theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Wedding

  • happy new year!

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    sometime, ask me how much i love my wife — and the talimos. amen.

  • anniversary

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    it’s our second consecutive year celebrating our October wedding anniversary during the first week of December.

    so, we’ve now officially celebrated our anniversary in December more than we’ve celebrated it in October. we talked about just “moving” our anniversary to December, but i’m a little nervous that’d mean we wouldn’t actually celebrate it until February.

    we had a late dinner at georgia brown’s (which made me realize i’ve was selling it short as “just a brunch place”) followed by drinks at the willard (we were cold, it was warm) and then dessert back in our neighborhood (the heights).

    conversation was exactly what you’d expect — the baby we left at home, where we should go on vacation next year, TSA screening regulations, the desintigration of party unity on Capitol Hill, the rise of hyperpartisanship and it’s impact on the american psyche — you know, the usual stuff.

    yup.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    christmas decoration downtown, washington, dc

  • *sigh*

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    a special anniversary for the lady sparkler and i tonight, celebrating three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days without accidentally killing our daughter — go team!

  • anniversary, apparently

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    the lady sparkler and i got a call from my mother today, wishing us a happy third wedding anniversary. we both looked at each other and said:

    wait, it’s our anniversary?

    apparently.

    UPDATE: aunt melissa has volunteered to babysit for us on a night of our choosing to help us go out and celebrate. yay 🙂

  • anniversary, revisited

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    IMG_1126, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    we already had what’s becoming a long standing tradition of screwing up our anniversary, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when sparklet popped out three weeks early on the night we were due to celebrate our second anniversary.

    so, when the spindler sisters — who’ve already been saving our bacon all week long — offered to sparklet-sit for us tonight, we grabbed our fancy clothes and flew out the door and had that anniversary dinner we’d been talking about since October and then tacked on a quick trip to the Capitol Christmas tree.

    we were a little preocupied about things to talk about that didn’t involve diapers (and we already have a long-standing prohibition about talking work at social events) but in the end we did okay (we stared at each other without speaking). turns out that we enjoyed it enough to do it again in a couple of weeks.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    anniversary, revisited

  • how i met your mother: date shirt (special 2nd anniversary edition)

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    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.

  • some assembly (not) required

    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 …

  • year-old wedding cake

    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.

  • first attempt at anniversary fails, couple reshedules for friday

    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.

  • wow, we really are married …

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    facebook, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    funny that it hasn’t sunk in before now, with the life insurance policy, the joint bank accounts, the house, the mortgage, all the name change paperwork she filed, and (not to mention) that whole ceremony/reception/honeymoon thing, but …

    … it turns out we really are married.

    what made me realize this was, tonight, when i noticed the lady sparkler’s name change application to “facebook” had finally been accepted (they hand-review each name change to limit fraud).

    funny that i lobbied her to *keep* her old name, and have so far kept up my boycott by continuing to scream “Spindler!” at her, regardless. she’s been unswayed, however, and i guess if facebook sees us as mr. and mrs. parker, who’s to argue?