priceless

8 inches of new snow: FREE

New orange sled from the outdoor store: $20

A new pile of snow on top of an old snow bank on top of the already steep slope in the yard: 1 hour worth of work with the snow blower

Sledding down your own backyard: PRICELESS

My Valentines

Valentine's day is somewhat of an anniversary for us. We got engaged shortly after Valentine's day and we moved into our first house on Valentine's day and we made the offer on the house we live in now during Valentine's week. It just seems like this time of year is when we remember some big things that have happened to us.

Well, my true Valentine was out of town for the holiday. Don't worry, we celebrated and exchanged gifts before he left. He even took me to U2-3D on a date. That was really one of the best presents ever! What an amazing experience. You can't beat a movie that wasn't made for kids, a night out with my hubby, and my favorite band to boot!

But, for the actual holiday, I was home alone in Stow with the other loves of my life, Gracie and Hattie. I decided that just because David was out of town didn't mean that we couldn't do something nice, so we had a great evening together (and we're giving the bill to daddy!)

I took the girls out to a nice restaurant in Maynard. I made reservations for three. When we showed up at the hostess desk, they asked me if I was waiting for someone or if my party was already here somewhere? Well, the reservations say three people, and if I can count, Grace and Hattie and Mommy make 3! They looked at me in disbelief that I had brought 2 little kids to eat there by myself. I'm sure they were wondering why we weren't at the McDonald's across the street. Again, we got the same questions from the waiter when we sat down. Are you still waiting for the rest of your party? NOPE. Why do you have to eat at McDonald's just because you're eating with little kids? We want good food too!

Actually, one of the biggest reasons I chose the restaurant I did was that Grace said she wanted to go somewhere where she could get salmon. Usually it is a toss up between salmon and clam chowder for her. So, we didn't even order from the kids menu. I got a salmon entree for the girls to share. I had lobster bisque and a really spicy salad. I regretted the salad later...a little too spicy, but the lobster bisque was to die for.

Anyway, the girls were GOOD AS GOLD at dinner. They are really quite fun to take out. I have been trying to figure this out for the longest time. I do take them out to nice places every so often by myself and they are always very good and very charming to those around us. I brag about this, and then I take them out with David or heaven forbid with other friends and they are MONSTERS at the table. No one believes me that they are so good when we go out.

It finally occurred to me this time why they are good when they go with just me. It's because the nice meal is all about them. I talk to them the whole time and I can really concentrate on asking them to be polite in a nice way rather than just trying to manage the chaos. When we go out others or even just with David, I am trying to have adult conversations and they are just in the background while I'm quickly asking them to be good and trying to manage them on the side rather than focusing a lot of attention on them.

So, we had a great Valentine date, the 3 of us. We had a wonderful dinner and then walked over to the paper store nearby to spend some money that one of their grandma's had sent them in a valentine. Again, they were so good in the store because the shopping trip was all about what they wanted to look at and buy and I wasn't trying to look for other things in the mean-time.

This is seriously and epiphany for me. I just wish I could figure out how to get this behavior out of them when I do want to talk to someone else or when I do have to shop for something that isn't of interest to them...

So what did you do for Valentine's day? I caught up with my Oprah TIVO today and watched her Valentine special. It focused on all the different kinds of Valentines. A Valentine can be your friend, your grandma, or even your dog! I'm glad I spent mine with 2 gorgeous girls.

Sandman 911

Mr. Sandman... bring me a dream. MAKE MY KIDS SLEEP!!!!

10:30pm. Just spent over an hour getting both kids to bed and they're finally asleep. Mom and Dad in bed. Is it too good to be true? Do we actually get to go to bed by ourselves and get some sleep? NO!

First, the thunder starts. IN FEBRUARY? Yep, huge lightning and thunderstorm followed by torrential rain. I thought it was going to snow tonight? Oh, - it did at 4am. Thanks. Well, one of our dogs is scared to death of thunder. If you ever hoped to sleep during a thunder storm with her in the house, you were wrong. She comes right up to the bedside and pants with hot doggie breath right in your face for hours until you think she is going to have a heart-attack or pass out. We have doggie xanex for her, but it doesn't work very well. We use to have prescription tranq's for her, but they're not "safe" to use anymore so the vet won't give them to us.

Cue Hattie. Thunder (weather) and/or Shadow (dog) woke her up at what - 11:30pm? Another hour getting her back to bed. I lost count at 35 times of putting her back in her little toddler bed and walking out of the room. It was textbook sleep strategy -exactly what they do on tv, only it's pretty painful to do. FINALLY, she stayed in bed and went back to sleep.

Cue Grace 1:30am. Shadow still breathing hot doggie breath and freaking out. Grace sits straight up in bed and screams "Mommy" until you get out of bed, walk to her door and either put her back to sleep or tell her she can come in your room. It's a toss up which is more painful. I chose #2 last night and she came to our bed to David's dismay.

Finally David locks Shadow in the downstairs bathroom so that she feels safe in a "cave" and we close our eyes for a couple of hours.

Cue Hattie - 4:30am? She's up. She wants milk. Mom is seriously too tired to try the 35 times back to bed routine. I wish she would sleep with us, really, but whenever she gets in bed with us she does everything BUT sleep.
Mom takes Hattie to her room and sits in the rocking chair with her for an hour. Finally decides to go back to bed and take Hattie with her at 5:30 for dare we ask 15 minutes of sleep?

Hattie rolls and kicks and pulls Grace's hair. Shadow starts barking from the downstairs bathroom. David gets up for work. Hattie won't stay upstairs if Daddy is downstairs. Mommy and Hattie head downstairs for early breakfast and TV.

8:38am Grace is still ASLEEP in Mommy and Daddy's BED!!!! Lucky!!!

ps - this has been going on pretty much non-stop since the week of Christmas. Before that, both kids slept soundly in their own beds without a peep and didn't take much to go to bed. WHY? I know that sleeping in the same room for a week for our vacation didn't help, but it was going on long before that... I guess I did too much bragging about what great sleepers they were and now karma has me.

Vacation Wrap-up

Well, we did end up having a good end to our trip despite the emergency room visit. Grace just had a virus, but it sure made her sick. She missed about a day and a half of skiing. She fell behind in the class and wasn't having so much fun, so we signed her up to take a private daddy and me ski lesson on Saturday morning. This was awesome for both of them. She really built up her confidence and started skiing really well. She has moved up to a level 2 skier which means she can now ride the chair lift. David and I kept skiing all week. When the kids were sick, we just traded off, and then when they were a bit better and went back to camp and day care, we skied some more together. It was so nice to be together all morning and then go to lunch together without the kids. We haven't had so many dates in years. We also had fun going to the fireworks show they have at Smuggler's. Grace was so excited because we missed the fireworks here on the 4th of July. She has not let us forget it since. The instructors also did a torch ski run right before the fireworks show which was pretty cool.
Yay for our first family vacation! David promised me that our next vacation (not to see relatives) will be somewhere warm. I would love to do Disney in 2009 before Grace gets much older.
David says he wants to post about skiing. Hopefully he will soon. I think he was really excited to get back to the sport. We will try to do some spring skiing in Utah when we come this year. David will be there in February and we (the girls and I) are going in March. We hear that Alta does free rope tow all day, so I think I'll take Grace and let her see some Utah powder. New England ice is not so fun...

Ski Vermont!

That license plate is hard to get use to after Ski Utah for most of our lives.

Well, we arrived at Smuggler's Notch, VT on Monday night for our first family vacation ever that doesn't involve visiting relatives. David and I haven't done any skiing in over 10 years. We decided it was time to try it again and teach Grace.

Smuggler's is a fantasy place for families. It is seriously fun. Our little condo is right in the center of the village about 1 minute walking to anything we want to do. In fact, we can ski right to our building. We enrolled Grace in a week-long ski camp and Harriet in a week-long, well, day care. They call it Treasures, and actually it's really nice and they do a very good job, but it is still day care.

Monday was a tough day as we scurried to finish packing, take the dogs to the Doty's house, rent skis from REI and then make the 4 hour drive with the screaming and fighting kids to northern VT. As David says, there's little between here and the arctic and once you've felt the wind at the top of the peak, you're quite sure that Santa's neighborhood isn't far.

Tuesday, we dropped Hattie off and we all started skiing. David and I were a bit nervous and took a cautious day going down the bunny slope to make sure we weren't going to kill ourselves. Grace had a rough day too because the skis REI fitted her with were way too long and she had a hard time keeping up with the class. Still, we were all pretty happy at the end of the day after skiing, got Grace some new skis, and looked forward to a better day on Wednesday.

In the middle of the night, Grace woke up feeling sick with a fever. We couldn't believe our luck that she would get sick on the second night here, but I pretty much had planned on someone getting sick. She woke up Wednesday excited to ski. After a phone call to her doctor who said that if Grace felt like skiing that we should let her ski and she probably wasn't too sick. So we dropped her off at camp and took Hattie up the hill to Treasures. It proved to be a long day for Hattie. She had to stay in the day care for 7 hours (you can't pick them up and take them back) while David and I took ski lessons and then went to a mandatory condo sales pitch (mandatory if you want your $700 discount!)

David and I had great ski lessons (on separate mountains!) and now are pretty confident that we can get back out on the slopes and really enjoy ourselves. Our knees and egos are holding up so far.

We went to pick up Grace who looked like she wanted to lay down and sleep for 100 years. Her eyes were both red little slits and she just looked terrible. Her fever was pretty much gone so we took her back to the room for a good nap hoping that it was just a long day for her. Her instructor said that she had a great day skiing until the last run which ended up being one run too many and she melted down.

Long story short, David just took her for a 30 minute drive to the nearest emergency room. She is really really really sick today. I feel so bad for her. She was so looking forward to learning how to ski and we were looking forward to the end of the week when we could take her out with us and ski with her. Now things aren't looking so good. It should be apparent that if you have time to blog on a vacation, the vacation is not going well!

We have taken only a very few pictures and are now starting to regret we don't have any of Grace skiing or even outside in the snow. We might not get any now. If you're reading this, say a big prayer and cross your fingers for us that we can get Grace better in time for her to do some more skiing before we have to leave.

Here are a few snapshots. See, we could have just posted these and made you all think that we're having a lovely yuppie ski vacation.The view off of our balcony.

Harriet saying "cheese" (she does this on command now!)

Grace in her ski gear before camp yesterday.

Both girls FINALLY in bed and asleep on Monday night, little did we know...

The Family that Sniffs Together...

Well the blog front has been pretty quiet as we have all been battling colds since just after Christmas. In the family friendly tradition, Grace got RSV and her first ear infection right after Christmas. In the spirit of Christmas giving, Grace thought it would be nice to share with Hattie. So Hattie ended up with RSV the next week. And since this takes up to 2 weeks to run its course it was inevitable that Mom and Dad were also going to get sick. All told, everyone visited the doctor except for me. Although I probably should have. This past week was the sickest I have been in recent memory and caused me to take my first sick time in three years. Luckily we are all recovered (I still have no voice and an occasional cough) in time for Vermont. I'll let you know if church produces any sniffles on Wednesday. ;-)

Ring in the New

Nothing new here except new viruses. We have been sick since the day after Christmas and counting. I started the New Year by crawling to the barn in a snowstorm to teach an impromptu riding lesson. When the rider didn't show up, I actually got to ride by myself in the most beautiful snowstorm. A tiny piece of heaven... should have known there was nowhere to go but down! Grace is finally well, but Hattie has RSV this week and David and I finally caught our share. We're just hoping to get better and stay better for our ski trip coming up in about a week!

We've been meaning to do our 2007 top ten list. Still haven't had a chance to do it yet because we've been too busy wiping noses and filling prescriptions. But, I have 5 minutes today (totally should be doing something else) and I thought I would write down a few things that the kids are doing (besides coughing and sneezing) these days before I forget them:

Harriet is:
*wanting to do everything Grace does exactly the way Grace does
*trying to dress herself
*successfully undressing herself at the most inopportune moments (like when we're late to leave to go somewhere!)
*refusing to wear socks, but demanding shoes
*hating to have her diaper changed
*despising to have her teeth brushed
*kicking so hard in the tub, that I think she could kick herself across a swimming pool with no problem.
*throwing a fit at the sight of her carseat
*not wanting to eat anything except candy
*trying to talk, but still 95% eh, eh, eh...
*getting little OCD things going on - like her naptime and bedtime routine that has to be just so or she will launch herself out of her crib until you get it right.
*playing with baby dolls
*playing with trains
*drawing
*laughing at everything
*loving her doggies
*learning to say sorry (she doesn't say sorry, but softly pats the person who needs a sorry)
*wanting to talk on the phone
*wanting to carry a purse or a backpack
*still wearing her pink crocs (what will we do when they don't fit!)
*throwing everything on the floor when she is done with it at the table - plate, utensils, food, cups. The dogs get hit sometimes, but they must think it's worth the bonk on the head from the sippy cup to stay there and wait for the pasta to fall.
*driving us crazy and melting our hearts at the same time

Grace is:
*being driven crazy by Hattie
*loving having someone who can play with her (sometimes)
*starting to pick up little traits at school from her friends - not always good
*loving school
*loving dance
*still playing with trains
*still not doing her hair
*choosing her own clothes - not always good choices for the weather
*able to get dressed all by herself, but doesn't want to half the time
*getting a huge vocabulary
*reading entire books
*adding and subtracting
*counting to 100 by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's
*writing everything she can think of
*asking us how to spell every word she can think of
*writing lots of notes to Velvet, Shadow, Rudolf, and her friends
*paying close attention to North, South, East, and West when we are driving. She watches the compass in my car. She wishes that we had a Mount Olympus nearby so that you could tell which way was East. East is her favorite direction because that's where Mount Olympus is in SLC.
*desperately wanting to take the training wheels off her new bike
*telling us she already knows how to ski (has never been)
*eating nothing for days and then eating every 20 minutes for days
*telling jokes
*talking more on the phone when I can trick her
*wishing for spring and summer, but appreciating winter
*planning her 5th birthday party

Conversations with Grace this week:

Mom: Grace, get in the car.
nothing
Mom: get in the car
nothing
Mom: Grace, get in the car.
Grace: Just a minute, I'm watching the fluffy gray clouds float by with the wind (on an overcast day when you can barely tell that the clouds are moving). Isn't it beautiful mom?

Grace: Mom, I think I see a red and white light in the sky. Yes! It's Rudolf!

Grace: I can't wait for Kindergarten. They will have monkey bars. You know, just the way I have been dreaming about. It will be amazing.

2007-Year in Review

Well I am a week late and I am sure a few dollars short, but here is the much anticipated 2nd annual video year in review. If you don't see yourself in the video, I guess you need to visit us more often!

Michelle and I are working on a 2007 Top Ten Event list that we will hopefully post shortly. For now, grab the popcorn, the drink, and sit back and enjoy the show. I hope that you have some time to waste.

Christmas Day 2007

Christmas morning was amazing. Grace has been wanting a bike all year and has been sincerely hoping to find one under the tree. She was absolutely thrilled to find just that thing on Christmas morning. Harriet is finally understanding a little of the magic and excitement. She even got the hang of trying to find "our elf" each morning during the month of December. ("Red" came each day to check on our house and reported to Santa each night!) Hattie found a bed full of baby dolls under her tree and was ecstatic. She has loved the Christmas tree, the lights, the bells, the music, and most of all - the BABY JESUS figures in the nativities!Having little kids and believing in Santa with them is one of the true miracles at Christmas. I don't care what some people might think of me, but for me, Santa and Christ go hand in hand and what better way to celebrate Christ's birth than to experience the pure joy of a child? Our only flaw of the morning was that for the second year in a row, we have finished opening all our gifts to realize that we didn't take a single photo! David manned the video camera through it all and I tried to orchestrate the chaos of passing presents and helping the girls open them and there just wasn't a second camera man available! In a way, it speaks to how excited and wrapped up in things we get that we totally forget to take pictures while we're opening gifts. I guess we trade being in the moment for recording the moment with a snapshot.

We did take pictures of everyone enjoying their gifts afterward. We received such an abundance from Santa and from relatives afar that we are still enjoying each gift as we play with it, wear it, or use it for the first time.
After all of the decorating, shopping, planning, wrapping, driving, thinking, mailing, sub-for-santa-ing, baking, and re-doing all of the above, the big day has finally come and gone. Sometimes in the middle of it, I really wonder if I'm doing the right thing by setting all of these crazy standards and trying to do so much - shouldn't Christmas be simple and solely about Christ? Then, when the day comes, I am glad that I did it and sometimes wish I could have done more. I think that threaded through the middle of what seems to be excess is the real Christmas spirit and I don't know if my Christmas spirit would be the same if I pared it down. In fact, I am wishing that I was able to do one more thing that I didn't get to do. I missed the Nutcracker this year with Grace and I felt the hole all season. I planned to take her "after Christmas when things calmed down", but so far, the calm hasn't come. So, I'm afraid it will have to wait until next year. To me, the abundance and craziness and tons of traditions just means that I love lots of people and want to show them that and also that lots of people love our family. And, in the end, I am always humbled by the generosity of everyone. Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent, but back to our day. We lucked out and got a warm Christmas day with a melted driveway - perfect for trying out the new bike. David pitched in big time and made a huge turkey dinner complete with all the side dishes and dessert. We had a great time just eating together in our dining room as a family. We didn't go a single place all day long. Even though we do miss going to different family members' houses, we were so grateful for an entire day that could be devoted to playing with the kids and being together without any other agenda.
We do want to say a very big THANK YOU to each person who sent an e-mail, card, picture, gift, or talked to us on the phone or video chatted with us on the computer this season. We felt very loved and remembered.

Christmas Eve 2007

(Grace and Hattie making sugar cookies for pre-school and the neighborhood.
Don't worry - we were all healthy that day and I made sure lots of handwashing went on!)

Christmas Eve was a busy day for us. We started the day by tromping around our neighborhood with goodies and gifts. Apparently, the "neighbor gift" is not a phenomenon in our area. I remember wherever we lived in Salt Lake, it seemed like you always had an endless stack of goodies brought over by the neighbors and/or people in the ward. So much you were sick of eating it all. Even if you forgot a neighbor, you always had plenty of extra to re-gift something real quick. Nope, not here. We have been giving goodies for 3 years to our immediate neighbors (now 6 houses) and no one reciprocates except our sweet friends, Roger and Jeanne and their daughter Elisabeth and her boyfriend Jay. We're not offended. We do like to spread a little Christmas cheer to the people whom we see across the fence or through the yard.

Roger, Jeanne, Elisabeth, and Jay always have something special for our kids tucked under their trees. Grace especially likes visiting their houses and Grace has now helped Jeanne and Roger decorate their Christmas tree for the past 2 years.

After visiting the last neighbor where we found out about noradsanta.org, we came home and started tracking Santa! This was a crazy thing. Grace sat in front of the computer for hours checking off all the countries as he raced through the time zones to deliver gifts. When it was time to leave for Christmas Eve dinner, Santa was in Africa and we had tracked him through Russia, Europe, and the Middle East.

As we drove on the winding roads to the Bahe's house, we marveled over the post-card setting we live in. The snow had a top layer of freezing rain, and in the full moon and Christmas lights it was like sparkling glass. The perfectly decorated country colonial homes were little paintings out of a Victorian Christmas calendar.

We spent the evening with our friends, the Bahe Family and the missionaries in our ward. The Bahe's invited us over to their house for the second year in a row. They have great traditions from soup for dinner to reading the Texas version of The Night Before Christmas (complete with Texan accents), re-enacting the Nativity (Grace was the donkey - hence the gray tail), singing carols (THEY sing well - professional musicians), and playing Christmas songs with hand-made chimes. Grace loves this party. She and Aydan Bahe get along famously. The Bahes also have some great little animals - 2 little dogs, a cat, and a kitten. They kept Hattie busy for sure.
When we got home from dinner, it was pretty late. We were nervous to see where Santa was on the tracker. He was VERY close. Actually, Grace saw him fly through the sky with Rudolf as we drove home. He was working near our time zone in South America. Boy, Santa expected us to be in bed at a good hour! I guess that's how you get on the nice list. Our household has gone back and forth from the naughty to the nice list this past month and we hoped to end up on the nice one! We decided we better hurry ourselves to bed and I think we just made it in the nick of time.

Christmas at the Ward

We went to what was, I think, the best ward Christmas party I've ever been to last night. It was simple, but very nice and everything was timed nicely so it wasn't too long and the pageant was really cute and not too long - so much that Grace said "that's the best play I've ever seen!"

The other great thing was that a lady in our ward went TO TOWN on having a great Santa set up. You could have fooled me. I think the REAL Santa was at our church last night. No fake beard - he was 100% genuine.

Hattie wouldn't sit on Santa's lap and Grace was a little nervous, but she did utter that she wants a bike for Christmas.

Hope your ward party is as good as ours was! (except David just reminded me that we got isolated with the whole deacon's quorom at our table so we didn't get to chat with any of our friends - oh well. at least they like him!)

Oh- and the best part about church this weekend was that we didn't have to go today! One great thing about New Englanders is that they cancel things for a storm. It would have taken more than an hour for us to drive there in the foot of snow that fell right when we would have had to leave. Don't be too jealous :-)

Frosty the Snowman

I built a snowman today for the first time in possibly 20 years. We got about a foot of snow yesterday and today was a glorious blue sky with sparkly fresh snow on the ground. I promised Grace we would try to build a snowman - you can't ask for a better day to do it. The only thing is that we got dry powdery Utah ski snow instead of wet sticky New England snow. Ski snow doesn't make for good snow man building, but I did my best.There was no way to roll up a ball of snow, so we started grabbing handfuls and packing them on top of each other as we went. After hundreds of handfuls and a bit of snow sculpting, we had an almost 3 foot snow man. With all the snow, I was hoping for a bit more of a giant snowman that could be seen over the snow drifts in our front yard. Our Frosty certainly doesn't compare to my friend's Frosty . Chris and her family built a pretty dang good snowman for SLC I have to say.

Will Frosty survive the nor'easter that's blowing through this weekend? We'll keep you posted. I think I'll bring in my wool felt hat and scarf though...

Early Christmas

In a way, Christmas came early for me this year. My mom and Melissa and Sean came out for a 4 day visit. They were able to see Grace's dance recital - a first for them. We also did lots of Christmas shopping, hanging out, and eating. We took the kids on a winter trip to Drumlin Farm and saw the animals in the snow too. Sean loves pigs and Harriet LOVES anything with 2-4 legs that makes a barnyard sound. Grace, of course always loves anything to do with a barn and animals and outside. I didn't take my camera, so I need to get some pictures of the farm from someone else (hint, hint.)

During their last night here, we had a big family old-fashioned Christmas and Birthday party. Melissa and I have birthdays 2 days apart in December and we've always celebrated them together except for the few years I have lived here. We have fond memories of going to our Grandma Primmer's house for Christmas where she baked up a storm of goodies and had the most delicious food for Christmas dinner. We tried our best to re-enact the old parties from when we were little and I think we were pretty successful. I have really missed having a big family Christmas party since we moved here. Sure, we celebrate with friends and ourselves, but it's just not quite the same. Of course there are lots of reasons to be glad that we don't have to go to the family Christmas parties with all of the drama and confusion that sometimes happen (we try to focus on those things when we're feeling blue at the Holidays!), but for the most part, the extended family parties are missed and I know David's family has traditions that he misses too.

So, at this family Christmas party, Sean and Grace and Hattie got to exchange gifts together for the first time as little cousins. That was my most favorite part - to see them open their presents together.

Thanks for coming mo Deb and Aunt Lis and Sean! We love you and we miss all the rest of ya too!

Now, I am most looking forward to seeing my little girls creep down our stairs to see what Santa has left under the tree. That little magical moment has to be the best part of Christmas for a parent.

Grace's Big Night

Grace is in her second year of dance and while I don't know if she is getting better, I do know that she is having fun. She was very excited for Thursday's Christmas recital and that her cousin Sean and Aunt Lis, and Mo Deb could come and watch her. She danced to Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer and then in a Finale with everyone that dances at the studio.


She did a great job despite her antlers that kept falling off her head and covering her eyes. She had a great time dancing and watching all the other dancers. I wish that I could say the same.

So if you couldn't be there, here is Grace dancing.

O Christmas Tree

Last Saturday we braved the cold and more importantly the bitter wind to take the kids out to pick out the family Christmas tree for 2007. It was so cold that we minimized our time outside and took the first tree that was short enough to fit in our house. It had just barely been taken off the truck and unbound so we did recognize or appreciate just how full this tree was. To quote Clark Griswald, "... a little full, lot of sap."

We got the tree inside and mounted and quickly discovered that we may have to do some trimming. So, since Michelle is the artist of the family, I got her the hedger and she went to town. You probably don't do that every day! After it was all said and done the tree looks great and we already have presents to put around the tree.

Just don't ask Michelle about ticks in the tree!

Goodbye and Goodnight

NaBloPoMo is over. The challenge was issued and accepted. In the end it took both the efforts of myself and Michelle to officially accomplish the task. I figure that is all well and good. Afterall, some days saw multiple blogs from yours truly.

I discovered that many of you would prefer I not blog about politics and that I instead stick to day to day activities of the family. While it was a struggle to come up with some blog material every day and I certainly did a poor job on some days, I can at least say that I did it. Perhaps not all "A" work, but I passed.

Now that it will soon be December, I hope that I can continue to maintain a healthly blog posting frequency. Every day is probably too much, but hopefully you all can tune in to hear me rant and rave and ramble 2-3 times a week.

Goodbye and goodnight to NaBloPoMo!

Christmas Dresses and Little Girls

...don't always mix. Some little girls LOVE to get all dressed up like a princess. Not my royalty. They think that fancy dresses are itchy and get in the way. Sorry mom, Harriet will NOT wear the little sleeve gloves you made to match the dress, so I took the pictures without them. I hope she'll wear them when we have to leave the house so she's not cold. She wouldn't wear a bow either. She doesn't understand bribery yet. Grace does, thus the bow in her hair.

I decided that I don't have it in me this year to go to some picture place, drive 30 minutes each way, wait in the waiting room until dresses and hair and nerves are shot and then come away with 2 poses that I half like and had to pay a fortune for. So, I took my own terrible pictures for free! (after all, we have a really nice camera now - no excuses not to use it.) Nerves still frazzled, hair still not too good, but dresses survived the ordeal.

Harriet was NOT happy about any part of the picture taking. I had to give her the favorite baby doll just to get her to sit down by her sister. No, she's not holding a baby we haven't announced! Just a doll that's almost as big as she is.

These are the final results. Please make honest comments. Tell me if I need a do-over. Do I need to dress them up again tomorrow and try again? I'm pretty happy with Grace's close up. I don't like any of them together - lots are cute, but not what I was after and none are "good" photos. I came up with nothing from Harriet, but I doctored up what I could. Would you want a glossy 8x10 of these at your house?

I'm just putting the two that I doctored and like best on the blog. Look at the flickr page for all the miserable shots...

Taking pictures of kids is a good way to put the scrooge back into Christmas! I'll try to get over it and decorate the tree this weekend.

addendum: David came home and thought Hattie needed a better photo, so we put her dress back on and took 20 more shots. Here's the winner:

Work, work, work

No rest for the weary around here. I have been gone from 7 AM until 9PM every night this week and I have to go into work even earlier tomorrow to get ready for a program review. Thus, it is a short blogging night. Luckily only 2 days to go.

Almost there, almost there, ...

I am finally getting close to the end of the month. NaBloPoMo has been a tough feat. Certainly some of my posts haven't been worth the ip packets that were sent over the internet. At the MRS the last couple of days I have been recommended to read several books. I thought I would pass it on,

1) Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. A plea for scientific literacy. Should be a good read.

2) Stephen Hawking's, God Created the Integers. It is about how math changed the world around us.

And finally, the last one isn't a book, but is a transcript of a talk given by John "Kappa" Cornworth. Check it out here.

Scientists Step Up

The annual Fall MRS meeting started today in Boston. Most of the sessions this afternoon that I attended weren't too interesting to me, but I stayed for the two plenary talks tonight. Both by Nobel Laureates and both talked about the need for scientists to confront global warming and our energy needs. It won't be the politicians, it won't be the movie stars, it won't even be the Al Gores of the world that will solve these problems. It will be the scientific community. Things look drastic and we truly need revolutionary ideas to confront our growing appetite for electricity. However, what we also need it a huge increase in renewable/sustainable energy research. Coming out of graduate school I really wanted to work for NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) but they were laying people off. Despite the warning bells that are sounding we continue to neglect this very important area of research. We had the Apollo Project, we had Star Wars, now it is time for Green Energy. Let's hope the politicians can at least put some resources toward this so that science can solve yet another problem. Let the politicians get the credit too, let's just get a move on solving this problem.