The Celebrity Couple Otherwise Known As McFreed

A Very McFreed Hawaii Part 1

nobody@vox.com(Sean & Stefan) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:18:41 -0700

The McFreeds return in triumph from their adventure in the South Pacific...

As you may recall McFreed fans, your favorite celebrity couple travelled to Hawaii much like The Brady Bunch before them.

Did they survive? Did they get sunburned? Did Vincent Price try and give them a magic Tiki? Did anyone drown?

Here is the exciting tale of what happened, who and what was seen, and where the "bodies are buried" so to speak! There are many tales and many pictures to share with all of you! Probably too much! So we are going to break out our post about our trips into several rather than one long scroll. So here is Part 1...

How Finding Nemo Saved Our Lives

We found a good deal on Delta which only had two legs to fly: Baltimore to Atlanta and Atlanta to Honolulu. Our friend Josh (one of Sean's best friends in the world) was going to meet us. We bought a portable DVD player and picked many things to watch on the way... making sure the battery was fully charged! Set up our iPods with all our favorite tunes (which Stefan later forgot his at home... oh no!). We even packed a number of snacks for the trip knowing full well that we'd get hungry over the long flight which was going to clock in at about 12 hours total if you count the layover in Atlanta. You' d think we would be prepared for anything! Wrong!

Finding Nemo

We would soon be put face to face with what being a parent is on our flight from Atlanta to Honolulu. A couple stationed on the islands for the Army was returning from visiting family in Virginia with their 2 and 4-year-old along. This was fine the first few hours despite the fact that the 2 year old kicked Sean's chair most of the flight. We enjoyed our flight, snacked, and watched 27 Dresses (and sadly we thought it was cute in parts; Stefan-the-sap did in fact cry at the end) and watched half a season of our favorite British sit-com Coupling (proobably cackling so much we were a distraction ourselves). Hour 7 came though and the 2 year old lost it... full tantrum! Quickly, Sean remembered he had smuggled Finding Nemo on with the intention of finally getting Stefan to watch it (that is a story in itself!). The "gay dads-to-be instinct" kicked in and we immediately suggested to the mother that she could use our dvd player and our copy of Finding Nemo. Unfortunately for her and her husband their dvd player had lost battery power...hence the "explosion!"

The lovely child almost immediately stopped crying and his brother was telling his mom what parts were his favorite. Suffice it to say, at the end of the flight the mom declared that we had "saved the plane" and the father thanked us for his much needed nap as the movie went on. Therefore McFreed fans, we recommend you bring a portable dvd player and a Disney DVD with you on future trips on flights over 5 hours as to eliminate any chance of "carnage" in the air .

Paula Dean

Celebrity Look-a-likes Oh My!

A side story to our big flight was we had two celebrity impersonators on our flight that tickled our funny bone whenever we saw them. Paula Dean and Joanna Lumley (in Patsy Stone hair mode and red flight attendent outfit although not drunk) were our flight attendents! It was such a chuckle when they both came by to help us with a meal or drink or trash. The hair ("Paula's" was huge!) and accents were uncanny! Just imagine if it was the real Paula with fried chicken and Patsy brought the booze?

Joanna Lumley as Patsy

Arrival

Josh (his partner John was working) met us at the airport with flower leis in hand and we continued on our journey... this was Sean's first trip to Hawaii and Stefan's 2nd (he had been when he was 14 for 4 days with his family).

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Happy New Year!

nobody@vox.com(Sean & Stefan) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:33:14 -0800

The McFreeds want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!!!

We will be celebrating with an early dinner with Stefan's brother Andy, sister-in-law Amy, and niece Sarah. Later, the party begins at Lady Godiva's herself (aka Barbara) with the usual suspects of Althea, Dennis, Beth, and Jon of course!

We have a lot to look back on. Sean's new job in January, moving in together in March, our trip to Las Vegas, time with our niece Sarah and nephew Zachary, the 1st Annual McFreed Summer Shindig, starting our blog, the Boston Red Sox winning it all, the New England Patriots perfect regular season, Stefan's kidney stone, meeting a ton of family and friends on both sides, and oh yeah getting engaged! Whew! There was so much more and we are so exhausted thinking about it!

A huge HUGGLE to all our family and friends near and far this holiday! It doesn't really mean anything but its always great to tell everyone you love and respect as well as just getting to know that you care... so Happy New Year and all the best in 2008!!!

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The McFreeds visit the shore...

nobody@vox.com(Sean & Stefan) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:17:29 -0700

Sean and Stefan say...

The McFreed Beach

It has only been three weeks and we, your McFreeds, have been on another exciting journey! I know you all are just excited to hear about our travels as we are to expound upon them!

The McFreed Lifeguard

Stefan's summer destinations always includes Ocean City (being a good Maryland boy as he is). Sean had been but never truly basked in the O.C. (not the O.C. some of you might be thinking of) beach's sizzle. So your McFreeds, being the celebrity couple you expect us to be, took the beach town by storm... but of course just out of season so we could get the lower rates!

Here are a few glimpses at our 6 day visit...and be glad we caught these pictures, because Sean almost left his camera behind at Layton's on 92nd!

Shadaim!

The Place

We stayed at The Pyramid, a condominium on 96th Street. At $500 for the full stay it was a nice bargain. More like a 3 star hotel than anything else, the place had a great view of the beach and pool. The balcony was very deep and could accomodate a few nice dinners outside in the nice ocean breeze. Strangely we felt though that we were in Conquest of The Planet of The Apes based on the architecture style!

The Pyramid

The People

The first nutcase... I mean person of interest we met was Poolside Sybil. Sybil was met at the pool one afternoon and was never seen ever again. She was a woman of about 60 who had a liking for religious literature (which is fine if not accompanied by an odd chanting ritual) for her poolside reading. Sean knew to keep those iPod headphones on the moment he saw her smiling at him and sitting nearby. She had that crazy look in her eye like she would talk to you forever...yes Sean does from time to time not like to talk. Shocking I know! Anyways... once Stefan came down he was quickly warned by Sean to just keep the phones on and smile like you can't hear anything. Lets say we were the lucky ones at the pool... we only witnessed the low chanting, impish smiles, and unappealing vision that Poolside Sybil was. The young woman next to us was not so lucky... we prayed for her soul later...seriously.

The Pyramid's Pool

The McFreeds also encountered Tania, the Russian Check Out Clerk. She was an odd duck all dressed up to go out in her lace top and silver jewelry. A build like the female wrestler Chyna and a nasty demeanor, we shared a complaint about her to some other customers as we exited the Super Fresh and they immediately said "She was our check out clerk last night and she was terrible then too!" We all four laughed and laughed... then your celebrity couple pushed our grocery cart through the dark parking lot and across the busy street to the condo.

The Boardwalk

Ocean City Boardwalk

Of course any decent power couple takes a stroll on the boardwalk when in Ocean City. Sean bought a kite at The Kite Loft - the largest kite store in

the world they claim! He never flew it but it is really nice! Look for pictures of its first flight later in the Fall! Here are some nice shots of the boardwalk as we strolled!

Tickets!!!!

We also played silly boardwalk games like Skeeball, pinball, shooting gallery, and old video games at a place called Fun City. You collect tickets as you play and get fabulously cheap gifts!

The weather was phenomenal during our trip to the boardwalk. It was warm yet breezy, romantic enough for a stoll and a quick duck into a photo booth! Here are some other sites and sounds of the Boardwalk!

The Putt Putt

Being the big goofs that we are, we had to take in the mini-golf! We played at Lost Treasure Golf and the Old Pro Golf location on 68th Street (Prehistoric Dinosaurs and the indoor Undersea Adventure).

Sean's Inner T-Rex

Stefan's Inner Cro-Magnon Woman

Stefan - Serious Golfer

Honey I feel something sharp!

Sean is Golf Balanced

We played one round at Lost Treasure and 3 rounds at Old Pro Golf. Sean won all the rounds... although it was all for fun of course! To win a bonus game you had the choice of hitting into a clam's or sabre tooth tiger's mouth at Old Pro Golf. Sadly, we already had a pass that gave us unlimited games... and yes we tried but didn't get the ball in the right place for the bonus anyway.

Here are some fun photos when we played the links!

Sean Celebrates His Hole-in-One!

The Police

The final day we were in Ocean City we were relaxing in our condo when all of a sudden there was a knock at the door around 9pm. The person said that he was security but seemed rather suspicious. He told Stefan that his car alarm was going off. Well for those of you who know Stef's 1994 Mazda Protege, it doesn't have a car alarm. So we thought nothing of it. At 1am we had just finished the Rock Hudson/Doris Day classic Pillow Talk when another knock came at the door. This time the guy was wearing a football jersey and was claiming the same thing the previous unseen guy had said. He wouldn't stand so we could see through the peephole and he took off his jersey while we were talking to him. Did we mention the out door light was going on and off during this? We called 911 and the police came letting us know that it was indeed security that was contacting us. We felt like we had egg on our face but the police assured us that with the way security approached us and the fact that we were tourists it was a good thing to call. Whew!

Volcano!

The Final Day

Your McFreeds left Sunday, Sept 16th after a breakfast at The Bayside Skillet of omelettes and crepes and some putt putt we talked about above. We are already planning for next year and hope some of you can join us!

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