Tim is married.
As of Sunday night, March 29th, 2009, Team Elhajj has expanded. We are now blessed with a southern franchise in Miami. I’ve never seen Tim so happy. Carry is gorgeous.
Congratulations, son!
We’re headed back to Seattle now, but I’ll have updates soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the photographs on flickr.
This is my niece.
She is auditioning for a choir opportunity at Liberty University. What a beautiful voice! She is overpowering the capabilities of the mike and the sound track is a little out of sync, none of which is her fault, but despite all that, it’s just a really powerful, heartfelt performance.
I am not familiar with the song, but wow.
This is my brother at work.
This remarkable video came from a manned surveillance camera that just happened to be shooting in the right direction during the arrest. Pure coincidence.
Once all the overlay text stops, you can see a gold truck pull up at the top right. This truck is filled with police. The little Nissan in the middle of the screen also has a solo cop driving. This cop has a taser. The guy racing on foot is the bad guy. If this video had an audio track, you would hear the cop in the Nissan screaming out his window, “Stop police!” But, of course, there is no audio so it feels like an old Charlie Chan movie, with pratfalls.
My brother is pure awesome.
If you were wondering where the “grizzled heart” line came from, this was how I described this very same brother last month on the Brevity blog. I am just glad the cops didn’t have tasers when I was boosting sneakers from the Harrisburg East Mall.
This sequence of photos is from the indoor water park at Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mounds, Washington. That’s 1000 gallons of water spilling from a very large bucket, suspended maybe 40 feet high. We celebrated the kids and my birthday here, a chain hotel and water park about 70 to 80 miles from our house.
We had fun, but everyone agreed it was not as good as Camelback, the water park in the Poconos that my sister Tina and her husband Steve treated us to the last time we were in Pennsylvania.
More pictures on flickr.
Yesterday’s reports of an armed gunman in the woods behind the kids’ school? False alarm.
Here is what happened: Bellevue Community College did an emergency drill that involved loud announcements over their public PA system using language like “take cover” and “armed intruder.” The kids at Puesta del Sol elementary school were actually able to hear these announcements during their recess, reported it, and were called in from recess: the elementary school went into lockdown.
School officials looked into the cause of the announcements, realized it was a community college drill, and were about to cancel the lockdown, when Kennedy saw an “armed intruder” running in the woods behind the school. She reported it, and the police literally poured into the neighborhood.
Holly got there and called me just as the police were tearing down the barricades. In the background, I could hear Aaron exclaim with much gusto, “They had machine guns!” I couldn’t be sure if he was talking about the cops or the intruders Kennedy saw, but he seemed delighted.
Holly and I were driving to the movies last week and she gasped and whipped the car down a side street.
I was like, “What?”
“Hold on,” she said.
We went all the way around the block and then she pulled up to this monster, about a mile from our house. It’s higher than the guy’s roof, so it must be, what, 15 to 17 feet tall?
And this was after three or four days of rain.
The next morning was Sunday. I got up around eight and hustled the kids in the car. “Are we getting donuts?” Aaron wanted to know.
“Better than donuts,” I said, getting my camera.
We’re back home, as of last night. What a trip!
Three weeks ago, Holly took the kids to California. The plan was for me to get some work done and then follow on the weekend. But then Seattle got socked in with snow. I went to the airport three times and purchased five one way tickets before I finally made it down there with them. What an adventure! I am still fighting to get a refund from Virgin America, who took advantage of my plight and are only offering a credit. With the lousy economy, I hope they don’t go belly up before I can use the ticket.
I met up with Holly and the kids so late, I decided drive back with them instead of flying. I wouldn’t have been able to get much work done anyhow: the campus (as well as most of Seattle) was mostly shut down due to weather. Seattle grinds to a halt with an inch or two of snow. We had over a foot.
I enjoyed the time off. We took the kids to Disneyland, Hollywood, both of Holly’s parent’s house, Portland and numerous hotels between here and there.
Holly and the kids outside of our Long Beach hotel. Aaron is wearing his Haunted Mansion hat from Disneyland.
We went sightseeing in Hollywood. The kids were amazed that Hollywood was even real. Once they got a load of Hollywood and Vine, they were less so.
Holly’s Dad, Wild Bill.
The decorations on this house cracked me up. If you look closely, you can see Santa just kicked an extra point in the far goal (It’s good!). Around the corner (not shown) is a life-size nativity scene.
No trip to California is complete without a celebratory drop into Powell’s book store in Portland on the return leg. We can never get out of Powell’s without and armload of books.
This year Holly and I told the kids that Santa isn’t real, but then the kids didn’t believe us.
I didn’t want to burst their Christmas bubble, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Most of the other kids in their fifth grade class don’t believe in Santa anymore. Aaron has been pointedly asking me if Santa were real, and I’d been holding him off by shrugging my shoulders and telling him I believed in Santa. That’s not an entirely untrue statement either: I believe a little faith and imagination will take you places you can’t get on reason alone. I would have let the whole Santa business go right there, but then Kennedy started to draw some uncomfortable associations between religion and Santa. “Jews don’t believe in Santa,” she told my wife. The little kids celebrating Hanukkah were telling Kennedy that Santa isn’t real. She would drift toward her church friends on the playground and say things like “You’re Christian. You believe in Santa, right?” But this only elicited eye rolls and other reactions that Kennedy didn’t understand. Holly and I decided we probably ought to tell them Santa isn’t real.
A few weeks ago after dinner, Holly brought up Santa. The kids gave us their full attention. Holly said Santa was a legend, based on Saint Nicholas, who used to sneak around putting gifts into shoes that poor people left out at night. Holly talked about the Spirit of Giving. Generosity. The Meaning of Christmas. That sort of thing. The room got quiet as a funeral.
“No North Pole?” Aaron asked.
“Nope,” Holly said. “And no reindeer.”
“I knew it,” Aaron said. His voice was even, but disappointed.
Kennedy surprised us by asking a bunch of questions. She wanted to know who bought the Santa gifts. And why the tags on the Santa presents were in a different handwriting than the tags on the rest of the presents. “And who eats the cookies, who drinks the milk?” she asked.
We answered her questions and then started to clean up. I felt terrible. While Holly and I loaded the dishwasher, I wished we could go back in time and do the last ten minutes over. A few days later, I forgot all about it. But then the strangest thing happened: Kennedy said she didn’t believe us!
At first she thought Holly and I were just pulling her leg. She kept asking questions and disbelieving the answers. Soon she convinced herself that Holly and I were out of our minds. It’s probably just a sign of how things are going to go as they get older, but it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Kennedy was planning to prove her theory by writing a secret Santa letter and then asking for something only she and Santa could know about. Fortunately Holly talked her out of it.
Turns out, a little boy has been needling Kennedy about Santa since kindergarten. Her whole focus has been showing this kid up, proving to him that Santa is real. Holly suggested that Kennedy believe what she believes and let her little friend believe what he believes. A lesson that downplays proselytizing and promotes tolerance all rolled up in one. Can I get an amen?
Kennedy even brought Aaron around to her way of thinking. Earlier this week as we were saying prayers, Aaron blissfully slipped into full blown Santa denial and expressed regret for asking Santa for a 14 karat gold plated portable gaming device. I was pleased. Not just because he was believing in Santa again, but because he was showing contrition for being greedy. What kind of kid needs a gold plated PSP?
I couldn’t be more happy with how this year’s Santa reveal turned out. My faith in the unknowable mystery of life has been renewed.
And I hope Aaron and Kennedy believe in Santa Claus until they’re a hundred and fifty.
Very soon now, my son, Timmy, is going to be a father all his own. Here is one of the first pictures of his little one.
And the tummy you’re looking into belongs to Carrie, who I have heard a lot about and can’t wait to meet. When I found out she was pregnant, I got so excited I made Timmy put her on the phone and chat with me, which was probably the wrong thing to do, because she sounded sleepy. But she was kind and sweet to me, and we made small talk. I can’t wait to meet her.
I can’t wait to hold this little baby.
I love to curse.
When I was growing up, colorful language was the rule. Aunt Polly loved to swear. Aunt Carol could hold her own. Mom seemed more reserved—she would say eff this or eff that. If her sisters got too vulgar, she would chide them to cool out. I would sit in the living room, pretending to watch TV but listening to every word.
No surprise, then, that as an adult I don’t have good boundaries when it comes to my kids and foul language. Case in point: Last weekend Holly and the kids were watching Spaceballs, an old comedy from the 80s with a surprising amount of cursing.
Holly has been exploring old movies and TV shows with the kids, but this was the first with a good amount of cussing. Aaron and Kennedy don’t curse. This is all due to Holly’s good home training, but the kids have really taken to it. I’m a little disappointed. In our house the D-word is dumb and the S-word is stupid.
“Stupid,” I say with mild scorn. “Stupid is a bad word? That’s retarded.” And Aaron slugs me in the arm.
Spaceballs’s Major Asshole scene nearly tipped the old time movie viewing scales in our house. Holly threatened to turn off the TV, but the kids protested. “We’ve already heard all these words,” Kennedy said.
“Where?” Holly asked.
Immediately both kids cried in unison, “DAD!” When Holly told me this story, I laughed. I love to curse.
Here is my favorite cussing story:
I joined the military when I was seventeen. This was back in the days when the Company Commander routinely cursed out the entire squad, just for good measure.
It was the first week and we were all—leaders and lambs—trying to feel out the situation. The Company Commander’s task was to break us down. He stormed up and down the barracks. We stood at attention at the end of our bunks. He was doing a pretty good job cussing us out. Something he said reminded me of sitting in the living room listening to my aunts swear in the kitchen. I snickered at in inopportune moment and he got right in my face.
“Are you amused, recruit!” he shouted.
I looked at my feet. I thought it was a retorical question, but he actually wanted an answer. He repeated his question, this time even louder and closer to my face.
“What’s so amusing, recruit!”
I was terrified. I didn’t know what to say, but decided honesty was my best apporach.
“SIR,” I shouted. “YOU SOUND LIKE MY AUNT POLLY, SIR!”
I said it with earnestness and enthusiasm. He just looked at his feet. Out the corner of my eye, I could tell he was trying to hide a grin. After a few seconds, he said, “Aunt Polly likes to curse, does she?”
“Sir,” I said. “Yes sir.”
“Okay, then.”
Present Tense 