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This is a fun little site.
My good friend and former University of Iowa teammate Heather Calomese is one of the featured writers.
Check it out.
Number one: Come on Eileen
Come on…
On Sunday we used the other half of our “twofer” Disneyland tickets to check out Disney’s California Adventure with my sister’s family. (Hunter is soaking wet, giving her Papa some love…)
It was an interesting place… a theme park whose theme is the great state of California. Who needs to see the giant Redwoods when you can walk through a fake one?
Just kidding. It was curious to see all the highlights of our great state in one convenient location. Disney’s rendition of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Warf now features a roller coaster. Quite fun; though neither one of my nephews wanted to ride it.
There was also a pretty cool ride called Soaring Over California that was something like an IMAX swing featuring views of, well, California. And smells! Oranges as you soared over orange groves, a pine-y mountain scent as you soared over Yosemite. Okay, the smells were a little weird. This is what Hunter (next to cousin Charlie…) thought of Soaring Over California:
All in all, a good day… with plenty of opportunities for family bonding time:
Hunter with her cousin Sydney while we sat out the river rafting ride. Lately, pictures of Hunter “posing” don’t turn out very well. Hmm.
Next weekend: we’re staying home! No, not next weekend. The weekend after!
So the reason for our Disneyland trip was the visit of my roommate from college, Rachel, and her two kids, Peyton and Sophia. My sister, her husband, and my niece Sydney joined us, and so did my friend Elaine and her two kids, Zach and Rachel.
The kids had a great time running around and riding on the rides and Disneyland really is the most perfect place ever. None of the other parents are judgemental when your child melts down or runs away from you, because they know it will happen to them later or their kid is just getting over such a fit.
It’s a fun thing to do, and, we feel fortunate to be able share such an experience with our friends.
Yesterday we went to Disneyland. Here’s a snap of the two men brave enough to marry the Webb sisters. (Working title: “Gay”.)
This one’s called “Super Gay”. And I mean that not in a discriminatory way, but more in the I am a child of the eighties and our two adjectives for something stupid were “gay” and “retarded”. Probably the reason the nineties became so p.c… hmm.
Anyway. Here’s a question: Who takes a five-month-old to Disneyland? Answer: lots of people. Magnus was a champ. Only a little angry at the beginning because he couldn’t get a good enough look at what was going on. That’s him above with his two Dads, I mean his Dad and his Uncle Charles. Magnus rode the merry-go-round, the storybook ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Jungle Cruise. Not bad for such a little guy.
His sister, however, did way more than a two-year-old should…
Riding all the kiddie rides (except Peter Pan that was freaking CLOSED! and Small World which was broken down when we got to it, and we forgot to go back later.) and several of the big kid rides too. One of the advantages (?) of being a giant child. Hunter did not care for the Pirates and as the day progressed and we were out on Pirate Island (formerly Tom Sawyer’s Island, but hey, who reads anymore?) it became evident that Hunter did not care for caves at all.
Hunter also did not care for the Haunted Mansion, but it turned into a good opportunity for a bit of a rest and a snuggle. And her favorite ride was Splash Mountain, a.k.a., the “log boat”… a ride that, in retrospect, was a little too intense for a two-year-old. There is a seriously huge drop at the end and Hunter pretty much tried to pitch herself onto the floor of the “log boat”.
There’s more to report, but, Magnus is awake and Nala sounds like she’s going to eat the puppy…
For moments like these:
Wolf Blitzer:
How worried are you, this is a blunt question, but there is a history in Pakistan, of a coup d’éta, a military coup, taking over, removing you, as the President of Pakistan?
(Dramatic, CNN camera work… Close-up of President Ali Zardari…)
President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan:
I don’t think that there’s any such chance at the moment. Whenever we’ve had a coup d’éta, whenever we’ve had a dictator, he’s always been supported by you. You being the United States.
Classic.
“What’s this?”
“You’ll see…”
Comprehension dawning; exasperated noise, exaggerated eye-rolling.
“You love this movie.”
“Oh, come on!”
“You love this movie.”
“It’s only interesting because of the erotic undertones.”
“What?!”
“Leisel and the nanny are both sluts.”
Michael and I have decided that we need to get out more. Alone. We’ve only been out alone together some six times since Hunter was born, and only a half of those have actually been at night. So last night, our niece Breanna came over and watched the children while we went out to dinner.
We started the evening at Mu (mumartini.com), a Thai fusion place here in town. Mu was formerly the Rama Garden, the best Thai restaurant in town and the place where Michael and I met. Anyway. The food was amazing. Spring rolls to start and Tom Ka Kai. I had the Grilled Lamb Chop with Red Curry and Michael had the Seafood Pasta.
The woman who owns Mu has always been famous for amazing service. Drinks are never empty, the spice tray is always on the table, and the food is delicious. But last night that was not the case. We waited quite a while to order a second round of drinks and when we did order another round, somehow our server thought we didn’t, and we waited for drinks that were never going to arrive. It was very disappointing, and, instead of spending the leisurely evening we had planned at the restaurant, we pretty much felt like we needed to leave.
We haven’t been out at night in town for so long, we didn’t really know where to go to just have a quiet drink, other than the place we just left. We called Jen Fieldhouse for help and she suggested a new wine bar called Time in a Bottle (timeinabottlewine.com). We sat in comfy leather chairs and drank a half-bottle of Italian sparkling wine, a Bellenda Prosecco Brut, (tasty, dry, and a little fruitier than our favorite Veuve Clicquot…) and split a slice of tiramisu.
All in all, a nice, but rather expensive evening. But I didn’t even mention the best part… Mormon missionaries out on the street talking to the Saturday night drinking crowd. I wonder if they were giving people rides home later…
Last night we watched Marley and Me, a movie that I had rented because I thought my mother-in-law would like it, but we never got around to watching while she was here. I can safely say it was not the sort of film I would have selected on my own, nor is it the sort of film Michael would have consented to had he been with me. But we watched it because that’s what we do on Friday nights. We were also a little curious to see a story about a puppy since we just agreed to take a puppy from Michael’s sister. (Mark, you should tell me how to embed links in my posts and I would link to Sheila’s website…)
If you haven’t seen the movie, you may want to stop reading now.
At first it started out as a happy little story about the “worst dog in the world”, and really, Marley was a bad dog. The characters in the movie called him their “clearance puppy” because the breeder offered to sell the dog to them at a discount. Of course the obvious question would be “Why?” But they never asked it. So when the dog turned into a run away chewing machine, well, I didn’t feel too sorry for them.
But about midway through the movie, it turned into something else… something else that a was a little too close to home and I didn’t want to watch it anymore. The characters struggled with the changes in their lives, (careers, babies, new houses, aging, sacrifice) and there were a couple of scenes that stood out. The one where she’s bitching her husband out, not because she’s unhappy, but because she is exhausted. Where she’s ready to kill the dog (in our case, cat) because he keeps waking the babies up from their naps. And finally, where she laments that no one ever tells you how hard it is. The “it” I suppose being normal, average, everyday life. Of course, her husband reasonably says that people told us, we just didn’t listen. (In my own experience, people only copped to how hard things were after there was no turning back…)
And these weren’t even the worst part. Obviously the dog dies. That’s what dogs do. But they showed the putting the dog down scene in graphic detail, forcing Michael, in particular, to relive the whole I had to put down the best dog ever that I’d had for nearly seventeen years thing all over again. And Bubba was a way better dog than Marley.
Anyway. I suppose this post is a lament over the bait and switch movie. They suck you in with cute clips of raising an unruly puppy and leave you laying on the floor (or locked in the bathroom refusing to watch the end… and that wasn’t me…) bawling.
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