Mom Goes For The Record!

So, I went back to the magical land of Green Bay for the Easter Holiday last weekend. There were many good and wonderful times to be had. My sister and I took my nephew to two different Easter egg hunts around the city. He's five now, so he's still in the "let's just throw a bunch of eggs into a field and have the kid's mad dash out to get them" stage as far as Easter egg hunts go. The kids run around collecting as many plastic eggs as possible. Most have candy in them, but a couple have stickers. If your kid gets a sticker, they've won a special prize.

Well, Dom cleaned house because he got like four special prizes at the very first egg hunt. When we went up to claim them, the gal there reached into a bag and pulled out the first four things she found. They were a plastic elephant mug, a tie-dye kite, a small football, and a sunflower headband. Being a boy, he took one look at the headband and gave me a look that screamed, "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?" Alert to these subtle messages, I quickly took the headband back to exchange it.

Well, all I can say is that it's a good thing for the Ibsen family that I did. What I got in exchange was the best present we could ever have imagined. Well, except for that whole Jesus/Salvation deal. We got a paddle ball that said "Happy Easter" on it.


At the time, I had no idea what a huge deal this was about to become. A day later, it was casually laying around my parents home, when I picked it up and tried to get some continuous whacks. This, I found out, was very difficult to do. However, my parents saw me fail at this and got very excited. Before I knew it, they were competing to see who could get the most whacks in a row. At one point, my Dad got 14, which was really quite impressive at the time. The following is my mother trying for the record (sorry it's sideways - just deal with it):



Isn't she cute? What you didn't see was her going all John McEnroe, whipping the ball on the ground and the table while shouting "God Dammit!" in the dining room before she'd figured out the "total body" technique.

The video clearly shows her reaching 13, but that didn't stop her from running to the basement and telling my father that she'd just beat his record of 14. But no matter. Later that day, I got 24 in a row, and my Dad got an astounding 62, sending her back to the drawing board. Even though I'm now back in Minnesota, I'm still getting calls from her about this. The latest one was a voicemail telling me she's now reached 241, though the dog is currently her only witness to this...

Happy Easter Everyone!