Put me down for 5 on the 4th

If I were a betting man, I would have most certainly put a fiver down that the boys would have a kick-ass time at the July 4th blowout festival. The problem with betting is that you first have to have money. Luckily, Angie's school took care of that for us. Thanks Dan!

Dan the Man had organized us VIP passes that included easy access onto the base, front row parking, and enough food and drink vouchers to keep all of us fat, dumb and happy. The boys were ecstatic and my jelly belly came out to say hi; I don't know which one that would make Angie, but it doesn't matter.

Apparently it did matter and Angie 'suggested' that I go celebrate independently. She took the easy one and left me with the gooftards.

I am truly amazed that this picture even turned out; the still shot does not give justice to how spastically they were buzzing about. And this was pre-soda.

We met up with Angie and the wild one at the party tent. With Peter and David, it was not until just recently that they would even think about venturing more than five feet from us, especially in crowded places. Tom did not even say ba-bye when he decided to abandon the family.


I saw him bolting and decided to follow him, curious to see just how far he would go without looking back. He zigzagged his way through the crowd and made his way from one end of the parade field to the other and did not look back once. His inner compass had apparently hijacked his sensibility and guided his selfish curiosity to the kiddy slide that he had screamed and pointed at when we walked in.


As Tommy satisfied his primal sliding urges, buddies 1 and 2 were busy guttering the lanes of the bowling stand.

Peter went first. No strike. David laughed. David went next. No strike, David cried. Peter paused. Papa laughed. Peter laughed. David hit Peter. Peter cried. Papa laughed. Peter punched Papa. Papa laughed. David laughed. Peter laughed. It was a bonding thing.

After so much emotional build-up on the whole 'strike' thing, I finally caved in.

That's right. A full assault air-strike balloon, just for Destructo Dave. Man I love America. My patriotic thoughts of annihilation were interrupted by a mean-looking roadie wearing a doo-rag.


He informed us that the show would be starting soon and commanded us to sit down. Show? what show? For a change, Angie actually obeyed instructions.


As we waited for the mystery show to start, we ran in to Hatch and Sandy. I don't know what the hell Jack did to Sandy, but I'm sure that she's thrilled that I'm using this shot.

David was flashing his patented 'go away' gesture to the Papa-razzi, which normally indicates that he is up to no good. As any good gossip hound, I ignored the signs and continued snapping shots of the miscreants as they waited in line for the show. What show?!


David looked like he was coaching Peter. By 'coaching' I of course mean 'mischievous advice', but I hadn't yet figure out their diabolical plan. It became a bit clearer when Peter started chucking balls at a scantily clad chick wearing a wet shirt. I didn't fully understand why David was giggling away as he continued 'coaching' Peter, but I was curious enough to watch on.

I guess bowling isn't the only sport that Peter sucks at. After missing all ten throws, David's coaching advice finally became clear.


I watched the whole ordeal from the sidelines and I must say that I really froze when honest Pete raced up to the dunking booth just after missing. I kept thinking 'there is no way that kid is going to cheat and manually dunk the poor girl who can't afford clothes into the cold water'. David's gleeful laughter confirmed that I need to rethink my thinking.

The dunkee was rightfully livid, but it was probably more aimed at Peter's insane cackling than getting unfairly dunked. The boy would not stop; he was cracking up so bad that he could not even walk. He was clutching his belly and had dropped to one knee. I have never seen a six-year old so content with himself. My boys constantly do things that I have never seen before, though, so overall - not a big shocker.
After being asked not-so-politely to leave the dunk tank, we decided to round up the animals and head back to the ranch. We went find Tom, who had again run away from his family in search of slides. Angie snatched up the slider and asked him if he was having fun.


I'm guessing yes, but just to be sure, I watched his reaction as Angie told Tommy to wave bye-bye to everyone because we were leaving.


After confirming that he really, really wanted to stay, we packed up our stuff and headed home. If I were a betting man, I would have most certainly put a fiver down that the car ride home would not be a quiet one. I should really start betting.
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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When I got a football balloon.
David: As I had a balloon.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: As we couldn't play any more games at the party.
David: When I not more can play with the Happy Birthday America.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Play with my friends in kindergarten.
David: Play kindergarten with Peter.

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'.
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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.

Pack it up, pack it in

Pack it up, pack it in,

Let me begin,

I came to win,

Battle me that's a sin

--House of Pain

On the way to what was sure to be another fun-packed family camping adventure with David's kindergarten class, Angie dared to challenge me to a tent-building contest. Please, woman.

I honestly couldn't believe that Angie was coming on the trip in the first place. Last year, she bailed with the whole 'Tom's a baby' excuse that only too conveniently fit with her hatred of nature and large gatherings of screaming kids. I had honestly assumed and planned on her not coming until the night before when she was gabbing away on the phone.

'Oh, damn, I'm so sorry - I'd really love to go to your cousin's neighbor's daughter's baptism rehearsal, but I'm going camping...'

Despite adamantly denying it, I still think Ms. Outdoors 'changed her mind' at the last minute. Whatever.

So anyway, I was enjoying a surprisingly quiet and pleasant ride until Angie started rambling on about how easy it is to set up a tent and how maybe even I could do it. That's it, lady - it's go time!

As we pulled up to the campground, there were plenty of parents who weren't two hours late who came up to gloat at us. They grinned and pointed at their deluxe super-duper-sleepers and explained how they had already pitched their tents, collected firewood, set traps and whatever the hell else over-zealous campers that show up on time do.

We promptly ignored them and raced for the colossal mess that we had crammed in our trunk. Angie beat me there and claimed stake to what I would later refer to as 'the easy tent'. I got there just as Angie was skipping away and was forced to take what I would later refer to as 'the WWII hut that requires an engineering degree and a blow torch'.

Normally I do not let David climb up on top of any car, moving or not. Angie had already unrolled her 'push-button' tent, though. I was torn between the safety of my children and kicking Angie's ass. In the end, I just pretended that David was wearing a helmet made of bubble-wrap and convinced myself that the pavement was not that hard.

In case I forgot to mention it - it was freakin' hot, and not in the 'Roseanne Barr naked' kinda way. For some reason, Angie was not breaking a sweat. I've read a few books, though, and realize that it's probably because she's from Venus. Apparently Venusians can't cook to save their lives, but they are fairly proficient when it comes to selecting the 'easy' tent from a pile of tents borrowed from said alien's father.

I don't know what was more humiliating - that I was beaten in a simple tent-building contest by a freakin' extraterrestrial that can't even cook, or that the creature's offspring just stared at me in pathetic disgust as it's Mama hammered in the victory pin.

For not being able to cook, this Alien could certainly chow down. She didn't even mind that I was somewhere in the background, cursing and tripping over cryptic tent pieces as I tried to decipher non-existent instructions and reconstruct pieces that had decayed years ago.



After finally getting my Quonset hut assembled, I stumbled my way over to the well-fed for some bread and water. Tommy stopped me on the way and demanded my head for his creative foot stool.


I noticed a potentially disturbing trend forming with Sitting Tom and decided to kick his lazy ass out of the chair for a bit of exercise. He chose instead to sit on a blanket and play poker with La Principessa.


I understand and can accept responsibility for the poker part, but where does this kid get his 'lounging around' bit? Hmmm...

In a totally unrelated segway, Angie was busy preparing a string of candy for a game of 'gummy bear dipping'.


I wasn't really sure if Tommy's dallying had warranted a treat, but I called for him anyway.


'What? I can't hear you and there's no way I'm walking over there. Come closer!'

'I said - you better get off your ass if you want to chow down on some yummy gummy candy'


Okay, not exactly what I meant, but at least he understands me. He also comprehended the growing crowd of children surrounding Mama's string of goodies and mosied on over for a snack.

The whole 'walking over' and 'chewing candy' must have really tuckered out poor Tommy. He plopped his lazy boy down and watched as Mama took her turn.

I don't know what it is about this picture, but it somehow reminds me of the scene in Pinocchio when the bad boy shooting pool suddenly turns into a donkey. You might think that obscure jackass comparisons might irritate the crap out of my wife. As it turns out, it just meant that happiness came an hour earlier. Hee-haw!


Bed time inconveniently coincided with the USA-Ghana World Cup match, so I conveniently left the camp site in search of more beer and a satellite TV. Yes, in that order.



I thought that Angie would be happy that neither of my searches were in vain, but let's just say that happy hour was over by the time I made it back to the camp site. The cool thing about tents - no sofas.

The morning after the night before was rather interesting for the boys. Peter and David are old enough to retain memories for more than 24 hours, but Tommy woke up completely baffled.

In computer chat talk, it would probably be something like WTF R WE? I know, I'm so hip it hurts sometimes. I understand and can accept responsiblity for the whole 'waking up and not knowing where you are' part, but instead of inquiring about his whereabouts, Tommy frantically searched the camp grounds until he found his coveted chair. Hmmm...
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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When we were by the camping.
David: When I play with the fire.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When I in trouble over the flashlight.
David: When I throw in the fire and you say that I no can do that.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To play soccer and do the treasure hunt.
David: To go home again.