I love YOU!

Vaughn has been in a period of prolific "I love you"-ing. Make him a snack? "I love you" Leaving to walk the dog? Two "I love you"s. Going to bed generally generates three solid "I love you"s. If you get up to go the bathroom and he's still awake you're guaranteed a bonus "I love you." Sometimes we'll be laying in bed and he'll call out "I love you!" from his room. It's really amazingly sweet and gushy. It's like it is always raining Valentines at my house these days.

In the Spirit

At 11, we're closing in on the end of the trick-or-treating years. I told Vaughn that it generally wasn't acceptable to trick-or-treat past age 12 or 13 and he reacted as though I had told him that his childhood would be ending and he'd be sent to work in the mines. Luckily, Vaughn really likes handing out candy. I was assigned the job of 'dog holder' so that he could don his costume and answer the door.

This year, he went as the Blazers Mascot, Blaze. When he first told us that he wanted to be Blaze, he also informed us that it would have to be purchased as a homemade Blaze wouldn't do. Well, you can't exactly go out and buy an NBA mascot costume off the shelf and besides, Jacob and I felt pretty confident we could whip together an acceptable Blaze.

We watched a video on how mascots costumes are made, purchased carvable foam from a specialty store and went to work. Vaughn got into the spirit of making the costume and even helped put it together. Ten hours and about 50 hot glue gun sticks later we had our Blaze head. It had to be jerryrigged together with multiple stick pins but my philosophy on Halloween costumes is that they only have to hold for a couple hours.

Unfortunately, as we were out trick-or-treating, one of the pins that was glued under a layer of fabric started poking through the foam. Jacob spent about five minutes literally trying to gnaw the pin out before I decided to go all MacGyver and stuck two Starbursts on the end of the pin to cover it for the remainder of the evening.

In addition to candy, Vaughn also got a visit from the Tooth Fairy since he lost a tooth on a Mike and Ikes. We're going to have him wear the costume to the Blazer game next week so I guess I'll have to come up with a permanent pin solution before then.

Vaughn and his zombie pal, Sten

Cake Boss

The other night Hrishi came over and introduced Vaughn to a show called 'Cake Boss', a TLC show about a baker named Buddy Valastro in Hoboken, NJ. The Cake Boss website sells shirts that say things like "Bada Bing, Bada Boom!" and "You Want a Piece of This?"

Fifteen episodes (in 24 hours) later Vaughn is saying things like, "I WILL own my own cake shop in exactly one year- mark my words!" When we pointed out he had chocolate on his face, he snarled, "It's a cake scar!"

Yesterday was his first attempt to make a "cake" on his own, despite the fact that I wouldn't drive him to the craft store for special molding chocolate. I put cake in parenthesis because the base of this culinary feat was rice crispy treats; something that felt permissible to Vaughn since Buddy uses them for framing. I'm including a picture of him next to his slightly overly decorated basketball masterpiece which you know is too sugary when 11 year olds won't even eat it.

While we were getting ready for bed last night he was lamenting the fact that between comic book writing, shoe designing, cake decorating and the NBA - he was really filling up on hobbies. I felt like a kill-joy but I had to point out that next week middle school was starting and so there'd be that too.

The Adidas Tour

My recent crusade has been to introduce Vaughn to careers that touch basketball but aren't actually playing basketball in the event that the NBA becomes a dream deferred. I'm hoping this will also help him see that school can lead to really cool jobs since after he starts middle school I imagine we'll be in for one long string of why-do-I-have-to-learn-this?

One of the things he loves to do is design and draw basketball shoes- a natural combination of his skills and passions. Like Jacob, he's doggedly determined when he's into something and he told me that he spent a half hour on the computer the other night trying to find out what the fabric was that lined the inside of his shoe. At the risk of seeming like a helicopter parent, I enlisted my friend Jill to use her connections to get him a tour at the Adidas campus with her friend, Anthony, who does shoe design for the skateboard division.

Vaughn got up early today and in typical fashion, carefully picked out his best all-Adidas outfit for the occasion and then pulled together his list of questions and two shoe designs (which, despite gentle prodding on my part, were never pulled out of my bag).

Anthony was amazing and spent well over an hour taking us around to see all the steps in the Adidas shoe design process. When he had to leave for a meeting, he left us with his co-worker, Thomas, who designs for the basketball division. Unfortunately by this time, Vaughn was wearing down a little, which was understandable since we had been there for almost two hours and had walked all over the campus and learned so much.

Out of all the people we met, three of them said they had begun drawing and designing shoes when they were right around Vaughn's age. It will be interesting to see where he ends up in life but I think a job where you get to play basketball at work on your lunch hour has to be high on the list.

Vaughn with Dwight Howard and Damian Lillard's shoes

Whitewater

Last weekend my dad invited Vaughn, Jacob, Hrishi and I to go rafting with him on the White Salmon river. None of us except my dad had ever been and whitewater rafting is one of those quintessential Oregon things and so we were definitely overdue.

I came well stocked with a giant tube of sunscreen but realized that I had totally forgotten to bring any sun-protecting lip balm. After getting burnt in Hawaii, I wasn't taking any chances and so I went to Wet Planet's store and bought the only lip protectant they had - a tin of zinc-based lip AND face sunblock.

There were about 40 people in our group and we all gathered around in a large circle to listen to the instructions as to how to get our gear. I wandered over kind of late and so I was positioned across from everyone else.  Jacob also got burnt in Hawaii and although he had already applied a base coat of normal sunblock, he decided to use this time to layer up with a coat of my white, zinc paste. Zinc based sunblock does not blend in. It stays like a layer of creamy paint on the skin and by the time he was finished, Jacob really looked like a splinter version of that Blue Man Group. Similar - but different. A woman standing next to me leaned over and said to her mom, "Man, that dude's really putting on the sunblock." It was a totally fair comment and one I probably would have made if I wasn't married to the river-going mime. Still, I kind of had to bust her. I turned and said, "It's zinc-based sunblock - it doesn't blend in. It was the only kind they sold in the store" and then smiled sweetly as I watched her face squish up as her brain

tried to connect my relationship to the man across the circle while figuring out how embarrassed she should be. For his part, Jacob wasn't even a tiny bit embarrassed - which is why we love him.

Unfortunately, I don't have a single picture of this or any shots from the day. I had to steal this picture from someone else's White Salmon experience.

You May Be Experiencing Some Changes

Vaughn's class is doing the big fifth grade puberty talk this week and he and his class are all aflutter. I felt a little remiss in our parenting duties when I saw that his pre-test was basically a series of 'don't knows.' We did the big talk on where babies come from a couple years ago (complete with a book!) but I guess we neglected to think a refresher course was necessary since just recently he asked me if families where two men have a baby would have a shot at super tall kids (probably mentally replacing me with any number of our tall male friends to increase his NBA chances).

Anyway, they have been disappointed each day that the separate male/female talk gets postponed and yet each day when he thinks it is going to happen there is a bit of posturing about how it is likely to be 'the worst day ever' since it will be 'so boring' with health class. The other fifth grade class is ahead of them and has already had their big separate talk. Apparently Vaughn's class spent recess yesterday peppering their more worldly collegues with questions only to be told that it gets 'much worse.' That's puberty for you.

Into the Clouds - Goodbye Hawaii

I read recently that Hawaii was again voted the 'least stressed' state in the U.S. It's not surprising; things move slower here and you either get with the program and get on Hawaiian time or you get frustrated.

For our final day here, the Mestman family decided to go hike Waihee Ridge trail while the Moyers opted to stay behind and get in a final snorkeling trip. We had a really hard time finding a consistent set of directions to the trailhead and were already kind of nervous to return to the area where we'd been foiled by a locked gate earlier in the week. Inevitably we got lost and had to pull over to ask directions twice. The second time we drove down a narrow dirt road toward a sign pointing toward a farmer's market. The "farmer's market" turned out to just be a guy at a card table in the middle of a road surrounded by maybe ten houses. Jacob parked the car and walked up around a bend to get directions while Vaughn and I stayed with the car.

After maybe fifteen minutes I was hot, antsy and maybe a little worried. Where the heck was Jacob? There were a bunch of trees blocking my view so I couldn't seen where he had gone off to. Was he being axe-murdered at that very moment (faithful readers of my blog will remember that axe-murdering is a logical conclusion in my mind)? He finally came back with directions and a small bag of groceries. Apparently the farmer had to go into his house to retrieve the laptop to hunt down directions. Then there was the pouring over various reviews of the trail we were going to hike. When Jacob bought papayas, he had to stop him from leaving the stand to go chop down new ripe ones for him. Jacob mentioned that we had been a little confused and frustrated by the lack of signs to which he just smiled and shrugged saying, "This is Hawaii dude."

The trail was 2.5 miles up 1,500 feet to the top of the ridge and it was every bit as thrilling and idyllic as we hoped. Though he started off apprehensive, Vaughn really got into it and carried his own pack the entire way. The top was packed in fog and so our valley views were obscured but the damp breeze felt heavenly after the steep climb. When we got to the top there was a family with several young Hawaiian children picnicking. We had already decided we wouldn't linger at the summit and would instead eat on the way down. As we turned to go I heard one of the little girls say, "That was quick. They must be on their way to a party." Ahhh, Hawaiian life.