I am a Haunted Mailbox!

In honor of Halloween and the most awesome costume ever, I asked Lily if she would write something about the haunted mailbox that she and Karl made together. 

I wasn't sure what to expect... but if I was honest I would say that I was hoping for her to write about how rewarding it was to create something so cool from scratch with her fabulous father. Perhaps even a gracious mention of her loving and supportive mom encouraging her hard work could have been worked into the paragraph somehow.

Instead, Lily chose to write from the point of view of her very own creation...the demented mailbox.

Here is her story.

 

The Haunted Mailbox!

Lillian J. Gieseke
Every day the same old junk- sitting there, receiving mail, and... actually there's nothing else! 

Except for the mailman opening my stomach everyday. 

That gets annoying after awhile. 

Well, now you know why I was thrilled when someone stuck their hand in too far.

It was a girl- about five or six years old, on the young side but at least someone to help me with my evil plan. I wanted to HAUNT whoever came to put mail in me. I started by striking a deal with the little girl. It wasn't much of a deal. I just convinced her to fight a raccoon. She agreed and I persuaded a vicious raccoon to do that. 

It could've had rabies, I 'm not sure. 

Let's just say when the raccoon was finished with her, she wasn't too happy. I was pleased to see that her ghost could look real solid if she wanted to and she forgave me. The mailman screamed when he saw her ghost in my stomach. Our career together was officially kicked off. We started our partnership by the girl sticking her hands out and screaming

"Save me! Save me!"

That made the boys start daring each other to stick their arms in me as far as they could.

Then, I would pull them in and strike the same deal. They weren't very mad about not being let go. They wanted to haunt things anyway. Then they found out they could be invisible if they wanted to. They had a contest on who could be the scariest by sneaking up behind the innocent people and saying BOO as loud as they could. 

As soon as they started doing this the girls wouldn't go within a twenty foot radius of me.

In short, beware of a mailbox with a chain and a couple of ravens perched on top.

It might be me.

Be afraid.

Haunted Mailbox on patrol... looking for innocents to terrorize.

Creepy Haunted Mailbox story
by Lily G.
5th grade

Been Booed.

 My family has Been Booed!

We discovered a Halloween package on our doorstep with all sorts of fabulous and spooky treats, including these awesome socks, immediately coveted by Henry.

The kids were so excited about this because it was a COMPLETE and TOTAL surprise. They didn't quite understand how it happened at first and thought that someone like the tooth fairy (who has been spending a lot of time in Henry's room lately) got a wild hair and decided to do something Halloween-y for a change.
I explained that it was not a Halloween fairy, but one of our cool neighbors and now it was our turn to leave some surprise packages.
They liked this idea even more.
They had a great time putting together a their own treat bags waited until dark to set out to do their own Booing.
"It's like we were Halloween ninjas." said Lily, who was nearly "caught" by her friend's dad.
All very thrilling.
Here is the website in case you would like to do your own neighborhood Been Booed. There is an office version too... I'm pretty sure that this counts as team building and will likely increase productivity and stuff like that. Nighttime ninja operations are probably optional.
Here ya go...
http://beenbooed.com/
BOO!
I really love our neighborhood.

A Princess Cake in 40 hours or less.

Rosie is a bit of an impulse shopper (huge understatement) and when she came across a cake making kit where you can create your own cake version of a Barbie doll, she decided that this was a "must have" item. 

I completely agreed.

Can you tell that she is excited about making "Princess Cake?"

Things got a little out of control when the princess cake pan turned into a party hat. 

The boys favorite song right now is Party Rock Anthem which they were blasting in the kitchen at full volume, so the sound track for this photo is electronic club music.

Eventually, we had to turn off the tunes and go to bed, leaving Princess Cake to cool. 

It turned out Princess Cake had plenty of time.
Our Saturday was a busy one and cake decorating was moved to the back burner.

But never fear...

Bright and early Sunday morning Miss Rose and I were able to finish up the spectacular Princess Cake.

(Jamie is in the background, making his morning toast.)

Nailed it.
I learned that the best pose for Princess Cake is to position her dancing with her arms up...helps keep her pits free of icing. 

And it only took us a mere 40 hours...
from the crack of the first egg to the final touchdown princess pose.

Floppy Hair!

Imagine my delight when Karl recently discovered his very own (adorable) senior portrait in a box of old pics and shared it with me. 

Since Rosie was with me, I showed it to her and asked her who it was.

"Justin Bieber" she shot back without an ounce of hesitation.

Yep... you're right Rosie, now I can see how you could confuse your dad with Justin Bieber.

In the same box, we found this historic photo of Karl, ten or so years later upon graduating from architecture school. He is posing with his future business partner (and founding member of the fabulous firm, Gieseke/Rostenthal Architecture and Design) and Christy, Andrew's future amazing wife. 

(ok... that's a lot of futures for these three)

When I showed Rosie this photo and asked her who it was, just as quickly as she identified the 18 year old Karl as Justin Bieber, this man was clearly

"Daddy with Floppy Hair!"

While it was nice, (and entertaining) that for a moment Karl was seen as a teen idol through the eyes of his youngest daughter, it was without a doubt that he was more happily recognized as the floppy haired daddy so important to Miss Rose.

Miss Piggy loves Kermit

Words can't really add much to these photos...but I will mention that Karl and I were dressed to go to a Halloween party where lots and lots of other folks were costumed and looking equally as goofy, all for a great cause. While our children were embarrassed on our behalf, ("...are you sure there will be other people dressed up too?") we thought we looked pretty darn festive. 

Miss Piggy loves Kermie!

I received a sort of  compliment during the evening when someone told me that I wasn't chubby enough to be a good pig. I really feel I must defend my favorite Muppet here... Miss Piggy is not at all chubby- she is a bit curvy perhaps, but in all of the photos that I could find of her she appears to be quite fit. She is also very modest... my Miss Piggy research did not lead me to any piggy cleavage or unsavory photos. Miss Piggy is a feminist pig who appreciates glamor and high fashion and is devoted to her frog. 

Snake Hunt

The kids and I went for a walk in the woods the other day and while I do my best to avoid anything snake-y while in nature's bounty, Jamie made it his personal mission to find one. 

I suppose we were nature walking at cross purposes.

I have fond memories of watching "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Animal Kingdom" with naturalist Marlin Perkins and his sidekick Jim Fowler. Marlin was very informative, but also pretty bossy and did stuff like watch from a safe distance while Jim wrestled the angry boa constrictor.

I think that Jamie was hoping that his snake hunter assistant would take on the role of "Jim."

Unfortunately, she had a hard time remembering if she was hunter of snakes or dinosaurs. 

Also. I'm pretty sure that "Wild Kingdom's" Jim hardly ever wore pink hair bows while snake hunting, so the similarities between Rosie and Jim may have been a stretch.

Could you guess who won the battle between Jamie's committed search for a snake and my general avoidance of them?

Instead of wrestling the snake, Rosie took charge of crowd control so that Jamie can snake handle without distraction.

While Jamie was determined to find a snake, he was woefully unprepared to catch one, so when he was looking at Mr. Snake eye to eye, scooping him up bare handed gave him the willies.

However, he was determined to cuddle Mr. Snake, so he did what any great hunter would do and quickly removed his socks, using them as makeshift gloves. 

I think that this was a quick lesson in humility for Mr. Snake to find himself suddenly trapped by tube socks.

Jamie was making big plans to bring Mr. Snake home, keep him bedside in an aquarium and make him a loving member of the family when his older cool cousin came to my rescue.

Big Cool Cousin happens to be a snake expert and  convinced Jamie that Mr. Snake needed to stay in the woods with his snake parents and snake friends.

"Oh darn, but he's right..."  I agreed, he will be far happier here then in your bedroom.

 

 Cool Cousin also told Jamie that he didn't really need tube sock gloves to snuggle the Mr. Snake.

Jamie enjoyed the company of Mr. Snake with brave bare hands for awhile longer before releasing him back into his natural habitat.

Go slither in peace Mr. Snake...

Thank you very much for spending some time with us,

sorry about the misuse of socks. I hope it didn't cause you any permanent emotional damage.

Two Figures in Construction Paper

 

Henry and Jamie both created collage self portraits. 

Because they are both in grade school, they have embraced the medium of construction paper and have really taken it to a serious level of realism.  

Check out their good works...

Henry in photograph is above.

His collage is below.

Uncanny, I know.

Again,

The real Jamie is above.

The cut paper version is below.

All parties interested in having a portrait commissioned should contact their manager/mom/me.

Plans for future hoity toity gallery featuring construction paper collages are currently in development and likely to open for business soon-ish.  

T.B.D.B.I.T.L.

T.B.D.B.I.T.L is a heartfelt acronym for the "the best damn band in the land." 

It not only perfectly describes how Ohio State alumni both present and future feel about our band, it's absolutely true.For someone like me who is challenged by doing any two things at once- the OSU Marching Band can multitask beyond imaginable. They play their instruments, they precision march, they sometimes sing... they are terrific and they got to be so damn good through commitment and hard work.

In fact, my dad likes to point out that the OSU band motto applies to most things in life...

Pick Up Your Feet,

Keep Your Corners Square.

And Drive, Drive, Drive!

You have to agree with that... it's tough to accomplish much of anything until you first pick up your feet. 

The band came to Cincinnati to play the half time show for the Bengal game and treated the city to a pre-game show on the corner. While Rosie can be equally as loud as a brass band- she was a little surprised at the volume.

As an aside, she REALLY loves the white tights that go with her new cheerio uniform and refers to them her "hanty-toes" so now, because "hanty-toes" is a far better word than pantyhose, we will likely never correct Rosie on proper pronunciation until she goes to college. Maybe not even then. 

 

 Here are the kids in tribute to our state spelling out the O-H-I-O with the tuba as the O. 

They were thrown off, because with our friendly stand in "O" they found themselves unable to get to  their assigned places and Rosie flatly refused to participate at all. 

She is a little nervous of tubas and those who play them.

Here is the gang in OHIO position. 
Please note that Henry is the H because he is seriously awesome at making his strong H for Henry. And Rosie recovered from her tuba scare to be a pretty good dot for the I. She is only choking Lily a tiny little bit. Of course, Mary and Jamie have totally nailed their "O's."

 The kids had a great time listening to the band until our sons got arrested.

Not really, but they did enjoy posing with this kindly motorcycle policeman whose very important job was to block off the street and direct traffic away from the best damn band in the land.