Sunday, July 22, 2007

Voila! Bon Anniversaire! Beaucoup images!

Technically, in French, I think that's "Happy Birthday". But AK woke me up this morning, the morning of our 12th anniversary, singing a Flinstones song that repeats "Happy Anniversary" about -- oh -- 12 times, coincidentally. That got me singing "Happy Birthday" but substituting "Bon Anniversaire" for Happy Birthday because that's what Madame Larzul (sounds like a character from Ghostbusters, yes?), in the 12th grade, taught me that French people do. Right after they smoke, drink, are rude and surrender, THEN that's what they do. If it's your birthday of course. *blink* So yeah, today was our 12th wedding anniversary.


We started by having a very late, clumsy start to our Sunday. We KNOW that it's best for all concerned -- including the poor speakers we interrupt by filing into Sacrament Meeting late -- if we arrange all our church clothes Saturday night. Yet we persist in tempting fate and just going straight to bed at bed time on Saturdays. This leads to Sundays like todays, when we both teeter the whole morning between:


"All RIGHT lets get this show on the road! Lets get dressed! Lets go to church! Ben and Milo, that's a bold fashion statement, but you've got to take off the pajama pants THEN put on the church pants! Max chip the fuzz off of your teeth, that's the 11th commandment you know: "Thou shalt take a flamethrower to thine plaquish bicuspids before thou offendest thy fellow churchgoers"


. . . . .and. . . .


"It doesn't matter, we're going to miss half of Sacrament Meeting anyway, then probably just leave, what's the point? Just sitting here fretting has, like, totally taken 5 more minutes. So now we're even later. We'll probably spend the whole day wishing we'd gone, but now, just saying that, were ANOTHER 3 mintues late! So now it's WAY too late, why are we even still considering going, as if it's still an option. . . . "

We ended up opting for going-but-going-late. Which was the right choice. Then we had to decide between flaking on Gospel Principles (or Gospel Doctrine or Gospel Fundamentals or Gospel Foundations or whatever they want to call it that day) and getting an early start on our Anniversary Picnic. This was tough, because the class (think "Mormon For Beginners", AK's not a beginner, but she goes because it's more her speed than the more academic classes and she gets to play the role of wise old Mormon to all of us Grasshoppers) is taught by a nice couple we like (theater people) who are new to our ward since the reorganization. So we flaked, but apologized to Nice Couple for said flakage.


Before moving from church to our picnic adventures, just a note on the PBS Mormons documentary. It's available for free somewhere on http://www.pbs.org/, so I watched it online last week. It did give me some new perspectives, but mostly it reminded me how much there IS to the LDS church that really never ever ever even begins to come up in my experience of the church on Sundays. Nope. I hardly ever hear the name "Joseph Smith" or the term "polygamy". Yet, that's what a good 2/3rds of the show was about. Which is fine, that's all important. But since it's such a new church, and really just coming out of cult status and into legitimate religion status, every skeleton in the closet is very well documented. If people's experience of the church was like the PBS show depicted, it would not be the fastest growing religion in the US. But it was an even-handed treatment of the church's history. Some of the Mormon stuff IS downright kooky, I just have to remind myself that it's no kookier than any other religion's checkered past. It gets scrutinized much more because, as someone on the show pointed out, it doesn't have the benefit of a long history to soften the images and the stories. This church has no patina, little room for interpretation of the history because it only just happened about 100-200 years ago. It happened how it happened, right or wrong, gotta deal (often apologize) and move on. All the more reason to keep my religion to myself, really. I can't defend a bearded kook's plural marraiges any more than a modern Roman Catholic can defend The Inquisition.

ANYway.


So we came home & got into play clothes, then split up so that a)I could take the twins' bikes in the little truck and b)AK in big truck didn't have to deal with a psychotic poodle while driving Firehose #1, Firehose #2 and Firehose #3 to the store for drinks & treats. We met at Tupac Park, State College's homage to the West Coast rap martyr, and had a little anniversary picnic. AK got me a card with a wonderfully appropriate image of a fat old bulldog serenading a sprawled-out cat on a piano. I got her an e-card that had kissyface little cartoon people making hilarious squeaky noises. Romance on a budget! Becuase WHEN THE HELL did greeting cards start costing FOUR DOLLARS??? After the pics were all nic'ed, we walked over to the Community Garden so AK could show me the trials & tribulations of our vegetables. Cool. The boys kept Emily company, since she's not allowed in the garden. . .

Then we ventured on to the Dog Park, so Emily could chase herself into a canine cardiac arrest. When we arrived there was a young couple with 2 Doberman Pit Boxer Bull Mastiff Rottweilers which they obviously couldn't control. There was also a nice older lady with a nice older dog, and between the 3 of us mature responsible dog owners we managed to make the young couple feel uncomfortable about the fact that whenever they took their full weight away from their dogs' flesh-mangling choker collar, their dogs tried to eat each other. That left us, Emily, Oscar and Oscar's owner. Emily did this. . .

That was followed by this. . .


. . . which degenerated into this. . .


All the while Oscar observed with the wisdom of his years. He offered:



You Go, girl.

Once it was clear that Emily would collapse from lack of oxygen long before she let common sense tell her to STOP CHASING THE BALL, we retreated back to Tupac Park. Ben and Milo set to lecturing and loving-up every other citizen in the park regardless of their age or their obvious preoccupation with something that was NOT named Ben or Milo. Milo latched on to a young man named, and tell me if this is a first for you or not: Sherlock. Here, a man the size of a house has shoehorned himself into "The Clubhouse" in order to teach Milo and Sherlock how to play cards. . .

Tonight on Fox,The World Series of Poker: Kindergarten Edition

Here we see Milo Hults and his definitive poker face, giving nary a hint as to what he's holding. Young Sherlock is either troubled by the hand he's been dealt, he's showing a convincing bluff, or he's legitimately concered that he can't hold his wee-wee until the next commercial break.

AK knitted while Max and I played frisbee. I taught the Pack 40 Webelos how to play Ultimate Frisbee last week (I am so uncool, I had to look up the rules on the internet) and it actually managed to hold their wee MTV attention spans and keep their PlayCube XboxStation Butts active for about 20 minutes straight! Max has done it enough he's getting mediocre at it, so I try to keep the frisbee handy in the truck so we can simulate an active lifestyle at least once a month

Emily made it very clear that she was very near death, dealing as best she could with the increased gravity that followed her around since the dog park and dragged her purebred red apricot pedigree'd butt down to the ground everytime she passed over shady grass. Here she is using her freak mutant 12-foot tongue to try and cool herself off. . .


I'm serious. It's cropped off in the photo, but her tongue goes from there to Iowa. It's the only organ, from any species, that's visible from space.

When AK wasn't knitting, she was taking pictures with my camera. She really liked the clickety clickety noise it made when she held down the button :). So she managed to fill up my 29 GoogoNanoUltraByte memory card pretty quickly. Here Max is using his Sixth Sense and whispering . . .

I see frisbee people.

 

 

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Pupp Daddy Dog spends his days working as an entrepeneur and as a Dad. He is passionately in love with/obsessively neurotic about his family. Imagine Kicking Bird mixed with Albert Brooks. Oh, and throw in some Notorious B.I.G.

 

Alaska is the frustrated but caring cat at the center of our canine universe. All of us alternately worship, rely on and ceaselessly whine to her. Her need to control everything is confounded by the fact that she really pretty much does control everything, so in her few free moments, she knits and searches desperately for things to fuss about.

 

 

Max is smart and handsome, with a big heart. He is not only growing like a weed, but he has the attention span and concentration abilities of a weed. Despite my best efforts, AK keeps feeding him and he keeps growing. Our plan is to keep him so busy with school, sports & the arts that he won't notice he's a teenager and is supposed to hate us. T minus 2.5 years to teen launch, so far so good.

 

 

 Ben and Milo are phenomenal little creatures who remind us minute-by-minute not only how little control we have in this world, but why we should cease our controlling efforts and just laugh at all of God's jokes. Lately, Milo likes to dance and is good on the piano. Ben likes to mimic Max and enjoys manipulating adults and anyone else who has no idea how quietly brilliant he is. Both of them would love your full and complete attention. Really, stop reading silly blogs and join the fan club now. Ok? Ok.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

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