2007 In Review

December, 2007

Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of All Ages,
Step right up and grab a seat for the greatest show on earth – our annual holiday letter. Without further delay, we present to you “The Year in Review”:

Dec 2006/Jan 2007 - No year is complete without giving your hard earned bucks to the four-fingered mouse on the high seas. Yes, we took a trip on a memorable NYE Disney Cruise. In one last testament to the Bermingham travel curse, the kids bags were accidentally tagged and sent to the other warm weather location – not Florida, but HAWAII. With Delaney on the FBI no-fly list, and the baggage now in Hawaii, we have confirmed that the travel curse is definitely hereditary. For those of you that can’t get enough of our family chaos, send Su an e-mail and you too can read the tome of our cruise – 20,000 other folks did online, now you can too! For Christmas, Su gets Dave his annual iPOD in hopes that this year, he’ll maybe be able to keep it for at least 12 months.

February - Good bye to our carefree Februarys where nothing good happens. We could have written a novel on February alone. To start, Su gets snowbound in Philadelphia for two days. After finally getting on a plane headed home, Su is stranded on the runway for six hours only to turn back to the gate. The gate agents told everyone to stay in the gate area, which is code for “If you’re smart, try to go stand by on another flight.” After Su puts her name on the stand by list she returns to her original gate to check the status on her malfunctioning plane – only to find out that United has apparently given her first class seat away. Su chooses some words that are not fit for print – and clearly not learned at Wheaton College – only to be told “Another peep out of you and we’re calling security.” Once back in Chicago, our family gets great news – Warner Bros. is interested in using our house for a top secret movie. If our house makes it to the finals of the beauty contest, none other than Christopher Nolan and his crew would be checking out our humble abode in person. So, on a wintry day, we cleaned up the house and welcomed Christopher Nolan and about a dozen of his crew to sniff around the house…and soon after declared it unworthy of movie stardom. Alas, our home was not bat-worthy, and a new bat cave would have to be found. We’ve rationalized our heartbreak by saying, “Well, what if they wanted to use it at Batman’s drug-house…that would be really embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”

March - Max finishes his terrible two’s and enters…his terrible three’s. And for the third year in a row, Dave enjoys his annual “Mancation” – yes, that would be a ski trip with the boys while Su collects her points by watching the kids at home. Soon, Su will have collected enough good-will vacation credits to travel around the world…alone. Dave goes on a business trip to California, with both sets of car keys. With a spare car key in hand, but no way to get into the garage, Southside Sandy comes to Su’s rescue and within seconds has broken into the garage. On a separate note, sad but true, Dave’s new video iPOD only lasted 3 months before it turned up lost. Looks like Su knows what Dave is getting for Christmas this year.

April - Su, Dave and Jack all celebrate birthdays in April which makes us really old, not as old, and a mere 5 years old. As Easter rolls around, we once again spend it in Michigan with Su’s parents. As the grandparents watch the kids, Dave and Su once again trek to dinner in the country. Upon returning home, Su swerves and instead of missing, hits the raccoon dead on. Being the second year in a row that we have created Easter road kill (Dave killed the Easter Bunny last year); we are beginning to get concerned that we have created a new family Easter tradition. Word to the all the Michigan critters – stay off the roads when the Oliveiras are in town.

May - Everyone has heard of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy…how about The Toenail Fairy? It’s true, Jack stubbed his toe and his toe-nail had to be removed by the great Dr. Pete. After putting the toe nail under Jack’s pillow, the Toe Nail fairy brought Jack enough money to buy something extra special. Unfortunately, on the Toe Nail Fairy’s flight to Jack’s room, it hit a 50’ tree in front of the house and knocked it over, crushing the car across the street. Apparently the Toe Nail Fairy needs to get its wings checked. Su took Jack to buy his Toe Nail gift and after purchasing, caught Jack praying in the back seat, “Dear Lord, thank you so much for helping the Toe Nail Fairy get to my house, I love my new toy and I don’t even miss my toe nail.” Delaney, our capitalist pig child, is jealous of Jack’s new toy and we find her trying to pry off her toenails, one by one.

June - Su ends up in the ER and gives the family the gift that keeps on giving – Parvovirus! We’re quick to point fingers at the dog, but apparently parvovirus can’t be transmitted from animal to human. Unless you are talking about our family, then all bets are off. “Umm…adults don’t usually get parvovirus….” Every two weeks, each kid comes down with it – and like good children, they do it in chronological order. Other parents run in fear of our kids, but we know that nothing says family like a case of Parvovirus. Our long time nanny, Bridget, heads off for a month’s vacation in Belize while Su’s niece Kassie nervously signs up for Oliveira Day Camp. Welcome to Chicago Kassie!

July - Tis the season of the Chicago monsoon, both inside and outside. While Kassie is corralling our kids into some semblance of order, a plumbing problem has it raining from the second floor to the first. The next day, Mother Nature furious and not be outdone by a mechanical issue, whips up a fury of her own. 8” of water in the basement and sewage back-up has Kassie counting down the minutes until her return flight to LA. Su beats about 50 other customers at the local hardware store for the last wet vac. Of course, Dave chooses to be in California during the great flood, likely to try to find his missing iPOD. Our basement resembles the Chicago reclamation district and while the kids would like to swim in our new sewage pool, we suggest that perhaps we find alternate activities for the tykes. On Friday the 13th, Bridget is expected back in town from her month away and Kassie packs her bags and heads home. We find out on the 14th that Bridget has gone AWOL and we are without care for the kids. Without batting an eye lash, Kassie graciously hops on the next flight out of LA and shockingly, heads right back into the chaos of our family to help us out until we can find new help. We finish out the month by joining friends at the Police concert and celebrating Dave’s mom’s birthday in Michigan. We also were allowed to see the filming of the “oh-so-secret-bat-like-movie” while it was in town thanks to our new found location scout friend, Patrick.

August - Su whips up a couple of hurricanes and sends them to Belize just to let Bridget know that we’re thinking of her while she’s sipping her Mai Tai’s on the beach. Delaney turns eight and Su gets mom of the year award. We take Delaney’s 8 friends to the tween sensation, “High School Musical” on stage and then after a couple of calls to the four-fingered mouse, Disney shows HSM2 on television when we return home for the sleep over. Chicago experiences our own mini-hurricane Katrina, and with 75 mile hour winds, we sustain enough damage in the neighborhood to fully appreciate trees and foliage, of which we are sorely missing now. Dave, thankfully, is home for this natural disaster, and we are finally well on the way to basement renovation.

September - After Delaney whines that she wants a puppy (what, the time-share dog K.C. isn’t good enough?), we settle on an animal that requires minimal care and is virtually indestructible – the Hermit Crab. Affectionately referred to as “Hermie”, she makes her public debut at show and tell for school. Su notices that Hermie hasn’t moved in the three days that we’ve had her and is concerned that we sent a dead Hermie to show to tell. After turning off all the lights and conducting her own stare-down with the crab, Hermie finally comes out of its shell, gives Su the finger and promptly goes back into hiding wishing that some other family would have rescued her from the confines of the Meijer fish tank. Days later, we host lots of friends in Michigan for the annual Apple Cider Century ride. We wake to screams of youngsters, “Something’s wrong with Hermie!” It appears that Hermie has rolled on to its back and simply needs to be flipped over. With Dave to the rescue, he gently rolls Hermie over only to have all of its legs go flying all over aquarium. It appears that in the middle of the night, the anti-animal-fairy has brought its mini machete and chopped off all of Hermie’s appendages serving up a crab leg feast fit for a pint-size fairy. Sad, but true, the indestructible Hermie is dead after only 9 days. Dave blames Meijer, Su jumps for joy, and Delaney starts the “can I get a puppy instead” banter.

October - Thanks to the good folks at Children’s, we have medical proof that Max does indeed have a brain. We thought for sure that all those recorded Thomas the Train shows had left a permanent indentation of a train on Max’s impressionable young brain, but alas, it’s all there. Su, feeling quite old, celebrates her 20 year high school reunion. A quick trip (ok, not so quick, more like a week-long vacation) to Salon Blonde rids years of anxiety and general graying on Su’s tresses and momentarily lets Su relive the 80’s. Andrea and Mark make the trek to see us and Oprah, and we learn definitively at dinner that the whole reason Su has kept her maiden name was due to Andrea and our best man making a quick dash to our house after the wedding. You see, Dave tore the marriage license in half to write directions to the house to our best man and promptly gave him the half with the signatures. Without a marriage license, there’s no SS#, and no name change. We end the month with Halloween and the boys requesting to be a Power Ranger and Thomas the Train. Unfortunately, Su got rid of last year’s costumes which also happened to be a Power Ranger and Thomas the Train. After ordering new costumes, it’s quickly realized that Jack’s Power Ranger costume might leave Jack unable to bear children later in life after the too-tight ill-fitting costume debuts in Wrigleyville to the horror of dads everywhere.

November - Nothing says Thanksgiving like family and friends, and three turkeys. We host Dave's family in Michigan and try our hand at smoking a couple of birds. Su even renounced her vegetarian vows to partake of the feast, only to regret it later as she prayed to the porcelain gods. We ended the month with our annual Lakeview Pantry Toy Drive. More than 800 toys were collected in a banner year for this event. K.C., the time-share dog, required surgery to remove a benign tumor. Pet insurance would have been a good idea – boy the kids are going to be surprised when they open up a tumor under the tree for Christmas in lieu of toys.

December - Su has not lost her golden touch for face-value tickets, and following our annual Santa Party, Su took Delaney to the Hannah Take-My-Money-Montana concert. While the squeals of young adults were enough to break the crystal chandeliers, Su found solace just outside the concert doors, with none other the Governor. Yep, the Gov with the good hair and Su chatted it up and Su even got a picture with the Gov while Delaney rocked out the show with the hottest ticket in town. Dave and Su are celebrating what they believe is to be their 10 year anniversary at the end of the month, although it’s questionable that they’ve actually been married for 10 years. While we applied for a license just prior to our wedding, the license wasn’t actually granted for another two years – apparently those signatures are kind of critical to a license. So, we’re either celebrating 8 years of marriage, or 10 – either way, it’s been a wonderful ride and one that neither of us would change for anything.