The Marcottes

st. baldrick’s is the world’s largest volunteer-driven fundraising event for childhood cancer research. thousands of volunteers shave their heads in solidarity of children with cancer, while requesting donations of support from friends and family.

at a st. baldrick’s event, something amazing happens. people who normally shy away from the very thought of childhood cancer find themselves compelled to support this cause after looking into the face of these brave children who are smiling broadly as their friends and family members proudly display their newly shorn heads.

volunteers and donors see it can be fun to support a serious cause. young cancer patients and survivors see how many people care. and researchers see st. baldrick’s funds helping to find cures!

last year, john raised over $2000 for childrens’ cancer research. at the event, the emcee asked the audience how much they would pay to see john shave one of his eyebrows off; to which he responded “it better be a lot of money and i’m shaving both!” i can’t remember the exact dollar amount, but i think he raised almost another $500 cash at the event by shaving both eyebrows and his goatee. i couldn’t get over the number of kids participating in this event in honor of a friend or relative that was battling cancer. it really warms your heart to see so many kids there for such a great cause.

this is a very fun event! john is participating again this year at uc davis cancer center on march 12th. i’m here to solicit your help with anything you can give. times are tough, i know. the one thing i keep telling myself whenever i get down about the economy is that at least my family is healthy. not everyone can say that.

if you would like to donate, please go to john’s page and follow the links.

here are some photos from last year’s event:

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on The Marcotte’s page. I figured it was time. So, here are some photos from Halloween - including pumpkin patch and cookie making. Enjoy!

Was it the pleated, acid-washed jeans? The Flowbee-style haircut? Or perhaps that faint whiff of Old Spice mixed with Clearasil?

No one knows for sure, but somehow I was really able to reel in the ladies with large prints on their dresses and even larger hair in the ’80s. Case in point below:

Hello, Ladies!

Sadly John never had these made as promised

Because Leon has been being such a pain in the butt about getting photos of my family, we have tried to oblige him. But giving him just any old photo of Stella or Anya has not worked out. He needs it to be vertical, and he needs to complain that Stella’s head is chopped off in this photo:

From Stella Grace

This evidently ruins the entire picture. A fact that had somehow escaped the notice of everyone else who saw it.

So we went to Picture People in Arden Fair Mall and spent a bunch of money to get “professional” portraits taken by people who probably also turned in applications at Orange Julius and Hot Dog on a Stick.

We had a pretty good time and hammed it up a little. Our photographer was either a current or former “Miss Sacramento,” which was nice, I guess. Anya found friends to run around shrieking with while we waited. And, according to Patti, I told inappropriate jokes to the other families in the lobby.

So here are the results of the shoot, complete with watermark to prevent me from printing my own copies.

We got an 8″ x 10″ vertical for Leon of the whole family, and a few more for ourselves. If anybody else wants any of these, let me know and we’ll try to get some more prints made.

Patti, Anya Stella and I went to Monterey this past weekend. It wasn’t our original plan, but since the entire northern part of the state was on fire, we decided to go south.

We saw the aquarium, an IMAX movie and WALL-E, all in one action-packed weekend.

Here’s some photos from the trip.

Maureen organized a trip to Fairfield to see the Kingston Trio with Dad — and by “organize,” I mean she bought tickets for everyone an then told us we were going and that we owed her money. I got a lot of crap for telling Dad that we were going to see the show because at some point I was unaware that this was a big secret. I know I ruined everything, but somehow I am living with the pain.

The Trio no longer has any of the original members. I’m guessing that, like Menudo, they cycle the guys out when they get to be a certain age to keep the teenage girls interested. By the looks of them, I’d say that age is 85. At least one of the replacements has been with the band since the ’60s. By my math, he’s now been in the band longer than any of the original guys. At any rate, all of them have been in other folk bands and were accomplished performers.

When they did their encore 90 minutes in, they finally hit a song I knew the words to: Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Great song, and a song about the sadness and futility of war. I thought it was interesting that the politics of the song have recently become relevant again, although there was no acknowledgment of that fact from either crowd or performers.

We ended up sitting really close to the stage (although far to one side.) I took some pictures. Here you go.