The Curtis Clan - Summer 2006
Summer Solstice to Fall Equinox
Summertime and the Living is Easy
21 June 2006 – A Day in the Life of Jane and Cate
06:55 Jane’s awake and wants to eat breakfast with Daddy
07:00 Cate’s awake too
07:10 Bethany’s awake, Randy leaves for work; girls get dressed, eat breakfast
08:00 Girls watch Sesame Street
10:00 Playgroup – Daniel’s House with Birthday cake for treat
11:30 Lunch - McDonald’s
12:15 Gramy’s house to water the plants
12:40 Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties at the Galleria cinema
2:30 Stories before naptime: McDuff Goes to School & A Llama in Pajamas
2:45 Naps
5:00 Go swimming in wading pool on back patio
5:30 Daddy’s home
5:45 Snack - cheese and crackers on the back patio
06:40 Bath time
07:10 Dinner
08:00 Brush Teeth
08:05 Stories: When Winter Comes; Bernstein Bears: Spooky Old House and Good Night Moon
08:30 Bedtime
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Jane and Cate celebrate the start of summer in our wading pool
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On the first day of summer, Bethany and the girls set up the wading pool on the back patio. Jane and Cate were quite happy, oblivious to the mosquitoes biting them (why don’t kids itch the way adults do?). Cate welts up impressively when bit so we limit our time out there and drain the pool when not in use.
4th of July
One of the neighbors suggested have a small parade along Tuxedo on the 4th. So with some help from the girls and leftover building and party supplies, we cobbled together a parade float on top of our wagon. The girls were quite pleased and very much enjoyed their ride up and down Tuxedo and then riding in style to the big Webster Groves annual parade along Lockwood.
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Jane and Cate in our parade float
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As usual, we went to the Webster Groves Community Days parade, although this year we were in front of the library with our neighbors watching the sights. The parade was filled with the usual bunch of scouts squirting water, teenage spirit groups (lacrosse, lifeguards, cheerleaders, football team); Shriner's and car clubs; politicians (interestingly NONE of them identified their party affiliation…NONE). The most memorable (and GROSS!) moment of the parade had to be the Girl Scout equestrian troop near the front of the parade, when one of the horses relieved himself in front of us and it flowed and pooled directly in front of us and remained there for the remainder of the parade. Even though all the kids saw this happen, we still had to prevent them all from grabbing candy that was tossed at them and landed in the malodorous puddle. After the parade, for the first time we attended the Byrns' annual "Post-Parade Pool-Party" and enjoyed a pleasant afternoon despite the rain showers.
We kept the girls up one night and took them to the carnival and fireworks for the first time. We made it out of the carnival without spending anything as the girls were so mesmerized by all the sights and noises (that and we HAD to get good seats for the fireworks and couldn’t linger). Cate started out fine for the fireworks but got grumpy (likely a function of staying up too late). Jane closed her eyes and held her hands over her ears. She finally opened her eyes after a few minutes and really liked watching the spectacle but the “Hear no evil” hands stayed firmly over her ears.
Viva Las Vegas (and the Grand Canyon too)
The week after the 4th, Randy had a 4-day conference in Las Vegas for work (the UXO /Countermine Forum, sounds tempting don’t it?). It didn’t take much arm-twisting to convince Bethany to go with him once her folks agreed to watch the girls
(you'll note that the length of these trip notes are dramatically longer than
recent vacations without having the kids along). We stretched a 4 day conference to 8 by leaving the Thursday before hand so we could visit the Grand Canyon too. With hotel points and frequent flier airline tickets, it was not going to cost us anything (best laid plans….).
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Randy and Bethany in Vegas
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It is certainly not the Vegas of the 1980s and 1990s. Cheap eats are tres scarce, as opposed to norm back then. Our first night out we ducked in to an Indian restaurant just off the strip. It was typical of Indian establishments we’ve visited across the country and the vegetarian entrees were a reasonable ~$10, however they charged us $4 for rice; twice! The government has even noticed the eating out in Vegas costs a lot and the per diem rate for meals is the maximum $64/day for the continental US.
Our best deal of the week was using Expedia to rent a car: an unbelievably low $12 a day,. Even though it ballooned up to $19/day with taxes and fees but we felt it was still a deal for our Ford Taurus (with an indescribable green-silver-gold hue). The Taurus allowed us to get around town and the Strip pretty well. And we do mean literally getting around the Strip as traffic there is always horrible. You’re much better going a mile or so to the east take Paradise up and down or the west and taking I-5. From the airport, we drove down the Strip so Bethany could see it during the day. It’s interesting to go downtown or wander of the main path just a bit. A vastly different side of Vegas comes through, which is very worn and run down and kind of seedy.
| Bethany overlooking the Strip in Vegas
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That first night we splurged and got half-price tickets to see the musical “Mama Mia”, showing at the
Mandalay Bay. We both really enjoyed it, as it was better and funnier than expected. We considered buying the cast recording until we remembered: we've already got ABBA’s Greatest Hits on CD! As with most things in Vegas, there were exceedingly high taxes and hidden surcharges so that our ˝ price tickets jumped up 21% from the quoted $37.50 lure, to $45.25 a piece. Still it was easily worth 11 times a “$4 bowl of white rice”, which became our benchmark for all of the trip expenditures (and making most things seem like quite a deal!).
Friday we got up and Randy got his favorite breakfast of toasted bagel with lox, cream cheese, kippers and red onions at the Marriott Suites we were staying at for our first 2 nights. We then went off exploring the sites of the theme hotels on the Strip. Randy had seen many of the theme hotels when he last visited in 1998 and 2002. The really big change though, was the explosion of high-end specialty shops providing indoor transit between the hotels. We walked through at least four of them filled with many shops you won’t find back home at the local mall (with the exception of Victoria’s Secret, which appears to be required by law to be in every mall, even the sucky ones). On our way through the casino to get to Caesar’s shopping forum, we were stopped by one of the upscale attraction peddlers hawking time-shares at the new Hilton resort on the strip. For a couple hours of our time to hear their pitch, they would give us 2 tickets to see Barry Manilow, 2 tickets to see Jubilee (a showgirl dancing review), 2 tickets for the
Bally's buffet and $25 at the Planet Hollywood restaurant (about $600 total face value worth of stuff for everything, without tacking on the extra fees and taxes). Well, there was little doubt we weren't going to pass up such a deal in light of Bethany’s past having a complete dance routine to the Copacabana with her sister.
After sitting through a reasonably pleasant promotion of the benefits of resort living, we got to the numbers. The deal they gave us was that for $16,000, we could own a week at in a one-bedroom suite at the resort forever with $500 yearly maintenance fees and taxes. As is typical, you can swap your time with other resorts in the system for nominal fees. The offer wasn't particularly tempting but than they sweetened the deal with an offer of 2 tickets to Hawaii and a weeks stay at one of the resorts there. With our 5-year anniversary coming, Bethany was swaying dreaming about Waikiki but we said no. They came back with another offer of $10,500 for a week every other year plus the Hawaii trip. This was easier to say no to. As we left and were being exited interviewed about the quality of our experience, we were given one last pitch of $1600 to keep our deal options open for 6 months and a weeks stay in Hawaii. Overall, it wasn’t a bad experience and it might be a good deal for folks returning to the same spot regularly and don’t have Randy’s cache of hotel points. We detailed the experience here in case others are interested or for comparison next time we get approached.
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Manilow - Music and Passion
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Anyway we got to go see Manilow’s “Music and Passion” at the Hilton on the same stage that Elvis played on for 10 years. We had the last 2 seats in the last row of the ground floor (row X) but just as the show was about to begin, an usher moved us forward to some fabulous seats in the 10th row! It was a great show, as the veteran Manilow really knows how to work the crowd (he danced and hugged several of the women in the front row on the wings, which were great crowd pleasers). On our way out of the Hilton, we went through the gift shop and bar area of the Star Trek experience.
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Randy being threatened by the salt monster
and the Gorn from the original Star Trek's season 1
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Saturday was the Hoover Dam and the drive to Flagstaff, AZ. Hoover Dam is as impressive as everyone says and you don’t need to be a former Dam Safety Engineer to appreciate and enjoy the experience. They claimed that 1.3 million people a year visited but that’s like 400 people an hour everyday during operating hours, which seems way high based our on visit during peak tourist season. Maybe they’re counting everyone that crosses the highway over the dam as a visitor. Anyway, its really cool and worth the visit. On the way to Flagstaff, we lost an hour or so due to an accident on I-40, which shut the down the highway. As an oddity, about 5 miles west of Williams, we came across Devil Dog Road leading off into the Ponderosa Pine forest but didn’t get to explore our volleyball team’s namesake road. By the time we rolled into Flagstaff, we weren’t in the mood to do much, so we grabbed a quick bit to eat and saw The Devil Wears Prada and called it a night. From our brief visit though, Flagstaff is a very cool community and would be worth coming back to. And you can't beat the summer high-temps in the chilly mid-70's!
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Bethany at Hoover Dam
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Sunday – Grand Canyon Day. We entered the park from the east entrance along SR 64, which took us past the Little Colorado River Canyon as sort of a warm up to the big show. There are a number of blue-signed scenic overlooks along this route, but for each one you have to go through a gauntlet of Navaho souvenir stands to get to the view. It was early enough that most stands were just setting up so it wasn’t too bad (that, and it is their land so complaining seems wrong). Anyway it was enough to convince us to wait until we got to the park to pull off more than the once.
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Bethany and Randy at Dessert View point of Grand Canyon
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Once you enter the park, the first pull off is Desert View with the iconic Watchtower viewing platform designed by Mary Jane Coulter.
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Bethany at the Watchtower
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It was fantastic view of the Canyon, as were all the other viewing points along the way to the main Grand Canyon Village. There’s little point in trying to describe how beautiful the canyon, as you already have seen pictures of it if you haven’t gone yourself. Have you ever heard of anyone not being awestruck by the view (with the possible exception of Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation).
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Randy goofing around at the Grand Canyon
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Anyway, we were lucky to be able to get a room in the 101-year-old El Tovar hotel that the ATSF railroad built to house visitors when they completed their line to the rim. Since it books up years in advance, we checked online for openings every few weeks for a month or so before a cancellation luckily gave us an opening. While the hotel was very nice (the rooms had been upgraded and it offered stunning views along the rim) it really is a distant second to the much grander Grand Canyon Lodge built on the north rim by the UP railroad a couple decades later. We lunched in the Bright Angel Lodge a thousand feet to the west along the rim, as the food choices and prices seemed more to our liking. Afterwards we road one of the shuttle busses out to Hermit’s Rest (personal vehicles are no longer allowed to the west of the village), which is the western end of the main tourist viewing sites along the south rim. It began to cloud up and lightening storms were rolling in from the west. Bethany rode the buss all the way back but Randy wanted to hike the last 3 miles to the Village. The hike along the rim was even more thrilling as the rain came in and the winds were whipping up to an estimated 50-60 mph. The storm stopped by the time he got back to the hotel and we had a wine and cheese picnic dinner on our own good-size balcony on the front of the hotel overlooking the canyon.
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The El Tovar Hotel
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Monday we got up early, packed up our gear and headed back to Vegas, though with a little less enthusiasm. After seeing the grandeur of nature complete with pine fresh smells, the absurdity of Vegas wasn’t all that welcome of a destination. However, the reason for our trip beckoned: Randy’s conference. We got settled into our room at the MGM Grand after lunch; Randy schmoozed the afternoon away while Bethany got to lay out by one of the 5 pools. By 8 pm when the official schmoozing was done, Randy was beat and so we returned to our room and watched TV.
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Randy at Grand Canyon
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Tuesday was more of the same schmoozing and pooling. In the evening, we used our free tickets to go see Jubilee, which was described to us as a typical Vegas showgirl dance review, to which we will also add "sometimes topless, but mainstream" at $65-90 per ticket
(sorry no pictures since no cameras were allowed). It was entertaining but in a funny kind of way. We were surprised that the sets and costumes were amazingly extravagant and fabulous. The talent was generally chorus-line grade and the melodies and themes were corny. They had extended bits on Samson and Delilah and the sinking of the Titanic with forgettable tunes, intermixed with tributes to Gershwin, Porter, Cohen and Berlin. It was like watching reruns of Lawrence Welk but with the dancers in peek-a-boo costumes and really good set designs.
By Wednesday night, our interests in seeing more of Vegas had definitely waned and our evening activities consisted of crossing the street to see the sights of the New York New York hotel, grabbing a bite to eat and then seeing a movie (Pirates of the Caribbean). The conference ended Thursday morning and we caught flights back home. We both got to fly over the Canyon en route to home (tickets on separate airlines). Flying into the lush green landscape of St. Louis was a welcome respite from a week of the desert (temp was 107 degrees on the day we left), even if it came with a “wet” heat.
More July
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Jane and Bethany at Grizzlies game<
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Upon our return from Vegas, we took the girls to see a Gateway Grizzlies baseball game (Single A club in the Frontier League). For a $16 group rate ticket, we got 4th row seats and an all you can eat picnic with sodas and $1 beers before the game (OK they were only 8 ozs but still a deal when going out). During the game there was lots of give aways and the girls ended up with a soft cushy baseball. Can’t really comment about the quality of the play because we didn’t pay much attention while socializing and watching the kids, who had a grand time in the very kid friendly atmosphere. A superior experience in every way to every to (almost) every Cardinal game.
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Cate and Rosemary at Grizzlies game
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The Indy cousins were in town for the weekend too, and we attended the customary Sunday brunch gathering at the parental residence to mark the occasion with a bonus celebration of the patriarch’s birthday (a week or so delayed). This provided an opportunity to photograph the Next Generation of the Sage Clan. Once they start having real input into their clothing selection and hair style, the cuteness factor will probably be gone but its working for them now.
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Cousins at Gramy’s pool
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On Wednesday night 19 July, a storm with freakishly high winds hit St. Louis area and knocked out power to over half a million customers (or roughly 1.2 M people / 40-50% of the population). The scope of the problem to us wasn’t immediately apparent as we put the girls to bed and read stories by flash light (power outages in the past usually last only a few hours or less). There was only very minor dead branch and leaf debris in the yard so it seemed like no big deal. In the morning, it became apparent that our family, neighbors and most of our friends were all out of power during the hottest week of the year. We were very fortunate as our power was out for only about 48 hours during which a friend offered us a room at her vacationing mother’s condo in Ellisville for a couple days (the girls thought we were on vacation). We had to do some refrigerator cleaning out when we got home but nothing too gross. Our greater family also got power on within a couple of days with the exception for Randy’s mother. She was out of power for 8 days, even though she doesn’t live in one of the zip codes that stayed darkest for the longest. Those areas happened to be poorer and blacker, leading to much race and class bias speculation. Her power got knocked out by several trees taking out a couple of poles and lines in the neighbor’s back yard that butt up to swanky Ladue knocking out power to some homes there as well. Anyway she moved in with us for a few days (Saturday-Wednesday) during the stretch.
Randy’s Birthday
To mark Randy’s 43rd Natal Day, we decided to do something new and different and happened to find the Wabash Frisco and Pacific Railroad (WFPRR) on a web site for family friendly activities in St. Louis. The WFPRR is located in Wildwood/Eureka area (way west county) and is a 12-inch gauge live Steam Railroad, that’s open every Sunday, May through October. The ride is a two-mile round trip lasting about 30 minutes and travels through the woods along the scenic Meramec River. At $3 a person donation, it was a treat we can recommend heartily to those with pre-schoolers. During lunch, Jane asked twice if we could go back and ride again.
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Nana, Cate Randy and Jane at the road crossing for the 12-inch WFP RR
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Jane’s Birthday – Mid-Summer at the Casa Curtis
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Cate and Jane lick the beaters while Bethany ices the M&M cake
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In the last moth or so we noticed that her pretend phone calls have switched from family members, to pretending she was calling one of the boys in her pre-school class Robbie. As the summer progressed, her conversations with and about Robbie elevated to almost an imaginary friend status, as should would off-handily mention that Robbie was going to pick her up to go to the movies; or vacation, etc. Other times, they’re married and having children of their own. His family moved over the summer, so she won’t see him in her class any more but we’re fairly certain he’ll live on with us in her dreams for a while longer.
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Jane’s ready to blow out her candles
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One of her other recent activities is playing “pet” with Cate. She gives her sister Daddy’s belt and then leads her around the house like a dog. Another example of her sibling love was when her sister fell asleep shortly after diner. Jane’s quick response upon realizing this was “Maybe I should eat Cate’s desert”.
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Cate and Jane at Deer Creek Park
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Cate Update
It’s clear that sweet, even keeled Cate has taken the Terrible Two baton from her older sister and is running with it. All sorts of little things can set her off in a crying tirade (like her father just looking at her). Of particular note, was going to bed for naps and at night for about a month and a half beginning in July. It made her absolutely furious and she immediately crawled out of bed, shrieking her unhappiness at the gate to her room before falling asleep on the floor about 5-15 minutes later. Eventually she realized the bed was more comfortable. Another example of her newly discovered talent for strongly expressing her will is when Cate holds her hand up and firmly demands ‘Top, daddy, ‘top when he’s is singing a song that she doesn’t want to hear. She has also become insistent about climbing in and out of the minivan “All by myself”, and will climb out of her seat and the van to do it again if you try and help her (we have no idea where she gets a stubborn independent streak…). On the really cute side of things, she’s likes coming up and saying “I got a secret” and motioning that she wants to say it in you ear. As you lean down, she whispers ever so softly with a big smile on her face: “Secret”.
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Cate watering the piracanthus
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Cate’s eating habits tend to follow her father’s, albeit at a much slower pace. While having cinnamon rolls for her sister’s birthday, she requested some of her Dad’s leftover green bean casserole he was noshing on. She gobbled that down before touching the less desired special breakfast treat. For breakfast, her standard preference is a mixture of the three types of cereal we have open for them (Cheerios, Cinnamon Life and Maple syrup Shredded Wheat).
Bethany’s Birthday
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Curtis Family at Grants Farm
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For Bethany birthday, Randy took the day off and we all went to Grants Farm for the first time. By far the most memorable feature for the girls was the goat pen, though not necessarily their favorite aspect, as the goats swarmed them. Jane shrieked at the top of her very able lungs that “We have to leave now. The goats are eating my pants!” Since then in her mind, saying naughty goats is redundant. Before leaving, we enjoyed the two complimentary beverages at the hospitality room (making friends is their business, right?)
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Bethany gets some help with her Birthday Wish
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Mid-August Party Time?
Although not the ideal weather season in St. Louis, in mid-August we also had out of town guests come and stay with us for a couple of days. First were Brad and Angula Kline, who made a road trip with their two kids Asha and Jay who are roughly 6 months younger than Jane and Cate respectively. The kids got along great as we went to the zoo and played around the house. Since it had been nearly a decade since many folks had seen Brad, we had a mini-Pi Kapp reunion as Anthony, Mike and Steve Swaine all came in for Fortel’s pizza, beer and BS-ing.
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Brad, George, Randy, Anthony and Steve holding Mike
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The following weekend, we hosted the 11th annual Wall party. Although it started out a decade ago as primarily a hard liquor drinking party, as people have gotten older and have had kids, its transformed in to an annual reunion primarily comprised of our former Sunday Dinner Group friends, that moves from city to city. As we were hosting the party, we had a house full of people, who came for the weekend and the reunion. There was Kathy, Alex and their baby Nicholas from Bethlehem, PA; Bill, Rebecca, Ethan and Robert from Indy and Natalie from Boston.
Although the main intent was fellowship, most of the party pictures ended up being about doing shots with a group. So instead of this turning into an over-the-hill Facebook thing, we’ll include a picture of the crowd watching the skills portion of the evening, which was scoring 2 points at Ladder/Norwegian golf (a kind of horseshoes with two golf balls tied together on a rope) in the front yard by the streetlight.
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Wall XI Skills Challenge - Ladder Golf
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The last Sunday in August originally didn’t look too promising weather wise for our neighbor’s Adeline’s 5th Birthday party at Crestwood Aquatic Center, which the entire family was invited. By noon the clouds cleared having
apparently scared away the crowds and our group had much of the very cool water park to themselves. Cate discovered the joys of Cheetoos and proceeded to eat all that she could and was pretty orange as a result. However, since we were at the pool it wasn’t a big issue.
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Bethany and Cate at the fabulous Crestwood Aquatic Center for Adeline's 5th B-Day
party (Note: Bethany's hair cut)
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September
Over Labor Day weekend, Randy’s Dad made his annual visit to St. Louis having driven in from Brookings, Oregon (on the coast just north of California). We all went to the zoo riding the train, carousel and seeing the new baby elephant Maliha. If that didn’t wear out Grandpa enough, coming back to our house after dinner at Fortel’s Pizza, the girls treated their paternal grandfather like a jungle gym, to the pleasure of everyone.
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Jane and Grandpa going to the zoo
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Cate thinks her Grandpa makes a fine jungle gym
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The next week was the annual WG Early Childhood PTO Family Fun Fair at Hudson Elementary in Rock Hill. Among all the activities (fire truck, face painting, bouncy room, water tables, etc.), they had a petting zoo, but Jane would have none of it, remembering all to well the naughty goats of Grant’s Farm from a few weeks earlier. The fact that these were baby goats, smaller than our cats budged her opinion not one bit. Cate, the (mostly) Fearless had no issue facing the savage, clothes munching beasts.
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Cate approaches a baby goat with no fear of her shorts being eaten
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Jane and Cate play with a parachute
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On Randy’s last trip of the fiscal year, he traveled to New Mexico and had to do some research at White Sands Missile Range. Besides HAVING to visit the museum to do research (and take pictures of the historic nuclear weapons on display), he and his colleague decided to take the long way back to Albuquerque, in order to visit the White Sands National Monument. The irregular rainy season in New Mexico and very heavy rains the previous week prevented them from going very far into the park to view the highly unusual gypsum sand dunes, as the road was underwater (in the desert). The Park Service didn’t charge the admission fee, so that was a plus.
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Randy poises with a "Fat Man" MK3 bomb casing
at White Sands Missile Range outdoor museum on a trip for work
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That weekend the girls Great, Great Aunt Sissy’s visit with her beau, resulted in the standard Sunday Brunch at the Sage’s with the accompanying group photo. During the family gathering, Jane and Cate played Hide and Seek with their Aunt Ro-Ro. The game consisted of them hiding in exactly the same spot their aunt just hid in and waiting for her to find them. It was very amusing to watch.
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Aunt Sissy and Sage Tribe
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