Spring Family Letter

Well, (sung in the two-octave shaky scoop of Chris Guest in A Mighty Wind) we don’t have a puppy in the parlor and a skillet on the stove or a smelly old blanket that a Navajowove – although we do have a 16-year-old boy living in our basement. So sometimes it smells like a smelly old Navajo cow lives down there. Potty trained of course, it doesn’t really smell like poo – more like musty, rain-soaked bovine flesh. Somehow, however, when he emerges from the depths, he always smells fresh and manly. And isn’t that appropriate as he has quite a social calendar to attend to. He hasn’t missed a prom/formal/Hawkins yet. He has a great group of friends that really are good kids and manage to keep each other occupied until midnight each night. I’m sure they read scriptures and raise money for the poor and volunteer at the local orphanage. I just can’t believe how late those orphans stay up. Max recently finished the swim season with the local high school. When he went to regionals he shaved his entire body-almost-and yes, even his hobbit feet, and shaved 5 SECONDS off his qualifying time. For those of you who follow swimming, hundredths of a second often separate first place from second. The strange ability to reduce your time by 5 seconds is simply impossible. I guarantee you that he did not have 5 seconds worth of drag on his body but shaving somehow made him super-human – kinda like Sampson in reverse. That’s the only way I can explain it.

Caitlin, master thespian, broke her leg recently. Acting! Genius! Thank you! Not so much an actual injury but the figurative kind where just before you take the stage some loose-lipped well-wisher implores you to ‘break a leg’. Caitie was in the junior high school production of Twinderella, a disjointed and poorly constructed double-overlapping fairytale involving many self-conscious, acne-ridden adolescents with cracky voices delivering lines with not a modicum of joy or dynamic (I pause here to point out the obvious parallel between that last sentence and Woody Allen’s classic, “…I hate this restaurant. Such bad food and such small portions."). Caitie, however, was STELLAR. She was--and I’m not saying this as a parent who has no objectivity--so fun to watch. She was over-the-top, bigger-than-life in her performance. She was funny. She was fluid in her dancing. And all this before I even dropped her off for the play. I kid. Really, though, she was a stand-out and the production really was delightful. Debi camcorded the event and copies of the DVD are available for a nominal service charge. Caitie lives in the basement but the smell in her room is much different than neighbor Max. I don’t know the nasal equivalent of the word cacophony but I’m going to have to make one up because the mixture of that many perfume odors produces a smell that is nothing short of nosiferous. Caitie continues to love softball, and plays like Cal Ripkin Jr. only younger and un-retired, and she made the junior high softball team this spring.

Abby grows ever taller. In fact, she is catching Caitie. As a result, her orchestra teacher has asked her to move from the viola to the bass. Not the singing bass As Seen On TV, but more like a violin with elephantitis. Her teacher stated that many others had asked if they could move to the bass but she told them “no” because she felt Abby was the only 5th grader in the school smart enough to not only change instruments but learn a whole new music clef. Recently, Abby participated in a Bass Jam music camp. This is an all-day event where children from all over the valley who have been told they play the bass gather at a local high school and pay out dad’s hard-earned American dollars. They divide up into 5 different skill levels, and learn techniques, tricks, tips, and Nee-Sackey-slap-jam-African rhythms at the hands of many emaciated, bespectacled, goatee-wearing hip cats with translucent skin who look like they see very little sunlight. (sort of like most of the citizens of Portland, right Richard?) She said she had fun and learned a lot. I was fortunate to be able to attend the concert at the end of the day. Mind you, this was a bass symphony. Imagine a concerto being played on just the lowest 12 notes of a piano. When I say lower register, what I mean is the vibrating sound produced on that stage would be better suited for a ghetto-thumping sub-woofer in South Phoenix (or Dennis Grant’s pimped ride). Abby continues to excel at school and loves to read, sing, play soccer, rollerblade, and play hockey.

Olivia, or the Rosebud, as she is known, is a cutie-face. Olivia just finished her soccer season and is now engaged in an intense training camp for softball. She has also taken up the cello. Being shorter than Abby, this is a more appropriate sized instrument for her. Recently, she performed in the elementary school orchestra concert. This is an annual event (thankfully) that involves the first line of many great Christmas carols. That, in itself, is sort of frustrating because I just get into the lyric of “Jingle bells, batman smells, robin laid an egg,” and they stop and move on to the next song. Olivia sat in the front and the other kids filed in around her. She was the star of the show – or you would think so if you saw the footage I took of the event. Olivia also sang with the school choir. Budding, young vocal talent eagerly blending their voices into melodious harmony it wasn’t, but she had a blast none the less. Olivia, a thespian in her own right, starred in the Room 5 production of Defeat the Dump Monster. She played a rat.

Last summer, we packed up the family and went to Hawaii – Maui to be exact – Kihei to be more exact – Maui Banyan to be even more exact. What a fun trip. It was our kid’s first time there and we had fun biking the crater, parasailing, beach-going and other such activities.