"WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PLANET???" Thus were hundreds of unsuspecting friends, relatives, and (most often) total strangers greeted this year by our oh-so-friendly son, matter-of-factly assuming they shared his newly-found incredible passion for outer space. (Notable factlet: most men answer "Earth," while women are all over the map - or solar system - with their responses). Let others work toward curing cancer, or hitting 75 home runs; Mike spent the year contenting himself with learning the temperature at the cloud tops of Venus, how many moons Uranus has, or when Neptune will next be farther from the sun than Pluto. When he wasn't trying to become the master of All Things Extraterrestrial, Mike did great in school (he's now in third grade) and again played Little League. In Cub Scouts, he was among the top fundraisers in his pack's summer car wash and fall popcorn sale, winning himself a free trip to 2006 summer camp (Dave is already visiting www.BuyHemlockOnline.com in anticipation). While you ponder your favorite planet, we'll leave you with Mike's universal public exit line: "BYE! HAVE A NICE DAY AND NIGHT!"
Emily is now almost halfway done with her final year of elementary school. Highlights for her included keeping score at Mike's Little League games (the height-challenged Emily brought a booster seat to the games, using it as a stool so she could reach the scoreboard), continued involvement with cheerleading, and beginning instrumental music. This was her first year of competitive tournament cheerleading and we got the optimal result: They advanced from their first tournament to the state tournament in Syracuse (the thrill of victory!). But they failed to advance from Syracuse to the regional tournament in Trenton, sparing the family another month of practices, not to mention the $209 per person that event would have cost (excepting George Washington in the 18th century, and several corrupt NJ politicians today, would ANY sane person pay $209 to get to Trenton?). Regarding music, the good news is that Emily was selected for french horn (the district provides this instrument - FREE!). The bad news is that Emily was selected for french horn (if you've ever heard a neophyte playing one, you don't need to wonder what cattle breeding sounds like). Emily also satisfied her creative side by designing our family Christmas card this year.
2005 was extremely kind to Meghan. She was involved in swimming and track, and had class trips to Quebec in January and Washington DC in May, not to mention a ton of June activities tied to her completion of middle school. In July, she spent two weeks as a volunteer counselor at a camp for blind kids. In August, JV swim practices began, and an outstanding coach made her work harder than she'd ever worked before. By season's end, her event times had improved by more than 20% from the beginning. More importantly, she formed some incredible friendships from her swim involvement. The JV swimmers, a wonderful group of girls, had parties all season, sometimes twice a week, and are planning more activities together even though their season ended in October. And the discipline and time management skills that athletes have to develop led to an outstanding first quarter in ninth grade, including something neither her mother nor father ever managed: a grade of 99 in math, the highest in her class.
Dave's billboard modeling career from 2004 seems to be on hiatus (he maintains it's not true that "you've seen one doughy middle-aged guy with thinning hair, you've seen 'em all," but the phone hasn't rung in a while). He's more than gotten by though. Dave was a coach on Mike's Little League team this year, helping preside over the "Mother's Day Miracle" in which the hapless squad "won" a game 19-19, plus a first-round playoff game in which the team scored the final 12 runs to pull off an improbable upset. He's still the leader for Mike's Cub Scout den and headed up the pack's fall popcorn drive (he was proud of how quickly he could make Katie cringe, just by donning his "Popcorn Kernel" t-shirt!). When a call went out for photographers for the Pop Warner yearbook, Dave let Katie volunteer him. He wound up shooting more than a thousand pictures of the players and cheerleaders at Emily's games. Dave resumed working outside the house this year. Somehow, this man who gets tremors when asked to change a lightbulb is being entrusted to recruit top executives for national homebuilding companies. Makes about as much sense as Elmer Fudd being a voice coach, right? If you're contemplating moving, you might consider buying a house built before 2005 for this reason.
This brings us to Katie. Could anyone live with: