My Sister's Big Fat Samoan Wedding

More to come, but I know my brother's are anxious for the world to see their lily-white chests, so I'm posting videos.

If you can listen to my dad sing that song to his baby girl without curling up in a ball and crying your eyes out, you are dead inside.

Kolby singing "our" song, The Luckiest, by Ben Folds.  He flew in the night before the wedding, which got him out of performing in the slap dance, but didn't get him off the hook altogether.  Some shitty adorable kids kept walking in front of my camera.

And the much anticipated Naked Brothers.  If anyone has this shot from a different angle, please let me know.  You can't see Don or Payton in mine.

Doh!

I apologize for the lack of wedding videos on my blog today.  I am experiencing technical difficulties. (No camcorder batteries are charged--I should have used my Flip.)  Check back tomorrow to see White Boys Slap Dance.  It's sure to be the next Youtube sensation.

More than just sharing clothes

I just arrived in Utah for my baby sister's wedding, so no time to post this week.  Someone sent me this article, and I loved it since I'm about to be surrounded by my sisters, who do make me feel happy and balanced.   (I'll also see those brothers of mine.  I'm glad to see that I can now blame them for any distress in my life.) 

Us girls?  We really are all rainbows and butterflies.

Because it's fun to lie to your children

We wrapped up our Spring break with a surprise overnight trip for the kiddos.  We planned it a couple weeks ago with friends from Portland, but Kolby and I decided we wouldn't tell the girls about it until we pulled into the Great Wolf Lodge.

Then yesterday morning, Evil got the better of me and the scam began.  The girls knew we were going somewhere fun, but that's all they knew.  All week long I'd tried to get them to go skiing, but they refused because we'd really pushed them hard when we went last week, and they hadn't quite forgiven us. (They were awesome though!).  So yesterday I said, "Okay girls, I guess we can tell you now what the surprise is.  We're going skiing!"   Mwa-ha-ha-ha.  

They both tried their best to feign excitement.  Even asked if they should just put on their long janes then or wait until we got to the slopes.  We continued with the deception throughout the 90 minute drive.  We'd talked up the fact that our hotel would have a hot tub they could sit in after skiing.  But then we "remembered" we'd forgotten their swimsuits.   Oops.  Then when we were getting close to the Great Wolf Lodge, I said, "Hey, could we stop here real quick for a potty break?"  So Kolby dropped the three of us at the front doors to go to the restroom.  The girls were so excited to finally see the inside of this place.  (We see it from the freeway every time we drive to Portland.)  

When we walked in the door, the three Nelson kids were in the lobby and ran up to our kids. Everyone jumped and screamed and hugged in excitement at seeing each other, but the Blackham girls hadn't figured it out yet.  They whisked Mia and Maddie off to see the huge water slides, and when I caught up to them, I had never seen such depressed little faces as the ones my girls were wearing.  Their friends got to stay here for the night, and they had to go skiing and take lessons?  

I couldn't take it anymore.  I told them we were staying with their friends, and they went berserk, as you would expect.

Although about 20 minutes later Madeline said, "But we aren't going to be able to swim because you forgot our swimsuits."  Damn, we're good at this!

We had a fantastic weekend.  The rooms were super cute with a bunk room for the kids.  And the waterslides and activities were included with the room.

The kids ran wild--riding the slides, running through the hotel doing the Harry Potter-esque scavenger hunt, playing in the bunk beds, riding the slides some more.   The Easter Bunny managed to find us there, and the kids had a little egg hunt in our room after breakfast this morning.

When we left to come home this afternoon, all of us exhausted, Madeline said, "Well, I don't know what the best vacation is that we've ever been on, but that is definitely the best hotel we've ever stayed in!" 

I Heart Cities

(Just a warning and apology up front: this post is overly long and wordy, but I count this as my "scrapbook" so I have permission to indulge myself a little here.)

I love cities. I can't get enough of them. If I'm feeling stressed or depressed or numb, I drive across the bridge into Seattle and I feel like myself again. It was the same in Portland, but our house was much closer and I lived my life more in the city than I do here. When I'm in a city I feel awake, alive, energized, happy. All the world is right when I have tall buildings and street noise surrounding me.

I don't love living in the suburbs.   I live here because of the children and their "education" and "safety." (Please do the air quotes with your fingers as you read that.) Someday I will hold this over their heads, "I moved to the suburbs for you! For years I was dying inside, wasting away in the 'burbs. All for you!"  Although I do have to admit, I appreciate sleeping a little longer on garbage day without the guy rattling down my street with his shopping cart full of bottles and cans, pilfering through our recycling at 6am, sending the dog into a frenzy and waking up the kids.   And also the only shootings I hear about in our neighborhood now involve a syringe, an aesthetician, and Botox.

The first time I ever flew I was 20 years old, and I flew alone next to a very seasoned and wise seven-year-old traveler. I was meeting Kolby in San Francisco and was giddy with excitement. I grinned stupidly the entire flight. My first flight! On an airplane! To the Big City! I couldn't contain my glee.  My seven-year-old flight guide was very patient with all my questions and my bouncing in my seat.

I adored San Francisco.  I wasn't quite brave enough to explore it on my own. Kolby tried to talk me into taking another cab to meet him at MOMA when I arrived, but I would have none of that. My first cab ride from the airport had been terrifying enough (I've had two near death experiences with San Franciso taxi drivers--I suggest you avoid them at all costs.) But when he was done (he was there for work) we started wandering the streets of San Francisco, and I was in heaven. Kolby tired out and needed naps during the day. I wouldn't think of wasting even a minute of my time sleeping. I had to keep seeing and smelling and tasting.

Not long after that someone in my class at school mentioned that she lived downtown. People live downtown? It was news to me. Kolby and I started driving around downtown SLC and the Avenues and within a couple of weeks we had our condo on the market and were moving to the Avenues. I get so nostalgic thinking about our years living on J and H street. We would walk downtown to the city library, get sushi, catch a movie, and then walk back home. We would go for hikes up City Creek Canyon. We'd walk up and down the avenues, admiring all the bungalows and four-squares and dreaming about which one would be ours. On weekends we walked to Einstein's for breakfast. The Avenues are (is?) still on my list of favorite places to live.


December of 1998,  we visited Seattle. Kolby and I, still babies at the time, were contemplating moving "out of state" and Portland and Seattle were at the top of our list. Seattle felt too huge and scary to actually LIVE here. It was fun to visit, we loved Pike Place and the Space Needle, and Elliott Bay Bookstore. But the thought of moving here just terrified us. It seemed so big.  And it was cold. Really really freaking cold. The winter humidity just cut through my born-and-raised-in-the-dry-dry-desert bones. (I do think that the really depressing motel we were staying in with it's cinderblock walls and stairwells that smelled like pee had a large part to do with our initial impression of Seattle.  But hey, it was $49 a night!)

Top of the Space Needle

Six months later we took a weekend trip to Portland, a city I fell in love with instantly. The only way I can describe it, and I'm aware that it sounds ridiculous: Portland is huggable--you want to hug it, and it hugs you right back. It smells like a mixture of coffee, patchouli, and B.O.   I hope you like that smell.  It's oddly alluring.  Portland is the perfect sized city. It's not super-sized. Not kiddie sized. It's like a 22 oz. soda. Just right. It has the rivers and all those fantastic bridges. It has music and amazing food and a perfect amount of weirdness. You can drive or walk through it and really feel like you've *experienced* Portland, and yet even after living there 8 years, I was always discovering something new. You might think I'm romanticizing it, but I'm not. Portland rocks. It did take me a very long time to get my bearings though, without the Wasatch Mountains on the East to keep me oriented.  (Who knew a year later we would be packing our bags and moving to Portland?)

We went back to San Francisco with Madeline when she was about two years old and discovered that she loves cities like her momma loves cities! She just ate it up. She loved the cars and the noise and the excitement. She tried to catch pigeons to bring home with her. She loved the trolley and the street performers and the boat rides. She didn't even mind my second (her first) life-threatening taxi ride.


Eventually, after moving to Portland, we returned to Seattle without the fear of having to actually live there, and I really loved it. In fact, one of my favorite weekends was when the girls and I drove up from Portland to spend the weekend with Kolby, who was finishing up a long week of city-hopping for work. We had one of those perfect moments eating breakfast at a sidewalk cafe in an alley at Pike's Place. There was a street musician playing the guitar and singing, and the acoustics were perfect, much like when I sing in the shower. (You should hear me. You would be impressed.) Sunny warm day, city, music, good food, my family. Aaaah. Bottled up and saved forever.

The first time I went to New York City, I was ready to pick up and move there. I was in awe. It was a couple years after 9/11, and everyone I met in stores, restaurants, cabs, the hotel, everyone still wanted to talk about their experiences. I cried more than a few tears sitting on a bench at Ground Zero. I visited all the tourist destinations--Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Empire State Building, etc. I walked my feet until they had blisters, then had to buy better shoes so I could walk some more. Standing in Times Square was just breathtaking. I shopped. And shopped. And ate and ate. And came home exhausted and yet somehow rested.

Times Square

Top o' the Empire State Building

The second time I went to New York I sought out neighborhoods--Chelsea and Greenwich Village. I saw some shows. We ate at yummy restaurants and listened to live music and let our local friends show us their favorite hole-in-the-wall places to eat or listen to bands perform. I wore myself out wandering through the floors of MOMA, where I saw original works by Picasso, van Gogh,  and Pollack for the first time. I watched all the families walking the streets and wondered why we weren't living there too.



Kolby is in New York now, and I am jealous.

We go back in May for our friends' wedding on the Brooklyn Bridge and to see another friend starring in his first big Broadway hit. I can smell it already.

Sunshine

We've had a gorgeous weekend, and spent as much of it as possible outside. Saturday evening we headed to Kirkland for dinner and then played on the beach for a while.

Celebration

Three things we're celebrating tonight:

I was accepted into the nursing program.  I start Fall quarter.  (Don't believe my sister Jodi if she tells you I got into bus driver school.  She can be a real twerp sometimes.)

Madeline passed her Sundae Multiplication Test (after studying her heart out) and scored 100%.  Their ice cream sundae party was at school today.  I am so proud of her.  She worked so hard on it!

Also celebrating the great annual reviews Kolby had this week with his manager and his manager's manager, and also the departmental MVP award he got for all the hard work he's put into this campaign.   I'm proud of him too!  His one year anniversary at Microsoft is next week.  Time flies when you're having fun!