and finding out this year that only fixing the gutters was not going to fix the entire problem, and if one is going to get water a couple times a year,... (More)

11/1 - Jonathan, "My favorite color is green."  Noah, "My favorite color is green, too!"  Jonathan, "Faith, what's your favorite color?  Is it green?"  Faith, "No, flower." 11/1 - Jonathan lost his left front upper tooth!  He bit into a grape (boy, that tooth must... (More)

I came across a hot pepper that I hadn't heard of before, and since it had a warning on it being really hot, I figured I had to buy it.  Now that I've learned it is the hottest known pepper in the world, I have to wonder -- what am I ever going to do with it? The cashier mentioned that... (More)

8/31 - The boys were making octopuses out of their banana peels. Jonathan called his a "cinctopus".  It had five legs.  His reason, "Because uno, dos, tres..." 9/6 - Faith's second birthday!  When you ask her how old she is, she will answer,... (More)

We arrived at the Fitzkees' house on Thursday night, and Nick said we could stay as long as we wanted.  We ended up extending our trip by a day and coming home on Tuesday, which was a good decision.  I think we spent the right amount of time for the whole family to enjoy the... (More)

We cooked bacon and pancakes (I found a nifty plastic pint jug in Walmart or somewhere that you simply pour water into the jug, shake it up, and pour it on the griddle) for breakfast, and then packed up and planned to meet for lunch at Great Falls, 15 miles away. Heather went back to... (More)

As I looked at the maps for the third day, we were going to be biking near various battlefields and other tourist-type places to visit, and so in the interest of resting a little, I decided we should drive for a ways and then maybe bike in the afternoon. We drove from Williamsport... (More)

I've wanted to bike to DC for a while, but there never seemed like a good opportunity to do so.  Once we purchased the tandem bike, and started thinking about the possibility of biking all over the country, the Washington trip seemed like a good first step. The trip did get... (More)

As Heather mentioned , it did take us a while to get this post written, but I thought it would be good to have a record of it, so here goes... Each year for the last several years, Paul has organized a two day bike trip for the kids of BCF.  This year, we drove to Rockwood, PA... (More)

We generally try to avoid corn syrup of all kinds (but we only "try", meaning it isn't banned or anything like that). But, when I'm looking for cereal or granola bars or whatever, I check the ingredients and particularly try to gauge if sugar (in whatever form) would be the first... (More)