The Brookston Family Blog
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Drinking Problems? No problems.

Manning the tap at a Giants’ tailgating party.

Chaperoning as the missing Mark shares a cuddle with John’s sister Catherine out in front of Paul & Eddie’s.

Oh, that lucky John!

So that was tasty. Right?

While we watched Porter on stage at the Spring Sing, Alice was having a ball playing with the bottles of water in buckets of cool water. She’d take them out and toss them back in again, over and over again. Sometimes she’d try to give them to us, but then she’d just as quickly take them back again.

Alice applauds as one of the songs on stage ends.

Then chooses two water bottles.

Offering them to Mommy.

When Sarah declined, Alice offered them to me. How could anyone refuse that face?

PART

Zenobia knew she and John would be together from the moment they met. That’s how we knew she was a crazed loon. But she was our crazed loon, dammit. Or rather she was John’s. Married for over ten years, John and Zenobia have two beautiful children and are expecting a third, which is living proof that not all drunken impaired judgment decisions are bad ones.

Zenobia working on an entire pitcher of margaritas while John, Suzanne and Karen look on in disbelief. Hmm, what did she have in mind? Note the great expression on Karen’s face. What was she thinking?

John, Zobe and more drinking. Are you sensing a pattern? By the way, that’s Shmare’s half-face sticking out half a tongue at the camera.

At a New Year’s Eve party we threw many years ago.

John and Zobe at our engagement party.

Friday evening was the annual Spring Sing at Porter’s Montessori pre-school. He started out pretty good — certainly better than than last year— but after a few songs stopped singing and just looked a little scared and sad. Overall though he seemed to do much better than last year though and once we moved closer to the stage and he could see us more easily he his spirits did seem to pick up a bit. It was great fun to see all the kids and moving it to the eveing (and outside) worked out great this year.

Ms. Liza leads the kids onto the stage.

Porter walking in awed by the crowd of parents.

Ms. Liza starts the kids singing.

The kids on stage. Porter is on the right, wearing a white shirt.

Working on the choreography.

“Hmm. What’s next?”

“Where’s mom and dad?”

I’m not sure if he’s waving to us or trying to follow the dance moves.

The kids near the big finale.

But by this time Porter had shut down and stopped participating.

He was just too cool for school.

Practicing his James Bond poses. “I take my milk shaken not stirred. After all, it’s a milkshake, isn’t it?”

Here’s a Quicktime movie of Porter singing and dancing to Neil Diamond’s Sing. You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).

PART

The many faces of Zobe.

Nice hat!

Zobe and Shmare.

With Mike and Karen at Eagle Lake at Lake Tahoe.

I’m actually a full week late with Zenobia’s birthday, which was actually on the 10th. I’m also not entirely sure how old Zenobia is, all I know for sure is that she was younger than the mainstays, which are all around 37 this year. Zenobia is married to John S., and it was as his girlfriend that we first met Zobe. Zenobia was the first among us to start a family and she and John have two kids, Mitchell and Samira. And the big news we just heard is that she is expecting a third! Congratulation and happy belated birthday Zenobia.

Zenobia and John at Sarcasm Central.

Be-hatted at a Duncanstone.

Looking like the proverbial innocent catholic schoolgirl at her engagement party.