dear sparklet,

this is the sixth in a series of letters to baby sparklet about how mommy and daddy met and woo-ed each other.

today is mommy and daddy’s second wedding anniversary, but (as you you’ve probably noticed by the time you are old enough to read) we’re not very good at celebrating these things.

on our very first anniversary, we were supposed to go camping in Delaware, but bailed at the last minute and instead had dinner at a roadside mexican restaurant somewhere out route 50.

this year, we were going to go to our favorite restaurant (Acadiana) but it turns out the whole place was rented out for some kind of event. so instead, tonight i put on my “date shirt,” took mommy out for BBQ at the site of one of our earliest dates, and we’ll save Acadiana for next week.

(which is kinda funny, because that’s exactly what happened to mommy and daddy last year, too.)

which reminds me …

a long, long time ago, your mommy and daddy were just two nervous people who were trying to figure out how to talk to each other. which, i’m sure, must seem *really* strange to you by now.

before we were dating, your mommy asked me to come over to a dinner party she was having at the house she shared with Auntie Melissa.

it turns out that one of her previously invited friends couldn’t make it (thank you, Gannon!) and since mommy was looking for an excuse to ask daddy out, it seemed like a good idea at the time to invite me in his place.

unfortunately, i looked like a mess. i hadn’t cut my hair in about two years (so i guess i didn’t look all that different then i do now) and hadn’t bought any “impress a girl” clothes in in that time either.

naturally, i did what any boy in my situation would do — i turned to a female friend to bail me out.

Emmy and i setup a time to get my hair cut (by about 9 inches) and she even tagged along for moral support. in fact, your mommy ended up coming, too … i think mainly because mommy wanted to make sure that daddy and Emmy didn’t develop a “thing” before she could have her dinner party.

the following weekend, right before the party, Emmy and I took an emergency trip to Friendship Heights (the Gap) and she helped me find something that looked nice, but not *too* nice.

the shirt we bought? it’s daddy’s “date shirt” (which you can see in the photo above).

dinner was great. Uncle Cole and Aunt Skye were there, and the four of us talked for hours, and then I stayed behind to help mommy with the dishes.

By the time we were done eating, talking, cleaning and talking, it was 6 am the next morning. Not wanting to end the the “evening” quite yet, we walked down to the Alexandria waterfront, and then had breakfast at Table Talk (which is still one of our favorite’s).

At that point, I knew your mommy was something special … and had a feeling that your mommy and i had a nice future ahead of us. i didn’t know quite how long it would take, but I knew she would be worth the wait.

love,
daddy (& mommy)

UPDATE: no Acadiana for us quite yet…! the restaurant called to confirm our reservation as we were sitting in the labor and delivery room, waiting for you to be born.

so, instead, we “formally” celebrated our anniversary with you in our laps, eating mommy’s favorite pizza (goat cheese and bacon) from our long-time favorite pizza place (Listrani’s).

and while it certainly wasn’t what we were expecting, it was a perfect way to celebrate none-the-less.

well, i’m officially old now. interestingly enough, this realization didn’t come from a mortgage, or a life insurance that gives the lady sparkler financial incentive for my death, or from friends having wedding after wedding after wedding, or from going to a party and being the only one there without kids.

it came, instead, from pottery barn.

last week, we went anniversary present shopping and settled on a 33%-off console table to replace a piece of crap we bought at Ikea five years ago. it wasn’t in stock, but they had extras at the big, bad warehouse in the sky, and promised to ship one over to a store-near-us as soon as they could.

well, we got the call yesterday, crossed the bridge into rural Arlington to go pick it up. when we pulled up front, a very nice boy wheeled the box out to our car … and that’s when all hell broke loose.

the box was enormous. like really big. like “size of a piece of furniture” big.

there are apparently places in the world where you can buy furniture that doesn’t require assembly. more importantly, there are apparently places in the world where you can buy furniture which requires something bigger that a Volkswagen Jetta.

now, don’t get me wrong … i had heard rumors of such extravagance, but bushed them aide as if tales of the fortress of Atlantis, or a land filled with Unicorns, or a country of people who’d reelect some one from the Bush family. i mean, really … would would have thought such a place existed?!?

after getting a grip on our new found alternate reality, “very nice boy pottery barn boy” led us to the conclusion that the Jetta just wasn’t going to cut it (and we galloped off to rent a pick up truck from ZipCar).

but, let this serve as a cautionary tale for the youth of america. there comes a time when you will be allowed to vote, sent to war, drink, and afford to buy furniture that comes assembled — assuming that you catch a really good sale.

so, excercise your rights (responsibilities?) with caution …

it’s amazing, but eating year old wedding cake really isn’t that bad … granted, the lady sparkler spent twenty minutes, a box of aluminum foil and a box of saran wrap getting the cake ready for the freezer, but when it came out it was all yummy goodness.

it’s our anniversary, and the lady sparkler and I packed up Saturday for some light camping along the Delaware shore (cape helopen, near rehobeth).

the first problem is that she’s been fighting a cold, and it seemed to take up residence as the weekend went on. second problem was that the beach town was packed with old white people and their funny accents (the origin of which we never did figure out).

but besides side-stepping octagenarians, we had a good lunch (authentic, takeout fish and chips) at the beach before heading bailing for the quiet serenity of the nearby state park.

turns out that the economy really is in the toilet, because while every motel had bountiful vacancies, the campsite was quite literally packed with miserable looking middle-class white people. we checked in, and found our allotted 8 foot square patch of sand surrounded on all sides by kids, dogs and cars.

our site seemed to have the special designation of being the dog run for the neighbooring sites, which would have been about 2 feet from our tent once pitched. i am pretty certain that I have never seen such a small “campsite” before, and (we decided) hope to never again.

so, given the illness, the kids, the dogs, and the funny accents, we decided to take a long walk around the cape, eat some cheesy-so-bad-it’s-good Mexican food (Chevy’s) along the highway home and call it a day.

in full disclosure, the day was by no means a wash … we had gorgeous weather, a beautiful hike, and a wonderful day trip. we’re going to celebrate our anniversary on Friday instead, with a meal at our favorite-est fancy restaurant in the world — Acadiana — like good affluent, married white-people should.

hopefully we’ll have less sickness, and we’ll definitely have less funny accents.

IMG_2549, originally uploaded by clrome.

so, the Washingtonian magazine is doing a “green” edition of their magazine this January, and have been looking to talk to a bride and groom about their “green” wedding.

a friend of mine is the director of media relations here at the conservancy, and he suggested that the reporter talk to me. to make a long story short, the call is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 10am.

needless to say this, quite rightly, got me to thinking about whether our wedding was actually “green” or not. and by “thinking”, i mean “obsessing”. i’m pleased to report that, after about 24 hours of concerted panicking, i am pretty certain we actually didn’t do a half bad job putting together something that closely resembles a green wedding (which is a bold statement considering how caveat-laden i usually am).

my first concern was the defining the term “green wedding”. we didn’t really start off trying to be “green” so much as we were trying to be thoughtful about reducing our wedding’s drain on ourselves and those around us. obviously, this meant we were looking for simple things we could do that would reduce our wedding’s strain on the planet as well. my second concern was that, in my head, the term “green wedding” was essentially synonymous with “hemp wedding dress” which i knew wasn’t going to fly (i didn’t even ask).

in an odd stroke of coincidence, the month after the lady sparkler and i got engaged, the conservancy posted something about the simple things you can do to have a green wedding. reading this yeilded my first thoughts that a "green" wedding might be possible (or, more important, practical).

looking back at the list now, we actually did quite a bit to reduce our wedding’s footprint:

• central: we threw the wedding in downtown d.c. which — besides being home for us and most of our friends — was also decidedly central for most of our families (who hailed from Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and New England).
• walkable: the whole weekend happened within four blocks of the church, including the hotel, the bachelor party, the rehearsal dinner, the reception and the after-party. once people arrived, they could opt out of transportation for the rest of the weekend.
• organic favors: for wedding favors, instead of the usual rock with our name painted on it, we gave out organic “endangered species” chocolate and planted 35 trees in a national forest on behalf of our guests. (also, it goes without saying, but we used animal-friendly blowing-bubbles instead of having guests throw rice or birdseed.)
• locally-grown: we tried to use local businesses as much as possible (more on that below), and the reception site we used (15RIA) billed themselves as “using a bounty of local fresh products.”
• virtual: besides trying to reduce the amount of paper we used in our invitations (limited inserts, no inner envelope), we saved a few trees by doing an email save-the-date and by using a wedding blog to keep people updated about the weekend details.
• eco-honeymoon: while the first half of our trip was at a resort with locally-grown/organic-friendly food, the second half of our trip was more legitimately eco-friendly at one of Belize’s oldest eco-lodges. we wanted to be sensitive, but we weren’t willing to honeymoon in a tent in our backyard.
• green registry: we (ahem) "strongly encouraged" our guests to make a gift to MercyCorps instead of the more traditional registry gifts, and about 1/3 of them actually did it. obviously MercyCorps isn’t an environmental organization, but poverty is one of the largest barriers to effective conservation. (we also were given an acre of rainforest through the Conservancy and a pig through Heifer!)
• offset everything else: we absolutely weren’t willing to uninvite people who had to use carbon-based fuels to get here (or make them watch on a web cam), so we offset everyone’s flights to and from our wedding — including our own flights to and from Belize. (the sum of everything, for the record, turned out to be around 18,000 lbs of CO₂.)

so, with all that, why am i hesitating about whether it was a green wedding or not? well, we have a couple of open items …

• the hemp dress: while our tuxes were rented (it’s best to share tux resources with hundreds of other grooms and groomsmen) and the bridesmaids picked out their own dresses (this increases the chance they might be worn again, however slightly) we didn’t even consider going down the path of the organic wedding dress. there was just too much wrapped up in our (er, her) vision of the perfect dress to add this layer of complexity.
• the rings: the lady sparkler got a diamond (and loves it however guiltily), and i got a gold ring (silver is less toxic for the environment). neither of them were used or recycled. we had a devil of a time trying to offset the rings (we tried, but couldn’t find anyone who would even approximate what would be required) so this one is destined to remain an open issue.
• the cake: we tried so hard to use local merchants, but every cake place we tried within the district didn’t pass our admittedly lofty standards (yes, including Cake Love which was dry and over-hyped). so we ended up using a place in (God-forbid) Herndon. not two months after we “sold out to the ‘burbs”, we found an equally fantastic bakery in DC’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood, and we will be definitely using them for all our baking needs in the future.

… but all of this, to some extent, misses the point. we were looking for simple ways to reduce our footprint, and (to be honest) we as a society just might be a couple years away from “eco-wedding dresses” and “environmentally sensitive engagement rings” being an option for mainstream-ers like us. that, and we just had bad timing with the bakery.

not that i am EVER going to have another wedding (ever, EVER!) but i’m happy to leave those three items open for future, er, motivation.

IMG_0356, originally uploaded by [ecpark].

Now, there are always people who *say* they want to see pictures from the honeymoon, but aren’t prepared for the full 526 photo onslaught. For those, we have prepared something special: the 72 picture abridged Belize.

If you are looking for the full annotated story (the hard core wedding enthusiasts, I presume) check out our more expansive “honeymoon” posts for a walk through our 10 amazing days in Belize.

Now that the wedding is over, we have to figure out what to do with tashaandevan.com … do we hold it in perpetuity as a last memento of the glory days of our engagement?

Sitting on the domain just seems unfair to the legions of Evanses and Tashas sure to follow (especially as evanandtasha.com appears to taken as well).

Instead, we have decided to take merge my web site (evancparker.com) with the engagement site, to form a brand-spanking new site called theparkerfamily.org. I had bought that domain for my parents for a Christmas almost five years ago (hi mom!) but sadly, nothing came of it (sorry mom!) and my mom ended up with a computer instead.

Anyway, if you want to keep track of the Sparklers from this point forward, you have come to the right place. You might want to grab our RSS Feed (if you are into that sort of thing) or sign-up to be notified by email when we post something new.

p.s. If you are wondering about the picture, for the last decade — dating back to when my vanity web site was unclevanya.com — my site has featured the same picture of my face on Karl Marx’ body that you see here. The new addition is the lady sparkler’s face gracing the body of Catherine the Great, who was arguably the most powerful female ruler of the last half millenium (it seemed fitting).

UPDATE: Karl Marx and Catherine the Great are growing to be a little too obscure, even for us. I just swapped them out for The Great Gonzo (needs no explanation) and Abby Cadabby, the newish girly-girl-fairy-princess Muppet on Sesame Street (which seems to resonate the lady sparkler all over the place). I was also thinking about Shaggy and Velma — which would be funny beyond all possible understanding — so maybe that will come next.

let the tropical drinks begin…

I’m not “supposed” to be online, but I negotiated and got that sentence reduced to just a ban on email.

With my new found interweb freedom, we have been uploading pictures from the honeymoon to Flickr. If you want to see what we have been up to, take a peak at our Flickr slideshow of the honeymoon so far.

We’ll keep posting so long as we have access to free WiFi at the bar (the drinks make uploading go MUCH faster).

UPDATE: Well, Flickr was fun while it lasted. Everything is great at Chaa Creek, but WOW! is the internet slow. It takes so long to upload one picture that if we keep going we won’t have any time to *take* pictures. Anyway, we have (sadly) posted our last pictures until we get home this upcoming weekend.

UPDATE: We’re back, and everything is uploaded. We will post an abridged version later, but if you want to see everything from beginning to end you can look here.

Thank you for coming! We had a fantastic time at our wedding, and it was absolutely because of the wonderful people who decided to share our special day with us. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to see our slideshow at the reception, take a look and see some of the other wonderful moments of our new family’s life.

first picture together

I guess it is about time for me to become weepy and sentimental, but first … where the heck did all that time go?

We had an 18 month engagement (April 15, 2006) and it seems like it was only yesterday that The Lady Sparkler was having trouble explaining to all of her Texas friends how a couple could be together since the first term of the Bush II administration and not be common-law wed yet.

A couple of lesson’s learned for anyone who is going to try throwing one of these themselves:

• Simplify — We did everything we could think of to simplify the wedding, and we still needed the whole 18 moths to pull it off (assuming tomorrow goes smoothly, of course).
• Avoid wedding magazines — Go your own path. Magazines are only good if you don’t already have too many preconcieved notions, and besides … nothing is ever *that* simple anyway.
• You and your betrothed are on the *same* side — And, frankly, if you aren’t then you should probably rethink the whole “wedding” thing.

… but the last one is really is the key. I can honestly say that the wedding has made The Lady Sparkler and I better partners, and that fact has been a real strength in seeing us through the last 18 months.

Oh, that, and the promise of a 10 day honeymoon when it’s all done. Which is tomorrow.

*whew*

Well, people have already started arriving for the big weekend … and pretty much all of them brought cameras. This led me to thinking that this is going to be a fairly well documented event, and we might want to do some online sharing of our own.

A lot of us use Flickr for our pictures and, if you are one of them, why don’t we try tagging all of our wedding weekend photos with “ParkerSpindler2007” (without the quotes) so we all can all share in the picture love.

It’s so rare for us to have this many friends and loved ones together, we’d love to see any many pictures of the ensuing happiness as we can.

Once The Lady Sparkler and I have the “official” pictures back from the wedding photographer, we will be tagging them this way (along with any snapshots from the extended weekend). If you aren’t on flickr, just add a comment to this blog entry with a link to wherever your post your pictures. If you don’t *have* a place to post them, feel free to forward them along to us … we’re happy to post them on our account for you.

© epmd

We’re almost there, which made us think it might be nice to tell you all what the heck is going on this weekend.

First of all, for those of you around (and not working) on Thursday, The Lady Sparkler and I will be having an open house at our new place in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of D.C. We’ll be there (1661 Park Road NW Apt 206) with some love and baked goods from 1:30 PM until 4:30 PM. Just take a taxi up 16th Street, amble up to the front door call box, press #206, and we’ll buzz you in.

By now, we hope that you have certainly heard about Saturday’s wedding ceremony (10:30 AM @ Foundry / 1500 16th St NW), not to mention the reception to follow two blocks away (11:30 AM @ Doubletree Hotel / 1515 Rhode Island Ave. NW).

What you may not have heard is that we are also having an after party that night on the top floor of Stetson’s (7:30 PM / 1610 U St NW) to help us relax after what is sure to be a wonderful day. Everyone’s welcome, so we hope you can join us.

p.s. All this (and more!) is available on the printable map and schedule mention in the last post.

We have thrown together a schedule of this weekend’s events, complete with a map with where everything is in relation to each other. We’ve got printed copies for people, but if you want to do some poking around before-hand, download the map/schedule here. The map also has a dozen (or more) places to eat within a mile of the church / hotel.

If you are a little uncertain about getting around the city, we also have a map explaining the taxi-cab zone system and one showing where the closest metro stops are to the hotels. (Again, we will have copies for you if you would like one.)

Well, we’ve been watching since 15 days out … and the forcast for the 6th has been holding at 80 degrees and mostly sunny for the last week. We have been looking at accuweather.com but The Weather Channel seems to be saying much the same thing.

Now, we must focus our collective attention on keeping Belize hurricane-free for the next two weeks.

We had a great day today. Two weeks out from “D-Day” and this morning we felt like we were far enough ahead that we could go hiking for the first time in 6 months.

We drove out to Shenandoah National Park, which is exactly what we did on our first date way back when. Oddly enough, we ended up doing a hike on the very same mountain. To completely beat the symbolism into the ground, we decided to top the day off by going out to the same restaurant (Ruby Tuesday’s … oh, were there something in Warrenton that ISN’T a chain).

It was great getting out. It’s good to get away and remember exactly why were are going through all this work :)

The Lady Sparkler has wanted to learn how to waltz since we met. I haven’t waltzed since April 1997, but something happened to my senses and I gave dance lessons to The Lady Sparkler for her birthday in May. Needless to say, she just “cashed” them.

Honestly, the topic is just ripe for a feast of self-depricating comedy, but I have to admit it went better than I ever expected (given that I have size 15 feet). The Lady Sparkler does have a rather funny habit of wanting to lead, tho.

Anyway, we only have one more lesson before the wedding, so don’t expect anything too, well, impressive. Our highest aspiration is to avoid killing each other, not end in an elaborate pose to waves of rapturous applause.