Beach Photos

Here are some of the pictures taken at the beach the day we took our Christmas photo. I was really happy with a lot of them. As with all the pictures on the blog, you can click on them to get a bigger version. Enjoy!
(Thanks again, Rachel!!!)

Literus Mortus

I finished reading And Then There Were None to Stacy last night. Good book! Stacy had never read any Agatha Christie, and this proved to be an excellent introduction. Ten strangers, all with a checkered past, invited to spend a vacation on an island off the coast of Devonshire. After the first one died mysteriously, some eyebrows are raised. By the time the second dies there is more of a commotion. Once the third is killed off, they realize they are all marked for murder, and not only that, but also that the psychopathic murder is not some disembodied spirit, or some stalker lurking in the shadows. He is one of them!

If you've never read any Christie, I strongly recommend this one. A good sampling! I read it a while back and I vaguely remembered who the murderer was, but couldn't remember exactly how he/she/it pulled it off. I really enjoyed reading it with that bit of insight and trying to reconstruct the solution as it unfolded. (I failed miserably.)

Ahhh. Now the challenge of finding the next selection to read. I'll have to think about it. Any suggestions welcomed!

Christmas Morning

Daddy was outsmarted by our 3-year-old daughter on Christmas morning. "L" noticed that there was only one gift left under the tree and she asked Daddy if that was for her. Daddy, wanting to give others some time to open their gifts, said "I don't know." But "L" wasn't satisfied. She pulled the gift out and looked at the tag. She spelled out all the letters for Daddy and said, "That's MY name!!" She was right and thrilled to have one more present to open. Steve and I laughed; it's becoming harder to outsmart her.

Merry Christmas!

L's Systematic Theology

With the Christmas season we've been talking with L a lot lately about God and Jesus and Heaven. She's clearly processing it, but there's still a lot of work to do!

• I was reading L the Christmas story this morning. We got to the part about the wise men and the gifts they brought. I told her that is why we give gifts on Christmas. At that she said "Are we going to take some up to Heaven?" I said no. "Oh, maybe they can take them up."
  "Who?" I asked.
  "Mary and Joseph. They live in Heaven. Maybe they can take an airplane and get the presents and go on up. But they don't need to buckle up -- they're not real people."
  (Evidently L is going through a theologically liberal phase.)


• L pointed out a crack in the plaster of our bathroom wall. I told her it was broken and Daddy needed to fix it. "That's OK Daddy. You don't need to. We'll call God and He'll come down and do it."


• Stacy asked her if Santa was coming down the chimney tonight. She said, "No, he's coming from his house at the mall."
  (Evidently Mommy shares some of the liberal tendencies...)

Gingerbread Cookies

Stacy had L help her make some gingerbread cookies this morning. L mixed up the dough and rolled it into a ball. Then came the almost unbearable ordeal of waiting an hour for the dough to set.

Finally it was time to roll them out. L had two different gingerbread man cutters - a big one (for Santa's) and a small one (for the rest of us). She had so much fun cutting them out, though by the time she pried the dough out of the cutter most of them looked like they had suffered some horrible and tragic natural disaster. As they were rolling out and cutting the last sheet of dough Stacy noticed that she had superimposed a big man and a little one. Stacy told her that they couldn't cover one another and that they needed to be side-by-side. L was visibly saddened by this and said, "But that is Daddy carrying me."

The Collie of the Wild

I've been planning on playing with a pasta maker I've had for a while, so I dragged it out this morning and dusted it off. Before long, with a little help from L, we had collie! For the uninitiated among you, collie is what L has always called pasta. Not exactly sure how it came about (probably a derivative of macaroni), but the word stuck and collie it is. It's so second nature to us now that last week, when we were at a friends house for dinner, we had talked about the food they'd prepared for several minutes before we noticed the confused looks and had to back up and define our terms.

All She Wants for Christmas...

Poor L.
A couple of weeks ago she took a tumble in the bathroom and bashed her mouth on something. (Don't remember what.) It was a hard bang, but she seemed none the worse for it. Then a couple of days ago she mentioned to Stacy, "My tooth doesn't hurt anymore." Stace was a little freaked because she didn't realize it had been bothering her up till then. And over the course of the last few days, the tooth has slowly started to discolor. As I write, she's at the pediatric dentist to see what to do about it. Stacy is fending off visions of horribly mutilated smiles and a daughter that no one will bear to look at again. I'm just fending off visions of a horribly mutilated wallet.


In other medical news, N just got back from this morning's wellness check at the doctor's. 95%ile for height. (Yeah! Stacy's genes!) His head size is off the charts. (Hmmm... that would be from me. Hard to hold so many brains.) Other than a suspected peanut allergy, everything looks good.

Mouse-free Cinderella

On Thursday night we took our daughter "L" on a "special surprise" we had been building up all week. Stacy and I and honorary Grandma Flo took L to see a full stage production of Cinderella at the South Bay Civic Light Opera. Now lest I immediately be mocked and ridiculed for being grossly "inconsistent" in my disdain for all things Disney, let me quickly note that this was the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, and not at all a Disney-goes-to-Broadway torturefest. Not a freakish humanoid mouse in sight!

While I had heard that R&H had done a version of Cinderella (broadcast on live television back in the 50's starting Julie Andrews), I wasn't familiar with any of the music. The storyline more or less followed the Disney version rather than the bloodier Grimm fairytale plotline. (Yes, bloodier. If you haven't read the Brothers Grimm story, put it on the top of your reading list. It's quite a trip. Lots of mayhem and mutilations. Fun fun!)

L surprised me. While she was obviously excited and thrilled to go, her excitement took on a serenity I wasn't expecting. We were braced for the three-year-old, princess-induced, spaz-out, but got more of a stunned wide-eyed wonder. We were in the front row of the second section, so there was a short railing in front of us rather than seats. For a good deal of the play she simply stood in front of her chair at the railing (which came up to her chin) in her poofy satin dress, transfixed on the stage, swaying slightly to the music. Even toward the end when she needed to lie down in Daddy's lap, her eyes never wandered, and she never got distracted. Stacy and I'd run through all the potential disaster-prevention contingency plans long before we got there (whispered threats of suffocation, mid-aria haulings-off to the lobby, etc.), and were quite pleased that no one had to be strangled or brought up on charges by child protective services.

A Finished Still Life

I finished the still-life I'd been working on over the summer and fall. I'm pretty pleased with it. I've been taking oil painting classes since 2003 and I've really grown to love it. It is so different from what I do every day at work that it becomes the perfect decompression chamber. I don't have much free time, so I almost never paint at home anymore. (Too many sticky-fingered art critics running around.) I really only paint during the three-hour class I take on Wednesday nights.
Stacy has been very kind to give me my night out, so in exchange I wrestle the kids on Mondays so she can take a scrapbooking class. I think we're both a little saner for the time off.

I'm working now on a portrait of Stacy and our son "N". It's got another couple of weeks to go, but classes are on hiatus until the beginning of the year. Maybe I'll brave all my resident mini-Jackson Pollocks and do some work on it over the break.

The Happiest Commercial on Earth

Yesterday Stacy and I braved the rampant consumerism and took our daughter "L" and son "N" to the Happiest Commercial on Earth.

While I love to hate Disney and its full-frontal marketing assault, I have to admit a grudging admiration for them in several aspects. What I really do love most is the attention to detail that pervades all the structures of the park. Kitschy Disney memorabilia aside, the art inherent in the park design is truly fascinating. I can spend hours appreciating all the thought that went into the faux-architecture, how every plastic thatched roof or fiberglass-molded log has been painstakingly designed to look real, but "cartoony" (for lack of a better word). Every building is a distillation (sometimes into absurdity) of some real or fantastical period architecture. And its all manipulated to bring about the whole "world apart" and "hidden paradise" illusion.

I've been told that the scale of the buildings that line Main Street get slowly smaller as you walk into park. This supposedly gives the illusion, standing at the entrance and looking down, that the street is much longer than it is, receding as it seems, in the distance. I've looked and tried to decide if it was true. I can't tell for sure, but the thought that they might have done something that clever seems to fit these folks.

But all philosophizing aside, the kids had a blast. N was enamored of Pluto while L would have nothing to do with him. When it came to the rides, L was quite fearless. There is one kid-friendly rollercoaster there that L was big enough to go on, though watching it go by, it definitely seemed geared for kids twice her age. But She wanted to ride it and I agreed, smelling a disaster in the making. At the first drop I vaguely remember hearing her scream like I've never heard her before and was sure she was was going to be a snivelling basketcase when we were done (which fortunately was VERY quickly - I guess that makes it kid-friendly). Stacy, watching from the sidelines with N, was shocked and convinced our daughter was going to be traumatized for life. But as soon as we deboarded she was begging to get on again. I was rather stunned.

All in all, she was pant-wetting excited the whole day. I think N was just happy to be out of his prisonlike playpen. And truth be told, Stacy and I had as much fun as the kids... The best part was, of course, the 45 minutes of perfect peace on the drive home with two sacked-out park-rats in the backseat.

Fighting the Fadeout!

Our hopes for this blog are not extremely lofty. We hope to be able to use this to keep family and friends a little more closely knit than they have been in the past -- because a continent's worth of landmass and the never-ending demands of budding families do not make for much catch-up time. As our kids grow, and our friends' families have their own adventures, it can be oh so easy to let inadvertent neglect whittle away the camaraderie; we have so many people we want to keep near to, virtually if not physically, and maybe, just maybe, this will in some small way help to do that.

So help us out by reading and commenting and filling us in with your lives as well. Here's to fighting the fadeout!

--Steve & Stacy.

Ahhh, the ever-daunting first post is done!