Celebrating our Elwayeth year... (Brandon Mass Email)

Well kids, time flies when you waste the time of the woman of your dreams. It's hard to believe but Amy and I are at the seven year (hence the Elway reference in the subject line for you heathens) itch. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't fear that Amy's going to figure it out and pursue the kind of guy that she deserves, but in the mean time I thought I might revisit our vows and let you all in on the little secrets we have that keep Amy on the preferred side of the knife's edge of her leaving me:

Love is patient, love is kind - Amy married me...enough said

It does not envy - There is no reason to envy anyone - I snagged the best wife ever, so I just sit back and watch all the other fellas envy me!

it does not boast - Amy has never bragged to any of her friends about me.

it is not proud - I've spent so many nights on the couch that I haveno pride left

It is not rude - Amy reads, or pretends to read, every one of my mass emails

it is not self-seeking - Amy reminds me of one of those people who, out of the kindness of their heart, dedicate their nights and weekends to helping Marginally Functional "Handicapables" (MFHs) so they don't have to live in a home. The rest of the time she sends that MFH to go engineer at work.

it is not easily angered - I have to forget to take out the trash after being asked three times in one day before getting yelled at.

it keeps no record of wrongs - except when I forget to take out the trash, forget to pick up the kids, forget to put the dogs outside, forget her birthday, tell her that the margarita chicken was an okay dinner but there were a bunch of other dinners I'd prefer so I don't really want her to make it again, or try to blow dry the cat's hair while Amy was using the blowdryer - I had no way of knowing that Stupid's claws were that long, that she would jump TOWARDS the hair dryer, or that your beautiful, youthful, goddess-like face would bethat close to a Mortal Combat meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon airborne, cat paw swipe. It was an honest mistake that any dude who's never tried to blow dry a cat's hair might make.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth - except when asking "Do these jeans make my butt look big?", "Is the new engineer at work pretty", or after a discussion about how terrible someone has been to her, offering any suggestion other than "What a rhymes-with-which".

It always protects - Amy defends the way I dress to all who may question it. Her typical response is "of course he dresses like that, he's a dad"

always trusts - Prenups for all!

always hopes - hope springs eternal in my mind, especially after I send a mass email.

always perseveres - seven years seems pretty severe, doesn't it?

Alright, I'm glad to share this with you, but this next part is just for Amy, so I need you to quit reading for a second.

Are you done reading? Cool.

Amy, I told everyone to look away so we could have a private moment. Ed McCaffrey knows I'm no poet, so I've spent the last few months trying to gather some of the most meaningful phrases I could grab from Post-Rennaisance poets and copying their timeless work to describe my love to you. So here we go:

FAMOUS POET LINE (from the emperor of eloquence, 50 Cent)

I love you like fat kid love cake

MY ATTEMPTS

I love you like Engineer love E-2 Paper

I love you like Russell Crowe love throwing phones at people.

I love you like Hunter love crotch

FAMOUS POET LINE (From the unquestionable lyrical genius, Bruno Mars)

I'd catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I'd jump in front of a train for ya
Take a bullet straight through my brain

MY ATTEMPTS - I've lost many hours, mostly because the absurdity of allowing someone to put me in these weird situations has kept me up most of the night, trying to figure out what I would do if I had to for ya...so here are the unecessarily dangerous things that I would do for your love:

I'd eat Pop Rocks and chase it with Diet Coke for ya

Go down an Olympic ice luge for ya

I'd use a cell phone while pumping my gas for ya (wait, I just Snoped it and that isn't true, so I guess that doesn't prove my love)

Drive in South Compton at night and if I see a car without its headlights on, I'd flash my brights at them, for ya

Wash the bathroom with Clorox and Ammonia at the same time for ya

I'd hint that I'd wash the bathroom, when you know dang well it's going to remind you that I never clean up the bathroom after making a mess and you usually yell at me and I usually feel bad, but not always because one time I was playing Zuma instead of cleaning the bathroom and I scored over 1.2 million, which made me feel really good, so I pretended to feel bad, but didn't really, and you could tell which made you angrier and you started yelling more than usual and it made for a rough couple of days and only an idiot would do anything like remind you about something that stupid, especially in a mass email, for ya.

I love you, Princess. Now I'm going to let everybody go back to reading my email.

Alright, kids, I'm back. Thank you for giving me that time alone with Amy - with the kiddos we don't get a lot of time alone anymore.

I hope the rest of you get to have the kind of happiness that I've had for the last seven years, and I'm hoping it continues for the next 4 times Tebow years (4 x 15 = 60, heathens) or more.

Happy Anniversary, dear. Please, please, no more wire hangers.

B

Catch-Up Post - Zoe and Dresses (March)

One of my good friends from Jazzercise just got a new puppy.  (Well, in late February she did!).  She asked the girls and I to come over and meet her because although she has 8 kids, the youngest is 8.  She wants the puppy to be used to kids of all ages because she wants to train her to be a therapy dog.  The girls fell in love!

They also had to wear their new "pillowcase" dresses Nana bought them.  They are BEAUTIFUL and we get so many compliments when they wear them.  They're from http://www.thesassychicboutique.com/ in case anyone is interested!  Jordan LOVES hers and every time we say she needs to wear a dress or dress up - she requests her 'strawberry dress.'

Random Pictures and Catching Up

This is the annual "I'm sorry but the consignment sale has taken ALL free time out of my life" catch up post!  I did pretty well this year.  I sold 111 things.  I think I made about $270 and I spent just under $200.  Not bad for a week's worth of work!  I also hit up a Gymboree "shop the box" sale and got 23 things for $100.  So needless to say, our little fashionista Allison, has a new wardrobe!  (And Jordan has a train.  That she's OBSESSED with).

Here are some fun pictures of the girls!!  These are actually all from 12/30 and 12/31 but between the Disney trip, blogging about Disney, the consignment sale and everyone getting sick, I never posted them!

Jordan's hair is getting LONG.

Brandon and I have rediscovered what nerds we are.  We are back into doing puzzles.  We went out and bought a couple and realized that with the kids, it's MUCH easier to do them on our HIGH dining room table rather than the coffee table.  We stayed up WAY too late to finish this one so the kids wouldn't destroy it.

We've been trying to work with Allison on getting ready for KINDERGARTEN.  She is starting to enjoy writing and seems to be right on the verge of reading on her own!  We're so excited for her!

This is a VERY common occurrence.  The girls LOVE to read.  They love their Tag pens that let them read the books and interact with the stories.  For the most part, they are good about sharing the books too.

This is our montage of "pretty princess smile practice" while getting ready to go out on New Year's Eve.  You can tell by the Disney trip photos that she didn't QUITE get it (but she's getting MUCH better!)

And of course Jordan HAD to join in.

Disney questions (Brandon Mass Email) [redaction included]

Well ladies and somethings, we just finished another successful journey to the second greatest place on earth (the first is still, of course, standing between Ed McCaffrey and and Troy Tulowitzki) and yet again I'm left with more questions than answers.

Why is it that if Snow White is drugged and passed out and Prince Charming goes up and kisses her he ends up with a smoking hot wife and walks away a hero, but if I were to do the same thing to some random hottie, I'd end up a sex offender and walk away with a restraining order?

So Monsters Inc is the story of two guys who, because of their job, don't have time for girlfriends and they empower their community by coming out of the closet...did I get that right?

Does Ariel realize how lucky she is that when she was stranded alone on the beach without a voice, that she ran into Prince Eric and not Ben Rothlesberger?

SPOILER ALERT...IF YOU INTEND TO SEE TANGLED AND HAVEN'T ALREADY, THIS NEXT THOUGHT ISN'T FOR YOU - Is the moral of Rapunzel that we're all searching for that girl whose tears heal us? Like I wake up next to this girl, ask her if she's getting fatter and then Wham! Hangover cured?

And why does Cinderella's fairy godmother turn a pumpkin into a coach, a mouse into a HORSE, and a HORSE into a coachman? Admittedly I don't have any experience with magic, but I think I could have saved you a step there.

Speaking of Cinderella, here's how I'm suspecting the story really goes. Girl lives with dad alone, then dad gets remarried and dies. Girl goes off the deep end and starts having conversations with birds and mice. New stepmother, either for the girl's safety or from sheer embarrasment makes her live in the attic so no one can see her. One night when the girl's stepsisters are going to a ball, Cindy comes down the stairs wearing some dress that fit her when she was 13 and that she claims "the birds and mice fixed it for me". When the stepmother tells her she can't go outside like that, Cindy looks down, sees the torn, ratty dress and starts screaming about how they tore her dress and runs into the forest. Stepmother takes the non-crazies to the ball.

That night Cindy talks to her "fairy godmother" (could be an imaginary friend, could be some crazy chick who lives out in the forest - If bibbity-bobbity-boo sounds anything less than cat-lady-crazy babble, you should probably go check in with a psychologist for a second) and Cindy is somehow convinced to tie 6 mice to a pumpkin and takes this, her horse, and her dog to the party. I think I've run this gag into the ground, so we'll move onto the next source of confusion.

How is it that in Up (which I love, and strongly recommend) the house contains millions of balloons and stays solidly on the ground, but once the balloons are pushed out the windows...Liftoff?

Why didn't I see any Josh McDaniels merchandise in the store that sold all of the villian stuff?

How is it that Toy Story 3 (which might be my favorite movie, ever) didn't win best picture Oscar, but that terrible song from Toy Story 3 that whats-his-name wrote (and I use the term loosely because even distracted I can come up with more coherent and clever sentences) did? Between this and Avatar's nomination, the Academy is on really thin ice.

Alright, kiddos, that's all for now. You really ought to go check out theschrenks.blogspot.com because my kids are awesome and you can see awesome pictures of awesome kids being awesome on our awesome website. It's awesome.

B

PS...This took much too long, but here is the long overdue shout out to Lieutenant Commander J - you are a badass, my friend,and you deserve it. Now go freshen up the Admiral's coffee.

PSS (or PPS, I can't ever remember how that works)

+++NOTE, THIS IS WHERE THE REDACTION BEGINS++++

The prior email sent requires redaction but I'm so confused as to how it was sent without me actually pushing the "Send" button, that I've lost all steam so instead of the diatribe I was preparing, I'll instead just say - if you have a kid, get a promotion, or drink a whole gallon of milk in a minute without throwing up, send me an email so 1) I know, and 2) I can give you the proper shoutout.

By the way, gmail offered a definition of redaction on the side column, and I'm easily distracted so I clicked, and I came across the miriam-webster site which offers not only definitions and synonyms but also "words that rhyme". Do you think they did this because they are tired of rappers who try to rhyme "ducking" and "thugging" or "simple"and "nympho".

Anyway, for any of you 8-mile battlers looking to bust out some tight rhymes and want to include redaction you may want to consider:

abstraction, attraction, bolt-action, class action, compaction, crossaction, detraction, diffraction, distraction, inaction, infraction, job action, live-action, olfaction, protraction, reaction, stop-action, subtraction, or transaction.

Word to your mother
B

Catch Up Time - Nora's Birthday Party (March)

Time to play catch up again!  I'd like to pretend that I have a good excuse for being so far behind but I really don't.  I had the JBF sale in March.  Then I hurt my knee and that ended with having surgery earlier this month (May).  But other than that, I've got nothing.  Sorry!

We had a BLAST at Miss Nora's birthday party.  It was at a bounce/jumping place which normally the girls don't do really well at.  And it was during naptime.  But they had a BLAST.

This is not a great picture but the expression is pretty much how she looked the entire party.

Jordan LOVES Nora and has to do everything she does.

Brandon getting ready to take out some other kids

We were SO proud of the girls!  They did almost all the things by themselves (or at least attempted to).  This is HUGE, especially for Allison.

Jordan went in this wind tunnel thing.  It simulated winds up to 74 miles an hour (hurricane).  This is what she looked like AFTER.

Chaos = trying to get a group picture of  LOTS of 7 & unders.

Happy birthday, Nora!  We had a great time!

Dance

Another session has come to a close!  Mom took pictures and I took video, so this is the only one I got.

She enjoyed this session again but towards the end would cry everytime she had to go in.  I think it's fake and she realizes that the girls who cry get more attention from the teacher or their mommy.  Luckily, her teacher thinks it's fake too so she doesn't cave into it.  She just picks her up, takes her in and starts class.  As soon as the door is shut, she's fine.

She has one more session of Creative Dance and then she can start Tap/Ballet.  I think she's going to LOVE tap!



Rodeo Day

Getting the girls ready for Rodeo Day was an ordeal and a half.  Yes, boots.  No boots.  Yes hat, no hat.  Yes bandana, no bandana.  Yes ponytail, no ponytail.

I take that back, getting JORDAN dressed was an ordeal and a half.

Allison and Nana played around with Nana's new phone.  And Allison walked into a wall while trying to show off her outfit.

Sadly, one of the better pictures I got of Jordan.  At least she wasn't picking her nose!

She has super cute pink boots that match her shirt.  But did she wear them?  No.  Instead, she wore her Ugg style ones.  "Mind of her own" does not BEGIN to describe her!  :)