Dale & Mary Young

Today we drove to Portland to witness the marriage of my cousin Dale Young to his beautiful new bride Mary. The wedding was very lovely, the bride was gorgeous, the ballroom was nice, the decorations were tasteful and the food was delicious. My Marriage Outlook Prediction based on the always reliable Wedding-Cake-Deliciousness-Factor: a 10 out of 10. I had the chocolate and it was not polluted with nasty raspberry (such a common mistake). The frosting was delicious and not overly sweet. Cake very moist, dense and chocolatey. Overall extremely satisfying. So their marriage is destined for success with many happy years together in perfect wedded bliss.

It was really fun to see some of my cousins and Aunt Linda that I haven't seen for 20 years or more too. All in all a wonderful day. It was one of those times when I felt blessed and grateful to have been invited and allowed to be part of the event.

I will say one thing about Dale and Mary. They are perhaps the most thoughtful and kind couple I've ever known. I wish we all lived closer together because I just love the time I spend around them. Dale couldn't be luckier to have married Mary... I think she is positively terrific. They are so cute together- so obviously in love. And it is a mature love. A caring, gentle, understanding love for each other. A wonderful and inspiring thing to see.

I wish you absolutely all the best, Mr. and Mrs. Young!

Monster Truck Showdown

So the signs that I am getting OLD are starting to show. I forgot that I had told Marina she could go spend the night at Sydney's house tonight and so I decided to get tickets to the Puyallup Fair to go see the Monster Truck Showdown. Kind of an expensive outing but Dakota's always wanted to see the monster trucks so it seemed like a great idea. At the time. So then Marina reminds me that she will be at Sydney's. So last minute Raeden comes along instead. Lesson number one: if you're ever tempted to hit "pay now" and finalize an order for two children's tickets and one adult ticket to go see a Monster Truck Show ask yourself this question... do I really want to take two small people to a Monster Truck Show without another big person to talk to? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's try and keep this in the order of the pictures.

OK. We got there in time to wander around and tire out our feet a little bit. And we saw the cows. Cows are cool. Cows with big horns are even cooler. Cool enough to get your picture taken in front if them. With sunglasses on.So then that takes us up to the Monster Truck Show. The kids were excited and anxious so they got us over to the grandstand well in advance of the show starting. We got to go down into the "pits" and see the trucks up close. And take pictures next to them. That tire would make one huge tire swing!
This one was the kids' favorite because it was painted camo. American Thunder or something like that.
And then we found some good seats.
So how come you can't get two kids to both smile & look at the camera at the same time? It's either one...
or the other.
But it's easier to get them to smile once you get them some soda pop and cotton candy!
Mmmmmmmm! I love you, cotton candy!

So all was going well. And then the show started. Somehow all of our talking about how loud it was going to be and how exciting it was going to be didn't quite make the impression that the actual deafening roar made as the monster trucks revved their engines!

Here they all are, lined up to be introduced.

One of the really loud ones was El Matador. It wasn't any of our favorite or anything but it happened to have the picture that turned out the least blurry so there it is.

First thing up was the wheelie contest. Here goes Dream Catcher, I think the loudest of the bunch.And the American Something-or-another. OK, the wheelies and unbelievable loudness was much more memorable and impressive than the names of the trucks.

So by this time I was getting, "Is it almost over?" "How much longer is it, Uncle Sean?" "Let's go do something else."

The El Matador did end up being one of the coolest trucks. Very loud and aggressive. We wondered if he was going over backwards on this one.

After the wheelie contest we watched the local guys with their weird looking rigs do tough car races. That was kind of a laugh. The dude from Buckley in his modified used-to-be-a-Jeep lost part of his drive shaft on his second run. There were 3 local guys and one guy that came up from Louisiana... he wiped the local guys out doing the run in about half their time. Then came the Monster Truck Races where two of the big rigs at a time would crash & smash over the row of cars and race to get across the fastest. By that time I was hearing, "I gotta go bathroom!" So off we went to the bathroom and to see the rest of the fair. Lesson number two: one hour of plugging their ears and feeling their seats shiver from the reverberations of sound is plenty for an 8 & 4 year old.

But they like bunnies a lot.

And baby goats.

And they are very impressed with milking cows. "You mean that's where the milk comes from that we DRINK!?" Which then leads to, "can we have ice cream?" We decided we'd stop and get ice cream cones on the way home. I'll let you in on a little secret: I was hoping they'd both fall asleep before we left the parking lot and we could just let the cotton candy/soda pop sugar rush be enough.

They liked the huge pumpkins too.

But I do believe that the highlight of the whole night was the stuffed flowers with wire stems that they won playing the duck-pond game. OK- I got one thing right: if kids are dying to play a game at the fair make sure to choose one where they are guaranteed to win.

They were also impressed with the colored fountain by the exit. Do these two look like a couple of kids that are going to be asleep immediately in the car or like two little kids that are so hyped up they're on a second (or third) wind and will be asking, "when are we going to get ice cream?" "Where are we going to stop for that ice cream?" "I can't wait for ice cream!" until I stop, 2 blocks away, at the closest possible McDonalds and fill the promise?

So bye-bye Puyallup Fair. Bye-bye Monster Truck Showdown. See you in another ten years.

The kids did have a great time. And they talked animatedly about how cool the trucks were. I could personally have enjoyed it a bit longer but one hour was good for them and after all it was for them that we went so it was good. Final lesson: you can get into the fair a lot cheaper if you don't include Monster Truck Showdown tickets... and you can watch monster trucks on YouTube. But I bet if you do that you'll spend the whole evening hearing, "I wish we had tickets to the Monster Truck show!" "Daddy, how come we can't go see the monster trucks?!" "It would be so awesome if we could have seen the monster trucks!"