It's a Wonderful Life on Candy Cane Lane

This past Saturday Lisa and I went to the home of a dance classmate of hers for a It's a Wonderful Life party.

The party itself was a very nice, casual affair. At 3:30 the whole group walked down to the Times, an old 'Magic of Hollywood' era theater where the movie was showing on the big screen.

I'm sure a few folks were influenced by one too many glasses of wine, but the audience, by and large, reacted to the scenes as if seeing it for the first time. There was genuine laughter, shock, you name it. That was unexpected.

The print itself was crisp, clear, and beautiful enough to make you wonder why they ever switched to that new-fangled 'color' film.

[out of place memory: as a youngster, for awhile I thought color was invented in the 60's. Not color film - color, period. I thought they filmed it 'normal' but the world was gray. How's that for crazy?]

And of course, I teared up a good three or four times. Nothing to be ashamed about - Sonny Corleone cried at movies too - and the movie remains, by far, my favorite of all time.

Definite Desert Island viewing.

Afterwards we headed back to the party for a minute, then dined at Real Chili, a site not condusive to a diet.

From there we picked up our kids and headed to Candy Cane Lane.

Candy Cane Lane is an area of homes in Milwaukee, three blocks long by maybe four or five wide, that decorates their homes Griswald style for the holiday. They attract quite a crowd, and it's all to raise money for the MACC fund - Midwest Athletes against Childhood Cancer.

[you'll have to forgive the photos of the night. The best houses (the brightest) don't photograph well]

Most folks choose to drive the route, turning off their headlights as a courtesy and joining a crawling motorcade of what can amount to a hundred cars or more.

Why?

Every year we choose to park and walk the kids through the streets. You feel much more involved, more Christmas-like, and get a better view. You certainly have more to remember than you would after an exhausting ride through the event.

You also run the risk of frostbite some years, but this time we got lucky with temperatures in the high thirties.

No whining and no complaining. The kids even took turns in the stroller of their own free will.

It was like taking strangers I tell ya.

Lu constantly pointed out any reference to Jesus, hollering out "I see Baby Jeezus!". She also said, when spotting the Grinch, "There the meanie!"

The only naughty act was Parker's tendency to yank the hair of whoever sat in front of him.

A dancing/talking snowman grabbed their attention for a good while

Two odd incidents:

There was a child, maybe 6 or 7 years old, who had obviously gotten her parent's idiotic permission to ride standing in the moonroof of a car.

"You're naughty," Lu yelled to her, full of exaggerated menace.

"Go home," the girl yelled back.

"You, you're naughty," Lu responded.

We squashed that fast.

Second not so Christmas moment: a woman was annoyed we didn't move the stroller out of her way fast enough and swore. Lisa let her know that wasn't cool, though the incident overall was nothing major.

But not the norm for the event.

Lis and I have a long standing tradition of taking our own photos, dating back to our beginning. With rare exceptions, they ain't pretty.  Here's that night's effort:

Quote of the Day

My wife and I were watching It's a Wonderful Life Saturday. When it came to the part where George see's his wife Mary as she would be if he had never been born - a lonely, buttoned-up wallflower with glasses and a frumpy coat, I turned to her.

"That's what you would have looked like if you'd never met me," I said.

She snorted.

"You mean that's what I look like because I met you," she said.

A Trio of pics of my Trio . .

Sorry about all the mess in the background :)

42 Days

As of 6 p.m. tonight, it's been 6 weeks/42 days/1008 hours since I last had a cigarette. Actually, 1008 hours since I last so much as held a cigarette in my hands.

Which is something, considering that even in the 'breakthrough' quit of earlier this year I didn't go more than a week without stealing some 2nd hand smoke or bumming a drag from someone.

It's still hard, especially after a meal. As my wife says "it's the period at the end of my sentence" and its absence is felt.

On the other hand, I'm mildly confident. It is getting easier, and I've begun to think of cigarettes as a crazy lover you no longer see but occasionally miss. It's tempting to link up for a quick one, and lord know's you'd enjoy it - but in the end you say no, because it isn't worth dealing with all her psycho c*** later.

In other words, it isn't worth going through the agony of quitting again just for the sake of a cigarette.

I'm still eating too much to compensate, but that too is slowing down. Heck, I even ignored the desire to watch TV and instead hit the gym for a good 1/2 hour tonight.

Maybe there's hope for me yet.

 

Two Unrelated Pics

Here's a bland pic of Parker in the tub. Because of the kooks in the world I won't put the rest of the pictures online, but check out the eyelashes on this kid. Believe it or not, he gets that from me. 

Secondly, here's a pic of my girls entranced by the computer. In additon to Barbie.com, Disney.com, etc. we've now discovered how to play videos on AOL.. They've watched two Mary Kate and Ashley Christmas videos, and one of the Smurfs.

Update on the Crickets

The dang things are still alive.

After that first night I made a quick attempt to drown them by dumping over the plant they hid atop. It didn't work, as they just jumped on the turtles shell.

Smart buggers.

Plus I felt kind of creepy trying to kill them. Nevermind that I've killed a million bugs in my day or that I had bought them as feed for the turtle, it felt wrong.

So I was hoping nature would take its course, but at least one of the monsters is still alive.

Lisa is NOT happy.

If they're still at it tomorrow night, I might just have to go euthanize them after all.

My Mother In Law's Annual Xmas Party

Another tradition is my mother-in-law's Christmas party. It was originally held at her house and often featured my co-workers. We'd have dinner, open presents, then journey down the road to tour a decorated house.

In recent years it's moved to Chuck E. Cheese, in honor of all the youngin's now in the family.

Here's some pics from Tuesday's (12-12) party.

I think most of the pics are self-explanatory.

 That was the first visit to Chuck E Cheese, btw, where we were given not tokens but DEBIT CARDS to use on the games. I'm not sure if I should say that technology is grand, or that the world is changing too much for my taste. It certainly was different, I can tell ya that.

Me, I miss the feel of the tokens in your pocket, but that's just me.

Here's Parker and his Mom playing basketball. He loved it and wanted to keep playing.

Now while the entire event was fun, I have to say it's hard on my nerves. Watching 3 little kids running in different directions . . sigh. lol

Each year my mother-in-law makes a Gingerbread house and raffles it off to a guest. We've yet to win it.

Finally, here's a shot of my nephew.

A good time, and thanks go out to my mother-in-law - the kids had a blast!

Breakfast with Santa December 10th

My Great-Grandfather was one of a group of people that formed a fraternal Polish life insurance company a century ago; my Grandmother was Women's President of the company until her death in 1981.

Every year that company hosts a breakfast with Santa, with each child getting a very nice, brand name gift at the end of the meal. I've been going since I was a wee lad - probably since I was born - and my kids go every year.

[For a few years they dumped the breakfast format and went with pizza, then burgers. Thankfully, they went back to pancakes this year]

Best. Breakfast Sausage. Ever.

We brought YaYa's friend (and daughter of Lisa's friend) along too.

Everything went suprisingly smooth, with no hiccups at all to report.

YaYa is in that 'either act really goofy or smile stiffly and artificially' stage, but she's still cute:

When YaYa was three we had her wrap up her di-di's and give them to Santa at Mayfair Mall, with a request to give them to babies who needed them. Well, we didn't do that, not with Park still a youngin', but we did have her promise Santa to give up the pacifier as she is a 'big girl'.

As of this writing, only a few hours shy of a week later, she is still di-di free.

Parker wasn't scared at all - he just wasn't keen on sitting still. He would rather just steal a candy cane and move on :)

As for the gifts, Parker first got a noisemaking hammer, but we asked for something else, as he already owned one. The lady acted like the request was a tad rude, but the boy doesn't have all that many toys - if he did we'd have just said thanks and moved on. The second time around he got a toy cell phone.

Lu got the best gift, a Little Mermaid toyCD walkman that plays miniature 'CD's' with Disny music.

YaYa's gift was a bit of a miss. It was a craft kit that converts a picture to a jigsaw puzzle. Aside from the fact that the craft was messy, largely ineffective, and quickly used up the supplies that came with it, I was impressed that she handled seeing Lu's gift like a champ, without even a whimper.

Oh, and their friend? Her Dad bought her a Barbie, which we smuggled in to Santa's helpers :)