Cowlicks

I've said before that the first thing I noticed when we picked up a five-day-old Tanner from the hospital in Kansas City was that cowlick right in the middle of his forehead. The cowlick is part of what makes Tanner Tanner. I thought to myself, "The kid's only five days old, but I already know he's going to hate that thing when he's a teenager."

That day has arrived. He was combing his hair tonight before he went to bed. When I asked him why he was combing his hair before going to bed, he told me that he'd put too much gel in the front and that he was trying to get some of it out. He admitted that he was using gel to try to hide his cowlick. When I told him that it was just so darned cuuuuuuute, he rolled his eyes and told me that was the problem. He says he's tired of people coming up to him at school and affectionately poking him in the forehead. (If the offenders are cute girls, though, he might not mind so much in another year or two.)

It could get worse. Maybe someday he'll go bald. Perish the thought! Then he'll want his cowlick back, right? We have no idea if there's baldness in his genetic makeup. Time will tell.

Still a character

Here are a couple of recent, random Lindsey stories.

1. On our drive to Paris, Tanner sat in the front seat (he's now old enough to do that) and Lindsey was alone in the back for most of the trip. At one point, she sneezed. After a pause of about five seconds, she loudly demanded, "Isn't anyone going to say 'bless you'?"

2. Something we saw at Disneyland reminded me of the movie The Hunt for Red October. I've always liked that movie. I thought Tanner might enjoy it, so I rented it from iTunes. Since the kids are still on break for one more day, I told Tanner that he could stay up late and we could watch it after we got Lindsey down.

I tried to get her down a little early so that we could start the movie. I didn't want her to know about it, of course. Well, she figured it out pretty quickly. After she was up a couple of times, I thought I finally had her down. When we were done with the movie, though, I discovered that her little toy baby carriage was parked a couple of feet behind the couch where Tanner and I had been sitting. It wasn't there when we started the movie. That was just her way of letting us know that she knew what we were up to and that she'd watched the movie with us for a while without us knowing it. I've always said that she's pure evil, but she's so funny about it that it's sometimes hard to see her for the devil that she really is.

(Here's the part where I sound really old: I remember when that movie came out in theaters. I really wanted to see it. Stace and I were desperately poor at the time and waited several weeks for the movie to come to our local dollar theater so that we didn't have to spend much money on it. In my mind, that all happened fairly recently. Would you be surprised to learn that the movie came out twenty years ago?)

Made it out alive

Once again, we survived the Disney machine. I often marvel at how both Disney and Apple have integrated themselves so thoroughly into our lives. Those folks are making a fortune. My only consolation about paying so much money for food and souvenirs--and it's a small one--was that I was using euros that I had gotten last year when the U.S. dollar had a really good exchange rate against the euro. That allowed me to fool myself into thinking that things weren't really as expensive for me as they seemed. It was a lie, but a little self-deception now and then never hurts.

Since we knew how it all worked this time, our strategy was much more efficient than the first time. We didn't find ourselves waiting in many lines, and we pretty much got to do everything we wanted to do. I rode "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril," which has a loop. It was pretty cool. I couldn't get Lindsey and Tanner to do it, though.

First, here's how one spends most of one's time at Disneyland:



Nah, just kidding. Like I said, we actually didn't spend that much time in line.

Here are some more pictures:

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And then, to top it all off, Lindsey celebrated by losing her first two teeth on the night we got back. She was pretty excited.

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And, finally, I'm now ten pounds down from the holidays. Apparently, the key to losing weight is both to be a single parent and to take trips to extremely overpriced amusement parks. It's a winning formula.

Off we go

Tomorrow, the kids and I set off for Disneyland Paris. It's about a six-and-a-half-hour drive. I'll take some pictures, although I doubt that it's changed that much in two years. If you want to see in advance how our trip went, just click on this.

(Whew! I'm glad that's done. Now I don't have to feel any pressure to take more pictures.)

Right on the nose

The Onion is a satirical news publication that I check out from time to time. There was a timely article that appeared yesterday. I won't link to the website because some of the articles can be a bit raw, but here are a couple of funny excerpts from this one. Keep in mind as you read this that I'm going to Disneyland and going on a cruise within the the next two months. Ouch.

Here's the headline: "U.S. Authorities Can't Really Fault Al-Qaeda For Deadly Bombing Of Carnival Cruise Ship"

Here's the subheading: "'Those Things Represent Everything That's Wrong With America,' Officials Say"

And here are a couple of snippets from the article. They're dead on:

"Terrorism is a crime against humanity for which there can never be any justification," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters. "But then again, so is a 130,000-ton boat with an indoor ice skating rink, 24-hour buffet access, and a dance club called the Caliente Lounge. To condemn al-Qaeda outright for this attack would be to ignore the fact that, well, you can't really argue with them on this one."

"Those things are really just atrocious," Napolitano added.

When asked if the CIA had any prior information about the terrorist attack, [CIA Director Leon] Panetta questioned if one could really call the destruction of a horrible thing that offends the very core of what it means to be human "terrorism."

Sources in the State Department said their only problem with the strike was that it wasn't on a Disney cruise ship, which they claimed would have allowed al-Qaeda to kill two birds with one stone.

"Typically I would say that if we don't move on and go about our daily lives, then the terrorists will win," Obama said during a late-day announcement. "But if this stops just one U.S. citizen from booking a 10-day getaway on one of those abominations, then I am happy to cede victory to al-Qaeda on this one. Congratulations, al-Qaeda. And thank you."

Or, maybe not

I got the expected but disappointing phone call from Royal Caribbean last night. They're not going to stop in Alexandria in April. Things are just too uncertain. Instead, we'll spend two days in Istanbul. Not quite the same, but it should still be interesting.

This has resulted in me having another one of those "how did my life end up this way?" moments. While growing up in Kenosha and Provo, I never really anticipated arriving at a point in my life where I'd find myself saying, "Well, I guess I'll go to Turkey again."

But darn it, I'm going to make it to Egypt one of these days.

Well, maybe

With the payment deadline upon us, I went ahead and made the final (and now nonrefundable) payment on the cruise in April. So we're committed. It's an open question as to whether the ship will actually stop at Alexandria. Obviously, no one knows what the situation will be two months from now. Tourism is critical to the Egyptian economy, so I've got to think that whoever ends up running things there will want to do everything possible to bring the tourists back as quickly as possible.

I decided that the cruise was worth it even if we don't stop in Egypt, just for the sake of my sanity. It will be a nice break for everyone. We can also visit Athens. If we don't stop in Egypt, I'm assuming that the cruise line will try to make it up to us somehow, maybe with onboard credit or something like that.

I'm really hoping that it works out for us to visit Egypt, though. In addition to the sites that I already want to visit, how cool would it be to visit a place that had just experienced a revolution? It's history in the making. It was interesting to visit Croatia last fall, knowing that they'd experienced a war less than twenty years ago. I'd love to visit the places in Cairo that I'm reading about right now in the news.

However, I have no desire to take dumb risks. We'll only go if it's safe. If I had to bet right now, I'd say that Egypt won't be stable enough for us to visit in two months. The situation changes by the hour, though. Who knows?