So another year has passed and the Cleveland Wedding family is hanging together bound by a lot of love and the secure knowledge that we’d better love each other since nobody else would put up with our zany antics. Hey, sort of sounds like the makings of a bad 1980’s sitcom!

 

Every year, people keep telling us that they enjoy the annual Christmas card write up. Primarily, it’s a lot of fun for people to see how there’s another family out there that is more screwed up than their family. It’s reassuring to know that no matter how messed up you think you are … there’s one family that’s even more messed up. I guess we provide a community service. You’re welcome. We often get asked, “how do I get mentioned in the Christmas letter?” Well it’s sort of like the philosophy of Mad Magazine. In Mad, their rule to get in included was “Get famous and then do something stupid”. Well, for the Christmas letter, you need to “do something with the Wedding family that Don can twist around, take out of context, and blow completely out of proportion”. 

 

OK, so what’s up with the Weddings? Well, first off we are trying to expose the kids to more culture and family traditions. On the cultural front, we have the kids involved in art, music, and we are taking them to plays. We are also letting the kids see classic television shows and movies. For example, we let the kids watch Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, PSYCHO. It scared the heck out of them. The scene that scared them the most was when Anthony Perkins comes into the bathroom dressed as his dead mother and murders Janet Leigh while she is in the shower (spoiler alert!). Now the kids all hate to take a shower because they’re afraid. Well, actually only the three youngest hate to take showers out of fear. Donald is not afraid to take a shower. He just hates taking showers because he’s a 14 year old boy. So anyways, I have a bunch of dirty little kids running around the house. Who’d of thought that would happen? OK, Kathryn warned me that would happen, but I didn’t believe her, so technically this is her fault.

 

As for family traditions, we went on two trips. Our first trip was this summer when we drove with Carol and Jeff up to Traverse City to see the sand dunes. It’s a Wedding family tradition for the kids to run up and down the dunes until they trip and roll down the hill and get sand in their mouths and noses and down their underpants. Then they cry. After everybody got sufficiently injured and sun burned, we drove around the perimeter of Michigan and into Wisconsin (ya, great planning there). And we met up with Don’s Mom and Don’s Aunt, who is a nun. The nuns own an old 100 year old mansion and we got to stay in the mansion. It’s supposed to be haunted, but sadly the only spirits that we observed were the bottles of booze that the nuns were drinking every night as we sat around the table and told stories and laughed. Boy, those nuns can really put away the sauce! When we left, there were so many “dead soldiers” that we could have filled the cemetery at Gettysburg. For Thanksgiving, we had 16 people show up. We had members from both sides of the family and we really put away the turkey. Kathryn has even perfected the Wedding family stuffing recipe (which is the best stuffing in the world). She can also make the mince pie that Don’s maternal grandma, aka “Geeba”, used to make. Three of the four kids and now Kathryn love the mince pie. The tradition will live on! After Thanksgiving, we piled into the car and went down to Kentucky and met up with Don’s dad “Grumpy” and the whole family saw a Wildcats game in Rupp Arena with Grumpy. Now all the kids are fanatical fans of the Kentucky Wildcats. Again, the tradition lives on!

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Don (“Dad”)

 

This is a relatively uneventful year for Don. The two highlights of the year occurred when Don did some statistical analysis the people who were doing the Atlas Shrugged movies. He figured out the best locations to release the movies. As a result, Don got to be in the movie credits for “Atlas Shrugged III”. It’s like the last two seconds of the credits and Don is the first name listed on the left side when it says “And special thanks”. We had no idea it would be in the movie and the whole family jumped up and down and cheered since Dad was “famous”. Everybody in the theater gave him a standing ovation (really!). Don fully expected that his new found fame would result in the paparazzi hanging out at the front door and taking his picture and then photo shopping in a picture of Elle MacPherson so that they could romantically link the two. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s clearly only a matter of days. BTW, save this Christmas card, you can sell it on EBAY for big money. Don also got a chance to meet George Takai aka “Mr. Sulu” from Star Trek. The family went to see the Cleveland orchestra play sci-fi music and George Takai was the host. After the performance, Dad and Donald and two of Kathryn’s friends, Angie and Jim, snuck back stage to meet him. We actually need to credit Donald for getting us back stage. He just walked right past the guards pretending that he was with another family that DID have a backstage pass. The rest of us waited a few seconds and then frantically ran up to the guards and pointed to Donald in the distance and said “that’s my son, I have to get him!” Eventually we cleared about 20 armed guards and made it back stage with Mr. Sulu. The funny thing is that none of us four had a back stage pass, yet everybody instantly trusted Donald and Angie and Jim. The only person that the guards confronted was *DON*. They instinctively did not trust him and were about to kick him out, but then George Takai said “it’s OK, he can stay”. So Donald and I have our picture with Mr. Sulu with the Vulcan hand sign of “live long and prosper” while we are all saying “May the Force be with you”. I know it’s the wrong movie, but hey … it was funny. 

 

On the home improvement front, Don spent the summer supervising a remodel of the attic. We had all the insulation sucked out, cross beams put in, new insulation put in, followed by a floor. We also added some windows, a pull down stair case, electricity, and … you aren’t going to believe this but it’s true … we put an elevator into our attic. It’s a “dumb waiter” cargo elevator by Versalift. Now it’s insanely easy to get stuff into the attic. Now Don waits with childlike anticipation for Kathryn to say … “can you put this in the attic?” because then he can play with the elevator. The whole process remodel took about 6 months to complete and the neighbors have started referring to the Wedding house as the “Winchester Mansion” (Google it … it’s funny).

 

By the way, Kathryn complained that in the previous section, Don put the PSYCHO spoiler alert *AFTER* he spoiled the movie’s secret ending. Kathryn said that is like saying that in the movie Citizen Kane that “Rosebud is the sled” and then saying (spoiler alert). So in the future, I’ll try to be more careful.

 

Don’s Quotes:

• “If we don’t become alcoholics, it won’t be from lack of effort”

• Don: If you were ice cream, your flavor would be ‘Pralines and Bitch’

Kathryn: I’m lactose intolerant, so I can’t be ice cream

Don: If you were DAIRY FREE ice cream, your flavor would be ‘Pralines and Bitch’

 

 

Kathryn (“Mom”) … don’t skip this section this year.

 

Normally people fast forward through my “Kathryn” write up because she usually is the only person in the family that manages to stay sane while the rest of the family acts like an outtakes reel from “Planet of the Apes”. Well, this year is different. That’s because Kathryn also has the ability to go off the deep end, particularly when she starts obsessing over something. This year’s obsession: TOMATOES. Yes, Kathryn planted her annual “Victory Garden” and got a bumper crop of Tomatoes. It started off slowly enough, with one or two tomatoes. She would put it in salad or on a sandwich. No big deal. Everybody was happy. But then more of them started to ripen...and more…and even more! I know that “five hundred and eleven” doesn’t sound like a large number of tomatoes, until you actually have to eat them all! Kathryn was afraid of wasting them, so she frantically began to force feed us tomatoes at every opportunity including soups, nutrition drinks, spaghetti sauce, adding it to the kids’ breakfast cereal, and dessert toppings. No matter what we ate, we would inevitably discover that Kathryn was making our food out of tomatoes. We reacted much the same as Charlton Heston did in the movie, Soylent Green, when he discovered they were making food out of people (spoiler alert!). So Kathryn expanded her market share and began pawning them off on family and friends until people got sick of tomatoes and stopped calling. Then she started giving packages of tomatoes to the neighbors until the home owner’s association sent us a “cease and desist” order. When desperation set in, she started just giving them to total strangers and anybody who was foolish enough to ring our doorbell. Not surprisingly, the Jehovah Witnesses and Amway Salesmen stopped coming by, the post office put a hold on our mail “sua sponte”, and we no longer got UPS deliveries. Even the suspected serial killer down the street gives our house a wide berth in total fear of the crazy “Tomato Lady”.

 

But Kathryn’s life is not just growing Tomatoes and giving them to well … everybody. She is still leading Emily’s Girl Scout troop, working as a lunch Mom, going to her book club, and of course ruling the household with an iron fist. She even has time to attend church every Sunday where she can usually muster a respectable 86.6% family attendance rate. In an unrelated note, the singles group at our church approached her about joining. They were surprised to find that she was married!

 

For fun, Kathryn enjoys placing a large plastic tarantula looking spider in places where it will surprise Don (i.e. coffee cup, winter hat, underwear drawer, etc.) It’s supposed to scare him, but it never does. Nonetheless, Don loves his wife so much that he pretends to scream and the then curse a blue streak at his wife and telling her to grow the “eff” up. But like I said, it doesn’t fool Don. By the way, I forgot to mention that it is a very REAL looking plastic tarantula.

 

Kathryn’s Quotes:

• Would you like tomatoes with that?

• I don’t have a double standard for me … I have a different standard.

• “Is it OK for me to make New Year Resolutions for Other People … or is that too controlling?”

• Kathryn : I forget, do you like to eat moldy cheese?

Don : Not especially.

Kathryn : Great. Now I have to throw it away. I knew I should have asked you after you ate it.

• “Donnie, I think your love language is PRAISE! I feel sorry for you because you live with me”

• “My sexual fantasies involve the house being clean and Don using a plate when he eats”

• “My goal is to go the rest of the day without finding fault with you … good thing it’s almost bed time”

• I am sorry to hear about the tragic loss in your family … would you like a tomato?

 

 

 

 

Emily (Age 11)

 

I normally hate when people use their Christmas letters as a vehicle to brag about their kids. It’s never in the holiday spirit of peace, joy, and goodwill to others. But in this case, I do need to make an exception and brag about Emily because it is necessary as a literary vehicle to give a snarky “I told you so” to Emily’s former school. The back story is that Emily is a very bright little girl, but disorganized. She was never challenged and was able to coast through school and not do homework but still get all A’s. That doesn’t go over well in a Catholic school where rigid adherence to rules and authority are prized above all else. So with Emily going into 6th grade, we wanted her to be put into a special “Pre-Algebra” class for advanced sixth graders because we knew the challenge would be good for her. But the administration wouldn’t allow Emily in the class because she was disorganized. So Emily studied all summer long before 6th grade started. She mastered Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and got into material that students are learning in their second year of high school algebra. Even though Emily had moved far beyond the rest of the 6th grade in math, it didn’t matter to Emily’s school and they insisted that she stay with the regular class. In her first week, they “challenged” her by making her come up with a “super hero math power”. We kept trying to get her into the advanced class, but the administration would not budge. Our request fell on deaf ears. It was truly frustrating. Then suddenly Kathryn had a brilliant idea. We contacted Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy (CVCA) which is a 7th-12th grade Christian school. They gave Emily an entrance test the very next day and allowed her skip directly into the 7th grade. They also decided to put Emily into an 8th grade advanced math class that was learning algebra for high school credit which is effectively putting her 3 years beyond the class we wanted her in! So how is she doing? Well for the first time in her life, Emily has to work hard and cannot “zone out”. She studies every day and does her homework for several hours a night. OK, sure, she still isn’t handing in her homework, but that’s not because she isn’t doing it. It’s because her locker looks like Fibber McGee’s closet (google it … it’s funny) and she can never find it. It’s driving CVCA nuts and they have us on speed dial to complain. But as parents, we’re thrilled because she’s actually doing the homework. A first! And what are her grades in her new school? Emily has all A’s again and loves her new school. She is also studying the flute and is on the “Academic Challenge” team. And she plans to go out for the Tennis team. So a challenge and demanding teachers are just what Emily has needed all along. So to her old school, we give you this message in the spirit of Christmas: “We told you so!”

 

On a personal note, Emily continues to have a creative imagination. She writes and illustrates stories and comic strips, makes up songs on the piano, and loves to sew. There is a downside to her imagination. Dad had the kids watch “The Blaire Witch Project” and Emily didn’t know that it was actually a fake documentary (spoiler alert!). Well, this proceeded to scare the hell out of Emily. Then she noticed that her clock radio was changing time by itself (she accidentally set it to change to central time automatically every day … why would anybody need a feature like that?). Anyways, Emily was convinced that her alarm clock was haunted and was afraid to sleep in the same room with it. She kept disconnecting it and putting it in the hallway.

 

Emily’s Quotes:

• Mom: This was your last day at your old school before starting CVCA; what did you do?

Emily: I spray painted the walls, vandalized the teacher’s lounge, and pulled the fire alarm.

 

• David: If Santa looks in his magic snowball and sees you in the bath tub. Does he see your butt?

Emily: No … it’s pixilated.

 

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David; aka “David … the Little Boy with Type-A Personality” (Age 5)

 

This year David started Kindergarten and took to it like a duck to water. He is in the “Busy Bee” class. He is totally drinking the Kool-Aid and has fallen in love with the rigid paramilitary hierarchy that one can only find in a Catholic grade school. David loves doing exactly what he is supposed to do when he is supposed to do it and loves every minute of it (I think Kathryn wishes that Don was like that). His favorite hobby is to remember with computer like precision when his fellow kindergarteners have to move their “bee” to a yellow or red flower (indicating bad behavior). David is a savant when it comes to naming the times, dates, and infractions of every school mate. He sort of acts like cross between Gregg Marmalard and Neidermeyer from Animal House. On a sweeter note, David spends his school days helping the teacher, holding doors for adults, and saying prayers. The reason is that every time a student does a good deed, the teacher gives that student a piece of straw for Baby Jesus’ manger. David wants to make Baby Jesus’ bed extra soft. Like I said, it’s really sweet. Unfortunately, when David gets home from school he stops being an Omega from the Animal House movie and then he turns into John Belushi. No, there isn’t an Animal House movie spoiler (the movie spoiler comes later). So David throws his coat on the floor, he demands that he get to play on Mom’s Kindel regardless of who is using it, he refuses to eat dinner but demands dessert, he won’t help clean up after dinner, and he isn’t exactly truthful when we ask if he brushed his teeth. Right now, the only thing that keeps David in line is when we pick up the phone and “call” Santa Claus and tell him to turn on the Magic Snowball and to start watching David. Boy does that get his attention! “Demanding David” is NOT eager to make the naughty list. But still, he really, really, REALLY, hates it when we call Santa. He glares at us with rage as he picks his coat up off the floor and eats his vegetables. I can only imagine what it will be like when, someday, he discovers … “you know what” (No spoiler there, what kind of Grinch do you think I am???). I think that David’s reaction to being manipulated deceived by his parents will be similar to Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes when he sees the statue of liberty and realizes he was on Earth all along! (See? There’s the Spoiler! And it’s even another Charlton Heston movie. What other Christmas card write up can make two separate Charlton Heston refererences? ).

 

We have a lot of David material this year. On the athletic front, David plays on a peewee soccer team. He is actually really good which is a shock considering the athletic ability of Dad. He plays every game like it’s a life and death struggle. While the other kids are picking dandelions in the grass, David is playing for blood. Any time the game is not to his liking he starts acting like John McEnroe. So even though he is the star of the team, he drives everybody nuts with his hypercompetitive nature. At the games, we are so embarrassed by his behavior that Kathryn and I have to pretend we aren’t David’s parents. 

 

Oh ya, here’s another one. David came up with a super hero power to help Emily do her homework (remember Emily’s homework assignment?). He figured out how to “count to infinity”. He turns his head sideways and counts to eight. It took us a while to figure this out until he explained to us that if you turn the “eight” sideways then it’s an “infinity”. I think there’s a flaw in that logic someplace.

 

One more (and David will someday hate me for this one). David is currently waking up in the middle of the night and “sleepwalking” to the bathroom to “tinkle”. Unfortunately, when you are five years old, sound asleep, and walking around it is difficult to distinguish between “toilet” and “hallway carpet”. Let’s just say that David keeps getting the two mixed up. We were pretty sure that it was David who was whizzing all over the carpet every night. But he emphatically denied culpability. Proof finally arrived from Emily who was awake in the middle of the night because she was afraid of her haunted alarm clock (remember the haunted alarm clock?). So she noticed David sleep walking past her bedroom door and she followed him and watched him urinating all over the carpet and then going back to bed. We were horrified that she just stood there and asked her why she didn’t wake him up. Emily said that she was watching an old TV show and learned that it was supposed to be dangerous to wake up sleep walkers. It turned out that when Kathryn is your mother it is extremely dangerous to NOT wake up a sleep walker when they are pissing all over the rug. Emily learned that one the hard way.

 

David’s Quotes:

• David: Did you give up candy for lent?

Mom: Yes

David: Good! Can I have your chocolate?

 

• When they nailed Jesus to the cross, did they use a hammer or a nail gun?

 

• Dad: The bank gave me a $50 bill. I hate that because they are hard to get rid of.

David: I’ll take it!

 

• CRASH !!! (sound from the next room)

Mom: What was that noise !?!?!?

David: Nothing !

Mom: I heard a loud noise! What was it ?!?!?!

David: It was your imagination.

 

• Will they put you in jail if you go “Skippy dipping”?

 

   

Katelyn (Age 9)

 

Katelyn is also doing well in school, with the exception of the fact that she keeps forgetting to do and/or turn in her homework assignments. Her teacher has a unique solution to this problem and every time a student forgets to do their homework, they must write the Gettysburg Address. Katelyn claims that she hates to write it, but we don’t believe her since she usually ends up writing it a couple of times a week. So “me thinks the lady doth protest too much”.  Katelyn also is questioning the wisdom of writing the Gettysburg address since nobody cares about it anyways. Besides, she “keeps getting Lincoln mixed up with Columbus so how important can Lincoln be anyways?”. Glad to see our tuition dollars we’re dumping into a private Catholic school aren’t going to waste.

 

Katelyn’s hobbies include art, fashion, and all things that involve horses. In fact she knows everything about horses and she can identify the type of horse just by looking at it. That might not seem so amazing, except that there are like 100 different types of horses, and to be honest, they all look the same to me. It’s more impressive than it sounds. Also, as I mentioned before, Katelyn loves art and she drew this year’s Christmas card which is a scene of polar bears celebrating Christmas in the snow. Other than fighting with David and Emily, Katelyn loves to watch old television shows with her Dad. We are currently watching “It Takes a Thief” which is the old show from 1968 where Robert Wagner plays “Alexander Monday” who is an ex-Jewel thief turned “secret agent”. Katelyn is now absolutely in love with Robert Wagner. She now is convinced that she wants to marry international jewel thief / secret agent. Join the club. After a recent episode from Netflix, Katelyn looked at us and said, “I can’t wait to have a boyfriend like Alexander Monday. I’m going to tell him not to kiss me. But he will do it anyways. Then I’m going to say (insert 8 year old French Accent here) ‘How dare you kiss me venn I tell you not to’ and then I will fall in love with him.” OK, one guess as to what just happened in the television show.

 

Katelyn also likes to watch really sad “chick flicks” with her mom. Katelyn is learning early in life that girls can’t be happy unless they are reduced to tears by a movie. Her latest tear jerker was Titanic. Katelyn was sobbing uncontrollably after Leonardo DiCaprio died in the end (oops! There’s another Spoiler alert!). One other thing, Katelyn just joined Seton Catholic’s Cheerleader team. Want to see something cute? Go watch little girls dressed in their little cheerleader outfits and doing choreographed cheers for the CYO 4th grade basketball team. It’s really priceless.

 

Katelyn’s Quotes:

• Dad: “Why did you tell me you did the dishes when you didn’t?”

Katelyn: I was being STARCASTIC.

 

• Mom: If you were on a date and kept passing gas at the dinner table, the boy would never call you again. 

Katelyn: I know. That’s why I’m getting them out of my system now.

 

• Katelyn: I’m praying for God bless all the Lesbians … because they don’t believe in God

Mom: Atheists are the people who don’t believe in God.

Katelyn: Oh. What are Lesbians?

 

Donald (Age 14)

 

This was an eventful year for Donald. One of the highlights for Donald III occurred back in March when his Grandfather (Donald Sr. aka “Grumpy”) got four tickets to the NCAA finals where Kentucky played UCONN. So Don and his two oldest children (Donald and Emily) flew down to see the game with Grumpy. Getting down there at the last minute was a terrifying experience since all the flights were booked and we had a tight connection in Charlotte. I won’t go into the details but Don got separated from the two kinds and they were seconds away from accidentally getting on the plane to Dallas by themselves and nobody to meet them in Dallas. Yipes! The game was great even though Kentucky lost. But the highlight for Donald was when we all went to a local bar and grill for hamburgers and milkshakes. The restaurant was named “Twin Peaks” and it turned out to be one of those “Breast”araunts where the waitresses are pretty, wear skimpy shorts, show a lot of cleavage. Oops. Mom was not thrilled by that mistake. And it really was a mistake! Really! Anyways, Donald at the tender of age of 13 suddenly discovered that there was something that was better than ice cream and he said “I can’t wait to tell my friends that I went to a strip club”. This worried Don who said that “A: This is NOT a strip club and B: Do NOT tell your friends at school that you were here”. That worried Dad, but the thing that was even more scary is that Emily stared at the buxom waitresses dressed in next to nothing and said, “these are the prettiest girls in the world and I want to be JUST LIKE THEM and then boys will look at me”. Groan. Is it too early to buy a shotgun?

 

On the academic front, our eldest has just entered high Walsh Jesuit High school in Cleveland. An interesting fact is that Walsh was built in 1964 at the same time as St. John’s Jesuit in Toledo and was started by the same group of Jesuits. Therefore, they decided to use the exact same floor plans for both schools, so for a while (before remodeling and expansion) both schools were identical even down to the keys. The neat thing about this is that anybody who grew up with Don in Toledo knows that St. John’s Jesuit was Don’s alma mater. Now his eldest son, Donald III, is going to the “clone” school of Don. An even neater fact is that Walsh is coed so all of his children will be going to Walsh. It’s nice to be able to pass along some of your educational “DNA” to your children. Also, Donald went to Toledo again this year for a few weeks and worked for his Aunts and Uncle at the family business. While in Toledo, he completed his graduate studies in being a feral child. He ran around Toledo with his cousins and perfected the art of swearing like a sailor, not changing his underwear, and eating nothing but junk food. He came home from this educational experience with the manners of a hyena. Oh ya, while he was in Toledo, Donald took an art class offered at St. John’s and it transferred into Walsh. So it’s great to say that my son went to my high school, even if only for one class. 

 

So right now a lot of you are thinking about Donald in high school, and you are wondering, “where did the time go?” It was just yesterday when our four year old Donald gave “pressed ham” to the two girls from the Twinsburg marching band (go look up our 2004 Christmas card), and now it’s 10 years later and Donald is in the marching band and hopefully not giving “pressed ham” to the high school age girls (or anybody else for that matter). Yes, Donald has joined the Walsh Jesuit High School marching band. So the question that everybody asks is “what instrument does he play?” Well, funny you should ask. Our son has 7 years of piano lessons and can play beautiful Beethoven and Bach that could bring tears to your eyes. He also has been playing electric guitar for 2 years. So what did he opt for at Walsh? Percussion of course. And not just any percussion instrument, our son with all of his musical training is the Walsh Jesuit “Cymbal Monkey!” Kathryn and I were horrified, of course. We asked him what motivated him to play cymbals in the marching band. Donald had three reasons: 1) there are 3 times as many girls in the marching band as there is guys 2) he gets a varsity letter and 3) cymbals are so easy that he is the only band member that doesn’t need to take his musical instrument home to practice. As Donald explained, whenever there’s an awkward silence in the music I just bang the cymbals and then go back to sleep. It’s hard to imagine where he learned to opportunistically exploit a situation to maximize his personal gain without doing any real work. Whoever taught him such behavior must be a cynical jerk. Kathryn says that, given his male role model, this behavior was about as predictable as an episode of Gilligan’s Island where in every episode (Spoiler alert to follow!) the castaways almost got off the island but then Gilligan screws it up at the last minute. (See? I didn’t screw it up this time! Aren’t you glad that I didn’t screw up every Gilligan’s Island episode for you?)

 

Also, Donald is getting involved in other areas of high school. He rejoined his CYO basketball league and he is seeing old classmates and friends from grade school. Donald is also in the chess club, the engineering club, and the “mock trial” club. He is also getting excellent grades. So we think he is making the most of his high school experience. We are very proud of how active he is in school.

 

Donald’s Quotes

• “I heard a scream ... did Dad see a spider?”

 

• Dad: Why did you screw up your Spanish quiz?

Donald: Dad! You *KNOW* I’ve *ALWAYS* been bad at memorizing the Spanish names of foreign capitals.

Dad: Right. I forgot about that. For a moment I thought it was because you didn’t study.

 

• “Here is what you need to know about my Dad: Only half of his stories are true … and the half that *ARE* true are only “half true”.