Family Gathering in San Diego

Of COURSE There was Karaoke

at my brother's wedding. And of COURSE I plan to write a blog post about it . . . this year. There are literally 2,000 pictures to wade through, which is no excuse, because this was one of the biggest events of the year, not to mention my life, and I'm embarrassed I haven't created a blog post, or ten, about this event yet. More will come, I promise! But here's a sneak peek.

Yippee!!

J and I just found out that Local Hero and Local Heroine are engaged!

The wedding is tentatively being planned for sometime this fall in Local Heroine's hometown of Okayama, Japan.

GUESS WHAT!!! This means we're going to Japan!!! I am so excited about this news I could pop. And I'm so excited to welcome Local Heroine into our family.

Old Home Videos

I've got a huge backlog of things to post, so be prepared for a whole slew of Christmas photos and posts once I get my pictures up online.

But first, I wanted to write about some old home videos we watched. My grandmother made a wonderful gift of putting old tapes that one of my aunts took at several different family get togethers on a couple of DVDs for us, and during our visit to my parents' for the Christmas holiday, we watched them together.

They were hilarious!

Some highlights:

During a Christmas get together at my aunt and uncle's house, you see my mother sitting on a couch when all of a sudden there's a bunch of thumping from upstairs. She yells upstairs, "LOCAAAAAL HEROOOOO! NO JUMPING!" After she yells, she looks back around the room at the other guests then starts and looks up again and says, "Oh, nice ceiling."

At this same family gathering, the cousins are all opening presents. My mother is wandering around helping clean up wrapping paper and asking us kids what we got. She comes to me and picks up a pink sweatshirt and holds it up to me and says, "Oh, who did you get this from?" I look straight at her and yell my cousins' names in her face.

Local Hero was kind of the star of the videos. While A spent a lot of time running up to the camera and making faces, it was Local Hero who was always doing something that would just CRACK US UP.

The two funniest moments were captured during video of a summer get together at my parents' old house. Local Hero was probably 4 or 5 at the time.

In the first episode, the camera walks into the play room, where a bunch of the cousins are hanging out and playing with all the toys. Local Hero is stuffing a plastic hot dog in my youngest cousin's face (he's probably 2) and then grinning to the camera and saying, "He likes it! He likes it!" It is freaking hysterical.

In the other moment-- remember, Local Hero is only like 4 at the time-- an older cousin is playing basketball with my brother A. This cousin is about a year older than Local Hero, and a year or so younger than A. Local Hero just jumps in the fray, shouting, "You're a terrible basketball player, Cousin! That was a horrible shot! You're terrible!" And then A gets the ball and Local Hero almost tackles him trying to steal it from him.

We about died laughing watching these videos, and all week we kept quoting or repeating these scenes. So hilarious. If I can figure out how to get clips from a DVD onto this blog, I'll see if I can't add actual video.

Congratulations, Local Hero!

My brother, Local Hero, just ran a marathon in 3 hours 48 minutes, finishing at 1400 out of 25,000 people!

Date Night

So I've stood up a few of my co workers the last couple of weeks. They've been organizing a happy hour on Fridays at 4. I've never been able to go, but this week I swore up and down that I would make it at least for half an hour or so before heading home.

Unfortunately, I ended up backing out, yet again. They all think I'm a major loser! But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a date night with J. Grammie and Grampie spent three days driving around Baltimore and seeing various sights around there, and then came back in town on Thursday, and generously offered to watch R while J and I headed out on the town.

So awesome.

We went out to dinner at a really good asian restaurant and then went to the mall. Yeah, I know, kind of dull, but it was still fun to be out just the two of us, doing what we felt like without worrying about a squirmy fussy baby who wants to grab everything, or who would get way too tired to be out much past 7 p.m.

It was the first time we'd had a whole entire evening to ourselves in a long time. And it was great. We found a few christmas gifts. I found a gift I wanted to get my brother, Local Hero, but it didn't work out. I'll have to keep thinking. I found a few things I wanted for me but J made me wait. We bought some things for Grammie and Grampie as well as Grandma and Grandpa. And we browsed Barnes & Noble, which I love.

Now we're back home and back to the grindstone, with huge piles of work in front of us. But what a great break last night.

Flying

My brother, A, just sent some pictures of his plane. They were pretty sweet so I asked if I could put a few on here. The pic above is the plane he flies (although I'm not sure if he is flying the one in the picture) and the two below are of the plane A flies (the B-52, on the bottom) and the plane that one of my other brothers, Local Hero, flies (the refueler on top, a KC-135).