Where's the Remote?

Where's the Remote?  Growing up in my house, this was a very common question for one Smith to ask another Smith. It was easy to get up off the couch for a snack and accidentally leave the remote in the kitchen.  Sometimes the remote would come back to the living room, and other times it wouldn't.  Often times the remote would find its way under the couch or between the cushions.  It became such a hot topic that my parents finally designated an end table in the living room as the "remote table."  The remote had to be placed on top of that table when you were finished watching TV.  Maren says in the Bray house(with 3 girls), the question always asked was "Where's the telephone?"

Given my background on this topic, you can see that I fully expected to ask this question in my own house one day, but not this soon.  Maren and I found ourselves searching high and low for the TV remote this weekend.  This was way too early for our family to have this problem for a couple of reasons...

First and foremost is because we don't watch much TV.  We don't even have cable, a fact that has been well documented by Maren's high school students.  Anytime I meet one of her students, the first question they ask is "Why don't you let Mrs. Smith get cable?"  Truth be told, Maren doesn't want it either.  TV is too much of a distraction and a time waster.  Maren and I have found so many other things to do to interact together that have helped us grow closer together as a couple.  There are way too many other things I'd rather do than sit on the couch as life goes by.  Plus I can't sit still long enough to watch a whole TV show anyway. 

Another reason we shouldn't have a remote issue yet is because our kid(s) are not old enough to watch TV.  Emry likes to press the buttons on the TV to make it go on and off, but she is like me and can't sit still for longer than 5 minutes at a time.  So its not like she would be watching TV and running around with the remote either.  She does like to play with the remote though.  Maren or I will give it to her while we are in the living room together, but we don't ever let her take it out of the living room. 

Lastly, we shouldn't be having this problem with the TV upstairs because we never use it.  The only time it ever gets used is when I turn on a football game and mute the TV while I'm playing with Emry.  The TV upstairs is an old box TV.  Its not even capable of receiving a digital signal, so we have one of those converter boxes hooked up to it.  The signal cuts in and out all the time, and is really annoying.  We also have a VCR hooked up to that TV in the living room.  It would be a pretty sweet set up...if we were living in 1984.

Yes, it says 4 Head with Hi-Fi Stereo. Not many people today know what this
inscription means.  The rough translation is "pure awesomeness."

So if we never use that TV and don't let Emry take the remote out of the living room, what happened? 

It was Thanksgiving Day.  We had a great day which started with our family going downtown for the Turkey Day 5k.  I had to walk the whole event because of an injury...I won't go into it now, but I'll probably rant about it in a future post.  Then we went home and cooked some food to take to my mom's family's Thanksgiving meal.  We had a great time visiting, seeing relatives, watching football and eating too much food.  Emry enjoyed eating the sweet potatoes and the peas the most!  She had a blast playing with her cousins all afternoon. 

Between the tryptophan and playing all afternoon, Emry was exhausted when we got home.  She went down for a nap and Maren started doing some work on the computer downstairs.

We posed for pictures next to our passed out
daughter.  However, we resisted the temptation
of drawing on her with a Sharpie.

To avoid distracting Maren from her work, I decided to watch some football on the TV upstairs(and fall asleep on the couch.)  I turned on the TV and converter box and sprawled out on the couch.  We only get 7 channels on that TV, of which we only watch about 3, so my odds were pretty good of having the right channel.  Unfortunately the TV was on the wrong channel.  We can only change the channel by using the remote control for the converter box, but I couldn't see it anywhere. 

Maren and I had just done a thorough cleaning of the house, so I knew it couldn't be hiding in the couch or under any furniture. I asked Maren if she had seen it, but she had no idea either.  We searched high and low, but couldn't find it.  Neither of us could remember giving it to Emry recently or seeing her play with it.  We searched through her toys anyway, but came up empty.  We gave up the search and figured it would show up later.  A couple days went by and we never found it. 

One evening the following week, Emry was playing in the living room.  She was doing her routine of turning the TV on and off and pressing buttons on the converter box and VCR.  I went up there and joined in the fun.  She likes to flip open the door to the VCR, so I flipped it open, and to my surprise I saw this...

The files are IN the computer? - Zoolander(And yes, I own it on VHS)

Emry,that little turkey, had stuck the remote in the VCR.  Maren and I had a good, long laugh about it.  Normally, I'd go all Doogie Howser right here and sum up the post by mentioning a great lesson I learned from this....but I've got a Ferris Bueller's Day Off" videotape calling my name right now, so peace out!