Family

I'm sure you know that my sister's real name isn't Heidi . I have a post about how she came up with that name if you're at all curious.

Her real name also has a story behind it. I was reading a book that had her name in the title (nope- not gonna tell you, no matter how much you beg) and my parents thought that would be a great name for her. The bearded eye-roller and I were talking about this lil' fact the other night and started joking about how Heidi should be really glad I wasn't reading any of the following books:

Frankenstein
Yertle the Turtle (Dr. Seuss)
Rumpelstiltskin
Dracula
Horton Hears a Who (Dr. Seuss)

OH, the possibilities are simply endless!

Here's a picture of me reading a book (not THE book) right about at the time Heidi entered our lives. Help me out here- what book should I be reading in this picture that would have made for a funny name for Heidi ? Maybe we can figure a way to go back in time so she ends up with a wickedly funny name!

::evil laugh::

OK, I wasn't really- but if this doesn't make you cringe for poor Casey, I don't know what will.

He was about 10, I think, when this happened.

I remember the parking lot we were in, but can't quite recall what we were doing there. I'm sure that doesn't matter to you, but now it matters to me. Lessee.... there was a movie rental place, an ice cream place, and something else.

OK- forget it. I don't remember what we were doing there.

::ahem::

Caseygot the 'brilliant' idea to put a ketchup packet behind the wheel of my car so it would explode when I backed out of the parking space.

It exploded all right- all over the car next to us. I don't know how it is that I saw it happen (maybe Cameron and Casey were laughing- which always caused me to immediately look for the source of laughter), or maybe I saw the red splatter on the car. In any case, I pulled right back in the parking spot, turned around and asked the two lil' devils, "which one of you are responsible for this?"

Cameron , I'm fairly certain would have never owned up to it, but would have been my first suspect. Cameron takes after his mom just a little too much and was always pulling pranks.

Nope- this time it was Casey, who, being the kid born with a button down shirt and dress slacks, always owned up to anything he did wrong. If he didn't own up to things, he had a 'tell' (a poker term for something people do when they are lying or hiding something). When Casey told a lie, his lips moved in a very strange way. It was SO obvious to me that I think he finally gave up on lying to me after a few years.

It is kind of hilarious. Jessica, if you aren't aware of this little 'tell', let me know. I'll let you in on what he does. We women have to stick together, dontcha know. Kathy? Good luck with Cameron. I still don't have him figured out. He's goooooooooooooood.

Anyhoo......

After fessing up, I made him get out of the car and wait until the owner of the car came out. This was sheer torture for the lil' guy because he did NOT want to have to confess to those people that he messed up their car. He was begging me to not make him do it, but I wasn't going to let him out of it. I really did feel sorry for him, but thought it was the right thing to do.

Thankfully, the people were very nice to him after he confessed to them.

What he doesn't know is that when yours truly was a teen, I used to like to go up in the sky thingees at Disneyland (what are they called?) and squirt mayonnaise packets over the side to make people think they were pooped on by birds. Fun!

OK- not a proud moment now- but now you know that the whole squirting things with condiment packets is hereditary. Perhaps this is a part of the gene pool that shouldn't have been perpetuated.

I still have a very sore bump on the back of my head, but I am fine! I told myself last night that if I continued feeling nauseated, I'd call my doctor today. The nausea is gone this morning, so it's all good.

New plan:
Eat more ::check!::
I'll start wearing a helmet to bed ::thinking about it::

In other news,
I was feeling sorta lazy yesterday, so I looked at my pictures from our wedding (among 100 million other lazy-type activities). I've decided that my family are a bunch of weirdos.

I'm sure this comes as no surprise to you, considering that I'm a part of the family.

My two favorite pictures from the wedding trip don't include the bearded eye-roller . Can you believe it? OK, I have a couple of favorites that do include him, but they're my favorites for a different reason. They also include gratuitous kissing and I thought I'd spare you from that.

Instead, I shall provide my two favorite "my family are a bunch of goofs" pictures.

This is me and Cosy , who is my bestest friend in the entire world and just happens to also be my sister, the day before the wedding. We spent the day goofing around in Vegas. The picture was taken by her husband, who hung with us for the day (BER was playing golf with his friends). I'm really surprised that he married her after being with the two of us for an entire day. I've heard that we're really annoying when we're together.


And this? I have this picture on my desk at work. The photographer wanted to pose my sons, sister and brother on the bridge for a nice family photo. See what happens? Can't behave for even a minute, I tell you!


Gosh, I love my family JUST the way it is.

I received an email from Casey this morning, sharing some pictures from his camping adventures of this past weekend with Cameron and other assorted friends with waaayyyyy too much testosterone. I've quit asking about what happens on these camping trips because I don't like knowing how dumb boys at that age can be. They've seen WAY too many episodes of Jackass.

By the way, we're still going strong with the 'Dumb' at 24 and 25....

A prime example of dumb would be, Cameron trying to stop his jeep from rolling away by jumping in front of it.

ER bill: 75.00 co-pay
Continuing visits to the knee doctor: 25.00 co-pay each
The fact that I can write about this blunder in my blog: PRICELESS!

When I saw the pictures from this year's trip, all I could think was, "Those boys".

OK, now imagine me saying it with my hands on my hips- shaking my head. That's more like it.

See this?


This is what happens when you go camping with my boys and you fall asleep before they do. In permanent marker, no less.

This is what the email exchange was between Casey and me this morning:

Me: You guys are TERRIBLE (but after my own heart!) I hope that wasn’t permanent marker.
Casey:Yes it was permanent. He had more stuff on his chest, right arm, and right leg. His fault for falling asleep in a chair at 10:30 with everyone still up.

I've seen the permanent marker for myself plenty of times when there were sleepovers at my house. In fact, I was a big fan of the marker at one time... but Cameron should be thankful that it wasn't permanent.



Click here to see my notes on the picture..

This, my friends, is why I slept with my door locked. 'nuff said.

Cameron flew to Indiana to pick up Kathy after graduation (WITH HER MBA from Notre Dame, thankyouverymuch) to bring her home.

Sigh... it will be so good to have her home. I'm sure that Cameron agrees....

They were supposed to be home by now, because they were going to go camping over the weekend before Kathy jets off to her next destination- a VERY.LONG. tour of Europe.

I got a call from Cameron a couple of days ago, that they were in an accident in South Dakota. Of course, when those words came out of his mouth I immediately went into panic mode..

Are you OK? Is Kathy OK? Do you need money? Do you need to commit your mother to an institution? (OK, I didn't ask that question because I don't want to hear the answer to it).

Apparently there was an obstacle in the road (big block of wood or a load of wood- I forget) and they had three choices. Go into the median which was a huge ditch; run over the obstacle (probably could have flipped the car); or run into a truck. Cameron chose to run into the truck after breaking as much as he could.

I guess it was the right decision because he didn't get ticketed.

Interestingly enough, this happened at almost the exact spot where Kathy did a lot of damage to this same car when she hit a deer last year. They took the car to the same dealership to be fixed, even.

I mean really, what are the chances?

Anyhoo- the insurance company hooked them up with a room until Friday, when the damage would be fixed and they'd be back on their way.

One night, at 2 a.m., the police pounded on their door and ended up searching them and their room. Someone called in that they were making a lot of noise (kids? Mommy doesn't want to hear about it, know what I mean?), but they were fast asleep. The police then figured out that they were in the wrong room.

You don't say...

Back on the road they went, only to hit a fox (not the petite brunette that kind Michael likes, either) which caused front-end damage.

Sill in South Dakota.

Hopefully, they've made a note to themselves to avoid South Dakota from now on. South Dakota = bad JuJu for Cameron and Kathy .

I'm crossing my fingers that they can get out of South Dakota before Godzilla comes and stomps on their car. I'm thinking that Godzilla would be about the only thing left that could happen at this point.

Kids? Watch out for a large, green, lizard with big feet. If you see one? Drive really fast.