One time, which was the first time, we went to the fair

Yes, hello again my blogging fanatical friends.  What have you done without me?  Now you can live again.

When you’re Roz and you go to the fair you go like this:

Yes, it’s very stylish.  And when you’re there and you look at things, like miniature trains, you look like this:

You’ve just eaten your first hush puppy at The Old Grist Mill and your mom has decided that next year that is what she will spend her food money on at the fair.   (They hand out free samples and wowza it’s good advertising)

If you’re an Empey boy you do this while your parents meander through the considerable garden displays.

And then, off in the distance, you see the ride that you will ride.  A gigantic rainbow slide.  It calls to you and you therefore call to your parents, every few minutes, like every two minutes, that you want to ride the bumpy rainbow slide.  Remember it is calling to you from the distance.

But if you’re an Empey parent at the North Carolina state fair, then you’re not so great with arriving at your desired destination in the most efficient manner, let alone at all.  You keep arriving at rides but the view is like this: fences and the backs of trailers.  It all seemed so easy to find until that fence was there:

So, as a befuddled Empey parent,  instead of arriving at the bumpy slide of wonder, you catch the tail end of the pig racing (which you will arrive for early next year – it is amazement itself) and try and appease your children with a muffin the size of their four year old heads.

Your attempts at appeasement are not entirely successful.

So, back to being an Empey boy, your relatively capable parents get you to the ride…. and you’re too short.

It is nearly unbearable.

So you climb on dad’s shoulders and despair.  All the way to the kiddie version which is four miles and a decade away (and that’s from your mom’s perspective.  But don’t get her wrong it was all very fun and she enjoyed it a lot, it was just 10 miles away).

By now, if you’re an Empey man, you’re tummy is empty.  That is to say, MP is MT.  And you buy a Giant Turkey Leg to eat from a person called McBride. 

But since you’re nearly thirty you have learned to share.

And so if you’re a starving MP three year old you eat that turkey leg that is bigger than your head and then you dance about it.  Little wiggles and jives and elegant bends. 

This picture cannot capture the awesomeness, but we have some blessed videos of it that maybe some day will make their way up here.  But that will take a little more motivation that I’ve got right now. 

Everybody rides a few rides in the kiddie area:

By now, if you’re an MP parent, you’re a little frazzled with how much that all costs, so you head on over to the education building where you’ve heard that you can buy a pickle the size of your head for a mere dollar.  Which is no mere miracle at the NC State Fair.

Okay, so this is a terrible picture, but if you’re Everett at this point you are beyond ravenous, and therefore MUST snatch the pickle out of your dad’s hand because he’s just too slow when he makes purchases and you just take like the biggest bite you can manage.

  

Only to find out that Nick wanted one of those spicy pickles.  This again, is nearly unbearable – this time for more physical than psychological reasons. 

And if you’re back to being Roz, then you smear that pickle all over your face.

By now it’s dark and if you’re me at the fair you love carnival lights and you take some blurry pictures. 

And then you feel like a big dork because not only did you not bring a stroller, you didn’t bring any of your kids jackets!  What?  I can’t believe I just admitted that online.  So then you have to carry your freezing pickle face daughter who really just smells like a big dill wrapped up in your jacket as best you can.

On the 20 mile walk back to the car you see and hear a crowd gathering in the arena.  You sneak in to see that there’s a freestyle motocross and BMX show going on.  Everybody is game and you sit and watch and clap and yell.  Everybody is woot wooting and it’s a grand old time.  Three and four year olds woot wooting  is not to be missed.

On the way out, you’ve overcome the chill a bit wearing mom’s sweaters, and ice cream sounds like a really good idea.  So while the ‘rents eat, you put on a show on the empty stage.  MPs on previously MT stage.

You wave goodbye to the fair and walk fifty miles to your car.

And then the heat is full blast and you’re out.  See you next year hush puppies.

Nick Empey Acoustic for the kids

Nick is a champion.  It’s one of the reasons I like him.  Another reason I like him is that he stands outside on the front porch and plays his guitar while the kids hooliganize. 

the boys, hooliganizing

This time Nick sang the first line and then said ‘kids, what should the next line of this song be?’  They wrote the rest.  Only two lines are slightly modified for storytelling purposes: the letter o, and staying with the rubber duck.

Can you tell which lines Roz wrote?

Click here to listen:  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2751975/i%27ll%20be%20right%20back.mp3

LYRICS:

hungry hungry caterpillar hanging out with mr. miller
foxes in heaven falling in love
you can do anything you do
you can't do anything you can't do
dancing cat with dancing cow

you can eat breakfast and not sing ho ho ho
up and down and all around like the letter O
i know what a pencil looks like
i will be right back

itsy bitsy spider has a pencil in his hand
caterpillars like eating envelopes or parts of them
move the bubbles out da way
oh, lovely lovely lovely day
that's where me and rubber duck will stay

you can eat breakfast...

…. i will be right back.

 

Share and make him famous.  =)

decisions about calendars

Let’s talk about 2014 calendars, eh?  I can’t decide which to ask for Christmas:

There’s the Rifle Secret Garden Calendar, which makes me so, so, happy.

…or the Paper Source Wall Art Calendar.  I love the ostriches, boats, stars, and bugs the most.  Those are nice doughnuts too, and flowering tree.  And who doesn’t like a good sloth or three in October?

but let’s look closely at those bugs that I love, because I can’t find a good picture online of the whole year, you can kind of get a better look if you follow the link:

Or there is the Pieces and Patterns Calendar:

And here’s a nice close up.  Those are all hand painted! 

And that kind of  hand painted precision is worth looking at all year.

So, tell me friends, which one wins?  Gah!  I can’t decide – they all make me pretty happy.  I wish I could get them all, but that seems excessive, so help me out and vote now!  No lurking.  =)

Spontaneity

Nick and I have always been a  rather spontaneous pair.  Not a spontaneous pear. There’s a difference there.

Anyway, a few years of marriage and a few kids haven't changed that, so when Nick got home from work at 5 and asked if we should go to the racetrack, I said yes, and off we went. 

It’s loud at the racetrack and for some reason the kids didn’t want us to stick squishy neon orange things in their ears, try as we might.

Despite all the glum looking kids in these pictures they did honestly have a good time.

But the boys would have been content to just play at this bounce house and $1,099 playground.

And Roz content to do some yoga, here pictured in downward dog, on the top most bleacher.

---

Ah, but the spontaneity isn’t over folks.  On the following weekday a friend asked if I wanted to go to the beach with her and I said yes.  So, all by me onesie I packed up my three wees and set off for the Atlantic coast.  I owe her a big thank you for inspiring this spontaneity, it was a fantastic time. 

I’d like to note here that the tide really freaked Roz out, which I was cool with because it kept her out of the tide.  The boys were once the same way, but this trip they loved it.  I have similar hopes for Roz.

We took a short little walk…

…over to an inlet where we played in some tide pools.  Everett attempted to catch fish (can you see those little fish there?).

But all either of the boys caught was seaweed.

Roz didn’t have to worry about the tide crashing in, so she finally got in the water. 

Exploring.

And once again, Roz-yoga.  Here pictured in a sliding downward dog, on the beach with her head in a tide pool.

And there you have it, folks.  Spontaneity resulting in a race track and a beach.   …and some yoga.

Reunion-ganza 2013

When my parents returned from their mission in the Philippines in 2009, they were a bit surprised when they received a phone call asking them to be in the Accra, Ghana, temple presidency for the next 3 years.  It spurred an urgency for family reunions.  Since they had 2 weeks each summer to travel while the temple was being cleaned they decided to organize a reunion each summer.  This summer we retreated to a lakefront house on Lake Gaston in Littleton, NC.  Believe me when I say it was indeed a little town.  The house—not so much.  Here it is from the back:

Here is a lovely girl waving from across the expansive balcony.  She’s Danish.  And happy.

Here’s a view of our room.  It has doors overlooking the balcony to the pool and lake in the distance.  The boys would fall asleep on our bed, then we’d move them to the capacious closet.  One night Nicole woke up to a pillow flopping on her head.  Then a little body climbed on top of her.  Apparently our bed was cooler than the closet…pfft.

Here’s the pool.

The boys learned how to swim using these fancy noodles.  They would bounce around on the fancy noodles.  They’d jump off the rock diving board with their fancy noodles.  They’d take their fancy noodles for walks.  Did you know that when Yankee Doodle stuck that feather in his hat and called it macaroni he was really calling it fancy?  Look that up folks.  It’s real.

Apparently there is a new reunion tradition that includes ping pong -- or for the more refined “table tennis.”  There is a tournament and everything.  Here’s some of that action.  The first one is round 2 action.

Here’s some more round 2 action.

Here’s the final.  We took it to game 3 (best of 3) when I lost it.  The victor was happy.  He’s Danish.

Here’s Mama Empey modeling the victory belt.  This is no podunk ping pong tourney, folks.  It’s a high stakes, winner take all affair.  I mean, look at that belt.

Oh, yeah.  There was a lake, too, but the boat was feeling ill.  That didn’t stop aunt Angie from blowing up the tubes anyway. Look at that tube.  Wow.  And what is wow upside down?  Mom.

Here is some comic relief.  One of my nephews made sure that everyone had a steady supply of bacon mints or pickle mints if one wanted during all the fun.  Nicole was never too sure about them and consistently refused.  The following picture proves her unsettled suspicions weren’t completely unfounded. 

Grandma Empey was feeling a bit pirately-inclined, and commissioned this large scale banner to set the party theme. 

Tattoos, hats, eyepatches.  Yes, she was feeling the pirate flow, and so was Everett here:

There was a treasure hunt! Arguably the most fun part of the whole week for our kids.

Searching the boat.

No pirate party is complete without a duel where someone ends up in the water.

So we dueled.

And threw each other in the pool.

And grandma really enjoyed it.  She loves that sort of thing.

But when grandma Empey wasn’t playing the pirate she invited kids out to the boathouse for a picnic.

Brookston really enjoyed those lakeside oreos.

All this sort of thing is tiring for a wee young one, and this is what bedtime brought.  Except for that one time when we came up balcony stairs to find through the door windows that there had been a ‘poo incident.’  Perhaps a poo catastrophe.  I mean, Brookston was up on the dresser emptying Nicks wallet, Everett was jumping back and forth from bed to bed, and oh…. Roz.  Poo disaster.  It took a few loads of laundry to sort all that out.  But yeah, usually it went like this:

And now we’ll say goodbye to the pool at night and see you all next year!