Competition anyone?

Last weekend my in-laws came to town to spend a couple of days with us. It was great. We dont get to see them as much as we may like, especially now that we live even further away from the town they call home, Arlington. We had a great time with them, as usual, but before they came "THE" question came up: "What are we going to do?"

What does one do to entertain their parents/in-laws when they come to stay? Is there some book written on the subject? I couldnt find one. I posed the question to www.ask.com, but they werent much help. One web site said to hire a professional comedian! I said I want to entertain my in-laws, not the Queen of Sheeba. I mean, I love my Mark & Eleene, but I cant be hiring people to come make us laugh everytime they come to town.

So what did we do you ask? We played a game. Simple as that. We played chicken foot. Chicken foot is a great game. Its simple enough, if you have a set of double 9 dominoes and 3 or more friends, you can have a right good ol' time. But this isnt really about us playing a nice game of chicken foot with the in-laws last weekend. Its about competition. I witnessed something that I hadnt really ever seen before. Marleene is competitive! She plays for keeps, and she isnt that great of a loser.

We played one game of chicken foot that Saturday night and Marleene dominated. She didnt win the first round, she didnt even win the most rounds, but she dominated the game from the start. When it was all over the score went something like this:

1. Marleene - 66 points
2. Doc - 174 points
3. Mark - 199 points
4. Eleene - 229 points

She won by 108 points! It was unreal, like I said, she dominated the game. And this was just the beginning. It was like her competitive side awakened. Last night we decided to play a little bit of Mario Kart Double Dash on the ol' Nintendo GameCube. This is a common thing for us to do when there is nothing on the tele worth watching, so I didnt expect anything out of the ordinary. Until we started playing that is.

Thats when Marleene Wible put her game face on. You see Mario Kart gives you the option of playing against each other along with 8 other teams in a 10 team race, or playing 1 on 1 for sole bragging rights. I dont think we had ever played the 1 on 1 race before. Until last night. The beast came out and took over.

Now we did 8 races and we split the first 2, and I took the 3rd. But thats when Marleene really put her foot down and beat the pants off me. She took the next 5 races in commanding fashion. She beat me so bad on the last race that the computer didnt even let me finish the race because Marleene was so far ahead of me! And it all happened so fast, I didnt even realize I was losing so badly, and then the screen shows me that i'm down 6-2.

And then Marleene does the unthinkable! She looks at me and says, "I'm tired, I dont want to play any more." WHAT?!?! You beat me 5 times in a row and you dont give me a chance to redeem myself? You just want to call it quits while youre up 6-2! And then she pushes the dagger deeper into my heart when she says "You can keep playing if you want." With the "You could use the practice, I wiped the floor with you" tone in her voice. There was nothing for me to do, it was getting late, I did have to get up and go to work the next morning. So I did what any good husband would do, I turned off the Nintendo and went to bed. I didnt complain about not getting a chance to redeem myself, I didnt claim that my poor showing was due to a sore thumb.

I am smarter than that, she had just destroyed me at the one thing I am usually better at than her, video games. Guys be careful, watch your wives, keep a close eye on them, this thing may be spreading. Or, maybe Im just getting old. Maybe my video game skills are dwindling. Maybe it was my thumbs... they were kind of sore!

What a week.... or longer

Sorry for the lack of updates on the ol' blog, but this past week was something else. Work for me is going well but it is extrememly busy. I spent most of this week out in Sun City and hardly any of it actually in the office designing. Thursday was interesting because when I got to work that morning I found out that all of our laborers were on strike because they did not all recieve the same pay raise. Later that morning a good deal of them either quit or were fired! Ah the effects of the immigration march are still being felt.

Marleene has been working diligently to further her Mary Kay buisness. She came home from her Monday meeting saying that her goal is to make a six figure income selling Mary Kay. So more power to you Mar!

Marleene's folks came down for the weekend this weekend, this marks the first time for Mark to see our house. It also marks the beggining of a bunch of busy weekends to come. Clay & Lauren Ploson will be making the trip down from Waco in early June as will Matt & Dawn Wible. We have yet to hear a definate time from the Stripling residence as to when they will be coming for a visit, and I am starting to wonder if they are waiting for our Casa Ole to open. Not to mention our up coming trip to Arkansas for my cousin Justin's wedding. Its going to be a busy summer!

All in all things are going well for the Leander Wibles, we welcome any of you to stop by if you are ever in the neighborhood. (Give us a call first to make sure we are home) I guess thats all for now, I will try to keep things updated a little more often from now on.

Well in an ironic twist of the famous phrase, "no pain, no gain," my pain came while not trying to gain. Marleene and I bought an elliptical machine over the weekend and moved it into our living room for the time being. As you may know we have two dogs who spend theirs days roaming "The Pit" also known as our backyard. Well they spend their nights sleeping in our room so as not to bark all night and keep any neighbors up. Maggie and Zoe usually wake up around 6:30 every morning and this past Sunday morning was no exception. I woke up to the beating of Zoe's tail on her kennel as usual, got up let Maggie out of the room and proceeded to open Zoe's kennel to scoop her out.

You see Zoe has a bit of a bladder control problem, when she gets excited she pees, and she usually gets excited when she sees Marleene or myself. So I carry her out of the room and out into the living room and put the dogs out in the back and am on my way back to bed as usual when I remembered that we had just bought an elliptical machine and had it sitting in my path to and from the bedroom. Well, I didn't so much as remember as the middle toe on my left foot reminded me when I smacked it against the foot of the machine. What resulted was a lot of jumping up and down on my right foot while holding my left foot and yelling loud enough to wake the dead, and even Marleene! (she happens to be a heavy sleeper) Once I was finally able to make my way to the bed and sit down I took a look at my toe, didn't seem to be too bad, probably just a sprain, a stub, no damage done. I tried to go back to sleep but the pain kept me so I "visited" an Austin church on Fox and the proceeded with my day as usual.

We got ready and went to a new church, we are still looking for our church home and really liked the one we visited this week. I think we will go back next week, if we are in town. Anyways, I limp my way through the morning, going to church and then to lunch. We get home and I take off my shoes and socks to survey the damage and immediately get a shock. It looked as if someone had taken a purple magic marker and made a half inch ring around my toe directly under the toe nail. What followed was a lot of ice being applied and a lot more limping.

It is now Wednesday evening and I am walking pretty normally now. The toe went from purple to black, back to purple and is now a reddish color. So all is well, and tonight I actually used the beast that gave me this!


It really looked worse than this on Sunday, doesnt look too bad here.

New blog for my random thoughts

Just to let everyone know, I have started up a new blog that will be dedicated to my thoughts on the world today. Now dont worry, I usually wont have much to say about politics, if you want that visit "All About Da Moose" where my moose-ish friend will keep us up to date on the political world. My new blog will be a place for me to express my opinions about tv, movies, life in general.



So check it out in the link section - "Doc's View."

Update time

It has been a while since my last post so I thought that I should catch everyone up on what has been happeing with us. Things are going really well, Marleene is enjoying having some time off to work on the house, decorating and such, although she is diligently looking for a job. She has signed up to start selling Mary Kay, a lady that I work with sells Mary Kay and visited with Marleene and she decided that that was something she thought she could do to make a few extra $$$. So please keep Marleene in your prayers as she starts this new chapter in her life. I know she will do great at it! And check out her website at www.marykay.com/marleene_wible to order any Mary Kay items you may need.

The dogs are doing good, Maggie is glad to have Zoe around to play with and Zoe is quickly growing into a big dog. Its funny to sit at our table eating breakfast and have them both sit at the back door looking in at us as if saying "Well, why are you out here playing with us?" Being a homeowner and a dog owner is a great thing.

Work for me is going good, busy, but good. This time of year people really start to think about their landscape and so we are staying really busy. And work is much nicer now that I am not driving 1 1/2 hour each way. Its funny how that really drained me but it really did, not something I would want to ever have to do again.

Well thats all for now, be on the lookout for my new blog coming soon where I will give my thoughts, rants, raves and ideas on a miriad of subjects.