Rachel Callahan

Mile High Shopping.

August 26, 2010 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, Photographical Oddities, Utter Silliness, Weird Strange and True

I never take a magazine onto a plane with me because I’m always completely fascinated by the Sky Mall catalog. So this last flight, I obeyed the instructions at the top and took it. So they could joyfully replace it.

The first thing I always think when I look at catalogs like this is, “What must be the target demographic of the market they’re trying to reach?”

(Because as it has already been established, I’m a geek like that.)

And, by the products inside, I can usually sketch up a general idea…

First of all, the Sky Mall Target Audience (SMTA) are people who apparently like to feel really, really small.

…their desire to feel really, really small is so intense that they’re willing to pay $150 for a fold-up camping chair that makes their feet (still in Italian Loafers for some reason) dangle uncomfortably off the ground.

The SMTA also have broken arms, or are planning on having one soon:

(Which, by the way, this product is a total rip-off, because if you ever need a cast, your doctor will give you a cast cover for it – believe me, I have a whole collection.)

But the biggest interest of SMTA is most definitely their pets.

Especially the method in which pets use the facilities.

Besides the bizarre array of kitty litter choices (which we’ll get to later), there were doggy litter options.

Yes, optionS.

Not just one,

Not just two,

But THREE options for indoor doggy relief.

I personally prefer the helpfulness of the third option, what with the fire hydrant and all, but nothing beats the name of the first one.

Really?

Pup Head?

As if your dog is going to tell his doggy friends in his macho-bar-voice about his wussy indoor peeing situation, “I’ve gotta go hit tha head.”

But the cat choices…oh the choices.

Apparently the main concern is to hide, as best as possible, the kitty litter box.

You can hide it inside a “Handsome piece of [bathroom] furniture”…

Or a beautiful planter that you can turn around when company comes so they don’t have to know it’s a litter box (they’ll only wonder why your plant smells like cat crap), which might also have the undesired effect of making your cat pee on THEM in anger of having their litter box hidden due to the presence of strangers…

Or, if you have a more futuristic decorating style, you can always disguise your litter box as a UFO landing pod.
.

But, if you’ve tried all the hiding solutions and still aren’t happy with the litter situation, then you will most definitely be interested in THIS kit:

I’ve never seen a happier cat sitting on a fake potty in all my life.

Apparently, though, the SMTA also wants to hide any and all pet accessories. So why not double your Dog Crate as a stylish end table??

After shopping in the Sky Mall catalog, virtually every piece of furniture in your home can also be used by your animals!

And you can even disguise your pet grooming kit as a….vacuum.

Or is that just a re-branded vacuum?

But moving on from pets, the Sky Mall catalog had the only allergy “device” that gave me chills worse than the original Neti Pot does every single time I think about it:

$100 for a sinus torture device. Yummy.

Also in the medical device category, “You MIGHT be a hypochondriac IF…

…you’re willing to pay over $100 for a special camera wand to take pictures of your owies to send to your doctor.”

But for the not-so-paranoid SMTA, they can provide the ability to let their kids pretend they’re Ariel…with, I’m sure, only a 50% drowning rate by having their feet bound together while swimming in the ocean.

And, of course, the decor items.

The “real” looking rocks…

I think someone MIGHT catch on that the 4-foot-tall sheer cliff of a rock MIGHT not be real…

But they’d never guess that your “Lifelike Bashful Yeti” was just a sculpture.

And to add to your ceramic yard zoo are the MeerKats…

I cannot tell you how much joy it brings me that you can buy the “Out of Hole” MeerKat, the “Into Hole” MeerKat, or, of course, the complete set.

Because who would want to JUST buy the butt of a MeerKat sticking up?? Seriously??

And finally, one piece of classy indoor decor: Dishwasher art.

…because when van Gogh painted “Starry Starry Night”, his deepest hopes and dreams were that it would one day end up as vinyl dishwasher art.

Pregnancy: You Know, THAT Dream Come True.

August 25, 2010 Rachel Callahan I embarrass myself just for your amusement., Just My Luck, Pregnancy: The Psychoses.

There are certain dreams that are universal, for whatever psycho-babbly Freudian reason.

We all dream that we can fly…

We all dream that we’re in our underwear in front of everyone we know…

And, in the morning, when it’s almost time to wake up and we’ve been sleeping soundly for many hours, we all dream that we’ve got to pee, so (in our dream) we go pee, and then STILL have to pee, because (fortunately) we didn’t actually pee.

It’s an infuriating dream, and tends to be repetitive. You pee, you still gotta pee, so you go pee again, you still gotta pee, so you go pee again, and you finally wake up, still having to pee and quite frustrated.

THAT, my friends, is the reality that IS pregnancy.

(Yes, I did spend some time pondering what it said about my level of classiness that I was willing to write an entire blog post about pee. And what my Mother would think.)

(And yes, for some crazy reason, I still decided to write it. Because honestly, there’s not too much room for anything else to be on my mind lately.)

(And yes, I realize that this post is written in the frantic fashion of run-on sentences that are used when someone is hopping around on one leg needing to go pee…because that’s how I live these days.)

This PeeDreamReality is ESPECIALLY true when you’re carrying a boy, who, being true to old wives’ tales, decides to hang out down low.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that my Uterus is actually housed inside my bladder. Or my bladder inside my uterus. Or they’re one and the same. Or something.

At least with Ali, it wasn’t until I was about to give birth any second that I would go, start to walk out the bathroom door, then shake my fists at the air with a yell of frustration, and walk back in the bathroom to pee again.

This time, it’s been since the beginning. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been laying on the couch, desperately not wanting to get up for the 10th time in 20 minutes, fantasizing about being catheterized, and wondering how our family was going to survive the 2010 Toilet Paper Budgetary Crisis.

In fact, I think I’ll go ahead and start docking Noah’s future allowance now, to manage to pay for the for the TP AND the water bill.

Gotta go now…literally.

{Sigh}

The State of State Hysteria.

August 23, 2010 Rachel Callahan Alabama Bloggers, Football and I have a Complicated Relationship, Weird Strange and True

The state of Alabama is now officially under the trance of the upcoming football season. And the teensy-tinesy detail of Alabama being the defending National Champion AND coming into the season ranked number one nationally is making the hysteria just a wee bit more deserving-of-straight-jacket-insanity than usual.

Unfortunately, this football hysteria causes some people to do really dumb things.

(And that’s BESIDES the people that have named their babies boy babies Saban and girl babies Crimson, or have gone out and added to their collection of Alabama Football tattoos.)

Like, for instance, not spellchecking the tickets before sending them to the printing press. Apparently, whoever WAS in charge of making 101,000 tickets apparently forgot the mnemonic that we all had to learn in third grade…

M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter

I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I

humpback, humpback, I.

And so, we all received our fancy-schmancy holographic tickets … with Mississippi spelled wrong.

Classy.

National Champions in football though we may be, National Champions in spelling we apparently are not.

But wait! There’s more!! The crazed football hysteria makes other people do even dumber things…. like photoshop ones’ own body over Nick Saban’s wife’s body and claim that he endorsed your Mayoral Candidacy:

I’m SO proud of my state right now.

But, in an attempt to show that some people are channeling their football hysteria a wee bit more ~~bizarrely~~ intelligently than others, I would like to present to you…

My Husband’s Annual Football Bonnet Bee.

Last year, Chris used his pre-season football energy to create a portable satellite system for tailgating.

This year, the football bees created an entire hive of tailgaters.

You see, we tailgate in the front yard of an on-campus Church. Although we pay by the season for our spots, they’ve never reserved specific spots.

And, apparently, tailgating just isn’t the same if you don’t have your specific spot.

After all, we’ve been putting our chicken wing bones in the same crook of the same tree and watching them get eaten away by ants as the season progresses for 9 years – what would we do with our chicken wing bones if we weren’t parked by our chicken wing bone tree?

So every game day, Chris’ Dad is one of several people who arrive before the sun comes up to reserve precious spots. Chris and I used to meet him there before the sun came up, but thank-the-blessed-stars, the birth of Ali precluded us from being able to keep such insane hours.

So. Because of the crazy arrival times to reserve spots, this year, the tailgating crowd decided to take matters into their own hands.

They have requested that the church reserve specific spots for years.

However, the Church wasn’t too keen on keeping everyone out of everyone else’s spots – it’d be a lot of trouble, after all.

So, the Voluntary Committee of Reservations asked the church if they would allow reserved spots if said committee could convince the entire group of football fans that park in the lot, all 112 of them, to agree to a diagrammed reservation listing of everyone’s spots.

The church agreed.

So, Enter the Engineering Delegation.

Kristina, another lot-tailgater, good friend, and also-pregnant-tailgating-buddy, used her Engineering prowess to get the city tax maps and “planimetrics” of the lot:
(The irony is not lost on me that we all park on “The Nutlawn”. Quite fitting, IfIMaySaySoMyself.)

Jerrod, Kristina’s husband-and-also-Engineer, along with Dax, a co-worker of Chris’, took a trip to the lot and quite professionally surveyed it – taking measurements and marking up where every single tree, statue, sign, and shrubbery was located.

Chris then took their survey information and Kristina’s Nutlawn Planimetrics and AutoCadded out the entire lot, shrubbery and all, and the exact number and location of all available parking spaces:

Jerrod negotiated the final arrangements with the church, updated the AutoCAD, and then the official copy was emailed out with an edict of “claim your spots or forever hold your peace”, and the mass hysteria began.

(If you want to come visit us on game days, drop by space #27.)

Within 3 days and batrillions of emails flying about, nearly all 112 spots were claimed, with a surprising lack of disagreement. Being #1 can bring a lot of collateral peace, love, and harmony.

If you’re wondering, 112 season tailgating passes is a grand total $31,360 of 2010 revenue for the Church that owns the lot. That’s one pricey Nutlawn.

…but something tells me that there will still be people in that lot before the sun comes up.

Football Hysteria. It affects hundreds of thousands every year. Have you been vaccinated?

To read more football-related posts from Alabama Bloggers or to participate yourself, go to the Alabama Bloggers Score For Your Team Football Carnival.

Instilling Mischief: Painting up the Walls.

August 22, 2010 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, I'm a Glutton for Adventure, Kids: The Experience.

My friend Christen and I were working on a project at her house the other day, so Ali and the aforementioned-post-surgery-for-the-bean-up-his-nose Luke got some time to play together. They went into the other room to color together, and I rolled my eyes as I listened to the bossiness that I heard from Ali in the other room…

“No, Luke..we’re supposed to do it like this.”

“No, we’re supposed to color here.”

“No, Luke!! We’re not supposed to do that!!! WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT!!!!”

Wait for it…wait for it…yup, here she comes.

A panicking Ali ran into the room, followed by a sheepishly guilty Luke. Ali ran to Christen and informed her breathlessly and aghast, “Luke colored on the floors!!!”

As I said, Ali’s just not familiar with the idea of mischief.

(But poor Luke, he’d never colored on the floors before, so obviously it was Ali’s fault. Either he felt the need to impress her with his bravery in the face of danger, or he was driven to color elsewhere because of her overbearingly bossy ways.)

(So I apologized to Christen for my child’s obvious bad influence on her son.)

But Ali’s shock at his scandalous actions was nearly more than she could handle.

So you can only imagine her awe and astonishment when I told her that Friday night, we were going to paint on the walls in Noah’s future room.

“We can do that?!?!?!”

“Yes! And no one even needs to get in trouble!”

Although she was quite ready to get started, we got her to help us get the drop cloths all in place,

And then we handed her The Weapon of Destruction.

She was excited as any Trading Spaces participant has ever been when Chris did The Big Paint Color Reveal:

And, true to form, very serious about her responsibility of putting the first paint on the wall.

We worked as a team: Chris and our friend Amanda doing the edges, and Ali and I doing the walls. Her with the paintbrush,

and me rolling over her paintbrush chaos.

She had a moment of panic when she got the first paint on her finger – a traumatic mistake, obviously:

So we tried to get her to loosen up a bit by telling her she could write her name on the wall. It worked. She even ALMOST looked mischievous at her actions.
It even made her relax enough to go ahead and add Noah’s name to the wall, too:
Despite her help, we managed to quite miraculously get two coats of paint on the walls, and, with quite a bit of our more-experienced-in-such-matters friend Amanda, managed to turn this Grandmotherly and crooked light fixture…

Into a very nice ceiling fan that EVEN has a fancy wall-mounted remote control:

Although it did have a bit of a crazying effect on Chris.
But, Ali had a delightful time getting to experience what it would be like to do a bit of naughtiness, and Chris managed to live through the ceiling fan installation AND get the thing to actually work.

So, although we don’t have the rest of the nursery set up yet, the paint is gloriously finished.

Before:

After:

And if you have any rooms that need painting, Ali’s been begging to do it all again ever since:

Fun Stuff and Giveaways – Don’t Miss Out!!

August 20, 2010 Rachel Callahan Alabama Bloggers, Giveaways and Contests, Shamelessly Plugging Away

I think that most of you are aware that I also run another blog, Alabama Bloggers. I don’t typically do too much cross-promotion, but there is some really great and exciting stuff going on over there this week, and I wanted to make sure that no one missed out on the chance to participate!!

AND, you don’t have to be in Alabama to participate in them all, so don’t just quit reading for THAT reason.

(I mean, if you have some other good reason to quit reading, such as if you just discovered that your boy-child has smeared poo on all the walls or something, feel free to go take care of that. I’m really enjoying all of your boy-child stories, by the way. And I’m only 90% reconsidering my decision to have one myself…but hey. Keep ’em coming!)

Okay. So, this week on Alabama Bloggers:

1. You might have noticed my new button on the left-hand side of my blog:

The reason is that it’s time for the Second Annual Score For YOUR Team Football Carnival!

It’s not just for Alabama and Auburn fans – it’s for all football fans that live in Alabama. It’s a great way to get to know other Alabama bloggers, even if you don’t like football all that much (I think my contributing post last year was about just that).

The basic idea is that you can score for your team by…

1. Putting a button on your blog’s sidebar (3 points)
2. Writing a post about football and linking up on Tuesday (7 points)
3. Tweeting and blogging about the event (1 point)

Whichever team wins gets bragging rights for having the best bloggers in the state!!

AND, two of my favorite restaurants are sponsoring the carnival and have generously offered up some awesome prizes for the participants!!

Baha Burgers will be giving five lucky participants $10 gift certificates to try out their AMAZING burgers,

And the grand prize will go to someone from the the winning team – a tailgate party for 10 people provided by Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe!!!

I’m really excited about the carnival this year and hope a lot of you participate!! For all the details, be sure to head over to Alabama Bloggers!

2. We have another giveaway going on that is only open through Sunday night, and there aren’t too many entries yet, so you have a great shot at winning!! This one is open nationally, not just to Alabama Bloggers.

John Claybrook, an awesome new and rising Christian Musician, is trying to win a contest to perform at Celebrate Freedom in Atlanta on September 4th. He has given us three of his Masterpiece CD’s to give away, and you can enter by commenting, plus there are multiple ways to enter to win that will help send him to Celebrate Freedom. Head on over and enter!

3.And finally, if you’re from Birmingham, you may be as fascinated as I am with a series of guest posts offered up from a Birmingham, England blogger who visited our city. She has written some great posts comparing the similarities of the two Birminghams, and they are running on Wednesdays at Alabama Bloggers. To check out the two so far, click here.

Thanks for enduring my announcements, and I hope you go over and check out one or all of these at Alabama Bloggers!!!

This Just In: Boys Will Be Boys. And I’m Frightened.

August 19, 2010 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, Boy Child = Bizarre., Kids: The Experience., Pregnancy: The Psychoses.

So Chris and I were lying in bed last night, doing what couples do when they’re lying in bed at night (checking Facebook on our iPhones), and enjoying reading the sudden outburst of boy mischief being reported on Facebook.

The first Facebook Status we read was this one from our friend Rachel G:

“seriously??!!?? so now each of the older boys has chosen (to their detriment) to use my WHITE SHOWER CURTAIN to wipe the.. POOP off their bottom. seriously??!! And yes, there was a FULL roll of TP available.

i’ve got a great idea: when my boys get married. I will go to their house, take a poo and wipe MY bottom on THEIR shower curtain. Yes. sounds like a GREAT idea.”

And then we read this one from our friend Greg:

“The demo crew strikes again…Nathaniel & Zechariah decided to de-pop another section of popcorn ceiling…..uuuuhhhhgggg…..

Their bedroom is on the 2nd floor with some sloped ceilings…and they climbed up on the dresser!”

Of course, being the parents of a VERY docile and proper girl whose greatest moments of mischief hardly even deserve the title, we were laughing heartily (WITH them, of course) at the unbelievablility of these statuses.

And then we remembered.

Our faces paled. We shook with fear.

There’s a BOY in that belly of mine.

So we started to reason….both of those instances were the work of TWO mischievous boys working together…maybe having just ONE boy would keep us safe!!!

Chris said, “Yeah! Think about Luke! He doesn’t have a brother and he never does mischievous stuff like that!”

“Um, baby, Luke had to HAVE SURGERY last week because he stuck a bean so far up his nose!!”

“Oh yeah…”

Silence ensued as we faced the fear of our future.

“Well…maybe we’ll have a geeky boy that likes to play with Legos and Tinker Toys and doesn’t get into mischief.”

“I doubt it.”

“Well….maybe if we read enough of these, we’ll at least be prepared for a boy…it’s all about knowing what to expect, right?”

“I doubt it.”

It’s time we faced the facts. We’ve had it WAY too easy for WAY too long. Our life will not be THIS calm for much longer:

So let us have it. Tell us your scariest boy-mischief story. Help us prepare for our future. We’ll read them as soon as we’re finished installing the plastic shower curtains.

A Geek After My Own Heart.

August 18, 2010 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Anal Retentivity to a Fault, Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore., Kids: The Experience.

My kid is a geek. There’s just no way to sugar-coat it, because, bless her soul, she is headed for THE Uppermost Echelon of Geeks.

And she can’t really help it – she comes by it quite naturally. She was created by an Accountant and an Engineer. Two geekier parents would be hard to find.

I was reminded of her total and complete geekness yesterday when I told her to go play by herself for a few minutes while I finished up what I was working on. When I came to find her, I didn’t find her dressing her dolls or playing with her Princesses…

I found her, sitting in the kitchen floor, studiously yet blissfully taking down all of the pictures off of the refrigerator and sorting them out by family, neatly giving each family their own square of tile floor:

She was actually quite apologetic that she put Luke and Aubrey in the same square (bottom center) because she couldn’t find matches for them, but she figured since they were brother and sister, they could share a square.

Poor thing. She is destined for a life of accountancy. And furthermore, she’ll absolutely adore it. Just like her Momma.

Because truth be told, sorting pictures looked pretty excitingly fun to me, too.

That being said, her latest geeky interests (i.e. her favorite “games” to play) have been addition, subtraction, and “what happens if you mix this color and that color?”

So, for a fun-filled ~~geekfest~~ learning experience (and since everyone else is starting back school which made me feel like we needed to return to the school groove ourselves), I combined her current loves, and told her that we were going to have the most ~~geeky~~ fun ever, and do Color Addition!!!

She, of course, squealed in delight at the sound of this most excellent game.

I got out her Play-Doh and a huge piece of paper, and then thrilled her socks off by telling her that she was going to get to do something I rarely encourage: MIX up her Play-Doh colors.

Serious thrills, people.

So we started off by putting pieces of Play-Doh on her paper, and then mixed them until we got the color we wanted, and wrote the number of pieces it took to get our colors. We did the basics:
And then I had her start guessing as to what color she THOUGHT we were going to make. I learned that she has a very vivid color imagination.

Of course, if mixing two colors is fun, then mixing four or even seven is ecstatic glee.

(Personally, I think God SHOULD have made it so that red + purple + green + yellow + blue + green + black made gold. That’d be pretty awesomely creative.)

But, of course, color addition paled in comparison to her favorite play-doh pastime, decorating Christmas trees. So all of our color addition samples eventually ended up here:

And if nothing else already has, that first Christmas tree is proof that she was made to be an accountant – definitely not an interior decorator.

Disney Creates Skanks.

August 17, 2010July 25, 2012 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, Kids: The Experience., Mystery Solved, The Cartoon Age, This is TONGUE IN CHEEK People - Don't take me Seriously., Utter Silliness

Disney is a complicated beast. They create characters so lovable (and widely marketed) that no child can go a day without running into them somehow.

In fact, my kid doesn’t go a day without pretending to be at least five of them. In the same day. Repeatedly. And not answering to anything but the particular Princess or Fairy that she happens to be at that moment.

And really, I can’t help but love all of their characters too. Not that I would ever admit to pretending to be any of them…

But yet, their more subtle messages are…interesting.

We already discussed how much Disney hates cats and idolizes dogs.

And, if you haven’t noticed, Disney also hates Mothers. Sit and think of all of the cartoon Disney movies that you’ve ever seen, and name more than three where the Mother IS present AND isn’t killed.

Bambi? Nope, unless your parents fast forwarded through that part.

Cinderella? Definitely not.

Beauty and the Beast? Just a Dad.

Snow White? The Little Mermaid? RatatouilleAladdinFindingNemoJungleBook?

No. No. NoNoNoNo.

I don’t know what Mommies and Cats did to Walt when he was a kid, but he despised them. Heartily.

But another problem that Disney seems to have is with the aftermath of stars from their Disney Channel TV shows.

We all know the sad, sad downhill spiral stories…

Britney.

Christina.

Lindsay.

And their latest failure-to-stay-sweet, Miley.

They all, quite sadly, go totally skank.

And as for the kids that grew up watching them innocently on the Disney Channel and then watched as they spiraled into skankdom, I’m sure the effect wasn’t positive.

And so, that makes me start to question Ali’s favorite Disney Channel stars…

What are they going to be like when they, and therefore Ali, grow up?

Is she going to have the innocence of her childhood idols defrocked in front of her wide little eyes?

It’s a concern I really MUST consider…

For starters, I’m quite suspicious that Dora’s Knee Waggling singalong of “We Did It”…

Will one day morph into a Booty Waggling “Oops I Did It Again.”

Oh…waitta minute. Dora isn’t Disney. But I think she hangs around those Disney characters enough that she’s been infected, too…

At any rate, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Stars Donald and Daisy Duck, I’m afraid, are most definitely destined to become the next Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.

After all, Donald already talks completely incoherently while spitting and slurping into the camera, all while Daisy is the epitome of class and style.

I can totally see Handy Manny becoming the next Marc Anthony, what with those thick, sultry hispanic eyebrows.…

And although I’m not too worried about Phineas and Ferb becoming anything more harmful than a very washed up Brooks and Dunn,

It’s Perry the Platypus that I’m really worried about.

I’d put all my money on him becoming the next Kid Rock.

Yes, it’s a risky world out there. But as long as Tinkerbell can keep her Pixie Dust to herself, I think Ali will manage to cope.

Token Germs.

August 15, 2010 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, I would NEVER take too many pictures. . ., I'm a Glutton for Adventure, Kids: The Experience., The Blissfulness of Life

I’m having trouble concentrating on writing this post. I’m sitting on the bed during Ali’s nap, but totally distracted by the view out the window.

No, not the ocean view. The other window.

The five gray-haired guys (and one woman) sitting, drinking beer, in the KIDDIE POOL.

It seems to me to be an inherent assumption that beer would not be allowed in the kiddie pool, but more importantly,

WHAT is in that beer that would make six grown adults want to sit in a lukewarm pool of toddler pee???

Concerning, I tell you. And distracting.

But anyway. I’ll try to peel my eyes away from their middle-aged pores soaking up baby urine for a few minutes…but it’s just so hard…

(Focus. Focus.)

Since we’ve been doing plenty of this…

and we really wanted to take advantage of this being the last family vacation with ONE kid and NO baby, we told Ali we were going to go do NEW fun stuff. That didn’t involve water.

She was skeptical.

We took her to The Track, which is like a Chuck E Cheese on Steroids.

I know this is a horrible admission to make, but we have NEVER taken her to Chuck E Cheese, so she has no concept of such “fun things”.

Although I loved the place when I was a kid, I have this horrible mental image (perhaps influenced by some of your complaints) of dark lighting, coke-syrup-covered floors, a vermin-covered mouse in the same costume he used when I was a kid with no washes from then till now, nasty greasy pizza, and completely and absolutely petri-dish-of-germs arcade games.

I am far from a germaphobe, but there’s just something about C.E.C. that conjures up the very image of a Meningitis bacterium infected by Hepatitis AND the Stomach Flu.

But it’s about time that she experience the joys of our childhood (stomach flu and all), and The Track has a bunch of bonus carnival and go-karty-type rides too, and, most importantly NO giant vermin-covered-mice, so I agreed.

Our first “fun stuff” was go-karts.

Ali was thrilled with the no-car-seat situation of “little cars” – perhaps the most exciting part.

She got to ride one circuit with Daddy, and another with Mommy.

Obviously, I had to ask the Most Important Question….and the answer was that MOMMY was the better driver.

Obviously.

They had a little kid carnival area, full of swings, airplanes, and spinning discs that all looked wholly too unsafe to her overly-cautious self.

I begged her to pick just ONE thing in the kiddy carnival to try out…

She she went with what she knew.
As if she hasn’t ridden on a million merry-go-rounds.

But germ-wise, it was probably the safest choice, because it was the LAMEST RIDE IN THE PARK.

Next, we headed inside to experience the Chuck E Cheese part of the trip: the amazing, intoxicating, addictive thrill of winning tickets.
And, for the record, 20 years can go by (or 26 in Chris’ case), and the feeling of richness and accomplishment when those tickets start spitting out of machines doesn’t change one bit.

Ali got Lessons in Proper Skeeballing from Daddy…
And then tried it herself.But unfortunately, the only balls that made it all the way up the ramp were the ones that jumped lanes and, therefore, were lost forever.

She was much more talented at stomping spiders,
Helping me win big at Deal or No Deal,

And giving the Car Racing games very feministically disapproving looks for those bikini-clad flag wavers:
But the thing she loved more than anything else were most definitely…

The Tickets.

And since none of us have come down with Staph Infections, Hepatitis, or Spinal Meningitis yet, MAYBE we’ll consider actually going to Chuck E Cheese at home sometime. Unless you stop me and remind me of that Hepatitical, Stomach Flued Meningitis Bacterium, that is.

But even so, it’s a LOT less germ-filled than the kiddie pool those gray-hairs are sitting in.

Ew.

Sleep is for the Sleepy.

August 13, 2010 Rachel Callahan Kids: The Experience., The Blissfulness of Life, This is TONGUE IN CHEEK People - Don't take me Seriously., Yes I'm a beach bum. What of it?

First of all, may I defend ourselves…

We don’t vacation an extreme amount – I promise!! We just take quite a few small, weekend trips during the summer rather than any extended trips. We actually haven’t taken a week’s vacation since…our honeymoon 9 1/2 years ago.

(From which we shamefully came home a day early because we got homesick, and realized that henceforth, we’re just not made for weeklong vacations.)

Plus, just because we happen to have family that lives at the beach, it’s not fair to punish them and not visit just because it might also be construed as “indulgently vacationy”… right?

After all, who are we to deny them seeing their only Niece-Grandchild??

Not cruel, that’s who we are. So in an effort to not be cruel, we come to the beach. Because we’re just sacrificially overly kind and generous like that.

With all of that being said…err…we’re at the beach again.

After three nights in my own bed and three days of frantically trying to get caught up AND ahead at the same time after returning from New York, we’re enjoying our annual trip with Chris’ Dad (and therefore his Aunt and Uncle who live down here) in Orange Beach.

And I have to say, I’m pretty tired, but this is a pretty relaxing place, so I’m taking the opportunity to take on a comatose-like state of being and be as low key as possible to try to get Noah and I caught up on our rest.

And, apparently, I’m not the only exhausted member of our family…

8:00 AM:

9:00 AM:

11:00 AM:

1:00 PM:
3:00 PM:

Being three. It’s an exhausting life.