New Years Part 2

I hope everyone had a great New Year's Day! I think I already broke a resolution--be a better blogger! I didn't mean to go this long between posts. Anywho, the brunch. One of the best parts for me is the picture above. After we ate, my brother, dad, and I took the kids across the street to the park. After romping on the swings and monkey bars, we started hiking Falcon Hill. It's a real easy, short hike as Arizona hikes go, and the kids had a blast chasing the dogs up the trail. They made me promise to take them on a longer one someday, so I told them in a few weeks we'll all go hike the Wind Cave Trail at Usery Park, which is only 10 minutes from our house. If you haven't been to Arizona, this is the place to be if you like outdoorsy stuff. The mountain hikes around here are beautiful, and with the weather in the mid 60's to low 70's, well you just can't beat a beautiful desert hike. In the pic above, our house is one of the ones in the background.

In the spirit of other resolutions, like more time at the gym and less fatty foods, I decided not to post FOOD pictures. I'm betting that's on everyone's list! Instead, here is our menu. Gregg made everything on it by hand. He started cooking on the 30th, and went straight through until 5 AM New Year's Day. He got back up around 9 to keep going. Voici le menu:

Appetizers:
Lil smokies n bacon (Mmm, good--mini dogs wrapped in bacon covered with brown sugar!)
Baked Dates w/chorizo prosciutto (Thought I hated dates, but damn these were good.)
Mini Quiches (The only "cheat"...frozen LOL)
Bloody Mary Soup (A type of Shrimp Cocktail)

Drinks:
Champagne
Mimosas
Bloody Mary’s
Orange juice
Apple Cider
Coffee Costa Rican & Mocha Java
Juice boxes for the kiddies

Main Dishes:
Pork Roast in apple
Prime Rib Roast (OK this was fantastic!)
Penne pasta and turkey sausage
Fudge Waffles (Picture this: Chocolate waffles with white chocolate chips...dreamy!)
Blueberry Waffles (Fresh blueberries; G. has none of that dried boxed stuff!)
Texas French Toast (This and the next one are from French bread, let go stale overnight, then turned into French toast...really good--I'm still eating the leftovers for breakfast!)
Double Cinnamon French Toast

Sides:
Mac N Cheese 5 cheeses (Yes, 5!)
Mac n Cheese 10 cheeses (In case your heart still beats from the 5, this one uses 10 cheeses!)
Sweet Potato Hash
Bacon
Sausage Links
Turkey sausage patties
Baked eggs and mushroom and ham crisp (I should have taken pics of this one...like an egg cupcake, from a muffin pan, with the ham as the "paper" and the eggs baked inside, poached style.)
Scrambled eggs n Cheese
Scrambled eggs mushroom/green onion/ cheese/
Gravlax (Salmon in herbs and spices; it was in the fridge with a giant rock on top of it for 2 days...apparently that is the customary way to make it.)

Dessert:
Pumpkin cheesecake (Yum!)

Sometimes having a fantastic cook for a boyfriend is what makes "More gym time" the resolution you have to keep!

Organ-ized Chaos

Last weekend was another "Gay Dads" group outing. We joined some of the guys for a trip to Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa. When we pulled into the parking lot, I got some eye rolling from Gregg because it just struck me as funny that a bunch of gay guys were having a meeting at a place called "Organ Stop". Then again, I guess my sense of humor isn't always the same as everyone else's...

Organ Stop is a member of what I call the "Germ Festival Restaurants", a place which is full of kids running around all over the place like Peter Piper Pizza or the one with that rodent, Chuck E. Cheese. Their shtick is they have a giant organ that rises from the basement. (No, not that kind sillies, the musical one. Geez, you people!) Some guy plays songs and puppets dance around while the kids run all over the place climbing on tables and generally causing mild destruction. You know, good family fun. A glimpse into parenthood future. Much like the ghost of Christmas future in A Christmas Carol, it's scary and bleak. But we can suck it up once in a while to make the kid happy. *Grin*

Whole New World?

Well it's been a little while since the last entry...not sure why. Anyway, some of you have asked what's going on, and the answer is...Nothing! There is still no update from the court, so we're in a holding pattern (still). But, I guess I can't say we've been doing nothing, cause we kind of have. For a while, Gregg's been on this website called http://www.meetgaycouples.com/. It's a site for gay couples to network and meet up with other couples for socializing (uh, no, not like Manhunt--other social activities!). I've been kind of embarrassed because the masthead on their homepage has a collage of member photos, and our pic is one of them. Anyway, he's made a few friends and they've emailed a few times. On our page it says we're adopting, so we got a message from a couple in Paradise Valley, Jim and Chuck. They have four kids, and they were having a dinner party with some friends and some other people from the gay couples site so they asked us to come. Those of you who know me won't believe me, but I'm a little shy when I'm around a lot of people I don't know so I was a little hesitant, but I'm glad we went. We had a great time. Jim and Chuck are very friendly and so are their friends. Two of the other couples that were there had kids as well. We've never been around gay families before. (I know, huh?) Really, we don't have any gay friends with kids. I never really gave much thought to that, but I guess it's strange.

Anyway, my point. I'm not sure how I expected kids with two dads to act, but I think I expected something other then what I saw, which is: nothing. Meaning, nothing I wouldn't have seen at my mother's house when all the kids are over. Kids running and playing, the boys into video games and the girls dressing the youngest girl as a princess. (She was so cute...a little girl just over a year, mixed race, whose fathers were a white guy and a black guy--just like the family we're hoping for! We talked a lot with them.) I guess to be at a party with gay men and kids is a different atmosphere to me, but one I liked. Everyone was so supportive of us and our adoption plan. One of the couples had a son who was turning 18 the following weekend, and invited us to his party as well.

That party was a real eye opener for us. There were 15-20 couples there and we were the only ones without kids. The only ones! The little buggers were running all around, the guys all talking about starting school, doctor visits, who won't eat what, just all stuff kids do. Sure it sounds like any other gathering, but that's the whole point--they're just normal families that happen to have two fathers. I found myself asking, Where did all these people come from? I had no idea there were so many gay dads in Phoenix. Well duh. They're not out at Charlies or Amsterdam on the weekends boozing it up with Junior; they're home reading stories and making dinner. They don't have a lot of visibility in the community.

The kids were all well adjusted, smart, and friendly. A few just started high school and were talking about being on the football team. (Kyler, high school kid: "You know how there's a full back and a half back on the team?" Will, adult gay male: "Um, no?"...LOL) Two 8 year olds were playing piano, and they were all jumping in the pool. We met a lot of new friends, and saw how many ways there are to create families. Some used surrogacy. Some open adoption. Some foster care and then adopted. One couple shared custody of their daughter with her two moms. On and on. None of them had any hang ups about the two dads situation. They were just families. Plus, they all meet up a lot, so the kids will always know they aren't the only ones with same sex parents. A built in support group. Not that they looked like they needed support.

We even met a couple who lives a few blocks away from us. They just dropped their son at ASU to start his freshman year, and have an 8 year old girl as well. We've made a lot of new friends, and I can't wait to get together with them again. As Jim said, "Don't worry, it will all work out fine. Remember, gay men have to go out of their way to become parents. It's not something that would be part of their world otherwise. That's one reason we cherish our kids so much". Yeah. I definitely see that. There was a lot of love in those parents eyes. *Sigh*

Dry Run

Sunday August 3rd was our nephew Noah's third birthday. We celebrated it at my parents house. It was a fun day. As we were getting ready to leave, his brother Ethan started grabbing onto my leg and saying "I want to go home with you Uncle Bobby!". Now Ethan is five, and a really great kid. He loves his Uncle Bobby and Uncle Gregg. He's a little, shall we say, "gun shy" about staying somewhere away from his parents. He's also a little afraid of dogs, especially big ones like The Boys. The Boys love kids, and would never hurt them, but they do get a little excited when guests come over. If you're five, short, and excitable, they'll love you to death. Loving you to death means knocking you down and licking your face and trust me, Labrador saliva is not very tasty. Since getting licked in the face is how I usually wake up in the morning, I'm kind of a slobber connoisseur. Anyway, Ethan promised not to change his mind in the middle of the night, and not to be afraid of the dogs. To his credit, he kept both promises.

The visit went really well. Gregg and Ethan played an online game, something about penguins (no, not Tango again!) and then we watched some Boomerang. If you don't know, Boomerang is a channel from Cartoon Network, and it plays all the old cartoons we watched as kids, like Space Ghost and Johnny Quest. Ethan was fascinated by cartoons he never heard of before. He was a little offended that Thundar the Barbarian ripped off the light saber and called it a "sun sword" but hey, no one said they were original. We let him sleep in the other room, and I told him some bedtime stories before we both fell asleep in there.

Next morning, at 7am, the first words out of his mouth were "What game should we play first?". I was about to get a lesson in five year old time management. It seems you go from one game to another, without stopping, until it's time to go to bed. So we played Chutes and Ladders, helicopter, threw parachute guys off the second floor balcony, XBox, and this candy grabber game all before ten o' clock. We took a quick time out for breakfast (Trix) and to feed the animals. Then it was off to the park to go on every swing and climby thing they had, and then back home to take The Boys out for some morning tennis ball playing. Did I mention a spin with the remote control car? All while talking non stop. We would have gone in the pool, but now it was time to go to Dave and Busters at Tempe Marketplace.

D & B's was pretty fun. We played a lot of games, won a lot of tickets, got some crappy prizes, and had lunch. I guess I knew we did a good job because Ethan didn't want to go home. I was out of energy so yes, it was time to go home! Thank goodness we're getting an infant. They don't start talking as soon as they're born right?

Firetrucks and Birthday Cake

Today was a nice day. Two of my sister Suzanne's kids, Timmy and Christina, have birthdays that are two weeks apart, so they always combine the two into a summer party. They do it up nice for the kids and all the cousins. This year my brother in law managed to get a fire truck parked in his driveway. The kids had a blast on it, climbing around on it, blowing the siren (man that sucker is LOUD!), and honking the horn. The truck was full of water, so my brother Dennis and brother in law Keith manned the hoses, while some of the kids climbed on top of it and worked the water spout. The kids all had fun with the "water war" and everyone and everything was soaked! They had a great time at the party. Not sure about G, but I know I feel a little tinge of loneliness at kid events lately. I can't wait for our little one to be here to join in the reindeer games. Arrh this takes soooo long! Well at least our adoption coordinator Lane from the IAC is back from vacation. He's going to look over our website next week and let us know what he thinks. We've had it up a while and I keep tweaking it because I wanted it to be perfect before sending it out to him. With any luck this damn home study from our Arizona adoption agency will get approved soon and we can finally get in the book. My birthday is coming up in two weeks and I can't think of a better gift then that!

Sadly, there were no actual firemen at the party...sigh.