Blown Away!

 

You should know by now that the zookeepers at the Johnson's Zoo are absolute crap at keeping time. If not, I can probably drive home that confession by explaining that today we celebrated David's birthday. Which was in May. It is now October. Yeah. 

Now, before you sensitive types go galloping off to call the PETA hot-line, I should explain that David did get presents from the family in May; we just never got around to organizing the loud and expensive party where the birthday boy gets to invite every human he has met in the last nine years. 'We' of course being a cute euphemism for 'Angie' because my ears were definitely not reminding anyone that we had almost succeeded in skipping the whole ordeal. Almost.

As we were getting ready to go, I saw David on the balcony blowing bubbles. I thought it was cute that at the ripe age of nine and a half, he was still innocent enough to enjoy blowing bubbles, so I snapped a quick memory. 

Tommy's ear-piercing screams a few seconds later led to several discoveries. The loudest one by far was that David was blowing bubbles that actually belonged to Tommy. Apparently David had snatched the bubble bottle out of Tommy's hands shortly before my ears had arrived. The second noteworthy discovery was actually threefold: 

1) Tommy was also on the balcony; I hadn't seen him before the screaming game started 

2) David was not blowing bubbles just to be cute; he was trying his damnedest to blow the bubbles directly into Tommy's eyeballs

3) David has incredibly good aim 

I resisted the urge to high-five Davey on his aim and tried to explain to a red-eyed Tommy that it was David's BIG DAY, but Tommy is like his mother and has a response for everything. 

'Yeah, but it's HIS party and I'm not even invited!'

Tommy did have a point. Normally, all brothers are invited to another brother's birthday bash, but Peter had already arranged to hang out with Arman and we weren't exactly sure if we wanted to teach our seven-year-old how to shoot other people. Yet. 

That's right. To the delight, I'm sure, of all the other parents, we decided to have a typical American 'shoot-em-up' round of Laser Tag. Hooah!

But let me briefly backtrack to the night before when Angie was trying her least worst to ruin my Saturday evening. 

'But there's 11 kids and 2 adults. The big car fits 7 and the Smart can only hold 2. How are we getting the other four there?'

Whenever I am confronted with naggy questions that I can't answer, my response is always the same. 

'Bring in the Godfather!' 

Sami was actually just supposed to help us drive the kids to the Sudden Death Match, but as soon as we arrived he made his intentions clear.

'I'm in - where's my vest?'

'Um, actually, the birthday package was for ten kids and we're already paying extra for the 11th kid, so...'

'Yeah, got it. I'm gonna go check my gun. This is gonna be GREAT!'

So yeah, Sami totally annihilated the kids in the first round. He more than doubled the score of his closest competitor. 

After Round One, Angie gently reminded the Finnish Rambo that it was a kid's birthday party and then not so gently suggested that maybe he should not dodge so many bullets. 

In his defense, Sami did seem to consider my wife's proposal before responding. 

After Round Two, the gloves were off.  

'Okay, Davey, listen up - you need to take out The Godfather.'

'Who?'

'Sami! Just aim for the chest. GO! GO! GO!'

I stood by to watch the take-down and quickly realized that I had misjudged two things - David's loyalty to his Godfather and Sami's ability to get my children to turn on me.  

'Hey, Papa! Sami told me to tell you "nice try, sucka!".'

'HEY! What are you doing? You can't shoot the war photographer! I don't even have a vest! That's it! Go tell your leader that I'm going back home!'

Angie is only half-American, so technically, David is only 25% German and 75% American. There's no real point there; I just thought I'd add that mathematical tidbit because I know that it somehow annoys Angie and she occasionally reads my ramblings. You can thank me later, Butter Buns. 

In any case, David was close enough in my book to being a full-breed that I made hot dogs for him and his guests. Angie was, of course, forbidden from helping with any cooking-related activities, but she did unwittingly support me by passing around the American yellow mustard. You're the greatest Mom EVER!

After devouring a taste of America, Angie came racing up to me and, for a change, she wasn't trying to seduce me.

'Steve! Tommy has a concert at the "Senioren Herbst" and we have nobody to take him.'

'Doesn't that mean "Senior fall"'?'

'Yes, it's the singing event in the fall for senior citizens. How is that funny?'

''It's not. Not at all. I'm sure Tommy will have a blast watching the seniors fall. Hahahahaha!'

'He's not watching, he's singing and please stop laughing! So, who's going to take him there?'

Whenever I am confronted with naggy questions that I can't answer, my response is always the same. 

'Bring in the Godfather!' 

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Ladder Talk: 
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That David had a good birthday.
David: That I celebrated my birthday with all of my friends at laser tag.
Tom: That I was with Lisi ice-skating, that David had his birthday party, and that I had my performance. 

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That David faked his head thing 'cause he jumped. 
David: That Peter hit my head against the corner of a box. 
Tom: That I couldn't go to David's birthday party. 

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to have a nice day. 
David: I want to play with Ben. 
Tom: I want to go ice-skating and I want to have fun by gymnastics. 

Transformtards

After a hard night of river camping with the animals, I had actually hoped for a quiet and peaceful morning where Angie would cook me a chicken-pot coffee and let me eat breakfast in bed. I do realize that along with hope, words like 'quiet' and 'peaceful' waved bye-bye around six years, two months and twenty-seven days ago. Not that I'm keeping track.

Sami woke me from my fantasy snooze and decided to teach my boys how to be 'more than meets the eye'. Like most of his 'lessons' my 'robots in disguise' learned more about adrenaline and noise levels than anything that was included in the original course description. I can't wait until Lauri is old enough for me to start up my own 'tutoring' service.

After Chorizo trained wild animals how to be wilder, I thought it would be nice if we included some of the finer arts in the program. We started out with some piano lessons.


Everything went great until Tom realized that Lauri was banging on HIS piano. At that point, Tom pulled a move that was a little unfair, considering that Lauri does not have older brothers that routinely steal HIS stuff. Tom knows this routine all too well and has recently learned how best to retain HIS belongings. It's a move I like to call 'scream like a little girl, flail your arms like a drowning monkey, and bite like Tyson'. Luckily, we have not yet allowed Tommy to watch a boxing match; even so, getting beaten on the head by a screaming monkey girl was enough to completely kill Lauri's interest in music. Thanks, Maestro.

To try and calm things down, I called in the Peace Gourds.

This worked for approximately 30 seconds. After that, it was more like Smashing Pumpkins and we had to evacuate the building. You might think it was related to the safety of my children, but it had more to do with Angie's completely warranted fear of cleaning up the messy aftermath.

We hit the streets, but like most of us, we were not really sure where we were going.

Even without a destination, Peter inner compass gave us a heads up that we were going in the right direction.

Yes, Peter recently learned to head butt soccer balls and has been forcing people to chuck balls at his noggin non-stop. I was more than happy to oblige, but protecto-Mom kept jumping in and making comments like 'not so hard' and 'underhand, not overhand' and 'his nose is bleeding - stop laughing'. Whatever.

To make up for pinging my boy's frontal surface so hard that he's now earned the nickname 'Unicorn', I decided to treat the boys to an ice-cream.


At the ice-cream shop, we ran into Lucy and Ben. Ben didn't have a red welt on his forehead, so I'm pretty sure I was the only one at the ice-cream shop buying a frozen apology. The four of them melted sticky laughter as they devoured their cones, so I thought I was forgiven until I glanced over at Angie. Trust me, her look was 'more than meets the eye'.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: Was that Germany won.
David: As I played with Peter kindergarten.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When I played with David not more.
David: That I not more play with Tommy.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Play soccer.
David: Play with mommy koony-koony-ku.