A Grand Gathering of Dorks

Loftis always comes with food.  Always.

Hi America.

Every once and awhile, my old campaign buddies from the Sausage Pad and I decide to get together and share more than a few beers.  We compare grey hairs, talk about how annoying our kids are, and, more often than not, play Risk.

It's been nearly five months since we last hung out (when we sailed down the Muskegon River back in July, if you'll recall), so we deemed it time once again to get together down at Smith's house in Kalamazoo - my old college stomping ground.

Sure, it also happened to be Smith's 36th birthday, but that's besides the point.

Anyway, here's some pictures of a bunch of old dudes far past their prime, sitting around and playing a board game with an inflatable fish.

Like thugs.

Not a whole hell of a lot on TV (college basketball - blegh) but we eventually settled on Super Mario Bros. . . which is just as awful as you remember.

As usual, I'm the Grey Army.  So obviously I bring my own officer to command my troops in the field.

Suckie Fish:  the nation's most prolific inflatable fish, back for another tour of duty with the Sausage Pad.  We found this at Damon's mom's house during Central/Western weekend back in 2001, and over the years this inflatable fish has traveled across the country with us on numerous adventures.  The Baseball Road trip down the East Coat of the U.S. in '02, to Key West in '03, to just about every single one of our weddings, Tennessee in '13, and every ill-conceived adventure in between.  Needless to say, the dude's in pretty rough shape these days. . .

Smith's always so cheerful.

$65 scotch?  Don't mind if I do. . .

Loftis still owns his Virgil Q's Dixieland Kazoo Revue shirt.  I plan on being buried in mine.

Two Smiths in a Nursery.  These two are the last to have kids, but Zack's first will be here sometime in mid-January, so him and his wife, Renee, are in scramble mode trying to get their house ready.  Smitty, who runs a painting business, was more than happy to criticize Zack's recent paint job.

Suckie Fish found Smith's fifteen-year-old fisherman's hat. . . and 15-year-old scotch.

Seloske makes his move. . .

Yet another phone break.  I don't think we actually got around to finishing our game of Risk, come to think of it:  we decided to head out to a couple bars later on in the evening, and shortly thereafter Loftis had to start his third shift at Meijer.  Nevertheless, I was positioned to end up in second place, based on the board's layout.

This is the most random, out-of-the-way bar in the greater Kalamazoo area.  Just two female bartenders and one elderly drunk were there when we rolled in and pleaded for a round as they were vacuuming up the place around us.  No idea why, it was only midnight. . .

Gingers.

No idea.

- Brian

The Cannononball's Sixth Birthday Weekend (feat. Father's Day)

Bam.

Hi folks,

I'm not one to toot my own horn.  I don't own a horn, honestly, and even if I did I sure as hell wouldn't know how to toot it.

Father's Day, therefore, isn't something I'm necessarily "pumped" about.  It's just another Hallmark holiday, and in our house this one means Kris lets me sleep in past 7am and she gets up and deals with the kids.  When I do wake up - which is always before 8am anyway, because my kids are loud - I get presents.  Usually this is a bottle of whiskey from Kris (awesome) and a bunch of handmade stuff from the kids (I'll say 'awesome' here as well, 'cause if I didn't I guess that'd make me a shitty parent.)

Anyway, Father's Day is always eclipsed by the far-more recognized birthday of our eldest daughter, Alayna.  Since Father's Day is always on that Sunday in June, it's usually observed the day after we observe Alayna's birthday, as her birthday usually falls during the following week and Saturday's the Party Day of the week.  This means my day is sandwiched in among the Cannonball's multi-observed anniversary of her birth.

So here's how we spent Alayna Fest '14 (there will be no further mention of Father's Day, as I'm no longer important as of writing this):

Kris, stressing out over a birthday cake - which NEVER happens.

Alayna also wanted a Frozen cake for her birthday, so we just said 'screw it' and reordered the exact same cake topper that we used for Abby's cake.  The cake was smaller this time around 'cause we were keeping her birthday simple this year - just having the Voigts over for cake and presents.  Instead of throwing a birthday party for her this year, we opted to purchase annual passes to Aquatica instead (more to come on that later.)

While Kris ran errands, the girls and I decorated the kitchen.  Well, they told me where to hang crap up , so I really don't want to take credit for this.

We were lazy this year and didn't feel like spending money on party decorations.  The kids don't care about them that much anyway.  So, therefore, we just reused a bunch of leftover decorations and had ourselves a good ol' fashioned hand-me-down birthday party.  Booya.

Birthday girl

This was a disaster.

Behold - chaos.

Alayna recently discovered pop - namely, Sprite.  We never introduced it into the house, but she tried some her cousins had a month ago and loved it.  This has become her favorite beverage, so she was pretty excited when we bought some for her party (along with some plastic champagne glasses, of course.)

Pizza party

Jack and his bizarro dad

Alayna busts out the violin to entertain party guests

Adam takes a turn

Jack cops a feel

6

The Voigts were lucky enough to stumble across Frozen dresses at Target, which, obviously, were huge hits with the girls. . .

Alayna has this weird tendency of becoming over-the-top obsessed with something, but only for a week or two.  After that, she no longer cares about it.  Not in the slightest.  This makes buying toys for her a real pain in the ass. . . not that she really plays with toys.  If you asked me 'Hey Brian, what does Alayna like to play with?' I'd be stumped.  She doesn't like anything.

Gift cards (like the Justice card, seen above) are a safe bet, but one of the things she really wanted this year was - wait for it - an alarm clock.  Seriously.

What kind of kid asks for an alarm clock for their birthday?!

She's big into arts and crafts, as well as jewelry, so these jewelry-making bead sets went over well. . .

As did the vanity.

For Alayna's birthday, we all went to Aquatica to purchase our annual passes (like I mentioned before). . .

Aquatica's one of Orlando's more popular water parks - which is saying a lot, since there's a ton of them down here.  It's main draw is that it's closely affiliated with Sea World (its owner) and has marine animals like dolphins and turtles and fish there.  This dolphin tank (above) has a water slide tunneling through it, though honestly one moves so fast going down it you're only catching a fleeting glimpse of the dolphins if you see them at all.

The male tortoise was chasing the female around in circles, obviously VERY slowly.  I'll give you a couple guesses what he was after.

Walking towards the kiddie area of the park. . .

Aquatica is a pretty big park, and is known mostly for its superior water slides.  It has a wave pool, but it sucks compared with Typhoon Lagoon's - pretty small.

Its kiddie areas, however, are better than Typhoon Lagoon's - there's a couple of them, and they're huge.  We actually haven't explored much of the park yet, as the majority of our time is spent here.

All smiles at a water park, of course.

These water slides were pretty popular with the girls - they'd go down and then run up around for another go at them.   The area's closed off to the rest of the park, so the kids were free to run around without fear of disappearing off to God knows where.

Some 'faster' slides.

Hijacking a double-tube from one of the slide rides

That's the name of the kiddie area we were in - I had forgotten what it was called.

This other kiddie area was absolutely insane.

The girls were too scared to go up into the water-spraying play area itself, but
 they loved shooting the water cannon harmlessly into the pool water.   Of course.

Toweling off and heading home.

Alayna's official birthday was celebrated in the Clubhouse at Sunchild. Abby, who had been throwing a tantrum about going, was eventually allowed to join.

As you can see from the pics here, Kris went with 'quantity' over 'quality' with this cake, knowing that there were dozens of little kids to feed who weren't going to give two shits about what the cake looked like.

Some of Alayna's summer teachers in Club House

That evening, we Skype'd with Dad and Cindy so Alayna could open their gifts. . .

More violin.

This was Alayna's present, but Abby claimed it almost immediately.  This chick's obsessed with Legos.

- Brian