I think it's okay to be sad about failure. Failure is not something to be ignored. We fail. Fail to do. Fail to achieve. Fail to love. Sometimes our failure's are born from our own desires. Sometimes we fail to do for others what we want for ourselves. Sometimes we fail to see. Sometimes we fail, and we ignore. Sometimes we fail and hurt others. Sometimes by action. Sometimes by inaction. Sometimes we do too much. Some times we do nothing. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we should be sad about that. But we must never stop.

Nothing I say is new.
But only now do I known.
If only I knew.

A Momentous Occasion

Since he's now 13 ....
    And has his own email ....

It's time to transfer authorship of The Joel Blog over to Joel himself.  I trust he'll do a better job updating than I have.  I'll sign off with a final list of recent quotes:

"I guess IHOP is the new normal." after 2 weeks on the road.

"2 hours until all hell breaks loose." before swim practice.

And finally,

"I don't think anyone wants to sleep in my room.  I have a basilisk in my closet.  Her name is Trudy."

True Story

Letter Joel wrote and tied to a balloon and set sail on Sat. following the 'incident'.

"Hello, I'm Joel. I sent this letter because of what happened on 10/13/11. My friend just had a birthday and had balloons. On Thursday I tied 5 balloons to a small lil'kinz bunny named Little Timmy. I took him outside with a bunch of string tied together. I wrapped the string around my hand, then one of the knots just came undone. It took 30 seconds before I couldn't see Little Timmy."

An original joke - yes, he wrote it himself.

A French foreign exchange student named Henri went to America to live with a boy named Sammy. One day Sammy asked Henri if he wanted to play Monopoly. Henri said, "Oui." "Oh, I don't want to play Wii," said Sammy. "How about checkers." "Oui," said Henri. "Fine," said Sammy. "We'll play Wii." As Sammy was setting up the Wii, Henri said, "I don't want to play Wii, I want to play Monopoly or checkers." "Ok," said Sammy. "So you want to play Monopoly or checkers?" "Oui!"

Wolf Knight

Inspired by Michael's "Spookduckularhalloween" costume contest, Joel constructed the following costume.

Materials list:

-empty milk carton

-cardboard

-strips of old jeans (for scabbard)

-t-shirt

-silver, black, green and yellow duct tape

He probably spent about 4 hours total on this project. The only help mom provided was buying the duct tape and approving the t-shirt.

Questions ...

(Joel 'camping out' while watching a triathlon.)

"Dad, what makes a yawn?"

"If you pay Anna for babysitting, can you pay me for being the baby?"

"Why did you sign me up for scouts?"

"What makes a burp? ..... Where does the gas come from? ... He won't tell me where the gas comes from."

Duct tape shoes

You get tin foil and you wrap it around your feet. Then you take some duct tape and wrap it around the tin foil so it will stay. Then once you're done with that, take one long piece of duct tape and a little shorter piece and stick them together. Put the rest of the sticky part of the longer piece on the outside of the tin foil shoe below the ankle around the heel. Get another piece of duct tape to stick this to the other side of the shoe. This is how the shoe stays on.

WARNING!

Do NOT just use regular tape. I did that once and my brother Mark took me to the store. After a few minutes he had to carry me the rest of the way.