Vegas & Toddlers: Very Bad Odds

After the three-day weekend in L.A., we followed Mimi and Grampy back up to Las Vegas to spend a few days with them up there.

Not one of my more brilliant moves.

Vegas is about as kid-friendly as a Democratic Primary. We did as best we could, staying at Circus Circus, which aptly summarized the couple of days. While it was good to spend time with the folks, there are about a billion better places to do it than Vegas. The clanging and flashing and dinging and honking drove Stacy into a catatonic fetal position, and left N huddling in a corner muttering "Beep-beeps! Beep-beeps!" over and over to himself quietly.

At least our hotel had a pool. Not one of those elaborate tropical paradises with waterfalls and toucans, mind you. More along the scale of a small pit filled with a garden hose, but thoroughly adequate for our needs.

L seemed to take it all in stride. She was fascinated by the plastic room key, referring to it as the "credit card", furthering my sense of foreboding. At one point, while on a daddy/daughter walk so that N and Mommy could get some sleep, things got a little theo-philosophical. Riding atop my shoulders, L asked me if God made Circus Circus. I had successfully navigated similar such questions in the past, explaining that God made cars and airplanes and, of course, Trader Joes balloons indirectly through the people He made. I was a bit at a loss on this one. Thank goodness 3-year-olds don't have a well developed sense of dodging the question.

Although it was non-ideal (and certainly non-idyllic), we did get to enjoy some final days with Mimi and Grampy. Stacy and Mimi braved the Lied Discovery Children's Museum with L and N while I stayed back with Grampy and learned the art of losing at craps. (No mystery why they call it that.)

Eventually Mimi and Grampy flew off to Tennessee to visit my sister Sue and her family (amid much crying from L and N), leaving us to head back to the relaxed, tranquil land of gang wars, freeway congestion, and earthquakes - quite the change for the better.

Easter Events

Easter's a week behind us now, but we were all too busy to do much posting over the last few days.



As expected, there were the new duds for church...

...And the compulsory Easter egg hunt...

...And the big dinner dinner with all the extended fam. Ham, asperagus, creamed spinach, corn cassarole, honey-glazed carrots, mashed potatoes, and carrot cake for dessert!


Grampy gave a very good indication of which branch of the family tree N dropped off.

Aquari-numb

Last Saturday Mimi and Grampy took a trip with us to the Long Beach Aquarium. According to Mimi, she has been to about a dozen aquariums with her grandkids in the last three-or-so years. I think she might be a little aquariumed-out.





T'would appear that for some, however, aquariums can still generate wide-eyed wonder.

Maine Attraction

L and N got a special treat last week. Mimi and Grampy came to visit them all the way from Maine (via Las Vegas, by way of Tennessee). The young-uns were spastic-excited.




Note Mimi's fashionable hair accessories, complements of L.

N had a particularly good time jumping on Grampy's makeshift bed...

...whereas L derived hours of entertainment at Mimi's expense. It appears that she took it as a personal challenge to run Mimi into the ground as expeditiously as possible. It was a challenge she recommitted herself to each morning on waking.

Mimi and Grampy were just in time to help celebrate Daddy's birthday, (not that Daddy much felt like celebrating...) L and N even helped Mommy decorate the gift wrap - Dinoriffic! Daddy was very pleased with his hand-crafted (literally) garden stepping stone.

And Here's to You, Mrs. Sexton

When I was a junior in high school I had an English teacher named Mrs. Sexton. Mrs. Sexton was one of those nervous, sensitive types who seem totally and perfectly malfitted to possibly survive daily onslaughts of teenagers. While she wasn't a bad teacher per se, she did have a tendency to end up in tears at least once over the course of a week. Such people tend to find comfort and take refuge in those who are not actively seeking their weekly humiliation, and so Mrs. Sexton, I believe, liked me.

Being, of course, an advanced English class, it follows all good sense and logic that we budding literates should read that most English of classics, Don Quixote. It has been said that Cervantes and Shakespeare both were born and both died on the exact same day. Evidently Mrs. Sexton assumed that also meant the same town.

In high school I was way oversubscribed, and while I loved to read even back then, I was too plugged in to a thousand high school activities (only some of which would have been considered illegal) to really dive into the books we were assigned. And so the time allotted to read Don Quixote came and went and I was faced with writing my book report having scanned the first three chapters or so, and having just realized that the "Cliff Notes" for the book were themselves longer than I would be able to read and plagiarize. And so I fell upon any teenager's last resort when conniving and deception won't pan out: I told her the truth. I wrote my report, puffed and padded as much as three chapters of raw material would allow, and then at the end, made my confession.

I remember the results to this day: The week following our submittals our reports were returned. Mrs. Sexton's red marks on my paper were nearly as copious as the report text itself. They spoke of my eloquence and sharp understanding of the themes and subtleties of Cervantes' work, all of which, evidently, were sufficiently distilled in the three opening chapters to make the remaining 150-odd chapters endearing, but superfluous. At the top of my page, written large, was a 97%, and at the bottom of the page, after all her notes, was her caveat: I got the A on the paper only on condition that I promised to read the novel in its entirety. She caught me after class and there extracted her pound of flesh. (Note the extra Shakespeare/Cervantes reference - no extra charge).

I swore my oath and at the time I was convinced I had successfully re-engaged the teenager's mainstay mode of veracity, and that conniving and deception had once again aptly served their purpose. But as the years progressed, my sins began to weigh heavily on my soul and though I struggled, I eventually succumbed in repentance. Over the course of several years I took up my literary lance and tilted at the windmills with the noble knight. It was not an easy sallying forth; I had to take a break between Parts 1 and 2, and by the end of it I feared I was less sane than my protagonist. But at 5:34AM this morning, after another intense all-night struggle, Don Quixote was laid to rest, and with his passing more than one chapter and fantasy promise is drawn to conclusion.

Happy Easter

Luciano Pava-rot-N

N and his voice coach.

Poppa Rocks

Last weekend Stacy & I took the kids up to Agua Dulce to visit Grandma and Poppa. With our welcomely wet winter, the wildflowers were exploding in Vasquez Rocks state park. (Wow, what a whole lot of W's were wedged within those words!) So we spent the afternoon hiking (or maybe strolling) around over there.

For N, it was all about Poppa! The two were inseparable.






Gramlynne, on the other hand, got burdened down with L.

N will obviously be a brilliant geologist.

It was a spectacular day.












Back at the ranch (Asher Ranch, that is. Grandma and Poppa's house!)



A busy day makes for a decent ride home.