You are so beautiful to me

You can't see it, because I can't make this picture big enough on blogger, but Mason's eyes are simply stunning in this shot. What a precious little man I have. Ah, he's a heart breaker.

Things you may not know about Mason:
1. Besides video games, he loves the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. We're on the last book, "The Last Olympian" right now. He also enjoys the Harry Potter series, although not quite as much.
2. He asks very mature questions.
3. He loves the Lakers. A lot. He practices his jump shot in hallways, theater bathrooms, restaurant lobbys, EVERYWHERE. Kobe Bryant is his favorite player, but he's starting to branch out and enjoy other players as well.
4. He is beginning to rebel a little, but in his heart he wants very much to please his parents.
5. He is 4 feet 9 inches tall. His mother is 5 feet 5 inches tall. His feet are about an inch shorter than his mother's feet. His mother is 30 years older than he is. I'll save you the graphs and trend charts, and just say, he's gonna be taller than his mother in about a minute and a half.
6. He loves Coldstone ice cream, especially mint with chocolate sprinkles, but hates frozen custard.
7. He likes to go on walks/jogs with his mom and or his dad, and when we're jogging up Chapel Hill, he chants "You can do it! I'm so proud of you! You can beat this hill!" And you know what? It helps a gal get up and over the hill, without too many rest breaks!

There's probably a joke in there about him helping me get "over the hill" but I'll leave it to the reader to craft it.

I'm sooooo sorry!

For anyone who attended yesterday's worship service at Fairview Road Church of Christ in Columbia, MO, I would like to publicly say I'm so so very sorry for forcing Monte to lead "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" as the closing song. I take 100% of the blame. Totally my fault. Rookie mistake. You know it's bad when your friends look at you and say "Oh, wow. You didn't think this through, did you." Like, when they look at your 80s prom dress choice or your wedding hair.

Nope. I didn't. Thought it would be fine. Figured it would be cool. Like the day we went to Johnson Shut-ins with baby Mason, and I thought a regular diaper would act just like a swim diaper, for a short period of time.

It wont. It'll blow up to 10 times its regular size and then explode in a gelatinous crystallized mess. And all the way back to the car, in the woods, with no real recourse but to carry the bewildered gelatin covered baby, you think to yourself, "I'm going back, not to a real bathroom, but a tent and a campsite." (The baby, although 9 now, still acts as though his parents have no idea what they're doing. I suspect it started right there at Johnson Shut-ins.)

Upside though, I now know what a vocal train wreck that song is! Lesson learned--only three billion more just like it to go! (I'm a simpleton.)

Ahhhhhh-men.

P.S. This afternoon, to get the sound of that closing song out of my ears, I went to the new Star Trek movie. Ooooo, it was soooo good. I give it six stars out of five. Dang it, Chris Pine is cute. Holy cow! I don't get a sitter, like EVER, and I would leave my kids with a street corner hobo to see this sucker twice, and happily pay the eight bucks for the privilege. It. is. So. So. Good. Christmas dinner at grandma's good. Ethel M's chocolate good. Two hour massage good. Free luxury hotel accommodations good. IT'S GOOD! GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!

Just don't sing. They don't take kindly to that on Vulcan.

Rock the vote

I just ran a few of my Mother's Day gift actions from MCPActions.com on this picture, and I have to say, I like it better. You can't see it, since I have to upload these within Blogger parameters, which means small, but after darkening the lighter background and lightening Pepe's face a little, especially his eyes, it seems to enhance the overall look and accent the depth of field to me. I dunno. I just wish he hadn't been wearing a dang dark brown shirt. and sitting next to the black piano bench. But the mess was where and when it was, which prompted the picture in the first place. It's all about location.

I know I'm going to look back on these pictures in five years and think how utterly clueless I was about retouching in Photoshop. They'll be embarrassing first tries, like a fifth grade art project that your mom shows all your adult friends. "My, she certainly was a fan of, uh, color, wasn't she?" Ack.

You'll have to be the judges. Which picture is better, the first one (the one in the last post, not quite straight out of the camera, but close) or the above computer-enhanced second one?

I eagerly await your opinions!

Boys for sale, gently used, cheap!

This one is cute, and he takes an occasional nap, but in the interest of full disclosure, he tears up anything set in any kind of order. Order in general makes him angry.
Also, be aware he has a knack for turning on and off computer components. And lights. And small appliances. CD Players, vacuums, TVs, Tivos, DVD players . . .
This one is nice too, and very low miles, but is consistently covered in ticks and Poison Ivy, Oak, Sumac, etc.
Also, he has many many criticisms for his care givers, as they attempt to counteract the work of the ticks and Poison Ivy, Oak, Sumac, etc.
This one mainly just sits in one spot and plays video games. I would suggest you start here if you're looking for a low maintenance boy. Just remember to triple your present grocery expenses when calculating the household budget.

Please direct inquiries to Mom. All sales are final.

Okay, just kidding. They're not really for sale. Who would keep me warm in the middle of the night when they come in and want to chat at 3 a.m.?

Unless somebody makes me a really really really good offer.

Salon Adair and Spa is just NOT that into me

So I'm feeling pretty cranky right now. I just sat for 30 minutes in the waiting room at Salon Adair and Spa, across from Hy-vee in Columbia, hoping for a haircut. I didn't need a style, or even sparkling conversation. Just a haircut that brings the ends of my hair back in alignment with each other. I called on Saturday to make an appointment for sometime pretty quick, and after stifling a yawn, the terse and sleep deprived receptionist with barely veiled disdain, told me they had a six o'clock on Monday, and did I want it? Okay, I said, and gave her my name. Mason had a baseball game at seven-thirty, so I reasoned that, surely, an hour would give me enough time to get a haircut, drive the two miles back to our house, and leave an extra fifteen minutes of organization time before we had to leave for the game. Surely. I mean, in this economy, nobody turns down business, right? Right? Is this thing on?

Not so at Salon Adair and Spa. They apparently have so much ridiculous business coming out of their amazingly coiffed ears, that they have no problem treating customers like they were something unpleasant on the bottom of a manolo blahnik. I walked in at six on the dot, and checked in. The receptionist (a new one this time) reacted to my presence like she would extend her help only out of sheer boredom and lack of anything better to do, which didn't bother me too much early on. It was only after fifteen minutes of sitting on their overstuffed couches reading boring hair and bride magazines that I realized I had been utterly forgotten. I walked up to the receptionist and explained I had a six o'clock appointment, and it was now quite a bit past that. She stared at me like she couldn't decide what to do next, and then after a protracted pause, told me she'd go check with the stylist. The stylist, it seemed, was still working on the person ahead of me, but she was just finishing up. I assented, but asserted I had to be finished by seven. The receptionist then said the most amazing thing. She said, "Well, it takes about an hour for a haircut." Hadn't I scheduled an hour? Wasn't six to seven exactly an hour? Ignoring the fact that this obvious point was lost on everybody but me, I said "Well, maybe she can just cut it and not style it or anything." At this point the receptionist and I agreed everything that could be said on the subject had been, and I sat back down.

At six twenty-five, I realized I was not important in any way to the entire staff of Salon Adair and Spa. Neither the receptionist nor the stylist had initiated any contact with me. I had to ask why my appointment was off schedule. (I never saw the stylist at all.) Finally, I stood up. The receptionist, realizing I might be upset, for the first time, said "I'm sorry." To her credit, she actually used a tone that implied she was being sincere. Unfortunately, it was too little too late. I said, "Thanks anyway" and "It is what it is" (in response to her apology), and left.

Nobody up there cares I left. In fact they're probably celebrating getting to go home early. And they really didn't lose a lot of business. I have my slow growing hair cut, maybe five times a year. But if the subject comes up, I wont hesitate to share my experience. Like I'm doing now with you good people out there. See, it's very hard for someone who takes care of a baby all day to get a second to herself for a haircut. Once you carve out the time, it just seems too precious to spend on waiting rooms and rude treatment.

My apologies to anyone from out of town who reads this . . . sometimes a gal's gotta vent.

Something I wish I'd written

You get a lot of good stuff off http://thepioneerwoman.com/. For example, there are the photography tips, hints, tricks and free photoshop actions, which have really helped prod my picture taking evolution. There are the fabulous recipes that I will never ever ever attempt, but that still look amazing in pictures that make the food look piping hot and delicious, like you could smell it cooking right through the internet. There's the smartypants quizzes, the homeschooling info (that, I'll be honest, isn't of much use to me) and the harlequin romance novel story of Pioneer Woman's courtship with Marlboro Man (her husband). All of which is extremely valuable and worthwhile information . . . but today, in a post about her mom and grandma, Pioneer Woman published the attached poem which really touched me. It was in there because her mom forwarded the poem, which is just like her mom to do (it was a mother's day post, after all). But I read it and thought, "this is how I feel when I stand out on my back deck alone and stare into the city-fied woods, and remember growing up on the farm near real woods, and real fields and real hog smell. Hog smell aside, a powerful bond exists between me and God's creation, and my small but solid place in it, and frankly, I just liked the poem's words.
------------------------------
“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
-------------------------
Yeah, Mary, I'll try. I'll try.

Bye bye baby

As inevitable as death, taxes and TV show dry spells, the day of Peyton's first haircut was coming and it was getting to be just a question of when. Monte had had enough of strangers commenting on how pretty his sweet little girl is (dang it, he IS pretty), and the other boys needed haircuts, so after the intervention, off we went on Friday to SportsClips. Peyton's hair was a little long, I'll admit, but it's basically cotton candy air fluff, and there really isn't much there when you get right down to it. Besides, he's so pretty and it's not THAT long. However, I am a reasonable person, and when threatened with being excluded from the first haircut and just finding out it happened later, I was motivated to go ahead and get on the haircut bandwagon that everyone else was already aboard. Here are some before and after pictures from the big day.

See, nobody but me gets that now that his hair's been cut, he's a little boy. He was a baby until Friday at 4:30, and after that he became a boy. It's the Christian version of a bar mitzvah--my son is a man, without the reading from the torah and the obligatory band. He no longer needs his mom in the same way as he did before. You think I'm being melodramatic, but later that night, he used a fork successfully, and he now says the words "fla" (flower) "Maah" (more) and "guh" (juice/drink). If he sees the floor he reaches for it, and once there he's off like a shot, in whatever direction I'm not in. I mean, give him a driver's license and a bank account, and suddenly he's calling me "mother" and shaking my hand in greeting. Waaaaaaaaaaaa!

God may be in the details, but Kindergarteners are NOT

I'm reading Stephen the second Harry Potter book. If you've never read it (and really, this explanation is for all five of you out there who haven't), there's a school called Hogwarts and in it are four houses the kids are sorted into: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Stephen was engrossed in the chapter, which discussed Harry's interaction with some Hufflepuff kids and some Slytherin kids. When we finished reading, we had this conversation:

MOM: So, what did you think of tonight's chapter?
STEPHEN: Good.
MOM: What was your favorite part?
STEPHEN: I don't know. Which kid was Ernie? Was Ernie a Sucklepuppy?
MOM: A Sucklepuppy?
STEPHEN: Yeah, you know, a Sucklepuppy or a Hidden Door?
MOM: You mean a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor?
STEPHEN: Yeah, that's what I said.
MOM: Oh. He's a Sucklepuppy.
STEPHEN: That's what I thought.

It's not about the details with boys. It's about how wacky you can get when you mangle the details. I think I'll write to J.K. Rowling and tell her she needs to rewrite the books using Sucklepuppy and Hidden Door, because from now on, that's what I'll be thinking when I come across Hufflepuff and Gryffindor.

Are you making fun of my mullet?

My daddy's hair looks just like this in his and mom's wedding album. Seriously.

This movement needs more allegro, fortissimo . . . and DiMaggio!

Having a little brother can be difficult at times. Especially when you've got two. Mason seems to be coping better than most, and for the most part, his payback has been the adulation of little bit and even littler bit.

But sometimes, a man's got a job to do and having little brothers can get in the way. For example, let's just say a man's got to practice his piano. Although Mason has one recital under his belt (last Sunday) he's still got more to do in piano learnin'. But how can you play with a little brother all up in your business?

I guess it's time to embrace the fact that little brothers aren't going anywhere, and you just have to deal with it!

When Peyton closes a door, he does NOT open a window

Oh, hello Mom. I'm sorry, but we're not interested in anything you're selling.

Yes, thank you, good-bye now. That's right, I'm closing the door.

See how much fun it is, when Mom is outside and Peyton is INSIDE? Now shoo or I'll set the dogs on you! (We don't have any dogs, but the door seems to be doing it's job.)

Parole Hearing

All five of us were sitting around a table at Red Lobster, eating dinner. In silence. It almost never happens, and when it does it never lasts. However, it was actually lasting for once, when suddenly, Stephen breaks the silence with . . .

STEPHEN: "Dad, what would happen if Mom went to jail?"

MONTE: "Uh, I'd be sad. What would she go to jail for?"

STEPHEN: "Well, what if she forgets to feed me?"

MONTE: "When has she ever forgotten to feed you?"

MOM: "Well, what do you do when you are hungry and you need something to eat? Wouldn't you just go to the kitchen and find something to eat?"

STEPHEN: "No, I would go to a restaurant, but how would I get there and who would drive me?"

MOM: "What about our kitchen in our house?"

STEPHEN: "No, I can't go there, there's nothing in there but muffin tops [eggo waffles] and yogurt."

Niiiiiice. The only reason I'm not in jail is that I know where all the restaurants are in Columbia.

Belated thank you note

• Thank you, Lisa Doty Guerrero and Kim Harper Frances, for teaching me to ride a bike at grandma and grandpa Doty's house. Lisa brought infinate patience, Kim brought passionate motivation--it was the perfect storm, and the bike got rode.


• Thank you, Rachel and Riley Doty for the American Royal, trips in a big grain truck with too many people in the cab, trips to Silver Dollar City, trips all over. I hope there's a travel plan in heaven.


• Thank you, Bob and Joyce Doty, for taking me to the Camelot Hotel in Little Rock, AR when I was 14, and showing me for the first time what man made splendor was.


• Thank you, Julie Doty Mankins, for being my first best friend. Thank you Susie Harvey, for being the last best friend I'll ever need.


• Thank you, Elaine and Clyde Harper, for the camping trips and the pies made out of white bread and cherry pie filling, cooked over a campfire.


• Thank you, Chris and Sharon Harper, for buying all kinds of stuff I sold when I was in school for this or that. I always think of you when I see a little kid with an order blank in his hand.


• Thank you, Laura Harper McWilliams, for showing me in adulthood what peace looks like, and for all those late night little girl talks under the Nadia Comaneci poster in your room back in the day.


• Thank you, Lisa Brass Ross, for the funny, funny, oh so funny.


• Thank you, Lisa Viets, for freshman year in high school, and not having to walk the halls alone.


• Thank you, Barbara Anderson Bickford and Stephanie O'Neal Beck for the 80s funny, funny, oh so funny, and how many times did we sing The Rose on some sort of stage, or at least in front of people? Too many. Bette Midler called. She wants her song back.


• Thank you, Andrew and Tiffany Lough and Michael and Alicia Moore, for Branson. Each and every time.
• Thank you Terri Hines, for several thousand dollars' worth of lunches. I'll never live long enough to pay you back! And for being my friend, and funny and for helping me face all those doctors . . .

I know I'm forgetting somebody . . . I'll probably have to do this again with a second list.

Mom and Dad, Brandon and Karen, Shauna and Matt, Monte, I'm always thankful for you, and hopefully you know what for.

I love Photoshop Actions

Because they turn the little guy on the left, into the little guy on the right! Boom! Yea color boost, yea lightener, yea yea yea!

Also, for those of you keeping score at home, Mozilla Firefox is faster, less flaky and a far superior browser than IE7, much like the MAC is superior to the PC in every way but third party software availability. Take that, Microsoft.

Oh MY!

My sister's year and a half old baby Ben is a spirited little guy who loves to scream and throw and run and bite and grin and laugh and play. He is a typical boy, and as a typical boy, he likes to rip the pages from books instead of looking at them and gently patting the pictures. (I have several books with no pages in them anymore. We switched to board books after the doctor announced the second Ellis baby would be a boy too.) But Shauna's Ben has done an artful job of ripping the above book, and Shauna wonders aloud, "Is he trying to send me a message?"

Yes, Shauna. Yes he is.

Welcome baby Caden!

So, I was helping to plan this baby shower for my friend, when baby Caden James arrived early and threw everybody off schedule! It's okay, he's just cute enough to get away with it. The little guy is just under 4 pounds and 18 inches long, with lot of hair! (All my babies were so precious, but also so bald. I've always been jealous of babies with lots of hair!)

Fritz's

GeoTagged, [N39.08325, E94.58183]

A few weeks ago while in Kansas City for LTC, we ate at Fritz's in Crown Center. Fritz's is a train-themed burger joint, with a black old time corded telephone for customers to "call" in a food order, and each booth was decorated with a train car-looking window that shows paintings of scenery, I guess to simulate what it might look like if you were on a real train and looked out the window or something (I've never been on a train, so I'm wildly guessing here). Anyway, the cutest part is that instead of people, an actual mini-train brings the food (people still bring drinks--they're not completely insane). It's on an overhead track that goes around the perimeter of the restaurant, and a little mechanical arm drops down in front of your table stop when the food is for you. Then, when the train passes by over head, the arm drags the food off the train and on to a tray, which is lowered down to your table. The boys couldn't stop staring at the process of each table getting their food. One box of food nearly fell off the tray while it was still in midair because the train went by kind of fast, and we jokingly wondered to each other if any of the trays ever topple over and pelt people with burgers and fries. The Hajicek family ate at Fritz's the same night, and I guess when you're both lawyers, you don't just wonder things and move on, you verify with people who know. So they asked the waitress if the food ever actually spills on unsuspecting customers, and she told them that, no, it didn't happen very often, only about once a week. We all agreed once a week represented a high incidence rate of food falling from the ceiling, not a low one, but even though we went back once more during the weekend, we never got to see anyone wearing a burger hat or fries for hair. But wouldn't that have been so cool?

My Favorite Websites . . . right now

If you know me, you know I don't live long without technology. Even camping I take my cell phone and make sure we can use Google Earth on it or some sort of GPS to make sure we can find the tent again. I do a lot of my shopping online (no crowds), nearly all of my banking (again, did I mention no crowds) and even track how far I've walked with my Nike+ shoes (to get AWAY from the crowds).

So it would seem I have a teeny tiny expertise in the area of rampant internet consumerism, and for one lucky post, all my knowledge can be yours. Shall we begin?

MY TOP ELEVEN FAVORITE WEB SITES (in no particular order)--That's right, eleven, deal with it!!!

1. The Shabby Shoppe digital scrapbook store: http://www.theshabbyshoppe.com/
   I just like this lady's digital scrapbook kits and designs. Plus, I use them for a lot more than scrapbooking . . . the spring kit will figure prominently in baby shower decorations in the next few weeks!
2. Pioneer Woman Photography: http://thepioneerwoman.com/
   Has awesome Photoshop actions, Photoshop tutorials, Photography hints, and even other website sections related to cooking and home schooling. The recipes look great and her pictures of them look even better. She can keep the home schooling, though!
3. Oh My Crafts: http://www.ohmycrafts.com/
   Everything scrapbooking, and it's cheaper than at the stores. Plus, sometimes they offer free shipping, or a discount on your total order, which makes all your craft items an even better buy!
4. Nelle and Lizzy: http://www.nelleandlizzy.com/
   Personalized silver rings and necklaces, and in a style you can't really find anywhere else. You can have your baby or sweetie's name in silver on your finger or around your neck, just in time for Mother's Day! These pieces are the bomb!
5. Columbia's Kitchen (formerly Super Suppers): http://www.columbiaskitchen.com/
   It's like having mom cook for you, then freeze the dish! Delicious, better than supermarket frozen food, and cheaper than eating out. I highly recommend the Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloaf and the Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas.
6. Ancestry.com: http://www.ancestry.com/
   Let's face it. If you're doing family history research, you're eventually going to have to get on this site. I know, I know, rootsweb and genweb are free, and this involves a membership, but still, you can get more info, in less time, with easier search tools and better hints from the mama of them all. Ancestry still rules the genealogy game.
7. Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/
   I have a thing for the past, especially old time radio and TV broadcasts (for my purposes, old time radio and TV involves anything originally broadcast in the 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s--in some cases I'll include 70s and 80s if I'm being nostalgic for my own old time lifespan.) Hulu has great TV shows you can watch on your computer for free, if you don't mind a few commercials. They have some of the old 60s Dragnet TV show, and of course, some newer stuff, depending on your taste.
8. Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/
   And, if you don't mind a few bucks a month and sitting at your computer monitor instead of your television (or at your TV if you have Tivo hooked up to Netflix, but I digress), you can watch even more old TV with no commercials. Plus some movies. I love this service--it's really worth the $14 a month to get the Rockford Files any time I want me a little James Garner in 70s polyester plaid.
9. iTunes: http://www.itunes.com/
   I love downloading old time radio and listening to it while doing the stuff I don't want to do, like laundry and such. It makes the separation of whites and darks so much more interesting, if Boston Blackie or The Shadow or Perry Mason are solving crime in my head! Plus most of the OTR podcasts on iTunes are free. Can't beat it, unless you don't have an iPod or other MP3 player. But seriously, that's like not owning a microwave anymore, right?
10. Pro Bar meal replacement bars: http://theprobar.com/
    I love the Cran Lemon Twister, and the Cherry Pretzel ones the best! If you're out or busy or need a little snack, these babies can either be a pick me up or a whole meal, depending on how much of them you eat (350 calories per bar). They really fill you up if you're hungry and lunch is still a long way off--and you can slip them in a diaper bag or purse or car glove box or hide them under your bed or in your underwear drawer! Think of the options! Plus, after you find out how good they are for you, you can buy them here (or at Clover's, but since this is all about the web, we'll gloss over that.)
11. One True Media: http://www.onetruemedia.com/
    Get all that footage out of your camera and into everyone's e-mail inbox! You upload your clips to OTM, add in some (for the most part) free styles, effects, transitions, music, whatever, and then you can share it by e-mail, to another person's Tivo, buy a DVD of it, any number of options. You don't have to invest in footage editing software or burn your own DVDs or try and get Grandma to understand how to open the MPEG file you sent. I use this site a lot!

Ta-da! Oh, and of course, blogger.com, but then again, you guys knew that!

PS: Other sites I love, but that didn't make the list because it was getting too long: http://www.bellasnaps.com/scripts/default.asp; http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=18797&cmd=tc; http://www.heavenlystitchesembroidery.com/ (yes, that's Hayden, it's Kristin Lasiter's site);
http://www.otr.net/; http://www.papertreyink.com/; https://lty.s.upromise.com/secure/cookiedHomePage.do and http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/shop/

Sometimes you want the drama

Mason's LTC drama participation (turn the sound up--my camera didn't catch the sound very well). It's a call in radio show, where the host, Ferris C. (Pharisee--get it?) played by William Kallenbach (yes, he's ready for his close-up) isn't all that fond of that radical Jesus guy, until the very end . . . Mason plays Peter, one of the diciples.

Life, Light, Word and Exhaustion

We spent the weekend at Leadership Training for Christ, a church based retreat in Kansas City where kids 3rd through 12th grades competed in events designed to grow them spiritually and encourage the development of their leadership skills. Each year there's a theme, and this year it was Life, Light & Word, the gospel of John. This was Mason's first year to participate, and the events he competed in were Christian art, speech, drama, bible reading, bible quiz & puppets. The whole weekend was amazing (it was at Crown Center also, so there was great food and shops when we weren't running to and from events), but the best part was anything Mason participated in--we had been before as church organizers, but there's something about having your own kid in the events, that makes it all feel so rewarding. He worked so hard--besides memorizing his lines for drama, he nearly memorized his speech and the first four chapters of John! Here's his speech (given at 8 a.m. on Saturday, in a suit, after having less than optimal sleep, thank you very much!)

We were really really tired when we got home, (and a few of us got the stomach flu and threw up so they were even more tired than the rest of us), but we would do it all again just to see Mason so grown up. (Well, grown up with the exception of a few escalator and elevator moments, but then again, Monte IS his dad!)