Christmas 2005

The Seefried Family Personal Ads (Christmas 2005)

MWM (45) seeks personal assistant to pay bills, uncork wine, organize battery drawer, and listen to repetitive golf stories;
MWF (44) seeks travel agent with medical background and taxicab;
SWF (16) seeks life of 26 year old including no rules, no curfew, steady paycheck;
SWM (15) seeks talent agent. Must own bakery or candy store;
SWM (13) seeks hit man to off David Ortiz
SWF (11) seeks (hot) members for band. Especially bass player (must be very hot!);
SWM (6) seeks introduction to Cinderella, but will settle for any Disney princess!

Now that our household consists of three teens, a pre-teen, and a six-year-old teen wannabe, everything is personal. We have so many hormones raging the Denver police have designated a new crime category “Home Rage”. That is the charge when anyone reacts so strongly to someone eating the last cookie that they try to kill them. It also covers reactions to whistling, singing, staring, saying hi to your brother’s friend, touching anyone’s anything, or asking “how was your day?”

Travel was the name of the game in 2005…collectively we logged enough miles on United to be awarded our own flight attendant (but she ate the last pack of peanuts, so we had to kill her).

In January, after years of trying to convince me to go “South of the Border”, Phil finally got his wish …sort of… and we headed to Mexico for a long weekend in January. It was a memorable trip in the way that most trips to Mexico are memorable. Enough said.

On February 1st, I flew to NY to surprise Kris for her sweet 16. Over the course of her sixteenth year she has ingested 563 slices of pizza, made 492 calls to complain, bemoaned her lack of money on 358 separate occasions, blamed someone else for everything 216 times, watched 197 episodes of Law & Order, used 12,597 cell phone minutes and logged at least 25,681 frequent flyer miles between DIA and LaGuardia.

March found us in San Francisco where Phil was shocked and dismayed to find (in an elevator with a mirrored ceiling of all places) that we weren’t kidding about his bald spot. The other people on the elevator were pretty shocked and dismayed themselves as apparently they had never seen a grown man cry.

Will continues to consume significantly more than one-fifth of my driving hours, our performing arts funds, and the family food supply. Since January, his roles have run the gamut from a Roman teenager competing with his father for the beautiful blonde (a mid-life fantasy for many dads we know) to a childless baker on a mission to steal Red Riding Hood’s cape! He also acted like a pretty convincing innocent bystander when he and friend Eve got picked up by cops while walking to the grocery store at 2AM…what??...they were hungry.

Kevin’s life dream came true last summer, when Phil and he flew to Detroit (glad that wasn’t my life dream) for three days of MLB All-Star mania. Kev came home with enough baseball paraphernalia to open his own stadium. Come September, he got a free make-over when several of Will’s female pals decided to update Kev’s look. Our clothing budget is now shot as he is no longer happy in old Yankee shirts and hand-me-down jeans. Along with his new appearance, Kev has developed an attitude…as well as a social life. His first big coed party somehow managed to coincide with parents’ weekend at Masters. I’m still not sure which one of us drew the short straw…but try to picture Phil and Will playing chaperone to 40+ thirteen and fourteen year olds… in our basement and on a mission.

Nicki is a savvy eleven year-old who dreads the hallmark of fifth grade…“Puberty Day”. Seeing that puberty has been the hallmark of our household since the turn of the millennium, it shouldn’t be that traumatic! Nicole has been testing the performance waters alongside Will, and was pretty cool last summer as a Thunderbird in Grease! This week she debuted as Granny in Into the Woods. If anyone had ever told me that I’d pay ten bucks (eight times) to see my daughter eaten by a wolf…and then cut out of the wolf’s stomach by her brother, the Baker, I never would have believed them…Nick has also been seen jamming around some Denver dives on her electric guitar. She is asking Santa for two monster cables, a special effects pedal and a parakeet. Guess we’ll have to soundproof her room…

Cameron. When he was one, I thought it was ‘fun’. When he was two, I thought ‘almost through’. When he was three, I thought ‘God help me’. When he was four, I thought ‘this is a chore’. When he was five, I thought ‘bury me alive’. But now he is six…and loving and clever…I hope he stays six forever and ever! His favorite activities include the monkey bars, spin art and Camrox727@yahoo.com (his new e-mail address…he’d LOVE to hear from you)!

As for Phil and me, well…we just do our best to keep smiling, drinking and playing one, two, three shoot to see who wins the late night rehearsal pick-up or the early morning coffee run. We’ve decided to sell the NY house and dig deeper into Denver…maybe a mountain house some day? We’d love to see you here or on the Jersey shore when we head East for July. Any interest in renting the Stone Harbor house in June or August, let us know!

This year we continue to pray for our troops and their families, as well as for all of those uprooted by Katrina and Rita.

We wish you peace, joy, health, and happiness!
With Love, Gretchen, Phil, Kris, Will, Kevin, Nicole & Cameron