April - May with the Girlies

April and May were quite enjoyable, probably - the weather was most likely getting nicer and Kim's brother, 'Steve', came to NY with his wife (often referred to as 'Rhonda') and their youngest lad Cameron. Cameron was recently identified by the Federal Bureau of Pizza Enjoyment (your stimulus dollars at work) as the only teenage boy in the western hemisphere who doesn't like pizza. I like pizza, although I don't like a lot of gross junk on there - just some pepperoni, maybe some sausage, and that's really all you need. Kim likes weird stuff on pizza like vegetables and cheeses from other countries.

By the way, we went to Pizzeria Uno the other day - we have lived in this neighborhood for 11 years and had never been there, but it seemed like a good place to go with the girlies and their friend Sophia. I have to tell you - Pizzeria Uno was quite good. I am a big fan of Chicago deep-dish pizza, although our friend Kirsten (who lives in Chicago) prefers Little Caesers or something equally nasty. Anyway, it was good, and very convenient since we have kids and stuff. I got pepperoni, while Kim got some odd pizza with gooseberry, vegemite and beets.

I don't really have anything funny to say about April and May - around this time I started interviewing for the job that I eventually took with the Germans, but other than that I found myself getting especially (I sometimes spell it 'expecially') good at laundry, able to knock out 6 loads in an afternoon, and while my skills at laundry do not include folding or putting away, I am probably the best that I know about when it comes to the laundering process itself.

Also, I probably saw some movies or occupied my time doing something, but I can't remember what that might have been. The girlies were delightful, though, and we had a lot of fun doing whatever we were doing in the afternoons after their naps. I can't remember what was, though, but I am sure it was fun and cute and inspired me to make a promise to myself to remember each and every detail of whatever it was that we did.

I am sure that these were happy days, the salad days as they say, but I can't be certain because I can't really remember.

Anyway, here are photos and videos below. Feel free to enjoy them, but put them back when you are done.

This is what Sally would look like if she were a hippy artist

Sally blowing bubbles

Cameron with his cousins waiting under the Brooklyn Bridge (Brooklyn is the setting for the 1970s comedy program 'Welcome Back Kotter')




Sally blowing bubbles under the Brooklyn Bridge

The girlies with the Hodges family looking across the East River

Cameron with Sally and Amelia's left eyeball on the Brooklyn Bridge, next to some tubby bicyclist who thinks he owns the place - 'Hey, back off fat Pete LeMond - I got toddlers here!'

With the girlies walking across the Brooklyn Bridge

Cameron with Amelia on the Staten Island Ferry

Steve and Rhonda, apparently repelling Sally with their Minnesota charm

Sally, Amelia, and their friend Sophia at the Bristol-Myers Squibb AIDS Walk Event at the Central Park Zoo

DeYan with Sally at the AIDS Walk

DeYan with Amelia and Amelia's radioactive eyeballs (that's the second 'Amelia eyeball' mention, in case you are counting)

Sally loves cake

Amelia going down the big marble slide in Central Park




Mike and Sally going down the slide

Hunting for Easter Eggs and stuff

Amelia with her what appears to be her 'Easter Basket' but might also be the contents of our junk drawer




Sally in her Easter dress

Special Bonus Video of the Girlies

For some reason this video got overlooked when I wrote about our recent winter activities with the girlies, but this is worth watching if you have some time and like watching green singing toddlers.

On Christmas night we drove to Jenny's house from Connie and Lloyd's, and Amelia was in a singing mood. Kim cranked up the futuristic night vision on the camera and got almost 5 minutes of cuteness to the tune of 'London Bridge is Falling Down'. Adding to the delightfulness of this video is that she is essentially singing whatever words happen to pop into her head, and Sally tries to join in a on a few occasions but realizes that she too has no idea what in the world Amelia is saying.

I hope you all enjoy this video. So, enjoy.

P.S. - This will make the blog when I finally get around to posting August junk, but in the meantime click this to see Amelia (Schnikey she is cute!) dancing as we played some music during our Chinese lesson. The woman in the video is Moying, our Chinese tutor ('lao she' in Chinese - see, I am learning something. Turkey in Chinese is 'huo ji', or 'Fire Chicken'. Isn't learning fun?)

March 2009 with the Girlies

In March my lovely and talented wife Kim had a major birthday, and as you all know she looks as beautiful as she did when I first met her. My plan for the big event (before the dirty Swiss and their stupid little army knife encouraged me stay home more often) was to rent a huge house in St. John and invite all of our friends and family to join us in celebrating her birthday. However, thanks to Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and the anticipation of the certain failure of the ridiculous 'Cash for Clunkers' program, the economy tanked, my company made plans to abandon the US market, and most of our relatives and friends decided that a week in St. John in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the late 1970s was probably not a great idea. That was a very long, disorganized, and confusing sentence.

So I tried to come up with something unique - a surprise party would have been too difficult, considering that both of our families selfishly refuse to move to NY to be nearer to us and the lovely girlies. Then I thought we could do a quick weekend away with just the two of us or with a few friends, maybe to Paris (home of Parisians), but Kim subtly (not subtly) let me know that whatever we did for her birthday should include and involve the girlies. Sally loves crepes and doesn't like to take a bath so I am sure she would have enjoyed Paris, but in the end I decided that was not a good option.

I also found that a crashing economy is really bad for owners of fancy vacation homes, so I turned back to St. John and found a very lovely place to rent for a reasonable fee. I knew most people would not be able to come, but fortunately I was able to convince several very important and good-looking people to postpone saving for college and retirement and use that money instead to celebrate the birth of my lovely wife.

It was a great trip, and a big surprise for Kim, as she had no idea that anyone was joining us. She sort of figured out where we were going but didn't know that others were joining us, so she was shocked when she saw Stacie Corcoran at 7 in the morning, her sister Jenny at the St. Thomas airport, and Stacy B and her charming mother in St. John.

The girlies had a wonderful time, as our house had a pool, a rooster, a few lizards (my sister D;alkjds's brother-in-law Tony thinks that chickens are actually just big lizards), and a huge bedroom with two fancy cribs.

Below are some photos, videos, and musings on my long-faded handsomeness:

Kim and the girlies at Starbucks at the beautiful Newark Airport - Did you know that drinking coffee gives you breath like my 8th grade speech teacher Mr. Hill?

The girlies at the airport



On the tarmac in St. Thomas - this video was taken only seconds before I was tackled to the ground by Department of Transportation thugs and questioned for hours about the extent of my airport video cassette taping activities

The four of us in front of our vacation house

Stacie Corcoran eating popcorn out of a Budweiser box, while Jenny enjoys a frosty cold Stella

Stacie and Sally (both looking cute), with some dork

For some reason I am making the stupidest face in the world, which is unfortunate because the girlies and my lovely wife all look beautiful. But I look like a huge knucklehead. I used to be the cutest boy in the 4th grade but those days are long gone.

Sally and Amelia with me on the beach, right before the iguana situation. I don't look so bad in this picture, probably because I have sunglasses on.



The girlies on the beach

A huge iguana crawled under Sally's chair



Exciting Lizard Video

Sally in her groovy sunglasses on the beach

Amelia playing in the sand

As the song lyrics say "More beauty in this world, I swear I've never seen"

Jenny and Amelia in Coral Bay

The girlies by the pool, with Kim's shinbones

Sally taking a snooze with her new goggles

Kim and Stacie with the girls, waiting for me to get our rental car battery fixed (a long story that involved me getting threatened by an angry dude because I mistakenly parked in a taxi zone. Not as interesting as the time I got choked in the Barnes and Noble, though.)

Stacy Bielema-O'Malley, with her Mom. Stacy got up with the girls each morning so Kim and I could sleep in like we used to do back when I was in my late 30s.

On our way to get sandwiches for the beach. In mandarin, 'sandwich' is pronounced 'san-ming-zhuh'

Every night I got to go home with the girlies while the broads, er, uh, I mean the ladies stayed out late and caroused with young surfer dudes. Here they are at Woody's, a famous joint in St. John.

January - February 2009 with the Girlies

January and February were relatively uneventful, except for some visits from family and some good snow. I can't really remember that far back, but from what I can recall it mostly involved me trying unsuccessfully to convince people to give me a cushy job with a bloated salary, and then me trying to figure out what to do with the girlies at 4 PM, once they woke up from their nap. It is pitch black in NY in January by about 4:00, so my options were mostly limited to either teaching the girlies to become burglars or getting them part-time employment as night-watchmen. Neither seemed like a good option, so we would pretty much wander the neighborhood to find the moon and stars, and then sing 'Mr. Moon' a few times (see below).

My Mom visited in January while Kim was away at a 'business meeting'. The girlies love having my Mom here, but the best part is that she scrubs things that I didn't even know you were supposed to clean, like the girlies high chairs and couch cushions.

We also had my (Texas) Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew visit us for a weekend in February. Uncle Drew, as followers of this blog may recall, used to tell us stories about Sam and George and Sally and Sue when we were young kids and now one of my girlies (Sally) is named 'Sally'. I also have a cousin named 'Sam', a friend from high school named 'Sue', and I once met 'George' H.W. Bush (the older one) at an IBM conference, so in may ways Uncle Drew correctly predicted my life. He could have given me a heads-up about the dirty Swiss, though.

My Aint Debbie loves to get organized and stuff, and as mentioned in a previous posting she doesn't mind giving a few knuckle sandwiches if the situation warrants, so we are always on guard when she is around. Uncle Drew, who is a hugely powerful executive with a multi-national conglomerate, had a meeting in Jersey City (LUCKY!) and decided to visit us and make a weekend out of it. Aint Debbie was afraid she would miss an opportunity to do karaoke, so she decided to come as well.

Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew have a relatively new baby British grandson named 'Caleb', who seems to spend most of his days listening to his mother say 'Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses...Kisses Kisses....' Fortunately he can't speak yet, or else he would probably say something like "Hey, Mom - holy schnikey, can you please zip it? You are driving me nuts with this 'Kisses Kisses' stuff. Now I'm hungry - pass the Bubble and Squeak" (because, you know, he's British).

On to the photos and video recordings:

My 'Mom' and Sally

Judy reading a book to Sally and Amelia. Amelia is doing her best 'Judy' imitation, covering her face and saying 'Put that thing away! Ugh Ugh! Stop taking pictures!' She later taught Amelia how to deploy the very effective crossed-fingers approach to avoid being photographed. The book she is reading to the girlies is called 'Umbrella' (Amelia LOVES umbrellas), about a 3-year girl who gets an umbrella for her birthday. When they got to the part in the book when it starts raining, the girls were laughing harder than they had ever laughed before. It was very cute, and I tried to get it on video but missed my chance. Trust me, though, it was very charming.

Judy with the girlies in the jackets she bought them at the Pearl River Mart, on the stools she bought them for Christmas

The girlies watching Mandy, Abbey and Trey (Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew's childrens) sing 'Mr. Moon.' Uncle Drew used to sing 'You Are My Sunshine' and 'Mr. Moon' with his kids when they were young, and so they made some videos of them singing the songs for our girlies. This story may not translate, but I will tell it anyway - when recording this song, the Walker childrens started to sing 'Your Are My Sunshine' but then realized that they were supposed to sing 'Mr. Moon', so they start over mid-video. The girlies think that is the funniest thing ever, so now every time they watch it (which is often) they laugh and scream 'They messed up!!' - Sally points it out in this video above. See, I told you that it wouldn't really translate, but once I started typing I realized I was so far into the story that I had nowhere to go. Sort of like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.

Aint Debbie and Uncle Drew in front of our building

As you can see by these two pictures, Amelia hardly left Uncle Drew's shoulders the whole weekend.

Amelia and Uncle Drew spent 45 minutes laughing about granola. To this day, when I say 'granola' to Amelia she has a huge laugh.

Aint Debbie reading to Sally - she also taught her how to make crescent rolls from scratch

At some point during this weekend, Sally decided that the sunglasses, hat and plastic apron would be permanent

Aint Debbie with the girlies at the Natural History Museum - Sally is still sporting the plastic apron



Sally and Amelia running down the slippery floor at the Natural History Museum - the plastic apron remains

Playing with home-made 'Play-Doh'. Aint Debbie is now working on a home-made version of 'Kerplunk'

We begged and begged, and they FINALLY agreed to have a glass of wine. This was after the dancing started, so this was most likely not the first glass of the evening

Sally and Amelia at their first movie - it was a 3-D movie about the ocean. The movie was pretty good, and the girlies were interested for most of it, but I doubt they are ready to sit through the ridiculously long 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy any time soon

Kim and Sally walking to the park to go sledding.

Kim and the girlies after a treacherous ride down the mountain (small hill) in Central Park

November - December with the Girlies

November and December were good fun - we spent Thanksgiving in New York, which means that we got to see a giant Underdog float down Central Park West, and this year we had the extra treat of having our friend Chris (**LAST NAME REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE NEW ZEALAND SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE**) and his lovely 'female companion' Emma came over from London to spend a traditional American Thanksgiving with us. Chris is from New Zealand and Emma is a Brit, so they celebrate Thanksgiving on July 1st (Canada Day), but they were quite eager to see the Phineas J. Whoopie float and enjoy some home cooked (from Balducci's) turkey, stuffing, and potatoes.

In December, among other things, we decorated a tree and visited Santa Claus at Bloomingdale's, which was so cute that it made me kind of weep a bit. Below are some photos and delightful videos:

The girlies standing in front of the Polar Bear Zone at the Central Park Zoo - the Polar Bears are named 'Gus' and 'Ida', which sound like an old German couple who enjoy bowling and Sauerbraten. Hey, do you know what there are more of now than there ever has been in the entire history of the world? Polar Bears. Take that, hippies!



The girlies riding on the Merry-Go-Round



The girlies swinging while Kim throws objects at them

Amelia at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Amelia just saw the 'Simon Bar Sinister' float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade



Sally at the Thanksgiving Parade with Kermit the Frog

The girlies are cooler than Jack Nicholson (and Belzer) - I once accidentally insulted Belzer for wearing sunglasses at the Law and Order: SVU premiere party in our building. A few months later I saw him on the street, and he looked right at me and said 'Hey, how are you?' like he recognized but couldn't figure out from where.

Our Kiwi friend Chris (**LAST NAME REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT) and the lovely Emma (and the equally lovely me) with the girlies at Bethesda Fountain. The Fountain was empty, as you can tell. Usually it contains 71% water, 6% leaves, and 23% dog urine.

Chris (**LAST NAME REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE BBC**) and Amelia getting ready to run around the fountain.




Chris and Mike with the girlies in the fountain, with some doofus trying feverishly to prevent any sun from getting to the back of his neck. Plus, I am guessing he (erroneously) thinks it looks cool.

Emma and Amelia, enjoying some delicious tasting Cheerios. In England, Cheerio usually means 'Goodbye', so in order to avoid confusion they call Cheerios 'Fester Pudding'. Raisin Bran is known as 'Whack-a-Doodle Johnson', and the traditional favorite for afternoon tea is 'Tonsil and Toast'. Those Brits sure know how to eat!

The girlies and Kim with our delightful friend Ina.

Sally with Maria's parents Nonna and Nonna (for those of you without neighbors from Italy, those words mean 'Grandma' and 'Grandpa' in German)

Sally is very excited to get her picture taken at the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Sally and Amelia (and Amelia's crazy eyes) with Santa Claus

In their Christmas outfits - Sally is trying to give Amelia a kiss, but Amelia is using the very effective 'hand in front of the mouth" kiss-avoidance technique first developed in the 19th Century



The girlies donating to the Salvation Army. We are teaching the girlies that they need to help others and consider themselves fortunate for what they have, and to donate generously to charities. My favorite charity - the 'Sally and Amelia College Fund'. Now accepting generous contributions.

Amelia getting ready to put an ornament on the tree

Sally looking for the pickle



A LONG video of us decorating the Christmas Tree - nothing much happens in this, so maybe you just want to move on to the next item of interest

Sally with my second cousin (or maybe my first cousin once-removed - I have no idea which one. My beloved mother has an encyclopedic knowledge regarding whether someone is a first cousin, or a second cousin, or a first cousin once-removed, or a third cousin forcibly removed against his will. She once spoke for over 2 1/2 hours about how cousin Orville was actually my second cousin, not my first cousin once-removed, and she only stopped because she noticed a smudge on the refrigerator - she probably could have continued for another half-hour or so). Anyway, the above photo is Sally with my second cousin, who has my exact name - my cousin Sam and his wife Johnna named him after me, because I have been such an inspiration to them and our entire family, so Sam and Johnna thought they should show their esteem for me by giving their son my name. I was honored, but really I am no hero. I am just an ordinary guy who does amazing things and makes the world a better place by improving the lives of others through my foundations and my philanthropic endeavors and my jazz dancing. If that makes me a hero, then hey, I plead guilty.

My nice Aunt Debbie (I have another Aunt Debbie in Texas, who loves to organize and get situated like my sister D;;lkjsad - the two Aunt Debbie's have a fierce rivalry and on the few occasions when they are together they have been known to engage in fisticuffs) with Sally at Christmas in St. Louis.



Dancing Chicken

The girlies with their cousin Emma after the most depressing Christmas Eve service ever (Minister of the Lord: Sure, you have all lost your jobs, and the economy is crashing, and you almost certainly will be unable to feed your family when the snows come. And sure, the world is full of war and poverty and pestilence and evil and it is only getting worse. Sure, Barbara Streisand and Rosie O'Donnell are still alive, health care is unaffordable and unavailable to our society's most vulnerable, and global warming is cooling the planet. And fast food and sugary drinks are causing our young people to be overweight and have diabetes. Life as we know it is as bad as it has ever been, and it will be even worse tomorrow. Merry Christmas, Everybody!). But we had fun later at Scott's house, as Emma played 'Smoke on the Water' on the guitar.

Sally and Amelia brushing their teeth - as my friend Danger used to say, 'Don't brush all your teeth - just the ones you want to keep!'

Exciting Teeth-Brushing Footage - Amelia's hair has no cavities