Some people go to the beach, others...

Admit it, you want me to plan your next vacation.

After I did this, I realized I am the stalker from Sleeping with the Enemy. Then I went and sorted the deli meat or arranged the bananas by size or something equally bizarre.

The Sunflower State goes East

Like my Manny?

Guess who loves M&Ms!?

I called Grant to tell him it looked like Kansas exploded all over the church basement. Just opening all the boxes and putting the flowers in water took almost 3 hours!

The wheels started to turn when at the end of the day we were faced with surplus sunflowers and horrific fake flower hanging baskets in the church vestibule. The end result -

(Lindsay and I found those cone baskets at Home Depot for $4.98!) Without Kay and Lindsay's help, I would still be in the church basement! The men in my family sure do marry well.

And now for a toast via internet:

Grant, when mom was pregnant with you, I prayed you would be a girl. When I moved away from home you were only eight years old, therefore you didn't get a chance to do much for me other than get me in trouble. You're 0 for 2. But now you are bringing Rachael into our family, and she's a way better woman than I ever thought you would end up with. WELL DONE. Pick up your wet towels and behave yourself.

An open letter to VDOT

Dear Virginia Department of Transportation

After a week in Massachusetts - and another week to go - I have learned one thing. I LOVE YOU, VDOT. Your signage, your tree trimming crews, your lack of potholes the size of my house --- you complete me.

Please forgive me for any bad things I have ever said about you. (Except for that deaf kid sign thing. They are everywhere up here!! I am still mad at you for that.)

Love,
Monica

Time for some princess themed decor

I know we JUST finished our addition, but it's time for a major upgrade:

Thanks to NG for this awesome find.

My college degree at work

One of Barry's friends asked him to play French horn on his latest cd. The recording session is tomorrow.

Now you may be thinking "Isn't the horn the only instrument in the entire Western hemisphere that Barry doesn't play?" Correct! But I used to play and we still own one, so that's close enough in his book to lead him to say "Of course I will play on your CD!"

Most likely this will be one of the CDs that you give to friends and family and maybe one random guy buys from cdbaby.com. It's not going to be showing on at the Grammy nomination list anytime soon, therefore I agreed to let him have use of both the horn and our family name.

I printed out a fingering chart from Google since Barry's made up fingerings left him with a sort of intonation that had him pulling the slides out so far they almost fell out. I showed him how to hold his hand to support the horn and keep the tone from sounding like he was playing underwater. In addition I have been providing helpful (?) guidance via the intercom paging system on the phone.

"CUT IT OUT WITH THE VIBRATO! You are giving me motion sickness!"

"You don't like my Mr. X* vibrato?"

"You don't sound like Mr. X. You sound like if Mr. X was playing the horn while he was having his stroke."

And THAT is why I am not fit to teach music lessons to kids.

*If you play the horn or ever listen to classical music on the radio, you know exactly who I mean. If not, not important.

So now you think you can build trumpets? What's next, you learn to play horn and make a move for my principal chair in the symphony?

Confessional

Is it weird that I take coupons on vacation?

I'm starting the week long packing process.

The last trip I just threw it all together in the last day. And that is how I ended up with one pair of pants for 5 days. Oops.

Happy 19 months!

17 months was the month of the whine. OH THE WHINING. We didn't write a monthly report that month because all I could remember was THE WHINING and I would not have said many nice things. And puzzles - she really developed her puzzle skills that month. But the whining, oh, I never wanted to leave her at the fire station more than month 17. And no, they will not take them that old; I checked.

18 months was fairly delightful in comparison. (Then again, Dick Cheney torture techniques are delightful in comparison to the nonstop whining that was month 17.) Her vocabulary really took off and she started regularly combining 2 words. Her ability to follow directions has become much more reliable, which gives me hope that before long I can just sit on the couch and order her to bring me pina coladas and the remote.

Last month she started sitting on her potty on her own. No actual luck yet, but she's no longer scared to sit on it and hang out for awhile. Other hobbies include picking up giant objects - chairs, buckets, boxes, 10 month old babies - and trying to carry them around.

This month we went to the toddler play area at the mall. As I was busy shaking my head at the 10 year olds running around, Marielle was busy busting balls on the slide. A 4ish year old boy was using both his feet to kick her off the end of the slide and not let her back on. I couldn't have been more proud when she stood up, punched him between the legs and just kept on digging in until he moved out of her way.

The trip to Milwaukee ruined our fairly decent routine. We don't have a strict schedule but were generally going to bed around 7:30 pm and taking one long nap right after lunch. Now we are so far off anything goes during the day, and she can take up to 2 hours to go to sleep at night. Since we're leaving town next week for eleven days, I've given up trying to reboot her system and we'll just try again next month. No one seems to want to schedule family outings and wedding activities allowing a 3 hour nap in the afternoon and a 7:30 bedtime.

If 17 months was when she learned to whine, 19 is when she learned to scream, or more accurately, shriek. These odd numbers are real downers. I just have to keep saying in my head "it's good for her vocal development!" and not reacting. So far she only does it when looking in the mirror at herself, like "maybe if I scream at this baby enough she will stop following me!" Maybe by tomorrow morning the mirror will mysteriously vanish and the screaming will as well.

Preferential treatment, please!

I love me some Mike Birbiglia and I love the weekly e-mails he sends me. (Surely he just sends them to me, and not hundreds of others, right?) I also loved his comedy special I got from Netflix as part of my summer project, particularly the special feature section which was longer than the comedy special itself!

Since we've talked extensively about how funny he is and I even plugged his DVD, surely he won't mind this rather large excerpt of his e-mail I'm posting about his recent family vacation in Cape Cod.

I consider it foreshadowing for our upcoming family vacation, where we will all fight it out for the best (widest) beds. I think you receive a certain number of points based on your marital status, grandchildren you have produced, and somehow if you are old and/or helped pay for the house you get some bonus points tossed in.

(Joe is his brother.)

The baby also gets Joe preferential treatment when we’re visiting our parents.
Because of Henry, Joe and his wife get the guest room and my girlfriend and I
get a pullout couch in a room with no doors. And my mom always tries to play it
kind of innocent, she’ll be like, “Well Michael, guest rooms start with G. Do
you know what else starts with G? Grandchildren.”

Staying on the hallway couch means lots of noise, not a lot of sex, and the 5th string set of sheets that only rarely make it out of the linen closet. You know, the sheets that have been in the family for 27 years and distinctly bear the scent of your worst
smelling extended family member and urine. Since we got no sleep at night, Jenny and I went to the beach during the day and slept on those same sheets on the beach. It’s times like those when the beach takes on a kind of ambiguous vacation/halfway house identity. When you’re snoring and rolling over on the beach, you’ve crossed certain lines of decorum. I think if there had been trees instead of the ocean, people would have assumed we were homeless. Maybe that guy in Central Park isn’t actually homeless. Maybe he’s sick of sleeping on a pullout couch in a room with no doors.

The moral of this story - Jeremy, hope you like the beach.

Sign up on his site to receive his weekly updates. And while you're there, buy some shirts! If you don't get the jokes, you can just send your shirt to me.

You wish I were your mom.

When the manager asks to take your picture, you have reached a new level on the awesome meter.

Is this considered recyling? Or just plain wrong?
The only thing I hate more than her new paci habit is when it shows up in pictures. But at least here we can pretend like it's a bull nose ring??

The tail didn't hold up to Marielle wear and tear for long.

She's not upset because her mother is an embarassment. She's upset because I took away her paci right before this picture was taken.

A lady who clearly lacks the ability to read giant signs and balloons and basic visual cues asked me what was going on, if people do this every Friday. I am kicking myself for not telling her "YES! Come back next week in full costume!"

Shhh

Don't want to jinx something that seems to good to be true, so I'm not making an official announcement about anything until the background check clears and his butt is in their chair next month. But let's just say I'm super-duper excited by the possibility that someone is going to subsidize my twice yearly teeth cleaning. Maybe I'll finally even get to see a doctor besides my trusty primary care physician Dr. Google without a $2000 deductible. Not that I think anyone makes a better team than me & Dr. G, but occasionally it's nice to have a doctor that can actually write you prescriptions.

NCLB

Since Marielle's actual baby book remains virtually untouched, I have to remember to record her milestones online. This gives me more flexibility too. Instead of recording the date her molars came in, a date I would rather forget, I can make up my own categories and keep track of things like her first costumed appearance.

I'm slowly taking each of the blog posts that pertain to her and making them into books with Blurb. Unlike scrapbooking I can do 5 minutes here and there without trashing my entire dining room. I finally finished the 9 months of my pregnancy, so now it's on to year 1.

Anyway - the point of this all is to say that for the last 2 days Marielle has eaten a bowl of cheerios with milk using a spoon. She's been eating pretty well with a fork for awhile but using the spoon correctly just eluded us until now. It's hysterical to watch her pile as many cheerios as possible on a spoon, slowly bring it to her mouth, and then of course pick up all the ones she dropped with her hands and eat them too. No cheerio left behind!

I guess next we work on the cup. She's really attached to her Sigg or straws though, so that one might take awhile.

The goals, we set them high!

My goal for this summer was to make a big dent in our Netflix queue (189 strong) by watching 3 movies a week. We had just gone 3 months with the same 3 movies and my brain was screaming "NOT COST EFFECTIVE!!!" Time to get my money's worth. My other goal was to take a nap whenever it was feasible and I felt like it.

I failed to realize that out of 189 movies, only about 12 actually seemed worth watching. Also, apparently my schedule does not allow for long afternoon naps AND movie watching. I made it a month. The nap habit is going strong but the movies are lingering on the console table just a little too long, and somehow even with a decent movie watching effort, my queue is up to 193. Stupid previews telling me other movies I should be watching!!

That Wii didn't help either. Buying vintage Mario Brothers to go on the Wii was also not our best decision ever. Why play them fancy games requiring some physical exertion when you can show off the only thing you remember from 8th grade -- where all the extra life mushroom thingies are hidden. (For the record the other thing I remember from 8th grade is how to figure percentages.)

Barry is in awe of my Mario skills as well as my razor sharp memory. He stares at me, jaw agape, when I tell him I spent hours upon hours of 7th and 8th grade playing with my Asian friends. I'm not sure if he's more amazed how much time I spent, how much I remember 17 years (!!) later, or that Kansas has asians.

I enjoy playing with him as now there's something technological (?) I can teach HIM and of course I always win. Oh, and because he always lets me be Mario since he doesn't realize yet that Luigi is the half brother nobody talks about.

Anyway, my new goal which I announced to the family this afternoon - save the princess. It may take longer than the summer though. I only did it once in 8th grade, and I played the game a LOT, with fingers that were lean and my reactions were laser fast. His new goal - win some game he downloaded for his Iphone called monkey ball. Excuse me, it's SUPER monkey ball.

We aim high in this family.

Did someone say free?

Time to dust off the cow costume. (And yes, of course I have a cow costume.) This Friday chick-fil-a is celebrating cow appreciation day, and I'll do anything for free stuff. And I don't even eat chicken! Marielle does though, and I'll bet she'll get a big kick out of my new look.

Diagnose this

Dr. Google & I have our opinions, but we would be interested to hear yours.


Does not itch. No fever or other symptoms. First showed up July 5. All over body but not on face.

More, please

Marielle approves!

Happy Anniversary to Mii

When I think back and try to remember past anniversaries, it's more than a bit blurry. All hail the blog and digital photo libraries! I read last year's recap and feel like I've swallowed a bottle of ginkgo biloba as all the memories come rushing back.

As for this year, it's hard to beat a gift of your own ice-cream flavor, but Barry definitely tried.

First, I got a Wii!!! (Now we need to remove all our den furniture so I can play tennis without fear of BarRii's Wii-mote smashing in my face.) Barry also picked up some striking hot pink and orange gerbera daisies.

I would take pictures, but several months ago my trusty Canon succumbed to droppedontheflooritis. Unlike the last 27 times, it could not be resuscitated. This left me taking pictures on my cell phone or lugging around Barry's huge camera. I was just complaining about this today to my brother JereMii.

Just when I thought surely Barry must be out of allowance, out came the final surprise...

a new digital camera! It's all the rage, is tiny enough to fit in my pocket, and is PINK! I shall name her "the panther."

I scream, you scream

VISIT MOORENKOS! Go quickly! Barry's delicious creation is officially for sale and won't be around long.

1359 Chain Bridge Road
McLean, VA 22101

Here's the great write up from the weekly newsletter, written by Sue Moo herself -

The Flavor of the Week this week comes to us from Barry, who's lovely wife Monica gave him the gift of Guest Chef as an all-purpose celebration (y'know, birthday, anniversary, Father's Day. Smart girl, that Monica!). Barry and Monica have a gorgeous and brilliant little girl, Marielle. At a very tender age, Marielle showed the great good sense to grab her parents' Cosmic JooJoo milkshake from their hands and drink it to the dregs. You may recall my sending a photo of that decisive moment in her life. She's my new best friend!

Anyway, Barry chose to create Lemon RaspBarry Wondermint ice cream. It is predominantly lemon ice cream with an ephemeral suggestion of mint. You don't taste it as much as you feel it. Then we swirled some pureed raspberries (get it? RaspBarry?) through it. So you get tart, cool and slightly acidic all at the same time (Top Chef fans, take note). As I have mentioned many times, and please don't hate me, I can have any ice cream I want anytime. Took me a long time to figure that out, but I'm getting used to it. The three of us sampled this right after we made it and immediately entered an altered state. And after Barry and Monica left, I headed back to the freezer for seconds...because I can! It is really wonderful. Clean, refreshing and extremely sophisticated. As always, this is the only batch we will make (unless threatened), so if you would like us to save some for you, please let me know.

Personally I prefer ice-cream with as much chocolate as possible, but even I was won over by this delicious concoction. That's not to say I won't try a big bowl covered in chocolate chips and/or hot fudge sauce.

Go early! Go often! You will love it, I promise. And if you don't, call me and I'll come finish off your bowl for you.

Just your average 4th of July

July 4 eve:

Flashbacks

Mari in 2007 -

Doormouse in 2005

Barry - 2002 vs 2008

Apparently someone didn't get the red/white/blue memo.

Atkins meets Weight Watchers?

I cannot stop laughing at the special requests my mom sent for our family vacation grocery list:

Eggs
Bacon
Cheese
Fat Free Pringles

Is the theory that if you eat enough Olestra chips, the rest of the fat will just leak out your body before it has the chance to be absorbed?

Careful what you wish for

I knew running a conference was exhausting, however I didn't expect to be this exhausted just from attending. Marielle is kind of getting back into the normal routine, though I think she misses all her buddies at daycare.

This morning Mari and I picked Cosmo & Kayla up from their 5 day stay at the kennel. (After paying FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS for the most basic of care, I decided my next business venture should be to start a kennel.) Later in the day I mentioned to my dad how in the future I plan to have only one dog at a time. The vet bills, the kennel stays...it all adds up; not to mention the difficulty of walking/wrangling/controlling two dogs AND a toddler at the same time. Little did I know the universe would give me a scare. (I should have thought to mention to the universe which dog was my favorite, just in case it decided to grant my wish.)

Despite - or maybe because of - the 5 day stay in a small kennel run, Cosmo can barely walk. Actually he can walk, he just can't go up or down stairs, in or out of bed, through the dog door, etc. I can't figure out if he will get better once he moves around a bit and lubricates all those joints, or if we are facing a future of hodling up a 35 lb beagle while he pees.

When Cosmo hurt his back before, it was instantly obvious as his back half was paralyzed. This appears to be less severe of an injury, but it still doesn't look good. He was a rescue dog so we don't know his exact age, but it's somewhere around 10. The end could be sooner than we like to think. Then again, maybe he's just milking it so we never make him go back.