The Party/Domination of the Past

Whoa, bros. One week ago was Grambee and Jim's 50th Anniversary Party! And I haven't even caught up with the documentation. We've been home for almost a week, but here's what we were up to back then:

Before the party we had a big photo session!  All kinds of foxes were getting prepared in their hotness!

Grambee!  Radiant.

You'll be surprised to notice that our Utah Rock cousins wore matching dresses!

There's something so satisfying about picking up a cousin!  That's Margo hefting Miki and Bonnie Kate

lifting Ida.  Ahh.

Talk about people heating it up!  A papparazo lurked on a ladder to catch Dr. Vining in this dress made by her mother forty years ago!  Silken!  Imagine it rubbing up against you.  Actually, don't imagine that.

Here the girls impress Grambee with their outfits.

Okay, here's the entire team.  Let's see:

Back row:  Older brother, Ella, Pierre Leblanc!, younger sister Sara, Grace and Jim Rock, Big Jen D'Amato and her husband Fred, Susi the German pet/exchange student!

Middle row, sitting:  Samson D'Amato, Phoebe Rock, Grambee and Jim, Sophie D'Amato

Front:  Sylvia Leblanc, underwear shower, pink cleavage master, Bonnie Kate and Margo and Matthew Rock, Lillian Leblanc.  LeBlanc!?

Here's what it looked like if you were in the actual picture:

And if it were just our own family, extremely backlit.  This is the spot, however, where my wife and I were married, over fourteen years ago:

True, I was too busy running around and managing disasters at the party to actually document it, but the next morning all the kids attacked Hilltopper Samson!

Thanks, everyone!

Especially to Lillian, for having an array of predilections  (like Hawaiian pizza) with me.  We're like twins!

And Bo, for sharing a name with the Obamas dog and also for accepting all the bones that Ida found in our tour of all my top secret forest hideouts from my childhood.

77

So, yes, against all odds Jim turned 77! (He is Ida and Miki's grandfather, but he doesn't like people (especially himself) to believe he's old enough to be a grandfather, despite appearances, so please don't call him Grandpa or Grandpa Jim. Just Jim. "A horse's name," one of his uncles once told him.)

Ida's interested in anyone opening presents, because they might not want them for themselves.

What! Uncle Carroll! CG! Jim's older brother made a sudden appearance!

Only older brothers can make younger brothers wear feathers on their heads.

Yes, Jim is quite strange, but we appreciate that. And he's generous. One thing he set up this time around was for Ida and Miki (and Bonnie/Margo/Matthew) to join the other cousins in the Walk of Fame:

More from the Compound / Various, Nefarious Relatives

So many relatives. The excellent Anne Hobler--95 years old, my first cousin twice removed (my grandma's cousin) invited us over for a delicious lunch, and the girls had a great time with her cane:

Here's an excellent film of Miki with singing soundtrack and camera work by Ida: The girls also had a great time with Pierre LeBlanc!

And who wouldn't? I mean, he is pretty good-natured and helpful.

And speaking of good-natured, my fourth sibling, the German pet Susanne Merk traveled all the way from Germany!  Yes.

Ida was pretty disappointed that Susi couldn't speak Japanese, but they still hit it off all right.

Dangerous Feats Atop the Tower with Matthew and Jim (who is 77, today)

Lots of history at the treacherous Eagle Tower.  Here's what it looked like, circa 1976, the Bicentennial:

Jen, Jim, Sara, Pete!

Compound: Update: Code Red

Too many cousins! We are just trying to keep it together, way up here on the peninsula...

It makes Miki into a little deviltron.

But the water is delightful.

Lillian LeBlanc and I are exactly the same!  Like twins.  We like all the same things.

Matthew Rock is often called "Bud" or "Brudder."  How he'll deal with this in kindergarten is  a big question.

There are more cookies, candy and screen time than usual.  HEre's Sylvia, Ida, Matthew, watching some kind of transformer cartoon violence episode.

Talk about twins!  I mean, Twin Foxes!  Every time Phoebe and Sophie go down to the beach wearing these matching suits, they are met by wolf whistles and shouts of "Twin Foxes!!!"

Miki:  deviltron.

More about her torment of Pierre, later...

The noodles are still in evidence.  This is what Grambee would call a "Vanilla Dip"--skinnydipping in the middle of the day.

Jim and Matthew climbed the tower with us!  More about this before long, too.  It's very high.

Grambee is not high, but often she acts that way (see preceding post).

Also a LOT more manicure and pedicure action out here.

Growing Weirdness at the Rock Compound

The DNA of Grambee and Jim:

The Fury of the in-law:

The hopes for international peace.

Obon Festival

As you may know, the girls are all .25 Japanese, thanks to GrandmaToko and the fierce Kashimada clan.  Represent!  So we got all yukata-ed up and headed over to the Obon festival.  It was about 150 degrees in the parking lot where it was held, and the following photos will show how the heat had its effect.  But for the actual text of this post I'll turn to the (recently recovered--thanks for the many huge boxes from the attic, GrandmaToko!) seminal text "Japan" by Ella Vining in grade 4.  It earned "++ Very Good!" and I'm sure you'll see why.

"Japan is covered with mountains.    Many of them are volcanoes...

"Japan has been a fishing nation for many centuries..."

"The Japanese had no system of writing before the 700's...

"The Japanese consider a 'beauty' with very white skin.

"The Japanese enjoy the beauty of every thing in Japan....

"Japanese art is ussually [sic] carving wood, but they also make a lot of small things.

"The Japanese write down and not across....

"Japan is the 'land of the rising sun'....

"It has an area of land smaller than California,

but it is the third ranking industrial power of the world."

"It is made up of four large main islands, Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikodu, and Kushu, and about 3,000 smaller islands."

By Ella Vining