2@2 Blog

My wife went out on Thursday night. Mia and Zoe fell asleep pretty early, so it was just The Boys up late watching some TV.

When my wife came home, Pirates of the Caribbean was on. It was a scene with an awesome swordfight (no skeletons- I wouldn’t let Evan see that part of the movie yet). She freaked out and told me to turn it off.

I said “Don’t worry, we weren’t really watching this. We were just switching to it when Band of Brothers was on commercial breaks.

I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.

Zoe’s 5th birthday was this weekend. Before this past month, I’d never heard of American Girl dolls. Well, that’s what she got. A doll that looks just like her.

See?

And that’s not it. No, of course not. There is a store built entirely around these dolls, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In said store is an American Girl Cafe, where you can have a quite fancy lunch. You know, with your doll. No, seriously, they sit at the table with you.

See?

The cafe.

The place was really great- Zoe had so much fun being fawned over. Everyone there wished her a happy birthday, they gave her a “birthday tiara” and a sticker to wear that told everyone it was her birthday.

See?

The doll (named “Star”… I guess I have a hippie daughter?) was served tea. And a good time was had by all.

Not saying it this time.

Even the fruit was cute.

Uh.

That is one tiny cup.

They even made her a special birthday cake.

Very cute kid.

She’s a funny little kid. Only not so little anymore.

As for the rest of the store, it’s what you’d expect. If you expect excess.

Yes. That is, in fact, a HAIR SALON for your DOLL.

We of course also had a party for her with her friends. It was a great weekend, so we just had a backyard party. Even had the cake out there. Very fun, very cute, very loud.

Been a while. Been busy.

I’m going to assume you know that yesterday was Memorial Day. Hopefully you did something for the day. And by that I don’t mean had a bbq and a few beers, and opened the pool. Have your food and drink, but at least THINK about the significance of the day for a while.

We had my mother come out to watch the parade that Evan and I would be marching in. My wife, mother, Zoe and Mia got a good spot on one of the Main Streets (there are two. Seriously.) and I gathered my boys together and tried to control them enough to at least seem like our Pack has some organization and discipline.

Before we marched, I spoke to the boys for a while about Memorial Day. They’re seven, so there’s only so much they can grasp. And only so long that you can be serious with them. But we spoke about it, which was the important part.

We stopped at the lake for a few speeches halfway through the parade, and the boys got to have some ice cream. The break was longer than it was supposed to be, though, and after about half an hour we lost more than 2/3 of our boys. They were just tired and bored and wanted to go home, and their parents obliged. If they weren’t seven, and if we had known in advance how long the parade route was, I wouldn’t have let them leave. But they’re young, and there was still a long way to go.

That’s about it, too busy to write any more. Some pics, though:

Zoe and Mia

Gathering

Ice cream break

It’s no city parade. (Evan is in the front row, second from right)

Yes, that’s me

The complete set of pictures is here. Slightly out of order, but I don’t have the time to fix them right now.

Saturday I had a really cool camping class with the BSA. I didn’t actually learn anything, but I had to have the class in order to take my Pack camping without the Council supervision. It was an all-day class, but like I said it was a lot of fun. We pitched tents and cooked on an open fire, stuff like that.

And after that, my wife and I went to see one of my favorite musicians (and my very favorite vocalist), Colin Hay. He was playing at a church nearby. Just him and his guitar. It actually was more like a comedy show punctuated by fantastic songs. Man is that dude funny. We had great seats- maybe 8 or 10 rows back. When he took the stage, he walked down the same aisle we did to get to our seats- he actually bumped me on his way by. I thought that was really cool.

And then after the show, he hung around to sign some autographs and hopefully sell some CDs. We got two- one for my wife’s car that I already had bought on iTunes, but we figured that it has Be Good Johnny on it, so we’d have him sign it with that (it’s Evan’s favorite song, so he’d get a kick out of that). And I got a CD that I’d previously only had two tracks from.

Even without getting to meet him, it was the best show I’d ever been to. Getting to meet someone whose writing I’ve admired for decades, and whose voice I’d kill for made it even better.

Colin Hay and some dork.

wife and Colin Hay.

Before you point it out, yes, I know he looks a lot happier in the second picture…

And then Sunday sucked.

Hey cool- just found a great write-up of the show.

or something like that.

We were at my mother’s for a Palm Sunday dinner. No idea why my mother feels that Palm Sunday is a family event sort of holiday, but it’d been a while since we were there. So we went. The kids had fun with their cousins, of course. Evan and Zoe both love getting to see their older cousins, since mostly they just see their younger ones.

And then while having dinner, we were talking about times we’ve done really stupid/funny things while drunk. I brought up the time that once, on a New Year’s Eve, my wife and I went out to dinner with my sister and her soon-to-be-husband. Oh, and some other couple- friends of my sister. My wife got ripped (well, we all did, but she was totally ‘faced). That other girl had really been annoying her, and when we left the restaurant my wife decided that she had to… make an absolute hysterical ass of herself. My wife’s not short by any definition- but the other girl was almost as tall as I am, and she was BIG. My wife ran at her and tried to tackle her… it had the same effect as if she’d tried to tackle a Toyota. She bounced off and ended up in a snow drift, the other girl was laughing (so was my wife, though- it wasn’t a serious “I gotta kick her ass” thing).

But.

When I told the story I had one of those moments where, as I was saying it, I was wondering how I was going to dig myself out.

“… so she runs at this huge girl, and remember- this is my wife BEFORE she had babies. When her clothes size was one-half.”

The table went silent. And then… thank GOD for my sister Laurie… Laurie said “So… you’re saying that she’s a size ONE now?”

“YES! That is EXACTLY what I’m saying. Hey, anyone need more coffee?”

————-

After we ate, Mia was pretty upset about not having something to do (she gets bored very quickly). She ‘asked’ for the phone by pointing at it and saying “Uh uh?” which in Miaese stands for anything she needs it to. Depending on the situation, “Uh uh?” can be “Pick me up!”, “Put me down!” “Give me food!”, “Where the HELL’S my water?”, “What’s that thing?”, “Let’s get that thing,” or, well, anything. You see what I’m saying. So anyway, she “uh uhed” the phone, and my mother gave it to her.

I warned my mother. “Mom, she always plays with mine, and even though I keep it locked, she’s managed to reprogram it twice. And she’s added in speed dials, too.”

“She’ll be fine.”

Two minutes later, the entire house was screaming at us that there was an emergency. I SWEAR TO GOD.

Apparently, my mother has an alarm system in the house. And, also apparently, you can trigger a panic mode via the phone. How? My mother and father have no idea. But Mia? SHE knows.

We struggled with her, got the phone away, pressed END a few hundred times while my father ran to the control panel for the system and entered his code. Still, the phone rang a few seconds later and my mother had to answer a few questions to convince the company that everything was, in fact, ok.

So. The moral of today’s story?

Never let me speak. And always listen to me.

Our Cub Scout Pack held it’s annual Blue & Gold dinner this past Sunday. And when I say “Our Cub Scout Pack,” I mean “Me.” As in- I did the entire thing… from planning and finding a hall and getting a caterer and figuring out the cost and what we would need and decorations and planning speeches and… on and on and on.

And when I say “Me,” I mean “Thank God for my wife.” I always used to make fun of her for stressing out when planning parties, but about three days into this she saw the look on my face and asked if I needed help. Where “help” = “Here, let me do that for you.” I got to concentrate on what the boys would do, what I would be doing and saying, and getting / building a gift for a departing leader. And make the slideshow, too.

The rough flow of events went like this:

History of Scouting (How Scouting came to America) - a skit with me and the eldest Webelo in the Pack
Some songs and skits by the Scouts
Pinewood Derby awards
Some more skits and songs
Tiger Cubs awarded their Bobcat Badges
Hiking staff given to the departing Leader
Food (which was awesome)
Yet more skits and songs
A sales pitch from the Council about Scout Summer Day Camp
Awards for the cake contest (the boys all baked and decorated their own cakes with Scouting themes)
Desert (the cakes of course)
Clean up (EVERYONE helped, thankfully. It had taken three hours to set up, but only an hour to break down because of all the assistance.)

It was really nice that a few of the parents came up to me afterward and told me how great the event was. When it’s all said and done, all that matters is what the kids and their families thought. And it seems like everyone had a good time. Couldn’t ask for more than that.

Bobcat badge

Mia loves to eat

Zoe, on the other hand…

and Evan? His plate always looks like this. And within three minutes he’ll say “I’m STARRRRRRVING!”

The Pinewood Derby cars

The cake table

singing “Super Lizard!”

more “Super Lizard.” Yeah, I’m singing along…

A skit

Evan’s cake, and his award (best camping theme - with canoe)

I was probably saying here, “Brace yourselves, folks- here comes another song!”

Well, no, that would imply that I slept. But regardless, hearing a 7-year-old kid getting up to use the bathroom, only to run into all the Saran Wrap we’d taped across his doorway… pretty damn funny. But I was actually too tired to laugh.

What else did I do… oh, we usually leave a couple of glasses of orange juice already poured in the refrigerator for the kids. Last night, I put them in the freezer and ran out this morning to get them into the fridge before the kids came out. Evan noticed right away, but Zoe… she leaned back to drink, leaned back some more, her little eyebrows came together in a true “WTF?” kind of expression, then she leaned forward and started swishing her glass around. She then looked at my wife and said “Mommy? I think there’s something wrong with my juice.”

We also left out some Oreos, glued to a paper plate.

I guess that all sounds kind of mean- but those were my wife’s ideas. Not mine. (Well, she did steal the Saran Wrap idea from me, I’ve been wanting to do that for no reason for years.)

My ideas were:

“Let’s sleep in the guest room downstairs!”
“You are so mean.”
“…?”

“How about if I tie their doorknobs together, so they can’t open their doors?”
“Seriously, why are you so mean? Zoe would freak out!”
“…”

I didn’t even mention my idea of actually Saran-Wrapping them to their beds. With how soundly they sleep, I could totally pull that off.

Oh. And Grandpa came to visit a couple of weeks ago. How did that go? See for yourself:

I’ll post again soon about the Cub Scout Blue & Gold dinner, which was really awesome.

It’s just a myth.

I also am beginning to believe that someone’s screwing around with physics. Three big plane crashes in two days, and two enormous eruptions in a week.

I can’t wait for Rodan to show up.

Just really crazy-busy.

But I wanted to post these real fast.

First up, Evan’s Pinewood Derby car:

And then this one… I got my wife another Le Creuset piece for her collection (and use) for her birthday. Mia thought it was for her. And, it would seem, she figured “Hey, if Yoda can fly around in one of these things, so can I!”

btw, she makes this face every time we take a picture of her, now. She has the same personality as Evan.

We’re doomed.

The test went well, which is great. And leaves me in the spot of having to decide who to listen to now- the cardiologist or my endocrinologist. My TSH (basically, my Synthroid dosage) level is high enough that the cardiologist expresses concern, but the endocrinologist says “sure, that’s right. If you weren’t a cancer patient. We need that to continue testing for recurrence.” Yay.

And the Superbowl was… good. Better commercials than we’ve seen in the past few years, but the game itself was… good. Better than I expected to be sure, but mostly what I came away with from the game is that I really don’t like watching players behave like that.

The strongest feeling I had coming away from the ‘bowl was one of profound sadness. Not for Arizona- they never had a chance. The only reason the game was even close was because of Steeler penalties and fouls. No, I mean a commercial that really, truly speaks to me.

Ouch.

Maybe it’s not the TSH level after all.