Lisa n Tom (n James n Joseph)

Lisa writes: Lori and Dave just got good news! The paperwork wait is over and they can go pick up Benjamin in Guatemala on June 5. Here is a picture of the last time they saw him, at two weeks old. He is now almost six months old.

Lisa writes: 800 miles. 17 1/2 hours. 5 pit stops. 8 Harry Potter CDs. 7 states. One big ol' party! We drove up to Rhode Island this weekend for a fun Memorial Day party and concert at the home of Tom's sister, Betsy, husband Mark and lovely red-headed daughter Julia. Coloradans and West Coasters will be impressed by how many states we covered in such a short time: Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and R.I. (If we'd been starting in Texas, for example, four hours later we would have still been in Texas.) Welcome to Manhattan! Connecticut is CUTE. Everything looks just like this. Everything in Rhode Island looks like this. Here is where we stayed. JUST KIDDING! That is a little barn on their property that Mark dreams of restoring and turning into an organic think tank some day. Here is their real house. Pretty, huh? Betsy wanted lots of activities for the kids. Here is party guest Frankie testing out the hula hoops. Here's Barbara trying ...

Lisa writes: Well, for one, there's this guy.

Lisa writes: For a month now, both of us have been humming and singing snippets of a song by Colin Hay. You know him: he was lead singer of Men at Work. We saw him in concert last month and ever since we can't get this song out of our heads. (Tom figures if it won't go away, we should at least get better at singing it, so he's learning it on guitar.) Waiting For My Real Life To Begin by Colin Hay I think the reason it resonates with us is that we both spent a lot of years "preparing" for our lives to start -- not realizing that that time was our lives. And now we won't want to waste any more time.

Tom writes: While packing to move I came across some items that surprised me, even though I knew they were there because I run into them periodically while rummaging through one of my drawers. One was a prayer book and rosary that my mom gave me when I received my first communion. I was eight. The other was what remained of a wallet my parents gave me at about the same time. Though the main part of the wallet had gone to wallet heaven, I had kept the picture holder. At one level, both items were mostly cheap plastic and were inexpensive even when new. But I sat there long forgotten thoughts and emotions flooded over me. I remembered the strong desire to be like my parents - to have the things they had and do the things they did. And every once in a while they would do something that would shorten the distance between me and them. All dads have cool wallets that they keep important things in. So I was really excited when I received one - even though it was plastic and bright b...

Tom writes: Growing up, one of my responsibilities was to help Dad clean the gutters (for all you young kids, in the olden days we did not have Gutter Helmets to keep the gutters clean, so you had to clean them out by hand). Every spring and every fall we would go borrow our neighbor's ladder and bring it across the street to our house. As a little kid, my job was to hold the ladder and handing the hose up to him. With the passage of time, the roles began to switch. However, it was a couple of years before I felt comfortable going up to the highest part of the roof - I did not trust the swaying of the ladder as you get halfway up. For whatever misguided reason, society thinks that I am a grown-up now and that I need to keep my own gutters clean. Fortunately, the previous owners had thrown me a bone. They had installed a kind of screen to keep the gutters clean. But although the insides of the gutters looked good today, they had gathered a lot of debris on the screens. We d...

Lisa writes: First poppy bloomed! First mortgage payment due June 5th. What is the street value of opium these days?

Lisa writes: First IT guy: (Hanging up the phone at the end of a Help Desk call) "She thanked me and said I'm a 'godsend.'" Second IT guy: Didn't God also send the locusts?

Lisa writes: We've got the house. Now we've got the chores to go with it. Here is what's currently on the To-Do list. This is so fun! It will keep us off the streets and out of trouble FOREVER.

Lisa writes: Tom is one of 2 or 5 children, depending on how you count them (full and half-siblings), but for practical purposes, there are two other brothers who deserve mention. Sebalius [cat that looks similar to Sebalius, but I've never seen Sebalius take this pose] and Mustafa [cat that looks similar to Mustafa, but not fat enough] Tom, tell us about your furry little brothers. Tom writes: Well, Lisa, what a great intro [grin]. One interesting thing about these two guys is that they adopted us (I was living with my mother at time, so "us" here means my mom and me). Sebalius used to live in a house at the entrance to our neighborhood, but was known to wander the neighborhood and work the circuit. Though his slender physique would not betray it, he was able to endear himself to enough neighbors to have them feed him whenever he showed up on their doorstep. However, he is a quiet guy, and as young boys in his house grew older and more rambunctious, he spent more tim...

Lisa writes: Thanks to Tom's sharp eyes and alarmed noise-making, I did NOT run over a woodchuck this afternoon. [Picture stolen off the internet. Not the actual 'chuck in question.]

Lisa writes: Newly refinished floors. Compare these to these to see the improvement.

Tom writes: Now that we are back in town, there are projects everywhere we turn. Important projects like, "What box are my underpants stored in?" or, "Let's insulate the attic," or "Let's cut up the old rugs so that we can throw them out in the trash bin in several weekly installments as opposed to paying for an extra delivery to come and take care of the situation all at once." But there is a good feel to the house, even in its chaotic state. When we selected this house, there were two on the short list, this one and another that we can call the "cute house." I liked the cute house more, Lisa liked this one more, and so we started a process of listing the pros and cons and trying to gather more information. Fortunately, we did not get very far down that road. As I walked from in from the parking lot to my office one morning, I was struck with an image of my father at this house, playing out in the yard with some young children, pres...

Lisa writes: And we will post pictures tonight. And we will backdate them to make it look like we posted them while on vacation. Because we are sneaky like CEOs. Yes, we are.

Tom writes: One great thing about being married into Lisa's family is that they have time shares in all these cool places - like Hawaii, for example. Their plan was that by having them in desirable destinations the kids would would have an increased desire to go vacation with their parents. As Lisa explained it, each of the kids were supposed to have "their turn" in Hawaii. Roy told me that this way they could have some time with whoever was there, otherwise everyone would go in every which direction. However, the plan backfired - almost everyone wanted to be in paradise, um I mean, with the family. It was my first trip to Hawaii, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You can see the short version of the video above or the long version of the video here . One of the highlights of the trip was a visit with May Au, who has lots of great stories to tell. For a full interview with her, try here . Or, for an shorter segment on the uses of the indigenous kukui nut, click here ....

Lisa writes: We packed up, hit the beach one last time, and flew and flew and flew and flew home. It's a 9-hour flight, no matter how you do it. Tom's mom was super gracious about picking us up from the airport at 6:20 a.m. Sunday morning without complaint and even looked happy to see us. The weather in Virginia is great, we both got long Sunday naps which took the edge off the jetlag, and the new floors in the house look beautiful. (See tomorrow's post.) Very good trip, great to spend time with family, saw a lot and learned a lot, and had a wonderful time. And did NOT get sunburned!

Lisa writes: We went to Bellows Recreation Area, an Air Force base apparently totally devoted to miniature golf and boogie boarding. Tom will post video of our wave riding. It was the kids' first time, and they all did great.

Lisa writes: We went to Jenny and Red's house and ate Chinese food and fed ducks and wore hats. Muchos mahalos for the hospitality, J&R!

Lisa writes: We're in Hawaii.

Lisa writes: We went to Laie with Debbie while Tom heroically babysat ALL SIX KIDS for TWO HOURS by himself. Then we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center and tried on culturally-appropriate headgear and played until we dropped (like Christian on Debbie's lap). Click on any picture to see it bigger.

Lisa writes: First, we went to Waikiki and ate shave ice and bought weird souvenirs. Then, we went to visit May's 100 year old mother, Margaret Parker. She is half Hawaiian and was born during the reign of King Kalakaua. Her father was the guard who escorted the last reigning monarch of the souvereign nation of Hawaii, Queen Liliuokalani, upstairs to her room in her palace when she was placed under house arrest by the United States. It's hard to grasp a life that straddles so much time.