Anniversary Smanniversary

For our anniversary Michael had a painting made for me. It was done by Nate Ashby, and it is the coolest thing EVER.



Everything in the picture represents something memorable from our 10 years of marriage.

For example, we got engaged on Halloween so there is a mummy proposing to a witch. There may be more symbolism in that than I'd like to talk about.

There is a blue bird on one of the buildings because when Maddie was young we lived in the second story a dinky little apartment by Pioneer Park. A lot of homeless people sleep at this park and one night a drunk homeless man started wandering up and down the street yelling that he wanted everyone to call him Blue Bird. It was pretty hot that night so we didn't want to close our windows.

Needless to say the painting is pretty damn cool. You should come and see it in person.

What Comes Around . . .

When I was a kid my mom told me to stop rocking in the new chair. "Why? It rocks." I said. She told me that if I didn't stop I'd use all the rocks in one sitting. I thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard.

So imagine my surprise when I found my self responding to the boy's question of why he needed to stop bending his bendable ruler with, "Because if you keep bending it, you'll use all the bends right now, and then you'll have nothing to do at school tomorrow."

As I heard those words come out of my mouth I realized something-- I bet my rocking in that chair was really annoying.

A Child's Mind

When I was in kindergarten I remember Mr. Castleton finding a black widow in the blocks at school. But now I wonder if it was really a black widow or just a spider I romanticized as being a black widow.

I also remember when the little girl who's desk was next to mine earned the strawberry scented notebook. She had one more "good behavior token" than I did. I would have won except I kept my eyes open during the prayer, and had some tokens taken away. I felt this was very unjust because I was only keeping my eyes open so I could tattle on other kids keeping their eyes open so their tokens would be taken away, thus securing my position and winning the notebook. My plan obviously backfired.

Once I dreamed that a robber, dressed in black and white stripes, climbed in my window during the night and stole my chap stick out of the toy box. I thought it really happened. I remember my mom being frustrated because she couldn't convince me that I had just lost my chap stick. She pointed out that the windows in my room didn't open. I didn't budge. In fact I'm still a little skeptical, it was pretty cool chap stick.

I remember tricking my mom into buying me a sticker book I really wanted. I told her that my friend Jon's sister was having a birthday party and I needed to get her a present. Jon didn't really exist and neither did his sister. I hid the sticker book in the closet in my room. I also had to play with it in the closet because I didn't want to risk my mom finding it. But as it turns out, she knew Jon and his sister didn't exist. I probably could have just said, "Hey mom, can I have that sticker book?" And avoided the self induced time in the closet.

I was reminded of all these things and how different kids look at the world yesterday while chaperoning my daughters field trip. We were visiting the world fest. We got to walk from booth to booth and learn about various countries and cultures. At one point we were told to gather near the stage because a Chinese dragon would be making an appearance. After a 20 minute wait the dragon finally came through the doors and the kid next to me exasperates, "oh . . . it isn't a real dragon."

Hug me not . . .

Recently I have been scanning in old family photos. I started with old dead relatives, moved to grandparents, then baby pictures of the parents and so on.

My intentions were to find the best ones and hang them on the very bare walls of my house. All these pictures came in handy when we decided to make a slide show of sorts for my dad's upcoming birthday. So this afternoon while the Boy and the Girl were in school I went to do some more scanning and came across these pictures. True gems I figured I'd better post them.

Sadly enough there are few things I remember about my 6 months in Vienna. Among them are, kinder eggs-- they tend to make an impression, drinkable yogurt, muesli with chocolate bits, and putting on this easter play with Marc. Is it odd that most of what I remember revolves around food?

Speaking of food, I think am using a mesh produce bag as a veil. Boy was I ever clever . . . and resourceful!