Golden Weekend

Graphic courtesy Glenn Wright

IT'S A WRAP: For months, weeks and days we've been working on plans for my parents' 50th anniversary party, which was held on Saturday. One of the related projects was a 'flash mob' dance. In preparation, CJ and Annabelle picked some of their favorite moves from their "Just Dance" Wii games and we weaved them together to make a dance to go with David Bowie's song "Golden Years" for the occasion.

Getting the dance choreographed was only the beginning of the project, though. The next question was how in the world do we get people from Alaska to Albuquerque to California and the Carolinas to learn the dance before the party? Enter the magic of the Internet. We posted two videos to Vimeo, and sent people links to them.

The first video was a tutorial. It was a break down of each of the moves in the dance, with CJ and Annabelle taking turns demonstrating them.
golden years tutorial from Kristine Kisky on Vimeo.
The second video was a run through of the dance. One of the challenges for CeeJ and Bee was to literally learn the dance forward and backward - because in the videos they had to perform them in opposite, so that they functioned like mirrors for the folks dancing at home.

In the end, all the work was worth it. There was amazing, widespread participation and people really knew the dance! My parents were completely surprised and overwhelmed by it, and when the dance was done, the crowd erupted into a spontaneous cheer for what we'd all pulled off. I never dreamed we would have such widespread participation by people of ALL ages. Yay everyone!
Golden Years Run Through from Kristine Kisky on Vimeo.
It was pretty funny, at the party, so many people Annabelle and CJ had never met before already knew their names/who they were from practicing "with" them ahead of time.   

Naturally, the party also involved a few cookies and a little cake. Thursday was Operation Cookie Day for us. The cookies we made told a story - each representing somewhere my parents lived during their 50 years of marriage.  We started with Space Needles, since they met and married in Seattle. Next, they moved to Las Vegas, so I made the iconic "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. (Those were my favorite.) After that, they moved to Portland, the City of Roses, so we made some rose cookies. Then they moved to Vancouver, WA, so we made little state of Washington cookies, putting a little heart down in the southwest corner, where Vancouver is. We also had to make some cookies to represent Pennsylvania, where they lived for a couple of years in the early 1990s. I made a Pittsburgh Pirates' "P," as the Pirates won their division both years my parents were there.

Friday was Cake Day. I made four batches (for four big layers) of chocolate cake, and raspberry filling for that. The next cake required two big batches of banana cake (oh SO good!) with a cheesecake and cinnamon filling bro in law Jim helped me come up with. The top layer was good ol' white cake with a blackberry filling - fantastic! Renee and I spent hours and hours and hours covering the cake in fondant and then decorating it with retro/atomic shapes in two shades of purple, two shades of teal and gold. It was topped with Elvis in a classic car atop a gold record. And I don't have a SINGLE PHOTO OF THE ENTIRE CAKE AT ALL if you can believe that. I feel like such a loser for that fact. Hopefully someone at the party got a shot of it.

I do have this shot of my parents cutting into it from the side, though ... At that point, cake topper Elvis had already left the building, so to speak. ;)

SUNDAY SOCCER: We pulled out of my parents' house early Sunday morning, destination Seattle. It would have been nice to maybe sleep in a bit, but we had a date to keep! Christian's niece was playing soccer in Seattle at 1 p.m. and we didn't want to miss that. 

We arrived home at 12:30 and by 12:45 we were pulling back out of our driveway, destination Capitol Hill where Portland State University would be taking on the Redhawks of Seattle University.

We got to see Torie play the whole second half, and the kids were especially excited when she had a corner kick right by us!

CALLING ALL FIFTH (& UP) GRADERS: CJ and Annabelle are just a bit too young to enter, but plenty of 10 and 11 year olds out there might be interested to know about the 2012 Cassini Scientist for a Day contest. It's an essay contest (just 500 words), and entrants have to write about one of three potential targets to be studied, and write a persuasive essay describing the scientific merits of their choice.