All of my kids are officially teenagers

My oldest turned 18 last month, and my youngest turned 13 on Sunday. The one in the middle is 15 and says his life will be soooo much better when he turns 16. I'm dubious, although his life isn't too bad now.

We had a fun party for David on Saturday. Jonathan crashed on his longboard on Monday, which oddly gave him a sense of euphoria for a while. He loves his battle scars and is hoping they will give him an in with the ladies. ;) He's serious about that, but I think he's a crack up.

Over the weekend my aunt and uncle got remarried too. I'm really happy for them, and it was nice to see most of my cousins there (many of whom I hadn't seen for years), and all of my aunts and uncles from that side of the family.

My thoughts are with Blaine (my step-father) tonight. He's in the hospital recovering from heart surgery. They replaced one valve and repaired another. The surgeon says it went really well. Blaine has always had great stamina and endurance, so I expect him to come through this just fine.

Unlimited Texting

Sarah, Jonathan, and I are having a blast with unlimited texting. I've recently added them both to my family plan and bought unlimited texting for the plan and we've kinda gone nuts with it. Sarah got well over 300 in the first week, Jonathan close to 300, and I was about 200. Kinda fun, if pretty banal. But anything that gives me another way to communicate with my kids is good!

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ydhsu/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Sarah's Birthday

Sarah turned 18 on August 12th so she's legally an adult! I was going to give her a cell phone and pay for her monthly cell phone service, but she wanted to pay her own way with a cell phone. So, I added her to my family plan where the incremental fee is only $10 and she plans on giving me that once a month. But that left me without a birthday gift for her, so I came up with an idea, went online, and ordered something for her.

It's a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog. I had it matted and framed and sent to her and I helped her hang it on her wall last night. It looks really good.

It has significance because this summer Sarah took a trip to San Francisco to visit her aunts. While she was there, Sarah walked the Embarcadero and over to the Golden Gate Bridge and then all the way across it and back. I wanted to give her a visual reminder of her own inner-strength and determination. It seemed to go over well and she says she really likes it.

Thanksgiving Point Gardens

Ever since I missed golfing with Dad earlier in the summer, I've been looking forward to getting together with him some other way. We finally made it happen on Tuesday when we got together at the gardens at Thanksgiving Point. I think the gardens was the second-to-last venue I had never been to before at Thanksgiving Point--the last being the golf course. Someday.

The gardens were beautiful. Dad and Leslie came. I asked Sarah to come and she did. It was really nice having her along. Rachel was planning to come, but had a very bad day at work (probably more about that later), so she went straight home from work.

I took these two pictures as we walked the gardens. Dad was hamming it up and Sarah just looks lovely.

After walking the gardens, the four of us went to the deli and had sandwiches, salads, soup, baklava, and ice cream. Yummy!

Tip Of The Hat

The name of this blog is Ego-Induced, which of course describes 99% of all blogs, this one being no exception. The term "ego-induced" was already at the tip of my tongue because of a poem that my grandfather, Allen Stephenson, wrote and put at the end of a self-published book of poetry.

--30--
Journalistic bombast?
Perhaps.
Ego-induced?
An odds-on bet.
Still, better not question
Too closely, I suspect,
Lest there be at the last
Nothing left--
And we each have need
Of a small something.

I should note that my old blog, A Small Something, also borrowed its name from the same poem. Maybe the next one will be Journalistic Bombast.