The Curtis Clan - Spring 2007
Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice
Spring Break in Chicago
Randy had an “emergency” research project (yeah he’s very aware of the oxymoron nature of such a statement) on a WWII TNT plant come up that required a trip to the regional archives in Chicago. With Jane on spring break, and the driving distance more than reasonable, we loaded up the gang for another Family Road Trip. On Tuesday, Bethany and the girls went downtown and enjoyed the sights of the Shedd Aquarium. Between 2 entrance fees, parking and soft pretzels for lunch, the tab was over $60 so they stayed all day to get their money’s worth out of it, along with a goodly portion of Chicagoland’s school age population also on spring break. The girls loved it but not as much as the bacon and Apple Jacks in the morning at the Concierge Lounge or the indoor pool at the Midway Marriott. The hotel had purchased a couple of the former Cow Town cow art sculptures that Jane and Cate were happy to poise in front of.
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Jane and Cate feeling American Pride Cow
Town style
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On Wednesday, while Randy pored through old contracts and real estate records, the family made a pilgrimage to Ikea in the west suburbs. It was a lot less hectic, though perhaps just as expensive J. Traveling so much for work is trying on the family but not so much when they can come along too.
Cate at 3!
The day after we go back from Illinois was Cate’s 3rd Birthday, so we had the family over for our standard fare of take-out pizza (Fortel’s, the best in St. Louis) and cake.
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The Curtis & Sage family celebrating Cate’s 3rd Natal Day
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At three, the formerly easy going Cate has become firmly entrenched in the terrible twos of establishing her limits and self determination. Arguments about what clothes, shoes or jammies to wear have become frequent. The recommended trick of always giving her a choice between two things has little effect and frequently results in her responding “I want nothing!”. It’s unclear if her new interest in her appearance, particularly dresses, is a lasting change of personal desire, a function of her sister’s preferences or a combination of both OR a fourth possibility that she just prefers to be contrary (Iowa
Stubborn?). She remains more interested in animals and observing natural things than her sister and is a terrific cuddlier when the mood hits her. She likes to hide, frequently playing in a closet or under the bed when she can. Sometimes the hiding includes household items, which has mostly been mildly annoying and not included anything really important except her blanket on occasion which she “needs” to go to sleep. It takes real restraint to not throttle her after spending 20 minute searching for the damn thing to have her suddenly show up with it, saying “silly Cate”. Although not a new trait, another charming game, she likes to play is taking off her shoes. More than half the time, getting into the car (or out of the car), involves locating the footwear (see diatribe about hiding) and reattaching them. “Silly Cate”.
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Cate showing her age
next to her Castle Cake
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The visits to Little Bristol where Bethany the room-mother is hosting a party for Jane’s class or for other ECDC activities have whetted Cate’s strong desire to attend school.
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Cate and Jane in arty Black & White
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Playing Princess?
The week after Cate’s birthday, they had a play date with one of Jane’s school mates. They wanted to play dress-up, which with Jane’s Belle Halloween costume and the recent acquisition of a Cinderella gown on clearance and a butterfly costume as a birthday gift for Cate, each girl got to look “fabulous”. Of particular interest from a social/cultural aspect is that when Cate donned the Cinderella costume, she cheerfully assumed the submissive role of her costume’s character with Jane and her friend taking over as the evil step sister roles giving her lots of chores and cleaning to do. They all seemed happy with the game but it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the Cinderella game lasted longer. Their quick assumption of the prescribed roles bought to mind some of the psychologist “prisoner” game studies that have occurred, where regular folks can quickly assume the role of cruel enforcer to strangers assuming the role of victim.
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Princesses Jane and
Cate dancing on the balcony
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Easter
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Cate and Jane are on
the hunt
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The girls were invited to the second annual Christen Hill neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt in Alton courtesy of their “Uncle” Charlie. The records low temperatures didn’t seem to dissuade anyone as the event was well attended though people didn’t linger very long afterwards. Randy’s threat about putting the girls in ski pants should anyone complain about the cold had a positive effect on the grousing about being cold as Jane mentioned afterwards. Not even 5 years old yet and they would rather look good and be unencumbered, than warm. It will only get worse. The girls got a couple pounds of candy, which should last them through till summer as we ration it out pretty good (though maybe not with the occasional “parent sugar tax” on the booty).
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The Curtis Family all bundled up for the unseasonably
cold temperatures
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As for Easter day, we had brunch with the in-town Sages and dinner with the Curtis tribe, along with Bob and the Kennedy's who joined us for dessert.
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Easter 2007 - Curtis Family
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Rosemary’s Shower
The following weekend, Bethany threw her expecting sister a baby shower at the Casa Curtis. It was a very pleasant affair for the approximately two dozen invitees. There was a definite “frog” aspect to many of the gifts as most people knew about their nicknaming the baby Kermit during the pregnancy without knowing the sex. Kind of like painting a refrigerator black with white cow spots, you plant a seed of inspiration in people’s minds for presents, whether you meant to our not.
Unfortunately no good pics of the party.
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Here’s one of Jane, Gramy and Cate from the next day when we had a luncheon at our house in celebration for Amy’s birthday
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Meanwhile, Dad took the girls and kept them busy for the day, including a Disney film Bridge to Terebethia. It was PG, but he assumed it was for the scary trolls etc, which he figured the girls could handle. Nope, one of the lead characters drowns about 2/3s of the way through the picture. It happened off screen but still. It went right past Cate but Jane was understandably concerned, even though she has a very limited understanding of death and people who died consisting of Elvis (thanks to our Graceland trip last year) and Jesus. He would have to answer sporadic questions on what happened to Lizzie, the girl in the movie, for the following couple weeks. Doah!
Camping with the Kids
Randy took the girls on a third annual Father-Kid camping trip at Maramec Springs along with friends Todd and Anthony, their progeny and camp-aholic Uncle Charlie. The weekend has become somewhat routine and gets easier with each outing, as the girls become more independent and comfortable in the environment and their camping friends. The 2-mile kayak float was completed in about 40 minutes of float time due to high river levels. We considered making an 8 mile trip to Scott’s Ford on Saturday, which would have taken about 2.5 hours but since we didn’t’ have enough boatage for everyone and knew the girls wouldn’t want to be without their playmates. The troop of 3-7 year olds were quite interested in fishing this time and were intent on observing the caught trout on the stringers along the bank. Cate in particularly was concerned about their condition and expressed a desire for them to be free and happy. Randy delicately described what happens to them in as neutral of terms as possible without lying (The fish in the bowl is lucky; they’re in for a worser fate. One day when the boss gets hungry, guess who is going to be on the plate, Uh-oh!, Under the Sea…). Cate said she didn’t want to eat animals but she would eat a lion because they were naughty.
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The kids all sit for a picture after feeding the fish at Maramec Springs
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On a humorous note, Jane and the young Hammond boy got in to a heated debate (Is too! Is not!...) over whether you could purchase ice cream at the McDonald’s drive-thru or not. I trod the tight rope of diplomacy to settle the squabble without lying to them and without confirming David’s assertion that life was better than Jane was aware of (little punk ratting me out like that).
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Silly Cate mugging at Maramec Springs
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Jane’s favorite part about camping: doughnuts and bacon. We’re hoping that eventually this will morph into more mature reflections about the outdoors, friends and relaxing with the simple things in life. Her crying regrets about not one wanting to leave and go home buoy these hopes, however, upon returning home, she was adamant about the need to wear dresses again and watch TV. The journey of a thousand miles begins with but one step.
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OK this wasn’t taken during camping
but it’s such a nice picture of Jane...
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Florida or bust!
The next week, work took Randy to Montgomery at the south central end of Alabama (the Air Force Historical Agency at Maxwell AFB). Given the relative close proximity to Florida, it seemed like an opportune time to take the family to the ocean. The plan evolved with some discounts to stay at a Hilton’s Sandestion Beach resort and a few nights at Marriott’s Panama City’s beach resort, primarily for the cost of listening to the 2 hour time share spiel. Randy left on Monday via airplane but the tribe didn’t follow until Thursday. In a moment of weakness, Bethany decided she could drive 600 miles with the girls in a day by herself. If it was easy, anybody could do it. When they got there, Randy had booze waiting for her, took the kids to a park and than brought her dinner in the hotel an hour or so later.
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Cate and Jane feeding ducks at Blount Park
in Montgomery (There were turtles too but the pictures didn’t come out so well)
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After a few hours work on Friday, the family headed down the 2 lane highways to Destin/Sandestin. The Sandestin Hilton was a fabulous resort, right on the beautiful powder white sand beaches.
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Cate and Jane frolicking on the beach at Sandestin
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The best part was the elation on the girl’s faces to find that our room included bunk beds and their own TV. The rest of the accommodations were also terrific but that really made our stay for everyone. There were red and yellow flags warning about the waves, so we didn’t do too wading or swimming at the Hilton but plenty of sandcastle building and swimming in the hotel pools.
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Cate, Jane and Randy building sandcastles on the beach
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Bethany, Cate and Jane
floating in the pool
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At night we goofed off the local Bass Pro Shop and on the beach where one of the weddings alters remained. The girls were quite enamored, particularly Jane with a forgotten flower girl basket with some dispersed rose petals remaining.
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Cate, Randy and Jane goofing around the Destin Bass Pro Shop
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Cate, Bethany and Jane enjoy a beach wedding alter at night
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After 2 nights, we headed east to Panama City Beach. The marketers call it the Emerald Coast but it is more commonly referred to by the locals as the Red-neck Rivera. There were older “tired” areas but not where we were staying at the Marriott. It wasn’t on the beach but on a back bay golf resort (Whoo-hoo!). It was nice but a bit of a come down after the beachfront with bunk beds. The impetus for our hotel choice was a bargain rate (3 nights $120) if we listened to the Marriott Time Share deal. In case you interested for comparison purposes, the deal they offered us was for a Platinum week 2 bedroom condo that would sleep 6-8 - $18,900 with $800 closing fees and $846 yearly maintenance fees and taxes. The enticement to do it right away was 200,000 bonus Marriott points, which would equal about $2,000 in hotel use dollars (and no you couldn’t exchange points for dollars in the deal, in case you had an extra 1.9 million points burning a whole in your pocket).
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Bethany and Cate waving in the water
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We had a 10 minute drive to the public beach at the St. Andrews State Park portion of Panama City Beach. The post spring break and pre summer block, mid-week time block was a particularly nice with only another dozen or so folks in the immediate vicinity. That along with the gentle, “green flag” waves and proliferation of a variety shells made for a wonderful beach experience.
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The Curtis Family at the beach
(with shirts on for the sunburn prone)
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Cate reveled in the environment and exhibited a propensity to roll around in the fine grained white sand thoroughly “breading” herself in it. We’d pick her up and wash her off in the ocean, only to have her immediately recoat herself again (Shake and Bake!).
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Cate coming back to the
umbrella and towels on Panama City Beach
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The shelling was very good and we brought home a bag of shells. Cate was content to ignore the doings of everyone else and wander off alone or lingering behind in search of shells. Jane enjoyed herself too, working up the nerve to wade chest high without always holding a parent’s hand. It was a great five days of sandcastle building and seashell collecting.
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Jane practicing here vowels like a pirate A-A-A-A-A…E-E-E-E-E-E…..I-I-I-I-I-I…
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Although sad to leave the beach, the parents were glad to be free from staying in one room with our kids all day and night for the last week when not out and about. That and a week of eating out at restaurants with toddlers, where part of the restaurant choice is whether the menu included deep fried potatoes, breaded chicken products or waffles/pancakes leaves much to be desired
(our favorite restaurant on the trip...The Waffle House). When the parents eat sans children, inclusion of these items on a menu is the first indication to choose another establishment. We were ready for the regularity or our normal lives.
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The Curtis Family outside the tres cheesy Treasure Ship restaurant
(with 3, yes three levels of pirate themed, overpriced
mediocre restaurants)
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Blue Screen of Death
Our return was marred by the crash of our home
hard drive, which was a bit of a family crisis as we hadn’t back-upped the
laptop in about 6 months. We took the drive to two different nerd shops, both with the same assessment that they couldn’t retrieve any data at all. The second guy, whose only financial interest was in retrieving info
(as opposed to selling us a new drive or PC) determined it was a broken read/write arm. Theoretically it could be repaired in a clean room environment by a few select personnel at roughly $1,500, which was expensive enough that we only considered it a bit, as opposed to really considering it
if the price would have been half or a third of that. We only lost a month or two of digital pictures as fortunately we copied them at the end of the year for Nana and Randy had sets of our recent trips on his work laptop as he downloaded them while on the road. The documents were another mater, particularly Outlook which hadn’t been archived in even longer and Bethany is a heavy user of the calendar, email and contact features. We considered the $1,500 several times more.
Buying a 250GB external hard drive for backing things up occurred about a week
later.
A Visit to
(the self described)
Baseball Heaven
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Curtis Family and Aunt RoRo outside Busch Stadium
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We were cheered up by Aunt RoRo taking us to a Cardinal game Friday on some vendor tickets. It was both girls first trip to the new Busch Stadium and Cate’s first big league
experience. They had a great time and why not? They pretty much munched non-stop (McDonald’s and roasted peanuts in the shell) and occasionally looked towards the field. Cate was asleep by the top of the eighth inning but we stayed to the end and got to see the rare Cardinal win this year, much to the delight of Jane who was very impressed with the fireworks,
which we thought boded well for the 4th of July (not).
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Jane and Bethany are
all smiles at the Cardinal game
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Return of the Prowler
(temporarily anyway)
After 5 years of storage in Rhonda’s garage, we decided to get
out the Spitfire (aka the Prowler as in “Hey Hon, the prowler needs a jump.” – Fargo) and in
a condition to sell. Jane was very smitten with the car and suggested we keep until she could drive it. Not going to happen but we did put in a booster seat so we could take both girls for a spin it.
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Jane on a booster seat joins Dad for a spin around the block in the Spitfire
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Mother's Day: Jane, Bethany and Cate
goofing around on a sculpture at Deer Creek Park in Webster Groves
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Strawberry Picking
In mid-May, Bethany took the girls to Bellville for an afternoon of strawberry picking at Eckert’s. They had a great time running up and down the lanes of strawberries. Hopefully, this type of outing will give the girls a better appreciation of where some food actually comes from. Not that it will matter much for Jane, as she won’t eat strawberries (or pretty much any other fruit except occasionally grapes, raisins and craisins.)
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Jane and Cate with their flat of freshly
picked strawberries
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Jane's second year of pre-school finished up on the last day of May, and she dressed up for the occasion. Bethany
organized another round of room parties and teacher's gifts.
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Jane last day of school
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June
The second weekend in June, our old Sunday Dinner group friends Kathy and Alex came to town for a wedding, prompting a reunion party of friends on Friday. We didn’t get around to playing Celebrity after the girls went down, but there was lots of good reminiscing and even some religious and political discussions as was common among the Dinner Group. The girls were very excited to have baby Nicholas to play with and shower their attention and affection on. He was inspired by their bi-pedal ways and a Winnie the Pooh stroller and made significant gains walking to his parents delight. Wait till they realize the additional trouble he’ll be able to find more quickly traveling upright.
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Cate helping Dr. Jane check out Nicholas
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Cate playing in front of our day
lilies
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Kid Camps - WAH-HOO!
(?)
The first couple weeks of summer had the girls enrolled in organized activities. The first week, Jane had at a ˝ day camp with the Webster Groves Recreational Center, where they did pretty standard camp craft stuff. The second week Cate and Jane both went to
˝ day Vacation Bible School (VBS) at Kirkwood Lutheran, which had been rechristened the Avalanche Ranch for the week. Unfamiliar with VBS? Well “Saddle up your horses!
We got a trail to blaze." (refrain to the main song for the week).
Today’s VBS is definitely not like the stogy church camps / youth groups, I recall from being a kid (which given my lack of faith would be a reason for overhauling that curriculum). VBS is highly organized and heavily produced with churches purchasing packaged programming such as the Avalanche Ranch (http://www.groupvbs.com/2007/AvalancheRanchnu/index.asp) to conduct their own course, though there are others. As would be expected, the program included videos of the bible story reenactments, but it also included DVDs with karaoke style songs and suggested choreography, additional videos retelling the principles of the stories with program specific characters (Chadder's Wild West Adventure DVD), posters, floor displays and toy figurines of Buc, Shadow, Skye, Ranger & Boss their “Bible Memory Buddies that have the day's Bible Treasure verse, so kids won't forget what they learned and how much fun they had at VBS” (not that our kids can read yet). 
Perhaps surprisingly, Randy went along blissfully unconcerned and unaware, considering the whole concept mostly harmless (and since it didn’t cost much, what the heck?). That changed a bit after attending the family night dinner assembly on Thursday, which inspired some checking on the web and the full program became clearer. The biggest concern was that 4 of the 5 bible stories selected for study dealt with the Old Testament story of
the Israelites razing Jericho and slaughtering all its' inhabitants because God promised it to his chosen people. Not exactly the emphasis on the teachings of Jesus he expected from a Christen VBS. The only New Testament story concerned Jesus
dying and rising again, generally covered by Easter. Wouldn’t love thy neighbor, turning the other check/forgiveness, do unto others etc. be more meaningful lessons for kids? The parallel of the Jericho stories supporting a political agenda different than ours also seemed less than “coincidental”. Belief in a vast right-wing illuminati is
just paranoid, or is it?
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