DISNEY TRIP!

 

This year we took our first major family vacation and we chose to go to Disneyworld in Florida. It was a fun vacation but we were plagued by more mishaps and bad omens than the guys who opened up King Tut’s tomb! It all started just before we left for Dinsey when Emily developed a severe case of mono! We almost had to cancel the trip, but Emily recovered just in time. Then we loaded up the van and drove to the airport on Saturday afternoon for our 6:00 flight to Orlando only to find that instead of being 3 hours early, we were 9 hours late. It turns out that there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between 6:00 AM flights and 6:00 PM flights. Who knew? I guess that the AM/PM thing is just something they don’t teach you in school. They expect you to learn it on your own. After a lot of work with the ticket agent at United, they found us some flights to Orlando but we got routed through 8 different cities … with 7 delayed flights … and 6 missed connections … and a 5 AM arrival … and a partridge in a pear tree! 

 

I won’t go into the screwed up hotel reservations, messed up meal plan, the brutal heat and humidity, or the some of the other strange occurrences. But all I can say is that if you ever go to Disney, you should not buy vacation insurance but instead invest is a good quality “exorcist”. That would have been money well spent. I’ll skip past how we almost missed our flight home and fast forward to our return to the airport parking garage where it turned out we left our lights on for the whole week. A dead car battery was fitting end to the trip! There were so many freak accidents that we were absolutely convinced that God was playing “Whack-a-mole” with the whole Wedding family. But it didn’t matter. We laughed the whole time and nothing ruined our vacation. The kids all want to go back some day (can anybody say “cold day in hell?”).

 

The best summary of our Disney vacation was given by comedian, Jim Gaffigan, in his stand-up routine “Mr. Universe”. His routine is so spot on accurate that it had Kathryn and I falling out of our chairs with laughter. Look it up on youtube and it’s 100% accurate! Priceless!

 

 

DON (aka “DADDY”)

 

For the most part, this has been an uneventful year for Don. He has now gone two years without changing jobs which is fast approaching a personal best for him! There was an interesting wrinkle in his career situation, though. Don got a call from Northwestern University and they asked him to teach a part time online statistics course in their new MSPA (Master of Science in Predictive Analytics) program. Basically, the job plays to some of Don’s strengths. He likes to talk about statistics and he likes to be the center of attention. Likewise, the students are the perfect foil for Don. They are required to learn about statistics, and they have no choice but to pay attention to him. This is a match made in Heaven.

 

This year, Don and son, Donald, broke away from the Seton Catholic Lego League team and formed a “Home Team” which consisted of Don “Dad” and Kathryn “Mom” as coaches with Donald, Emily, Katelyn and a friend of Donald’s from our Church as team members. They named their team the “Black Sheep” since their decision to form their own team did not exactly win friends and influence people at Seton. The name turned out to be mired in controversy since the judges at the regional competition said that our name, Black Sheep, was racist (like the Washington Redskins”) and that we needed to change it in order to be politically correct and in keeping with “Core Values”. I tried to explain that “Black Sheep” meant outcast and was not a reference to any particular race. The judges relented, but were not convinced. In the end, we scored 326 points with our robot which put us in fourth place (just a whisker behind second and third place). Even though the top seven teams move on to district, our fourth place finish wasn’t good enough. We just didn’t score enough points in the core values section of the competition. But at least we defeated our old team, Seton, who only scored 145 points. They got “PWNED” (google it) by the Black Sheep. Baaaaaaa! But I suppose they got the last laugh since even though their robot stunk, they got a trophy for having good core values. I can’t imagine anybody taking offense at their team name, the Crusaders. We have a lot to learn!

 

The year marked an important milestone in the lives of Don and Kathryn. This is the 15th year that Don and Kathryn have been married. Yes, that one still has people scratching their heads and wondering. But ever the incurable romantic, Don decided to celebrate this anniversary by taking Kathryn on “retro dates”. We have been spending the past year going to special places and doing things that we used to do when we were dating and first married. Some of our retro dates include going on a three mile walk in freezing snow to “Your’s Truly Restaurant”, going to “Put In Bay” where we had our honeymoon, and going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show (Don even dressed up like Count Frankenfurter and wore fishnet stockings … no you cannot see those pictures!). There are many other retro dates that are special to us. Don’s personal favorite was when they re-watched “Johnny Dangerously” and Don arranged for one of the movie’s stars, Glynnis O’Connor, to send Kathryn a letter with best wishes on our anniversary. We highly recommend that all my married friends go on some of these retro dates. They are a lot of fun and bring back many special memories.

 

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KATHRYN aka “Mom”

 

Kathryn continues as the matriarch of the house, which she rules with an iron fist. She believes that the only way to properly care for her husband and children is through a careful balance of love and a heavy handed application of oppressive terror. The rest of the family doesn’t always agree with her methods, but we have grown to respect them. 

 

Right now we have three kids in grade school, so most of Kathryn’s day is spent with our last pre-school age child, David. Kathryn expressed sadness that after this year she’ll be a bit of an empty nester. So she is making the most of this time by spending every waking moment with David and doing things like playing with “play dough”, playing “Candy Land”, and reading “Green Eggs and Ham” (all while she secretly longs for the day that she’ll never again have to play with “play dough”, “Candy Land”, or read “Green Eggs and Ham”. She then sighs wistfully and fantasizes about the day that we will finally have a clean house! 

 

For fun, Kathryn continues to go to her book club and her Bible study group. She attends church regularly and she goes to Jazzercise, walks around the neighborhood, and goes to the gym. Kathryn continued to run Emily’s Girl Scout troop this year and has done a wonderful job. Unfortunately for her, she is so good at organizing that she got drafted to help coach the family Lego robot team. So while Don helped the kids with the robot, Kathryn had to do everything else like arrange for the field trips, make the display boards, work on the presentations, get the t-shirts made, and pretty much everything else. It was a ton of thankless work, but she did a great job. She made Don pinky promise that they would never run another Lego team ever again. She didn’t have to ask twice!

 

Kathryn’s secret passion is red wine and watching “Project Runway”. It’s probably the only quiet time she gets all week. So every Thursday at 9 PM, we put the kids in their bedrooms, chain the doors shut, and lovingly place bear traps and claymore mines throughout the upstairs hallway. Then we pour some pinot noir and make a plate of cheese and meat and watch Tim Gunn say “make it work”. All I can say to Tim Gunn is … Kathryn *DID* make it work … didn’t you see the bear traps and claymore mines? Do we need to paint you a picture?

 

 “I love you more than Ice Cream … but that’s only because I’m lactose intolerant.”

 

“Hey! I was the first person to take a nap on the new couch, and you were the first person to get crumbs all over it!”

 

“You don’t need to get me drunk … I love you even when I’m sober”

 

Kathryn: “Did you know that the Bible says that getting revenge is wrong?”

Don: “Of course! What did you think it was?”

Kathryn: “I thought it was just ‘neutral’ “

 

“Unless you plan on using that thing in the bedroom tonight, you had better return it to the toolbox where it belongs!”

 

“You spend 15 years spoiling me, and then you act surprised when I won’t share my chocolate with you?”

 

“That’s my decoy chocolate. You’ll never find the good stuff”

 

“It makes me happy that even though you work from home, you still shower on a semi regular basis” (my wife has learned to set the bar really low)

 

DONALD (Age 13):

 

This was a fun year for Donald as he started it out by getting a part in Seton Catholic Schools’ production of Fiddler on the Roof. Of course, when it is a bunch of 6th through 8th graders, this is a shorter version of the play (“Fiddler on the Roof, Jr”). Still it was well done, and we were so proud. Donald got the part of Motel the Tailor and he got to sing a solo “Wonder of Wonders”. He did a great job and we were all relieved that he didn’t inherit his Dad’s gift for music. 

 

The funny part of “Fiddler Jr.” was that the children of Seton Catholic weren’t able to pull off convincing “Russian/Jewish” accents. When they tried, it sounded more like Italian immigrants from the 1930’s. As good as the production was; it was hard not to think that you were watching The Godfather by Mario Puzo. So rather than transporting the audience to the farming village of Anatevka, we were sent on a detour to Corleone Sicily. I half expected to hear Tevye make Fyedka an “offer he can’t refuse” while the Fiddler pulls a machine gun out of his violin case. Good thing I wasn’t directing! By the way, Kathryn suggested that next year the Seton musical should be “Rent, Jr.” (google it, it’s a funny joke).

 

This summer, Donald spent in Toledo working for his Aunt at her electronics company. He spent two weeks doing odd jobs; formatting computer drives; and proof reading business proposals (which he was actually quite good at doing!). Unfortunately, he was also exposed to the feral life style of his Toledo cousins. So within two weeks, he had seen every episode of South Park and Family Guy and learned and entirely new set of words that would easily make a sailor blush. Next year we will need to be a little more careful of where we send Donald. We’re thinking of sending him some place with a little more moral structure … like Las Vegas.

 

Since Donald is in 8th grade, he is looking at High Schools right now. He has narrowed down his choices to Western Reserve Academy and Walsh Jesuit (which is the twin school of Dad’s alma mater of St. John’s Jesuit of Toledo). Walsh seems to be the more rigid of the two schools with inflexible regulations and an emphasis on strict adherence to seemingly pointless rules (sort of like a Ghestapo internment camp). Just touring the school made Don and Kathryn home sick for our days in Catholic school. Western Reserve, on the other hand, has more of a Montessori approach to education and seems to be run something like the Hogwarts School from Harry Potter. Can you guess where Donald WANTS to go to high school? When we checked at the tuition, we found that Western Reserve was about 4 times the cost of Walsh Jesuit and Daddy would need to sign a pact with Beelzebub in order to afford it. Can you guess where Donald is GOING to go to high school?

 

Dad : Have you ever seen “Gilligan’s Island” ?

Donald : Is that the show where the little guy says “Ze plane! Ze Plane?

 

I’m working on my resume. Where did I go to “pre school” ?

 

I don’t think this medicine works. It’s probably just the amoeba effect. (Donald meant the placebo effect).

 

Donald : I want to be engineer like Dad when I grow up.

Mom : What kind of engineer?

Donald : A “Stay at Home Engineer” … just like Dad

 

 

 

EMILY (Age 10)

 

Emily had an exciting year. At the top of the list for was the fact that she was interviewed by two publications who wanted to do stories about her. The first interview resulted from her lemonade stand. Emily decided to hold a lemonade stand to earn money to spend on the family vacation in Disney World in Florida. Emily has a big heart and said that she would donate half of her proceeds to a family with special needs children. She put up fliers, baked cookies, made homemade jewelry to sell, made the lemonade, and even got permission to put her stand outside of a local grocery store. Sadly, on the day of her big sale, she came down with a high fever and was too sick to run her stand. Her brothers and sister jumped in and ran the store while Emily was sick at home. They were able to earn over $200 dollars for her charity, plus she split all the remaining money equally with her siblings. This whole episode caught the attention of Streetsboro’s local newspaper and they interviewed Emily for a story.

 

So now remember that fever that Emily had? Well, it got worse and worse and her face and neck were swollen up like a basketball. We took Emily to the Cleveland Clinic and it turned out that Emily had mononucleosis aka “mono”! So Kathryn wanted to know how it was possible for her little 10 year old angel to get the dreaded “kissing disease”. The doctor assured her that “mono” can be caught via casual contact. That seemed to satisfy Kathryn’s curiosity. Sure! She believes that Emily can get “mono” from casual contact, but watch what happens when Don comes home from a business trip with a case of syphilis. Think she’ll believe that “casual contact” story, then? I think not! Talk about “double standards”! But I digress. Back to the “mono” story. So we were thinking that we might need to cancel our Disney trip since it takes weeks to recover from mono and Emily was only a few days into her kissing disease. But when faced with missing our trip to meet all the Disney princesses, Emily magically recovered the night before we were to leave. Her fever magically dropped from 103 to 98.6 and her face went from “Wilson the Basketball” back to our adorable little Shirley Temple. Clearly this was a case of the “Amoeba Effect” (see Donald’s quote’s to understand this joke…trust me, it’s funny). So anyways, Emily’s recovery apparently broke some medical records and probably a few laws of nature so the Cleveland Clinic called us up and interviewed us (and Emily!) about her bout with mononucleosis. Not joking! They really did! It is set for publication in the early March time frame. I wonder if they plan on taking credit for Emily’s miracle cure. For my money, I’m betting that Emily’s recovery had more to do with Snow White’s Magic Apple than modern science. The only question I have is whether under Obamacare “if you like your Disney Princess, you can keep your Disney Princess”.

 

In October, Emily volunteered at the Hudson Haunted House. Every weekend for the entire month, she would go over to and get dressed up like a zombie and then she would scare the hell out of unsuspecting patrons. Turns out that Emily has a real theater gift and quickly became the star attraction. While other cast members would jump out and scream and wave bloody machetes at people, Emily went for the more subtle approach. She would sit in a corner and giggle and make disturbingly macabre comments (and I won’t put them in this letter because this is a Christmas card!). But if you want to know the effect, just rent the movie “The Ring” and watch the little ghost girl crawl out of the television. It would make your hair stand on end!

 

Emily’s Quotes:

“Should I put my tooth in a plastic bag, so the tooth fairy doesn’t catch ‘mono’?”

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KATELYN (Age 8):

 

Katelyn has spent the past year perfecting her dual identity. To the outside world, she presents herself as the sweetest little angel that God has ever permitted to escape from heaven. Unfortunately, inside is lurking the cynical, calculating, self-interested heart of a Ferengi (google it). For example, we received a letter from Katelyn’s teacher informing us that Katelyn was failing every one of spelling pre-tests every week. Katelyn is a good student so this seemed to be unusual. As we began to investigate, we soon learned that Katelyn had figured out that if she failed the pre-test, she would get the easy spelling words for the graded test at the end of the week. So she could get an “A” without actually breaking a sweat. Kathryn was furious, of course … and I pretended to be angry even though I was in total awe of her third grade application of “game theory” economics. I wasn’t really sure how to proceed. Should I teach her a lesson and take away all of her “My Little Pony” toys … or should I put her in charge of the family investment portfolio. It wasn’t really a clear decision. Along the same lines, Katelyn was asked to select her own spelling words one week and she decided to put some really difficult words on her list like “allergy” and “penicillin”. Difficult words for anybody, let alone a third grader. We were pleased with her choices until we noticed than many of her words were on her emergency medical bracelet that she wears. She claims that it was just coincidence and it would never have occurred to her to look at the bracelet during her spelling test. Hmmmmmm. 

 

But Katelyn is also an angel with the gentlest little heart you will ever find. She loves horses and unicorns and Pegasus. And she is always playing with her toy ponies and drawing pictures of them. She also has a wonderful eye for fashion and can quickly assemble an outfit from any closet that looks like it was ready for the “catwalk” on Project Runway. Kathryn wants to let her take sewing classes this summer at Jo-Anne Fabrics because we think she will have a talent for it.

 

One of the sweetest memories I have of Katelyn was at Disney this summer. We went on the uber lame ride “It’s a Small World”. You know the ride, it has all these stupid little dolls moving with 1960’s technology. They are all singing an irritating song and dancing and waving to you while you ride around in a boat at about 2 miles an hour. We all rode the ride and I started to make fun of it and eventually Donald and Emily took their cues from me joined in (the kids inherited an insensitive, boorish sense of humor from Kathryn). Well anyways, at the end of the ride, I looked at the back of the boat and there was little Katelyn looking at the dolls, and loving them. But she had a sad look on her face. The unending barrage of mocking insults had ruined the ride for her. Her sadness hurt my heart. I couldn’t help but to feel that it was somehow my fault. Well, I decided to make Katelyn happy (and to assuage my guilt) by going on the ride again. This time, she got to sit at the front of the boat and we all were quite. We all quietly watched her as she sang the song, gently waved to each little doll, and then blow each one of them a kiss. The ride went from cheezy to magical after seeing it through Katelyn’s eyes. Her little smile seemed to ask “can anything be as wonderful as this”. I can’t imagine anything that could come close.

 

Katelyn’s Quotes:

 

“Is 666 the Devil’s phone number?”

“Am I allowed to change my lucky number?”

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DAVID  (Age 4 … and three quarters):

 

Last but not least we have David. Last year we described him as a cross between Curious George the Monkey and the little boy name Damien from the movie “The Omen”. Well, that description is still valid, but now we have noticed a bit of Calvin in him (from “Calvin and Hobbs”) and a lot of Eric Cartmen (from South Park). He is definitely a delightful and imaginable little guy, but he requires constant supervision. We seem to be getting the hang of keeping an eye on him because we were able to keep his visits to the Emergency Room for stitches and head injuries down to two. That’s remarkable since the Cleveland Clinic was offering to enroll us in their frequent flyer miles program.

 

David is finishing up St. Mary’s pre-school where he is starting to give us a glimpse of his true personality. For example, St. Mary’s let’s each student be the “star student” every month. The star student gets to hold the flag, turn out the lights, and gets to call on the other students when they raise their hands. That’s a lot of power for a four year old. Yes, a lot of power indeed. And as you would expect, with that much power, there would be small percentage of the four year old population that would become drunk with such authority and start wielding it with an iron fist. Sadly, it appears that we might have drawn short straw with David as he quickly became drunk with his new power. On his special day, he demanded that everybody do exactly what he said the moment he said it. When they didn’t do what he said, he would rage that it was his “special day” and they had to do what he said. It got so bad, that his teacher mounted a coup d’état and deposed him. He was devastated to lose his “au-thor-i-tay”. To make matters worse, the next day the teacher was sick and the substitute teacher came in and accidentally made David the “star student” again. This teacher didn’t know what the star student did, so she pretty much let David set up a shadow government with unrestrained power. The effect of this was that David got a taste of power and he also got the impression that he was to be the “star student” every single day going forward. He just couldn’t grasp the concept of waiting his turn.

 

On to more pleasant thoughts. Kathryn signed David up for a pre-school soccer camp this summer. Now here is the part that you aren’t going to believe. David was good at soccer. I mean REALLY good. He was so good at it that Don is going have a paternity test done. He ran around the field and successfully controlled the ball, and passed it, and stole it, and played the goalie and did it all. We were stunned at his athletic ability and coordination, especially since Don usually wears out two pairs of shoes each year just from stumbling. 

 

David’s Quotes:

 

MOM : This six pointed star is called a “Star of David”.

DAVID : A star of “ME” ?

MOM : No, a “Star of David”

DAVID : I’m David !!!

MOM : I know, but it’s not your star. It’s the “Star of David”

DAVID : But I’m David!

COSTELLO : I’m not asking ya Who’s on second

ABBOTT : Who’s on first

COSTELLO : I don’t know

ABBOTT : He’s on third

 

DAVID : I’ve decided something. When I get big, I’m going to buy a tractor.

 

DAVID : I’m alone without people! (said when David is upstairs by himself and gets afraid or lonely…very cute)

 

MOM : We make you brush your teeth and clean your room to get you ready for the “real world”.

DAVID : So right now I live in the PRETEND world?

 

DAVID : What is that handle?

MOM : That’s the car’s emergency brake

DAVID : Where is the emergency gas pedal ?