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happy birthday melissa!

(Sorry Mac folks, it’s a wmv.  Because I don’t have a Mac.  And because I had 10 minutes.)

Here’s Melissa, enjoying her birthday soda:

Here’s the cake, up close and personal:

… and here’s a bracelet they gave out.  What does it say, Shmel?

We’ve been reunioning this month.

Weekend #1: Dave’s dad’s dad’s family (Aukermans)
Weekend #2: Dave’s mom’s mom’s family (Schraders) <- this weekend
Weekend #3: Dave’s mom’s dad’s family (Funks) which we’re missing for…
Weekend #3: Dave’s 10-yr high school friends reunion

David has a lot of people to reunite with… =) I enjoy these reunions, though. This is something my fam doesn’t do.

I’ll take some pics this weekend and post ‘em so you can join in the reunion festivities (now that I’ve figured out why my photos weren’t transferring from my camera and fixed the issue).

It has been a wonderful two weeks.  My sister, Leah, visited while our mother went to spend time with Dad in Hawai’i.  Then, Mom came back from HI and spent a few days with me in Indy.

I’ve discovered something:  of all the people I know in the world, I have the most in common with my sister Leah.  We like the same movies.  We like the same music.  We like the same shoes.  We drool over the same necklaces.  We have the same hobbies.  In fact, the biggest difference I could find between us while she was here was that she likes video games a little bit more than I do, and that I like playing the piano a little bit more than she does.

A couple of pictures from our family reunion, recently uploaded by Dave’s brother and his wife:

Tara, David, Randy, originally uploaded by rauke1.

Jake and Tara, originally uploaded by rauke1.

I just enjoy the first picture - I love having a big brother!  And the second photo…  Imagine that dog trembling - he was TERRIFIED of the water.  See how taut his muscles are?  He was very, very tense, and leaping about from rock to rock so he wouldn’t have to touch the water.  =)  We had a large audience up on the bank.

Dad and David are upstairs working on a small room/big closet we’ll be using for a library.  We inherited this project from the house’s previous owners - heretofore, this room has been closed-off and unused.  Now that my dad’s here, though, the boys are making this a liveable, useable space.  These guys started off with an unfloored, barely insulated, plastic-covered mess, and are slowly but surely turning it into a real room.  I’ll post more pictures as they get farther along in the process.

Just got back from the Aukerman reunion.  It was fun - I love this group of people.  It’s a strange mix of generations - the family reunion involves the four Aukerman brothers and all their various offspring, so we’re up to three generations.  The brothers interact with merciless heckling and the telling and retelling of Aukerman classic jokes (the punchline of the one of the goodies is “Leo needs a new face!”, and a relatively new one goes like this: “Hey, what was the score?” “3 to 2″ “Who was winning?” “3, by 1!”).  There’s a point at which an awful joke really does become funny - and these guys keep me laughing.

One of the funniest moments of the reunion occurred while we were waiting at the lodge for the last set of us to arrive.  The kids had just finished a day full of swimming and running around outside, so they were tired and starting to get grouchy.  One of the cousins grabbed Chutes and Ladders and all 5 itty-bitties ran over to play.  After a while, they started fighting about the rules, so a mom brought out another game hoping to split them up.  Of course, when the kids saw Candyland, they all wanted to play the new game and the other was abandoned as boring.  The exasperated mom told them that half could play each game, and then they’d switch, but the kids weren’t having it.  They all sat down and grabbed pieces.  Mom looks at the oldest 2 kids and says, “One of you is going to have to go play Chutes and Ladders.”  When neither volunteered, she gave the oldest a meaningful look - whereupon the girl gets up, stomps about 5 feet away, then turns around and seethes.  She looks at the mom and says (amid breath-catches, as if she’d been sobbing), “If this is the manner in which I’m going to be treated, I’m never going to play again!”  This kid is 7.  It was hilarious!  The mom gave in and let the girl come back - immediately, the drama queen settled down and happily resumed bossing around the other kids.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of my family (I only pulled out the camera at the very end because my sister-in-law was snapping so many pictures).

We’re back in Indiana.  And we’re exhausted.  We didn’t sleep at all on the long flight over the Pacific (something to do with the chairs and the screaming infants), so when we came home, after doing a few things, we crashed.  Hard.  Woke up to the doorbell - Dave’s parents came to drop off our dog (they watched him while we were away this time) and to report on his misbehavior.  He was angelic, they said, the first 8 days, and evil the second 8 days (messing on the carpets a couple of times, jumping the backyard fence, etc).  They looked relieved to give him back - and I don’t blame them.  =)  We’ll be keeping a close eye on him for the next couple of weeks - hopefully getting back to his routine and getting a ton of exercise will fix those behavioral issues.

Anyway, we’re back safe and sound for those of you who were waiting to hear. 

Leah and I have just finished watching all 6 hours of the A&E Pride and Prejudice - and she said she liked it!  She assures me that she didn’t say that to make me happy (I happen to think it’s the best thing since… well, ever).  Tomorrow, we’re going to watch the American version, and then the Bollywood version.  (For her literature class - compare and contrast.)  I’m in heaven.  =)

So nice… he lets me take pictures of him while I play with my new camera:

Dave, uploaded by tara.aukerman.

My body doesn’t know what’s going on.  After 4 hours of sleep, I stayed awake for 20.  Then I went to bed at 6:30pm (HI time).  I woke up every 15 or 20 minutes after 2:00am (which is my normal wake-up time of 7:00am, IN time) until I finally got up at 6:00am (HI time).  I’ve made it ’til 9:00pm tonight, but I’m fading fast. 

I’ve been trying to get in a last hour of work today, but work right now is some graphic manipulation, trying to squeeze an image and find an extra 24 pixel rows - then trying to use that image as the base of a 20-image series.  It’s just too detailed for me to really focus on right now.  So I’m posting a funny video.

We ate at the Hickam AFB officers’ club tonight - at a mongolian barbeque.  It’s a building with only 2 walls, opening out over Pearl Harbor.  While we ate, submarines and motor boats floated by.  I got some fun pictures of my family, but can’t put them online or they’d cry…  my favorite is one of my dad’s face right after a baby puked all over the table in front of him and in his coffee.  =)  Use your imagination.

Leah and I asked Kelly (mom’s friend) to take a picture of us goofing off.  I handed the camera to her in video mode instead of picture mode.  =)  Here’s us posing for her, then waiting, then posing for a second shot just in case the second didn’t come out (pushing the capture button started then stopped the movie):

[coolplayer] http://tara.elmadera.com/images/hickamposes.AVI [/coolplayer]

Other pictures from tonight are posted on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/taukerman/.