Putting the Fun Back in DiscrimFunation

The other day was opposite day at Owen's school, where kids wore their shirts backwards and such. We carried the theme over to home where we had breakfast for dinner, and now here to CloudEight, where I am doing the opposite of what I usually do by actually posting. Oh, and by not being funny.

This past week also saw some crazy Martin Luther King Day activities over at the grade school and, apparently, the pre-school. We were talking to Owen about MLK over breakfast at dinnertime, when the twins broke into the conversation. Cooper declared "Hey! We know that guy!" Hayden followed up by telling us "some bad people put a brick through his window." Props to the Catholic pre-school for trying to tackle a tough topic, I guess, as at least something seems to have stuck in their little three year old minds.

Meanwhile, over at First Grade, Owen, as part of the educational MLK celebration had filled in blanks in a worksheet intended to provide an opportunity to talk to our child about "values and dreams." It had a "Martin and Me" chart where it listed things like MLK's favorite games (baseball and Chinese Checkers, FYI) and Owen would then list his (soccer). In the "Dream for the Future" column, MLK had "fairness for all." Owen's dream for the future: "toys." I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that the "for all" after toys is implied.

The "First Grade News" Owen's teacher sends home each week also noted that the class had "participated in some fun activities to allow the children to see what discrimination feels like." Wow. I mean Wow. What to say. It almost sounds like it should be called discrimfunation. Anyway, Owen hasn't talked about it, so I assume it was fairly mild, like making one kid wear a Packers jersey.

And it is on to the next holiday, Valentine's day, where the kids can participate in some fun activities to see what having your heart broken feels like.

More Holiday Fun: Swedes, Cookies and Jesus' Birthday Party

More Holiday Traditions:

While I am largely an American mutt, I am 1/4 Swedish, so by default I have always regarded Sweden as providing my ancestral roots. We fortuitously had a store in my childhood hometown called the "Swedish Shop", which allowed me to indulge these cultural leanings by buying advent calendars and buttons that said clever things like "Swedish Power". At holiday gatherings of extended family as a kid, I recall being given glasses of "glug" - this was good. Less good were holiday "treats" like pickled herring and lutefisk (codfish cured in lye (no lie!)). Owen's first grade class had been studying Christmas traditions around the world in the weeks leading up to the holiday, so it was with interest that he and I recently reviewed the Swedish Chapter. We especially liked the idea of Santa Lucia day, where on December 13 the oldest girl in the family dresses in a white gown, makes sweetbread and coffee, puts a wreath with lit candles on her head and wakes everyone else up to eat the treats and drink the coffee. This sounded like a much better tradition than eating pickled herring, so we were keen on trying to incorporate it into our family. The plan falls apart, of course, at the bit about the oldest daughter doing all of this, as we inconveniently do not have an oldest daughter. Owen, somewhat unwisely suggested to Deanna that she do it. This suggestion was met with the kind of withering glare and sharp retort that might be expected from someone who spends more than enough time concocting treats for the rest of us without taking on the added risk of setting her head on fire. Oh, well.

Speaking of treats, while Deanna and I may be compatible in parenting styles and a million other ways, there could not be a starker contrast between us when it comes to cookie compatibility. She comes from people who like their cookies soft, gooey and full of meringues, gloppy fillings, etc. In other words, barely edible. My people like our cookies hard like a Scandinavian winter (see above for more about my rich Swedish heritage), made with butter and/or lard with a crust of hard frosting or a sprinkling of sugar. Real cookies, like spritz and thumbprints (world's best cookie!). This incompatibility rears its ugly head each holiday season, when Deanna effortlessly cranks out a zillion cookies, most of which I simply don't like. I was apparently a bit more vocal than usual about that this year, because Deanna was actually indulgent enough to make me a big batch of spritz dough. I then spent an hour wrestling with our cookie dough gun, loudly complaining that it was a piece of inferior equipment. As it turned out, I simply had no idea how to properly use the damn thing, since when Deanna finally became annoyed enough to come see what all the fuss was about, she proceeded to crank out several trays of beautiful cookies - the only ones that later turned out to be actually presentable to guests. Then, while checking on my actual baking of the cookies, Deanna discovered that I had placed an unbaked tray of cookies in the oven on top of an already baking tray of cookies. After we all had a good laugh at my expense, I inexplicably did the same thing again! It was then that we all decided we were best going back to our old system of Deanna making whatever she wants and me subsisting on tins of thumbprints slipped to me periodically during the holiday season by my mother.

As we were driving towards church on Christmas morning, I realized from various comments being made by the twins that since they knew we were going to church to celebrate Jesus' birthday, they believed Jesus would physically be there. Not just in spirit, mind you, but wearing a party hat and smiling as a bunch of Kings and sheppards, and us of course, sang happy birthday. Mary supervising a game of pin the tail on a real donkey - best party game ever! Plenty of loaves and fishes (hopefully not lutefisk!) to go around, no matter how many guests show up! I'm picturing Jesus excitedly opening our gift of Rock'em, Sock'em Robots - much cooler than the boring old myrrh. Anyway, assuming it would be in our best interests to dissuade them of this live Jesus notion on the way rather than in response to loud inquiries in church, we did our best to engage in a rushed bit of 3-year-old theology. Why we still celebrate the birth of someone who lived 2,000 years ago is not an easy concept for them to wrap their little 3-year old heads around, as suggested by Cooper's continuing litany of questions throughout the service and since. My favorite moment however, was when we were still in the car, and I had just finished explaining that Jesus was a baby 2000 years ago and that nobody can live for 2000 years. Owen, a big Harry Potter fan, then not-so-helpfully interjected from the backseat "Unless they have the Sorcerer's Stone." Oy.

I hear next year Mary and Joseph are having Jesus' party at the Roller Rink. Should be cool. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and Happy New Year!

Evil Genius Christmas Mouse and More Holiday Fun!

Having been a member of a family for 43 years, married for almost 12 (holy s*&$!!!), and a parent for almost seven, it occurred to me that I am taking part in traditions all over the place - some admittedly better than others. So for December, I was ambitiously picturing a series of posts talking about some of the treasured and not-so-treasured holiday traditions here on CloudEight. Well, being that it is December 21 and I have yet to post, it appears that my year-round tradition of procrastination and slow-writing have won out. Still, it is a season of hope, so I will take a stab at coughing up a couple of posts before year's end.

Even as the remains of the turkey carcass are still lukewarm, Deanna and I like to kick off the holidays by engaging in our first seasonal tradition each year - fighting over the amount of Christmas decorating that is about to take place. When we first married, we had but a handful of our own Christmas-related possessions. Mine consisted of a box full of ornaments made or possessed since childhood, kept in a gift box that had been hand-decorated by an ex-girlfriend years before (a bad marital move). Hers consisted of a similarly sized box of ornaments and an alarmingly large collection of miniature Christmas books, the charm of which eludes me to this day. Our first house had a full unfinished walk-up attic, as well as a full unfinished basement, with the predictable result that we rarely worried about storage. By the time we had moved to our current house three and a half years ago, our Christmas collection had swollen to fill five or six large storage bins. Now, helped along by the unabated Christmas enthusiasm generated by the increase in our collection of miniature humans since the arrival of the twins, our Christmas possessions have grown exponentially. The weekend following Thanksgiving has become a full-fledged tactical operation as our current non-walk up attic spews bin after bin after bin of Christmas paraphernalia down into the main part of the house already packed to the gills with all manner of toys and kid-related accessories deemed necessary to raising the young 'uns. While I can't argue with the end result, the work involved in festooning every square inch of already limited space with a layer of green and red can't help but leave me a bit crabby, with the result that I have a reputation as a Christmas scrooge with Deanna. This simmering tension usually comes to a head when we are decorating the tree - while Deanna's bizarre but strictly enforced edict that ONLY round ornaments can be placed on the tree gets a pass, my efforts to keep the kids from layering on even one of our six gazillion ornaments are shouted down by all. While really this is not even a fight worth having, you can rest assured that I will have forgotten that fact by next Christmas when I stand in the attic scowling at a wall of green and red bins that will have grown again since this year.

Another treasured seasonal tradition here on CloudEight are my periodic battles with an mouse and/or mice who have sought to join our family during the holiday season as a refuge from the cold. And who can blame them - with three young and endlessly eating boys wandering the house leaving trails of tasty crumbs, the floor of every room resembles a mouse-friendly buffet. Upon the first evidence of an infiltration, I break out my arsenal, which consists of a variety of types of traps accumulated over years of battle. This includes everything from the lowly but effective glue trap to the ultimate in mouse-fighting technology - the Rat Zapper 2000. While this year's mouse (or mice??) have proved to be worthy adversaries, including routinely cleaning out traps without tripping them, studiously avoiding the Rat Zapper, and, most alarmingly, mockingly pushing one of my own springtraps from where I had set it along a baseboard to the middle of a doorway leading to the kitchen where any unwary and barefooted family member could have easily stepped on it in the morning. Brilliant! He is obviously an evil genius. He still has a ways to go to match wits with the mouse of 2002, however, who got such a superiority complex during his month long running battle with me that he used to do things like taunt us by watching us watch TV. I got that one eventually, but only after upping my game by building a temporary wall out of cardboard bricks that left him only a narrow opening between the kitchen and dining room. He tried to run the gap in the middle of one memorable night, only to find that I had created an Indiana Jones-style tunnel of terror for him. A misstep into a glue trap ended the reign of that worthy adversary. I will get this one to, as I have recently come into some good intel on his hideout. That and a troop surge out to do the trick.

Christmas is a pretty awesome time to be a parent. This holiday season, as I have the last several, I set up my dad’s old electric train set from the 1950’s for the boys. They are simply crazy about it despite its sometimes spotty functionality and my struggles to get the various electric accessories (grade crossings, switch tracks, etc.) to operate. My ability to work with aging electrical components and electrical knowledge are not what they could be. This is despite the diligent efforts of my father-in-law, who is always “teaching” me to do life-threatening electrical projects around the house, and whom I imagine is rather frustrated with my seeming inability to retain even the most basic electrical knowledge. I have stuck with it this year though, with the result that the old Iron Horse and its various accessories (even the famously uncooperative barrel-loader!) are firing on all cylinders. And when it is all working, it is pretty damn cool, and the excitement of the boys as they watch it circle the track is one of my favorite holiday things.

The Continuing Adventures of RedPlanet: Kiddie Comedian, Part IV

New reader Christina in Aurora, Illinois sent me the following joke:

"Me: Knock, knock;
Miscellaneous child: Who's there?
Me: Banana.
Misc. Child: Banana who?
Me: Knock, knock.
Misc. Child: Who's there?
Me: Banana.
Misc. Child: Banana who?
Me: Knock, knock.
Misc. Child: Who's there?
Me: Orange.
Misc. Child: Orange who?
Me: Orange you glad I didn't say Banana again?"

A classic to be sure. And, unlike my previous jokes, it actually resulted in gales of laughter from the boys when I told it. Unfortunately, unlike the others, it did not result in any sort of amusing or otherwise interesting comments on their part. They merely made me repeat the joke another sixteen times, laughing hard each time.

Since then, however, they have been working this joke into their own comedy routines (such as they are), each putting their own indelible stamp on it. Their variations, with some of the repetition removed as indicated in brackets, are as follows:

The Owen Variation:

Owen: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Owen: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
[Repeat again]
Owen: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Owen: Orange.
Me: Orange who?
Owen: Aren't you glad I didn't say Banana again.
Me: Dude, it's "orange" you glad!
Owen: Oh yeah, yeah. Knock knock ..."

The Cooper Variation: Cooper does the traditional set-up but will repeat the banana section over and over and over. Literally, like eight times, chuckling all the while at the hilarity to come. Then, he hits you with his signature ending:

"Cooper: Knock knock.
Me: Who's there?
Cooper: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Cooper: Aren't you glad I didn't say orange again [bellylaughs]."

I wish I could say that Cooper is purposely switching up the traditional ending with his own non sequitur ending, but it seems clear that he believes he is telling the joke verbatim. No future in stand-up for this one, as he seems to have inherited both mine and Deanna's awkward comedic timing and poor joke memory retention.

The Hayden Variation: Hayden, who has never been shy about working blue, does the traditional set-up followed by this killer ending:

"Hayden: Knock knock.
Me: Who's there?
Hayden: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Hayden: Banana Poopyhead! [bellylaughs]."

And so it goes.

Hens in Your Backyard and Fresh Eggs Every Morning!

My mom grew up on a farm in downstate Illinois. While my sister and I have pressed her for childhood memories on a number of occasions, it appears that she was distracted and/or had her nose in a book for the majority of her childhood, leaving us largely with just the images we can conjure up from a handful of black and white photos. One thing she has always made clear however, is that she did not like gathering eggs from the henhouse. I have always regarded that dislike as no more remarkable than someone asserting, say, I don't like sardines. Nor, despite an abiding love of the State Fair and the fact that I find watching cows to be an oddly zen-like experience, have I ever felt an urge to farm or keep livestock, being instead content with my urban/suburban existence. That has all changed, however, now that I have discovered the EGLU!

Here is the EGLU. Marvel at its modern and aesthetically pleasing design! Available in green, orange, red, blue or pink! See the happy suburbanites enjoying freshly laid eggs practically every morning! Oh, and the copy writing. "A stylish and practical addition to any backyard." "Designed to be the house the chickens themselves would choose." Check out the "grub and glug" food and water dispenser! Did you know that a single hen can lay up to 300 eggs a year! No rooster needed! What a concept!

Seriously, within half an hour of discovering the Eglu, I was checking out chicken-breed discussion boards, picking out breeds, and deciding whether chickens would be happier on the backyard grass or the wood chipped area by the swing set. I was thinking about who would feed them next time we were on vacation and contemplating strategies for keeping them alive during the winter (despite the Eglu claims that that the twin-wall insulation keeps them warm in winter, I still can't ascertain whether that means they would survive if it was negative 20 out). I was also busying myself drawing up an egg-collecting schedule for the boys since, after all, the "eggport, on the side of the lid, gives easy access to the nesting box and makes looking for and collecting the eggs a daily pleasure." Heck, maybe even my mom would want to give it another go!

I had all but settled on a pair of either Rhode Island Reds or Gingernut Rangers when I checked our Village Code and learned that CHICKENS ARE BANNED. Despair! Indignation! Outrage! My dream dashed, I may have even told Deanna that we needed to relocate the family to a more chicken-friendly and enlightened Village.

Having since worked my way through the various stages of mourning, I have regained some sense of reality and am now able to verbalize these thoughts and concede that keeping chickens may not be in my immediate future. For now. I guess. Maybe. Cluck.

Pee At Sea

Recently, when I mentioned that so-and-so enjoys reading my blog, my mother sarcastically responded "that's got to be pretty time consuming." Ouch. Yep, time to get back to posting.

Last month we took a 7-day Disney cruise and spent an additional three nights at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. I returned relaxed, vaguely tan, and definitely poorer. A couple of weeks later and the tan and relaxed state are long gone, while the poorer part, unfortunately, appears to be sticking. There are the memories though too, and they were worth every one of the hundreds of thousands of pennies that were spent. Predictably, a great time was had by all. While I won't bore you with details of our many trips to the pool, beaches on Caribbean islands, the 90-something degree weather, trips to the spa, awesome workouts, the sumptuous feasts we were treated to each night, my brilliance on the shuffleboard court (skills honed during childhood summers in Door County, WI!), our $2,000 bingo jackpot (whoooo-hoooo!), or the warm milk and cookies delivered gratis to our cabin each night with just a call to room service, there are a few memories that I did want to share:

The RedPlanet Family Singers: Having never tried karaoke before, we attended a "family karaoke night" on the ship one night and gave it a whirl. Unfortunately, we selected "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", foolishly forgetting that not only does the song increase in speed to its final frenetic pace, but that the words are actually sung backwards at one point. Disaster ensued.

Least Disney Moment: One night my father-in-law was trying to secure chairs on the top deck of the cruiseship only to find them being hogged up by various people. Approaching a man who was hoarding a large number of unoccupied chairs, my father-in-law inquired what the man needed all of the chairs for. The man began to explain and then said "I don't know why I am telling you all of that, this is Disney, we do whatever the hell we want." To which my father-in-law replied "OK then, I want your chairs" and proceeded to start taking them before my mother-in-law intervened to stave off a fistfight. Go Bob!

Most Disney Moment: While Disney employees are almost all outstanding, I was particularly impressed when one day while at sea I stopped by the sports bar hoping to watch the Bears game via satellite. As luck would have it, the ship sailed into an area with no satellite signal for the duration of the afternoon. I expressed my disappointment to one of the bar employees. Later that night, I returned to my room to find that she had slid a printout under my door that had not only the score, but all the statistics of the game. Awesome!

Regrets: The Animal Kingdom Lodge offers stunning views of free-ranging African wildlife on a savanna, some wandering as close as 25-feet from your balcony. What you saw at any given time depended on what particular animals had wandered within viewing distance of your balcony. As cool as this was, I quickly become a bit jaded and when Deanna suggested on the third morning that we sit on the balcony and watch for a bit while the kids were still asleep, I replied "why bother, there's nothing out there right now but giraffe and zebra." As I sit in my cold basement a month later, rain spitting against the window for the 7th day in a row, I am wishing I had bothered!

My most enduring memories of the cruiseship, however, will be of the bathrooms. While I bragged back in May about having changed my last diaper, I did not realize that leaving diaper changing behind would result in my hearing innumerable shouts of "Daddy, will you wipe my butt???" The twins are hyper-conscious of their need to use the bathroom, and, like a pair of 22-year old girls out at a club, one cannot possibly go to the bathroom without the other. One dinner on the ship we took both of them three times! As we were rarely in our cabin during the cruise, we were most often patronizing public bathrooms around the ship. While almost every public bathroom in the universe features urinals of varying heights, astonishingly, considering how utterly predictable it is that there would actually be children aboard a Disney cruise, every damn urinal on the ship was designed for use by men 6 feet and over, leaving the stalls as our only option. Since space is tight on a ship, there was almost always only one stall in each public bathroom, and it would, of course, usually be occupied. Hayden's modus operandi upon entering the men's room in this situation was to get down low to get a good look under the stall door and announce to all in a loud voice that "there's a man in there!". He would then alternate between repeating that phrase every 30 seconds, in case it didn't sink in the first five times, and loud speculation as to when the man would be out so he could go. This proved quite effective actually, at causing people to practically flee the stalls to avoid further embarrassment. Then Cooper, Hayden and I would crowd ourselves into the stall for ten minutes of business, chit-chat and butt-wiping (often while a line formed outside), followed by handwashing and, the most exciting time of all, use of the hand dryer (the twins love to talk about whether hand dryers are automatic or push button).

So, as I dry my chapped and cold hands this winter here in Chicago, I can always warm myself up with the memories of that bathroom on Deck 4, aft, on the starboard side. You know, the one with the manly industrial style toilets and sinks, the roomy single stall and only low urinal on the ship, and the nice automatic hand dryer. Ah, sweet vacation memories.

The Continuing Adventures of RedPlanet: Kiddie Comedian, Part III

Truthfully, I have a terrible memory for jokes, and never seem to get around to mining the Internet for good kids jokes. Oh yeah, and ya'll haven't helped matters by not sending any in this month. Anyway, for this installment of the CloudEight Comedy Club, I had to resort to the only joke everyone can remember, and which isn't even funny under the best of circumstances.

Me: "Joke time guys. Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Cooper: "What chicken Dad, what chicken??? Where is that chicken???"

Me: "Nowhere Cooper, its just a joke; a pretend chicken."

Cooper: "Oh."

Me: "So, why did the chicken cross the road?"

Owen: "I don't know, why."

Me: "To get to the other side."

[Silence; blank looks]

Me: "Its like the world's oldest joke."

[Owen shrugs]

Hayden: "I'm going to follow that chicken."

The guys then began to lay their own jokes on me, all of them knock-knock jokes, all of them involving gibberish, and all of them ending with one of two punchlines - "Putt-putt man" or "Poopyhead" - either one guaranteed to leave the other two brothers in stitches. Oy.

The Tooth Fairy: My Two Cents

Since I have managed not to lose any teeth for about thirty five years or so now, it has admittedly been some time since I gave the Tooth Fairy more than a passing thought. That has all changed, however, as she has suddenly become a hot topic at our place. Owen has been losing teeth at an alarming rate these past weeks, leading us to conclude either that he desperately wants to be a realistic looking jack o' lantern for Halloween or is secretly a crystal meth addict. I suppose an alternative explanation is that he is six years old.

Anyway, maybe its the economic times, maybe its that I recall my own youth through rose-colored glasses, or maybe the old girl is simply getting up their in years, but the quality of the Tooth Fairy's operation appears to me to have fallen off dramatically in these past three plus decades. Specifically, two out of the last three teeth Owen has lost took an alarming two nights for the Tooth Fairy to collect. This has put Deanna and I in the uncomfortable position of having to cover the Tooth Fairy's ass with made-up explanations to a crushed six-year old. After the first failure to appear, we used the "there must have been a ton of kids losing teeth yesterday and she just couldn't make it to every one's house in one night" excuse. A few weeks later, following yet another lost tooth and yet another inexcusable first night failure to appear, we were forced to reach a little more, actually suggesting that "maybe the Tooth Fairy doesn't work on weekends." Sure, that one smacks a little bit of desperation but how the hell are we supposed to know why she didn't show up.

I thought sure the Internet would yield some clues, but my on-line research on what may be going on with the Tooth Fairy failed to turn much up. My assumption was that she would at least have a website with contact information and an on-line Tooth Fairy visitation request form, or maybe some FAQ's about pick-up times, etc. Not finding her website, I then thought that at least I could find some speculation, news stories or discussion boards on what kind of problems the Tooth Fairy may be dealing with - union work slowdown, tough divorce, budget cutbacks, torn wing muscles, that sort of thing. Miraculously though, it appears that even in this information-driven age, the Tooth Fairy is able to operate under the same veil of secrecy she always has.

Rather than risk further disappointment, I have now laid in a supply of those awesome new presidential $1 gold-colored coins. Interestingly, I was only able to get my hands on James Polk and John Tyler coins, as apparently the coins with A-list presidents are saved for more prestigious institutions than our humble local bank. For those of you who are surprised that I was getting $1 coins, $1 appears to be the going Tooth Fairy reimbursement rate these days. Considering that Tooth Fairy reimbursement rates appear to have outstripped inflation since my childhood by the same approximate rate as college-tuition rate increases, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the Tooth Fairy was in dire financial straits, especially considering that the secondary-market in used children's teeth can't be great in this economy (or, frankly, at any time). If financial struggles are what is driving her delays, who can blame her for taking a little extra time to pick up teeth - when you think of all the additional interest she could earn on all her dollar coins by routinely delaying tooth pick-ups by a day or two, it boggles the mind.

With my supply of Polks and Tylers in hand, I am now ready to step up should the Tooth Fairy inexplicably fail to appear yet again. Crazy as it sounds, I might take a similar cautionary approach come Christmas by laying in some gifts to give from Santa, just in case he, in his similarly inscrutable fashion, decides not to show up. The look on one crestfallen child's face has been bad enough, and I imagine three crestfallen faces might just break my heart in two.

Cupcakes and Firetrucks

Hayden and Cooper commenced their educational careers today at their very first session of two-day a week pre-school. They were little bundles of nervous anticipation and excitement this morning, as we made our way the two long blocks to school. Typical boys, most of their pre-arrival questions centered around whether there would be a bathroom at the school and whether they would be getting anything to eat. Cooper's specific inquiry when he was informed there would be snacks, spoken in his most hopeful tone, was "Donuts???". As luck would have it, his wish was not that far off, as it was a classmates birthday right off the bat, resulting in cupcakes for the class at snack time. Score!!

Upon our eventual arrival at school, they both made a bee-line for the bathroom , so most of our pre-class time was spent in there while Cooper took care of number 1 and Hayden took care of number 2. While accompanying them, I was able to answer their usual press conference-like onslaught of bathroom questions, including classics such as why there are sinks in bathrooms, why we wash our hands with soap and warm water, and why some paper towels come out automatically and some toilets flush automatically and some don't, and, of course, the all-time most asked favorite, where do the poop and pee-pee go when they are flushed. They seemed no less fascinated at my answer to this last question at the school than they have been the 10,000 times they have asked me that same question at home. While modern plumbing systems are indeed amazing, especially when measured against human history as it relates to sewage, I really don't think it is that much more amazing than say, a microwave oven cooking food (something I frankly wouldn't be so hot at explaining (pun intended)). It strikes me now as I am writing this that my little teaching lesson in the bathroom was actually their first in-school student experience.

Anyway, we made it out of the bathroom just in time for parents to be kicked out of the classroom and after kisses goodbye, we left them happily playing with toy firetrucks. When asked what the two best parts of his school day were later, Hayden replied "cupcakes and firetrucks." To my two littlest guys, your proud dad wishes you many, many cupcake and firetruck days in your school career and in life. Godspeed.

Low-Tech Vacation Fun

As summer winds down, there are many things I never got around to writing about. Probably the biggest oversight was not posting anything about our late June week in Door County, Wisconsin, arguably the best week of the summer for all in the RedPlanet household.

Just two years ago, in fairly different economic times, there was talk about how tourism was way down in Door County, with many involved in their tourism industry wistfully theorizing it was because the times had passed it by. No waterparks, no movie theaters other than the charming old fashioned drive-in, no mega-malls or chain stores or chain restaurants, no rollercoasters or video arcades or any of the other things today's modern quick-cut, low attention-span kids are thought to need to have fun. Instead it is quiet and old-fashioned and full of low-tech fun, with endless cherry orchards, charming shops, friendly people, sunsets, art galleries, Lake Michigan, lighthouses, antiques, boats, fish boils, and boundless natural beauty. Two years later, while tourism is still down, now for economic reasons, its slower pace and throw-back retro-vacation style couldn't seem more perfect.

How can kids be bored when there is an endless supply of rocks to throw into the water? Or at the Fyr-Bal Festival in Ephraim where summer is welcomed by the lighting of bonfires at dusk in a ring around beautiful Eagle Harbor followed by low-tech old-fashioned fireworks. Where there is an endless supply of fried-perch sandwiches, cheese curds and ice cream. Not to mention Al Johnson's Swedish restaurant with its goats grazing on the grass roof, cherry stands with every kind of cherry-themed food you can imagine, the fish boil at the White Gull Inn, where the boil-over sends flames shooting ten feet into the air, the car ferry to the desolate beauty of sparsely-settled Washington Island, the Ephraim town-hall sing-a-long, on and on. We read in hammocks, scrambled down the rocks to watch the waves crash against the rocks at Cave Point, played miniature golf on a course that, though well-kept, looks exactly like the ones we played when we were kids ($4 and a free prize for the kids!), watched "Up" snuggled all together in the van at the Skyway Drive-In, checked out the yachts tied up in the harbors, caught fireflys, and meandered through the Anderson Dock museum.

One of the coolest experiences we had was when we came out of a store to find a crowd of people gathered around a small lake. A Golden-Crested Merganser duck mother had shoved her seven two-day old ducklings out of their nest in a tree 75-feet above the lake and was manically flying in circles and squawking in an effort to get the ducklings to come out of the lake and follow her 100 yards across a lawn, busy street, and parking lot to Lake Michigan. They eventually got the idea and trotted in a little group across the lawn towards the Lake as the onlookers dashed into the street to hold traffic while they passed. They all made it safely to the Lake and swam off behind their mother out farther than we could even see.

Best of all was the time just to be. Drinking wine with our parents after the kids went to bed, playing cards, talking and laughing, golfing, and just reconnecting with myself and as a husband, dad, son, brother, Uncle and son-in-law with Deanna and the boys, my parents, my sister and her family, and my in-laws. Priceless.

You know you have squeezed the most out of a day when, as we approached the door of our house one night and suggested to our usually sleep-adverse boys that the last one to bed would be a rotten egg (a lame motivational tact that has almost never worked), Owen responded "the last one to bed is crazy." Here are a few pictures:

Bonfires dot the perimeter of Eagle Harbor during the Fyr-Bal Festival

Eating outside with my Mom, Dad (obstructed view), Sister Suzanne, Brother-In-Law Bill, and lots of kids

Owen at sunset

Me and the guys.

The twins throw rocks, practicing for their fall-back careers as professional protesters.

Owen, with cousins Kurt, Emma and Kirsten. And a hammock.


Hayden takes his beach going very seriously.

Deanna and her mom on the car ferry to Washington Island.

The guys and their cousins on the playground at the drive-in movie theater.

Ice Cream at Wilson's!

Surfs (not) up!

Mom and two-day old ducklings.

Cooper after shooting the curl.