Passport to Forever - 2011

 

Our little guys had a very exciting opportunity to work the catwalk last night at the annual Passport to Forever benefit for the International Adoption Center at Cincinnati Children's.

Rosie got to walk with her little buddy Ryan, because they are younger (read: not to be trusted) they were supposed to walk with a helper, who happened to be big sis Mary.  

Mary said that the two of them decided that they were going to "hold hands and walk all by themselves."

And so they did.

They worked their Christmas pj's with style...

Rosie was a very sassy little sugar plum fairy and Ryan was the most serious and adorable Santa ever.

I can't tell you how much I hope that these two go to prom someday so that I can use these photos will serve as a classic reminder of their early days together.

 

Jamie and Henry rocked their look as very handsome young dudes in blazers.

Jamie chose to wear his bow tie because he has a clear understanding of how awesome this look is.  

 

 Jamie loves to dress up and look stylish...not so much a priority for Henry, though he still enjoyed himself while on the runway.

Not sure exactly what Jamie said to Henry here, but he is definitely giving his big brother the dagger eyes.

It was a fantastic evening. 

The kids enjoyed having a chance to show off and their proud parents and guests were happy to cheer for them.

  Everyone at the event was  delighted to be there and do what they can to support Dr. Mary Staat and the staff of the IAC... so instrumental in helping each of these kids find their forever family.

Day of the Dead + 3 More Days

I was hoping to get these photos of the Day of the Dead inspired mosaic skull on the actual Mexican holiday of November 1st. But then it took me three more days to recover from the Ohio holiday of Halloween to find them and post... so in honor of the Day of the Dead +3, here is

La Cabeza 

by Niki de Saint Phalle

La Cabeza can be found in Charlotte, NC in a very nice little park across from the art museum that serves as a temporary, (but long term) home for some wonderful sculptures. 

Before she died in 2002, Niki de Saint Phalle expressed a desire for children to be drawn to her sculptures and be able to explore them fully. 

She would have been very cool with Henry crawling into La Cabeza's sinuses and taking childhood exploration to a new level of familiarity.

 You can walk through the ears of La Cabeza to check out his brains...so fun for so many reasons.

 

Who knew skull brains could be so awesome. 

Here is Henry peeking out under the brains and through his choppers.

Not many little dudes can strike a casual pose like Jamie, from the inside of these very pearly whites.

Another one of Ms. de Saint Phalle creations has a permanent home standing guard in front of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. The Firebird is directly across the street from the his pal, La Cabeza. We love The Firebird because it reminds us so much of Lily's favorite birdy friend, Harry.

Here is Harry striking his own impressive firebird on a pumpkin pose.

I think you'll agree that the similarities between the two are quite remarkable.

Important Stuff that we Learned on Halloween...

 

 We learned lots of important stuff during Halloween of 2011.

For example...

We learned that Jamie can transform himself into a very convincing Harry Potter with the wave of his wand. 

Welcome to Hogwarts, Mr. Potter.

  

 And that while Henry's tornado costume was a valiant and noble effort...

we learned when to ditch it and bring on the back up Ninja outfit.

Goodbye Tornado, Hello Ninja Henry!

 

 We now know that Lily can walk for several miles wearing a costume that began as a wardrobe box and was lovingly fashioned into a haunted mailbox.

 We learned that Ninja Henry got Ninja angry when he overheard "strangers laughing at Lily's mailbox costume!" 

He got very defensive over his big sister's honor and constitutional right to be a mailbox and didn't much like ANYONE making fun of her.

Lily had to talk him down and explain that she was ok with people laughing because she was "supposed to be funny... a walking mailbox is a joke, I want strangers to laugh!"

 

 We also learned that Rosie's costume plan of being a "purple cow with a lollipop" was perfectly within reason and also extremely cute.

And that tiny purple cows can get a little undone in all of the Halloween excitement...

Hope that everyone had a very, very happy Halloween full of happy kids and fun memories.

And that you were able to restrain yourself from snarfing down too many of your kids fun size Reese's Pieces packs after they fell asleep.

Because those Pieces will give you a truly troubling candy hangover... believe me, Karl and I learned this from very recent experience.

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.