Mmmm... cake!

I love cake.

Wait, let me repeat that. I love love love love love cake. If allowed, I would gladly subsist on cake and nothing else. But Rich, with his silly theory on balanced diets, has overruled me on that.

But, for our anniversary this year, I got in a little cake love. I signed us up for a cake decorating class.

Let me tell you -- the folks on Ace of Cakes make this cake decorating thing look way too easy. I mean I knew it would be a challenge, considering I have no creativity, skill, or coordination, but I didn't think I'd fret over it as much as I did.

For the last class, we were told to bake our own cake, ice it, and bring it so we could decorate our masterpiece.

So on Sunday Rich and I baked our cake and started the icing process. This did not go well. I'm not sure if the cake was just too moist or if we just didn't give it enough time to cool, but when we starting icing it, chunks starting falling off. I had a cake avalanche on my hands.

I became quite distraught and was ready to trash the whole thing but I just don't have it in me to throw away a cake. Rich suggested that we stick the cake in the fridge and give it a try the next day with a new batch of thinner icing.

The idea worked and I caulks the cake with the new icing, filling in the cracks. By the time I was done, you could hardly tell how bad it looked the day before. Yes, the cake and all its spackle now weighed about 10 lbs., but it looked good.

Our last class happened to be on the eve of my parents' 36th anniversary so we decided to make the cake for them as a gift. I toyed with a few different sayings such "Celebrating 12 years of happiness" or "36 years of wedded adequecy." But, due to my lack of skill in writing on cakes, we opted for a shorter and simpler design.

I have to say that I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. How it tastes, however, is an entirely different issues. I may love cake, but I'm not fighting to try this one.

So, um, enjoy it Mom & Dad. Hope you've stocked up on toilet paper.

Wet dog: A beautiful smell

There isn't enough Prozac in the world to give me the same high I get from the annual Doggie Paddle. This is the fourth year in a row I've gone to the neighborhood pool for some dog-on-water action, and I still contend that life doesn't get any better. For two hours, all is right with the world.

All of the usual suspects were there: the gung-ho water dogs, the scaredy cats, and the dozens of wet dogs, all seemingly named Buddy. And this year featured the dog in the red collar who almost knocked me into the pool not once, but twice. My favorite though had to be the little guy who starting the swimming motion ever time his owner picked him up.

I could go on and on about how much I love this event, but I'd rather let the pictures tell the story.



Someone is a little reluctant.





"Uh huh. So if one wanted to exit the pool, how exactly might they do that?"



Don't you know the cardinal rule of perms? You always have to wait two days before washing your hair.




"This swimming thing isn't so bad. Just don't let go of me."







"Um, excuse me. That dog took my Frisbee."






"But I 'm not ready to go yet!"

Happy 70th Anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa!

I have the cutest grandparents in the world and today marks their 70th wedding anniversary.

I've previously detailed how they met and the other highlights of their lives so I won't repeat myself on that end.

What I will say is that I consider myself so lucky to still have my grandparents around and get to learn from their wisdom and the great example they set.

I wore my grandmother's wedding band today in honor of their anniversary. It's the first piece of jewelry my grandfather designed and the same ring I wore on my wedding day. I consider it a good-luck charm.

It gives me chills to look at their initials engraved on the inside along with 5/1/38 and 12:50 p.m. Rich and I had our initials engraved alongside theirs.

If there's any marriage to emulate, this is the one.

Where the wild things used to be

I didn't want to do this. I really didn't want this to be my fourth consecutive blog entry focusing on animals.

But, this weekend marked the five-year anniversary of my first date with my husband -- a date which took place at the zoo -- which we lovingly recreated with a return visit. In other words, how could I not write about it?

(Besides, we had some awesome Italian ice while we were there and that alone would have warranted a zoo-related posting.)

Okay, so the zoo in Baltimore has always been a bit underwhelming. San Diego it's not. The reptile house is closed (which, incidentally, doesn't bother me a bit.) The flamingos have relocated. You have to go to D.C. if you want to see a panda bear. The elephants only narrowly escaped the axe a few years back. The monkeys rarely throw feces anymore.

It's a sad state of affairs. They've removed so many exhibits that you now have to take a tram ride from the front entrance to where you can actually find an animal. They take your picture at the beginning and then let you pick which animal background you want with it because you certainly aren't going to find anything nearly that exotic at this zoo.

But there are still some cute critters worth seeing at our zoo and we even went the whole visit without Rich shaking his keys at any of the animals. The penguins are pretty adorable. I adore Magnet, the polar bear who swims laps like an old guy at the YMCA. The giraffes were pretty neat too. Rich somehow instigated a fight between two of them. (Lifetime ban, here I come.)

We completed our day with dinner at HOPS, which is where we dined on our first date. We didn't have Jonathan Ogden sitting in the next booth over this time around, but other than that, it was the perfect way to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the last time I let Rich finish a sentence.

The best five dollars he ever spent

Today my grandparents celebrate 68 years of wedded bliss.

For those of you keeping track, that translates into four children, nine grandchildren, three great grandchildren, a jewelry store, a hardware store, and an optical lab.
And they're still just as much in love today as they were back on their wedding day... probably even moreso.

"There is nothing in this world that I wouldn't do for him, and nothing he wouldn't do for me," my grandmother says.

I can listen to the story of how my grandparents met over and over again. My grandmother, on the advice of her sisters, got all dolled up and went to a practice for a local musical arts group where my grandfather, a saxophone player, performed with the orchestra. Despite the warnings of her father to stay away from those musician types, my grandmother thought my grandfather was cute and kept going back to see him.

As the only one of the group with a car, my grandfather got stuck driving everybody else home. At the beginning he would drop off my grandmother first because she lived the farthest from him. But after a few nights, he dropped everyone else off and would take her home last so he could have some time alone with her.

Grandpa jokes that he knew they were getting married when his father bought them a bedroom set. Adorably enough, it's the same bedroom set that they still use, complete with the double bed they've shared for all of these years. (How they managed to sleep in a double bed together all these years is beyond me. My husband and I have a king size bed and if I can even see him over on the other side, he's too close.)

My grandfather often jokes that he got off really easy when it came to paying for the wedding because his only expense was the marriage license. "It was the best five dollars I ever spent," he said.

My grandmother's wedding band, the same one I wore for my wedding, is the very first piece of jewelry my grandfather designed and crafted. (In addition to his talents as a musician, my grandfather is also an amazing artist and jewelry designer.)

So what's the secret to such a long and happy marriage? Grandma says the key is to always be willing to go more than halfway. She claims they've never had a fight in all of these years but Grandpa says she just has bad hearing and a short memory.

While I'm hardly the sentimental type, I can't help but share a few comments that my grandmother made during a visit a few months back. (My brother was smart enough to take notes.) Seriously, how can this not be the cutest thing ever?

"Marriage is forever. When you say I do, you are making that promise for life."

"Everything in a relationship is give and take. Sometimes you give more, and sometimes you get more. In the end it all balances out."

"Love your children equally, but all for different reasons. That way when another child comes into your life, you can love them just as much without taking anything from the others."

"The key to a great marriage is happiness. Strive to make your partner happy, and you will be happy."

Happy Anniversary, Grandma & Grandpa!

Obligatory Valentine's Day tribute to the man I love

For the first 23 years of my life I was always alone on Valentine's Day. Because of this, I determined that the so-called holiday was nothing more than a stupid Hallmark invention. After all, if people are in love, they should tell one another all the time and not allow the greeting card industry to dictate when and how they share those feelings of love. Sounds plausible enough, right?

Ah, but therein lies the rub. While this functions quite well as a theory, I haven't done so well with it in practice. Saying that Rich is the most amazing person to come into my life is a vast understatement. So understated in fact, that I usually don't say it at all.

I've never been the lovey-dovey, touchy-feeling type. I don't cry at sappy movies (unless there is a cute animal that somehow meets harm) and I don't get misty-eyed at weddings. In other words, it doesn't hurt that once a year society forces me to tell my husband how much I love him.

I don't think it makes me a bad person to need something every once in a while to remind me how much I love my husband. Sometimes it's a story about those who have loved and lost and other times it's a silly holiday filled with heart-shaped chocolates.

So anyway, here goes:

I love you, Rich. I love how you laugh at all my silly little quirks (or at least don't make me feel like I'm that strange for having so many.) I love how you're always there for me and you treat me like a royalty. You know the stupid little things that make me happy and avoid the ridiculous things that annoy me. Simply put, I love you. Happy Valentine's Day!

Wedding wishes from afar

In just a few hours, two of our good friends will be tying the knot in Jamaica. It's a bittersweet time because while we're absolutely thrilled for them, we're also sad because we can't be there to share their special day.

I like to take some credit for introducing the happy couple. After all, I was the one who convinced her to join my softball team that year and as luck would have it, he also came aboard that season. I could see the sparks starting to fly early on and the proposal came three years later.

When we learned of the wedding plans, we tried to figure out a way to be there for the wedding but it wasn't meant to be. Instead, we'll celebrate their vows from 1800 miles away.

So raise a glass with me today at 10:30 (or perhaps a cup of coffee; it is an early wedding) and let's toast the wonderful couple. Here's to your dream wedding and the perfect life together.

And let's hope they have those wedding pictures and DVD back soon.